Rosemary Rowe: A Pattern of Blood

‘Stop them!’ The man I had just seen accosted by the soothsayer had wrested himself away and was running up the street towards his friend, but it was too late. The figure with the dagger stooped, cut free his victim’s purse and the two robbers disappeared like arrows up the empty alleyway into the night. The pursuer was an older man, and there was no chance of catching the thieves. None of the onlookers, I noticed, had lifted a finger to help.

A small crowd was gathering at the entrance to the alleyway. I joined them, craning my neck to see the little drama unfold. The man had given up his chase now, and had gone back to his companion and was kneeling beside him, lifting his head, holding a hand to his heart. He turned to the watchers, and, still panting from his exertions, gasped out, ‘A litter. Fetch a litter. Quickly, while there is still time.’ He picked up the torch and set it against the wall, where it maximised the illumination.

He was a good-looking man, now that the light struck him. Tall and striking, although his head was bald. His face — intelligent and mobile in the half-dark — was remarkable for the intense concentration with which he was taking something from the pouch at his own belt. Herbs, I realised a moment later as he placed them in his mouth and began to chew them. The man was carrying a kit of medicinal herbs and bandages, like a soldier going to battle. Sure enough, a moment later he was parting the folds of the bloodstained toga and applying the improvised poultice to his friend’s wound.

‘Stand aside, there.’ One of the aediles , the market police, appeared behind me, jostling through the crowd and making way for the litter which had now appeared. I stepped aside smartly. The last thing I wanted was an interview with the aediles, on suspicion of being a stranger at the scene of a crime. The authorities have very effective ways of dealing with witnesses they are dubious of, so effective that people often confess to things they couldn’t possibly have done in the first place. I had no wish to have my memory tested.

I wasn’t wearing my toga either, and that made me an immediate offender, should anyone arrest me. Strictly, as a male Roman citizen, I am required to wear a toga in public at all times, but like many of my humbler fellow citizens, I usually ignore the instruction. They are expensive to clean and awkward to put on, and I have never learned to wear one with grace. It may be different in Rome, but no one in the Insula Britannica is going to stop a mosaic-maker with a handcart and ask him why he isn’t more formally dressed. I had thought about wearing it on the morrow, in fact, to give myself more status when I wanted information, but had decided against it. My toga needed cleaning, and besides, wearing a toga on a trip like this would be to invite the attention of pickpockets and a higher price at every hostelry.

Now, though, I was sincerely regretting the decision. A toga would have ensured, at least, that I wasn’t manhandled by the aediles. I slipped back into the thermopolium. The crowd was in any case beginning to drift away.

‘Still alive, is he?’ I realised that the stallholder had been standing at my elbow.

I nodded. ‘It seems so. Otherwise he would not have applied the poultice. Badly wounded, though. Lucky his friend was there, and so well equipped.’

The man spat into the corner, expertly missing the food vats. ‘Well, he would be. That’s his doctor, that is. Best medicus in Corinium. All right for some, being able to afford a private physician.’

‘Just as well he could,’ I said. ‘Who is he, anyway, the man who was attacked?’

The stallkeeper gaped at me. ‘You don’t know? That’s Quintus Ulpius Decianus. He is one of the councillors here, a decurion . Richest man in Corinium, or one of them.’

‘I see.’ I did see. If Quintus Ulpius was a decurion, he would be worth robbing. A decurion is one of the highest officials in municipal administration, and the chief requirements for election to the office are the possession of a sizeable property and payment of a large fee into the official coffers. And, presumably, he had just won something on the chariot races.

‘Stranger here, are you?’ The stallholder spat again, less accurately this time. Two racegoers had come into the shop, wearing favours for the green team, and they were looking at me menacingly. I remembered that their team had lost, and I smiled nervously.

‘Here on business for a day or two,’ I said.

‘Only, I thought you might be looking for a bed,’ the stallholder said. ‘My brother keeps an inn.’

I was so relieved, I let myself be persuaded. It cost too much, of course, five as coins for a shared bed, and five more for a blanket, but at least it took me away from the hostile crowds and the eagle eye of the aediles.

My visit to the town was not much more successful in other ways. I devoted two days to my enterprise, lost four days’ earnings and gained nothing more than the name of a possible slave trader and a rash of flea bites from sharing my bed at the inn with an unsavoury fellow traveller. Of course, it did not prevent me from planning assiduously to come again as soon as I could afford it. If I could find that slave trader, he might be able to remember who had bought Gwellia. But in the meantime, I was not sorry to go home.

Someone might have remembered seeing me at the scene: that could still mean being dragged before the authorities.

At least, I thought, as I began the weary walk back to Glevum in the drizzle, by the time I next got to Corinium this whole affair would have been forgotten. And, fortunately, the stabbing of a decurion was none of my affair.

Which only shows how wrong a man can be.

Even when the invitation came, many days later, I did not foresee trouble. In fact, I was inclined to be foolishly flattered. Junio, my servant-cum-assistant, came out from my ramshackle workroom to fetch a piece of marble, and found me standing among the stone heaps at the entrance to the shop, staring thoughtfully down the crowded, muddy street.

It was not difficult to see what I was looking at. Here, among the butcher’s stalls, rickety workshops, bedraggled donkeys and second-hand clothes sellers, that smart, gold-bordered tunic and scarlet cloak stood out like a centurion in a slave market.

‘A messenger?’ Junio rubbed a dusty hand through his tousled curls. ‘I thought I heard voices. Good news, then, master?’

I realised that I was smirking inanely, and I adopted a more dignified expression. ‘An invitation from my patron, Marcus. I am to dine with him tomorrow, at his new villa. Alone.’ I tried to keep the self-satisfaction from my voice.

Junio whistled. ‘A private dinner with the regional governor’s personal representative, eh? I wonder what he wants.’

I frowned. He was right. Junio was only a boy still, but he understood the world. He was perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, I could not be sure. When I found him, half-starved and shivering in a slave market eight years ago, they didn’t know his age. He was simply a tearful, terrified child and I had tossed the slaver a few coins and taken him home. And now here he was, taller than I am, and showing more sense than I had done. Taking infernal liberties, too, by telling me so.

I put on my sternest face. ‘You are impertinent. Kindly do not speak of Marcus Aurelius Septimus so.’

‘Oh, come, master,’ Junio persisted, selecting his piece of marble from the heap. ‘How long has His Excellence been your patron? Two years? Three? When has he ever sought you out, unless he wanted something? And it must be something important. I know how highly he values your intelligence, but he wouldn’t invite a simple tradesman to dinner just for the pleasure of his company. Not even you.’