I shook my head. ‘It isn’t possible. Commemoratus was already at the dock when I first got there, and — according to Vesperion — had been there for some while, asking for Alfredus Allius and wasting everybody’s time by pretending to be interested in purchasing some wine. He could not possibly have come here, done this and got away, between your leaving here and my arrival at the docks. I was quite a short time at the garrison.’
‘So perhaps it wasn’t Cacus after all?’
‘There can’t be two of them!’ I was bewildered now. ‘But Cacus was running an urgent errand with that scroll — they wanted it registered before the will was read, though his master doesn’t usually move without him, it appears. He would not have had the time to come down here as well — in fact, he said as much. They were going to come and see me later on with a message for Marcus, if I hadn’t met them there. Yet I can’t believe it’s just coincidence. I wonder if the tanner’s slave has got his timing wrong. You’re sure Commemoratus is not the man who came here earlier?’
‘Absolutely certain.’ Junio was emphatic. ‘If he’s the man you pointed out to me with Cacus on the dock, that’s not the person who wanted pavements made. The two are not dissimilar in a lot of ways, I suppose, and certainly both wore a wide patrician dress, but your Commemoratus looks nothing like the man who came out here. He was much younger and had a different colouring.’
I glanced towards the fireside. The tanner’s wife was on her knees, still totally absorbed in tending Maximus — I doubt that she had heard a word of this exchange. Her slaves, however, were simply standing watching her. I beckoned them across.
‘One more question — answer it, and I won’t ask any more. If it helps me find the culprit, I’ll give you a reward. A half-sestertius.’
The boys exchanged a glance. It was the skinny one who answered. ‘What is it, citizen?’
‘Did you notice the colour of the patrician’s hair?’
This time the look that they exchanged was a bewildered one. Then Festus shrugged his shoulders. Obviously the promise of the bribe had done it’s work. ‘Just ordinary hair. The one thing that I noticed about the purple-striper that we saw was that his face was very pale, as if he never went outside into the sun and wind at all …’
I had just time to reluctantly conclude that this could not be florid Commemoratus after all, when we were interrupted by the tanner’s wife calling from the hearth. ‘Citizen Libertus, I think you’d better come.’
Great gods! I had been chattering all this time while Maximus was hurt! I scampered across the workshop as quickly as I could, scattering tesserae in all directions as I came. I think I was in time. I took my poor slave’s hand and held it in my own, and I still believe there was the faintest pressure from his fingertips and that a suspicion of a smile curved the bloodless little lips before the hand went slack and the face expressionless. I picked up the copper mirror which was on the floor nearby, where Junio had dropped it earlier. I held it despairingly before my slave-boy’s mouth, but — though I kept it there for minutes — no blessed mist appeared.
My beloved little red-haired Maximus was dead.
TWENTY-ONE
I staggered to the stone pile and sat down heavily. To any outsider my distress would no doubt seem ridiculous. My patron had been robbed of goods worth millions of denarii, his household slaves had all been killed, Pertinax was murdered and the Empire was in shock, but the loss of Maximus — a mere slave of the kind that you could pick up from any slave-market for not much more than the price of an amphora of good wine — hit me harder than any of the other horrors of the day. I closed my eyes and buried my head between my hands. I have no idea how long I stayed like that, but after what seemed an eternity I was conscious of a hand on my shoulder and a soft voice calling me.
‘Father?’ I looked up, wearily. Junio was beside me, carrying the remnants of the mead, re-warmed and steaming in a metal drinking cup. ‘Drink this.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t want anything.’ I tried to say the words, but my voice had failed.
‘Maximus mixed the spices in for you — almost the last task he performed on your account. So, don’t make his efforts appear to be in vain. Drink it — as he meant you to!’ My son spoke so severely that I did as I was told.
There was not a lot of mead but it was strangely comforting, though the act of drinking what my dead slave had so lovingly prepared almost made me weep. But my grief was mingled with an anger too — a bitter fury so intense it gave me strength. I would find the culprit and I would make him pay, even if I had to go beyond the law.
The law, I knew, was of little use to me. The killing of another person’s slave was an offence, of course, and if I could find the culprit and convince a court, I could demand the maximum legal penalty for such a crime: a compensation of three times his market price. No doubt there were excellent slave-boys available for less, but no amount could buy me another Maximus. I did not want a substitute — I wanted something much more like revenge.
But first, I had to find the murderer, and there seemed to be only one place to begin: Cacus, the giant with the muscles of a human Hercules, who could break me in two across his knee as easily as I could snap a twig. I looked around the inner workshop, ready to ask Festus and his friend to tell their tale again — no new questions, since I’d promised that, just a recapitulation of their first account, with the inducement of another half-sestertius if they did. But the room was empty except for Junio and me and that shrouded form which had once been Maximus, his injured head now tenderly covered by my cloak. Four lighted tapers burned around the corpse.
Junio had followed the direction of my glance. ‘The tanner’s wife and her two slaves have gone. There was nothing further she could do for Maximus — we’d closed his eyes and called his name three times and set the candles up, but she had a business to attend to, and naturally she wanted to get back to it. She was very good — even offered to leave Festus with us to start up a lament, but I said that we’d prefer to take the body home and do these things ourselves.’ He looked sadly at me. ‘I presume I guessed that right. She promised we could have her slave again if we changed our minds.’
I shook my head. I had always supposed that Maximus would be one of the bearers at my funeral. It had never occurred to me that I might find myself arranging his. (Of course, many slaves are simply buried without ceremony at all, as very young children are, but I held Maximus in too high a regard for that.) But it left me a problem. Unlike Marcus, I had not paid contributions for my servants to the Slave Funeral Guild: I had not even considered whether they would prefer a Roman pyre or to be interred in a proper grave as I hoped to be myself. I would like to think of little Maximus entire, dressed in a gold and silver gown and with a jewelled circlet on his head, happily living in the Celtic Otherworld, but he was born into a Roman household, and — if he had a preference — it would probably be for a version of the cremation rite. As paterfamilias, that meant I could officiate at the pyre myself — an idea which was heartbreaking in one respect, of course, but also comforting. There would be no funeral oration or lamentation pipes, but I could make sure that he enjoyed some dignity in death.
‘We’d better get some purifying herbs,’ I said, making an effort to turn my mind to practicalities. ‘We’ll do it properly. Cleanse the body and purify the room, and put him in his newest tunic, cloak and shoes. We’ll break his bowl and spoon and put them on the pyre, and Minimus can …’ I broke off. I could not bear to think of what Minimus would feel. The two boys were not related, but they had seldom been apart since Marcus bought them several years ago — and had grown so close they could often finish each other’s sentences.