“We’re almost ready,” she said, forcing a smile as she stroked the damp hair off his forehead. “Here, let me tend your wounds.” He closed his eyes and let her lift his tunic. He heard her gasp. “Ah, my love. You must have lost so much blood.”
“I’ll be fine, just get me some water,” Aculeo panted.
Tyche gave Calisto a worried look. “He needs a healer,” she said.
“Fetch Kushu – hurry!” Calisto said to the girl, who nodded and ran from the atrium. Aculeo could still see the walls of the catacombs when he closed his eyes, the sound of waves slapping against the walls of the cistern, the pinpoint of Zeanthes’ torchlight as he tried to escape into the darkness.
He woke up with Calisto stroking his face, gazing down at him, her eyes glistening with tears. “Where are we?”
“Still here – come,” she said, helping him to sit up. He grunted in pain, his face covered in sweat. “I’m so sorry, I know it hurts my love. You’ve been so brave. Drink this,” she said, holding a cup to his mouth. The wine was strong and sweet, infused with myrrh and cinnamon.
Aculeo shook his head. “Just water.”
“In a moment, I promise. Drink this first.”
He drank it down in small sips. A warm sensation spread through his stomach, seeping tendrils throughout his body. The room was spinning. He closed his eyes again, leaning back in her arms. “We need to go.”
“We will. Just rest a bit first,” she said, her voice soft, soothing. “Where shall we go to?”
“Somewhere far away from here, anywhere you like,” he said. “Neapolis perhaps, or Knossos. We could have a farm.”
“Yes,” she said, stroking his head. “Tell me about our farm.”
“It sits on top of a tall hill overlooking a grove of olive trees,” he said. “Fat goats run about in the pasture. A path leads from the house down to the sea, a beach of white sand, the sea blue as azure. We have vineyards, and the wine we make is so sweet the bees envy us.”
“Do we have children?” she asked, pressing his hand to her cool, soft lips.
“Of course,” he said, drifting off again. “As many as you like, all of them beautiful like their mother. They run out across the sand to play in the sea, their faces brown as acorns.” He looked up at her suddenly. “We should go now, Calisto.”
“Rest a little longer. How long will it take us to get there?”
“I don’t know, two days, maybe three depending on the winds.”
“Then we shall give sacrifice and pray to the gods for favourable winds.”
“Yes, favourable winds,” Aculeo said. He listened to the sounds of slaves stacking wooden chests and furniture in the fauces, waiting to be ported down to the harbour for the journey. “You’ve packed too much, it will only slow us down. Just bring the clothes on your backs, what money you have. We’ll buy passage on the first ship ready to leave.”
“Alright.”
“You need to gather Idaia. And Tyche. Where is she? Is she alright?” he asked, looking around in a panic.
“My love, stop worrying so much.”
He lay back in her arms again. “Zeanthes would have murdered me down there if not for Tyche.”
“She’s very brave,” Calisto said.
“I can scarcely believe Zeanthes was behind this madness.”
“He wore his mask well,” she said, stroking his head. “Never mind, it’s over now. Try to rest.”
A fragment of memory came to him then, unbidden. “When we were in the catacombs, Zeanthes said something about how he gave me his Ariadne. What could he have meant?”
Calisto bent her head and kissed him gently on the cheek. “He meant me, my love.”
“What?”
She sighed and drew her hand gently from his grasp, holding it to her breast. “He meant that he gave me to you.”
“You? But …” A sudden chill coursed through him like a river of ice. “You knew?”
“Yes, I knew. Zeanthes and I have been together for a very long time,” she said. “He trained me since I was a child. As I’ve been training Idaia.”
“No,” he gasped. “No …”
Calisto gazed down at him, her lovely violet eyes dark as midnight, the scar along her jaw stark white against her face. “When you first appeared asking about Neaera, claiming to be a friend of Iovinus’, I was terrified. It felt like all the other places we had to run from. I thought for certain we’d be discovered. I wanted to leave that very night. But Zeanthes wasn’t afraid at all. He wanted to meet with you. To understand why you were delivered into our lives. It was Zeanthes who saw you for what you truly are. Our Apollo.”
“Apollo?” Aculeo said. His head was pounding now, his chest on fire. “This was all just some sick fantasy to you as well?”
“No, not a fantasy,” she said. “We needed to fall in love, and we did. You can’t tell me our love wasn’t real.”
“But what of Ralla? Was he even involved?”
“He played a role of course,” she said.
“A role? You make it sound like he was an actor in a fucking play! You let me think he was at the centre of it all. I tried to murder him!”
“My Apollo,” she said and tried to take his hand again. He pulled it from her grasp. He felt like he was going to vomit. She gave him a wounded look. “Oh Aculeo – what choice did we have? We could hardly have left Ralla alive knowing all that he did. He couldn’t possibly have understood – he would have made so much trouble. When he turned up just before the symposium began, he was completely unhinged from your attempt on his life. We had to deal with him or it would have ruined everything.”
Aculeo felt a numb sensation seeping through his body. He clutched his stomach – it felt suddenly as though he’d swallowed a fistful of white-hot potshards. He tried to stand, fell to his knees, then dropped on his hands, cold sweat pouring down his face. He looked up at her in anguish.
“Aculeo, my love, forgive me. You would have realized the truth eventually.”
He tried to grab onto her, to take hold of something real, but his hands wouldn’t move. He tried to speak, but his tongue lay like a piece of dead meat stuck in his mouth. He lay there on the floor, unable to stand, his body started to convulse.
Calisto stood there, looking down at him, watching him die. “I’ll always love you, Aculeo. That’s real, I promise you.” She bent over and kissed him then, a long slow kiss. Then all he could hear was the sound of her footsteps as she walked away.
Aculeo dreamed of Titiana, her lovely face, reaching out her hands to him. He dreamed of Atellus running down the hallway of their villa, laughing his beautiful laugh, always just out of reach. He dreamed of a crowded, bustling marketplace, of a mad, drunken symposium where the guests feasted on flesh, of dark, endless tunnels that wound through cisterns of blood. He dreamed of the sea. He dreamed of Sekhet standing over him, rolling him onto his back, her hands burning cold as she pressed her fingertips against the side of his neck, gazed intently into his eyes.
“Can you speak, Roman?” she asked, her voice echoing from an eternity ago. He just looked back at her, wondering why she was here. The vision of her slipped into darkness as she walked away.
Sekhet took a small pouch from her satchel, forced Aculeo’s mouth open and pressed a pinch of powdered medicine under his tongue. His tongue and lips were tinged with blue, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He had little time left. He lay there for a moment, not responding, then he groaned and writhed in pain before vomiting up a mouthful of pink-white froth.
“What are you doing?” a woman’s voice demanded from the edge of the courtyard.
Sekhet didn’t bother to look up. Aculeo’s breathing was rough and uneven, his pulse was thin as a thread being drawn out of a tapestry, beating far too fast to count. The poison had already worked its way into his system, so the lotus emetic had done little for him. “What did you give him? Rock flower?”
“How dare you! Get out of my house this instant! Kushu!”
The healer dug into her satchel again, searching. There, foxglove to slow his heart, she thought, putting a pinch of the dried flower under his tongue. Aculeo gagged, coughed half of it up, moaned and twisted on the ground, sweat running down his pallid grey face. It wasn’t looking good, not good at all.
“Idaia told me everything,” Sekhet said. “She even told me all about how you turned her into a little murderer as well, luring your victims to your depraved parties to serve as your osti. Your sacrifices.”
“She’s Phrygian. She understands sacrifice.”
“She’s a child!” the healer snapped. “Ah, it doesn’t matter anymore. I sent word to the Public Order officers. Everyone will finally know you for the murderous bitch you are.”
Calisto gave a cutting laugh. “You actually believe anyone would arrest me? That my friends would permit it? Why? For you? For justice?”
“You forget that whatever patrons you had are dead,” Sekhet said.
“You’ve no idea of how Alexandria works,” Calisto said. “I’ve a hundred others in high places ready to help me at a moment’s notice.”
“And what of Aculeo? Who’ll help him?”
“He’s already dead.” With that, the hetaira turned to go.
Sekhet grabbed Calisto suddenly by the chiton. “You’re not leaving here tonight.”
Calisto spun around on her, slapping the healer across the face. “Know your place, fellahin witch!” she hissed.
Sekhet smiled grimly. “And what’s your place, Phrygian whore? On your back with your well-worked legs wrapped around whatever lovestruck fool that’s fallen for your poisonous charms?” Calisto’s face went pale with rage. She lashed out at her again but Sekhet caught her by the wrist this time and twisted it painfully behind her back.
“Let go of me!” Calisto squealed, but the healer held fast, pulling her back tight against her own chest. She pressed her mouth against Calisto’s cheek like a lover wanting to whisper in her delicate ear.
“It’s true, we’re quite different people, you and I,” Sekhet said. “No doubt the fools that run this city would sooner listen to your charming lies than hear the truth from the likes of me. But don’t forget, from commonest slave to Phrygian whore, we all have one thing in common.”
“What’s that?” Calisto hissed.
“We all bleed.” Sekhet put her hand to the shoulder of Calisto’s chiton and drew out her fibula pin, long and sharp as any dagger, then stabbed it beneath the hetaira’s left breast.
Calisto cried out, tried to pull away, but the healer locked her in a tight embrace, pulled her in closer, pushing the fibula in hard and deep until it would go no further, then gave a sharp twist. Calisto gasped, arching backwards in the healer’s arms. Sekhet released her and she fell to the floor, blood spilling on her fine silks, pooling beneath her on the marble floor, the heady smell of death filling the dark atrium. Calisto looked up at Sekhet, her face white, unable to speak.
“Do you hear them whispering to you?” Sekhet asked. “All your victims, they’re calling for you now, aren’t they? Ah, so many I can almost hear them myself. They’ve been looking forward to this day, I think. Lingering on the shores of Abydos all this time, ready to escort you to your tribunal.”
“Please …no … ”
“Save your pleas for the gods you murderous bitch. Our gods this time. Just remember that when Osiris weighs your twisted, black heart, it won’t matter how charming you are, how much money you have, how many important friends you’ve gathered. No, the only thing that will matter there will be the wicked deeds you’ve done.”
Sekhet watched as the last light faded from her lovely violet eyes, then went to Aculeo and knelt beside him. “How are you now Roman, ah?” she said, examining his pupils, checking his pulse, trying to smile. “A little better I think. Come on, stay with me. You don’t want to join that bitch anytime soon. I hope you’d be sick of her company by now.”
The children laughed in delight as they played in the rushes at the side of the canal, splashing in the warm, slow-moving water while Felix ran along at their feet, barking and chasing the seabirds into the amber-coloured evening sky. Even Gellius and old Xanthias appeared to be enjoying themselves as they sat on the bank of the canal, watching the children at play.
“They seem to be having fun,” Aculeo said, watching Tyche chase a delirious Idaia along the muddy bank.
“It’s good to see them being actual children for once,” Sekhet said. The smell and clatter of the evening meal being prepared filled the air. Fine loaves of bread, jars of beer, platters of asparagus, lentils, eel, it all smelled quite delicious. “And what of you?”
“Me? I’m fine,” Aculeo said dismissively.
The healer cocked her head suspiciously, considering him. Over a month since the ordeal ended and he still looks ill, she thought. He continued to recover of course, and his wounds had healed with minimal infection, a miracle in itself. But the damage Calisto’s poison had done to his heart might well be permanent – the effects of rock flower tended to linger for years. And there was something in his eyes as well … as though he’d been dragged to the underworld and back again, leaving something important behind on the journey. “Are you?”
“Better than some others at least.” Ralla’s body had been found in a store room of his villa, his wrists cut open. His apparent suicide had engendered whispers around the corridors of power about some sexual imbroglio possibly involving Mysteries worship. Officials had found it most expedient to blame the murders of Gurculio, Zeanthes and Calisto on Ralla’s obvious madness and decadence. In the end, no one had the political will to conduct any investigation, official or otherwise, into the involvement the Prefect’s son and his friends might have had in the scandal. Least of all Magistrate Capito, after finally being released from his thankfully short-lived incarceration.
Aculeo and Sekhet watched the children charge up from the canal, dripping wet and laughing, running through the back gate into the courtyard, Gellius and Xanthias well behind them. Pesach awoke from his nap as the children thundered past his bench. He grumbled and grouched at the sudden intrusion, but gave a rueful smile. The three men had finally turned up several days after the murders, a little worse for wear from living on the streets but alive at least. The girls sat on the ground near Pesach’s bench and started up a game of Mehen.
“I’m grateful you took the girls in,” Aculeo told Sekhet.
“They deserve to finally have a normal life.”
“Do they ever talk about what happened?”
“Not a word since that night. Idaia still refuses to sleep alone. Tyche often awakes with bad dreams. It will take more time for them to heal. What about you?” she asked, listening to the rattle of plates and cups being set at the table.
He shrugged. “I’m alive, the murders have ended. I’ll move on.”
“And what of Corvinus?” Pesach asked, eavesdropping from his place on the bench. “Do you move on from his betrayal too?”
“Pesach, let the dead be,” Aculeo said wearily. “I just want to live my life for a change.”
“As does Flavianus and all his ilk,” Pesach snorted. “Back in Neapolis or Capria or Pompeii, no doubt, living quite comfortably off the gold they stole from us and countless other fools.”
“Perhaps you could let the poor man recover before you hound him for vengeance,” the healer snapped.
Pesach muttered something under his breath but had learned from experience there was much to be lost and little to be gained by arguing with Sekhet.
Aculeo looked out at the sunset, the breadth and depth of the coloured sky, the seagulls catching their wingtips on invisible currents of wind to sail towards the light of Pharos glowing in the distance. “I still have trouble wrapping my head around how Calisto stayed with Zeanthes, helping him. Like Dionysos and Ariadne, Zeanthes claimed.”
Sekhet smiled. “Yes, well, those two didn’t have such a nice ending either.”
“What do you mean?”
&
nbsp; “Don’t you remember your own mythology?” she asked in surprise. “Mad Dionysos, the god who was murdered, the god who murders. He travelled from one land to the next, killing as he went. Yet Ariadne loved him anyway, worshipped him. You know how Dionysos finally rewarded Ariadne for her loyalty? By ordering her to hang herself. He could have used his power to help his lover, yet he chose instead to use it to destroy her and all those who’d loved her as well.”
“But Zeanthes didn’t try to actually hang her. Her life was never truly in danger.”
“Only symbolically. They used others in her stead for that role as they tried to do with Tyche. But Calisto was Phrygian. The Phrygians worship Cybele, the Mother-Goddess, who rules over all the other gods. Dionysos included. Her devoted male worshippers castrate themselves, then hang themselves in her honour. Like Iovinus and Gurculio. Her sacrifices – her osti. Be grateful you escaped with both your life and your manhood intact. You really should be more careful with the friends you choose.”
They watched Idaia and Tyche, quiet now, hunched over their board game. “What shall we do with Idaia?” Aculeo asked quietly. “She helped Calisto lead countless women to their deaths.”
Sekhet sighed. “That poor child lived through a great deal of evil not of her making. She comes from a place where human sacrifice is normal practice. She was torn away from her family, forced into slavery, then raised by that evil pair. Can she truly be at fault for the role that was forced upon her?”
“I don’t fault her, only fear for her. For both of them,” Aculeo said as he watched Idaia move her ivory game piece around the little maze, until at last it entered the snake’s mouth. The end of the game – the afterlife. The children laughed in delight and clapped their hands. “What will become of them?”
“That’s for the Gods to decide, as for us all.”
Enjoy an Excerpt
from
by
D.L. JOHNSTONE
© D.L.Johnstone 2012, All Rights Reserved
Furies Page 35