INSURRECTIO

by Alison Morton

  We stopped after another two hours. The pre-dawn wind skipped across the top of the range picking at us in small ice-carrying blasts. Sheltering in the lee of the summit, backs against the snow-covered granite and feet pressed on the ice and gravel, we chewed energy biscuits and drank water. Marina was almost too tired to eat, but she swallowed the last of the meat and fruit with the rest of us. She was the first to stand ready afterwards and reached out for her bag. She seemed to have dug out some deep strength.

  ‘We have about five kilometres to go,’ I said, ‘and just over an hour before the sun gives enough light to spot us. It’s downhill, so we’ll get warmer, but we can’t relax. We may have to fight once we’re back in the plain.’

  Two faces – lined, red-eyed and grim – stared back at me.

  I tipped my head up. ‘Eamus.’

  *

  Within forty minutes, the navy blue sky with its slim crescent moon was broken at the horizon by a thin line of dawn. It was August and the full day would come very quickly, but we marched on. The gradient was dropping fast. The loose gravel turned and twisted under our boots. I worried that we were so tired, one of us might sprain, or worse break, an ankle. We slid into the shelter of the first trees before the full light could betray us. Marina dropped to the ground and closed her eyes. Her breath came in sobs. She tried to push the water bottle away but I made her take a few sips, before she curled up and closed her eyes.

  Callixtus and I crawled forward to the edge of the trees skirting the fields. It was hellishly hard dragging myself those few metres after such a night. I swallowed, struggling to get my breath back. If I stopped and laid my head on the ground even for a minute, I’d fall asleep.

  I panned around with the binoculars. The Castra Lucilla estate complex covered a large area with the pars domenica – the main house – on the south side. The farm office and dormitories for the farmworkers occupied the next section and the fructuaria – the production area where they processed butter, cheese and yoghurt, and packed and bottled everything – lay beyond that. The vinery was at the far end. Barns, milking parlour and all the poultry runs stretched out on the other side. No sign of life from the house, but it was normally closed when none of us was there. Now, shutters hung open on the front.

  ‘Anything?’ Callixtus asked.

  ‘Nothing. Not even a vehicle outside the farm office, no barn door open.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘It’s half-seven. People should be swarming all over the place. The fructuaria should be open and running – it’s market day tomorrow in Castra Lucilla and they need to pack all the produce today. We’ve still got wheat and spelt to cut. And then prep work for winter sowing.’ I swung the binoculars round to the fields. ‘And the cows should be in for milking.’

  I looked towards the town of Castra Lucilla, but it was too far for me to see clearly.

  ‘Either they’re waiting for us, your people had a big party last night or they’ve all buggered off.’

  ‘Thanks, Callixtus, that’s really helpful.’

  He grinned at me. I relaxed my shoulders and smiled back, but only for a second.

  ‘I think I can discount the third one, the second one’s possible, but if it’s that, the farm manager’s going to have an uncomfortable half-hour with me.’ I took another look through the glasses. ‘Unfortunately, given everything that’s happened, it’s likely it’s the first.’

  XII

  We crawled back to Marina. At least the physical effort absorbed some of my anger. Who were these bloody people who dared attack us, come onto my land and take my farm? The manager and her staff would try to keep the farmworkers calm, but they’d be terrified.

  ‘Our main problem is that if we walk in from here, they’ll see us coming,’ I said.

  The farmland was open but the estate complex was built on a slight rise. All very well in previous centuries as a defensive position, but now we’d be picked off by anybody with a sniper rifle before we’d gone ten metres.

  ‘What can we do, Mama?’

  ‘Oh, I have a little surprise they may not be expecting.’

  Callixtus jerked his head up. His eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of surprise, domina?’ His voice carried a resentful tone. Odd.

  ‘Come with me,’ I said.

  We trudged along the mountainside limit of the treeline about four hundred metres west of where we had dropped down from the mountains. I turned to face the mountains and squinted in the morning sun. In front of us grew dense scrub, dwarf birches and hawthorns sheltering between two hillocks.

  ‘You see that little gully?’ I said. ‘Between those two rocks?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s a blank end.’ Callixtus shrugged.

  ‘Not quite,’ I replied and headed straight for it. Peeling back the thorns and fighting our way through the brambles, we reached the base of the back wall. I turned and took three paces forward, stopped and stamped hard. Nothing happened. I jumped on the spot several times. Callixtus frowned at me – he must have thought I’d gone mad. Marina looked desperate, no doubt hoping I hadn’t. Several seconds passed. Then I felt it under my feet. I smiled at Marina to reassure her, then broke into a laugh. A straight black line approximately a metre wide appeared at the base of the rock. The rumbling grew and a grinding noise of a turning mechanism escaped from the gap now ten centimetres deep. Callixtus stepped back as the dark rectangle widened into a square.

  ‘What’s this?’ He stared down into the darkness with a look of dread as if it were the pit of Tartarus.

  ‘Our way in. Let’s go.’

  I fished the torch out of my backpack and started down the steps. Light footsteps behind me confirmed Marina was following. I squinted up into the morning light.

  ‘Callixtus?’ A pause. ‘Problem? You’re not claustrophobic, are you?’

  ‘No, no, domina, just surprised.’

  He followed us in slowly, almost reluctantly.

  I found the winding handle and gave the torch to Marina.

  ‘Shine the light on that pulley at the top and tell me when the weight is halfway down.’ I braced my feet and seized the handle. The wrist-thick rope looped around a series of pulleys with a massive weight hanging from the other end. After the halfway point, all I had to do was control the descent. To my relief, Callixtus recovered his wits enough to help me finish it.

  The trapdoor slid shut with a final thump. All I could hear was my own breathing, Marina’s gasps and some foot shuffling.

  ‘Marina, torch, please.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’

  The beam skittered over the rock surface as she passed it to me. I found a cable and traced it back to a wooden box on the wall. I opened it and threw the switch. Tiny glows like Saturnalia lights barely lit the underground chamber, but they showed us the passageway.

  ‘Where in Hades are we?’ said Callixtus.

  ‘Back in history. How far do you think it is to the farmhouse? On the surface, I mean?’

  ‘About a couple of kilometres.’

  ‘Thirteen hundred and fifty mille passum in old Roman miles, to be exact. Can you imagine how long it took to hack and blast that out of this rock?’

  ‘This goes all the way to the house?’

  ‘Mitelus’s great-granddaughter had the first one dug during the late fifth century as an escape tunnel,’ I said. ‘It was about half the length. But we hadn’t pushed the cultivated land out so far then.’

  He said nothing more until I stopped at the eight-hundred-passum wall mark. A few metres on, the tunnel widened out into a bulge where a wooden table and half a dozen folding chairs had been pushed against the wall. To their right stood two large cupboards and a wooden chest carved in crude country style. Everything was covered in dust.

  ‘We’ll stop here. We’re safe now. Nobody can track us this far underground, and we must have some rest. Juno knows what we’ll find at the other end.’ I pointe
d to the left. ‘You’ll find a bunk in that side cave, Callixtus, behind the curtain. Help yourself to blankets from the chest. Marina and I will take the one on this side. Leave the backpacks here – I want to sort through them before I turn in.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Marina, give me a hand to lift these.’

  She stared at me for a few moments, then bent down and heaved the first bag onto the table.

  *

  Six hours later, rested and fed on tinned fish and dry emergency rations, I felt boosted and ready to carry on. But as I held the emergency water bottle to my lips, my hand trembled. I changed hands. I couldn’t let Marina see me unnerved. In the dim light, she looked paler than usual, which emphasised her red-rimmed red eyes and the brown shadows under them. Callixtus gave an air of being ready, but the expression on his face was more set than usual. He merely grunted in reply to my greeting. I searched his face. He lowered his eyes and mumbled an apology.

  We walked along in silence, no spare energy for talking. Five hundred metres later, steps started rising.

  ‘We have to creep up here like granary mice avoiding the watch cat,’ I whispered. ‘Leave our packs here. We’ll come back for them later.’ If we survived. I fished in my backpack and held a black plastic handle, about fifteen centimetres long, in Marina’s direction. I pressed on the depression at one end and a steel blade sprang out.

  She flinched.

  ‘Here, take this.’ I folded the blade back into its handle. ‘I don’t expect you to fight aggressively – leave that to Callixtus and me. But you have to be able to defend yourself.’

  She nodded slowly, her eyes staring at the thing I’d laid in her hand.

  ‘I know it’s frightening, darling, but you have to make this one last effort. We might be a little busy once we get into the farm.’

  I stared at the door at the top of the steps. On the other side, it came out by the side of a stone bench at the back of one of the old abandoned barns. It looked like any other neglected storage cupboard door – peeling paint, warped, a distorted latch. I had inspected it regularly to make sure it stayed that way. When she was newly appointed, the farm manager hadn’t understood when I refused to let the old barn be pulled down and replaced by a modern watertight one. I’d explained it had been there for many hundred years and was historic. I’d seen doubt on her face and had hastily arranged for a national monuments surveyor to classify it as a protected building. A slightly bored professor came for a few hours, then left a bevy of students who dutifully photographed and documented every stone and beam. It was annoying, but after a week they went away and left the barn in peace. None of them had found the passage entrance beyond the false back.

  I doused the lights at the top of the steps and felt for the first catch. Of course, it refused to budge. I slid the point of my knife along the gap below and above the catch. Grains of dirt fell out to the ground but there was no give and absolutely no movement. I cursed myself for not checking before that the bloody thing opened from the passage side.

  The flash of light from the torch startled me.

  ‘Turn that off,’ I hissed.

  ‘With the door that fast nobody will see it,’ Callixtus whispered, irritatingly logical.

  ‘True,’ I had to concede. But now I could see the problem; the wood panel which formed the false back of the barn cupboard bulged towards us. The damp in the barn and the passageway had warped it enough to jam it. We daren’t risk making the least noise; we had to assume there were hostiles on the other side.

  ‘Okay, Callixtus, you and Marina press on the panel by the catch. Perhaps we can ease the pressure that way.’

  When I thought my fingers were turning numb with the effort of applying so much pressure, the latch gave way. The door creaked and more dust blew out from the jamb. I nodded at Callixtus. He hefted his weapon ready and stood behind me, the barrel of his hunting rifle pointed forward over my shoulder. A faint outline round the barnside door showed there was still natural daylight. I just hoped nothing big like a storage bin was in front of the door to block our exit.

  I took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Nothing. No machine noise, no voice, no footsteps even. I climbed through, Callixtus following with Marina. We waited for a few seconds. Out of the line of sight of the large barn door, we were still safe.

  ‘Farm office first,’ I said.

  We crept forward to the barn door, slid it open a metre, watching all the time. Still nobody. I glanced at my watch. 18:56. Normally, the staff would be sitting down to their supper. But what was normal? The farm office was across the yard. I sent Callixtus forward. He reached the door and to our amazement, it was unlocked. We were in within the next few seconds, but it was empty of people.

  ‘What in Hades is going on?’ I whispered.

  Callixtus shrugged, Marina said nothing. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears. I touched her forearm. ‘Hold it together for a little while longer.’

  She jerked her head in a tight nod, but I reckoned she was near collapse point.

  ‘Right, let’s see if there’s anybody in the dormitories.’

  We crept down the corridor and at the end turned right down the long corridor. Men on the left, women to the right. There were two doors to each dormitory, separated by a fire door.

  I beckoned to Marina and whispered in her ear, ‘I want you to stay here in the corridor, until I say to come in. Understand?’

  She stared at me with huge eyes, licked her lips, then nodded once. I pressed her hand and gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

  I put my head against the first women’s door and listened for a full minute while Callixtus guarded my back. Somebody was moving around in there. No, several somebodies. But no voices. I looked at Callixtus and tilted my chin in the direction of the door that led into the far end of the dormitory. He headed off there. I glanced down the corridor to him and signalled with three fingers. He nodded. On the count of three, I thrust open the door.

  A man in hunting clothes, his rifle lying on the table in front of him, rose to his feet. I ran full pelt at him and punched hard down on the bridge of his nose, breaking it. As he went to cry out, I spun him round and chopped his neck with the edge of my right hand, just catching him as he fell. I let his unconscious body slide to the floor as quietly as possible. Another movement. To my left. I grabbed my pistol, swung my arm in his direction.

  ‘Drop it. Now!’

  After five full seconds, he complied.

  I glanced around the room. Where in Hades was Callixtus?

  ‘Kick it towards me,’ I said. ‘Down on the floor, hands out.’ He shot me a sullen look, but slowly obeyed. I kept my weapon trained on him until Callixtus eventually entered through the far door. I frowned at him, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

  Several people started to talk; gasps and crying in reaction to the violence.

  ‘Quiet,’ I hissed. ‘Any noise will bring more guards.’ They fell silent immediately. There were nearly twenty women in a room with twelve beds.

  ‘Any ex-military here?’ I asked in a voice barely above a whisper. Four stepped forward; one was easily over fifty, another was badly bruised and nearly stumbled, but two looked reasonably fit. I pointed to the two male guards on the floor. ‘Secure these two and also gag the conscious one. Check their weapons and keep a lookout for any sign of trouble. If there’s an auxiliary medic here, check the unconscious one’s vitals, please. And keep the noise to zero.’

  I eased the corridor door open a few centimetres and waved Marina in. She went to speak, but I held my finger up to my lips. She blinked but said nothing. Inside, I eased her down to sit on one of the beds. She stared at me with huge eyes. I pressed her shoulder.

  Next, I looked down the far end of the dormitory and beckoned Callixtus to join me. He marched down the centre aisle, making no effort to move quietly. I opene
d the outward opening door to the small laundry room at my end and ushered him in. He was so confident he left his rifle, barrel end up, against the dormitory wall and entered the small room first. His mistake.

  ‘Sit down,’ I said and closed the door. I remained standing. ‘Would you care to explain a few things to me? Why you were so slow through that door, for instance? A simple infantry move – a first-week cadet could have done it.’ I waited, but he said nothing. ‘And why didn’t you bother to move quietly through the dormitory just now when you know we’re working covertly?’

  He hunched over, his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together. I almost couldn’t bear to ask the question.

  ‘So how long have you been working for the opposition?’

  He said nothing.

  I crossed my arms and leaned back against the washing machines. And waited.

  ‘How did you know?’ He spoke to the concrete floor.

  ‘I found it very strange that they’d reached that mansio before us and set up the ambush until I thought it through and came to the only conclusion possible. I hoped I was wrong, but your face confirmed it when I opened the concealed passage.’

  He shifted on the wooden bench. I flexed my feet to be ready to meet his attack.

  ‘Mercury knows I tried to protect you,’ he said, ‘in the riot, coming here. Even the new security at the house.’

  ‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘Did you still have a sense of obligation to your patron, of honour towards the Mitela family?’

  ‘They wanted me to kill you, but I wouldn’t. I made a bargain with them. I’d do what they wanted, but they had to promise not to kill you. Only proscribe and exile you.’