The Ghosts of Glevum (16 page)

That last thought vexed my tired brain, and I veered away from it. I seized on another little mystery instead.

‘Sosso!’ I said suddenly, as if this were the most pressing matter in the world. ‘You called him by his name. You knew him before? Or did he tell you tonight what he was called?’

She was unhooking an iron pot from the fire, and mixing something into it from a clay bowl which she had nearby. She looked at me sharply, but – as if she was content with what she saw – she answered gently enough. ‘Both. I had heard of him, and when he came I recognised the man. It is hardly a description you’d mistake. I said, “Are you Sosso?” and he said, “I am.” I’m not ashamed to tell you, citizen, my husband has talked once or twice, when times have been particularly hard, of going to the tombs and joining him ourselves.’

‘Joining him?’ I made no sense of this.

‘Sosso has a little band of men – and women – in the town. The Ghosts of Glevum, folks call them. You have heard of them?’ She did not wait for a reply. ‘They would starve without him. He has some arrangement with a slave who works in a hot-soup kitchen near the docks.’

‘A big fat fellow with a beard?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know exactly. All I know is that the owner of the
thermopolium
has a wife who is a member of that peculiar sect. You know the one. Believe in all sorts of peculiar things – only one god and that crucified Jew who was supposed to have come back from the dead. Anyway, you know what they’re like.’

I nodded. I’d had dealings with Christians before. They weren’t popular with the Emperor, of course, since they refused to sacrifice to him, but they weren’t dangerous to know – the sect wasn’t forbidden, like the Druids. Generally, in fact, they were not disliked; they tended to be sincere and generous, even if their beliefs were rather odd. ‘All prayer and penitence and giving to the poor,’ I said.

She looked up from mixing her brew, which was beginning to smell dreadful as it warmed. ‘Exactly. So when the shop closes for the night, she sends her slave out with the scrapings of the soup vat to give to the poor, and a bit of the makings for a fire. Of course, he’s got more sense than to distribute it for free – he’s looking to buy his freedom by and by – and Sosso’s come to some arrangement with him. His group always get the soup, and the slave gets a cut of anything they make.’

‘I see.’ That was close to what I’d worked out for myself. I said, ‘I understand that members of the group do little jobs for the slave as well?’

‘Spying mostly, from what I understand. Collecting information, and that sort of thing. Which councillor is taking bribes, who’s standing for election, and who is visiting whose wife – anything he can turn to money in the end. It’s amazing how indiscreet some people are, when they think nobody’s about – but who takes any notice of a beggar in the street?’

I shook my head. ‘You thought of joining this pathetic crew?’ It was still an effort to say anything and I realised how exhausted I’d become. I ached in every inch, but I could not relax. My future, if I had one, lay in Sosso’s hands, and I wanted to know everything she had to tell.

She looked at me. ‘Citizen, you don’t know what it is to be desperate. These people stick together and they share what they have. They would perish individually, together they survive. Believe me, citizen, if you have no money and you cannot work – whether you are freeborn and sick, or injured in some way, or even if you are a slave who’s been turned out on the streets because you are no further use – you go to Sosso, if you don’t want to starve. All the unfortunates round here know that. Sosso will look after you, if he takes you on. He’s shrewd and he’s handy with a knife.’

This was a new view of the underworld: Grossus as a sort of Marcus of the poor – patron and protector of his own brand of
clientes
, and Sosso as perhaps the chief of these, the inferior with brains whom Grossus relied upon. I had formed a grudging admiration for the ugly little man, but now I saw a parallel with my own position too. I didn’t care for the comparison. ‘He welcomes thieves and runaways as well,’ I muttered ungraciously.

She stopped stirring and poured some of the liquid back into the bowl. ‘All right, so there are some thieves and vagabonds as well, but this isn’t a market centre like Corinium. People like that aren’t drawn to Glevum as a rule; there are too many soldiers here. And as for runaways, Sosso was a runaway himself. Originally freeborn, they say, but very poor. His parents would have sold him for a slave, but he was a freak and no one wanted him. They left him on the streets, but he was picked up by a trader who put him in a cage and took him round the markets as a show. Charged an
as
to see him, till he got too big and cost too much to feed, and then he arranged to have him given to the beasts as comic entertainment at the Games.’

I nodded. Such freak-shows were not unknown in Glevum, at the Games, although most children born with less than perfect limbs were simply left to die. I felt some sympathy for Sosso, all the same. ‘But he got away?’ I said.

‘He had worked out how to undo the cage, and the night before they came to get take him off, he ran away. He walked for days and days until he found himself here among the tombs. Now, citizen, I made this for you.’ She handed me the evil-smelling bowl. ‘Drink this; it will help you sleep.’

It occurred to me that she needed sleep herself. I took the bowl and sipped. It tasted as dreadful as it smelled. ‘And so he came to Glevum in the end. How long ago was this?’

‘Not so many questions, citizen.’ Cornovacus was awake again. ‘And you, you toothless crone, keep your confounded gossip to yourself – if you don’t want Lercius to cut out your tongue.’ The interruption startled both of us. I wondered how much he’d overheard. ‘Now shut up, the pair of you, and go to sleep before I lose my patience with you both.’

The poor woman cowered. She had been good to me. I decided I had nothing left to lose. ‘I’ve been taken captive and locked into a shed and then obliged to promise money to escape. I think I am entitled to know who I am dealing with.’ It is hard to be dignified when one is lying on the floor, covered in goose-grease and weasel-skins and not much else, but I did my best.

Cornovacus’s answer soon put paid to that. ‘As matters stand you are entitled to exactly nothing, friend.’

And that, I thought wearily, precisely summed it up. I did as I’d been told. I drank up my disgusting draught, shut up, lay down and allowed my eyes to close. The old woman’s brew was an effective one. In spite of everything, I drifted almost instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

I awoke to thin winter sunshine streaming on to my face, and the chatter of excited voices somewhere nearby. At first I could not work out where I was, but as I moved my head – slowly, because my neck was very stiff – and took in my surroundings, the events of the night before came back to me.

The pathetic nature of the hut was much more evident in the light of day – the bunch of reeds and skins on which I lay, a few tools, a single stool, a pot, and the row of little clay bowls by the wall. There was a rough log serving as a bench, on which rested a jug of water, a few herbs, a crust of bread and two battered cups – that was the extent of the possessions here. And yet these people, with a roof and fire of their own, talked about days when ‘times were hard’ and knew that they were fortunate compared to some.

Cornovacus was still there, sitting at his post by the door, but when I looked for the old woman she was nowhere to be seen. It occurred to me to wonder where she’d slept since there was no sign of bedding anywhere, and then realised – as I should have done before – that she must simply have curled up in her cloak beside the fire. She’d given up the only bed to me.

What rich citizen, I asked myself, would have done as much?

As if she’d heard my thoughts she hobbled in, a dead hen dangling by its feet from either hand, and her wizened face lit in a toothless smile. ‘Ah, Citizen Libertus, you are awake at last. Don’t try to move. You have slept well but you still need to rest.’ She shook the chickens at me. ‘But see what Lercius has brought us from your house. A good broth of one of these and you’ll soon be on the mend.’

‘From my house!’ The brazenness of it made me sit upright.

Or try to sit upright. The instant I moved, I fell back on the bedding with a groan. Instead of being a creature with mobile arms and limbs I seemed to be one solid throbbing ache, as stiff as if I had been thrashed from head to foot. I had endured some savage beatings when I was first a slave, but not even they had left me feeling as weak and battered as this. I could scarcely turn my head and, although I could hear someone else coming through the open door, I could not twist myself enough to see.

‘I wrung their necks. You should have heard them squawk!’ It was Lercius. He burst into my view, his face alight with frank, unholy glee. He had his right hand concealed behind his back, but now he had my attention he brought it out to display a bloodied bundle in a bag. ‘This one’s even better. I cut off its head. Crunch, I went. Sosso let me. I used your axe. And it went on running a bit even afterwards, when it had no head. Blood was pouring from its neck. This one is for us – we’re going to cook it on the fire tonight.’ He thrust his hand into the bag and brandished the unhappy, headless thing.

My first thought was outrage. That was my old cloth bag he was carrying and those were obviously my chickens he had killed! It was outright robbery, and I was about to voice my anger when the old woman spoke.

‘I’m glad you found something at the house to save.’

‘To save?’ By now I was propped up on my arm, bruises or not. ‘You mean the soldiers may have looted it?’

She paused a moment, then turned back to me. ‘Lie back, citizen, and try to rest. There is nothing you can do. Oh, Great Minerva! I had not meant to tell you this so soon. But I suppose you’ll have to know. When the soldiers came, they waited for a while, but when it was clear that you weren’t in the house they went inside . . .’ She hesitated.

‘And looted it?’ I could imagine it only too well.

She shook her head. ‘They went with torches. Claimed they were searching it, my husband says – though you can believe that if you like. At all events, the thatch caught fire and, quite simply, the house burned to the ground. They didn’t make much effort to try to put it out.’

I did lie down then, as if someone had knocked me down. Of course I didn’t believe the story of the search. Those men had put a torch to it, though since they knew I was a citizen no doubt they thought the lie expedient. The punishment for convicted arsonists is fierce. However, it would be hard to bring a charge, even in ordinary times. This was neither a warehouse nor inside the town, and anyway it is always difficult to make a case against the guard. And these were no ordinary times.

My roundhouse! The beloved little house that we’d rebuilt ourselves, using woven branches in the fashion of the local tribes. We and our slaves had woven osiers round the stakes, and daubed the walls with mud and dung to keep out the searching wind and rain. Gwellia had cut and tied the bundled straw that formed the roof, had flattened the earth floor with patient hands and laid the firestones for the central fire. It was more than just a dwelling, it was a work of love, a symbol of our new-found hope and life. All reduced to ashes by a Roman torch. I have never felt so bitter against our conquerors.

‘All burned?’ I said. I thought about my workshop in the town, similarly gutted and destroyed. Fires were common enough happenings, of course – inevitable when there’s thatch and naked flame – but both of those conflagrations had been deliberate. The Fates seemed to have placed a peculiar curse on any building which I called my home.

She shook her head. ‘I think so, citizen. Or so my husband says. One of the soldiers chased him off at first, but when they’d left at last he did go back again.’

‘Left these though,’ Lercius said happily, swinging the hapless corpse.

‘Where did you find them?’ I enquired. I moved with exaggerated care, so that I was able to lean up on one arm.

‘The chickens? They were roosting in a tree. The coop had been pushed over and they’d escaped. But I got up and caught them!’ Lercius laughed. ‘Woosh – like that. I was too quick for them. They couldn’t get away. After I’d killed them, I put them in the bag. I found that in the lane. It was hanging on a bush – there were some things in it. I brought them too. Sosso says they might be worth something in the market place.’

He reached into the bag again – it was an old one that I’d once used for tools but discarded because it was split and frayed around the seam – and produced a stained, patched cloth which had once been a cloak and a pair of sandals with a broken lace. I frowned.

‘You say you found these hanging on a bush?’

But Lercius had lost interest, and it was the woman who replied. ‘He’s right. The bag was in the lane. I saw it there myself when I went out to see a customer before you came. It was just dangling from a tree. I almost picked it up myself, but I thought that someone must have dropped it on the road and would be back for it. You wouldn’t think that anyone would simply toss it there because they’d no use for it any more. Imagine throwing things like that away – a useful piece of cloth like that, and sandals which would be nearly good as new if you could afford a visit to the shoemaker.’

‘They’re mine,’ I said. I felt rebuked. I had put them on one side myself, admittedly to use as rags or scraps, but I had effectively discarded them. I’d stuffed them in the bag and hung them from a nail in Gwellia’s dyeing-house. So how had they survived the fire, and what were they doing in the lane, hanging on a bush? Perhaps the soldiers had been looting things and thrown this away in disgust as useless junk. Unless . . .

Of course! Junio! I had told him to leave a signal near the gate. This must be it. That bag would have drawn my eye all right. But . . . I frowned again. He was to warn me if the guards were at the house – yet according to what I’d heard last night, my wife and slaves had gone before the soldiers came.