There was a little gateway that led out of the court into the orchard which adjoined the house. When I looked at that gate earlier the bolt had been secured, but I could see from where I stood that it had been opened since. I gestured to Junio, who followed the direction of my pointing finger with his eyes.
He saw the bolt and nodded. He repeated my finger-to-the-lips routine, held up a hand to indicate I should stay where I was and started to inch silently towards the gate. He had been born to servitude and had acquired the knack — which as a slave myself I’d never quite achieved — of moving absolutely silently. I could only watch him and admire his stealth, though my heart was in my mouth as he placed one noiseless hand upon the latch and the other on the gatepost. Then with a sudden motion he released the catch, pushed the gate wide open and burst into the orchard in a single lunge.
Nothing happened. No one set upon him. No one cried out in surprise. From where I was standing I saw him hesitate and crane his neck in all directions to look around the field. I was about to go and join him but he shook his head at me.
‘I think there’s something moving over there,’ he mouthed, pointing with a tapping motion at the farther wall. He peered a little longer and then came back to me and murmured, too softly to be overheard by listeners-in, ‘There’s certainly something, though I can’t see what it is. You stay here. I’ll go and have a look.’
I was about to protest but he shook his head again. ‘One of us had better stay here in case Minimus turns up,’ he insisted with a firmness that wasn’t usual for him. ‘Besides I’m better at moving quietly — and if there is any problem and I don’t come back, it’s better if one of us can go and call for help. Stay where you are, and make sure you are out of sight behind the wall.’ And before I could reply he was through the gate again and had disappeared from view among the orchard trees.
I’m not accustomed to my former slave dictating what I do and I was inclined to bridle inwardly — but I did as I was bid. I knew that his assertiveness was born of care for me, and it had to be admitted that he was no doubt right: I am not as young and agile as I used to be. If there was any danger he was better placed to flee, or even to put up a struggle and defend himself. But I did not enjoy the moments that I spent listening to the silence, cowering by the wall and wondering what Junio was doing on the other side of it.
After several moments there was another rustling — this time coming very close to me — and I could hear someone breathing heavily. I was half inclined to make a lumbering run for it and try to get into the slave quarters and hide, when Junio came bursting through the gate again.
‘That’s the second time today that you’ve half frightened me to death …’ I was beginning, with a chuckle of relief. Then I saw the expression on his face.
‘You’ve found something! Tell me it isn’t Minimus!’
He shook his head as if attempting to dispel a dreadful dream. ‘Oh, I’ve found Minimus all right and he is still alive — but I couldn’t bring him back. He wasn’t well enough. There’s something in the orchard. You’d better come and see.’
FIVE
Before I could say anything at all he was leading the way back through the still half-open gate into the orchard field. I followed him, but as I glanced around I could not see anything particularly out of place. The trees — apples, walnuts, damson, sloes and pears — had just begun to sprout their new spring buds, but otherwise the branches were quite bare, making it possible to see through the tangled trellis of their twigs right to the other corner of the field, but I could see nothing unusual at all, except what looked a random pile of coloured cloth against the further wall.
Even that was not especially surprising, given that the master and the mistress were away. Most of the cloth that I could see was roughly the distinctive scarlet shade of the house uniform of Marcus’s house-slaves — except for a much smaller heap of greenish-brown a little to one side — so this was presumably drying laundry I was looking at. The diminished household that had been left behind were hardly likely to take their tunics into Glevum to be cleaned or dyed: the fullers gave no credit and the dyers even less. That small amount of laundry would be done at home, just as Gwellia always personally dyed and washed our own — except of course for togas, which required the whitening that only a professional fuller could provide.
So if a lot of odd items were being dyed to match and the result was not especially critical — which at a quick glance appeared to be the case — then what could be more natural than to spread it out to dry on the long grass beneath the trees, particularly on a windy, bright spring morning like today?
‘There’s Minimus. Can you see him? I think he’s being sick.’ Junio broke across my thoughts, indicating the direction with a thumb.
It was then I realised that the green-brown heap was Minimus — or rather his slave-tunic, which was all that I could see. He was crouching up against the high stone wall, his head bowed away from us and his shoulders heaving slightly as I watched. I hurried towards him, down one of the grassy strips between the trees — and as I grew nearer I got a clearer view — and then looked more carefully at the other pile of cloth.
What I was seeing stopped me in my tracks. There was no question now of what had happened to the missing slaves. I had been right in thinking I could see their uniforms — what I hadn’t realised was that the owners were still wearing them. The whole household of servants, what was left of them, were lying two deep in a sort of ragged line, some on their fronts and others on their backs, some with their feet towards me, others facing the other way. It was not a tidy pile. Many of them overlapped their neighbour in some way — a leg here over someone else’s shoulder there — and the variation in the famous crimson shade was occasioned not by the recent application of a dye, but by the streams of blood which had soaked into them, and which now had dried in random patches of a darker hue.
It was not hard to see where all this blood had issued from. The heads were missing. Every one of them had clearly been hacked off at the neck. Some of the bodies had been cruelly stabbed as well (several in the back, I noticed), but some corpses appeared to bear no other mark. There must have been a dozen or so in all — surely the whole of the small staff that Marcus left behind: male and female, young and old, kitchen slaves and pages, even the amanuensis and the steward (easily distinguishable by their longer robes) all jumbled together in this macabre equality of death.
I turned to Minimus, still retching in the grass. He knelt up to greet me, ashen-faced and with an effort at a sickly smile. ‘Master! I’m sorry. I should have come to you …’
I held up a hand to silence him. ‘I’m not surprised this has affected you. It would take a man without a heart not to react to this …’
He gulped. ‘That boy there — the second smallest one — I knew him, I am sure. I helped to train him when he first arrived. He was going to be page, but in the end they made him kitchen-boy. His name’s Pauvrissimus. I recognise him from that scar there on his arm where he tripped and fell into the brazier one day.’ He seemed to feel that he was showing disrespect, so he put one still-shaking hand against the wall and pulled himself upright. ‘And that big, hulking one beside him, I am almost sure, is the second-ranking cook who used to do the baking for the house.’
I nodded. I had forgotten that these people would be personally known to my red-headed slave. ‘I’m sorry you had to find this on your own,’ I said. ‘What made you come into the orchard anyway?’