‘There has not been time to alert the warehouses, but you still have that official letter with his seal on it. That should gain you entry anywhere. He gave orders for special transport for you, as soon as he had made the morning sacrifice. They should be waiting now. I have been given directions, master, and I am to take you down there as soon as you are ready.’
Chapter Fifteen
What happened next was a surprise to me. Instead of leading me down into the courtyard to a waiting litter, or even to one of the town gates to take a carriage, Junio took me to the back of the palace, turned left at the gate, and down a short path to the river bank.
‘Your transport, master,’ he said, with a gesture and a grin.
I found myself confronted with a barge.
I do not care for water travel. I was captured once by pirates from the sea, and after being hauled aboard their filthy craft I was held in chains in a stinking hold for days until they dragged me blinking into the daylight at a distant port and sold me into slavery. That was an experience I never want to repeat — although it still haunts my nightmares — and I have kept away from water ever since, except when it is necessary to cross a river by a rope-ferry, and even then I scramble off as soon as possible.
I have seen more peaceful water-traffic of course, many times: the docks in Glevum near my home are constantly busy with ships of all descriptions. But I had never voluntarily been aboard a boat since my captivity, and my chief sensation as I was helped up the plank to this one was something very akin to panic. I was sure that it was about to start rocking dangerously, although the water was calm, and I was very glad to sit down on the wooden seat that was provided for me at the stern.
The bargemaster, a squat dark fellow with a bushy beard, hurried up to bow before me and ensure that I was comfortable — so far from my previous experience that I began to feel a little more secure. Junio, though, was delighted by the whole event. When I recovered myself sufficiently to glance in his direction, he was squatting on the deck at my feet, and grinning with careless satisfaction.
‘What a splendid notion, master,’ he murmured. ‘I asked one of the household about it this morning, and it seems that all the grain stores are by the river. This is much the fastest way of visiting them, even if you do not care for boats.’
I hadn’t realised that Junio knew about my fears, and in the interests of dignity I did not reply. Instead I took a feigned interest in the preparations around me. The governor’s personal standard was run up on a small post at the back, and the slave-crew settled into position. It was a dual-purpose barge, designed to be towed by horses when required, or rowed by a bank of oarsmen, one oar on either side. A man with a drum appeared from the quay and took up a position at the bow.
‘They’ve let go the ropes, master! We are off!’
Junio hardly had time to frame the words before the bargemaster barked a command and two rows of oars were lowered into the water, like so many long white teeth. They could row, those men. I would not have believed that anything so bulky could move with such apparent ease. Out we went, leaving the riverbank behind, and joined the traffic on the water.
It was a whole other world out on the river. Great ships from distant provinces, some of them sixty feet or more, filled the waterway, their huge square sails filled or furled. Small boats, punts and cockles wound their way between them, carrying everything from fish to hempen rope. A barge filled with horses rocked at anchor as we passed, and Londinium towered above us in the morning sunshine. And still we ploughed onwards. The oars splashed in time to the drummer’s beat, men strained and grunted, and once I swear I saw an eel slither through the depths beneath us. I was beginning to enjoy myself.
The bargemaster sidled up again. ‘You wish to see the corn stores, citizen? You will see the first one in a little while, on the right — the steer-board side.’ He grinned, showing a gap where his front teeth had once been, and indicated the slave manning the steering oar at the back. ‘Not that they will be expecting you at the granary. We travel faster than any messenger.’
I thought to myself that if I hoped to learn anything at all, the fact that nobody was expecting me might prove to be an advantage. I was about to say so to him, but by that time we had reached the bend in the river and I caught my first sight of one of the Londinium grain stores.
There are grain stores in Glevum, of course — any large city has a need for bread and flour — but nothing I had seen before prepared me for the scale of this. It was an enormous building, as of course it would have to be: the lands around Londinium are not suitable for growing corn, and every grain of it has to be imported and stored somewhere. The warehouse stood on its own wharf, where a contingent of slaves under the supervision of a bad-tempered soldier with a lash were struggling to move heavy sacks of grain on to a wide, flat-bottomed boat alongside. Further along, another lesser boat was being loaded with smaller sacks.
‘Army rations,’ the bargemaster said, with the air of one long familiar with the river and its ways. ‘One and a half thousand troops in the Londinium fort.’ He spat contemptuously into the water. ‘Most of them the governor’s personal guard. But there’s another section — town watch they call themselves — and they’ve got their beaks in everything, mostly on behalf of the army procurator, so naturally the best of the grain crop goes to them. Not like the likes of us. Won’t find them having to pay three times the proper price for a sack of corn, and then finding when they get it home it’s full of weevils, or so damp that it is half rotted before they open it.’
I looked at him questioningly. Bargemasters are famously experts on any subject you care to mention — even I had heard that — but this man seemed to speak with personal feeling.
‘Haven’t there been edicts to control the price of corn?’
‘Oh, there are supposed to be. But only up to a certain quantity. If you need more than that, you have to pay whatever they are asking. The official price is a waste of time — first sign of a wet season, and it goes shooting up like a ballista.’ He spat again. ‘My sister’s husband has a baker’s shop, a very up-to-date affair, with two ovens, three boys to help him and his own donkey-mill as well. In a good place too, just east of Government House — just where all the minor officials have their accommodation. You would suppose, wouldn’t you, that a man like that would do a splendid trade?’
He barely waited for my agreement.
‘My father thought so anyway, when he arranged the match for her. But with the price of grain — wheat, barley, rye, it’s all the same — the family has been close to starving more than once. Men will only pay so much for a loaf of bread, whatever the price of grain, and when half of that turns out to be useless, there’s no room for profit.’
He turned away and began barking orders to his men. As if by magic half the blades stopped beating and instead dropped, like a single wounded insect, into the water, the steering slave strained at his oar, and the barge moved smoothly up beside the wharf. The soldier with the lash came belligerently over, and then, seeing the governor’s pennant flying behind us, clearly thought better of it and hurried off to find somebody official to welcome us ashore.
The man who did so was a small, pale individual, thin as a blade of corn himself, with a fringe of faded sandy hair around his balding head. He was dressed in an amber-coloured tunic of fine wool, with a good cloak and leather leggings, and was clearly a man of some substance; possibly even a citizen, despite the dress. There was a pilleus, a freeman’s cap, tucked into his belt, and freeborn men in any substantial city these days earn the distinction of citizenship simply by being born within the walls. He came towards us bowing frantically and looked (as he must have been) astonished when he found that the only occupant of the imperial barge was an elderly Celt in a travel-stained toga.