Rosemary Rowe: The Fateful Day

‘Unless the killer is a member of the household, possibly? Took the food across to them and managed to convince them that things were just as usual. In that case, is it possible he’s still somewhere about?’ He glanced uncomfortably round the room. ‘I don’t like this, Father. Let’s get out of here ourselv-’ He broke off suddenly and looked into my eyes. ‘Dear gods!’ I saw the horror dawning on his face, just as I felt it rising in my own. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

‘Minimus!’ I said.

He nodded. ‘I have sent him off searching the back court on his own! Come on!’ He was already leading the way towards the door. ‘We’d better go and find him before someone else does.’

I hastened after Junio as fast as my old legs would carry me — through the vestibule, into the peristyle garden and out towards the back. This time we did not stop to skirt the rooms but hurried directly down the central path.

Past the fountain, through the inner gate and out into the courtyard where the slave quarters stood. I led the way inside and looked around. ‘Minimus?’ I shouted.

But it was already clear that nobody was here.

The room was exactly as I’d seen it earlier — neat and ordered and empty as the skies. I glanced at Junio, who was staring at the rows of tidy sleeping-spaces on the floor — obviously surprised to find the place so undisturbed. ‘No one left here in hurry,’ he observed. ‘But there’s no sign of Minimus.’

‘Perhaps he’s in the courtyard — in one of the other outbuildings, maybe?’

We hurried out again, scouring the empty stables, the barns, the storage sheds, and still calling Minimus at every step. I even went back into the inner yard and checked the open amphorae in the ground. But there was no sign of him and no answer to our shouts. The echoes mocked us, bouncing off the walls.

I was about to suggest to Junio that we go back into the house, in case the boy had followed him inside and we had somehow missed him as we left, but I was suddenly conscious of a distant sound behind the right-hand boundary wall. I glanced at Junio and raised a warning finger to my lips. It was ridiculous. A moment earlier we had been shouting loudly for a slave! But it suddenly seemed vital that we did not make a noise.

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.’

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.