Rosemary Rowe - A Coin for the Ferryman

Gwellia raised her eyebrows and looked across at me. ‘I expect they’re hoping that they’ll discover very soon. I’m sure they want your master to find that out for them and that is what has kept him all this while?’ It was only half a question.

I nodded and she sighed.

‘I wish they would not go on making these demands on you,’ she said. ‘It is not good for your health. But, I suppose, since it is Marcus who is asking you. .’

Refusal would be even more injurious to my health, is what she meant.

‘I would want to do it in any case, for Junio’s sake,’ I said. ‘And Cilla’s too, of course.’

The slave girl did not meet my eyes. She looked down at the floor, where she was drawing circles on the earth-dust with her toe. At last she said, ‘I don’t want to push myself forward, master, but you’ve used my help before. If I can do anything to assist you this time, let me know. Slave or not, I’ll do whatever I can.’

I was about to ask her gently what she thought she could do, but she was too quick for me. ‘You are always saying that there are things that servants can find out that aren’t so easy for a citizen. I could ask questions in the villa, while I’m there.’ She sounded eager. ‘There’s one of the kitchen slaves in particular I used to know well. .’

‘Cilla,’ I said gently, ‘tonight you will be freed. You are invited to the banquet to signify the fact. After that you won’t be a servant any more. You’ll be a free woman, betrothed to a free man — to a citizen, indeed.’

‘You mean my friend isn’t likely to confide in me again?’ Cilla sounded shocked, as if this aspect of her new existence had not previously occurred to her. ‘She’ll think that I’ve joined the owner class and treat me differently?’

It was almost exactly what I’d meant, but I said, ‘You can hardly go wandering into the villa kitchens unaccompanied, in any case. It isn’t the sort of thing an invited visitor can do. And you will be a guest tonight and not a slave — a special guest, in fact.’ I scooped some water up into my hands and rinsed my lower legs.

Cilla’s usually cheerful, plump young face creased in an unhappy frown. Then all at once it cleared. ‘But I’m not invited till the final course,’ she said. ‘I’m still a slave till then, so I could talk to her. I could even go and show my tunic off. It’s a nice one that my former mistress Julia sent for me — a lady’s tunic, all the way down to the ground instead of stopping at the knees the way servants’ tunics do. My friend would like to see it. When I was working at the villa we always talked about the things we would wear and the colours we would choose, if we could buy our freedom and have any clothes we liked. “Anything but this old greeny-brown,” she used to say. .’

‘Very well, Cilla,’ my wife interrupted. Cilla had a tendency to enliven her reports by imitating the voices of the people she described — she’d captured the adenoidal tones of her friend the kitchen maid quite comically, I thought, but Gwellia, for once, did not seem inclined to smile. ‘You obviously have an interest in the matter,’ she said seriously, ‘and if you can help your master to clear it up, I should be very pleased, for his sake as well as yours. What do you say, husband?’

It was clearly not a moment for levity. I turned to Cilla and tried to look properly severe. ‘You may question the servants at the villa, if you have the chance. But you are not to go anywhere unaccompanied, or make yourself a nuisance in any way at all.’

She looked chastened. ‘Very well, master. I won’t let you down,’ she said, and Gwellia rewarded me with an approving nod.

Great gods, I was in danger of being ruled by women here! I felt the need to assert authority. I clapped my hands and raised my voice a notch. ‘Maximus! Minimus! I need a drying cloth!’

The result was very soothing. I had hardly got the words out before the boys were at the door, though Cilla had to point out where the clean rags were kept, hanging in a bag beside the wall. Each boy selected a likely piece of cloth, and then came across to kneel beside me, one on either side.

‘You should have called us earlier, master. .’ Minimus began

‘. . we would have washed your feet.’ And as if to prove it they each seized one of my legs, and attempted to outdo each other as they rubbed them dry. I feared they would upset me from my stool, such was their eagerness to prove themselves of use.

I held up a staying hand. ‘You first, Maximus!’ Deliberately, I presented my right leg to him, and indicated that he should pat that very gently dry, before I permitted his companion to do the other one. Minimus added a light massage to his ministrations. I have never felt so foolish, or so cosseted.

‘Will you be changing for the banquet, master?’ Maximus enquired.

I was just about to shake my head — I was wearing my best toga already — but Gwellia was far too quick for me.

‘He will change his under-tunic. I have had his white one cleaned. So you can help him strip and wash from head to toe. Empty the bowl, and he can stand in it. There is a jug of fresh water by the door that you can pour over him.’ She saw my look of slight unwillingness — Junio had washed me just the day before — and as they hastened outside with the bowl she turned smilingly to me. ‘Marcus is bestowing a compliment on this house — on Junio and Cilla in particular, of course, but on us as well. Any Roman would have bathed and changed and you must do the same. And, Cilla, your master has said that you may ask the servants questions if you like, but even if you learn something of interest, you’ll wait till afterwards to tell him what it is, and not interrupt the banquet. Ah, husband, here’s your wash.’

I stood up and rather reluctantly took my tunic off and stepped into the empty bowl the boys placed at my feet. I mustered what dignity I could — a naked man is always at a disadvantage in a situation of this kind.

‘Remember, Cilla, it is vital that this evening goes off without a hitch,’ I said, addressing the girl over Minimus’s head, as he clambered on the stool with the big jug in his hand and formed a sort of human screen between us. ‘Any breaking of the rules and the ritual will be spoiled. You might not get your freedom after all. It might be regarded as another bad omen, too. So don’t get so interested in your quest that you fail to join us at the proper — aargh! — time.’ The water was extremely cold.

Cilla nodded. ‘I’ll be very careful.’ She turned her attention to her mistress’s hair.

‘In any case there probably isn’t very much to learn,’ I said, the words coming in little jerks as Maximus rubbed my back with energy. ‘If there were rumours at the villa I’d have heard when I was there, but there were none at all, not even when they thought the body was a simple peasant girl. One of Julia’s servants said as much to me.’ I seized the cloth that Maximus held out and wrapped it round my vitals as I spoke, waiting for lanky Minimus to climb down from his perch and rub the rest of me.

However, the expected pleasant friction did not come. I looked round. Both the boys were gazing at me in astonishment.

Minimus, as usual, was the first to speak. ‘You’re talking of rumours at our villa, master?’ He clambered off his stool.

The older boy added, incredulously, ‘A body , did you say?’

It was only then I realised that the two boys didn’t know about the corpse.

It had not occurred to me — but of course they were in Glevum when the discovery was made, and they had not spoken to anyone from the villa since. Kurso and I had not said anything to them when we arrived, and they had obviously been too busy with their knucklebones to listen at the door while I was telling the story to Gwellia and her maid. Even now they had only caught the very end of it and they were goggling with curiosity.