Rosemary Rowe - Murder in the Forum

The man lying outside the basilica was dead. Messily dead, the way a person is apt to be when he has been dragged for miles at the wheels of an official Roman carriage. As this man had obviously been.

This was not a clever deduction on my part. The official Roman carriage in question was standing right in front of me, and the unfortunate victim was still attached to it, his hands bound to his sides, so that he could not protect his face, and the chains just long enough to protract the agony, allowing him to stumble after the cart until his heart was bursting, and then when he tripped — as he inevitably would — dragging him remorselessly headlong. The official Roman who must have given the instructions was still sitting smugly inside his conveyance.

I looked at the hapless corpse and blanched. Not at the battered head and bloodied limbs — I had seen men executed this way before — but at the remnants of uniform which still adhered to the body. That scarlet tunic and golden edging meant one thing only: the wearer was a servant of my patron, Marcus Septimus Aurelius, the regional governor’s personal representative. In fact, I suspected that I knew the victim. It was hard to be sure, of course, after such a death, but I thought it was a rather pompous young envoy whom Marcus had once sent with me when I was investigating a crime: an arrogant, self-important youth, vain of his pretty looks.

Not any more.

I glanced at the smug Roman. Of course, he was a stranger (and carrying an official warrant to travel, or the carriage would not have been permitted within the gates during the hours of daylight), but one didn’t have to hail from Glevum to see that the man he had executed was no ordinary slave. Anyone sporting that fancy uniform was clearly the cherished possession of a particularly wealthy and powerful man. So either the man in the carriage was a passing imbecile who had lost the will to live, or he was a very important personage indeed.

He saw me gawping. ‘Well?’ He threw open the door of his carriage. I realised that up until now he had been waiting for someone to do it for him, though his carriage-driver attendant was nowhere in evidence. He didn’t get out. ‘You! You are here to attend on Marcus Aurelius Septimus?’

I gulped. There was no simple answer to this. Yes, I was there on my patron’s business, I had just been visiting his official rooms, but I was not exactly ‘attending’ him since he was twenty-odd miles away, doing a bit of ‘attending’ of his own. Marcus had recently lost his heart — or at least his inhibitions — to a wealthy widow in Corinium and he was there again, doubtless neglecting the affairs of state to pursue affairs of a more personal nature. I pondered my reply. The man in the carriage did not look as if he would have time for fine distinctions.

I was right.

‘Well, are you or aren’t you? I want an audience with your master.’

The tone alarmed me. It was deliberately insulting. Bad enough if I had been wearing my usual tunic and cloak, but (since I was visiting Marcus’s rooms) I was wearing a toga, which only citizens can wear. That should have ensured me a little respect: I was a Roman citizen as much as he was, and he could see that perfectly well. Yet the man addressed me as if I were a slave.

I didn’t protest. I had just glimpsed the toga he was wearing. A purple edging-stripe is a sign of high birth or high office — the broader the better — and the smug Roman had a deep purple stripe so wide it seemed to reach halfway round his body. I have never seen so much purple on a single garment. On his finger glittered the largest seal-ring I have ever seen: even at this distance I could make out the intricate design. And he spoke in the strange clipped tones of the Imperial City itself. Mere citizenship would not protect me from this Roman, toga or no toga.

I said, humbly, ‘Marcus is not here, Excellence.’

‘So I was told.’ He glanced disdainfully over his shoulder, towards the shattered body on the flagstones.

I swallowed harder. This, presumably, was the news for which my poor vain, arrogant friend had paid with his life. I was talking to an old-style Roman then. Perhaps the man had imperial connections. The Emperor Commodus, too, was said regularly to execute messengers who brought unwelcome tidings. That kind of casual barbarity was rarer in Glevum, under my patron’s comparatively benevolent eye — though Marcus was an Aurelian himself, and rumoured to have connections in the very highest places.

I, however, had none and that was worrying me. I was a mere freed-man, and although I had been awarded citizen status on the death of my ex-master, Marcus was my only protector.

A crowd was beginning to gather at the verandaed stalls on the other side of the forum, keeping a discreet distance, but pointing and whispering with undisguised curiosity. The Roman was beginning to look dangerous. Clearly he was not accustomed to being goggled at by a raggletailed crowd like this: slaves, thieves, shoppers, beggars, scribes and stallholders, to say nothing of itinerant butchers, pie-sellers, cobblers, bead-merchants, turnip-sellers and old-clothes men. Equally clearly, he didn’t like it. I wished I had my patron’s protection now.

But at this moment, Marcus was a day’s journey away, his envoy was dead, and I was about to bring this visitor even more unwelcome tidings. Marcus was not only absent, he was likely to be away for some days. I felt that the information might be injurious to my health.

I said carefully, ‘I am sure, Excellence, my patron would wish to entertain you, if he were here. .’

The eyes which met mine were stonier than those of the painted basalt Jupiter on the civic column behind me. Their owner was about as communicative as the statue, too. He said nothing. The silence was deafening.

‘If only, most revered Excellence, I knew whom I had the honour of addressing. .’ I mumbled, keeping myself at a respectful distance, and ensuring that my bowing and shuffling meant that my head stayed decently lower than his. This wasn’t easy, since he was still sitting in the carriage and I was standing on the flagstones outside, but I managed it. Marcus calls me an ‘independent thinker’, but I can grovel as abjectly as the next man when the moment demands. Even my best grovelling produced no flicker of a thaw in the Roman’s manner, but it did provoke a response.

‘My name is Lucius Tigidius Perennis Felix. Remember it.’

I was hardly likely to forget it. Some years ago a man called Tigidius Perennis had held the post of Prefect of Rome, and become the most feared and powerful man in the world after the Emperor Commodus himself. Of course, this was not the same Perennis. That particular Prefect had long since fallen from favour, and been handed to the mob for lynching. But that only made this man the more dangerous. Anyone who bore the Perennis name and survived was obviously someone to be reckoned with.

Most of the Prefect’s family had been executed with him, so any relative — especially a namesake — must have enjoyed special protection to escape as this man had. I realised, with some dismay, that I was probably talking to a favourite of the Emperor himself. That would explain the nickname ‘Felix’ — the fortunate — and why the man was now driving around the Empire on an official warrant, with an imperial carriage at his command.

I said, fervently, ‘I shall not forget it, Excellence. Your name is written on my very soul.’

That was no lie. Branded on my brain would have been nearer the truth. In fact the more I thought about it, the more alarmed I became. This man was an imperial favourite — and although Commodus called himself ‘Britannicus’ this was not his best-loved island. There had been several military plots here to overthrow him, and to install the governor, Pertinax, as Emperor in his place — that self-same Pertinax who was Marcus’s particular friend and patron. Of course, the plots had been put down, by Pertinax himself, but Commodus still suspected conspiracy on every hand — and here was his emissary from Rome, looking for Marcus.