He recovered hastily. ‘Citizen, to what do we owe the honour?’ He had a habit of pressing the ends of his long thin fingers together as he spoke, and bowing over them like a temple priest. ‘I am the chief clerk of stores and civil overseer for this granary. The governor has sent you here today? Is there some problem with the imperial stores? If so. .’ His pale eyes flickered nervously to the official pennant as he spoke.
‘Nothing of that kind at all,’ I murmured soothingly. ‘It is merely that I should like to see over the granary. There are one or two unresolved enquiries as a result of Caius Monnius’ death.’
I tried to keep my reply deliberately vague, while sounding as efficient as possible. If the truth were told, I had very little idea myself what I hoped to learn from this visit — except perhaps to understand the office of frumentarius a little better, and discover what kind of service Eppaticus might have provided, for Monnius to owe him five thousand denarii. Or, to put it another way, what kind of underhand activity it was that had sent him bolting like a startled carriage horse at the mere mention of Monnius’ murder.
If I had intended to reassure the overseer, I had not succeeded. The pale eyes were flickering like candles in a gale, and he pressed his thin fingers so hard together that the tips went white. Nonetheless he went through the motions of welcome. ‘Of course, of course. A terrible business, the death of Monnius. We were all most shocked to hear it. Now, Mightiness, if you wish to look over the granary. .?’ He waited while I made my way ashore, with the assistance of Junio and the bargemaster, and then added, ‘Where, exactly, would you care to begin?’
As I know rather less about Roman granaries than I know about boats, this was a difficult question to answer. At my oppidum when I was young, we simply dried the rye on wooden racks, threshed it, and kept the resultant grain in a pit, with prickled branches set around it to keep off the mice. I said, with as much authority as I could muster, ‘Let us start from the beginning. Show me where the corn comes in, and what you do with it.’
That seemed to worry him still more, but he began to gabble a description, leading the way as he did so. ‘This is the main quay — at harvest it is full of grain barges. They bring it down from some of the shallower rivers by canoe, and offload it into barges when they meet the main waterway. Cheaper than road transport, and besides, Caius Monnius arranged for drying houses to be built on the riverbank, so that even if the weather is bad or the corn is green it can be dried out and used.’
I nodded. ‘I had heard that.’
The warehouse manager pressed his fingers together again. ‘They have proved their worth, this year alone. Some of the harvests in the east would have been wholly spoiled by the rains. And once the corn is dried, of course, it keeps much better too. Then, even out of season, people can come here and buy from us. With the kilns we have grain all year round. Much more efficient than it used to be. But still half the cost is transport, as I expect you know.’
I was thinking about that five thousand denarii. ‘Do farmers transport the goods at their own cost?’
For the first time, he smiled. A thin little ghost of a smile, as if the idea pleased him. ‘It all depends. Some of this grain is tax corn, collected by the government — that’s used for the army, in general. Then on some large estates we have an outright option on the whole crop every year, and of course the procurator owns many farms himself, and in those cases, obviously, there is no charge for transport and drying. If it is a smaller man with just a field or two, then he will bring the corn here at his own expense, and pay to put it in the drying kilns.’
‘Or apply for a compulsory loan to build his own?’
‘As you say, citizen.’
‘It is a wonder he chooses to sell his corn at all,’ I said.
He smiled again. ‘But of course, citizen, he has to pay his land taxes. In coin. So he is forced to bring his goods to market to earn the money.’
‘Very well,’ I said, impressed by the ruthlessness of his logic. ‘So the grain arrives here. What happens to it then?’
He led the way, up and down ladders and in and out of rooms heavy with grain dust, showing us how the grain was barrowed into large storage areas, and raked constantly to keep it dry and turned.
‘Here you are, you see, citizen,’ he said proudly, as we reached a central court. ‘This is the loading area.’ A number of wooden channels, with hatches, stood around the walls, and at one of them two slaves were holding a wide-mouthed bag. The shutter opened and a waterfall of golden grain streamed down the chute and into the sack. One of them shouted something, there was a sound of hand-wheels turning and the shutter closed again, cutting off the stream of corn just as the top of the bag was reached. The two slaves dragged the sack away, another began sewing up the top with a bronze needle, and the whole operation began again. An overseer with an abacus was counting off the sacks as they were completed.
‘About five mobius-fuls to fill a sack that size,’ our guide announced, indicating one of the corn measures hanging on the wall. ‘Worth about twenty denarii at this time of year, though the price seems to be going up all the time. That’s good news for us, of course. Some people want less than a sackful, and others more. We sell to bakers, market traders, large city households — and to the army, too, of course. It is shipped out again by river, or loaded on to waggons at the back. We are just inside the town defences here, but we have our own entrance through the eastern wall.’
‘This is important business then?’ I said, impressed by the idea of a private gate.
He preened. ‘One of the most important in the city. Some of our grain is even exported to Rome. Now, I don’t think there is anything else I can show you, gentlemen?’
I bent down to pick up a few seeds of scattered grain. They were different in size and shape, and one of them was spongy to the touch. ‘Why are there several different chutes?’ I asked, looking at the wooden channel through which the corn was pouring again.
‘Each grain comes down from a different storage area,’ he explained. ‘This one is spelt and rye, that one is barley, and so on. Spelt is the easiest to store — it has to be roasted before it can be threshed, and so it never rots. Of course that’s less of a problem now, thanks to Monnius’ drying floors.’
He led the way outside, and waved a hand. ‘Oh, and Monnius recently began a scheme to deal in hay — there is quite a market for it as winter fodder for horses. That is stored in the warehouse over there. It has been a good investment — we are quite close to one of the racing stables here, and they are pleased to have it, as well as their usual grain. We have even sold hay back once or twice to some of the farmers we bought it from. At a profit, of course.’ He gave me that thin smile again. ‘That is all, citizen, unless you wish to see my office? It is through this door, although there is nothing to see.’
There might, of course, have been much to learn if I’d had time to examine in detail all the documents stacked, or stored in pots, around the walls. Invoices, lists, records, orders — scribbled on bark, scratched on wax or inscribed with elaborate care on vellum scrolls — the office was a mass of documents. There was another abacus, and a steelyard, too, with a series of little weights beside it.
‘For corn?’ I asked, surprised. The weigh pans looked too small.
He gave me a pitying glance. ‘For weighing money, citizen. In a city this size there are always lots of strange coins in circulation. Egyptian, Greek — all sorts of things. People even take shavings off imperial coins and melt them down. I always have my banker weigh the coins we receive to make sure they contain the right quantity of silver. Or of gold, of course. Sometimes the sums involved are very large.’