Rosemary Rowe - Requiem for a Slave

Glypto shook his head decisively. ‘Green man,’ he said again. ‘I heard them talking,’ he added, as though that settled it.

I abandoned my attempts at making sense of what the green man was, and seized on the implication of what he had just said. ‘You heard them talking?’ I repeated. ‘So he was not alone. How many of them, Glypto? The green man and who else?’

The thin shoulders underneath the tattered blanket shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I only saw the green man. And I heard another voice.’ He stole a look at me. I must have been looking doubtful, because he suddenly burst out, ‘But pay no attention to Glypto, citizen. Perhaps there was nobody in the lane at all. My mistress says that I imagine things. Glypto is too old and deaf and foolish to know anything. She told you, didn’t she? She tells my master, and he believes it too.’ He said it with such bitterness and force that he made me reconsider my own approach to him. A man who could express himself like that was not an idiot.

‘I think Glypto notices a lot of things,’ I said. ‘More than his master and mistress ever dream he does.’ I realized I had adopted the form he’d used himself, talking about ‘Glypto’ as if he wasn’t there. It sounded belittling and I corrected it at once. ‘So you know there was someone with the green man, Glypto?’ I said patiently. ‘Because although you didn’t see him, you did hear the voice?’

My only answer was a reluctant nod.

I was finding this questioning very difficult, for more reasons than one. Not only was it hard to coax answers from the slave, but a breeze was threatening to blow my oil lamp out, so that I had to concentrate on shielding the flame with my free hand. To say nothing of the fact that I was obliged to raise my voice and I was afraid the tanner would overhear and come out to reclaim his slave. But, for the sake of Lucius and my own missing servant, I had to persevere, in case there was something Glypto knew and hadn’t told me yet.

So I persisted. ‘Did you recognize him, Glypto? The owner of the voice? A man who had dealings with your master, possibly?’

‘No one Glypto knew.’ He shot me a knowing glance. ‘And not a man at all. It might have been a woman, but I think it was a boy.’

‘A boy.’ I felt a surge of hope, wondering if it could have been a small red-headed slave. ‘You guessed that from his speech? But you didn’t even glimpse him? Not his hair or clothes?’

Glypto shook his head. The smile he gave was not so foolish now. ‘Not any part of him. He was hidden from me on the far side of the pile. I couldn’t see him for the rubbish heap. Anyway, the green man’s back was in the way.’

‘So the other person obviously wasn’t very tall? Another reason why it was probably a boy?’

‘Exactly, citizen. Glypto is not as stupid as he looks.’ The old slave’s manner was quite triumphant now. He gave me a crafty look. ‘Why are you so interested in all this, citizen?’

It was a reasonable question, even from a slave, but it took me aback. I debated inwardly as to how much I should tell and decided on a partial version of the truth. ‘There is a problem, Glypto. My slave has disappeared. And — before you suggest it — I don’t believe he’s run away. He was very happy here. I think someone has seized him — perhaps to sell him on. But he was very young — only a pageboy that my patron Marcus Septimus Aurelius lent to me. That’s why I’m so interested in what you have to say. I thought it might have been his voice that you heard, that’s all.’

He gave a sly laugh. ‘A slave belonging to your patron, citizen? And you’ve lost him, have you? No wonder you are worried and want to get him back. Even Glypto has heard of Marcus Septimus — he’s the most important man for miles around.’ He was almost gleeful at my predicament. ‘But I’m afraid that I can’t help you. The boy I heard was not a private slave, or not an indoor one. Certainly not the kind of page His Excellence would have. Might have been some sort of land slave, I suppose, but what would a land slave be doing around here?’ He shook his head. ‘Most likely a street urchin, from the sound of him. No education — you could tell that at once. He had rough manners and his speech was coarse, and his Latin was even worse than mine.’

In fact, Glypto’s Latin was not bad at all and he had just used it to surprisingly intelligent effect. I should have noticed that and encouraged him to talk. But I was too busy following my own train of thought. ‘Yet this urchin person said that everything in my workshop had gone out?’ I mused. ‘How would he know that?’ A thought occurred to me. ‘Or was it every one ? Are you sure you heard correctly?’

The foolish, vacant look came down across his face, as suddenly as an actor might hold up a mask to depict an idiot in the theatre. ‘Pay no attention to Glypto, citizen. I told you that before.’

Dear Mars! I had offended him again. I tried another smile. ‘On the contrary, Glypto. You’re an excellent observer and you’ve helped me quite a lot. And there’s more that you can do. What did this green man look like? Was he tall or short? I know that you only saw him from the back, but what was green about him? Did he have a cloak, perhaps?’

It was a mistake to press him on that point again. His voice reverted to a senile whine. ‘Glypto didn’t notice. He didn’t stop to look. His mistress flogs him if he stays out too long.’ He gave a long, exaggerated sigh. ‘As she will do now, when he gets back to her, if you don’t release him quickly and allow him to go home. So he begs you will be quick. Glypto has already told you what he knows, and you can see that it is nothing related to your slave.’

I felt a little guilty, as he clearly meant I should. It was true that I had kept him from his work, and I feared that the flogging was a possibility. Besides, it was clear that he wasn’t going to tell me any more, and the turnip-seller was awaiting us impatiently by now.

I turned away, and almost managed to let the lamp go out. I shielded it hurriedly and it flared up again. ‘Of course, I shouldn’t keep you any longer than I must. I’m sorry, Glypto,’ I said, and led the way towards my workshop door.

Radixrapum was watching us as we approached, and he was looking decidedly displeased. ‘You’ve been a long time coming, citizen,’ he said. ‘I thought you were in a hurry, to sort things out in there. .’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the corpse. ‘You’ve been so long about it that the cart will soon be here and you won’t have time-’

I interrupted him, aware that Glypto was alert to every word. ‘The tanner has been good enough to light my lamp for me, and to give me embers so that I can start the fire,’ I said, trying to signal with my eyes for him to be discreet. ‘You and I will go inside and quickly get it going. Glypto here’ — I nodded at the slave — ‘will stay outside and keep watch on your barrow while we’ve gone. But his mistress needs him; we must not keep him long. We’ll bring the brazier back to him as swiftly as we can.’

The turnip-seller raised a pair of bewildered eyes to mine. ‘But. .’ he began, and then I saw illumination dawn. ‘Ah! I see. Of course.’ He mouthed the words as if the slave was blind. ‘You haven’t told him. .?’

But Glypto had seen it and was obviously aggrieved. He had put on his feeble, stupid face again. I gave the turnip-seller another warning frown. ‘Of course I have told him that I have lost my slave,’ I said, with careful emphasis. ‘That’s what we were discussing in the street just now. And he’s been a lot of help. He overheard some people talking in the alleyway — it may turn out to be quite relevant.’ I didn’t know how sharp the turnip-seller was, but I hoped that he would realize that I had not mentioned Lucius.