Rosemary Rowe - Enemies of the Empire

It worked. He stopped and looked at me, then volunteered, ‘A plumpish fellow with a big round lumpy face?’

I nodded. ‘Exactly like a loaf of unbaked bread.’

That made him smile. ‘I saw him. Wearing a scarlet tunic you could hardly miss. He was standing over there.’ He nodded towards the pavement opposite.

Big-ears turned to Cupidus. ‘There you are, you see. It’s just as well I didn’t let you two go rushing into things. It seems there really was a slave.’ He was clearly the most nervous of the three, which was probably why he had been the voice, throughout, of caution and restraint.

Cupidus gave his nasty grin again. ‘And how do we know that? We’ve only got his word for it — his and this wretched slave’s. They probably arranged all this between themselves. Amazing what people will agree to say, if you promise to pay them a sestertius or two.’

The child was shaking his head nervously. ‘He was there for simply ages. You ask anyone. You couldn’t help but notice him: he was dressed in such a fancy tunic, like a uniform, and he seemed to be in everybody’s way. I wondered what he was doing there.’

I nodded. That sounded like Promptillius to me. ‘When did he give up waiting?’

The child shrugged, cascading another little pile of ash. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t answer that. He was here last time I looked, that’s all I know.’

‘And how long ago was that? An hour? Or more?’ Aurissimus snapped out.

The boy had found confidence from somewhere, because he answered back. ‘I don’t know. How am I supposed to tell? No water clocks in our house.’ Aurissimus took a threatening step towards him, and he added hastily, ‘Just before sundown. I came out to get more logs and charcoal for the fire, and I noticed he was still hanging around then.’ He frowned. ‘Talking to somebody, I think, now I look back on it.’

‘What sort of somebody?’ Surprise and anxiety made me sound as sharp as my companions had, and I saw the poor lad flinch instinctively. I softened my voice, and added, ‘Can you remember that?’

He was terrified, you could see it in his face, but he shook his head. ‘I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. My master beats me if I take too long. He’ll beat me now, when I get in again.’

‘Nothing to what we’ll do, if you can’t tell us more than that.’ Cupidus was scornful. ‘Show him your dagger, Laxus.’ Laxus waved it, dangerously close. ‘Does that refresh your memory at all?’

The poor lad was almost blubbering by now, and the board slipped entirely from his hands and clattered to the ground. ‘A boy, I think. A big boy — that’s right — he had a cup and ball. That’s all I know. I remember looking at it and wishing that I had one like that.’

‘Huh! Not good enough. .’ Cupidus began, and motioned Laxus forward with his blade. What would have happened to the little lad I cannot guess, but my startled exclamation interrupted them.

‘Rufinus! Lyra’s messenger!’ I said. ‘You’re sure about the toy?’ I turned towards the child-slave, who had dropped to his knees and was trying feverishly to scoop up the scattered ashes with pathetic, trembling hands. He glanced up at me with a tearstained face.

‘I didn’t really look at anything but that,’ he managed, between sobs. ‘I’m sorry, sirs. I didn’t think it mattered. It’s all I can remember — honestly. I swear by all the gods. .’ He went back to scrabbling at his hopeless task again. It was clear that he feared a thrashing from his master over it.

His plight touched me, so that for a moment I forgot my own potential danger and, ignoring Laxus and his knife, went over and squatted on my haunches next to him. ‘Of course you were looking at the cup and ball. Because you longed to have one of your own?’

The child looked up at me. ‘I never had a toy. I had a sort of cart-thing once my father carved for me, but when he sold me to the pastry-cook. .’

My turn to nod. I too had been a slave, but only as an adult. My childhood had been a very happy one, full of dogs and horses and gambols on the cliffs and in the streams, with playthings and playfellows aplenty. What this child’s miserable existence must have been, I could only half imagine.

‘He was amazing,’ the boy added, with tearful eagerness, as if sharing a special confidence. ‘He kept the ball up all the time and never dropped it once. I got a thrashing when I got inside for watching him so long. I’m sorry if I should have noticed more.’

‘You did very well,’ I said, and he looked so grateful that it touched my heart. Praise was as rare as toys in his young life. ‘Here.’ I put a hand into my purse and pressed a sestertius into his hand. He looked incredulous. It would be taken from him, like as not, but I felt that some reward was due. ‘Tell your master you have been delayed by helping a Roman citizen to find a missing slave, and that I will be here in the morning to buy some honey cakes. Tell him to put half a dozen on one side for me. Here’s half a denarius to pay for them.’ With any luck, I reasoned, a lucrative order from a customer would be enough to soothe his master’s wrath.

He flashed me an uncertain smile, and hurried round the corner with the coins and what little ash he’d succeeded in collecting up again. The others made no move to stop him going.

‘Very pretty,’ Cupidus jeered. ‘And you expect us to believe that the boy is not in your employ? Or in the pay of your bath-side friends? Well, let me tell you, this is my father’s area. He won’t take kindly to your bribing servants here to tell their confounded little lies for you.’ He shouldered up to me, more belligerent than ever, and made to seize me by the neck again.

Aurissimus restrained him. ‘Cupidus, don’t be more stupid than you have to be. All right, you can’t recognise a cheating net man when you see one, but can’t you take in what’s right before your eyes?’ He turned to me. ‘You said the youth who came was Lyra’s messenger. Who’s Lyra?’

I was about to protest that surely he must know who Lyra was, and then of course I realised that he did and he was testing me. I remembered the reaction to her name from the keeper of the thermopolium, and I said hastily, ‘I was in the town, looking for a silver cloak clasp for my wife. Lyra approached me and offered me her girls. She gave me an address — the street of the oil-lamp sellers — although I didn’t go there at the time.’ If the spy system in this part of town was half as good as that in the bath-house area, I knew that my movements could easily be checked. I didn’t mention Plautus. I was certain that part of the story would never be believed.

Big-ears was looking at me with amused contempt. ‘But you went there later, did you? After dark.’

I was reluctant to say anything which might be proved false. I compromised. ‘I never found it,’ I said truthfully.

He laughed. ‘So you got lost and wandered round the bath-house area? Lyra’s wolf-house isn’t over there — it’s on this side of Venta, where all the soldiers go. No wonder you were followed. A thief, most likely, hoping for your purse. It’s a marvel someone didn’t cut your throat. They don’t like strangers in that part of town.’ He turned to his companions. ‘I don’t believe the man’s a spy at all. He’s just an idiot who can’t control what hangs between his legs. That’s why he wasn’t present at the games. Made some excuse and sneaked off in the dark, looking for the wolf-house. It all makes sense. That’s why the poor fool left his slave behind. I’ll bet he’s got a wife at home, as well, and didn’t want her finding out where he had been.’ He gave another hoot of mocking mirth. ‘And then he didn’t find it after all. It’s true. He can’t have done. He gave money to that slave. Lyra wouldn’t leave a customer with silver in his purse. If he didn’t spend it willingly, the girls would get it from his clothes while he was occupied with something else.’