by David Drake
He stopped and put the mattock down. The light at this depth wouldn’t have been good even without Pulto leaning over the top, so Corylus tried the seam between stones with his fingers and found what he thought his eyes had told him: a slot wide enough for passage had been cut in the living rock, then closed with a fitted stone with a stone wedge above it.
“Pulto?” Corylus called. “Send the lantern down to me on a cord.”
Pulto only grunted in reply, but he jerked the basket up more abruptly than usual—a long task was better handled at a steady pace than by fits and starts. Moments later the lantern wobbled down, tied to the end of Pulto’s sash. They could have passed it directly from hand to hand, but not without searing somebody’s fingertips on the hot bronze casing.
Corylus set the lantern at an angle on the ground so that the light through its mica windows fell on the stones inset in the smooth shaft. He set the point of his pry bar, then used it to work the wedge sideways. When it bound, he blocked the widened crack with a pebble, then shifted the pry bar to the other side and levered the wedge the other way.
An inch of the wedge was clear of the wall. Corylus thumped it with the heel of his bare palm so that the pebble fell out, then gripped the stone with the fingertips of both hands and wriggled it back and forth while he drew it out. He hopped when it fell, but it landed between where his feet were anyway.
“What are you doing down there, boy?” Pulto asked with a rasp in his voice. He was worried, and that made him harsh.
“I think I’ve found what we’re looking for,” Corylus said. He didn’t say that he’d found an Etruscan tomb, because he knew that the information wouldn’t please Pulto.
As Corylus hoped, the larger slab tipped forward when the wedge was removed. He walked it awkwardly to the side, trying not to crush the lantern or trip over the wedge. Holding the lantern before him, he knelt to peer into the opening.
The chamber beyond was cut from the rock like the well shaft. It was about ten feet long but not quite that wide. Benches were built into the sidewalls. At the back, facing the entrance, was a chair that seemed to also have been carved from the limestone.
On the chair sat a bearded man with a fierce expression. He wore a white tunic with fringes of either black or dark blue and a heavier garment of deep red over his left shoulder, leaving the right side of his chest covered only by the tunic. On a gold neck-chain was an elongated jewel clasped by gold filigree at top and bottom.
“Master, what are you doing?” Pulto said. His voice echoed dully in the well. “Hold on! I’m coming down!”
“Stay where you are!” Corylus said, twisting his head backward as much as the tomb door allowed him. “I’m coming right back!”
He stepped forward, hunching; the floor was cut down so that the ceiling might have been high enough for him to stand, but he didn’t want to chance a bad knock in his hurry. He set the lantern on the floor, then took the jewel in his hands and started to lift the chain over the head of the bearded man.
The figure and his clothing vanished into a swirl of dust. A bracelet of braided gold wire clinked to the stone chair, then to the floor.
Corylus sneezed, then squeezed his lips together. He backed quickly out of the tomb, then dropped the chain over his own head as the easiest way to carry it. I’m not going back for the lantern, he thought.
“Pulto!” he said. “Drop me an end of the rope and snub it off. I’m coming up and we’re getting out of here!”
The rope sailed down; the basket was still attached to the handle.
“That’s the first thing you’ve said tonight that I agree with!” Pulto said. “By Hercules! it is.”
CHAPTER VII
Daylight through cracks in the shutters awakened Corylus. He sat up quickly, angry with himself. Ordinarily he awakened before dawn and—
Pain split his head straight back from the center of his forehead. He wobbled, sick and briefly unable to see colors. He whispered, “Hercules!”
“Swear by Charon, better,” said Anna as she hobbled over to him, carrying a bronze mug that she had been heating in a bath of water. “I’ve never seen anyone closer to dead but still walking than the two of you when you came in last night.”
She offered the mug. “Here,” she said. “Swallow it down.”
Corylus lifted the warm bronze cautiously. The odor made his nostrils quiver; he started to lower the mug.
“Drink it, I tell you!” Anna said. “D’ye think you’re the first drunk I’ve had to bring back to life in the morning? It’s been your father often enough; but I don’t think he’d be pleased to learn that my man, who he trusted, let you get into this state—and himself no better!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Corylus said obediently. He held his breath and drank the whole mugful at a measured pace, then set it on the side table, empty. Anna gave him a napkin. He looked at it puzzled, then sneezed violently into it.
“There,” said Anna with a satisfied smirk. “You’ll feel better now, or so I believe.”
Corylus lowered the napkin with which he had covered his mouth and nose. He did feel better, for a wonder. He would have thought that the sneeze would have shattered his head into more bits than the shell of a dropped egg.
“I meant to stop at the first jar,” he said contritely. “I must have had more than that to drink.”
“Aye, you must have,” Anna said, her tone still grim but her face showing a trace of humor—if you knew what you were looking for. “Well, it’s done and you’re back safely, no thanks to that fool husband of mine. Are you going to your class today, then?”
“If I…,” Corylus said. He got slowly to his feet as he spoke. Somewhat to his surprise, he found that he was all right except for a slight wobbliness when he straightened. “Yes, I will. I want to talk with Varus afterward anyway, and Master Pandareus too.”
A thought struck him. “Oh!” he said. “And we did find what you sent us for, or I think it was.”
He reached under his tunic. The chain wasn’t around his neck.
Anna gestured with her free hand toward the storage chest on the other side of the bed. The chain and the jewel wrapped in the net of gold wire were there. In a shaft of sunlight, the stone was a cloudy gray-green with very little sparkle.
“I took it off you,” she said. “When I got you out of that filthy tunic and sponged you before I put you to bed.”
Her grin suddenly widened. “As I’ve done your father half a hundred times. It takes me back, lad.”
Corylus reached for the jewelry, then paused and raised an eyebrow in question.
“Aye, take it,” Anna said. “Take it and wear it. I don’t know what it means or what it does, but I know it’s meant for a man.”
Corylus didn’t move. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Meant for a man?”
Anna grimaced. “I don’t have the words!” she said. Her voice was as harsh as he ever remembered her talking to him. “If a civilian asked me how you knew the shields on the far hill were Suebi and not Batavians, what would you tell him? You’d just know, that’s all. Well, I tell you, that jewel’s meant for a man; and whatever else I am, I’m not that.”
Corylus picked it up by the chain and carried it over to the window for better light. He threw open the shutters.
“It’s glass,” he said, looking at the scalloped fracture lines at one end of the stone. “Slag from a glass furnace, anyway.”
He held it up against the sky and squinted through it. “There’s something inside, but I can’t tell what it is,” he said.
Then, lowering the pendant with a triumphant grin, “No! It’s volcanic glass! But I still think there’s something inside it.”
“I tried to look,” Anna said. Corylus tried to hand it to her; she waved it away and said, “No, I don’t mean like that, so better light would show me more than the lamp did. Another way, boy. All I learned is that there’s something inside, all right, and that it doesn’t like women. I set it down then—”
“—and I stepped back, and I burned a little frankincense to Mother Lucina—”
A Greek would have called the goddess Hecate, but Anna was a Marsian born in the mountains a hundred miles south of Carce.
“—that I wasn’t any deeper in when I roused it.”
“Should I—” Corylus said. He stopped, lifting the pendant by its chain. He was seeing the complete object this time, not trying to peer into the depths of the cloudy glass.
He looked at Anna. “You said I should wear it, dear one,” he said. “If it’s dangerous…?”
She cackled without humor. “A sword’s dangerous, boy,” she said. “But not to you when you’re wearing it, I think. Nor is this, for you’re a man if ever a man was born. The dream that guided me…”
She shrugged.
“I can only trust my guides, master,” she said with a catch in her throat. Corylus realized that she was close to tears. “I would tear my own heart out if I thought it would help you, but it wouldn’t. I can only tell you what I am told, or what I anyway believe. And I pray that I’m right, because I would so rather die than you be harmed!”
Corylus dropped the chain over his neck and tucked the pendant, the amulet, under his tunic. Then he folded his old nurse in his arms. She felt as light as a plucked chicken. He felt a rush of love.
“I love you, little mother,” Corylus said. “You kept me safe as a boy, and you protect me still.”
He squeezed Anna again and stepped back, smiling. “Now, I’m already late,” he said. “I’ll pick up a roll on my way to class. We’ll deal with this business, whatever it is.”
Corylus quickly laced on his sandals. He was still smiling, but that was for show. He wished he could be more confident of what he had just told Anna; and he wished he didn’t feel that he had a vicious dog on the end of the chain around his neck.
Because despite Anna’s words, he wasn’t sure it was his dog.
* * *
HEDIA’S EXPRESSION REMAINED pleasant as the new doorman announced the arrival of Senator Marcus Atilius Priscus. In truth the fellow’s South German accent was so broad that if she hadn’t known who was invited for dinner, she wouldn’t be any wiser now.
Keeping her professional smile, she murmured to Saxa at her side, “Dear heart, we cannot keep Flavus on the front door until his Latin has improved. Not if we’re going to entertain senators as learned as Lord Priscus, at least.”
Flavus was a striking physical specimen, tall and blond and ripplingly muscular. Hedia could certainly appreciate the fellow’s merit, but she had never allowed appearances to interfere with her duty.
Hedia had never let anything interfere with her duty.
She was standing beside her husband as a matter of respect while he greeted his dinner guests, though she would not be dining with the men tonight. She didn’t have a party of her own to attend: she planned to dine in her own suite, either alone or possibly with Alphena. She hadn’t decided whether to issue the invitation, and she thought it likely that the girl would decline it if she did.
Varus wasn’t present, though he would be dining with Saxa and his guests. That wasn’t a protest, as it might have been with his sister in similar circumstances. The boy said he would work until dinner.
“Work” in his case meant that he would be reading something and taking notes. Hedia had recently looked through one of the notebooks Varus was filling, thinking that she should display interest in her son’s activities. She had found them either nonsensical or unintelligible, though no more so than the passage from Horace to which they apparently referred.
Hedia’s smile became momentarily warmer. Her son—stepson by blood but, in law and in her mind, her son—would never be the sort of man she socialized with; but he was a clever boy, and brave. Hedia had seen that the night in the Temple of Jupiter when Varus saved the world from fiery destruction.
Marcus Priscus waddled into the entrance hall, accompanied by a score of servants. There were no freeborn clients in his entourage. Sometimes a host would give his guests the option of bringing the number of diners up to nine with their own friends and hangers-on, but Priscus had not asked for this right and Saxa hadn’t volunteered it. Hedia knew her husband viewed the dinner as a chance to frame his magpie’s hoard of erudition with the solid scholarship of his guests and son.
“Welcome, my honored colleague!” Saxa called. “Your wisdom lights my poor house.”
“Welcome, Lord Priscus,” Hedia said, her voice a smooth vibrancy following her husband’s nervous squeak. “Our household gods smile at your presence.”
“Lady Hedia,” Priscus said, beaming at her. “I recall your father fondly. He would be delighted, I’m sure, to see how his daughter has blossomed.”
Priscus was badly overweight and nearly seventy, but his undeniable scholarship had not kept him from getting quite a reputation for gallantry in his younger days. A pity Varus isn’t more like him, Hedia thought. We might get along better if we had something in common.
Hedia murmured something appreciative to the guest, then turned to a deputy steward—it happened to be Manetho—and whispered, “Go to Lord Varus—he’s probably in the library—and tell him that the guests are arriving for dinner.” Manetho nodded and vanished toward the back stairs.
Candidus was marshaling the members of Priscus’ escort and leading them toward the kitchen where they would be fed with the household staff. There were probably as many more out in front, including litter bearers. Hedia was sure that Priscus hadn’t walked here himself from his home on the west slope of the Palatine Hill.
Her husband and Priscus were chatting, waiting for Pandareus and perhaps Varus as well before they went up to the outside dining area, overlooking the central courtyard. Instead of permanent masonry benches built into the walls, wicker furniture was brought up from storage and covered with goose down pillows covered with silk brocade whose ridged designs made the guests less likely to slip off than slick surfaces would.
“The learned Master Pandareus of Athens!” Flavus said, butchering the words even worse, if that was possible, than he had the senator’s.
The servant who whispered the names of those arriving was a wizened Greek from Massillia in Gaul. He was extremely sharp—Hedia had never known him to misidentify a visitor—and would have been a perfect doorman if he hadn’t had the face and posture of an arthritic rat. By Venus!, the trouble the gods caused for a woman who simply wanted to present her noble husband with the proper dignity.
Hedia smiled more broadly by just a hair. She wasn’t fooling herself, of course; but the experience of behaving normally for a woman in her position had thrown a little more cover over the figures of her nightmare.
The scholar entered, looking faintly bemused. He didn’t have an attendant, and Hedia could only assume that the tunic he wore was his best. One heard of rhetoric teachers becoming very wealthy, but Pandareus had clearly avoided that experience.
I must remember to check with Agrippinus to make sure that Varus’ school fees are paid.
Priscus greeted the teacher with obvious warmth. Varus had said that the men were friends despite the difference in their social position; this confirmed the statement.
Saxa glanced at Hedia and whispered nervously, “My dear? Do you suppose V-V…, my son, that is, will be joining us?”
“Yes, he’ll be—” Hedia said. She stopped gratefully as Varus entered from the office with an apologetic expression. Two servants were trying to adjust his toga on the move.
“The noble Senator Marcus Sempronius Tardus, Commissioner of the Sacred Rites!” Flavus boomed.
There was silence in the hall, at least from the principals. Servants continued to chatter like a flock of sparrows, of course.
“What’s this, Saxa?” Priscus said. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be inviting Tardus, not after that consular visit yesterday.”
He didn’t sound angry, though he probably felt that he should hav
e been informed of who the other guests were when he was invited. There were senators who certainly preferred never to set eyes on one another.
“I didn’t…,” Saxa said, looking stunned. He turned to Hedia. “Dear one, did you invite Tardus? That is, I’m not misremembering something, am I?”
“No, little heart,” Hedia said coolly. “I’m sure Lord Tardus will inform us of why he is gracing us with his presence.”
Tardus entered the hall with attendants, crowding it again. No toga-clad citizens accompanied him, but the three men closest to the senator were the foreigners whom Hedia had seen with him in the theater. Close-up they seemed even more unusual, especially the man with the stuffed bird pinned opposite to the roll of his long black hair.
“Greetings, Lord Tardus,” Saxa said. “You are welcome, of course, but I confess that I was not expecting to see you today.”
“I was equally surprised yesterday, Lord Saxa,” Tardus said. “But your visit reminded me that we were colleagues with similar interests which we might be able to cultivate together.”
Hedia didn’t recall ever meeting Tardus before, and if she had seen him casually in the Forum, he hadn’t lingered in her memory. He would have merited the term “nondescript” were it not that his toga was hemmed with the broad purple stripe of a senator. He had the reputation of being not only superstitious but involved in kinds of magic that were discussed in secret if at all.
Hedia’s smile was cold. She wasn’t the one to talk, of course; not after the task she had given Anna.
“Well, I…,” Saxa said, his words stumbling as he tried to understand the situation. “I’m pleased that you’re, ah, reacting in that fashion, Marcus Tardus, but in truth this isn’t a very good time … that is—”
“I see that you’re gathering for dinner,” Tardus said, nodding to the guests. The two senators and Varus wore their togas, showing that this was a formal occasion. “No doubt you’ll have private matters to discuss, so I’ll take myself away. Perhaps another time.”