A Coin for the Ferryman Read Online Free PDF Page B

concern herself with an unlucky corpse at all, let alone a bruised and battered peasant one. ‘So you sent for me?’
    ‘And now I’m doubly glad I did. The chief of the land slaves came to ask for me, not half an hour ago. He seems to think there’s something slightly odd about the look of it.’
    ‘Odd? Apart from having a battered face, you mean?’ All kinds of pictures were flitting through my brain. ‘In what way odd?’
    She shook her head. ‘She’s dressed like a poor peasant, as I said, but when they came to put her on a board, and carry her over to the stable block, it seems he noticed that her hands were very soft. The nails are clean, he said, and nicely shaped as if they’d been rubbed with a pumice stone or something of the kind – not black and broken as a peasant girl’s would be. And, he tells me, the feet are much the same. It made me wonder . . .’
    I whistled. ‘Perhaps she is not the pauper she appears to be?’
    She smiled. ‘Exactly. Libertus, I knew you’d understand. Supposing this is a wealthy girl, found on what is still officially our land? It makes it rather awkward for Marcus and myself, when we are due to go to Rome in less than half a moon. What was she doing in the forest, on private property?’
    I found that I was nodding once again. ‘Some wealthy citizen’s daughter, perhaps, attempting to escape a marriage that she didn’t want? It has been known for such things to occur. If she disguised herself as a peasant to meet someone in the woods, it is possible that she was attacked and robbed.’
    Julia met my eyes. ‘I thought of that myself. But I have not heard of any young lady missing in the town. And surely, you’d think, we would have known of it? A wealthy father would have called on Marcus for a search, and got the town guard looking for the girl. It’s not as though there’s not been time for that. The body had not been dead for very long, but clearly it has been there for at least a day or two.’
    Junio, emboldened by his new rank of citizen perhaps, dared to join the conversation. ‘Pardon me, madam – Father – but there is another thing – if I might speak.’ We signalled our assent, and he went on, ‘If it was a failed elopement, why smash in the face? It can’t be to prevent the family from identifying it. Surely they would lay claim to an uncovered corpse at once, if they were looking for a missing daughter anyway? And they would recognise the fingers, if your land slave did.’
    I nodded. ‘And having made the corpse unrecognisable, why bury it at all – especially in such a shallow ditch as I understand this was? Yet clearly it did not get there by itself. Someone put it there. The body of a wealthy girl, dressed in peasant clothes. Your slave is right, it does seem very odd.’
    Julia gave that tight-lipped smile. ‘Exactly so. That’s why I called for you. I very much fear, Libertus, that we may have an inconvenient murder on our hands – probably of someone of good family. And what with the Festival of the Dead and our impending trip – to say nothing of our important visitor from Rome – it has come at a very awkward time indeed.’
    I sighed. I knew I’d have had to work out who the body was, if possible, and arrange to give the corpse a decent funeral – for Junio’s sake if nothing else – but the matter was already becoming more complicated than I would have wished. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’d better get a slave to show me where she is, and Junio and I will take a look at her.’

Chapter Three
    I was not really hopeful of discovering very much as my new son and I followed the blond pageboy from the house and through the inner court. If this girl was dressed in someone else’s clothes, I thought, they could have been obtained from anywhere, so there was probably little to be deduced from them. As for establishing exactly who she was, we would probably have to wait until someone came forward to claim the corpse as some missing