Banishing his night fears, he pulled up his legs, still holding onto the reins of his galloping horse, then let go, sprang across the gap, hitting the side of the carriage with a thump and seizing hold of the ornamental moulding. Gritting his teeth ferociously, he hauled himself up onto the footboard, then snatched hold of the trailing traces. Sitting down on the seat, he hauled on them again and again until the runaway horses had galloped themselves into stillness. Flanks shuddering, jaws foaming, the creatures stood motionless.
As Gaiseric jumped down to investigate the cab, the rest of his troopers rode up to join him.
‘How, Gaiseric, chief,’ barked one of them. ‘You stop them one handed!’ His men sent up a catcall of acclamation. ‘Now our prey is within our grasp!’
Gaiseric strode to the door of the carriage and flung it open.
The carriage was empty.
As dawn broke over the Apennine Mountains, three bedraggled figures crawled through the undergrowth in a garden on the edges of Tibur. Some way from the emperor’s own famous villa, an avenue of cedars stood on the edge of a private park belonging to a prominent citizen of the town.
It also abutted onto the road to Rome, and it had been here that Flaminius, Rhoda and the slave had sought shelter after all three had leapt from the speeding carriage. Unseen in the darkness by their mounted pursuers, they had lain low in this garden until the first light of day.
‘We’d better get moving,’ said Flaminius. ‘It’s a long way to Rome, and now we’re on foot it will take even longer.’
They reached the edge of the dusty road. There was no sign of any riders at this time of day, although hoofmarks scarred the ground in both directions. Flaminius found a moss-grown milepost and sat down on it, peering at the inscription upside down through his legs.
‘Eighteen miles to Rome,’ he reported.
‘I suppose it was a good idea to jump from the carriage,’ Rhoda mused, looking up from where she had been in earnest consultation with her slave. ‘But that vehicle wasn’t cheap, and nor were those horses. I hope Probus intends to reimburse me!’
Flaminius shook his head. ‘What matters is that we have found what we were sent after.’ He patted his tunic and heard the reassuring crinkling sound of dry papyrus. ‘This document is the key to understanding the plot against us.’
‘No one’s plotting against me,’ said Rhoda tartly, as her slave withdrew into the nearby bushes on some mysterious errand. ‘Eighteen miles?’ she added. ‘No one could walk that.’
Flaminius rose to his feet. ‘You’re a city girl,’ he said. ‘Going everywhere by litter, no wonder you’re so soft. In the legions, I was used to walking eighteen miles a day.’
She snorted. ‘Probus said you were an auxiliary tribune,’ she said. ‘He said you were an excellent horseman.’
Flaminius shrugged. ‘Marching eighteen miles a day, I soon requested a transfer,’ he admitted. ‘But do we have any choice?’
Cingetorix returned, leading three fine looking horses. He was glancing about himself warily.
‘Where in Hades did you get them from?’ Flaminius demanded.
‘He saw a stable at the edge of the park,’ Rhoda said, mounting a roan stallion without troubling to saddle him. ‘While you were snoring, he was out scouting.’
The slave mounted another horse, wearing a smug expression.
Flaminius had not been looking forward to walking the whole day. After his exertions of the last two days and nights, and little sleep, a good ride down to Rome admittedly had its attractions. ‘But we can’t go by road,’ he objected. ‘They will still be looking for us, and as soon as the owner of these horses wakes up and finds he’s been robbed, they will know how we got away. We must travel by the back lanes and trackways as much as possible.’
He mounted, and led them at a gallop.
They reached Rome at dusk. Following Flaminius’ route had involved several wrong turns, and at one point they had been forced to gallop across a slave worked olive plantation when a gang of overseers gave chase, but they had shaken off all pursuit. In the end it took them as long as it would have done if they had been raw recruits of the legions, marching their stipulated eighteen miles a day.
Riding uses different muscles from marching, but some time had passed since Flaminius had ridden anywhere for an extended period—in fact, it must have been on the way back to Alexandria from the Libyan Desert, and much of the journey had been on camelback.
They returned to the Tiburtine Way as it entered the great sprawling metropolis. They had decided to go at once to Probus’ lodging house in the Argiletum and arrange a meeting with him. Flaminius had spent some of the quieter moments of the journey scanning through the document. What he had read there had given him pause for thought. He had also remembered Sabina’s words, her memories of the conspiracy on whose edges she had once found herself.
He pitied the woman. Her imprisonment was unjust; her involvement in that foolish plot due to boredom, and who could blame her? Flaminius remembered that vicious little brute Antinous. Sabina was haughty and a little too long in the fetlock for his liking, but he could not see what the emperor saw in a vile little Greek like his new catamite.
‘What’s that over there?’ asked Rhoda, rousing Flaminius from his reverie. Although shades of night were falling, it was still possible to see the black column of smoke rising to the dark blue vault.
‘Looks like a fire,’ he said. ‘Somewhere in the middle of the City. Let’s hope the Watchmen have seen it.’
Many years had passed since the Great Fire. Flaminius’ own father had been a boy when flames had raged across the City, transforming it into an inferno. Since then the Watch had been extra vigilant, and never again had any fires spread so far. But they were a frequent menace, especially in poverty stricken areas. And as Flaminius rode his stolen horse further into the City, he realised that the smoke came from the Argiletum.
A strange fear seized hold of his heart.
It was night by the time he rode into the winding streets of the Argiletum. Rhoda and the slave Cingetorix trailed behind him, the former crying out to Flaminius, asking what was wrong. But Flaminius barely heard her queries. Something told him, some god, some skill in prophecy he had never dreamed of, that the pillar of smoke did not bode well.
He cantered into the street where Probus had his lodging house. Soot stained all the buildings black—all bar one, which was a guttering ruin. The local Watch was assembled outside the blazing wreck, doing their best to stop the fire from spreading while the gawping civilians of Rome did their best to get under their feet. Flaminius leapt from his horse and without stopping to secure the beast ran to the aid of the Watchmen.
They had a squirter, if not as effective a model as the one used by the Praetorians in the Villa, and had already doused most of the flames. Now they were breaking down the walls of the building with axes in an attempt to gain entrance.
‘Does anyone know who was inside?’ a Watch centurion asked of the on-looking mob. No one seemed to know anything much.
‘Upstairs was a lodging house,’ Flaminius said bleakly, looking on as two brawny Watchmen smashed down the door. Inside was a confusion of wet ashes and blackened timbers. ‘Downstairs was a wine shop. The House of the Satyr, it was called.’ He gazed sadly at a blackened carving of Silenus that lay face down in a puddle, as if it had fallen asleep after overindulging.
‘You knew this place, citizen?’ the Watchman asked. ‘You drank here?’
Rhoda joined them. ‘What’s happened? The House of the… oh, no…!’
‘I knew it,’ Flaminius told the Watchman. ‘Not very well, I only went here once. But I knew it.’
Another charred figure lay beneath a tangle of fallen beams. Before the Watchman could reply, he was in there, forcing his way through the ruin. Reaching the fallen figure, he turned it over.
It was a corpse, burnt beyond recognition. A horrible suspicion had been growing in his mind ever since he saw the pillar of smok
e. Now it had almost taken on full form.
‘Keep back, keep back!’ the Watch centurion was saying. As his men held back the crowd, he crossed to Flaminius’ side. ‘Was this man known to you? Did he have enemies? They say another man, bearded like yourself, was seen running away from the wine shop shortly before the fire broke out.’
Flaminius looked up, bleak. ‘It’s difficult to say,’ he began. ‘It’s the right size for the man I knew. But it’s so badly burnt. It could be the wine shop keeper for all I know. There’s no way to identify him.’
An idea struck him, and he crouched down, seizing the burnt corpse by the hand. The scorched flesh felt strangely warm, almost as if the body was still alive, but that was impossible. Nothing could have survived those burns. Through eyes that were misted with tears—why was he crying? He had not cried since Medea died, and even that had been in private, not before the eyes of the mob—he recognised the silver signet ring.
He had seen it on Probus’ hand so many times. Almost unaware of what he was doing, he slipped it off the dead finger and slid it onto his own.
A slim figure came to crouch beside him. He looked up. ‘Probus will never reimburse you now, Rhoda,’ he said. As she looked at him in horror, he turned to the Watchman. ‘Yes, centurion,’ he confirmed, ‘you could say he had enemies.’
His eyes narrowed. A burly figure stood at the far end of the street, watching the scene. Pushing the Watchman aside, he walked towards this newcomer. The man vanished down an alleyway.
‘What will you do now?’
Flaminius and Rhoda sat within the rotunda in the Gardens of Sallust where Flaminius had last spoken with Probus. After the aftermath of the blaze in the Argiletum, they had returned to Rhoda’s own lodgings with her slave. Now the two of them had come out here to the Gardens. It was some time after midnight, and the lawns and groves were silent and deserted, but the scent of night blooming flowers was heady in the air.
She looked at him for a long time when he did not reply, then touched his arm. He looked up, starting.
‘What will I do?’ he repeated, as if she had just asked the question. He pursed his lips. ‘Probus died because he threatened someone. He was dismissed from the Commissary for the same reason. Perhaps if he—and I—had not investigated the mystery, the fire would never have been started.’
‘You don’t think it was an accident?’
He shook his head. ‘It was no accident. While we were making merry fools of ourselves in Tibur, someone gave orders for Probus’ death. And not just his death. It seems that we’re all in danger. All Probus’ associates.’
Flaminius remembered what he had learnt when he caught up with the burly man in the alley.
‘But who?’ Rhoda asked. ‘Who is behind all this?’
Flaminius took the battered document out of his tunic and unrolled it on the bench. He held a lamp over it and studied the writing. He traced a name on the document with his finger. Then he looked up suddenly.
‘Something Sabina said puzzled me,’ he told Rhoda.
‘You spoke with the empress?’ Rhoda asked.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Flaminius asked. ‘She sheltered me. She’s not such a bad sort after all. On our last meeting I disliked her intensely, but she’d forgotten that. Forgotten that it was me who exposed the plot she had been implicated in. A plot against the emperor.’
Rhoda gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘She plotted against her own husband? No wonder he keeps her a prisoner! I’m only surprised he didn’t have her killed.’
‘There was a lack of evidence,’ Flaminius said. ‘And Hadrian was merciful. She was very much on the fringes. I told him the names of the real ringleaders, the ones I knew about. He didn’t move against them, either, not in any real sense. The conspiracy was unmasked, but the plotters were given a reprieve. Not executed, merely “banished from public life”, most of them. In Sabina’s case that meant house arrest, but the others were simply dismissed from the emperor’s service.’ His own reward had been discharge from the Praetorian Guard. ‘Some not even that.’
‘Why?’
‘He wanted to avoid a scandal,’ Flaminius said softly. ‘Hadrian’s reign began in blood. Rivals and enemies were murdered left, right, and centre—but not at his orders. So he maintains. It was the work of an overzealous Praetorian Prefect, who was removed shortly afterwards. And Hadrian did not want to anger the Senate further. So when Probus and I exposed the plot against his life, he showed mercy on the plotters. What’s more, he regarded my work as something of an embarrassment.
‘But it seems I didn’t do as good a job as I thought,’ Flaminius continued, gazing at the distant lights of the City. ‘There was one conspirator who I did not identify. But Sabina named him. He wasn’t in Italy at the time, so that’s how he avoided arrest, although I met him later, without knowing him for who he truly was and under very different circumstances. In Britain. Britain was always important to them. It’s such a long way from Rome, of course. That was where I first found out about it—me, and… Probus. And that’s where we’re going.’ He looked at her. ‘You can join us, if you like,’ he added. ‘You might prove useful.’
For a long time Rhoda made no reply.
Book Three—The Caledonia Conundrum
— 17—
Bodotria Estuary, Caledonia, Ides of June 125 AD
The salt-tanged sea wind moaned mournfully around the thorn bushes as it whipped in from the scudding waters of the firth. Night had fallen long ago, the sun setting in a bloody cataclysm over the dark land to westward, and the wind was cold. Flaminius shivered as he hung, pinioned by his spread-eagled arms, from the gnarled, withered tree, but it was not the cold alone that made him shake.
He lifted his head and peered out into the murk. The island was small, a rocky excrescence in the wide waters of the firth, the open sea at its back. Grassy slopes ceased abruptly at the head of cliffs where white breakers flung up a salty spray. Beyond them the firth waters were dark and broad.
Nothing moved in that vast black expanse. It mirrored the star strewn sky almost perfectly, reflecting the dark land and the distant mountain peaks that pointed accusingly at the dark sky. Somewhere north-west of here was where they had caught him, near the old ruins. Ruins he remembered from his youth as a place full of life and activity, now dead and cold as if they had been deserted since the beginning of the world.
He shifted slightly, trying yet again to find a comfortable position. But it was impossible, hanging, as he was, from the tree. He leaned his head back against the rough bark and gazed up at the stars.
A sobbing cry drifted out of the windswept darkness. Somewhere else on the island. He had heard it before, night after night. And still he could not tell if it was another prisoner like him or the unearthly wail of some sea bird. But surely it did not mean they were beginning again. Not yet. They had left, he knew that much; just before sunset he had seen their skin boat crossing back to the mainland. Ruefully he regarded the unhealed burn marks on his arms. They had wrung many a cry from his broken lips, but they had not coerced any answers. It would be a long time before he broke. And before that…
He heard the splash of a muffled oar. From down there, down beyond the cliffs. Out in the firth. Leaning forward as far as his bonds would permit, he strained his eyes. Nothing. All he could see was the dark waters and the mirrored stars. But… what was that?
A dark shape drifting closer. Again he heard the splash of oars. They were returning!
The cry broke out again. He craned his neck trying to see where it came from. This time it was throatier, wilder. He could not mistake it for human, not this time. He heard the fluttering of wings in the night air above him, and something flew down to land in the branches of the withered tree. He thought he saw a dark bird, perhaps a crow, silhouetted against the stars.
Silence fell upon the waters, broken only by the sigh of the wind in the coarse grasses. He looked back and saw no sign of the skin boat he had seen. But now he heard voices
, distant, below him. Ruddy torchlight flickered. Someone was coming up the cliff path. Perhaps more than one of them.
He remembered that path from when he had traversed it, hands bound behind his back, urged on by spears. It was a precipitous route, one to be taken with care and caution, even in daylight. The red glow of the torch grew more distinct, then vanished behind the thorn bushes.
At last his visitor appeared.
‘They tell me you won’t speak, foreigner,’ he said.
The tall, gaunt man held high a blazing torch, which reeked of pitch and whose light kept half his face masked in shadow. He approached the tree where Flaminius hung in his bonds, peering curiously up into his face.
Another figure loomed out of the gloom, giving a harsh cry. It was a woman, clad in long black robes, her hair in thick locks that snaked around her like the hair of a gorgon. She danced and capered eerily on the edge of the light, her face in shadow.
The man also wore a long, dark robe, and his beard was long and tangled, and he spoke in the Caledonian dialect of the British tongue, but Flaminius saw that he wore a Roman ring on his finger.
‘I see they have been most… persuasive,’ he added, indicating the marks of torture on Flaminius’ limbs. The Roman wore only the tattered remnants of his clothes, rags that fluttered in the wind. He had been subjected to torture and deprived of food, and all but the occasional mouthful of water, for several days now. But he had not answered their questions.
‘Do you know who I am?’ the gaunt man demanded suddenly, stepping closer. The heat from his upheld torch caused Flaminius to flinch back. ‘Do you have any notion, Roman fool?’
‘Who says I am Roman?’ asked Flaminius, speaking the same language as his interrogator.
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