The topmost branch of a pair of tall wooden crosses drifted past. Hortensia suppressed a little shudder of revulsion. She had a vivid memory of the previous summer when her mother had mysteriously insisted on the drapes to their carriage being drawn as they drove along the road. Impatient with the stuffy atmosphere this produced, Hortensia had stubbornly dragged them aside and been transfixed by the sight of a naked man hanging from a cross at the side of the road, his flesh raw and scorched from the sun, his broken body limp like one of the dolls she used to play with as a child. She’d had just enough time to register that the man’s tongue was lolling from his mouth and that his sightless eyes were rimmed with flies before her mother grabbed her round the waist and snatched the drapes shut again. Later, Quintus had gleefully told her the truth. The man was one of the rebel slave Spartacus’s army, whose survivors Crassus had ordered to be nailed up alongside the Appian Way. The crosses were empty now of course, the carcasses of those who had once hung from them rotted away to nothing, but no doubt Crassus wished to ensure that his purge of the runaway gladiators of Capua had not been forgotten. The entry of Crassus into Hortensia’s thoughts reawakened her sense of triumph and she was allowing herself some satisfied contemplation of his current predicament when the carriage jolted and the landscape outside came to an abrupt halt.
Hortensia waited, unconcerned, assuming that they were pausing to allow a wider vehicle to edge past, or to make way for a cohort of soldiers returning to Rome from the port of Brundisium. But the absence of any sounds that might signal such an approach and a battery of loud cursing from Glaucus, her father’s coachman, prompted her to sit up and look through the opening to the driver’s seat.
“What’s the matter?” she called out.
Glaucus slung himself around and waved an arm in a gesture of impatience. “Stupid mules won’t go, domina.” Over Glaucus’s shoulder, Hortensia could see the rearing head of one of the two animals who pulled the carriage. Its ears were set flat either side of its poll, its eyes rimmed with white. “They just stopped, but there’s nothing that should scare them. It’s like they think there’s a ghost in the road.”
The novelty of this thought brought a look of slight nervousness into his eyes but he flapped some more with his arms and poked their soft rumps with his whip, still to no avail. Hortensia watched as one of the attendant grooms rode into view, dismounted and grabbed the harness underneath the off-side mule’s chin, attempting to urge it forward. But instead the mule began to retreat skittishly. Hortensia, who was still sitting bolt upright, had to grab the side of the vehicle to steady herself. As hard as the groom pulled, the mules stubbornly resisted.
A tiny voice of worry whispered in Hortensia’s ear, though she could not have said why at the time. It struck her that the traffic on the road had thinned out and that they had lost touch with the carriages that had been just ahead of them when they left Rome. The last changing post had been passed some time ago and there were no houses or buildings on this section of the road, which instead was flanked with a thick pinewood on one side and high, lonely tombs on the other. Quintus used to try his best to scare her with the same ghost tales which were now giving Glaucus pause for thought – of discontented souls emerging from their graves and setting upon passers-by, or the spirits of dead legionaries being seen marching toward Rome. His efforts were always in vain. Hortensia was unmoved by such stories and not for a moment did she think there was any truth in them. Yet there was something about the wide, echoing silence all around them that she found eerie, and she felt uncomfortably foolish recalling her insouciance in the face of Rixus’s warnings about the threat of Cilician pirates on the road.
The cry of an eagle lanced across the pale sky overhead, making her jump, but just as quickly quiet was restored, disturbed only by the sound of the mules’ hooves pawing and scraping at the smooth paving stones. Then came a long whistling sound, as though another bird of prey were soaring above them, followed by a surprised exclamation from the groom at the head of the mules. Hortensia watched uncomprehendingly as the man sank out of her sight and then screamed as a second arrow buried itself with a crunch in Glaucus’s neck, and the coachman too slumped from view, his hand raised uselessly to the bubbling wound.
Panic wrapped its hot fingers around Hortensia’s heart. The arching canopy of the carriage blocked her view of what was going on but she could hear scuffling outside, the scrape of metal on metal, and she could feel the vehicle beginning to tilt precariously as the terrified mules, freed from the check of Glaucus’s hand, began to shy off the main road onto the dirt track alongside. Desperately, she tried to yank up the thick awning from the near side of the carriage in the hope of being able to reach the shelter of the wood. But just as she felt the ties of the heavy material begin to give way, a pair of hands grabbed her waist and tugged her backwards. Hortensia couldn’t see her assailant but even if she hadn’t been anticipating the attack, she would have known who it was by their bitter scent. A damp hand wrapped itself around her mouth and Tiberius’s voice hissed breathlessly in her ear.
“Now. Let’s not be too hasty. You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
Hortensia kicked back with her heels but felt Tiberius pinioning them together with his own. She opened her mouth and tried to bite down on the fleshy hand clamped against her mouth but a vicious tugging on her long hair forced her head upwards and a cry of pain escaped her throat.
“You need someone to break you to bridle, that’s all.” Tiberius was lying half on top of her now, his weight pressing her body deep into the soft mattress. Hortensia could feel his breath on her cheek and tried to turn away, closing her eyes as she did so.
“That’s right. Relax. You’ll only excite me if you struggle. And right now we need to be very clear-headed, both of us.”
The precarious, juddering motion of the carriage had not abated but Hortensia could hear voices close by and she felt the wheels turn suddenly and purposefully to the left. Tree branches scraped against the roof and the sides, raking deep patterns into the soft canopy as the carriage was guided into the forest.
FABIA GAVE A nervous start as she heard a murmured word at her shoulder. She had been staring into the dark dancing flames of the hearth, her fingers playing abstractedly with a fold of her white priestess’ gown, much preoccupied with her role in the events of the past three days. But now she realized that her period of duty had come to an end and stood up so that the next priestess could take her seat at the hearth. She made her way along the passage leading from the sanctuary, emerging into the peaceful oasis of the palace courtyard, and walked slowly up a staircase to the light, airy room she occupied on the second floor of the Vestals’ living quarters. It was lit by a single, half-melted candle and simply-furnished with nothing more than a sleeping couch and white woollen blanket, a wooden clothes box for her robes and a stand supporting a large marble basin of water which she and her fellow priestesses were commanded to use for frequent ablutions. Fabia twisted her veil into a knotted skein behind her before dipping her hands into the basin and carefully flicking cold water over her face.
A small pitcher of oil stood beside the basin and she poured some out into her hands, rubbing hard between her rigidly splayed fingers. As she leaned over the basin to rinse them, she saw a white shape flicker in the water’s reflection and turned round to find Felix standing immediately behind her.
“Felix!” she expostulated indignantly. “What are you doing here? You know you’re not allowed along this corridor, we have told you any number of times. You have to stop peeping or we’ll tell Cornelia and she’ll ask the Pontifex to have you sent back to the orphan house.”
She groped for a linen cloth and pressed it to her face, trying to calm her breathing as she felt the water being absorbed from her skin. When she looked up again, she expected to find Felix looking abashed and seeking forgiveness as usual with one of his beseeching smiles. But instead there was a curious blandness to his expression, belied only by
a watchful keenness about his eyes.
“What is it?” she asked uncertainly. Then her eye was caught by the glint of silver in his hand. She stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, recognizing the special knife kept in Cornelia’s chamber and used for slitting the throats of sacrificial beasts. Her gaze snapped back to his face and she saw that the smile was there now but not a trace of its usual boyish sweetness was visible.
“You shouldn’t have interfered,” he said in his soft voice, shaking his head slightly. “I knew it was you all the time. You thought I didn’t see you. But I did.”
Fabia shook her head in dawning horror as she backed slowly away, clutching the sides of the basin stand as she put it between herself and Felix. He didn’t make a move to stop her but raised the knife, flexing it in his fist, a glow of childish satisfaction flaring in his eyes as he saw the effect this had on her.
“I bet you wish you hadn’t told that bitch you’d help her now, don’t you? I saw you sneaking through the door into the sanctuary just before you all went to the theater yesterday and I saw you sneaking back. I waited for you.”
Still she didn’t understand. “Felix, you don’t know what’s been going on. I’m sure you think you’re doing the right thing but you have to let me explain, I promise I would never have deceived anyone but there was going to be such terrible trouble …”
“Don’t know what’s been going on?” His face was suffused with gleeful incredulity. “You stupid whore. I know more than you do.” He took a step toward her, the knife in his hand catching the light from the candle in the corner.
“I swear if you come any closer I’ll scream.” Her panicked voice caught in her throat as she struggled to get the words out. “You know what they’ll do to you if you so much as touch me, Felix, they’ll tie you up in a sack and throw you in the Tiber.”
“What, just like I helped throw that bitch friend of yours?”
Fabia’s eyes dilated and she gazed at him while he beamed with delighted pleasure.
“She made a lovely big splash,” he crooned. “Like a sow flopping in the mud.”
She shook her head, terror and disbelief contorting her pale, heart-shaped face. “It can’t have been you! You killed Helena? You stole Pompey’s will? But why …?”
“Of course not, you dumb cow. What do I care about some politician? But I have a new master now – one who trusts me with his greatest secrets. It was me who let him into the Temple sanctuary, and now he will reward me with anything I want.”
He advanced purposefully and the pitch of her voice escalated.
“I’ll scream! I told you I would scream and I will.”
“Scream all you want,” he said mockingly. “It won’t matter. In a few hours, my master’s word will be the only one that counts in Rome. Your bitch friend is probably dead already – if my master’s done with her. As for you, they’ll say you killed yourself just like Helena, and call you a whore too. After all –” he shifted his grip on the knife in his hand “– it’s not as though you haven’t been called one before, is it?”
He lunged too quickly for her to react and the terrified cry that escaped her was one of anticipation. But his knife caught in the voluminous drapes of her gown and grazed her flesh instead of burying itself in her ribs. His thin white arm came back again but with her good hand she overturned the marble basin and he was forced to jump backwards to stop it toppling on his feet. Clutching her side where the blood was already beginning to seep through her dress she tried to run to the door but her legs would not carry her and she slipped and fell to her knees on the rough stone floor. Sensing Felix’s shadow above her, she quickly hurled herself forward and rolled under the low sleeping couch, pulling up her knees as she felt Felix trying to stand on her ankles and pinion her down. With her back pressed against the cold wall of her cell, she curled herself up into a ball, kicking wildly at Felix’s grasping hands as he reached in and tried to grab hold of any part of her flailing body. After a few frenzied seconds, Fabia felt his fingers wrap around her bare calf and his grip tighten. The stone floor began to move underneath her, scraping agonizingly against her injured side, and she grabbed the underside of the couch, clinging on so hard that it began to drag across the floor too.
Just as she realized that her grip was not strong enough to resist another violent tug from Felix, there was a loud, hollow thud. The tightness around her calf slackened and she opened her watering eyes to see the top of Felix’s head now lying at an awkward angle in the space between the couch and the floor, his thin silky hair splayed over his eyes, the silver knife partially concealed beneath the lifeless fingers of his left hand. To the right of his prostrate body was the gently swaying hem of a long white robe beneath which she could just see a pair of sandaled feet. Crawling forwards and peering out from underneath the bed, Fabia looked up to see the tall figure of Cornelia looming overhead, the thick wooden fire stick normally used to kindle the hearth in her room clasped across her body at an angle like the weapon of a warring goddess.
“I knew I should have complained about him to the Pontifex,” she cried wrathfully. “But you girls were all so soft-hearted over him, insisting that he was just an innocent boy. Well I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
She dropped the fire stick with a clatter as Fabia dragged herself out from under the bed, leaving a red smear on the floor. Still lying on the floor, the wounded priestess prised open Felix’s loosely curled fingers and extracted the knife. Cornelia stared at it in horror.
“That’s the knife from my chamber. You’re bleeding! In the name of the gods my dear, what has he done to you?”
Fabia stood, wincing as she clutched her side but with a determined look on her face. “It’s only a cut, domina, it doesn’t signify. We must go to the villa of Servilius Caepio at once.”
“But why?” asked Cornelia in bafflement.
“She has put herself in danger. Felix is the least of our worries. Please, domina, we have no time to waste.”
XXXII
HORTENSIA’S SCALP BURNED WHERE HER HAIR HAD BEEN VICIOUSLY pulled and as she came to from her faint, she had to close her eyes once more against the insistent drumming of blood in her head. Waves of nausea and fear flooded over her, scrambling her brain. Her nostrils were full of the smell of pine-sap from the forest outside and another unpleasantly familiar scent, bitter and green. She felt something gently brushing against her head and cringed as she realized that it was Tiberius’s hand, his fingers dislodging the flowers so meticulously woven into her hair by Elpidia. Opening her eyes just enough to see his thin, scarred face swimming into focus above her, she realized she was lying on her back, staring up at the vaulted canopy of the carriage. A tightness around her wrists and ankles was soon explained, and a length of cloth had also been wound around her head and mouth, preventing her from speaking. She stared warily at her captor, who was looking down at her with an expression of satisfied greed.
“Apologies for any discomfort, my dear, though I confess it’s been very pleasant, watching you sleep a little while. I hope this isn’t too tight?” He plucked at the cloth stretched across her cheek. “You know I enjoy listening to you almost as much as looking at you. But you’d be too tempted to draw attention to our presence here. We’re only a few feet from the main road even if no one will see us until we want them to.”
He correctly interpreted the flicker of her eyes toward the opening in the canopy.
“Yes, your coachmen and other companions are dead, I fear. You’ll appreciate the necessity. A few of my men are outside, keeping an eye on the traffic. But we have an hour or two yet. So what shall we talk about in the meantime?” He wound one of her curls around his finger, smiling as she tried to tug her head away.
“You mustn’t feel too foolish, my dear. You did very well for a beginner. Your only mistake – and that of your friends in the Temple of Vesta – was in assuming that I was quite so inept a player as Crassus. Clever of you to find the forger. A mistake on my part in
fact, letting Crassus handle his disposal. One can only hope he’ll make a better fist of governing by himself. I was rather hoping to be able to fade into the background by that point though I see that I may have to take a hand now and then. You’re probably wondering why I even took on so clumsy a partner in the first place,” he mused in a philosophical tone before chuckling as she mutinously shook her head from side to side.
“Money, you think? Well, maybe. Money’s a nice thing to have. I enjoy it as much as the next man. Particularly if the next man’s your father.” He studied her face for a reaction and smirked with pleasure.
“That was a little unfair of me, I admit. Your father has proved a more stubborn foe than either Crassus or I expected. Did Petro tell you that I ran into Hortensius doing business with him in that squalid tower block of his in the Subura? It wasn’t long before I first met you, at Crassus’s games – do you remember that? An embarrassing moment for Hortensius. He feared then, of course, that I would expose him. It’s always been an open secret that your father doesn’t exactly fight fair in some of his trials, but to be able to offer evidence of it …well that would be a coup. I admit, I thought that all I had to do was to threaten your father to make him compliant. That’s why I sent him one of those rather embarrassing letters Petro gave us. Both Crassus and I assumed your father would by then be so terrified of losing the reputation he’d built for himself that he would pledge himself to whatever scheme that was proposed. But I underestimated Hortensius. Just as I underestimated you, my dear. Your father gave me to understand by return post – in his own inimitable way! – that he considered me a cockroach scurrying through the rubbish tip of humanity and that if I chose to expose him, it was my own affair.”
Rivals of the Republic Page 23