— 12—
Soon it was too dark to see. This time it was Flaminius’ turn to stumble over a snag in the rocky floor, and only a wild grab at the rough stone wall saved him from landing flat on his face.
‘We need some kind of light,’ Rhoda insisted.
‘What if it’s seen?’
Flaminius leaned against the wall for support and sucked at his sore fingers. A shelf ran along it and here he rested his arms so they were stretched out like those of a crucified convict.
‘Seen?’ she asked, her voice echoing weirdly in the pitch blackness. ‘No one is down here to see it. There are no slaves here.’
‘There will be,’ said Flaminius with certainty, ‘when morning comes. We can’t stay here.’
‘No one is talking about staying here very long, ducky,’ said Rhoda. ‘But wherever we’re going, we need to be able to see what we’re doing. I have flint and tinder in my kitbag. All we need is something to use as a torch.’
Flaminius’ groping fingers slid along the shelf in the wall, brushing against a rough shape of baked clay. It sloshed slightly. He looked up blindly in the darkness.
‘Come over here,’ he hissed. ‘Careful,’ he added, as he heard her faltering approach. ‘This floor is very rough. Good,’ he added, as he heard her come to a stop only a short way from him. ‘Strike your flint.’
He heard the chinking of steel on flint and sparks flared in the darkness. Light burgeoned as she blew at the rotten wood she held in her hand. Sparks ignited, turned to flame, revealing her face intent on the operation. They also exposed the tunnel, the rough, knobby floor, the vaulted roof, the shelf… Flaminius had found a terracotta lamp that had been left here by who knew what slave.
Flaminius picked it up and touched the wick to Rhoda’s tinder. The wick flared, and the light grew, revealing the tunnel stretching away in either direction.
Rhoda dropped the flaming tinder on the floor and stamped it out. Returning her flint and tinder to her bag, she muttered, ‘Now we can see what we’re doing.’
‘We’d better find somewhere we can hide during the day,’ said Flaminius. ‘It will be a long time before our assignation with Minos.’
They traversed the rock walled gallery for some time without seeing any sign of any alcove or cubbyhole or anywhere they might seek refuge. Although these tunnels were deserted at this time of night, Flaminius knew that in the day they would be thronged with slaves busying themselves about the affairs of the Villa. Sabina might be a prisoner here, but she would by no means be the only inhabitant. And the slaves would be kept busy. They needed to avoid detection.
At last they found another shaft. ‘Shall we go up here?’ asked Rhoda, looking upwards. ‘We’ve found nowhere to hide down here.’
‘We’ll surely not find anywhere to hide aboveground,’ said Flaminius. But he started climbing.
The trapdoor at the top opened out into a silent, shadow hung room of veined marble, where busts of emperors peered down censoriously from all four corners. A quick reconnaissance showed that they had come out in a newly built pavilion that stood at one end of the gardens known as the Vale of Tempe, named after the famous valley in Greece.
‘Not far from the Latin Library,’ Flaminius whispered triumphantly. ‘It looks as if this is intended as some kind of meeting place for visitors to the Villa. Legitimate visitors, that is,’ he added with a wry grin. ‘But it’s deserted at the moment.’
Searching round they found a small chamber under a staircase. They barricaded themselves in here, and spent the rest of the night sleeping in turns, with one of them keeping watch.
The following morning dawned while Flaminius was on watch. He had heard the sound of patrols passing in the night, but the Villa seemed to have quietened down since the dramas of their arrival. The smell of smoke still hung rank in the air, and it was stronger here. Hearing the incongruous sound of laughing voices, he ascended the steps.
They took him into the Hostelry, a two storey building with several lavish guestrooms—all unoccupied at the moment—arranged around a central hall. Crossing to another flight of steps, he found a window overlooking a large courtyard.
To one side stood the palace, incorporating the old villa that had stood here for hundreds of years with more recent construction. To the other stood two buildings that must be the Greek and Latin libraries.
It was a quiet day, it seemed, as he peered outside. Birds were singing. Deer cropped the grass in the distance. Down in the courtyard, laughing girls were playing a game of ball. Watching their sport indulgently from an arbour was a woman who Flaminius recognised with a shock as Sabina herself. His eyes narrowed as he saw armoured Praetorians by the exits from the courtyard. By day Sabina was free to roam about the grounds, it seemed, but the guards kept a discreet eye on her and her servants.
He returned to the alcove under the stairs and shook Rhoda awake.
‘Seems fairly quiet,’ he told her. ‘It’s a nice day, too. The sun is shining, the grass is green, and the spring flowers are blooming. Despite last night’s dramas, the empress and her handmaidens have been let out to sport in the gardens—under armed guard. The reek of smoke from your incendiary activities is all that mars a beautiful morning. There could be worse places to be on the run. Oh, and our destination is just on the far side of the Hostelry next door.’
‘So more by accident than design we’ve found where we were going,’ said Rhoda tartly. ‘I thought you knew your way around this place, honey cake.’
‘I’ve been here before,’ Flaminius corrected her. ‘But Hadrian has had a lot of work done since then. He must have had a man in.’
Again he recalled the momentous events of his last visit, which had amongst other matters resulted in Sabina’s house arrest. The emperor’s reaction to a plot against his own life had been remarkably mild. After a bloody beginning to his time in office, when rivals for the purple had been brutally assassinated in his name, Hadrian was loath to anger the Senate with further bloodshed. There were factions within that august body, in fact the very conspiracy Flaminius had encountered so often must be one of them, who would love to see him proved as bad a tyrant as any of his predecessors—so that one of their number could use it as an excuse to take his place. Besides, it was possible that he felt some regard for his wife, however loveless the marriage might have been.
He yawned.
‘You’d better get some sleep,’ said Rhoda critically. ‘We want to be alert and prepared tonight. I’ll keep watch...’ She broke off.
They both heard the tramp of footsteps from outside. Flaminius looked at Rhoda, the hair on his head seeming to quiver in its roots. Booted feet! Had the Praetorians followed them here? He loosened his stolen sword in its scabbard.
Rhoda put a hand on his arm.
‘Stay down,’ she hissed. ‘You can’t fight the entire Praetorian Guard.’
Grimacing, Flaminius peered out from the doorway. Two men entered. From his position he could see only their bare legs and sandaled feet.
‘Either Lepidus has deserted or there’s some other reason for his disappearance,’ one voice was saying.
‘Do you think this has got anything to do with that mysterious fire of last night?’ said another.
‘You could be right, centurion,’ said the first voice. ‘I’ve got men searching the grounds. The place is almost entirely deserted, except for our distinguished guest, her handmaidens, and a few hundred slaves, for the most part underground. Remember that there have been attempts to set her free in the past. Be ready for anything.’
‘Should we search this place, sir?’
‘Leave that to the guards,’ said the first voice. ‘We’ll return to the barracks and report.’
The two men marched up the steps and vanished into the Hostelry.
It had been a close thing, but now the place would be crawling with Praetorians. Flaminius and Rhoda would have to lie low until the second watch of the night.
Sustaining themselves with
the rations they had brought with them, they lay all day in the gloom of the cubbyhole, sleeping in turns, keeping ears open for the sound of approach. On two separate occasions patrols of suspicious Praetorians passed close by, but no one investigated the building closely. Both Rhoda and Flaminius had succeeded in stirring them up, but it had been unavoidable. Her trick had got them in the Villa, and he had had no choice but to kill the Praetorian called Lepidus. If they were found, they would have a lot of explaining to do.
But it was not that which troubled Flaminius as he lay in the stifling gloom, trying to sleep. It was the presence of Commissary agents in the tunnels. Were they spying on Sabina at the emperor’s orders? If so, it was a criticism of them that the object of their surveillance was aware of their presence. And seemingly fooling them with studied ease. He wondered who it was who had attempted to free Sabina from her opulent prison, and to what object.
Night fell at last, to Flaminius’ relief. The waiting had been worse torture than anything the interrogation division could employ. Spending a day cooped up with an attractive girl would have sounded quite delightful to his younger self, but he was clearly becoming a responsible citizen in his old age, since his thoughts—unlike those of Sabina—did not tend in the direction of lust, even once. Not even with Rhoda’s soft, firm thigh pressed against his own. He wanted to get the document from Minos and get safety back to Rome and Probus. What might happen afterwards remained to be seen, but if they could learn how and why they had been dismissed, they might be able to do something about their situation.
Flaminius rose and stretched. It was silent outside, with only a splash of moonlight and a speckling of starlight illuminating the lawns and groves and temples. Rhoda looked up from where she had been lying, curled up. With a snort, she got to her knees.
‘Do we go now?’ she asked.
Flaminius pursed his lips. ‘It’s not far from the second watch,’ he said. ‘The sun set some time ago. Besides, I want to scout out the area before we make the assignation. You’d better stay here. I’ll come back for you when everything is finished.’
‘Sweetheart…’ she said as he stepped out from under the stairs. He looked back.
‘What is it?’ he asked irritably.
She paused. ‘Be careful,’ she said at last. ‘Be careful!’
‘I will,’ he said, then turned on his heel and departed from the building.
It was cold outside. His breath steamed in the air as he halted in the cover of a colonnade, watching from behind a pillar as a patrol of Praetorians marched across the Vale of Tempe. When they vanished into the trees on the far side, he followed the wall round until he saw a low, two-storeyed building with a domed roof standing in the lea of the main palace. A flight of steps led up to a pair of arched doorways. Flaminius grinned harshly. This was it. His destination. The Latin Library! He glanced up at the glittering stars to calculate the time. Still a while before the second watch. But forewarned was forearmed. He would scout out the ground before making the meeting.
A small door opened in the wall to beside the main entrance. Flaminius ducked back into cover as a dark figure appeared in the doorway, then turned with a jingle of metal to lock the door behind him. It hurried away. Was this the slave Minos?
As the figure passed by Flaminius’ hiding place he glimpsed the bundle it carried under one arm. The starlight fell briefly upon its face and he saw a scar running from eye socket to jaw. This wasn’t the slave, but he recognised him from the tunnels. Then the imperial agent was gone, vanished round the corner of the building.
Flaminius hurried up the steps to the main entrance.
Both the double doors were also locked. That came as little surprise. Presumably the slave Minos intended to unlock them in time for the meeting. Undeterred, Flaminius followed the scar-faced man’s route round the line of the building to the right, soon coming to the pillars of a colonnade. Under this was the side wall of the Library, in which stood two small doors.
The air was cold, and the smell of smoke still hung over everything although it was less pungent. In the distance, from the far side of the Library, the crunch of marching feet on gravel remained audible. Flaminius could not wait around. As he stole up to the closest doorway, he caught the flash of moonlight on armour from the courtyard, then heard a challenge and response. Then more talking.
‘Intruders…’ he heard. ‘…found our mate floating in one of the canals… Went missing last night… the killer may have got away…’
Tensing, Flaminius listened. Another voice responded, one he recognised as that of the man with the scar.
‘Search the area. He may still be at large. He may kill again!’
‘Sir!’
The Praetorians were marching his way. They hadn’t seen him yet but they were going to notice him if he didn’t move quickly. He tried the door. It was also locked. He could force it but the noise would draw the guards straight to him.
He darted along the wall to the second door, and as the Praetorians reached the colonnade, he tried it also. Luckily, he was in shadows here and the guards showed no sign of having spotted him. He tried the door.
Fortune was smiling upon him this night! It opened silently into a large, unlit room. He shot inside and quietly closed the door behind him. The sound of marching feet grew louder… louder… louder… then died away as the guards marched past.
He wished now that he had brought the lantern with him, but he had left it with Rhoda. Its light would have helped, as long as it was not visible from outside.
A skylight let down a shaft of hazy moonlight and he moved in that direction. Halting in its gleam, he saw that this room was indeed part of a library. Rows upon rows upon rows of pigeon holes lined the walls, each containing a scroll identified by a classification tablet. Reading desks were dotted about the marble floor. But the place was silent, deserted. No sign of anyone. No sign of Minos.
A door to one side of the entrance led into a small office, and next to this stood a large arch, opening out into another chamber much like this one, its walls lined with pigeon holes. Everything lay in darkness, lit only by occasional shafts from skylights. Soundlessly, Flaminius explored the Library.
At the far end of the new chamber stood two arched doorways. They were locked, and from their position and size Flaminius guessed that they were the same ones he had tried from the outside, the main entrance at the head of the flight of steps. He turned and surveyed the chamber.
There were two alcoves on either side, but they led nowhere. Beyond them on either side were doors. The one on the right led out onto the colonnade, but it was the one he had previously discovered to be locked. He crossed over to the far left corner and tried the door. It creaked open so dramatically that Flaminius cringed into a crouch, looking desperately around in expectation of an entire cohort of Praetorians bursting in from every doorway.
Silence fell. There was no sign of anyone coming to investigate the noise, neither soldier nor slave. Flaminius stepped through the door.
It was a smaller room than the others, with another door in each of the walls. He tried the one in the left-hand wall and it opened into a small office with yet another door in the far wall. There was little to be seen: only a table, a scatter of documents upon its marble top, an unlit lamp, and lying on the mosaic floor in a pool of blood, a dead slave.
Flaminius knelt down. On the finger of one outstretched hand glinted an iron ring. With difficulty, he swivelled the seal round to reveal an image that was almost indiscernible in the darkness, but he was certain that it would show the goddess Feronia. This had to be Minos.
Beside the corpse lay a scroll case. It had been opened and the scroll was gone.
— 13—
Rhoda was fretting.
Some time had passed since Flaminius left to scout out the library. He had been gone so long, it must be almost time for the meeting itself, although she had no way of knowing the hour in this gloom. What had happened to him? Had he fallen foul of some Praet
orian patrol? He was no trained thief, even if he was supposed to be an imperial agent. What did a heavy booted soldier like him know about stealth?
She had grown up in the gutter, an orphan of the Argiletum. She had been stealing to survive as long as she could run away without getting caught—longer, in fact; acting and related activities had eked out a meagre subsistence in the meantime. She had had her ears boxed numerous times before she had mastered her craft, once even coming within a half-cubit of being caught by those dozy old men in the City Guard, before she was taken on by Magister Marcus of the College of Raptores, a crime ring operating out of the Argiletum, but with chapters throughout Rome. He had nurtured her skill, taught her his arts, and soon she was on the road to mastery.
As for this Flaminius, he knew nothing about what he was doing.
Why in Hades had he killed that Praetorian? It would have been better to stay concealed than to break the man’s neck. Very well, that armour would keep him at the bottom of that canal unless someone thought to dredge it—but what if they did? She hoped it would not occur to the guards until the two of them were long gone. And yet Flaminius had been away too long already.
Nervously, she emerged from beneath the flight of stairs, looking about her warily in the gloom. The place was empty, silent. Moonlight falling through a crack in a pair of doors cut the darkness of the mosaic floor with silver. It was as if she was the only person alive in this place.
Or was it? She thought she heard distant cries from outside. Her heart pounded. Had Flaminius been found? Were they coming for her?
She hurried up the moonlit steps.
They took her into a large upstairs hall. Crossing to the window on the far side she looked down upon a courtyard. And dashing across it into the colonnade between the two libraries, moonlight glinting on their polished armour, was a patrol of Praetorians…
Hearing a clatter from outside the Library, Flaminius rose. A key scraped in the lock of the external door. He froze, paralysed with fear. Just as the paralysis broke, and he turned to run, the door burst open and in charged several armoured figures.
The Londinium File Page 10