A Coin for the Ferryman Read Online Free PDF

basic rites.
    Clearly Julia intended to deal with this corpse in the same way, if we couldn’t find its family to perform the rituals. That would do a great deal to appease the vengeful Lemures, I told myself, hoping that the body had not been hidden for so long that we were already past the half-moon after death which – tradition said – was the maximum permitted before a funeral, if one wished to keep the ghost from haunting afterwards.
    I was still thinking about this when we reached the villa gates and the cart did stop at last: I scrambled down, with Junio and my slave, and was immediately accosted by the gatekeeper. I knew the man, a swarthy rogue called Aulus, who always carried a faint scent of onions and bad breath.
    He greeted me as though I were a friend. ‘Well, pavement-maker, here you are at last. We’ve been expecting you. The mistress will see you in the atrium – I’m to find a slave to take you to her straight away, she says.’
    I was about to protest that I knew my way around the villa very well and did not need a slave, but a young pageboy was already hurrying out to us. Obviously they had been watching for my arrival from the house.
    The page was not a servant I’d seen before. Marcus’s usual pageboy was a more flamboyant lad. I looked at Aulus. He knew everything.
    He gave me another of his leering grins. ‘Pulchrus was sent to Londinium a day or two ago – the morning of that last important feast it must have been – to make arrangements for the master and his wife to start their trip to Rome. You must remember, citizen. I’m sure you’ve heard about that.’
    I nodded. Julia, like me, did not enjoy the sea, and had refused to contemplate the long ocean voyage from Glevum, so Marcus had decided to send the boy ahead with messages and imperial travel permits, requisitioning their passage on a naval ship from Londinium to Dubris, and from there on the shortest possible sea crossing to Gaul.
    This substitute was a good deal younger, seven or eight years old perhaps, but he was fair-haired and pretty and desperate to please. He spoke in a piping, eager voice. ‘If the two citizens would follow me,’ he said.
    Junio looked at me and grinned. It was the first time anyone had called him ‘citizen’. He followed me (walking with some difficulty, true – togas are not easy to manage if you are not used to them, and his was showing a tendency to unhitch itself) and we were shown into the atrium. We had hardly reached it before Julia arrived. That was an indication of how distressed she was. There was none of the usual fashionable delay, intended to make lesser mortals like myself appreciate the honour of an interview with her.
    She was attended, as usual, by a pair of maidservants, and was looking as lovely as she always does. Her
stola
and over-tunic were of the softest pink, and she had woven ornaments into her hair. But her face was strained and tense. She managed a smile for Junio, and then turned to me. ‘Libertus, I am very glad to see you. This is an unhappy business, I’m afraid. I’ve had my land slaves take the body to the stable block – the room where we prepare dead slaves for burial – and I have sent some servants out to make enquiries, to see if anyone is missing in the area.’
    ‘Recently dead then?’ That was a surprise.
    ‘It seems so. But my slavemaster thinks that you should come and take a look at her yourself.’
    ‘It is a female?’ I was quite surprised. No reason why it should not be, of course, but most people travelling the forest – off the paths – are men.
    ‘A girl. Quite young, from what I understand, and dressed in peasant clothes, though obviously I haven’t been to see.’ She swallowed. ‘They tell me that she is not a pleasant sight. I understand the face is battered in, and there are other injuries. When they reported that they’d found her, I just instructed them to bring her here.’
    I nodded. Nobody would expect a lady of her rank to