Requiem for a Slave by Rosemary Rowe Page A

mistress sent you there. I heard her say as much. And then you saw the man.’ I dropped my voice a notch. ‘Why was he a green man, Glypto? Was it the clothes he wore? A green tunic, maybe? Or even hair, perhaps?’ That was not a wholly preposterous idea. There are some Celtic elders, especially among the rebellious western tribes, who still maintain the ancient customs of our ancestors and bleach their hair and long moustaches with the traditional lime. That sometimes gives a faintly greenish hue.
    Glypto shook his head decisively. ‘Green man,’ he said again. ‘I heard them talking,’ he added, as though that settled it.
    I abandoned my attempts at making sense of what the green man was, and seized on the implication of what he had just said. ‘You heard them talking?’ I repeated. ‘So he was not alone. How many of them, Glypto? The green man and who else?’
    The thin shoulders underneath the tattered blanket shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I only saw the green man. And I heard another voice.’ He stole a look at me. I must have been looking doubtful, because he suddenly burst out, ‘But pay no attention to Glypto, citizen. Perhaps there was nobody in the lane at all. My mistress says that I imagine things. Glypto is too old and deaf and foolish to know anything. She told you, didn’t she? She tells my master, and he believes it too.’ He said it with such bitterness and force that he made me reconsider my own approach to him. A man who could express himself like that was not an idiot.
    ‘I think Glypto notices a lot of things,’ I said. ‘More than his master and mistress ever dream he does.’ I realized I had adopted the form he’d used himself, talking about ‘Glypto’ as if he wasn’t there. It sounded belittling and I corrected it at once. ‘So you know there was someone with the green man, Glypto?’ I said patiently. ‘Because although you didn’t see him, you did hear the voice?’
    My only answer was a reluctant nod.
    I was finding this questioning very difficult, for more reasons than one. Not only was it hard to coax answers from the slave, but a breeze was threatening to blow my oil lamp out, so that I had to concentrate on shielding the flame with my free hand. To say nothing of the fact that I was obliged to raise my voice and I was afraid the tanner would overhear and come out to reclaim his slave. But, for the sake of Lucius and my own missing servant, I had to persevere, in case there was something Glypto knew and hadn’t told me yet.
    So I persisted. ‘Did you recognize him, Glypto? The owner of the voice? A man who had dealings with your master, possibly?’
    ‘No one Glypto knew.’ He shot me a knowing glance. ‘And not a man at all. It might have been a woman, but I think it was a boy.’
    ‘A boy.’ I felt a surge of hope, wondering if it could have been a small red-headed slave. ‘You guessed that from his speech? But you didn’t even glimpse him? Not his hair or clothes?’
    Glypto shook his head. The smile he gave was not so foolish now. ‘Not any part of him. He was hidden from me on the far side of the pile. I couldn’t see him for the rubbish heap. Anyway, the green man’s back was in the way.’
    ‘So the other person obviously wasn’t very tall? Another reason why it was probably a boy?’
    ‘Exactly, citizen. Glypto is not as stupid as he looks.’ The old slave’s manner was quite triumphant now. He gave me a crafty look. ‘Why are you so interested in all this, citizen?’
    It was a reasonable question, even from a slave, but it took me aback. I debated inwardly as to how much I should tell and decided on a partial version of the truth. ‘There is a problem, Glypto. My slave has disappeared. And – before you suggest it – I don’t believe he’s run away. He was very happy here. I think someone has seized him – perhaps to sell him on. But he was very young – only a pageboy that my patron Marcus Septimus Aurelius lent to me. That’s why I’m