Free The Legatus Mystery by Rosemary Rowe Page A

investments flourished, certainly. The gods were smiling on him, he believed.’ Trinunculus grinned. ‘Though it is my belief he was just extremely cautious. He’s like a woman in his ways sometimes. The old lady had him from a child, and instilled in him such a fear of omens that he will hardly change his sandals without consulting the auguries.’
    ‘I thought all you priests were much the same in that?’ I said. Foolish! I meant it lightly but I saw the young priest flush. He had seen my words as a rebuke, again. I tried to repair the damage. ‘Scribonius, for example, is a stickler for the rules. Why is that, do you think? You said that he felt he had to prove himself.’
    Too late. Trinunculus had put a halter on his tongue. ‘I talk too much,’ he said. ‘It is a fault of mine. The pontifex has had occasion to rebuke me for it before now. I am sorry, citizen, I have already said too much. I was accompanying you to the gate, I think.’ He drew his robes around him, and walked purposefully on.
    I did my best. I walked beside him, cajoling, flattering, urging. I even found myself pleading that, as a Capitoline priest, it was his duty to assist the governor – and I was the representative of his representative. To no avail.
    ‘My duty as a priest,’ Trinunculus replied, in a sing-song voice, ‘is to save my tongue for sacred purposes, and not to talk about my fellow priests.’ The little speech was obviously a formula, and I guessed that the high priest had obliged him to repeat those words many times as part of a penance. And that was all I could get out of him, all the way across the courtyard to the gate.
    At least, I thought, as I stepped out into the commercial hubbub of the forum, and began to make my way home through the busy streets, this time there had been no infernal wailing to speed me on my way.

Chapter Seven
    So I was going home. And Gwellia would be waiting for me. I could still hardly believe it. After years of searching for the woman who had once been my bride, I had been reunited with her less than a month ago, and that was in Londinium. This was the first time I had left her alone in my little workshop-cum-apartment in Glevum, and I had been much longer than I intended. I found that I was worrying about her a little as I hurried back. Would she be anxious because I was late?
    Ridiculous of course, but my heart gave a little skip; never, since I had been granted my freedom, had anyone but my slave Junio worried about me – except my patron, when he needed me. As I had said to Marcus, Gwellia was no longer legally my wife, but I found myself hurrying home like a new bridegroom as I turned into the little alley where my workshop lies.
    I found myself looking at it with new eyes.
    I rent a building in part of that straggling western suburb which has sprung up outside the city walls over the last hundred years. No fine Roman pavements or towering columns here, only a collection of ramshackle buildings huddled together along haphazard lanes, the gutters often running with filth and slime and the stinking mud from the river margins. Perhaps it is not the most congenial of places. But it’s my home, and I’m attached to it. The rooms are humble but adequate, the rent’s affordable, and – despite the presence of a tannery on one side and a candlemaker’s on the other – the place has never actually caught fire or collapsed, as other buildings in the area have been known to do. And my work had prospered. Some of the wealthiest men in Glevum had come here to order pavements – or at least sent their servants here on their behalf.
    Why did I suddenly find myself needing to defend it to myself? Because it was not the situation I’d dreamed of for my wife. Ah, well! I picked my way down the alley, waved aside a turnip-seller and his donkey, and under the bold eyes of a woman hawking pies stepped over a large pile of dirt and rubbish in an entry, and came to the open shopfront which was mine.