With a mixture of dread and superstitious reverence she examined the crudely hammered bronze blade. She had got rid of it, had thrown it away with inexpressible loathing, and it had come back to her....
Who had placed it on the chest? Atia perhaps, but she hardly considered this possibility, for another thought bore inexorably in on her: no other could have brought her the bronze pennant but ‘the dwarf’, the dwarf who had appeared to her at every dramatic turn in her life. He alone could have picked it up on the corner of Cyprius Street.
Irresistibly the monstrous image of the dwarf dominated her thoughts. He must have followed her here, and must at that very moment be lurking somewhere near, waiting, as was his custom, for the propitious time to show himself. Perhaps it was he who had killed Xychus. Perhaps she should lay the dastardly killing to the account of Calvinus’s and Brazen-beard’s henchmen, who might have tortured the faithful servant of Jupiter’s Flamen in order to wrest from him the secret of Fanina’s hiding-place. In any case, this crime was but the first act of a new tragedy.
Fanina hurriedly slipped the bronze pennant into a fold of her tunic over her breast, next to the box of counter-poison given her by Locusta.
Her mind was made up. Without waiting any longer, she would return to Rome to join battle. She had no fixed plan of action, but she would think one up during the four or five days the journey would take her. The main thing now was to get away, to escape as quickly as possible from this accursed place and to find Vindex.
Fanina stood up briskly, wrapped herself around with her home-spun cape and put on her sandals. She was going to see Vindex again. She would live again. She felt more light-hearted and she breathed more freely. Never had she had so much faith in herself. Nothing would overcome her now.
She stopped on the threshold of the temple and examined the gloomy scene. At some distance, on the top of another grassy sanctuary, less imposing than that from which she was fleeing, she saw a thin figure outlined against the grey sky. It was Atia with her black tunic flapping in the wind; she seemed to be mounting guard. By what secret passage had the old woman got out of the labyrinth? It mattered little to Fanina, provided that she was not seen.
The young woman’s reddish-brown cloak merged with the heather that dotted the vast cemetery. With a spring she was in the bushes and, as furtive as a shadow, vanished among the tombstones.
For more than an hour Fanina had been running from tombstone to tombstone, from hollow to hollow and from bush to bush. Now the tombs were beginning to thin out around her and the temple, on top of which Atia had taken up her post, had disappeared in the distance.
Fanina took her bearings. Deliberately turning her back on the road through Vulci — far too dangerous a way to take, for Atia would be sure to seek her first of all in that direction — she decided to take a short cut along the left bank of the Arminia.
She was in unknown territory, a wild landscape traversed by overgrown tracks, and furrowed with steep ravines, but this did not worry her unduly. She could not lose her way. The river would lead her without fail to the Aurelian Way, which ran down the Mediterranean coast, and would bring her to Rome.
The main thing was to reach the sea before nightfall, when the wolves that infested the area came out to hunt for food.
For the time being the wild beasts of the locality were not the enemies that Fanina most feared. She was constantly on the lookout, and every few moments would stop to listen, her heart pounding, would jump at the slightest suspicious sound, and would shudder violently at the harsh cawing of the great crows wheeling in the grey sky.
Once past the last ruined tomb, a long slope opened out before her. She quickened her step with a feeling of relief and began to descend, then suddenly, carried away by her own impetus, she felt her legs give under her and stopped. A feeling of giddiness came over her and she raised her hand to her brow.
What was wrong with her so suddenly?
How silly she was! She was hungry, that was all. And thirsty loo. She had set off on this adventure as if she were a disembodied spirit, without even thinking of bringing any kind of supplies with her. And she certainly would never find anything to satisfy her hunger in this arid and desolate land.
It seemed to her, however, that if she stilled the thirst which was devouring her, she would put off her hunger. The ravine through which the Arminia flowed was no more than a hundred yards from where she stood; regaining all her former liveliness Fanina ran towards it.
The wall of rock was much less steep at this point than she had feared, and by letting herself slip down from one gnarled tree to another she would easily reach the water.
But she had scarcely begun to descend the slope when she suddenly came to an abrupt halt. At the bottom, on a narrow strip of reddish-black sand that ran along the opposite bank, a man had just appeared. He had bright red hair and his powerful torso was strapped tightly into a black leather tunic with tattered edges that revealed his herculean thighs and arms. Swinging his broad shoulders as he walked he slowly made his way towards a wood fire over which a haunch of meat was sizzling.
Fanina crept behind the trunk of a holm oak, and stood completely still, her face ashen. Those were no branches or brushwood that fed that fire, but the pieces of a wagon, whose broken wheels and shattered body she could now make out among the rocks.
Beside the pile of wood lay the mangled bodies of two mules which, like the wagon, had been hurled down into the ravine.
Xychus’ mules and wagon .. . The man could be none other than the murderer of Cornelius’s wretched servant.
With wrinkled brow and clenched jaw, trembling from head to foot with cold rage, Fanina watched him with intense hatred. Who was he? He was about fifty feet below, coming and going, breaking the wooden planks from the wagon as if they had been so many stalks of straw, throwing them into the fire, turning his haunch of meat. As he went back and forth behind the curtain of small, bare branches that separated him from her, she could not see him properly.
Then suddenly he came forward to the edge of the water, looked around and lifted his head. Fanina stifled a cry. How could she have failed to recognize him sooner? It was Kald, the gigantic Caledonian beast-fighter, the most famous of all the Roman gladiators, the ‘bear-slayer’, ‘the man with the painted face’, as he was called on the posters advertising the circus games.
To Fanina, Kald was above all Brazen-beard’s bodyguard, one of the giants who had accompanied Domitius when he had invaded her father’s house ten years earlier. He was also the man with the bestial face to whom she had nearly been handed over on that night of madness when the Subura quarter, the centre of debauchery and vice, had burned down.
Jupiter’s Flamen had been right in his forecast. Once he had got over his fright and his drunkenness, Brazen-beard had tried to explain the appearance of Fanina’s ghost in the very gardens where he had been celebrating her condemnation and death. He had become convinced that the daughter of his mortal enemy was still alive and had immediately sent Kald to seek her out. The beast-fighter had followed Fanina like a bloodhound to the region of Vulci, where, probably after losing her track, he had caught Xychus on his way back and savagely tortured him to make him talk, before finishing him off and hurling him into the Arminia.
Now this terrifying man-hunter was here, just a few yards from Fanina, lurking like a beast of prey, his head down between his formidable shoulders, gathered together, ready to pounce, sniffing the air as if some instinct had warned him of the presence of the woman he was seeking, the woman he had desired and undoubtedly still desired to possess.
Fanina analysed the situation with desperate lucidity. She could hope for no kind of assistance. She had her back to the wall, and it gave an obscure sense of satisfaction. Crouching behind the tree-trunk that hid her, she watched the gladiator’s every movement. She coldly weighed her chances, prepared her plan of combat, and picked out with her gaze the big round stone she would hurl at his head as he passed — and pass he must bet
ween that small oak and that large rock.
She could defeat him, she had to defeat him, and in so doing would be taking the first step on the adventurous road she had set herself to follow.
Now Kald was moving slowly, very slowly backwards, with measured movements towards a black rock beneath which lay piled a sack, a coat, a quiver and a gigantic bow with a horn handle as thick as a child’s arm.
With her eyes still glued to the beast-fighter, Fanina bent down and stretched out her hand towards the stone she had selected.
Down below her Kald moved imperceptibly closer to the black rock, then suddenly, when he was no more than a few paces from it, leapt forward incredibly swiftly, seized the bow and an arrow.
With the heavy stone raised, Fanina abruptly straightened up. A shriek of terror had split the air, drowning the dull roar of the torrent. Before Kald could even draw his bow, it had been torn I rom his hands and had flown through the air to land twenty paces away in the tumultuous waters of the Arminia.
Dumbfounded, no longer understanding what was happening, Fanina then saw the beast-fighter rush like a man demented towards the opposite bank of the ravine, still howling with stupefaction and rage, to meet someone whom she now saw climbing unhurriedly down the steep slope, swaying heavily on his short, twisted legs, aind casually swinging at the end of one of his inordinately long arms the sling he had just used with such fantastic skill.
The dwarf! Her intuition had not deceived her; the dwarf too had followed her to Vulci, and once again, like a true deus ex machina, had made his appearance at the most dramatic moment. He could have broken Kald’s skull, as he had broken that of the Thracian gladiator in Brazen-beard’s garden, but he had not done so. Reeling grotesquely, he advanced towards his terrifying opponent.
Fanina, still clutching her stone, had lost all sense of time and place. Both these men had persecuted her. They were both evil forces that implacably destroyed those who stood in the way of their criminal intentions. Killing was for them an action of no importance whatsoever, a daily occurrence. They were about to confront one another in a merciless duel. At least one of them would be eliminated, and that would be all to the good.
Still shrieking and stumbling over the fallen rocks, Kald ran straight for the dwarf who, with his russet cloak drawn up to his elbows, arms flexed, stood motionless, on a narrow ledge overhanging empty space, waiting for him. When he came up with his adversary, the beast-fighter seemed to regain his coolness and planting himself in front of the dwarf, drew himself together, then, striking out for a hold familiar to wrestlers, tried to grasp one of the dwarf’s wrists.
He was not given time to do so, for the other, quicker than he, ducked and slipped beneath the gladiator’s arms as he stood off balance, and suddenly straightened up gripping him round the waist.
Then, locked together, without attempting any other hold, the two men squeezed one another fiercely. Bending backwards in an attempt to free himself, Kald had taken hold of the dwarf’s hooded head with his enormous hands, and, every muscle taut, was trying to twist it and break his neck. But all was in vain, for the dwarf, his head pressed against Kald’s chest, had him in a grip like an octopus, and was irresistibly bending him backwards.
The roar of the torrent drowned all other sounds, and yet Fanina, standing open-mouthed and unable to take her eyes off the terrifying scene, thought she could hear the two wrestlers breathing heavily as their joints and tortured vertebrae cracked, and their heavy ironclad shoes slowly scraped the rocks.
How long did it all last? Kald and the dwarf seemed to be immobilized for ever, forming one of those titanic groups of bronze statuary that adorn the Circus Maximus in Rome.
Then suddenly Kald began to roar again, a terrifying, unbearable noise like a lion struck to the death. Loosening his hold, his formidable fists clenched, the beast-fighter rained blows on the dwarf’s head just as he had done when stunning bears during the games, while the crowd acclaimed him, wild with enthusiasm. But the blows he struck grew less and less accurate, more and more uncoordinated and feeble, while the dwarf, tightening still further his deadly grip, bent him double, literally breaking him in two.
With his head thrown back, his mouth foaming, the veins on his forehead swelling to bursting point, his eyes turned upwards in his head, Kald began his death-rattle, and the sound of the titan in the throes of death reached Fanina where she stood. With his spine dislocated and his loins broken, he put up some resistance for a few moments more, then suddenly, as if seeking to drag his adversary with him to his death, he straightened his bent legs with a desperate effort and hurled himself head first into the void.
As in a hazy dream Fanina saw the two bodies locked together, spin round and round, bounce heavily on the rocks then, falling sheer, crash down on a heap of stones at the bottom of the ravine. All was over.
Dropping the heavy stone she still clasped to her breast, with trembling legs, Fanina slid rather than walked down the steep slope to the river.
Still trembling, with a bitter taste in her mouth, hardly believing her eyes, she could not stop staring at the bright scarlet stain spread over the rocks and disappearing in the black sand of the opposite bank.
On the other side of the Arminia, his limbs strangely contorted and his skull burst open, lay Kald the invincible, the idol of the Roman crowds, Brazen-beard’s henchman.
A little farther on lay the dwarf, his interminable arms spread out in the shape of a cross, a stocky, lifeless brown mass.
They were both dead, the implacable killers. Dead was the brute with the painted face who had sought to impose his revolting embraces on her. Dead too was the nightmare figure who had terrified her for so long. Never again would she turn round with parched throat, fearing to see behind her that massive silhouette covered in leather, that dwarf herald of misfortune.
Tonight the wolves would come down into the ravine and eat them. That would be the end. Now that these two sinister figures were cast from the land of the living, a page of Fanina’s tragic life had been turned. Without having to lift her little finger, she had scored a most important victory. For her they had fought, for her they had killed one another. And she was alive. Never had she taken such delight in breathing long and deep till she grew almost drunk with the air. Standing before the remains of these two cruel bloodhounds, to whom she had been nothing more than a prey, a defenceless, hunted creature, she found, with no trace of shame and indeed with secret pleasure, that she felt astonishingly healthy, vigorous, agile, clear in mind, in possession of all her faculties, ready for anything.
She was already hastening to Rome, to Vindex. She had no time to lose if she wanted to reach the Aurelian Way before nightfall. She ran. Then suddenly she stopped.
The dwarf!
Had she lost her wits? He was the key to the mystery, the instrument of all her misfortune.
Hurriedly retracing her steps, she placed her foot on one of the moss-covered rocks that rose up out of the fast-flowing Arminia, hesitated for a second, then, leaping lightly from rock to rock, found herself on the opposite bank.
A wreath of pungent smoke swirled up from the haunch of meat Kald had been cooking when the dwarf had appeared, and once again, Fanina felt the pangs of hunger. She would have something to eat in a moment before continuing on her way, she decided coldly, and went on, calm and resolute towards the pile of stones on which the two men had crashed down.
Without affording him a single glance, she passed the colossal twisted carcass that had been Kald. The beast-fighter no longer held any interest for her: she knew who he was and by whom he had been sent.
It was the dwarf and the dwarf alone that Fanina examined avidly; the dwarf to whom she was bound by so many painful memories; the dwarf who had struck Vindex, whose appearance had heralded every disaster that had overtaken her. The dwarf who had followed her when she had escaped from the tomb in the Field of Evil-doers. The dwarf whose brutal intervention had prevented Vindex from meeting her beside the shrine of Janus-Cur
iatius.
The dwarf who, hidden in the shadows that night, must have seen her give herself to Vindex in the street, facing the city.
As she recalled these memories she was gripped by a cold rage. She forgot that the dwarf had saved her that night in Brazen-beard’s garden. She forgot and saw in him nothing more than the manifestation of one of the obscure forces that pushed her this way and that like a slave, inexorably submitting her to their contradictory desires.
By unmasking him, by searching him, she would find some indication that would at last help her to identify the man he served, and this would furnish her with the means to carry on the battle she had sworn to herself to fight.
With pounding heart she bent over the massive shape that sprawled crookedly across a rock, head thrown back. What sort of a face was she about to uncover? No doubt a horrible, battered, scar-covered face like Kald’s, possibly hideously mutilated in addition, as slaves’ faces sometimes were.
She hesitated a moment more. For ten long years she had been taught that for a vestal to touch a corpse constituted a grave stain on her purity and, in spite of all that separated her from her former life, the imperious injunction she had received from Vibidia and the other priestesses who had brought her up still held back her hand.
Making an effort to overcome her repulsion, she fell to her knees right up against the dwarf, firmly grasped the end of the strong leather lace that held the hood closed, and the hood immediately fell open.
Fanina started back in sheer amazement. Not believing her own eyes, she reached forward again and gripped the russet leather point of the hood, then, with a sharp wrench, pulled it back.
The dwarf’s face appeared, deathly pale before her astounded gaze.
Fanina, Child of Rome Page 10