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waiting to accompany you to town, but Mother insisted that one of us should stay, just in case you came home by some different route. You might have ridden back across the fields, she thought, if the land-slaves were not working where you thought they were. Then you’d have wanted someone to come and fetch us back. But you’d been so long that we were quite alarmed for you.’ He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘And something’s shaken you. Was it something to do with this gatekeeper of yours? Where is he, if he isn’t at his post? Should I go and talk to him?’
    ‘It would do no good,’ I told him. ‘He couldn’t answer you. Someone has strung him from the ceiling by his belt and he is very dead.’
    ‘Dead?’ Horror and disbelief were dawning in his face.
    I nodded. ‘It’s not a pleasant sight. Let’s just hope that Minimus does not stumble on it unprepared. Where is he anyway?’
    ‘He went to the back courtyard looking for the slaves – we couldn’t see any.’
    ‘I don’t think there are any others here to find, alive or dead.’
    He wrinkled his nose in mock perplexity. ‘So what’s happened, do you think? Has Marcus left for good and put them up for auction at the nearest sale?’
    I shook my head. ‘I know no more than you. It’s a mystery to me. I should have thought that if he’d done that he would have let me know. And if he had decided to sell them on a whim, wouldn’t he have sent his land-slaves to the market, too? But they are out there working in the fields and do not seem to be aware that anything is wrong! I spoke to them this morning.’
    Junio frowned. ‘Minimus had the feeling that something was amiss, ever since the moment that we found the gate ajar. He swore that when he worked here Marcus would never have permitted that. He thought it was just slackness by the staff because their owner was away – but it made him very nervous all the same. He was quite concerned at coming to the house at all.’
    ‘But came in any case.’
    He gave me a wry grin. ‘We were fairly sure that you were in the house, and it was you we’d come to find.’ This brave concern for my welfare was rather humbling, but before I could say anything my son was rushing on. ‘Of course, we went to the front door first, but nobody was there either. However, Minimus knew about a servant’s side-gate in the wall, so we hurried round that way, trying not to make ourselves conspicu-ous. He thought there might be trouble if someone spotted us. He had no right these days to be going that way at all – and nor had I, of course, though as a citizen I might have got away with it.’
    ‘You need not have worried,’ I put in. ‘There was nobody about. Though I suppose you didn’t know that.’
    ‘We were soon aware of it. In fact, we could not find a trace of any living soul until I spotted fresh footsteps on the gravel near the gate. So I went in that direction, and there you were, indeed!’
    ‘Though you almost made me die of shock,’ I said. ‘I was sure that a murderer was bursting in on me.’
    ‘I was a bit alarmed about what I might find, myself,’ he said. ‘That’s why I sent young Minimus the other way, in the direction of the servants’ block. He used to know most of the slave-force in the household here, so they are likely to be friendly to him if he does find anyone. They might even talk to him and explain to us why everybody else has disappeared.’ He looked around again. ‘It is odd, isn’t it? The place is positively eerie.’
    ‘I might have believed your theory about the slave-market,’ I said, ‘if it wasn’t for the presence of that grisly corpse.’
    ‘Dear gods!’ Junio exclaimed. ‘The gatekeeper! I have just realised the force of what you said. “Someone” strung him up, you said – presumably meaning that he didn’t do it himself? I was somehow supposing that he’d taken his own life – perhaps out of despair or something because the household was being broken up.