The Fateful Day by Rosemary Rowe Page B

remember anything at all.’ He buried his head in both his hands and sobbed like the little boy he was.
    I understood his terror. It is commonplace for courts to torture slaves to make sure that they’re not withholding evidence. I put a friendly arm around his heaving back. ‘We won’t let them hurt you,’ I said, trying to sound as sure of that as possible. ‘And no one knows that you were here – apart from us.’
    ‘Or do they?’ Georgicus put in sharply.’ ‘Have you been talking to anybody else? Any of the other land-slaves?’
    The child refused to meet his eyes. ‘Of course not, captain. I wasn’t supposed to come here yesterday. I didn’t say a word. I was afraid that somebody would ask me where I’d been, but the others were too busy fetching wood to notice whether I was there or not. Most of them don’t talk to me, in any case.’
    ‘Then don’t say anything to anybody now,’ his overseer warned.
    ‘But you can talk to us,’ I told him. ‘If you think of anything at all that would help us find these men – what they looked like, the colour of their hair, even how tall they were, perhaps – you must let us know at once. In the meantime, stay close to Georgicus. He’ll take good care of you. Go with him now and show him where this famous wood-pile is. I’m going to go to Glevum and call the Slaves’ Guild out to deal with the bodies, but in the meantime we need one of the senior land-slaves to start up the lament.’
    Tenuis nodded. He ran a scruffy tunic-sleeve across his nose, then squared his skinny little shoulders and lifted his small chin. ‘Can I see Pauvrissimus before we go?’
    I glanced at Georgicus. ‘Better not, I think. But when the Guild have prepared the bodies for the funeral and laid him on the bier, you can walk beside him to the pyre – which will obviously be on the property somewhere – and help lament him then. I think that your slave-captain would agree to that?’
    Georgicus nodded brusquely. ‘I suppose that all we land-slaves will have to be involved. That’s all that’s left of the household, isn’t it? Jove knows how I’m supposed to get the grapevines planted now – or what the mistress is going to say when news is brought to her! It will bring her to her child-bed before her time, I think. You’re sure that it is possible for you to contact her?’
    ‘There’ll almost certainly be a courier from the garrison riding to Corinium anyway,’ I said. ‘There are messages between them almost every day. And if there’s any problem, I’ll hire a private messenger and tell him that the recipient will pay.’ That is not unusual, in fact, since it ensures that your message actually arrives and the rider doesn’t simply take the money and abscond. ‘I’m sure that Julia will agree to your proposals for the funeral. It’s obviously sensible to have the pyre out there on the fallow field – it involves the least expense.’
    Georgicus looked doubtful.
    I wondered what it was that troubled him. Perhaps he thought that mentioning expense seemed rather disrespectful to the dead. It couldn’t be concern about the sum involved, because the guild would be paying for the funeral in any case.
    ‘And being cremated in the fields they knew is the best way of showing proper respect towards the dead,’ I added hastily.
    But it wasn’t money that was causing him anxiety. ‘Should we wait for permission from the mistress, do you think?’ he said. ‘I suppose she’ll get an answer back to you as quickly as she can. In fact, if she sends a verbal message it could come straight to me. But I wonder if we should begin on the preparations, anyway. With so many corpses, there is a lot to do. We’ll need a massive pyre.’ Then a thought seemed to strike him, and he added suddenly, ‘Though it occurs to me that, while the master is away, I was told that I was answerable to you. So I can reasonably act on your authority.’
    I wasn’t sure I altogether welcomed