Rosemary Rowe - The Fateful Day

So I was not in the best of tempers as I approached the villa gates. Having been so short a time out at the fields, I had decided that I did have time to call.

I tied Arlina to a tree nearby and knocked on the gate, but I was not prepared for the reception I received. Or rather, lack of it. My continued rapping brought no response at all. There was no sign of the usual burly gatekeeper, not even his enquiring eye at the peephole of his cell beside the gates. Even my tapping directly on his wall produced not the slightest movement from within. Either the fellow was asleep, or he’d slipped off for a meal. Or possibly a morning visit to the slaves’ latrine! But meanwhile the gate was unattended. That wasn’t good enough, I thought grimly. Marcus would hear of it, when I next sent word to him!

I knocked again, a good deal louder now, shouting as I did so — strongly enough for my voice to carry to anyone on duty in the front court of the house — ‘Greetings of the morning. Open up the gate. It is Libertus here. I’m on my patron’s business and I have some information to impart.’

Still there was no answer. That was curious. I got down from Arlina and thundered on the gate. ‘I tell you, it’s Libertus. The gatekeeper’s not here. Somebody come out and let me …’ I broke off as the gates creaked open at my touch — almost as though they’d not been fastened properly: latched, perhaps, but certainly not bolted as they should have been — especially if there was nobody on watch. Even more curious! Ever since Marcus’s child was kidnapped and held to ransom years ago, he had been fanatical about security. I pushed the gates again. They opened slightly wider and I slid a cautious head into the gap and looked around.

At first sight everything appeared to be exactly as it should — the villa looked quite peaceful in the morning light, standing at the far end of the entrance court, with its new wing and private gardens to the left and the walled storage yards and orchards to the right. Too peaceful, perhaps. There did not seem to be a single slave about. I knew that Marcus had left only a very few of his household servants — as distinct from the land-slaves who tended the estate. And he wouldn’t have people keeping the hypocaust alight, so there would be none of the usual slaves scuttling around with fuel from the orchards to stoke the fires for that, but surely there would be someone working at this hour — sweeping the steps, or taking shutters down, or raking leaves from round the entrance court? It had not been done today. There were a lot of leaves — a brisk little breeze was blowing them in spirals as I watched. But there was no sign of human movement anywhere.

And it was oddly silent, too. I called again and listened carefully. No distant answering voices. No hurrying footsteps coming from within. No clatter from the store-yard behind the inner wall. A faint, insistent tapping was the only sound — and even that, on consideration, was not coming from the house. It seemed to emanate from somewhere at my side — apparently from the little cell beside the gate, where the absent gatekeeper had his sleeping-bench and stool. I frowned. Where could everyone have gone, and what could the gate guard have left behind that made that knocking sound — irregular but repeated and scarcely audible?

I was increasingly uneasy, but extremely curious by now and, though the door to the keeper’s porch was closed, I pushed it gently open. And was appalled and horrified by what I found.

The tapping sound was caused by the inhabitant himself. He was suspended by his own belt from a ceiling hook. The stool on which he had been standing had been kicked away and he was swinging gently in the draught which blew in through the stone bars of the window-space. He was extremely dead. At first I was inclined to guess at suicide but I quickly realised that it was nothing of the sort. As he rotated slowly in the air, his hands came into view — firmly secured behind his back with a short length of chain.

I sat down on the sleeping bench and tried to take this in. There could be no mistake — it was the gatekeeper all right. I’d have known him anywhere, even without the uniform tunic — a great bear of a fellow with a mane of tawny hair and the muscles of an ox. He’d been a wrestler in a travelling show when Marcus purchased him. It must have taken someone of enormous strength to subdue a man like that, overcome his struggles and hoist him up on the hook. Or, more likely, several someones working as a team.

He had never been a handsome man in life, but in death he was entirely hideous. His face was purple and contorted horribly, his tongue protruding like that of an ox-head on a plate, while his bulging, bloodshot eyes stared sightlessly at me. The air was foetid with a smell like a latrine, and I could see what caused the tapping: one sandal seemed to have dislodged itself (during his final struggles, probably) and now dangled from its straps, just low enough to lightly touch the corner of the table as he swayed.

Noticing the sandals drew attention to the feet. They — and the lower legs — seemed blotched with pooling blood. That was so astonishing I took a closer look — indeed, my first impression was correct. This was not bruising, it was simply that the blood had gathered there. I shook my head, bewildered. I’d seen enough of bodies to be fairly sure that such a thing took quite a time to manifest itself — which suggested that the man had been here many hours. Could this be connected in some way with that carriage I had seen?

But that could not be right. Marcus’s land-slaves must have been here at the villa overnight. Surely they would have known if somebody had killed the gatekeeper — and I couldn’t believe that it would occasion no remark. Wouldn’t that be the first thing that the overseer said to me, instead of calmly discussing the proper time of day for planting vines?

Perhaps I was wrong in my estimation of the time of death. I reached out a reluctant hand and touched the lifeless thigh. It was cold — which in itself was not a proof of anything, since the body had been hanging in a very chilly draught. But it was also stiff — so stiff that when I tried to move the knee, it would not budge at all. I would have needed to apply such force I would have snapped the joint. That kind of rigid stiffness did not occur for many hours — another indication that the victim had been dead since yesterday.

My mind went back again to the florid visitor of the night before. It was tempting to suppose that he was guilty of this death. But I shook my head. From what I’d seen of that aggressive citizen, he was middle-aged and over-fed and not especially fit. He would be no match for this burly gatekeeper (who — it occurred to me — was generally armed, though there was now no sign of his cudgel anywhere). And the driver of the carriage could not have done this, I was sure. He was thin and wiry, but he was very slight. He would have lasted no longer than an instant in a struggle with this strong, athletic guard, never mind managing to hang him from the hook. One might as well suggest that a cat could kill and lift a bull.

In fact, the more I thought about events, the more it seemed to me that the likely explanation was the very opposite: that the carriage I’d seen was standing idling in the lane precisely because the occupants (like me) had not succeeded in getting a response — which suggested that the gatekeeper was already dead by then. It was not what I secretly wanted to suppose, but it made sense of things — including the citizen’s furious response that he’d had a wasted journey, his angry departure, and even his willingness to take my word that Marcus wasn’t there. It also fitted well enough with my observations of the corpse.