A Roman Ransom Read Online Free PDF

horn scoops suspended from the lid.
    ‘Bring me warm water from the pot beside the fire,’ he said to Gwellia, ‘and a drinking cup. I’ll make a little potion for our friend,’ and with that he began to measure out ingredients, for all the world as though our problems were suddenly resolved. ‘There,’ he went on in his creaking voice, adding the hot water to the mixture he had made, ‘I think that this should send him back to sleep. And once he has finished drinking it, Excellence, I advise you once again that we should go back to the villa and you should try to rest.’
    ‘Philades, be silent!’ Marcus’s voice was sharp. ‘You are quite absurd. How can you suggest I rest tonight?’
    ‘I will make a sedative for you as well,’ the man said, nodding his bony face importantly. ‘There is clearly nothing you can do for now. But first thing in the morning you can make enquiries, and when you find out where this Lallius lives you can send the town guard down there to storm the house. Of course,’ he added, in a judicial tone, ‘I suppose – as you say – he did not do the deed himself, so the captives may not actually be there, but once you’ve made a few arrests the torturers will get the truth from somebody. You’ll soon discover where your wife and son are being held and be able to bring them safely home.’
    Marcus had lost patience. ‘Storm the house? And have these abductors kill their prisoners at once? Of course I shall do nothing of the kind.’ He gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I imagine that’s what they’re relying on. And as to taking sedatives, the thought is quite absurd. How can I rest when I have evidence that they have laid hands on my wife – torn her robe and cut bits from her hair? You expect me to take a draught to make me sleep, when she is lying terrified somewhere? I just thank the gods the child is too young to understand.’
    Marcus pushed past the physician and came close to me, ignoring Philades’ protesting cry of ‘Excellence! I beg of you! The seeds . . .’
    I had managed to raise myself a little more by now and my patron came to kneel beside the bed and handed me the folded piece of bark. ‘Look at it, Libertus. What do you make of it?’
    It was impossible for me to read it properly but Gwellia brought the oil light so I took the bark and turned the message this way and then that, as if by peering at it I could persuade it to tell me something more. My patron looked so stricken that I longed to help, but it was hard to concentrate and I could determine nothing except that the letters were so badly scrawled that they could have been written by a child. Probably deliberate, I thought. This was an adult’s message – short, simple and brutally direct. I passed the letter back.
    ‘Well . . .’ I began, trying to think of something sensible to say.
    ‘Please, Excellence!’ The medicus had come hurrying across with the cup, and now placed himself firmly between my patron and myself. ‘I beg that at least you will stand a little further off. It is said that smoke destroys the evil with its breath. You would be safer over there, beyond the fire.’ Marcus ignored him. I was obliged to do the same.
    ‘This does seem an extraordinary affair,’ I said. ‘You’re sure this Lallius is not wanted on a capital offence?’
    Marcus moved his head to look at me, past his human shield. ‘Not if I recall the details correctly, though he won’t have full Roman rights, of course. I’m pretty sure this Lallius is only a citizen through his colonial birth.’
    I nodded. Glevum was founded for army veterans, a city-republic within the Empire, and has the status of colonia. That means that any townsman born free within the walls is automatically a citizen by right – whatever lineage he may have had. That would explain why Lallius had the full protection of the court, and was not merely tried before some lowly official in a yard somewhere, but obviously he had no serious