Death in the Ashes

by Albert A. Bell, Jr.

  I slipped off my horse. “Let’s take a look upstairs.”

  Tacitus joined me and we climbed a set of stairs leading to part of the second floor.

  “Wooden stairs,” I pointed out. “That’s a sign of cheap construction. And the tenants could be trapped in the event of a fire.”

  But the wooden stairs were the only negative feature I noticed. We did not knock on any doors or try to look into any of the living quarters, but the place seemed clean and well-maintained. The fact that the stairwell did not reek of human waste put it in a class above most such buildings.

  “Would you say it shows a woman’s touch?” Tacitus said.

  “At the very least, the hand of an owner who cares about the place.” I ran a hand over the plaster. “This is fresh.”

  “How many people do you think live here?”

  “That’s hard to tell. A family will rent an apartment and then rent one room of it to another family. There could be four or five hundred people living here. The new owner would have to take a census, I suppose, to be sure he was getting full value.”

  Tacitus shook his head. “You’re starting to think about buying it, aren’t you?”

  “I can’t entirely rule out the possibility.”

  “It must be nice to ride past some random building one day and think, ‘Oh, I might buy that,’ like buying a loaf of bread.” He stroked his chin like a man pondering a weighty question.

  Tacitus’ fortune is sufficient to qualify him for membership in the equestrian order, but it comes nowhere near to equaling mine. I inherited my father’s estate and then my uncle’s, both of them quite large. In financial matters I am somewhat cautious—I prefer to think of myself as judicious—and I have added substantially to my holdings in the five years since my uncle’s death, partly by selling two insulae that were costing me more than they were earning. I regretted any instance when my wealth became an issue between Tacitus and me.

  “I’ve seen all I need to,” I said. “Let’s get back to Aurelia’s.”

  †

  We mounted our horses again and soon passed through the city gate, which could no longer be closed because of damage from the last earthquake. I prodded my horse to pick up the pace. In a few moments we were passing the Necropolis—which seemed to stretch halfway to Vesuvius. The road dipped a bit, making me feel that the tall monuments on either side were rising above a little valley. I was about to joke with Tacitus about whether he needed to step behind a tombstone and relieve himself again when something whistled past my head and the servant riding behind Tacitus cried out in pain.

  I turned to see the man clutching at a dart sticking out of his shoulder. Blood ran through his fingers and down onto his tunic.

  We had ridden into an ambush!

  The horses reared, throwing two of our men off and galloping away. I bent over, my face in my horse’s mane, as another dart flew over my head and clattered against a tombstone on the other side of the road. If we tried to ride out of the trap, we could be picked off one by one, and we couldn’t leave the men who had lost their horses. I had no choice.

  “Quickly, men! Dismount! Scatter among the tombs.”

  A shower of stones began to rain down on us from both sides. Tacitus’ horse reared when a dart struck him in the neck. I heard his leg snap as he fell to one side, nearly trapping Tacitus under him. The rest of us dropped from our horses and scrambled for the tombs on each side of the road. Tacitus and I dove behind the first monument we could reach, a low sarcophagus that wouldn’t offer protection for long. I pointed ahead of us and we crawled on our elbows and knees to hide behind a taller mausoleum. The spot offered better concealment but the arrangement of the tombs meant we were boxed in on three sides.

  “Any idea where they are?” I whispered.

  “None. They’re on both sides of the road, though.” His head jerked as he looked to each side and above us.

  Tacitus reached under his tunic and drew out his knife. I unsheathed my sword. Handle and all, it was the length of my forearm and sharper than a butcher’s cleaver. I hoped it would be to our advantage if our attackers assumed that we were typical unarmed aristocrats, separated from our servants, who—as luck would have it—had all found cover on the other side of the road, except for the one lying in the road, moaning and clutching his wound.

  We listened and tried to determine where scuffling noises were coming from. The tall marble tombs and the narrow passages between them distorted sounds, bouncing them around in all directions. A Necropolis is truly a city of the dead. We were hiding behind small-scale houses with the streets between them reduced to the appropriate width, and the streets were not laid out in a grid pattern. It was as confusing as being lost in the maze of streets and alleys that winds through Rome once you get away from the center of town.

  I was gathering my courage to peek over the top of our hiding place when I heard a voice that seemed to come from right around the corner from where we were.

  “I think they went in about here.”

  The depth of the voice made me expect a large man. My grip tightened on the handle of my sword as I held it slightly behind me, out of view, to save the surprise for the best possible moment. A cry of pain rang out from across the road. Tacitus and I exchanged a glance. One of ours or one of theirs? Our men, though not skilled fighters, were armed with knives. But those damnable darts could be thrown effectively from a considerable distance, as we had seen in the taberna.

  Metal clinked against marble and one of the would-be assassins stepped into view. He wasn’t as big as I expected, but his sword was large and heavy. He had the air of a former legionary. “Found ’em!”

  “Where are you?” the dart-thrower responded. Although I had heard only a few words from the men who tried to kidnap Aurelia, I recognized that voice, now that I heard it without the distraction of the crowd in the taberna. He was the man who had been holding Aurelia’s feet.

  “To your right, I think.”

  “On my way,” the disembodied voice promised.

  I concluded that there were only two men on this side of the road. I could see that the man clutching the sword in front of us had the small finger on his right hand, and the dart-thrower had shown that particular digit in the taberna, so neither of them was Sychaeus. If Sychaeus was involved in this attack, he must be on the other side of the road. If we could deal with these two, we would probably have good odds against those on the other side, as long as they weren’t throwing darts. We backed up against the tomb that blocked our retreat, and at the same time, protected us against assault from that direction.

  “Sniveling cowards,” the brute said, taking a step toward us. “Just like all you narrow-stripers. Two against one, but the odds are still in my favor.” Holding his sword with both hands, he drew it back over his head.

  I lunged and thrust my sword into his stomach all the way to the hilt. Angling it upward, I hoped to hit his heart. He gasped and looked down at it in surprise, his eyes bulging. I pulled the blade out and he sank to his knees. His weapon clattered to the ground behind him and a pool of blood gathered around him as he toppled over on his side.

  “Watch out!” Tacitus cried.

  The dart-thrower appeared on top of the house-shaped tomb to our left. “Bastards!” he snarled, hurling a dart.

  Tacitus yelped as the weapon struck him in the leg. Before I could react, the man threw another dart, at me. The thing struck me in the chest, hitting the Tyche ring. Deflected, it fell to the ground.

  The man heaved himself over the roof of the tomb and dropped in front of me, with a sword drawn. As he made his move, I picked up the dart and clutched it in my left hand and a little behind me, holding my sword out to draw attention away from my hidden weapon.

  “How did I miss you?” he sneered.

  “Do you want to try again?” I flung the dart at him. Underhanded and with my left hand, it was an awkward throw but accurate enough to strike him on the right shoulder.

  His reac
tion startled me. Panic spread over his face as he tore the dart out, making the wound even larger. “Oh, gods! No!” he gasped.

  Suddenly I realized—the darts had poisoned tips. Even with his minor wound, Tacitus was going to die if I didn’t do something right away.

  The dart-thrower sank to his knees, dropping his sword, and tried to suck at his wound, but he couldn’t get his mouth over it. I looked at Tacitus, clutching the wound in his thigh, his face pleading.

  “Gaius Pliny! It’s starting to burn.”

  I sheathed my sword. As unpleasant as the prospect was, I knew what I had to do. First I picked up the dart-thrower’s sword and heaved it over a tomb, then did the same with the first man’s weapon. I knelt and sucked as much blood out of Tacitus’ leg as I could hold in my mouth without swallowing or vomiting. When I spat it out and was about to resume, Tacitus cried, “Look out!” He pushed me away from him and rolled over in the opposite direction. The dart-thrower’s blow—with a knife he must have had hidden under his tunic—fell between us, the weapon clattering on the marble.

  “I’m going to kill you,” the man said, scrambling to his feet and breathing hard. “That’s what I was…paid to do. Then I’ll watch your friend die…while I die. Some consolation, at least.”

  “But not just yet,” I said, pointing behind him.

  “Do you think I’m that big a fool?” the dart-thrower said.

  “You are if you don’t drop that knife,” Novatus, the commander of the vigiles said, causing my attacker to jerk around.

  He found himself facing Novatus and three of his men, all with swords drawn. To judge by the sounds coming from across the road, other vigiles were rounding up the rest of the bandits. Novatus walked up to the man, and without a word, plunged his sword deep into his chest.

  †

  Leaving several of the vigiles to recover our horses and stand watch over the dead bandits, we borrowed their mounts and set out for Aurelia’s house. The sun was low over the bay by the time we arrived and got Tacitus and the wounded servant, Antullus, settled. Both were in considerable pain, sweating and beginning to babble. I was riding the same horse as Tacitus, holding him in front of me. Most of what he was muttering was incoherent, but I caught a few words about his father-in-law, Agricola. I just hoped he didn’t start talking about how much the two of them hated Domitian. I decided to keep close to him when we got back to the house. His delirious ravings could get us all into trouble if they came to the wrong ears.

  Philippa, taking her duties in the stable very seriously, met us even before Aurelia’s groomsman came out. “Where are our horses, my lord?”

  Since she’d been on the premises for only two days, I was amazed she could recognize that these weren’t our horses, something I wouldn’t have been able to do. As far as I can tell, a horse is a horse. “We were attacked. One of our horses was killed and the others ran away. We borrowed these from the vigiles. They’re looking for ours back up the road.”

  “These have been ridden hard, my lord,” Philippa said, patting my mount on the neck. “We’ll feed and water them.”

  When we got into the house I was more disappointed than surprised to find Bastet in charge. She had ridden back from the ruins with a servant who brought food and water to Calpurnius. In the morning she would return on a horse, so that she could come and go as needed. She had ordered Aurelia to stay in her bed and had virtually taken over the household in the few hours she’d been there.

  “Do you know what kind of poison was used, my lord?” she asked.

  “No, we don’t. I didn’t have time to ask the man any questions before Novatus here killed him.”

  The watch commander’s annoyance was evident. “As I told you on the way down here, sir, he made a motion toward me with his knife. You couldn’t see it because you were trying to help Cornelius Tacitus. I had no choice.”

  “It might have been just a spasm caused by the poison. He was dying and he knew it.”

  “I saved him some misery then, I guess.”

  “Never mind all that,” Bastet said. “If I knew what sort of poison he used, I might be able to make an antidote.”

  The last thing I wanted was for this witch-princess to put some concoction in Tacitus’ mouth, but I couldn’t let him die without trying something, no matter how futile or risky. “We did bring along the man’s bag,” I said. “He kept his darts in it, and there’s a small vial of some sort in here.”

  I gave the leather bag to the Nubian, who retrieved the vial, pulled the stopper out of it and sniffed it. Then she put a minute drop on the tip of her finger, touched it to her tongue and immediately spat it out. “Scorpion’s venom,” she said, wiping her tongue on the back of her hand, “with aconite mixed in. It’s powerful, but it takes longer to work than some poisons. I think I know what might stop it.” She took the vial and headed toward her room.

  “Well, if that’s all, sir,” Novatus said, “I’ll be going back. We’ve got a bit of a mess to clean up before dark. You’ve got our horses. We’ll keep yours when we round them up. Easier for everybody that way.”

  I offered my hand to close the deal. “All right, and thank you again for your help.”

  “Just sorry we didn’t get there a bit sooner, sir.”

  “Any time before we were dead was soon enough.” I hoped that was true for Tacitus. “Remember to keep an eye on Plautia’s insula. If Sychaeus was involved in this attack, he’ll go back there.”

  “I’ll do that, sir, and I’ll make an offering to Asclepius for his help in saving your friend and your servant.”

  “The gesture will be appreciated,” I said. No matter how useless.

  Novatus turned on his heel and left the garden.

  I entered Tacitus’ room, picked up a cloth and begin wiping his legs and feet. The wound where the dart had pierced his skin was inflamed, growing redder and spreading, even as I watched, it seemed. I heard him say, “Julia, Julia.”

  “That’s his wife,” I told the servant woman. “He doesn’t really know what he’s saying.”

  “Yes, my lord. A fever can make people say the strangest things. You can’t pay it any notice.”

  “Do you think he might survive?”

  “There’s really nothing we can do until Bastet finds a potion.”

  “Do you think she will?”

  The woman pulled up the blanket that Tacitus kept kicking off. “Yes, my lord. She has those skills.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  She looked at me, then turned her attention back to Tacitus. “My lord Calpurnius does. Now, if I may speak freely, my lord, you are in my way. Why don’t you wait outside? I’ll call you if there’s any change.”

  “For better or for worse.”

  “Any change at all, my lord.”

  I sat on a bench outside Tacitus’ room. Now that I was still, a wave of fear and sorrow washed over me at the prospect of losing Tacitus. In less than two years he had become one of the three most important people in my life. I could not imagine waking up and knowing that I would never again see my mother or Aurora, or Tacitus. I loved each of them in different ways, and my life would be diminished in different, but equal, ways by the loss of any of them.

  I put my head in my hands and began to weep.

  †

  A servant brought me the wine I had requested. With enough spices added to it, it was drinkable, as long as I reminded myself there was nothing better available in the house. Like the wine, the garden before me was a sad reminder of the deterioration of the house. It would cost money to procure a better vintage and it would cost even more money to restore the garden to what it must have looked like before the eruption.

  I was facing Aurelia’s room, which was still being guarded by two of my men. Given some calm, I needed to think through the events of the day and decide what they meant and what I should do next. Trying to blot everything out, I lowered my head and closed my eyes. When I opened them and looked up, Aurelia was standing in front of me, mak
ing adjustments to her blond wig.

  “I thought Bastet sent you to bed,” I said, moving over so she could sit beside me.

  “She thinks so, too. I want to know what’s going on, Gaius Pliny. Everyone says I shouldn’t know so it won’t affect the baby, but not knowing just makes me that much more anxious, and that can’t be good for the baby. Please tell me everything, no matter how bad it is.”

  And so I told her all I knew—starting with what I’d said before about Calpurnius being blackmailed, and going into detail about how much money he had paid the blackmailers and how little money they now had (and why they had to drink such wretched wine).

  She was quiet as I talked, her hand going to her mouth as the enormity of it hit her. “Do we have…anything left?”

  “Whatever you inherited from your father. I suppose Calpurnius hadn’t figured out how to get to that without you finding out, but he had run out of his own funds. He couldn’t pay the blackmailers last month.”

  “So they killed Amalthea, as a warning to him.”

  “I believe that, but I can’t prove it yet.”

  “I knew my husband couldn’t have done it. It must have been someone who knew this house well enough to know she would be out there every morning.”

  “You were aware of what she was doing?”

  Aurelia nodded. “I saw no harm in it. One can’t pray to too many gods.”

  “Amalthea’s prayers didn’t do her much good.”

  “It’s such a shame that she had to die merely as a warning.”

  “And two of the blackmailers tried to kidnap you for the same reason. One was a former servant of yours, a man named Sychaeus.”

  Her lip curled in distaste. “Calpurnius sold him about six months ago. A very disagreeable man. He was missing a finger, wasn’t he?”

  I nodded. “The small finger on his right hand.”

  “Was he the one who attacked you on the road?”

  “We don’t know. We killed two of them, but two escaped.”