Rosemary Rowe - The Ghosts of Glevum

Fortunately, Marcus’s wife had furnished an excuse, and I could take my leave without appearing to desert my patron in his hour of need. Not that I could have done anything immediate to help, in any case: Marcus had been formally arrested by the authorities, and the best assistance I could render now was to find some way of persuading them that this was a mistake.

‘If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I must attend the lady Julia,’ I began, in my best ingratiating voice, but it was a waste of time. Nobody was paying the slightest attention to me.

Bullface had just noticed that the bucket-boy had gone.

‘Where is he? Where is that confounded boy?’ He had his dagger drawn by now as well as his sword, and was jabbing both of them in the air in front of the bewildered guests, as if by doing so he could prod the truth from them. ‘Come on, if you know what’s good for you. One of you must have seen something. Where’s the boy?’

‘Mellitus!’ Gaius, the old ex-councillor who’d sat next to me, was sober now and had clearly been pushed forward to protest. He twitched at his toga to assert authority, but his voice had become high-pitched and wavering. ‘This must be stopped at once. This sword-waving is an insult to our dignity. We are not landless peasants to be treated in this way: we are councillors and magistrates, members of the ordo of the town — and not just a common town, but a military colonia with full republican rights! An affront to us is an insult not just to Glevum but to the whole Empire and to Rome.’

Everyone began to speak at once, and suddenly pandemonium broke loose.

‘Where is the boy?’ Bullface insisted in a roar.

‘It isn’t. .’ Mellitus, trying to keep the peace.

‘I don’t know. .’ The doorkeeper, as one of the soldiers twisted his arm behind him once again.

Balbus and the other guests were still protesting too. ‘By all the deities. .’

The high priest of Jupiter was muttering something at my side. He seemed to be invoking all the gods. It may have been an incantation or a prayer, but I interrupted anyway. I touched his sleeve.

He leapt to face me as if burnt and I murmured soothingly, ‘I must attend the lady Julia at once, since Marcus has nominated me her guardian. I did try to explain, but they did not hear. If anyone asks for me, that’s where I’ll be. I’ll look out for the page-boy on my way.’

I did not wait to see his startled nod. Taking advantage of the chaos created by the noise and the flickering shadows of the torchlit search, which was now beginning in the colonnade, I slipped away, taking the long route through the now empty triclinium and the central block, and through the side entrance to the even more opulent owner’s wing beyond, which Marcus had so recently had built.

It was as well I knew my way. Eerily — for any mansion on this scale — there were few oil lamps burning in the corridors, and there was not a solitary slave in sight.

Julia was waiting in her dressing room, a little ante-room next to the smaller of the two adjoining bedchambers which Marcus had constructed for their use. The original master of the house was not a married man, and all the bedrooms round the central colonnade — though luxurious — were self-contained: small individual rooms which opened off the court. This further wing had been my patron’s fantasy, a tribute to his beautiful new wife, and he had showed me proudly round it when it was complete.

It consisted of this connubial suite (well-bred Roman couples always have separate rooms, a practice I have never understood), a nursery and a servants’ room nearby, and a fine new librarium as well, all situated around another little walled enclosure containing a statue of Venus and a lily pond. The extension to the front façade, through which I’d just approached, also provided another small triclinium, an intimate dining area the family had used when the approaching birth had kept Julia from any public gaze, and where she could still dine in comfort and apart on purely masculine occasions such as tonight’s. I still hoped for a commission for a floor in there — the current plastered one was only a temporary expedient, hurriedly laid down by the builder to ensure that the room was ready by the promised date.

‘Libertus.’ Julia rose to her feet to welcome me. She had been sitting on a little gilded stool, surrounded by her maids, and was now demurely dressed in a warm dark-coloured Grecian robe with a cloak around her shoulders and her arms, and her hair obscured by its handsome hood. Of course, it was much more fitting garb, for both the climate and the company, but I was a little disappointed at the change. I may be an old man — at over fifty I am one of the oldest men in Glevum — but I am still susceptible to female charms.

She misinterpreted my glance and shook her head. ‘It was foolish of me to come out like that, I know, but I did not stop to think. I was told that they’d seized Marcus, so I came just as I was. However, I have recovered my wits now, as you see.’

‘I see that you have wrapped up against the cold.’

She gave a bitter laugh. ‘And against the wagging of malicious tongues. With Marcus gone, there might be allegations of impropriety. Of course the idea is perfectly absurd, old friend — no one could imagine you in such a role — but those who have trumped up charges against my husband would no doubt gladly do the same against his wife.’

I nodded glumly. Her absolute discounting of me as a virile male was hardly flattering, but I did see what she meant. She was alone in private with a man at night and in her personal quarters too. It was most unusual for anyone but the spouse to bring charges of adultery, but it was not utterly impossible, and for those found guilty of the crime the punishment was cruel.

I said, ‘Marcus has appointed me your guardian. It would be hard to make an accusation stick, even if there was anyone to bring a charge. Besides, you have your maidservants as witnesses.’ This was thin comfort, as we were both aware: the presence of slaves — especially female ones — would hardly signify. However, my own words did give me an idea. ‘Perhaps you could send one of your attendants to go and fetch my slave as well? He will be waiting in the servants’ quarters in the main part of the house.’

She gave a wan smile. ‘Of course. Cilla, see to it.’ She nodded to one of the handmaidens, a large and rather lumpy girl, who trotted off at once. All the time that I’d known Julia, she’d always surrounded herself with unattractive maids, not out of compassion for their plight, to offer the poor things employ, but so that she could sparkle the more in comparison. It was an unnecessary and rather disappointing vanity. Julia would have sparkled in any company. Even now in the flickering light from the oil lamps, muffled in a cloak and looking tired and strained, she was astonishingly beautiful. If I did not have a dear and much-loved woman of my own, I might have envied Marcus his delightful wife.

One of the female slaves had brought a stool for me, but I preferred to stand. Julia, however, sank down again and muttered in a breaking voice, ‘Libertus, what are we going to do? To accuse Marcus — Marcus! — of murdering a guest! And a senior officer in the army, too! Of course my husband hated Praxus, we all knew that, but Marcus would have contained his power in other ways. This is simply unbelievable!’

‘Contained his power?’ I must have been peculiarly dense that night.

Julia seemed to think so. She gave me a startled look. ‘Of course. The three of them were to rule the area, under Pertinax’s nominal control, until the new provincial governor is installed. Surely you were aware of that?’