The Year of Confusion(76)

It was a modest building, the carving above its portal proclaiming it to be, logically enough, the Brotherhood of Mercury. There was a rather fine statue of that deity out front, and a number of members lounged about on the steps. Ordinarily, a great many more occupied the tavern just across the narrow street, but it was all but empty at this early hour. We climbed the short flight of steps and passed within.

As a guild whose only stock in trade was its membership, the place needed no elaborate facilities or warehousing space. There was a single, spacious room, its walls decorated with tasteful frescoes, a fine marble desk in its center. In the rear wall was a doorway leading to what appeared to be a smaller room lined with honeycomb shelves for record-keeping. That was all. A substantial man rose from behind the desk.

“Welcome, Senator Metellus!” he said. “How may I help you? I am Scintillius, duumvir of the Honorable Guild of Mercury at Rome.” Actually, the word “substantial” is a weak one to describe the duumvir of the guild. He was grossly corpulent and wheezed as he rose. If he had ever been a messenger himself, those days were long behind him.

“Ah, my friend Scintillus!” I said as if I wanted his vote. “Well met! This morning I find myself in need of your services. That is to say, I am trying to locate a man who might be a member of your guild.”

“Eh?” He looked a bit hesitant. “I mean, I shall be most happy to help you and the noble Senate any way I may.” He sweated slightly but that might have just been all that fat. “I do hope there is no, ah, irregularity involved?”

“None at all, none at all!” I assured him heartily.

“The senator is looking for a man who may be going by the name of Caius Domitius,” Hermes rapped out. “We think he works here.” This was a routine we had worked out long before. I was all hearty geniality, and he came across as threatening. Sometimes if you keep people off-balance you learn things you might not otherwise.

“I see. Caius Domitius, you say? I can’t say that I know all of the messengers by name, but with two names he must be a citizen so that narrows it, and we have records, of course. Why did you say you wanted him?”

“We didn’t say,” Hermes told him forcefully. “Records, you say?”

“Yes, yes,” he gestured toward the door behind him. “Right back here. Records of our purchases and discharges, payrolls, important commissions and so forth.”

“Show us!” Hermes barked.

The man whirled and now it was time to do my bit. I took him by the arm. “This fellow should be distinctive. He’s a great cross-country runner, surely an asset to your magnificent, ancient, and very honorable establishment. Such a man as you might use to run messages to country estates, or even hire out to the legions for wartime service. Why, when I was in Gaul with Caesar a few years ago we had a company of men hired from this very guild for routine communications between far-spread cohorts, all those daily missives that don’t call for a detached cavalryman, you know.” While I babbled on thus we entered the smaller room which was jammed full of cabinets, the nests of cubbies stacked to the ceiling.

“As you see, Senator, we keep very careful records.”

I could see nothing of the sort, but I hoped they were in better order than those at the public archive. “So I see. A splendid facility indeed. And among these heaps of scrolls do you have the employment record of our Caius Domitius?”

“I truly hope so, Senator. As you can see these records go back many, many years, but I presume that the man you seek will have been employed here, if indeed he was, in rather more recent times?”

“Certainly within the last few years.”

“Then the payroll records are the place to look,” he said, taking down a large scroll. “Since most of our staff are slaves, those receiving a free laborer’s pay are a decided minority.”

“Why do you employ free men at all?” Hermes demanded.

“It’s a matter of law,” he said, “laid down by the censors in the times of the wars with Carthage. In businesses that employ more than a hundred persons, no more than eighty percent may be slave. It is the same for the construction industry, the stevedores, brickmaking, and so forth. In fact, only agriculture is exempt, and certain occupations that free men won’t do for any pay, like mining.”

This was a law dating from the earliest days when cheap slaves began to pour into Italy. There was fear that free labor might be totally displaced and the censors acted to stem the tide. Their success has been partial, at best. Caesar had recently passed a law requiring those who grazed their herds in Italy to employ not less than one-third freemen as herders. It was the least he could do, considering how many Gallic slaves he had dumped on the market.