Rosemary Rowe
The Legatus Mystery
Chapter One
‘Marcus Aurelius Septimus is here?’ I asked the attendant slave at Glevum baths, as I stripped off my cloak, sandals and tunic and stuffed them into one of the stone ‘dove-holes’ provided for the purpose.
The boy eyed me doubtfully. I could not blame him. I had come here without an attendant slave, my clothes were travel-stained and dusty, and I had not even been wearing a belt around my tunic. I scarcely looked like a Roman citizen, let alone a fit bath companion for the most important man in Glevum.
‘He is expecting me,’ I assured him, as I wrapped a linen toella around my nether parts. It was not obligatory — indeed many men visit the baths without wrapping themselves in anything — but a humble pavement-maker like myself can hardly meet the personal representative of the provincial governor of all Britannia dressed only in his own drooping skin. Besides, if I knew Marcus, he would be at this moment sitting in the caldarium, the hot room where he sometimes came, like other influential Romans, to conduct business and meet acquaintances. To my thin, fifty-year-old Celtic posterior the stone seats in the caldarium soon seem uncomfortably hot, and I knew I might find myself very glad of the protection of my towel.
In the absence of my own slave, I slipped the bath attendant a quadrans to watch my clothes.
The boy took the coin. It seemed to loosen his tongue. ‘His Excellence is here all right, and his attendants with him. He’s been here all the afternoon, with no end of important people coming to see him — I think something special is going on. That slave watching his clothes has been waiting there for hours.’
He gestured towards a servant boy in a bordered tunic who was sitting with patient boredom in a nearby niche, keeping guard over a pile of neatly folded garments on a bench. It was a necessary precaution. Many a fine citizen has left the baths — here as in every other city — with a poorer cloak than he arrived in. One or two unfortunates have even been known to lose the ‘bath tunic’ (which most people wear under their cloaks when travelling to and from the baths) with humorously embarrassing results which have been the topic of town gossip for weeks afterwards. But Marcus’s garments were more than usually worth stealing — even from here I could see the wide purple border of his toga. Marcus was very conscious of his patrician status, and famously wore that cumbersome badge of citizenship even to the baths.
‘You’ll find His Excellence in the hot room,’ the bath boy said.
I nodded, and began to make my way in the direction of the warm pools and the tepidarium. Little time for me to linger there — I should have to plunge almost immediately into the caldarium.
‘I hope you’re right about his wanting to see you,’ the boy called after me. ‘He doesn’t take kindly to being unexpectedly interrupted at his ablutions.’
He hardly needed to tell me that. I had been extremely surprised by the messenger myself. Normally, when Marcus wants me — often at the most inconvenient hour — he summons me to come to his apartments or to his official rooms, where he can keep me waiting in comfort. But here? Marcus may regard a visit to the baths as an excellent opportunity to discuss affairs, but usually with patrician friends and town dignitaries, not a mere mosaic-maker like myself. Roman citizen I might be — indeed I was born a nobleman in my own tribe — but I was also an ex-slave and a tradesman, and the gulf between myself and Marcus was as great as that between me and the bath-house attendant himself. Without the most explicit instructions I would never have dared to come to seek my patron here. What was so critical that he had sent for me?
Perhaps he was irritated that I had not called on him at once, the night before, when I had returned from a journey to Londinium. That was a worrying possibility. Indeed, I should probably have done so, had we not come home to all the usual time-consuming problems created by prolonged absence — damp blankets, reluctant firewood and the discovery that a large rat had made his home in the bedding — and had consequently slept until long after sun-up. At least — I comforted myself as I hurried through the tepidarium and entered the caldarium, where the hot steam gushed out to meet me — here in Britannia a rich man’s protégés, his clientes, are not expected to attend him flatteringly at dawn every morning, as they are in Rome.
I need not have worried. Marcus greeted me cordially enough. ‘Ah, Libertus! I have been waiting for you. Come in. Welcome.’ He raised himself a little on one elbow and blinked at me benevolently through the steam. He was elegantly draped in a long swathe of blue linen towel, and wore a pair of thick-soled bath slippers against the heat of the floor. He was looking wonderfully bronzed and relaxed. Although his short blond curls were plastered to his head and his handsome young patrician face was slightly flushed, he seemed otherwise unmoved by the temperature. He held out a languid hand for me to kiss.
I was not altogether sure of the protocol. How does a mere ex-slave mosaic-maker — however much of a citizen he may finally come to be — greet his patron with dignity, draped only in a skimpy towel? I made a swift bow over the hand, an equally swift grab for my wrappings and sat down gratefully on the lower bench he indicated, lifting my bare feet clear of the floor. Marcus’s bath slippers were not merely for show. Glevum caldarium is not as hot as some, but the tiles still left my soles stinging.
I was ready with apologies, but Marcus waved them aside. ‘Libertus my old friend, it is a long journey to Londinium, even for a younger man. Days of travelling are wearisome. Naturally I forgive you for any lapse of courtesy.’
I was on my guard. When Marcus calls me his old friend it is almost always because he wants my services and, since he was elegantly pointing out how magnanimous he was being, I had an uncomfortable feeling that this was no exception. On the other hand, perhaps he genuinely wanted my news. After all, I had been the guest of the Roman governor, Pertinax, who was Marcus’s particular friend and advocate. (Even patrons may have patrons of their own.) ‘You are gracious, Excellence,’ I said.
‘I hear you were of great service to the governor,’ Marcus said approvingly.
I murmured something suitably deprecating. ‘A mere matter of a dead corn officer. .’ but Marcus made an impatient gesture.
‘Of course, of course — he has told me all that in his letter.’
On reflection, I should not have been surprised. The imperial post, carried at top speed by a single man on horseback, is obviously faster than a man in a carriage. Marcus would have heard the news from Londinium days ago. And he had ‘forgiven me’ for failing to call on him. So it was some other matter on which he wished to see me. Knowing that Marcus refused to ‘insult me’ by ever offering me money for my service and advice, I fervently hoped that the reason for this meeting was not the ‘something important’ which the bath slave had mentioned. I had been away from Glevum for almost a month, and the store chests and shelves in my humble workroom and garret were depressingly empty.
Marcus fixed me with a vague smile. An attendant, dripping perspiration in his tunic, brought him a dipper of cool water from the apse at the door, and Marcus buried his face in it.
I, however, did not merit this luxury, and in the circumstances it would be disastrously impolite of me to move. I squirmed a little on my bench. It was hot, even through the linen. I was already beginning to turn pink-faced and wilt like a limp leaf. Whatever Marcus wanted, I thought, I hoped it would be quick.
‘And you have not only been helpful to the governor, Libertus,’ Marcus said, wafting away the steam as he spoke. ‘I have received a communication from Rome. The Emperor is minded to be pleased with you, for your part in uncovering that plot against his life.’