Enemies of the Empire (13 page)

Marcus was looking furious again at my unseemly lack of suitable attire, but clearly there was no alternative. He gave a brusque, dismissive nod. ‘Very well,’ he muttered tersely, and applied himself to nibbling dates again. By the time I came back – glowing from the cold plunge, and wrapped in an old tunic of the optio’s which was far too wide for me, and didn’t reach my knees – he’d eaten every one of them.

He had, however, managed to obtain a battered writing tablet and a stylus for my use, so after a stout midday meal of army broth and bread, I sat down and drafted a letter to my wife and included some instructions for Junio, my slave. Since he was making samples of possible designs for the pavement of Plautus’s memorial it occurred to me that, by calling to show them at the house, he would be well placed to make a few discreet enquiries. However, I knew that Marcus would not approve of that – it has never been his nature to stir up hornets’ nests. So, after a little thought, I closed up the tablet at the hinge and, having tied it carefully, sealed the tapes with melted tallow-wax. It looked like the sort of makeshift fastening that anyone might use when sending a letter between distant towns: not a proper ring-seal, suggesting secrecy, but probably enough to stop Marcus from casually reading it before he passed it on. I reasoned that he could not overrule my instructions to my slave if he did not know that I was making them.

I need not have worried. Marcus handed my letter over to the messenger without a second glance, along with several missives of his own, and they were on their way to Glevum shortly afterwards. My patron was much more concerned with the information, brought by the optio, that neither the butcher nor his boys could be found. However, his men had rounded up the butcher’s brother, who had been left to mind the shop, and he was waiting in a back room of the mansio. Would Marcus care to come and question him?

Marcus would. He made a point of not inviting me – evidently I was still in disgrace. However, the man must have said something to the soldiers who had brought him in. I waited for the optio to come back through the court and intercepted him, bustling and busy though he obviously was.

The optio looked dismayed at seeing me. ‘Now what do you want?’ he said ungraciously. ‘I can’t stop to talk. His Excellence is furious with me as it is – he seems to blame me for the whole event. Just when I was hoping to make a good impression on a man of influence, and perhaps be made up to centurion by and by.’

‘This is as much in your interest as mine,’ I said. I outlined what I wanted.

He shrugged.’ There isn’t any mystery at all. The butcher, it seems, summoned both his sons last night and went out with his donkey cart at dusk. Took some skins out to a tannery a few miles down the road, and from there he was going on to visit a few of the larger stockholders nearby, to haggle for extra animals. There are some public feast-days coming up.’

‘And that’s not unusual?’

‘Apparently he does the same thing every day or two. He keeps a large cart in a private stable not far from the gate, expressly for expeditions like this. It’s a useful thing all round. It disposes of the waste materials from the stall and makes him a little extra on the side. He takes out the bones and ‘block-bits’ too, his brother says, all the ends and trimmings that he can’t get rid of here.’

‘Surely he could find somebody to buy the odds and ends?’ I said, remembering Lupus and his thermopolium.

He laughed. ‘He does. He sells them to forest-borderers, it seems, though he will hardly make his fortune doing that. Those people have no land: they scrape a living out of selling wood and bits of anything that they can scavenge by the road. They’ll take anything he has: little scraps of flyblown meat – they boil that up for soup – or even bits of bone and teeth. The womenfolk carve ornaments from them and sell them to people passing by – I’ve seen them hawking the wretched things myself. Apparently they have a barter system with the butcher – he gets things like firewood in exchange.’

‘So he went out there at dusk?’ I said, and realised what a daft remark that was. Of course he went at dusk – wheeled transport could not operate by day. ‘Is he not afraid of brigands, in the dark?’

‘I suppose he’s used to it. He and the boys sometimes stay overnight with relatives who have some land out there. They’ll be home again tonight – or tomorrow at the latest – and then we can bring them in and question them. Till then, that’s all the information that we’re going to get. His Excellence is going all through it with the man again, but I really don’t think he’s got anything to add. He wasn’t even at the butcher’s yesterday: he’s got his own stall selling something else – and, in case you were going to ask, his wife looks after that when he takes his brother’s place. All quite a family affair – like everything round here. Look, there he is. I see they’ve let him go. He’ll be pleased at that. We dragged him from the market as he was – bloodied arms and all – and he is obviously anxious to get back to the shop.’ He made an exasperated face. ‘And I must go as well. I am expecting a messenger to come from Lyra’s house. I’ve been in enough trouble over you!’

He hurried off. I looked where he had pointed, and sure enough, there was the man in question scurrying away. He was a hunched and furtive-looking little man and had clearly been brought in straight from the market-stall: he was wrapped in the bloodied leather apron that all butchers wear and he still bore streaks of spattered flesh and fur. I grinned. Marcus would not have enjoyed his interview with that!

The fellow saw me looking and glowered fiercely back. I had a strong impression that I’d seen him somewhere before, though after all the anxieties of the last few days I couldn’t for the moment work out where. I was still standing, staring after him, when the optio’s other messenger arrived, saying that Lyra was nowhere to be found. She had been in her rooms this morning, it appeared, but now she had gone out and none of her girls knew where she was.

‘Touting for business, probably, or visiting some special customer,’ the rider said to me, with a suggestive leer. He swung down from his horse, and gave it to a mansio-slave who took it round the back to stable it again. ‘I’ve left orders for her to report here as soon as she returns. That seems to be the best that I can do. Are you going to tell His Excellence the news, or do you want me to?’

‘You tell him,’ I said quickly, though I felt a little qualm as I watched him swagger off towards my patron’s room with innocently cheerful confidence. I knew what Marcus’s mood was apt to be when his plans were frustrated in this way. I made myself as scarce as possible, but even from the stables I could hear the bellowing.

I did not see my patron again all afternoon: he had himself carried off in a private litter to the public baths where he was no doubt soothed and entertained by meeting the wealthy officials of the town, and the delights of hot plunge pools and steam. I had already had my chilly dip in the mansio bath-house and – ridiculous in my ill-fitting borrowed garb – could not go anywhere, not even to the market for that clasp. My tunic had been taken to the fuller’s to be cleaned, but I knew that it would be at least another day before I could expect it to be returned to me.

There was nothing for it but to hang around the inn, and a very boring afternoon it was. Even the optio had no time to chat. I guessed that Marcus had been short with him. He had lost his air of polished eagerness, and hurried distractedly about, bellowing orders and ignoring me. A series of officials bustled in and out for hasty conferences in his private room and I guessed that this was part of an attempt to make the enquiries which Marcus had required. I would have loved to ask a question or two of these men myself, but the optio was quite abrupt when I suggested it, and without my patron to intercede for me there was nothing I could do.

In the end I went back to my room and went to sleep – a rare enough pleasure in the afternoon, but a welcome one, after the discomforts of the night before.

We dined in the optio’s private quarters later on, at his request. He was clearly very proud of his domain, and if he had offended Marcus, this evening was intended to atone.

There was a proper dining couch – though only one instead of the more usual three, because his private dining room was small. Still, there were slaves to serve us with the meal, and the young officer fussed about to arrange us suitably on his solitary couch, as if he were presiding at a major feast.

‘Your Excellence, if you would take the guest of honour’s seat, there on my right hand, I, as host, shall have the central one, and I have also invited a town official whom I was sure you would be interested to meet. He will be sitting on my other side.’

He gestured to the individual in question, a stout, self-important man with gigantic sandy eyebrows as big as tufts of reeds – the sure sign of a provincial. I saw Marcus flinch. Like any pure-blooded Roman my patron would endure hours of discomfort at his barber’s hands – tweezers, bat’s blood depilatories, anything – rather than appear in a public place looking like that.

This apparition was the local censor, it appeared, the town senator responsible for keeping the taxation records for the civitas and the surrounding area, and he was blithely unaware of his offence. On the contrary, he was inflated, like a bullfrog, with his own self-importance and portentousness. Marcus rarely dined with town officials of such lowly rank, but the man was clearly oblivious of that: in Venta he was an important personage, and he condescended to us wonderfully.

Since all three places on the dining couch were thus accounted for, I was placed at one end of the table on an uncomfortable stool. I had swapped my borrowed tunic for a borrowed
synthesis
– the sort of combination robe and toga generally reserved for special feasts – in which I looked, if possible, even more absurd. In this setting it was wholly out of place. Even the optio wore informal dress. He was reclining in a simple yellow robe – and looking entirely at home.

The mansio kitchen had excelled itself. The food was pleasant and the servings liberal (though I noticed that pork and fennel was among the offerings again). By the time the optio’s slave came round with watered wine even Marcus had shrugged off something of his bad mood. I almost wondered if our host would produce a lute-player or some other after-dinner entertainment, as there might have been at a civilian feast, but of course he did nothing of the kind. Instead, as soon as the final dishes were removed, he turned the conversation to the day’s enquiries, and it became clear why the censor had been invited.

The optio cleared his throat. ‘I have carried out your instructions, Excellence, and now I have the honour to report. I had the whole town searched this afternoon, especially the so-called Roman quarter of the town. I have also interviewed all members of the watch, but I fear there has been no news of the man with the scarred face whom you’re looking for.’ To my surprise he seemed secretly pleased, if anything – though since he had nothing positive to report, it was a little difficult to work out why. If I wanted to be promoted to centurion, I would not have smiled.

Marcus took another sip of wine and frowned. ‘I trust your friend the censor has had more success? I presume you have made an examination of the tax records?’

The tax official inclined his head. ‘I have. As you are well aware, Excellence, all private landed property is subject to a tax. It causes some ill-feeling locally, I’m afraid, but as I always explain, since all the land in the province is ultimately the property of the Emperor, the charge is effectively a rent.’

Marcus was nodding impatiently at this – he needed no instruction in the nature of the law. ‘Of course. And all full citizens residing in the civitas are required to pay a contribution to the upkeep of the town. That is the object of the census officer.’

His irritation was quite plain to me, but the censor was imperturbable. ‘Exactly so. As a result all local landowners and citizens should be registered. However, there is no mention of a Gaius Flaminius Plautus anywhere.’ He delivered this information in a measured monotone, raising his enormous eyebrows skywards as he spoke. ‘Nor is there any record of a Lyra in my scrolls.’

Marcus looked thunderous at this, but the optio seemed pleased, if anything. Indeed he flashed me a triumphant look. I wondered if there was more information still to come.

Sure enough, the optio turned to me. ‘You talked about the street of the oil-lamp sellers, citizen. We have made enquiries. Most of the property in the area is owned by one individual, it seems. Censor, you have the information, I believe?’

The official produced a document from the folds of a pocket underneath his belt, with the air of a magician conjuring a snake. ‘I’ve had my record-keeper make a copy for you.’ He handed Marcus the scrap of parchment-bark on which the details had been scrawled in watery squid-and-lamp-black ink. ‘The owner is a certain Nyros, the current head of one of the old Silurian tribes. Unlike most of the families that did not welcome Rome, his clan seems to have successfully maintained its wealth – judging by the tax on his estate. Not only does he have a farm some distance from the town, but he owns several buildings in the civitas. He has recently financed several public works, so he may consider seeking office soon, though there is no record of his ever doing so before.’

I squinted at the document as I best I could. It was not easy from where I sat, but if I craned my neck a bit I could make out the writing, more or less. Marcus saw what I was doing, and, aware of his own dignity, snatched the sheet away. ‘I suppose he rents the building to this Lyra person, and takes a portion of the profits from the house. That’s not unusual.’

The censor nodded. ‘I agree. That is almost certainly the arrangement, although according to the record the rent is very small, no doubt in consideration of certain . . . hmmm . . . privileges with the wares.’

The optio looked horrified, but Marcus actually laughed. Before his marriage he had enjoyed a certain reputation of his own – though, given the rumours of his imperial lineage, it is doubtful he ever had to pay for services. ‘He prefers the proprietor herself, perhaps?’