The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits Read online

  "And then again in Rome?"

  He nodded. "I was there very briefly, some days ago, then came straight back to Ravenna."

  "But Zanziba, why didn't you send for me?"

  He sighed. "When I sent you the money, I was in great despair. I expected every day to be my last. I moved from place to place, plying my trade as a gladiator, expecting death but handing it out to others instead. Then I fell in with these fellows, and everything changed." He smiled and gestured to the men around him. "A company of free men, all experienced gladiators, who've realized that it simply isn't necessary to kill or be killed to put on a good show for the spectators. Ahala is our leader, but he's only first among equals. We all pull together. After I joined these fellows, I did send for you — I sent a letter to your old master in Alexandria, but he had no idea where you'd gone. I had no way to find you. I thought we'd lost each other forever." Regaining her strength, Zuleika rose onto her elbows. "Your fighting is all illusion, then?"

  Her brother grinned. "The Romans have a saying: a gladiator dies only once. But I've died in the arena many, many times! And been paid quite handsomely for it."

  I shook my head. "The game you're playing is incredibly dangerous."

  "Not as dangerous as being a real gladiator," said Zanziba. "You've pulled it off so far," I said. "But the more famous this troupe becomes, the more widely you travel and the more people who see you — some of them on more than one occasion — the harder it will become to maintain the deception. The risk of discovery will grow greater each time you perform. If you're found out, you'll be charged with sacrilege, at the very least. Romans save their cruellest punishments for that sort of crime."

  "You're talking to men who've stared death in the face many times," growled Ahala. "We have nothing to lose. But you, Gordianus, on the other hand . . ."

  "He'll have to die," said one of the men. "Like the others who've discovered our secret."

  "The skulls decorating the gateway?" I said.

  Ahala nodded grimly.

  "But we can't kill him!" protested Zanziba.

  "He lied about his purpose in coming here," said Ahala. "But his purpose was to bring Zuleika to me . . ."

  So began the debate over what to do with me, which lasted through the night. In the end, as was their custom, they decided by voting. I was locked away while the deliberations took place. What was said, I never knew; but at daybreak I was released, and after making me pledge never to betray them, Ahala showed me to the gate.

  "Zuleika is staying?" I said.

  He nodded.

  "How did the voting go?"

  "The motion to release you was decided by a bare majority of one."

  "That close? How did you vote, Ahala?"

  "Do you really want to know?"

  The look on his face told me I didn't.

  I untethered my horse and rode quickly away, never looking back.

  On my first day back in Rome, I saw Cicero in the Forum. I tried to avoid him, but he made a bee-line for me, smiling broadly.

  "Well-met, Gordianus! Except for this beastly weather. Not yet noon, and already a scorcher. Reminds me of the last time I saw you, at those funeral games in Saturnia. Do you remember?"

  "Of course," I said.

  "What fine games those were!"

  "Yes," I agreed, a bit reluctantly.

  "But do you know, since then I've seen some even more spectacular funeral games. It was down in Capua. Amazing fighters! The star of the show was a fellow with some barbaric Thracian name. What was it, now? Ah, yes: Spartacus, they called him. Like the city of warriors, Sparta. A good name for a gladiator, eh?"

  I nodded, and quickly changed the subject. But for some reason, the name Cicero had spoken stuck in my mind. As Zuleika had said, how strange are the coincidences dropped in our paths by the gods; for in a matter of days, that name would be on the lips of everyone in Rome and all over Italy.

  For that was the month that the great slave revolt began, led by Spartacus and his rebel gladiators. It would last for many months, spreading conflagration and chaos all over Italy. It would take me to the Bay of Neapolis for my first fateful meeting with Rome's richest man, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and a household of ninety-nine slaves all marked for death; but that is another story.

  What became of Zanziba and Zuleika? In the ensuing months of warfare and panic, I lost track of them, but thought of them often. I especially remembered Zuleika's comments on Roman slavery. Were her sympathies enflamed by the revolt? Did she manage to persuade her brother and his comrades, if indeed they needed persuading, to join the revolt and take up arms against Rome? If they did, then almost certainly things went badly for them; for eventually Spartacus and his followers were trapped and defeated, hunted and slaughtered like animals and crucified by the thousands.

  After the revolt was over and the countryside gradually returned to normal, I eventually had occasion to travel to Ravenna again. I rode out to the site of Ahala's compound. The gate of bones was still there, but worn and weathered and tilted to one side, on the verge of collapsing. The palisade was intact, but the gate stood open. No weapons hung in the armoury. The animals' pens were empty. Spider webs filled the slaughterhouse. The gladiator quarters were abandoned.

  And then, many months later, from across the sea I received a letter on papyrus, written by a hired Egyptian scribe:

  To Gordianus, Finder and Friend: By the will of the gods, we find ourselves back in Alexandria. What a civilized place this seems, after Rome! The tale of our adventures in Italy would fill a book; suffice to say that we escaped by the skin of our teeth. Many of our comrades, including Ahala, were not so lucky.

  We have saved enough money to buy passage back to our native land. In the country of our ancestors, we hope to find family and make new friends. What appalling tales we shall have to tell of the strange lands we visited; and of those lands, surely none was stranger or more barbaric than Rome! But to you it is home, Gordianus, and we wish you all happiness there. Farewell from your friends, Zuleika and her brother Zanziba.

  For many years I have saved that scrap of papyrus. I shall never throw it away.

  The Hostage to Fortune by Michael Jecks

  We move forwards some eighteen years to Caesar's invasion of Britain, a troubling enough time without having a murder to investigate. This is Michael Jecks's first venture into the Roman world. He is best known for his series of mysteries set on Dartmoor in the fourteenth century featuring Bailiff Simon Puttock and the disgruntled Sir Baldwin Furnshill, which began with The Last Templar (1995).

  There are days when you wake up and you know, you just know, that this one's going to be a bastard. All right. As a soldier, you get used to bad days. There are days when you have to stand watch all night, days when you have to break camp and carry all your belongings miles to some other gods-forsaken spot, days when you're detailed to dig the new latrines, or clear the old ones . . . Yes, as a legionnaire, you get enough shitty days for the average lifetime. And every so often there are the other days, when you get to do what the citizens back home expect you're doing the whole time, and risk getting a blade in the guts or an arrow in the face as your glorious general orders you to shove some barbaric, painted scum from some boggy waste-

  land just so that the general can claim his glory. They're all bastards, believe me. Especially generals. They're no better than any other politicians.

  Not that my low estimation of the intelligence and ability of the average general has anything to do with this particular bad day. No. This bad day was caused by my own mates. For my offences against the gods, which must be many, as soon as my comrades learned that I had some education, they elected me as their own private leader. Silly sods.

  And now these same silly sods had let the King's son die.

  King? He was a chieftain of the Britons; one of those with a tongue-breaking name that any sensible man would refuse to try to repeat. There never seemed much point. The bastards were never around for long. Either the
y'd submit to our authority, or they'd die. Either way, they wouldn't be with the army for long.

  His son was taken to ensure his father's good behaviour, along with eight other close relatives: some other of the chieftain's family, including his own brother, and so on. We didn't piss about when it came to taking folks. And now, as I stared down at his bloody body, a great gash in his chest like a second sodding mouth, I knew that my mates and me were all in trouble. We'd been in charge of this pen of hostages, my mates had all been guarding them, and me? I'd bloody fallen asleep, hadn't I, with no chance of an excuse if our general got to hear of it.

  Not that I was safe anyway. Not with the most important hostage, the second in line after the tribal chief, lying dead on the packed earth in front of me.

  Of course, you'd think that he was killed by someone left in that stockade with him, wouldn't you? But I knew that the first thing a hostage learned was, no knives, no swords, nothing. They'd have been patted down before they were put in our stockade. And when the body was found, my boys would have searched the lot of them for a weapon. Since they had all been frisked and checked clear before they'd been allowed through the door, it wasn't much of a surprise to learn that they were all clean.

  Yup. No weapons in there. Other than the good old Roman ones in my lads' hands.

  I guess I should explain what we were doing there.

  It was already late in the year when the army was sent on its recce of Britain. Two legions had been selected for this operation: mine, the VIIth, and another well-blooded legion, the Xth. I had only just joined. A free man, I had little cash, and couldn't join one of the greater cohorts. No, I was stuck in the mob called the "velites" of the VIIth legion. The cohorts weren't split into the four groups now, but the front line, the skirmishers, still got that nickname. Velites — men with little money and no standing. I suited them perfectly. And, my, wasn't I glad to learn that I was to be attached to the force going over the sea to attack a land filled with hordes of particularly vicious pagans. I had hardly learned how to use my gladius or pilum when I was told I was to go.

  The men of my band were a shabby lot. We all had the same woollen tunic, leather coat reinforced with bands of steel, leather caps, greaves, a cloak and all the paraphernalia of a soldier, but somehow my companions managed to make all appear filthy and worn, no matter how new it might be.

  Here in the hostages' pen at least they looked smarter because of the comparison with our prisoners.

  They were an odd assortment. The king's relations had uniformly broad shoulders, but they weren't tall, and their rickety legs spoke of malnutrition. Two had lost a lot of teeth; I think it was the scurvy got them because of bad harvests. The way these natives tried to farm was laughable, and many starved even when the weather was kind. All were tattooed, with various black and green swirls adorning their cheeks, foreheads, arms and breasts. God knows why pagans do that. It must hurt like hell.

  The dead boy's uncle (he had a very long name — I'll call him "Verc" because that's the nearest I can get to it) was at his side, tears of rage dropping from his sallow cheeks. He was heavily tattooed, with the drawn features of a man who has suffered hunger and the pain of loss. Deep-set eyes met mine unflinchingly. Behind him were the cousins of the dead man, as though ordered away, so that Verc could denounce us and demand compensation without risking their lives. I felt a fleeting respect for him at the sight.

  One, a lad called "Trin" by us, stood back at the wall, his black eyes restless, going from one to another of us, like a man who was about to spring an attack, and I gripped my sword more tightly as I met his gaze. The stupid arse was actually thinking of making a break for it, and I motioned with my hand to the men behind me to block the entrance. There was a sturdy gate for the stockade, and my lads pulled it across quickly, the guards remaining outside sliding the bar across to lock it. Only then did the lad seem to realize he had no escape. Like a trapped dog, he glared and walked up and down, but made no attempt on us.

  There were three in there who were my own personal comrades. Pugio, named after the dagger made from a cut-down gladius, was well named. Short, dark, wiry, with high cheekbones and narrow features, his eyes were suspicious and sharp in a face already scarred from a hundred fights; he was as unforgiving as a whore from Syracuse. Quick to anger, it took the three of us to calm him when he felt insulted. Once, I remember all of us dragging him to the ground when he thought a man cursing a dog had referred to his own ancestry. The man had been a legionnaire, but that wouldn't hold him back, not Pugio. If he thought he'd been maligned, he would strike. But for all that, Pugio was loyal and steadfast as I had learned during the landing from the sea. If you were standing in line waiting for the enemy, you didn't want a better man at your side.

  Certainly he was better than the man we all called Consul. He was a languid, tall, well-bred man, with the ability to sneer at his superiors without their being able to respond, he was so careful in his language. His hair was a peculiar light shade, and some had said that his mother had been a slave from one of the northern tribes, which maybe explained his pale complexion too, but I don't know. He never spoke to me of his family. When we hunkered down around the fire at night, there were better things to discuss. Women, booze . . . you know the sort of stuff. I always reckoned he had a miserable time of it, because he seemed to have some breeding. Know what I mean? He was from a leading family, all right. That's what I thought.

  And then there was As, named after the tiny coin. It takes sixteen copper "as" to make one denarius, so you can guess what he was like. Short, stunted, permanently sniffing as though he had a cold, always pot-bellied, with a pair of broken teeth in the front of his mouth when he smiled, breath reeking, he was the worst nightmare of a decent centurion, which was why our own averted his gaze whenever he caught sight of As. The little man was perpetually grinning. Oddly, he hardly looked a professional killing machine. Not many of us did. That meant keeping clean and weapons shining. None of us could manage that in a good summer, let alone at the grim beginning of a damp winter. At least with his clear grey eyes gazing out from his pox-scarred face he looked like a killer of sorts, especially when you saw the lunatic expression in his face. It wasn't his fault, but he was dim to the point of real stupidity, and that look can scare the bravest. He had the look of a man who enjoyed killing for killing's sake. It took a brave man to stand in front of him.

  Yet for all his apparent murderousness, he wasn't really violent. The only fights he ever got into were the ones he was supposed to: protecting the legion's honour, or saving his mates when they were drunk and legionnaires from another cohort started ripping into us.

  Mind you, then he was a demon.

  The boy was lying on his back when I first saw him. He'd been on his face before, I saw, because nearby was the starting point of all the blood. It lay in a vast puddle, soaking into the ground, and the little shack reeked of it.

  I never knew his name. All about him were the other hostages, and the one who squatted like an animal was Verc, eyeing me with unblinking rage. The others behind him were snivelling. As the gate shut, Verc rose to his feet, his tattooed face working with fury. He shouted at me, pointing at the boy, then shouted again, spittle flying. Even as I sighed and bellowed for a translator, I knew it was unnecessary. This big bastard with the mud stained shirt and britches was asking what value were my sureties now, since one of the lads had already started killing the hostages.

  He was a good-looking boy, too, the dead one. The sort a man would have been proud of. Wide mouth, broad forehead, strong chin, exactly the sort that the matrons would go for in the gladiators' ring. His hair was a dusky brown, the still-open eyes dark and serious, but there was a bit of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

  "Some reckon that when a man dies, you can see the face of the last person he saw in his eyes," As said.

  "Bollocks," Consul said. "Do you see the slaughterman's face in the boar's head when it's carried to your table?"

  "Ne
ver had a boar's head," As said glumly, but then shot a vicious glance at his elegant companion. "Not being a flicking patrician like you."

  "Shut it, both of you," I snapped, but I studied the body. All I could see in his eyes was a certain calmness, as though he'd thought he was about to go to sleep. It meant nothing. Trouble was, I was depressed. The only men who could have done this were behind me. My own group. All the hostages were his family. I can remember thinking: they wouldn't kill the king's son, would they?

  In theory there were eighty men in our century when it was up to complement, but how often does a century have the luxury of a full complement while it's on campaign? Never, in my experience. There are always men who dodge the selection, and once the legion marches, illness, cowardice, death in battle and desertion mean that the numbers are reduced steadily. Especially under a leader like ours. Our centurion was determined to make a name for himself in Gaul, and he'd risk any number of us to win it. He'd shown that when we landed.

  Our cohort was formed of six centuries of maybe sixty men in each, after the ferocious battles in Gaul of the past year, and especially after the fighting to land here in Britain. The natives had thrown everything they had, rocks, bullets from slings, arrows, the lot. While I stood on the ship, two men beside me were struck down by the mad bastards. It made the lads anxious about making the jump down into the deep water. Well, not surprising. Our ship was made for deep waters, not for shelving sands. It stood high over the water, and the water itself was obviously deep. In the end it was the aquilifer, the man who held the standard of the Xth legion, who leaped in and exhorted his mates to get down there to protect him. He'll not do badly; there'll be a good reward for the mad arse. After all, any good general knows that his men only follow so long as there's good chances for money and slaves.

  Still, after the fight there were only maybe three hundred and sixty in the cohort instead of the complement of four hundred and eighty, so you can see that the general was not going to be happy. What? You need to ask why?