Iaia had collected many beautiful things in the course of her career ��� finely crafted tables and chairs, small sculptures so delicately moulded and painted they seemed almost to breathe, precious objects made of glass, ivory figurines, and the paintings of other artists as well as her own. These things were displayed about the house with a great sense of harmony and an unfailing eye for beauty. No wonder she had been so disparaging of Lucius Licinius’s taste in paintings and statues.
It was my nose that led me to the room where Iaia and Olympias created their pigments. I followed a strange medley of odours down a hallway until I came to a chamber cluttered with pots, braziers, mortars and pestles. Stacked all about the room were dozens of clay jars, some large, some small, all labelled in the same hand that had signed the portrait of Gelina. I opened the lids and examined the various dried plants and powdered minerals. Some of them I recognized ��� brown-red sinopis made from rusted Sinopean iron; Spanish cinnabar the colour of blood; dark purple sand from Puteoli; blue indigo made from a powder scraped off Egyptian reeds.
Other jars seemed to contain not pigments but medicinal herbs - black and white hellebore ground to a powder, poisonous but having many uses; the holosteon or ‘all-bone’ plant (perversely named by the Greeks because it is entirely soft, just as they call gall ‘sweet’) with its slender, hairlike roots, good for closing wounds and healing sprains; white lathyris seeds, good for curing dropsy and drawing away bile. I was just replacing the lid on a tiny jar full of aconitum, also called panther’s-death, when someone cleared his throat behind me. The door slave watched me disapprovingly from the hallway.
‘You should be careful before you stick your nose in the jars,’ he said. ‘Some of the things inside can be very poisonous.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘like this stuff. Aconitum - they say it sprang from the mouth foam of Cerberus when Hercules pulled him up from the Underworld. That’s why it grows near openings to the Underworld, like the Jaws of Hades. Good for killing panthers, I’m told … or people. I wonder why your mistress keeps it.’
‘Scorpion stings,’ the slave answered curtly. ‘You mix it with wine to make a poultice.’
‘Ah, your mistress must be very wise about such things.’
The slave crossed his arms and stared at me like a basilisk. I slowly replaced the jar on the shelf and left the room.
I decided to take a walk along the cliffs beyond the village. The afternoon sun was warm, the sky was crystal. A progression of clouds scudded along the blue horizon, and overhead gulls circled and shrieked. The fog that had blanketed the coast an hour before had vanished. The Sibyl of Cumae began to seem unreal, like the vapours that rose from Lake Avernus, as if all that had happened since we left Baiae that morning were a waking dream. I breathed deeply of the sea air and was suddenly weary of the villa in Baiae and its mysteries. I longed to be in Rome again, walking through the crowded streets of the Subura, watching the gangs of boys who play trigon in the squares. I longed for the secluded quiet of my own garden, the comfort of my own bed, and the smell of Bethesda’s cooking.
Then I saw Olympias climbing up a narrow trail from the beach. In one hand she carried a small basket. She was still quite distant, but I could see that she was smiling - not the ambiguous smile that she wore in Gelina’s villa, but a true smile, radiant and content. I also saw that the hem of her short riding stola was dark, as if she had been wading in water up to her knees.
I looked beyond her and tried to imagine where she had come from. The trail she was taking vanished from sight among a tumble of rocks, and I could see no beach at all at the water’s edge. If she wanted to gather shells or sea creatures, there must surely be better and safer places in the vicinity of Cumae.
As she drew nearer I hid behind a stone. I circled behind it, trying to find a way to watch her without being seen, and noticed a movement from the corner of my eye. A hundred paces away I saw what might have been my mirror image, had I been wearing a dark hooded cloak and worn a long pointed beard. The philosopher Dionysius stood just as I did, poised behind a rock on the edge of the cliff, furtively watching Olympias climb up the hillside.
He did not see me. I moved slowly around the stone, concealing myself from Olympias and Dionysius both, and then scurried away from the cliff until I was out of sight. I hurried back to Iaia’s house and rejoined Eco on the terrace.
Olympias arrived a few moments later. The door slave spoke to her in a hushed tone. Olympias stepped, into another room. When she reappeared some moments later, she had changed into a dry stola and no longer carried her basket.
‘Was your visit to the Sibyl fruitful?’ she asked, smiling pleasantly.
Eco frowned and averted his eyes. ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘We’ll find out on the way back to Baiae.’
Olympias looked puzzled, but nothing could dampen her buoyant mood. She walked about the terrace, caressing the flowers that bloomed in their pots. ‘Shall we go back soon?’ she asked.
‘I think so. Eco and I still have work to do, and Gelina’s house will no doubt be in much confusion, such as always occurs on the day before a great funeral.’
‘Ah, yes, the funeral,’ Olympias whispered gravely. She nodded thoughtfully, and the smile almost faded from her lovely Lips as she bowed her head to smell the flowers.
‘The sea air agrees with you,’ I said. She looked more beautiful than ever, with her eyes shining brighdy and her golden hair swept back by the wind. ‘Did you take a walk along the beach?’
‘A short walk, yes,’ she said, averting her eyes.
‘When you came in the door a moment ago, I thought I saw you carrying a basket. Gathering sea urchins?’
‘No.’
‘Shells?’
She looked uneasy. ‘Actually, I didn’t go to the beach.’ The sparkle in her eyes became opaque. ‘I walked along the ridge instead. I gathered some pretty stones, if you must know. Iaia uses them to decorate the garden.’
‘I see.’
We left shortly thereafter. As we walked through the foyer towards the door, I saw that Olympias had not bothered to conceal her basket when she entered but had left it in plain sight in the corner opposite the door slave’s stool. While Olympias stepped through the door into the sunlight, I lingered behind. I stepped towards the basket and lifted the cover with my foot. There were no stones within. Except for a small knife and a few crusts of bread, the basket was empty.
The passage through the stone maze and across the bald, windy hills seemed quite different in the bright sunshine, but when we began to enter the woods around Lake Avernus I sensed the same atmosphere of uncanny seclusion that I had felt before. I looked back occasionally, but if Dionysius followed he kept himself out of sight.
It was not until we came to the precipice that I told Olympias I wanted to stop. ‘But I showed you the view already,’ she protested. ‘You can’t want to see it again. Think what a beautiful day it must be down in Baiae.’
‘But I do want to see it,’ I insisted. While Eco found a place to tether the horses, I located the beginning of the path on the left side of the slab, just as the Sibyl had described. The opening was obscured by overgrown brush and old branches, and the path itself was faint and disused. There was no sign of fresh footsteps in the fog-dampened earth, not even the mark of a deer. I pushed through the brush with Eco behind me. Olympias protested but followed.
The path descended in sharp switchbacks over barren, rocky ground. The odour of sulphur grew ever stronger, borne on a wave of hot, rising air, until we were compelled to cover our faces with our sleeves. At last we found ourselves on a wide, shallow beach of yellow mud. The lake was not a uniform liquid surface, as it appeared from above, but a series of interconnected pools of sulphur overhung by clouds of vapour and separated by bridges of rock that might have been used to traverse to the other side, if a man cared to take the risk and could survive the heat and the smell. The stench of the bubbling pits was almost overpowering, but I thought I detected an e
ven more unwelcome odour borne on the reek.
I looked up. We stood almost directly below the shelf of rock from which we had descended. In the face of the cliff I could see no cave or any other sign of shelter. I shook my head, more dubious than ever of the Sibyl’s word.
‘How can anyone possibly meet us here?’ I grumbled to Eco. ‘I’d sooner expect to see the Minotaur come strolling up this beach than one of Gelina’s escaped slaves.’ Eco gazed up and down the beach, as far as the obscuring mists allowed. Then he raised his eyebrows and pointed at something at the water’s edge only a few feet away.
I had seen the thing already and had taken no notice of it, thinking it was only a piece of driftwood or some natural detritus thrown up by the lake. Now I looked at it more closely, and realized with a shock what it must be.
Eco and I stepped cautiously towards it, with Olympias following. At one time most of the thing had been submerged in the pit, where the greater part of it had been eaten away by the boiling, caustic sludge. The remains were drained of colour, spattered with mud, and rapidly beginning to decay. We looked at what was left of a human head attached to shoulders still covered by bits of discoloured cloth. The face was turned downward into the mud. On the back of the corpse’s head a ring of grey hair swirled around a bald spot. Eco stepped back in fright and stared into the lake beyond, as if he thought the thing had emerged from the pit rather than fallen into it.
I found a stick and prodded at the shoulders to turn the thing over, at the same time keeping my nose covered. It was not easy; the flesh of the face seemed to have become melted somehow into the mud. When at last I succeeded, the sight was hard to bear, but enough of the features remained for Olympias to recognize him. She drew in a shuddering breath and wailed into her sleeve: ‘Zeno!’
Before I could think of what to do with the thing, Olympias decided for me. With a piercing shriek she stooped, picked up the head by its remaining hair and cast it into the lake. It flew through the mists, causing them to furl and flutter in its wake, and landed not with a splash but with a slap. For an eerie moment time stopped and the head remained afloat on the bubbling cauldron. A hissing vent of steam opened beneath it. Through the vapour I thought I saw the eyes of the thing open and peer back at us, like a drowning man looking desperately to those on shore. Then it sank beneath the mud and vanished altogether.
‘Now the Jaws of Hades claims him for good,’ I whispered to no one, for Olympias was mnning headlong back to the path, tripping and weeping, and Eco was on his knees, vomiting on the beach.
Part Three
Death in a Cup
XIV
‘Will this day never end?’ I peered at the ceiling above my bed and rubbed my face with both hands. ‘My backside will ache tomorrow from all this riding. Up hill and down, through the woods and across the wastes.’ I babbled, the way that weary men do when given a chance to rest in the course of a long day and they find themselves too overwrought to relax. It might have helped if I closed my eyes, but whenever I did I saw the horribly decayed face of Zeno staring at me from a gaping mouth of flame.
‘Eco, could you pour me a cup of water from that ewer on the windowsill? Water!’ I slapped my forehead. ‘We still have to find someone who can dive down into the shallows around the boathouse to see what was dropped from the pier last night.’ I sat up to accept the cup from Eco, and peered past his shoulder through the window. The sun was still up, but not for long. By the time I found Meto, assuming he was fit for the task, and trundled down to the water’s edge, the shadows would be growing longer and the evening chill would have begun to settle. We needed bright sunlight piercing the water if we were to find something amid the rocks on the bottom. The task would have to wait.
I groaned and rubbed my eyes - then quickly snatched my hands away when the face of Zeno loomed up before me.
‘Not enough time, Eco, not enough time. What’s the point of all this scurrying about when we can never hope to get to the bottom of things before Crassus has his way? If only Olympias hadn’t cast the head into the lake and then raced back to the villa alone, we would at least have had something to show Crassus ��� proof that we had found one of the slaves. But what would that have served? Crassus would see it as just another proof of Zeno’s guilt - what better way for the gods to show their fury at a murderous slave than for Pluto himself to swallow the miscreant feet first?
‘For all our work, all we have are questions, Eco. Who attacked me on the pier last night? What was Olympias up to today, and why was Dionysius following her? And what part does Iaia play in all this? She seems to have some agenda of her own, but towards what end, and why does she play her part behind a veil of secrecy and magic?’
I stretched my arms and legs and suddenly felt as heavy as lead. Eco dropped onto his bed, his face turned toward the wall. ‘We shouldn’t he here any longer,’ I murmured. ‘We have so little time. I still haven’t spoken to Sergius Orata, the businessman. Or Dionysius, for that matter. If I could catch the philosopher off his guard …’
I closed my eyes - for just an instant, I thought. Around me it seemed that the room itself sighed wearily. Perched atop the villa with an east-facing terrace, it captured the heat of the morning and stored it all through the day, but now the walls began to give up their warmth. A coolness seeped in from the window and pervaded the air. The back of my body, pressed into the bed, felt deliciously warm, while my hands and feet were slighdy chilled. I could have used a light blanket, but I was too tired to bother. I lay on the bed, exhausted, alert to every sensation and yet beginning to doze.
The dream began in the bed on which I lay, except that I seemed to be at my house in Rome, for I lay on my side with Bethesda pressed against me, face to face. With my eyes closed I ran my hands over her warm thighs and up her belly, amazed that her flesh was still as firm and supple as when I first bought her in Alexandria. She purred catlike at my touch; her body writhed against mine and I felt myself grow achingly stiff between the legs. I moved to enter her, but she stiffened and pushed me away.
I opened my eyes and saw not Bethesda but Olympias looking back at me with aloof disdain. ‘What do you think I am,’ she whispered haughtily, ‘a slave, that you could ever use me so?’ She pushed herself up from the bed and stood naked, bathed in the soft glowing light from the terrace. Her hair was a golden aureole about her face; the full, sleek curves and the subtle hollows of her body formed a beauty that was almost unbearable to look at. I reached for her and she started back. I thought she mocked me, but suddenly she covered her face with her hands and ran weeping from the room, slamming the door behind her.
I rose from the bed and followed. I opened the door with a sudden foreboding, and felt a breath of hot air on my face. The door opened not into a hallway, but onto the shelf of rock above Lake Avernus. I could not tell whether it was day or night; everything was lit with a harsh, blood-red glow. On the edge of the rock a man sat in a low chair, draped in a crimson military cape. He leaned forward, his chin on his hand and his elbow on his knee, as if he watched the progress of a battle far below. I looked over his shoulder and saw that the whole of the lake was a vast pool of belching flames, filled from shore to shore with the writhing bodies of men, women, and children trapped waist-deep in the burning mud. Their mouths were wrenched open in agony, but the distance muffled their screaming so that it was like the roar of the sea or the sound of a crowd in an amphitheatre. They were too far away for their faces to be distinct, and yet among them I recognized the slave boy Meto and the young Apollonius.
Crassus looked over his shoulder. ‘Roman justice,’ he said with grim satisfaction, ‘and there is nothing you can do about it.’ He looked at me oddly, and I realized I was naked. I turned about to return to my room, but I could not find the door. In confusion I stepped too close to the edge. Part of the rock began to crumble and give way. Crassus seemed not to notice as I fell backward, desperately trying to scramble onto the rock even as it fell with me, plummeting into the empty
void���
I woke in a cold sweat to see the boy Meto standing over me with a look of grave concern on his face. From across the room I heard the gentle sawing of Eco’s snore. I blinked and wiped my hand across my forehead, surprised to find it beaded with sweat.
The sky beyond the terrace was dark blue, alive with the first stars of evening. The room was lit by a lamp which Meto carried in his small hand. ‘They’re waiting for you,’ he finally said, raising his eyebrows uncertainly.
‘Who? For what?’ I blinked in confusion and watched the lamplight flicker across the ceiling.
‘Everyone is there but you,’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘In the dining room. They’re waiting for you to begin the dinner. Though why they’re in such a hurry I don’t know,’ he went on, as I shook my head to clear it and struggled to rise from the bed.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because it’s a dinner hardly fit for slaves!’
A great gloom seemed to have settled over the dining room. Partly it came from the gravity of the occasion, for this was the last meal before the funeral; throughout the night and all the next day, until the funeral feast that would follow Lucius Licinius’s cremation and interment, everyone in the household would fast. Tradition prescribed a meal of rigorous simplicity: common bread and bowls of plain lentils, watered wine and a grain porridge. As an innovation, Gelina’s cook had included a few delicacies, all black in colour: black roe served on crusts of black bread, pickled eggs stained black, black olives, and fish poached in octopus ink. It was not a repast to spark clever conversation, even from Metrobius. Across the room Sergius Orata surveyed the prospect with a glum eye and filled himself up with pickled eggs, popping them whole into his mouth.
Arms of Nemesis - Roman Sub Rosa 02 Page 17