I nodded. Julia, like me, did not enjoy the sea, and had refused to contemplate the long ocean voyage from Glevum, so Marcus had decided to send the boy ahead with messages and imperial travel permits, requisitioning their passage on a naval ship from Londinium to Dubris, and from there on the shortest possible sea crossing to Gaul.
This substitute was a good deal younger, seven or eight years old perhaps, but he was fair-haired and pretty and desperate to please. He spoke in a piping, eager voice. ‘If the two citizens would follow me,’ he said.
Junio looked at me and grinned. It was the first time anyone had called him ‘citizen’. He followed me (walking with some difficulty, true — togas are not easy to manage if you are not used to them, and his was showing a tendency to unhitch itself) and we were shown into the atrium. We had hardly reached it before Julia arrived. That was an indication of how distressed she was. There was none of the usual fashionable delay, intended to make lesser mortals like myself appreciate the honour of an interview with her.
She was attended, as usual, by a pair of maidservants, and was looking as lovely as she always does. Her stola and over-tunic were of the softest pink, and she had woven ornaments into her hair. But her face was strained and tense. She managed a smile for Junio, and then turned to me. ‘Libertus, I am very glad to see you. This is an unhappy business, I’m afraid. I’ve had my land slaves take the body to the stable block — the room where we prepare dead slaves for burial — and I have sent some servants out to make enquiries, to see if anyone is missing in the area.’
‘Recently dead then?’ That was a surprise.
‘It seems so. But my slavemaster thinks that you should come and take a look at her yourself.’
‘It is a female?’ I was quite surprised. No reason why it should not be, of course, but most people travelling the forest — off the paths — are men.
‘A girl. Quite young, from what I understand, and dressed in peasant clothes, though obviously I haven’t been to see.’ She swallowed. ‘They tell me that she is not a pleasant sight. I understand the face is battered in, and there are other injuries. When they reported that they’d found her, I just instructed them to bring her here.’
I nodded. Nobody would expect a lady of her rank to concern herself with an unlucky corpse at all, let alone a bruised and battered peasant one. ‘So you sent for me?’
‘And now I’m doubly glad I did. The chief of the land slaves came to ask for me, not half an hour ago. He seems to think there’s something slightly odd about the look of it.’
‘Odd? Apart from having a battered face, you mean?’ All kinds of pictures were flitting through my brain. ‘In what way odd?’
She shook her head. ‘She’s dressed like a poor peasant, as I said, but when they came to put her on a board, and carry her over to the stable block, it seems he noticed that her hands were very soft. The nails are clean, he said, and nicely shaped as if they’d been rubbed with a pumice stone or something of the kind — not black and broken as a peasant girl’s would be. And, he tells me, the feet are much the same. It made me wonder. .’
I whistled. ‘Perhaps she is not the pauper she appears to be?’
She smiled. ‘Exactly. Libertus, I knew you’d understand. Supposing this is a wealthy girl, found on what is still officially our land? It makes it rather awkward for Marcus and myself, when we are due to go to Rome in less than half a moon. What was she doing in the forest, on private property?’
I found that I was nodding once again. ‘Some wealthy citizen’s daughter, perhaps, attempting to escape a marriage that she didn’t want? It has been known for such things to occur. If she disguised herself as a peasant to meet someone in the woods, it is possible that she was attacked and robbed.’
Julia met my eyes. ‘I thought of that myself. But I have not heard of any young lady missing in the town. And surely, you’d think, we would have known of it? A wealthy father would have called on Marcus for a search, and got the town guard looking for the girl. It’s not as though there’s not been time for that. The body had not been dead for very long, but clearly it has been there for at least a day or two.’
Junio, emboldened by his new rank of citizen perhaps, dared to join the conversation. ‘Pardon me, madam — Father — but there is another thing — if I might speak.’ We signalled our assent, and he went on, ‘If it was a failed elopement, why smash in the face? It can’t be to prevent the family from identifying it. Surely they would lay claim to an uncovered corpse at once, if they were looking for a missing daughter anyway? And they would recognise the fingers, if your land slave did.’
I nodded. ‘And having made the corpse unrecognisable, why bury it at all — especially in such a shallow ditch as I understand this was? Yet clearly it did not get there by itself. Someone put it there. The body of a wealthy girl, dressed in peasant clothes. Your slave is right, it does seem very odd.’
Julia gave that tight-lipped smile. ‘Exactly so. That’s why I called for you. I very much fear, Libertus, that we may have an inconvenient murder on our hands — probably of someone of good family. And what with the Festival of the Dead and our impending trip — to say nothing of our important visitor from Rome — it has come at a very awkward time indeed.’
I sighed. I knew I’d have had to work out who the body was, if possible, and arrange to give the corpse a decent funeral — for Junio’s sake if nothing else — but the matter was already becoming more complicated than I would have wished. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’d better get a slave to show me where she is, and Junio and I will take a look at her.’
Chapter Three
I was not really hopeful of discovering very much as my new son and I followed the blond pageboy from the house and through the inner court. If this girl was dressed in someone else’s clothes, I thought, they could have been obtained from anywhere, so there was probably little to be deduced from them. As for establishing exactly who she was, we would probably have to wait until someone came forward to claim the corpse as some missing member of their family, since the face was said to be unrecognisable. However, I was interested to see those hands and feet.
‘There, citizens.’ The pageboy indicated the outbuilding where the body had been put. He was clearly unwilling to go near the place himself, so I took pity on his youthful sensibility and Junio and I walked forward on our own.
The door was already ajar as we approached, and the swarthy figure of Marcus’s chief land slave could be seen inside, standing guard beside a sheeted bundle on a plank. I knew the fellow slightly. His name was Stygius: a big man, strong and powerful from long years in the field, with muscles and sinews that stood out like knotted ropes, and speech as slow and deliberate as his walk.
He came out to greet me with a worried frown. ‘Citizen Libertus, I am glad you’re here. The mistress told me you were on your way. And you too, citizen, of course.’ He nodded in Junio’s direction with a vague, respectful air, twisting his fingers together in front of his leather apron and bowing to us both. ‘The mistress told you what I noticed about the skin and nails?’ He avoided looking us directly in the face. Life had taught him to be subservient.
‘She did indeed, Stygius,’ I said. ‘And I was impressed. It was very intelligent of you to notice it. Many people would not have spotted the significance of that.’
His face was browned with sun and wind, but I would almost swear he blushed. ‘It’s kind of you to say so, citizen,’ he said and stared down at his hands.
I realised that it was probably not often that anyone commended Stygius for his intelligence — it is not something expected of a land slave on the whole. Strong arms, a strong back and an unwavering application to the task in hand, however dreary and repetitive, were the important attributes, even for a chief man like Stygius. I felt a sudden surge of sympathy for him, labouring in the fields from dawn to dusk, at the mercy of all extremes of sun and rain: he was slow of speech and movement, but it was clear his mind was sharp. ‘You did very well,’ I added, and he flashed me a shy smile.