gateway to the town the urchin paused beside a mounting stone, and indicated that I should climb onto the creature’s back.
The only saddle was a patched and tattered rug, tied underneath the belly with a piece of hempen string. I climbed up, graceless and rather hesitant. I was accustomed to owning horses in my youth, but I scarcely went near one when I was a slave and it is many years since I have ridden anywhere.
This donkey was bony and bouncy compared to my fine steeds of long ago, and distinctly slow. But it was not displeasing to be on its back and although my toga billowed out and threatened to unwind, I very quickly got the hang of it. The donkey-boy was even more surprised than I was at my skill.
‘He seems to like you, citizen. Sit tight, and I’ll squeeze in ahead of you.’
I was certain that the donkey would refuse — it seemed recalcitrant in any case — but to my surprise it answered to the switch and we found ourselves swaying precariously along, not very quickly, but faster than on foot.
We must have presented a strange spectacle: a scruffy boy and a Celtic citizen with his toga half-undone, squashed together on a skinny donkey’s back. Certainly we did not go unremarked. Cart-drivers and riders who passed us on the way grinned and raised their whips in mock-salute and various land-labourers turned their heads to look.
The track — we had long ago turned off the Roman roads — swung uphill and down the valleys as the boy had said. In places it was barely wide enough to take a cart, but wheel-tracks in the mud were evidence that a wagon had indeed lurched past this way, and fairly recently. The presumed Paulinus and his wife were said to have a farm-cart, I recalled, and certainly the homesteads here were agricultural.
I began to wonder if my mission was a waste of time and this farmer and his family were not impostors, lured by the reading of the letter — as I’d thought — but exactly who they claimed to be, in which case all my careful reasoning fell apart and I had no other theory to advance. I would have liked to ask the donkey-boy about his previous mission to the farm, but he would have had to turn his head to catch my words, and such was the concentration required to stay on — particularly here, where the road was rough and steep — that there was really no opportunity for that.
At last the lad urged the creature to a stop, close to a clearing where there were several homesteads scratching a living from the land. ‘Here you are, citizen. This is the very place.’ He gestured with his switch.
I looked where he was pointing. Paulinus was a Roman citizen, from a patrician family and, although I had several times been told that he was not a wealthy man, I had expected something more like Lavinius’s estate, though on a smaller scale. This was a humble farm. The house was square and made of stone, as Roman dwellings generally are, and there was a land-slave working in the grounds outside, but there all resemblance to a normal villa ceased. There was no handsome court, no separate slave-quarters, no gatekeeper on watch inside imposing walls, just an enclosure made of piled-up stones, a single dwelling with a stable to the side and rows of turnips and cabbages behind, and a tiny orchard with chickens pecking free. There was a pig-byre just beyond the house, sharing a scruffy pasture with a cow and several piebald goats, while the entrance to the whole was guarded by a large dog on a chain. This was more on the scale of my own abode than anything more grand.
The donkey-boy was looking impatiently at me. ‘This is where I brought the letter, citizen, following the directions that were given me. Are you not getting down? I thought I was to leave you here, when I’d delivered you?’
I swung off my makeshift saddle, which swivelled under me and almost deposited me head-downwards on the ground. However, I managed to keep my balance and maintain my dignity, though I discovered that I ached in every limb. ‘And the man who lives here is called Paulinus?’ I said, with as much gravitas as I could muster.
He looked at me as though I were the donkey here. ‘That’s right, citizen. Or that’s what I was told. The letter was addressed to someone of that name, and when I brought it here, the slave I spoke to went and got him from the house and he came out personally and took it from my hands. Seemed very pleased to get it, from what I saw of him. Gave me a piece of bread and cheese for bringing it. Not the sort of greeting I usually expect, especially from proper citizens: generally they keep you waiting for an hour and then send a servant out to deal with you.’
‘So you’ll remember what he looks like?’ I said eagerly, glad to be making progress of a kind. If the description did not match what I had been told this morning by the slave trader, then the man who took the letter was not Paulinus.
‘Naturally, I do.’ The donkey-boy looked doubtfully at me. ‘You want me to describe him? It won’t be very flattering. He’s not a handsome man.’
I reassured him that he would not be punished for his words.
‘Well…’ The urchin dropped his voice, because the land-slave in the tattered tunic had come over to the pig and was feeding it something from a wooden pail, and it was possible that we could be overheard. ‘Tall and rather stooping, with a skinny face. Just a little balding, with protruding teeth. But he’s got a kindly smile, when he uses it. Took him a minute. Quiet voice as well. I thought he might be shy — if that’s not a silly thing to say about a Roman citizen.’
I was dumbfounded. The description matched exactly what I had already heard. ‘That is very helpful,’ I said untruthfully. ‘I’ll…’ But before I could complete the sentence the land-slave had looked up from his task and was calling out to us.
‘You have business with my master?’ He put down the pail and came over to the boundary wall, if you could call it that. The pile of stones at this point came no higher than his waist. His skin was tanned and wind-burned to an even darker brown than his coarse tunic and his leather boots, except where mud and grime had turned him to the greyish-black colour of his tousled hair.
‘I am looking for a man called Paulinus,’ I said. ‘I believe he was in Corinium yesterday.’
‘That will be my owner,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You’ve come to the right place. He went to Corinium all right — took some goods to sell and went to the slave-market while he was in town. What do you want with him? We don’t very often get visitors round here. Is there some trouble with a bargain that he struck?’
I shook my head. ‘There have been a couple of mysterious deaths,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. ‘Someone that he knew was set upon and killed, and a slave was found dead this morning at the very lodging-house where your master stayed. I’m hoping he can help me with my enquiries.’
The land-slave rubbed his filthy hands across his filthy hair. ‘I don’t mean any disrespect but, who are you, exactly, citizen?’
‘My patron is Marcus Aurelius Septimus,’ I said, but his expression told me that the name meant nothing here. I tried again. ‘I am sent here by the bridegroom of one Audelia, who was a Vestal Virgin until recently, and by her uncle who is called Lavinius.’
He grinned. His remaining teeth were crooked, but only one was black. ‘Oh, I see. We know all about Lavinius — he’s quite famous around here. Refused to help my master when he applied to him for aid. Wanted to take the child to a healing shrine. You know about the daughter of the house…?’ He saw my nod and went on, more soberly, ‘Fortunately this new wife has got a kinder heart.’
‘And I suppose that your master was offended, too, by the fact that Lavinius did not ask him to the wedding feast?’
That jagged smile again. ‘On the contrary. Quite relieved, I think. My master never liked Lavinius very much and now that he has married for the second time, this household is too busy with its own affairs to spend the time and money that would be involved in travelling all the way to Glevum for a feast. In fact it is as well you came today. Another day or two and you would be too late. He and his wife are leaving here to take the child to Gaul — there is said to be a healing spring there, which they want to try. Not that I suppose it will do any good — nothing else has ever helped her in the least — but Secunda’s brought a dowry with her, so they can manage it, and if he wants to use her money in this way, I say good luck to them. Anyway, you never know, the spring might do the trick.’
I looked around. ‘And what about this farm, the slaves and everything? Surely they will not just abandon it?’
‘They’ve found a fellow down the road who will look after it in return for a half-share of the crops, till they get back again. Or, if they do decide to stay in Gaul, he’ll buy it as it stands — but I think they only mean to be away for a half a year. I hope so. I have worked here since a child, and you couldn’t ask for better owners. Both this wife and the first. I would hate to see a change. But if you want Paulinus — that’s him coming now.’
