The Legatus Mystery

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‘Marcus Aurelius Septimus is here?’ I asked the attendant slave at Glevum baths, as I stripped off my cloak, sandals and tunic and stuffed them into one of the stone ‘dove-holes’ provided for the purpose.

The boy eyed me doubtfully. I could not blame him. I had come here without an attendant slave, my clothes were travel-stained and dusty, and I had not even been wearing a belt around my tunic. I scarcely looked like a Roman citizen, let alone a fit bath companion for the most important man in Glevum.

‘He is expecting me,’ I assured him, as I wrapped a linen toella around my nether parts. It was not obligatory — indeed many men visit the baths without wrapping themselves in anything — but a humble pavement-maker like myself can hardly meet the personal representative of the provincial governor of all Britannia dressed only in his own drooping skin. Besides, if I knew Marcus, he would be at this moment sitting in the caldarium, the hot room where he sometimes came, like other influential Romans, to conduct business and meet acquaintances. To my thin, fifty-year-old Celtic posterior the stone seats in the caldarium soon seem uncomfortably hot, and I knew I might find myself very glad of the protection of my towel.

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