Rosemary Rowe - The Fateful Day

Almost faint with apprehension and alarm, I forced myself to turn and face this newcomer, only to find that I was staring at my own adopted son. Relief undid me. My old knees crumpled and I sat down heavily on the mosaic floor, my legs deprived abruptly of the strength to hold me up.

‘Father!’ Junio had come and was bending over me. His face was all concern. ‘Are you all right?’

I nodded, reaching out a hand for him to help me to my feet. ‘You almost gave me a heart attack, that’s all. What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you,’ he said, ignoring my hands and coming round behind me to lift me by the elbows and haul me to my feet. ‘We got concerned when you were gone so long, and set off for the prospective vineyard field to search for you.’

With his help I found myself unsteadily upright. ‘And they told you that they’d seen me, I suppose?’

He was still holding both my arms to support me, but he said, ‘We never got that far. When we reached the villa we saw the mule outside and guessed that you had come here. We didn’t realise there was no one else about. We hammered at the gate, but it was open anyway and when no one answered we decided to come in.’ He looked around. ‘What’s happened, by the way? Has there been some sort of change of plan? Where have the servants gone?’

‘You didn’t look inside the gatehouse, then?’ I said, freeing myself and readjusting my tunic round my knees.

He shook his head. ‘When there was no answer, there did not seem to be much point. As I said, the gate was open so we didn’t really need the man to let us in. We assumed that he was busy bringing you inside …’ He broke off, looking anxiously at me. ‘Why, Father? What made you ask that question? Don’t shake your head like that. What happened at the gatehouse? Something did! I see it in your face.’

‘The gatekeeper!’ I muttered, still too shaken to give a full account. ‘I looked in and found him …’

‘If that brute treated you disrespectfully, just let us know!’ he said. ‘We’ll go and talk to him. He may be big but there are two of us. He won’t try that again!’

‘Two of you?’ I murmured stupidly, though of course he had been talking in the plural all the time. I should have worked out that he hadn’t come alone.

‘Minimus came with me, naturally,’ he said. ‘You might have needed help — if you had fallen off the mule or something of the kind. In fact, you look as if you need some help right now. You’re still looking shaken. I think we should find somewhere for you to sit down.’

I shook my head. ‘Marcus seems to have put most of his furniture in store. We’ll probably find it stacked up in a barn, unless he’s sent it over to Corinium for his wife. But I’ll be all right now, the more so since you and Minimus are here.’

He grinned. ‘Maximus was disappointed to be left behind. We three had all been waiting to accompany you to town, but Mother insisted that one of us should stay, just in case you came home by some different route. You might have ridden back across the fields, she thought, if the land-slaves were not working where you thought they were. Then you’d have wanted someone to come and fetch us back. But you’d been so long that we were quite alarmed for you.’ He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘And something’s shaken you. Was it something to do with this gatekeeper of yours? Where is he, if he isn’t at his post? Should I go and talk to him?’

‘It would do no good,’ I told him. ‘He couldn’t answer you. Someone has strung him from the ceiling by his belt and he is very dead.’

‘Dead?’ Horror and disbelief were dawning in his face.

I nodded. ‘It’s not a pleasant sight. Let’s just hope that Minimus does not stumble on it unprepared. Where is he anyway?’

‘He went to the back courtyard looking for the slaves — we couldn’t see any.’

‘I don’t think there are any others here to find, alive or dead.’

He wrinkled his nose in mock perplexity. ‘So what’s happened, do you think? Has Marcus left for good and put them up for auction at the nearest sale?’

I shook my head. ‘I know no more than you. It’s a mystery to me. I should have thought that if he’d done that he would have let me know. And if he had decided to sell them on a whim, wouldn’t he have sent his land-slaves to the market, too? But they are out there working in the fields and do not seem to be aware that anything is wrong! I spoke to them this morning.’

Junio frowned. ‘Minimus had the feeling that something was amiss, ever since the moment that we found the gate ajar. He swore that when he worked here Marcus would never have permitted that. He thought it was just slackness by the staff because their owner was away — but it made him very nervous all the same. He was quite concerned at coming to the house at all.’

‘But came in any case.’

He gave me a wry grin. ‘We were fairly sure that you were in the house, and it was you we’d come to find.’ This brave concern for my welfare was rather humbling, but before I could say anything my son was rushing on. ‘Of course, we went to the front door first, but nobody was there either. However, Minimus knew about a servant’s side-gate in the wall, so we hurried round that way, trying not to make ourselves conspicu-ous. He thought there might be trouble if someone spotted us. He had no right these days to be going that way at all — and nor had I, of course, though as a citizen I might have got away with it.’

‘You need not have worried,’ I put in. ‘There was nobody about. Though I suppose you didn’t know that.’

‘We were soon aware of it. In fact, we could not find a trace of any living soul until I spotted fresh footsteps on the gravel near the gate. So I went in that direction, and there you were, indeed!’

‘Though you almost made me die of shock,’ I said. ‘I was sure that a murderer was bursting in on me.’

‘I was a bit alarmed about what I might find, myself,’ he said. ‘That’s why I sent young Minimus the other way, in the direction of the servants’ block. He used to know most of the slave-force in the household here, so they are likely to be friendly to him if he does find anyone. They might even talk to him and explain to us why everybody else has disappeared.’ He looked around again. ‘It is odd, isn’t it? The place is positively eerie.’

‘I might have believed your theory about the slave-market,’ I said, ‘if it wasn’t for the presence of that grisly corpse.’

‘Dear gods!’ Junio exclaimed. ‘The gatekeeper! I have just realised the force of what you said. “Someone” strung him up, you said — presumably meaning that he didn’t do it himself? I was somehow supposing that he’d taken his own life — perhaps out of despair or something because the household was being broken up. But you don’t think so?’

‘Nor would you, if you had seen him,’ I replied. ‘His hands are chained behind his back. He could not have arranged the noose around his neck.’

Junio was goggling at me. ‘No wonder you were talking about murderers,’ he said. ‘That does seem proof that something criminal’s afoot. Yet the land-slaves have gone off to work as usual, apparently thinking that it was an ordinary day?’

I nodded. ‘I don’t imagine that they knew there’d been a murder here — and that is something which I can’t understand. I know they don’t all sleep in the same slave quarters as the domestic staff. There are so many of them now that Marcus has converted a barn on the estate for them just opposite the rear entrance to the house. But the overseer comes in, and still they get food from the kitchens and all that sort of thing. So how could this have happened without their knowing it?’