The Fateful Day by Rosemary Rowe Page A

steward catching up with him.’
    ‘A squeal?’ That confirmed what I’d been thinking. ‘Oh, dear gods!’ I exchanged a startled glance with Georgicus, who had clearly come to much the same conclusion for himself.
    Tenuis misinterpreted my expression of dismay. ‘I couldn’t help him, citizen. I would only make it worse, so I went back to the woods and tried to help the others with collecting up the pile. But I’ll thank him when I see him. He took a risk for me. I just hope he didn’t get into too much trouble for my sake.’
    I turned to Georgicus. ‘I think it’s time we told him. We’ll show him what we found – and then we’ll go and get your other land-slaves from the wood.’
    The overseer nodded, grimly. ‘I’ll send somebody in with you to tell the Funeral Guild. Then I suppose we ought to find the missing heads. Some of the male land-slaves can institute a search. In the meantime I’ll have some women start on a lament. And there’ll have to be a pyre. There are quite a lot of corpses to be burnt. So there may be a use for that wood-pile after all.’
    I shook my head at him. This was not the way I’d meant to break the news to Tenuis. But it was too late. The poor little lad had been listening to all this, and his white face told me that he’d understood exactly what had happened to his friend.
    ‘Funeral? Heads? Corpses? Oh, dear Juno …’ It was a strangled sob. Blank as a sleepwalker, he took a stumbling step.
    I darted forward and was just in time to catch him in my arms before he fell crashing to the paving in a faint.

TEN
    I t took us some moments – and half a bucket of water from the well – to bring him round again. When he did revive, the poor child looked like someone who had brushed with death himself.
    ‘It’s true?’ he whispered, sitting up and shaking his damp locks. ‘I didn’t dream it? Pauvrissimus is dead? Someone chopped his head off?’ He sounded as if he could not believe what he was saying, even now.
    I reached out a hand to help him to his feet. ‘Among a lot of others, I’m afraid. If it is any comfort, I’ve promised my own slave that I’ll find out who the killers are, and see that they are made to pay for this – and for stealing everything of value from the house.’
    He looked doubtfully at me. ‘If robbers did this, I suppose there is some chance. The master would want them punished for theft, if nothing else, so the authorities would have to help you, wouldn’t they? Though they mightn’t care too much about the death of a few slaves.’
    ‘Oh, I rather think so. They were his possessions, too,’ I pointed out.
    He bit his little lip. ‘I still can’t quite believe those men with carts were bad men – thieves and murderers. The steward didn’t think so. He even let them in.’
    ‘And now the steward’s dead,’ Georgicus said and sobered him again.
    ‘But why did they want to kill all the master’s slaves – especially the little ones, like Pauvrissimus? He couldn’t possibly have done them any harm.’
    ‘Because he saw them. We think they killed the witnesses – anyone who might describe them afterwards. It wasn’t a question of how big they were,’ Georgicus said.
    Tenuis was young but life had made him sharp. ‘So if those guards had seen me, I’d be dead as well?’ He turned as pale as chalk and I thought for a minute he was going to faint again but all that happened was that his eyes filled up with tears, two of which spilled over and trickled down his cheeks. He was too stunned even to attempt to wipe them off.
    ‘It makes you a valuable witness, from our point of view,’ I said heartily. ‘You saw them, but nobody saw you – so they won’t be looking for you and you should be quite safe.’
    I meant to be supportive, but the boy looked terrified. ‘But what about when His Excellence comes back? I don’t know anything. Don’t let them question me. I didn’t really look. It’s no good asking me. I can’t