One of them, obviously more impatient than his companion, had wandered further on. She lay still knowing, with a feeling of inevitability, what he would find in the chamber beyond. She heard his sharp cry and something which sounded like ‘Bismillah!’ Then she heard the second man run forward to join his companion and exclaim, ‘Ma’uzbillah!’
As soon as the catacomb darkened, Fidelma slipped out of the tomb, clutching lamp and chalice and moved swiftly and quietly forward in the opposite entrance. She could hear the alarmed voices behind her. She dared not stop to light the lamp but moved hopefully forward into the darkness. She tried to concentrate on reciting the boy Antonio’s directions, this time in reverse, heading up the short stairway, lamp and chalice held in one hand, the other hand now feeling before her. She managed to negotiate the stairs, though grazing a knee against some protruding stone.
At the top of the stairs she paused to catch her breath then made a right turn into the long passageway as she recalled. How long was it? Two hundred yards before it widened out into a large ornate tomb. She paused again, shoulders heaving, and put her head to one side. She could hear no sounds of pursuit behind her.
Fidelma knelt down in the darkness and, in the utter blackness of the catacomb, she placed the lamp and chalice on the floor before her. Then she reached into her marsupium for the tinder box. In her nervousness it took a while before she was able to ignite it and light the lamp.
With the warm golden glow spreading through the chamber, she gave a deep sigh of relief and sat back on her heels for a moment. Then, gathering lamp and chalice, she stood up and moved on through the corridor to the next chamber towards the lengthy stairway which led up to the higher level of the catacombs. Quietly she swore to herself that she would never again venture into this dark labyrinth.
She was now in the last long stretch of corridor, a length of some hundred yards or so. She controlled her inward urge to run and forced herself to walk slowly along its twisting length. She began to feel a little ridiculous. After all, it was obvious that the two strangers had not encompassed Brother Ronan Ragallach’s death, so why should they menace her? She wished she had been more courageous but she could not deny the strange dread which had gripped her in that dark, brooding sepulchre. She wondered if they had gone to meet with Brother Ronan and, if so, who were they?
A chill thought suddenly struck her for the first time. The method by which Brother Ronan Ragallach had met his end was exactly the same as that by which Wighard had been murdered. He had been garrotted. Therefore Ronan had not murdered Wighard. But, and here was the conundrum, if Ronan had not slain Wighard what was Ronan doing with at least part of the treasure taken from Wighard’s chambers?
Ronan had denied his complicity and had called on her to meet him so that he could explain. Explain what?
She remembered the piece of papyrus in her marsupium and wondered if that might hold any of the answers. She would have to find the sub-praetor of the Foreign Secretariat, Brother Osimo Lando, and ask him to translate it. Here was certainly a mystery indeed.
She came to the juncture of the passageway and turned to the right to ascend the stairs into the brightness of the cemetery.
She was aware of a figure in front of her as she swung the corner. Aware, briefly, that the figure was familiar even though she saw only a momentary glimpse of its outline. Then she felt a pain against the side of her head and plunged into utter blackness.
A voice was calling her name as if it came from a great distance away.
Fidelma blinked and found she felt nauseous and dizzy. She groaned and someone pressed cold water to her mouth. She took a swallow, coughed and gulped and nearly choked. She opened her eyes and found that the light was momentarily blinding. She blinked again and tried to focus. She appeared to be lying on her back with the blue canopy of the sky above and a merciless yellow sun scorching her face. She groaned again and closed her eyes.
‘Sister Fidelma, can you hear me?’
It was a familiar voice and she lay a moment or two trying to recognise it.
Droplets of cold water splashed against her face.
She moaned, wishing whoever it was would go away and leave her to her nausea.
‘Sister Fidelma!’
The voice was more urgent now.
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and focused on the dark figure above her.
The sallow features of Cornelius of Alexandria swam into focus. The swarthy physician looked worried.
‘Sister Fidelma, do you recognise me?’
Fidelma grimaced.
‘I do. Yet how my head throbs.’
‘You received a blow on the skull, a sharp contusion above the temple but the skin is not split. It will heal after a while.’
‘I feel sick.’
‘That is merely the shock. Lie a while and have some more water.’
Fidelma continued to lie back but let her eyes wander around. Behind the shoulder of the Greek doctor stood the young boy, Antonio, looking scared and anxious. She could hear worried voices. Voices! Was that the sharp, penetrating tone of the Abbess Wulfrun in the background? She tried to raise herself up. She was surely not imagining she could hear the abbess instructing Sister Eafa to follow her?
She struggled to sit up but was gently pushed back by the Alexandrian physician.
‘Where am I?’ she demanded.
‘At the entrance to the catacombs,’ replied Cornelius. ‘You were carried out unconscious.’
Memory came back sharply.
‘Someone knocked me out!’ she asserted, attempting to sit up again but Cornelius held her down.
‘Be careful,’ he warned. ‘You must take things slowly.’ Then he paused, head to one side. ‘Why would anyone knock you out?’ he asked sceptically. ‘Are you sure you did not hit your head on a protruding rock in the dark of the passageway? It has been done before.’
‘No!’ Fidelma suddenly paused and stared at him. ‘What are you doing here?’
The physician shrugged.
‘I happened to be passing the gates of the cemetery when I heard cries for a doctor. I was told that someone had been injured inside the catacomb. I found you at the foot of the steps.’
Fidelma was baffled.
‘Who raised the alarm?’
Cornelius shrugged and helped her into a sitting position once he had assessed that she was fit enough.
‘One of the pilgrims. I have no idea.’
‘That is right, sister.’ She turned to find that the boy, Antonio, was nodding. ‘A person came out of the catacombs and said that someone was badly injured inside. I recognised the physician’s lecticula at the gates of the cemetery and asked someone to run and get him to come here.’
‘I came and found you at the bottom of the stairway,’ repeated Cornelius. ‘It looked as if you had hit your head on the side of the passageway. We carried you up.’
Antonio, seeing that Fidelma was not so badly injured, gave an urchin grin. ‘You do not have much luck in this place, sister.’
Fidelma returned a rueful smile.
‘You speak wisdom, young Antonio.’
She was able to stand up now, the dizziness and nausea having abated a little.
‘Where is this person to whom I owe my rescue?’
There were several people standing around but, having ascertained that there was no further drama, they were dispersing on their various errands. She wondered whether she had really heard the Abbess Wulfrun in their midst.
The boy shrugged.
‘They went some time ago.’
‘Who were they? Do you know that I might thank them?’
The boy shook his head.
‘It was just another pilgrim. He wore the garb of the east, I think.’
Fidelma’s eyes widened. She wondered if it could have been one of the swarthy men whom she had seen in the catacomb of Aurelia Restutus.
‘How many foreigners have been in this place, Antonio, since I arrived?’
Agai
n the boy shrugged.
‘Including yourself, several. It is only foreigners that come here to see the dead ones. Also, there are three other entrances such as this one.’
She smiled at her naivete in thinking the boy would differentiate between herself and the two dark-skinned men she had seen in the tomb.
‘How many men from …’
Cornelius interrupted her with a grunt of disapproval.
‘I think you should worry about thanking your rescuers later. My lecticula can transport you back to the Lateran Palace where I can dress your wound properly. Then you should rest for the remainder of the day.’
Fidelma expressed her disagreement with his advice but, as she began to walk, another wave of dizziness washed over her and she realised that the physician was probably right. She sat down promptly on a nearby stone and groaned slightly at the ringing in her head.
She was aware that Cornelius had raised his hand in a signal and through the cemetery trotted two burly men bearing a curiously shaped chair which they carried, one at the back and one at the front, on long poles. Fidelma had seen several of these about the streets of Rome and ascertained they were called lecticula. Of the modes of transport used in her own country, Fidelma had never seen anything to compare with these strange chair-like contraptions in which people had themselves carried on the shoulders of slaves or servants.
She was about to protest but realised that, as she felt at the moment, she would be unable to walk back to the Lateran Palace. So she accepted the transport with a small sigh of resignation. It was when she was clambering into the chair that she realised what she had forgotten.
‘Your lamp must still be down at the foot of the stairs where I fell, Antonio,’ she called to the boy.
The boy simply grinned and shook his head, picking up the lamp from his side and showing her.
‘When we carried you up here, I brought it with me,’ he assured her.
‘And the silver chalice that I was carrying?’
Antonio looked at her in genuine bewilderment.
‘I saw no silver chalice, sister. Nor did you take one down there, that I saw.’
In a sudden panic Fidelma grabbed at her marsupium. Her tinder box and coinage were still there but there was no sign of the papyrus she had taken from Brother Ronan. However, the severed piece of sackcloth remained.
She saw Cornelius gazing at her in suspicion.
‘One moment,’ she said, climbing out of the lecticula and walking unsteadily towards the boy. She knelt down by his side and lowered her voice. ‘Antonio, in the catacomb of Aurelia Restutus is a body. No,’ she saw him start to smile at the idea of a body being found in a tomb. ‘I mean someone who has just been slain. I discovered the body. As soon as I return to the Lateran Palace, I shall send the authorities to recover it …’
Antonio stared at her with wide, solemn eyes.
‘The matter should be reported to the office of the praetor urbanis,’ he advised.
Fidelma nodded agreement.
‘Don’t worry. The proper authorities will be notified. But I want you to keep an eye on whoever comes and goes. You see, I did find a silver chalice and a papyrus which, when I was knocked unconscious, I believe were taken from me. So if you see anyone behaving in a suspicious manner, in particular, two men, eastern in appearance and speaking a strange language, I want you to take a careful note of them and where they go.’
‘I will, sister,’ the boy vowed. ‘But there are many other entrances and exits to these catacombs.’
Fidelma groaned inwardly at the news. However, she reached in her marsupium and dropped some coins into the boy’s basket.
She turned back to where Cornelius was standing fretting at the delay and clambered back into the lecticula. The two men gave a heave and a grunt as they lifted it up and began to trot forward along the path to the gate, with Cornelius pacing rapidly alongside.
It was an odd sensation to be carried in such a manner but Fidelma was thankful for the mode of transport. Her head was aching and her forehead was throbbing and tender. She closed her eyes, oblivious of the stares of curiosity that passers-by gave her, for while the lecticula were common enough in Rome it was uncommon to see a religieuse being transported.
Fidelma sat back and relaxed her mind, turning over the events of the last hour.
It was only after they had re-entered the city through the Metronia Gate and turned under the shadow of the Caelius Hill that the thought struck her. In her dizziness she had not realised it. She had been convinced that one or other of the two strangers must have followed her, struck her and taken the chalice and papyrus from her. But she had left them behind her in the catacombs. The memory flashed back. It was only when she had turned the corner at the foot of the stairs leading out of the catacomb that she had seen the figure, the familiar figure, obviously waiting for her. A single person had struck her down. A person she knew. But who?
Chapter Twelve
Fidelma sat in the officium set aside for the use of Brother Eadulf and herself in the Lateran Palace still nursing her throbbing head. The dizziness and nausea had left her but the soreness remained. It was Eadulf, with his knowledge of medicines, who had insisted on taking over from Cornelius of Alexandria. Cornelius did not seem troubled that the Saxon monk wished to encroach on his role as physician. In fact, he seemed grateful to be able to hurry away on his own business. Brother Eadulf, since his training at Tuaim Brecain, always carried a pera, or lés as the Irish physicians called their medical bags, full of medicinal herbs. He dressed her wound and prepared a drink made from an infusion of dried flower heads of red clover which, he assured her, would gradually ease her aching head.
Fidelma had absolute faith in Eadulf as she sipped his noxious potion, for he had similarly come to her aid twice before at Hilda’s abbey at Witebia in Northumbria. In fact, he had cured her of a throbbing headache with a similar mixture when she had fallen and knocked herself unconscious at the abbey.
As he fussed about her, she explained to him and to Furius Licinius about her morning’s adventure. On learning the basic facts, the young tesserarius summoned a decuria of the custodes and set off for the Christian cemetery at Metrona. Fidelma put up with Eadulf’s chiding for a little longer as she sat casting her mind over the events and trying to establish some pattern to them but she realised that for as much information as she had there was still no framework for it. Without a framework none of it seemed to make any sense.
‘We must send for Brother Osimo Lando,’ she said, suddenly interrupting Eadulf in mid-stream. He had been gently chastising her for going to the catacombs alone without first warning him or letting anyone know where she was going. He blinked.
‘Osimo Lando?’ he frowned.
‘He admitted that he knew Ronan well. I feel he knows much more than he is telling us. With Ronan dead he may now find himself able to tell more.’
The door abruptly opened and Marinus, the military governor, entered with a worried look on his features. He addressed himself directly to Fidelma.
‘Is it true? Is it true what I hear … that Brother Ronan Ragallach is dead?’
Fidelma gave an affirmative nod.
The expression of the Superista of the custodes abruptly softened into a smile and he made a sound of emphatic satisfaction: ‘Then the matter of the death of Wighard is finally brought to an end.’
Fidelma exchanged a bemused glance with Eadulf.
‘I do not follow your logic,’ she said coldly.
Marinus spread his hands as if the reason were plain to see.
‘The murderer has been caught and killed. No need to spend further time on the matter.’
Fidelma shook her head slowly.
‘I can only believe that you are not aware of all the facts, Marinus. Brother Ronan Ragnallach was found garrotted while he was on his way to meet me. He had sent me a message to tell me that he was not the murderer of Wighard and wanted a chance to explain. He was garrotted in the same manner as Wigha
rd. Whoever killed Wighard also killed Ronan Ragallach. The matter, you see, is far from over.’
The military governor blinked rapidly in bewilderment.
‘I was simply told that he was dead,’ he replied, his face changing to an almost woebegone expression. ‘I presumed that he had been killed or killed himself because he realised that he could not escape us forever.’
‘Fidelma was right, and we were wrong,’ Eadulf entered the conversation. Fidelma stared at him in surprise, somewhat amused by the unexpected respect in his voice, as though he delighted in being proved wrong by her. ‘She said all along that she suspected that Ronan Ragalach was not the killer.’
Marinus set his jaw firmly.
‘Then we must discover the truth as soon as possible. Only this morning the Holy Father’s scriba aedilicius contacted me to say that the Holy Father is chiding at the lack of resolution to this matter.’
‘He is no more anxious than we are,’ replied Fidelma in annoyance at the implication. ‘It will be resolved when we have a solution. And now,’ she rose, ‘we have much work to do. Could you send someone to bring Brother Osimo Lando here? We require his advice.’
Marinus started at being so peremptorily dismissed. He opened his mouth to say something in protest, but snapped it shut again and grimaced his acceptance of the order.
Eadulf grinned slyly at Fidelma.
‘I swear you will treat the Holy Father with as much disdain.’
‘Disdain?’ Fidelma shook her head. ‘I do not hold Marinus in contempt. But we are each supposed to be competent in our arts and authority and each should fill his or her office with the qualities we expect in others. Pride in office without competence is as much a sin as competence without confidence.’
Eadulf’s eyes grew serious.
‘With Ronan Ragallach dead, I can see no leads into this maze, Fidelma.’
She inclined her head slightly.
‘Ronan Ragallach, while he denied that he had killed Wighard in his message to me, and which claim I believe to be the truth, nevertheless had some of Wighard’s valuables with him when he was killed.’ She explained how she had found a chalice and the piece of sack still gripped firmly into his dead hand. She paused and then shrugged. ‘Although, of course, I cannot prove that now.’
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