Yesterday the official augurers at the temple had warned of ‘unexpected storms’. I liked the arrival of Perennis Felix less and less.
My feelings must have been showing in my face. Felix, for the first time, allowed himself to smile slightly. It was not an attractive smile and his voice was positively poisonous as he said, sweetly, ‘A problem, citizen?’
I had, at least, acquired the courtesy of a title. I was debating whether ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was the less dangerous answer to his question when we were interrupted by the arrival of a swarthy soldier striding down the basilica steps at the head of a delegation of magistrates. That alone was enough to confirm his status — this was Felix’s driver. No ordinary soldier would dare to force the civic dignitaries into second place. He did not so much as glance at me as he strode past me to the carriage and, assisting his passenger to the pavement (as if Felix was a delicate woman instead of a strong and very ugly man), engaged him at once in hushed and private conversation.
The magistrates hovered behind him, not daring to interrupt. Glevum is an important city, a republic in its own right within the Empire, and these men were its most eminent citizens. Yet they were cowed. From their wringing hands and apologetic smiles, I gathered that they felt as uneasy about this sudden visitor as I did.
I looked at the carriage-driver. He was handsome in a glowering sort of way, in a shorter-than-regulation leather skirt, revealing long tanned legs and muscles as hard and gleaming as his shirt-amour. He was bare-headed, without wreath or helmet, his dark hair flowing, like a barbarian’s, his cloak fastened dramatically across his breast with an expensive pin. Not much like an average military carriage-driver, in fact, although from the way Felix was looking at him — like a wolf regarding a particularly succulent peacock in a pen — I guessed that the young man had been specially chosen, and singled out for additional duties.
I was wondering whether I dared now slip unobtrusively away when Felix suddenly looked towards me, raised a peremptory hand and summoned me to him.
‘You! Whatever-your-name-is! Come here.’
‘My name is Libertus, Excellence,’ I burbled, hurrying towards him as fast as I could, bobbing all the way. This was not a moment, I felt, to stress that I was a citizen by giving my three full Latin names. I need not have concerned myself. Felix was not listening.
‘You know where Marcus is?’
I nodded. In bed with his wealthy widowed lady, if he was lucky. I did not suggest this to Felix, however. ‘He had pressing business in Corinium,’ I offered humbly. That was true, after a fashion. I did not say what he was pressing.
Felix gave me his Jupiter stare again. ‘That amuses you?’
If I had been guilty of the faintest amusement it vanished instantly. ‘No, Excellence.’
‘Very well. Then you will fetch him to me.’ He must have seen my appalled look — Corinium was miles away.
I said hastily, ‘It will take some time, Excellence. It is a day’s walk.’ And another back, I thought bitterly. Even supposing that I could impress on Marcus the urgency of my errand, and persuade him to come at once.
Felix looked at me with contempt. ‘You will return with him tonight. Zetso shall take you in my carriage, as soon as I have settled in this house they promise me. It is doubtless a provincial hovel, though it belongs to one of the decurions, apparently.’
So the civic magistrates had been sufficiently awed to offer him one of their own town houses, instead of putting him in an official inn or finding him rented accommodation. It didn’t altogether surprise me, although I felt a certain pity for the unfortunate owner. He would be turned out of his house (though that was probably a blessing, with Felix in residence) with no thanks, forced to beg a room from friends or relatives, and almost certainly grumbled at for it afterwards. I couldn’t imagine a Glevum residence, however well appointed, being good enough for Felix — at least in his own estimation. There are moments when I am glad that I have only a workshop by the river with a tumbledown attic over it. At least I am not expected to vacate it for passing dignitaries from Rome.
One of the magistrates intervened nervously, almost tripping over his toga-ends in his desire to please. ‘If your most exalted Excellence will condescend. .’ He stepped forward and murmured something to Felix, who permitted himself a kind of smile.
‘Better still,’ the Roman said, addressing himself to me, ‘they are proposing a civic banquet for me this evening. Marcus may attend me there. You may tell him so.’
‘Yes, Excellence.’ I tried to disguise my dismay, imagining Marcus’s fury at such an invitation, which he could hardly refuse. That alone would have made me reluctant to go — not to mention the fact that I had a mosaic business to run, and customers of my own to see to.
I didn’t mention it. Had I been remotely tempted to do so, the sight of that battered corpse on the cobbles would have taught me discretion.
Felix followed my glance. ‘Yes,’ he said. He turned to his driver. ‘Zetso, once you have installed me in my house you had better take that’ — he gestured towards the body — ‘outside the walls and dispose of it. Stake it out somewhere, as the barbarians do — his master can find the body and bury it if he has a mind to. Always supposing that the crows have not found it first.’
I blanched. Leaving the body unburied! It was an appalling idea, even to a Celt. The Romans are usually far more superstitious in such matters, and will not even permit the burial of the decently dead within the walls of a city for fear that their spirits may return to haunt them. Felix, it seemed, feared nobody — not even the dead.
My revulsion seemed to please him, and for the first time he nodded almost affably. ‘It will be a warning. Perennis Felix is not to be trifled with.’ He smiled at the driver, a cold, unpleasant smile. ‘Nor his servants either.’
The driver’s swarthy, handsome face was a mask of carefully controlled passivity, but in spite of himself he flushed slightly, and I saw him flinch. So there was an additional reason, perhaps, for the calculated cruelty of that execution? One smile too many at the handsome Zetso, one glance too many in return? It seemed only too likely. How else would this ugly Roman keep his sexual favourite faithful?
If Zetso was to drive me to Corinium, alone, I would have to be very careful indeed.
Felix was helped back into his carriage. ‘You know the way to this house?’ he said to Zetso.
The man nodded.
‘Then, drive on!’
Zetso raised his whip and the horse lurched into life, dragging the carriage smartly towards the narrow entrance to the forum, scattering the startled crowd and sending them stumbling in all directions. Dogs barked, pigs squealed, a woman dropped her turnips as she fled. A basket of live eels was overturned on the flagstones, and the fish fell wriggling under the wheels, the body of the dead envoy dragging grotesquely among them.
‘Outside the East Gate, then, before the hour,’ Zetso called to me, over his shoulder, and then they were gone, leaving market people and magistrates staring after them.
I had no water-clock or sundial, and no way of estimating time, so I could only shrug helplessly as I picked my way among the scattered turnips. I would simply have to get to the East Gate as promptly as I could.
Chapter Two
I calculated that I had time to return to my workshop first. Zetso still had that corpse to dispose of, and that would take him more than a few moments. A staked, unburied body would have to be carried a long way outside the gates. And first he had to take his master to his newly annexed abode.
All the same I did not wish to keep Felix’s driver waiting.
So I hurried. Back though the town and out of the gates to where a makeshift suburb of humble shops and dwellings huddled together outside the walls, on the marshy land beside the river. No fine paved roads and handsome buildings here — only running gutters, crowded streets and the hammering, shouting, smoke and stench that always accompanies manual industry. I turned into a particularly noisome little alley, stepped over a pile of stone and marble chippings into a ramshackle front shop, poked my head around the frowsty curtain that separated customers from the kitchen-workshop behind and called, ‘Anyone there?’