Patria
609 Ab Urbe Condita (145 BC)
PAULLUS SAT WATCHING THE RAIN. It had rained after the sack of Corinth. People said it was the dead: the damp gases released by the thousands of burning corpses had gathered in the upper air, had formed rain clouds. The rain had put out the fires, laid the soot, turned the streets into tracks of foul black mud. Paullus did not like to think about Corinth, not the first visit – the envoy and the mob howling for blood in the street – and certainly not the second, when everything in which he had believed had been broken.
It was August, two days after the festival of Vulcan. They should have been burning the stubble, but it had taken longer to prepare the stakes for the vines than Paullus had thought. See that you carry out all farming in good time, Paullus remembered his father often saying. If you are late doing one thing, you will be late doing another. His father had always been ready with a sententious rustic maxim.
They had cut the willows, stripped the bark and were tying them in tight bundles when the unseasonal storm had moved in from the sea, misted the view over Temesa and swept on up the river. Eutyches had claimed that he had known it was coming. The cattle, by raising their eyes skywards, had given him a presentiment of the storm from the smell of the atmosphere. Ants had hastily removed their eggs from their nests. Centipedes had been climbing the walls, and earthworms had come to the surface. When Paullus could endure no more of the old slave’s belated prophesies, he had sent Eutyches from the house to muck out the ox stall and the sheep pens.
Now Paullus was alone in the main room with his mother. She had despatched the new maid on some unspecified errand. His mother was working at her loom. They were not talking. Apart from the patter of the rain and the occasional rumble of thunder, the only sounds were the clicking of the loom weights. The silence was not companionable. That morning she had described in detail the virtues of the unmarried daughter of a farmer called Hirtius, who lived along the coast near Clampetia. Tall and healthy, with childbearing hips, not superstitious, extravagant or given to gossip, untouched by any scandal, her virginity assured, she had a biddable nature and was heiress to ten iugera of reasonable land, half set with mature olive trees. Eventually, Paullus had told his mother that he did not wish to hear any more.
In rainy weather a farmer should try to find something to do indoors. Some of the wine jars were damaged. Paullus assembled the ingredients to seal the cracks: one pound of wax, one pound of resin and two-thirds of a pound of sulphur. When he had mixed them sufficiently, he added just enough pulverised gypsum to make the consistency of a plaster. His father would have approved. Remember that even though work stops, expenses run on none the less. It had been a favoured saying of the old man.
Paullus had not been close to his father. Furius had not been cruel. Paullus had been beaten no more than was usual. Furius had done the best for his son: taught him to farm and to hunt, scraped together the money to send him to the Greek schoolmaster, and at home sought to instil the Roman virtues of duty and respect for the gods. But there had been little affection. Furius had only seemed to approach happiness when drinking and talking with his neighbours, old Severus and Junius. When allowed to attend, Paullus had not been encouraged to speak.
Paullus mended each of the jars carefully, closing the fissures with the paste, then hooping them tightly with thoroughly dried bands of oak wood.
Like all Romans, while his father had been alive Paullus had been completely in his power. Under patria potestas, according to the law, a son could own nothing. Anything he might acquire or be given was the property of his father. When he came of age, still he could not marry, divorce or go to law without permission. A father was within his rights to banish or even execute his son. The annals of Rome were well stocked with examples of fathers who had taken the latter harsh decision. In the Greek east Paullus had come to realise that such savage customs were not universal, that other people did things differently.
Paullus set the jars aside. All that remained was to heat the pitch and liberally spread it over the interiors. Later, if he thought it necessary to make the colour uniform after the mending, he could bake two parts chalk with one part lime and paint it on the jars.
Outside Niger started barking – the deep, menacing note that warned of the approach of strangers.
Paullus went out into the farmyard. A procession was leaving the road from town, and coming through the belt of oaks and beech trees. The two annual chief magistrates were at the front. Among the thirty or so landowners who followed, Paullus saw Ursus the priest, and both Fidubius and Vibius. The latter two were accompanied by his friend Lollius and Fidubius’ bailiff Croton. There was purpose, even urgency, about the way they all came through the trees.
Paullus whistled Niger to sit at his heels.
‘Health and great joy.’ It was Ursus who hailed Paullus.
Having returned the greeting, Paullus waited. For some reason, he felt nervous. Perhaps the evident anxiety of the newcomers – the good and the great of Temesa did not cast off their measured dignity to hurry through the countryside without cause – had transferred itself to him.
‘Have you seen your neighbour Junius?’ Although the magistrates were there, it was the priest who spoke.
‘Not since threshing, when I returned his ox.’
‘The old witch Kaido said he was dead – murdered.’
‘I would not have thought the visions of a Bruttian wise woman would have been given such credence as to bring this company out from town on foot.’ Paullus tried to keep any mockery out of his tone.
Ursus sucked in his sunken cheeks even further with irritation. ‘She said she had come from his land on the other side of Mount Ixias, actually seen his corpse with her own eyes.’
Paullus looked round. ‘Where is Kaido?’
‘She vanished.’
‘Vanished?’
The priest tutted in exasperation. ‘She must have slipped away from the marketplace while we were talking. The most direct route is across your farm.’
‘I will come with you.’
Paullus told Niger, who had been winding through Lollius’ legs, to stay with a gesture of his hand.
Hunched against the rain, they crossed the first field, their feet treading down the unburnt stubble, the wind whipping the olive branches above their heads. The trunks of the trees were black from the downpour. Picking up the track, the men climbed back and forth up the terraced vineyard. When they were near the top, as suddenly as it had come, the storm was gone. Paullus watched the dark clouds and the trailing curtains of rain driving up into the heights of the Sila.
The sun shone from a blue, washed-out sky. The heat returned to the day. The ground steamed, and there was a rich, loamy smell to the air. They went by Severus’ empty house and across the fields that were now a part of the ever- expanding holdings of Lollius’ father.
Reaching the hut of Junius, they halted to catch their breath, as if it had been prearranged. Many of the landowners were not young, but they were countrymen, uncorrupted by the indolent luxury of a big city. Whatever their age, these were men who still farmed and still enjoyed taking their hounds into the forest. Not one of them would dream of showing weakness.
Ursus rapped on the door of the hut. There was no answer. The door was locked. At a nod from Fidubius, the slave Croton kicked it open. There was no one inside. Paullus went in and felt the ashes in the grate. They were cold.
‘Anything missing?’ Ursus asked.
Paullus looked round. ‘It looks the same as when I brought back the ox.’
Some innate decency, or perhaps merely a deep-seated belief in the sanctity of private property, prompted Fidubius to order Croton to lash the door shut behind them.
The path over Mount Ixias was narrow. They went in single file, well spaced, so the encroaching brambles did not flick back on the next man in line. The ascent to the ridge was steep, going down the other side no better. They pressed on, although they all suspected that there was no reason to hurry. Paullus got the impression that some of them were certain what they would find.
It took a couple of hours to reach their goal. They fanned out, then halted, every man pausing to appreciate the upland field: five iugera, almost flat, facing south and well sheltered. Most of the stubble was blackened, but a patch in the south-west corner was still golden. Just beyond the scorched earth, half a dozen crows were busy, perched on a low, humped shape.
‘The old woman was telling the truth,’ Ursus said.
The carrion birds rose, cawing their annoyance.
The corpse had not been there very long. It was not yet bloated, but something larger than the crows had already been at the remains – a fox or a wolf. But it was not the work of the scavengers that shocked the men to silence.
Junius lay on his back. In death his eyes did not regard the sky. His eyeballs were gone. Those delicate orbs might have been pecked out. But the birds had not stripped him naked. No wolf had cut out his tongue or hacked off his extremities: his nose, hands and feet. One of the hands was missing. Perhaps a beast had taken that, but only another man would have severed his penis and stuffed it into the bloody ruin of his mouth.
Despite the mutilation and the attentions of the animals, it was obvious how he had died. They were wounds to both arms – Junius had fought – and three cuts to the left side of his chest. The latter were wide and deep, great trenches which had peeled the flesh back to expose the ribs. Most likely they would have killed him before the desecration of his body.
‘A butcher’s cleaver or a slashing sword,’ Ursus said.
Some of the onlookers were ashen faced. The priest was not one of them, nor were Vibius or Fidubius. The latter’s big slave Croton had his head on one side, as if considering the killer’s handiwork.
No one moved to touch the corpse. To touch death brought pollution. Those whose calling was to handle the dead lived outside the town, shunned by the citizens except when they were necessary. They would be summoned later.
A swarm of flies rose when Paullus bent to study the body. Close up there was the sweet stench of decay. Careful scrutiny revealed nothing else. None of the others moved to help when Paullus went to turn the body. The flesh was cold and clammy from the rain and decomposition. He heaved Junius onto his side. There was another massive cut to the back of the neck. Mortally injured, Junius had been on his hands and knees when the killer finished him. Before laying the corpse back, Paullus noticed a small puncture wound high on the left thigh. Its edges were ragged from the barbs of the arrowhead when it was removed.
Paullus wiped his hands in the damp earth, then scrubbed them with the stubble. Even so, when he got to his feet, the others stepped away from him.
‘The Hero of Temesa has returned,’ Fidubius said.
They all looked at Ursus. The priest said nothing.
‘In all the stories that was how Polites treated his victims,’ Fidubius said. ‘It is in the paintings in the temple.’
‘Yes,’ Ursus said, ‘but why would the Hero return after all these centuries?’
‘To punish evil men,’ Fidubius said.
‘Was Junius more evil than other men? Are we worse than our ancestors?’ The old priest was unconvinced. ‘It is more likely the work of brigands.’
Vibius spoke for the first time. ‘Daemon or bandit, the killer must be caught, and caught quickly. If not the peasants will soon be too afraid to work the outlying farms, the land will be abandoned.’
Some of the men put their thumbs between their fingers to ward off evil; one spat on his own chest, as if the words of Vibius would bring about the very thing against which they warned.