The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  Presently the puppies joined in, echoing Scuto’s deep bark with their high yaps. The girls left the path and wove between the gnarled and twisted trunks of ancient olives.

  They found the dogs standing near a quince bush by the steep mountain side. Scuto stopped barking when they appeared and took a few steps towards them, tail wagging. Then he trotted back to the bush.

  ‘Scuto! You found the amulet! Good boy!’ Flavia knelt to hug Scuto round the neck while Nubia gently brushed ash from the tender blossom of a pink flower. Using a sharp stone Flavia dug it out, careful not to damage the bulb.

  ‘Behold!’ cried Nubia, who had been searching for more amulet behind the quince bush.

  The shrub hid the entrance to a cave.

  ‘That’s what they were barking at,’ said Flavia, putting the cyclamen in her shoulder bag and taking a step backwards.

  The cliffs and mountains of this region were honeycombed with caves. Flavia’s uncle Gaius had warned them never to go in, reminding them that there were all kinds of wild animals in these mountains: foxes, wolves, wildcats, even bears.

  Tail wagging, Tigris disappeared into the cave’s dark mouth.

  ‘Tigris,’ hissed Flavia. ‘Come back!’

  From inside the cave came a piercing scream.

  Flavia and Nubia exchanged horrified glances. Then, with a murmured prayer to her guardian gods, Castor and Pollux, Flavia ducked her head and plunged into the darkness.

  The cave smelled of old smoke, musky animal and urine. Before Flavia’s eyes could adjust to the dim light, the high scream came again.

  ‘No! Get the wolf away!’

  Wolf! Flavia’s instinct was to turn and run, but Nubia was close behind her. Then Tigris’s bark rang out, unnaturally loud in the confined space.

  Now Flavia could see a small figure huddling at the far end of the cave about five feet away, and near it the shape of a small black wolf.

  Flavia laughed. ‘It’s just Tigris. He’s a puppy. He won’t hurt you.’

  She took another step into the cave, crouching because of the low roof. Nubia followed, and as she moved away from the entrance, the orange light of the setting sun poured in, illuminating a little girl who wore a torn tunic and one sandal.

  Shivering in terror, the child pressed herself against the back wall of the cave as the dogs snuffled round her toes.

  ‘Scuto. Tigris. Come here at once!’ said Flavia sternly. ‘You, too, Nipur.’ The cave was low at the back, and Flavia had to approach the girl on hands and knees.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you. What’s your name?’

  The little girl gazed up at Flavia with large, tearfilled eyes. Her nose was running and she stank. Flavia guessed she had wet herself with fear.

  Flavia pulled her handkerchief out of her pouch and put it under the girl’s nose.

  ‘Once for Castor,’ said Flavia brightly.

  The little girl blew obediently.

  ‘And once for Pollux.’

  The girl blew again.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Flavia. She tucked the handkerchief back into her belt and sat cross-legged on the dirt floor of the cave.

  ‘My name’s Flavia Gemina. This is Nubia, and these are our dogs. Scuto’s the big one. The puppies are Tigris, the brave one, and Nipur, the sensible one. What’s your name?’

  The little girl sniffed. ‘Julia.’

  ‘How old are you, Julia?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Where are your mummy and daddy?’ Flavia asked.

  Julia’s chin began to quiver and her eyes welled up with tears again.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Flavia hastily. ‘It doesn’t matter. Why don’t you come outside with us now? We’ll try to find them.’

  Julia put her thumb in her mouth and shook her head vigorously.

  ‘Come on! It will be dark soon.’

  Julia shook her head again and said in a tiny voice:

  ‘Rufus said for me to wait here.’

  ‘Who’s Rufus?’

  ‘My big brother. He told me to wait here when the men were chasing us. He told me not to go away. He promised he would come back.’

  ‘What men?’ asked Nubia softly. She had been crouching by the door. Now she moved forward and squatted beside Flavia.

  Julia looked at Nubia and her eyes widened.

  ‘You have black skin!’ she whispered.

  ‘Nubia’s from Africa,’ explained Flavia. ‘Haven’t you ever seen an African before?’

  The little girl shook her head again, still staring at Nubia.

  ‘Who were the men chasing you?’ asked Flavia patiently.

  ‘The scary men,’ whispered Julia, and her lower lip began to quiver. ‘Rufus told me to hide here and wait for him. He told me he would come back soon. And then he didn’t come and it’s been a long time.’

  ‘Did you spend the night here?’ asked Flavia.

  Julia shook her head and tentatively reached out to stroke Tigris, who was sniffing her big toe.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’ asked Flavia, holding out the water gourd.

  Julia nodded and took the gourd. She drank in long gulps and then handed it back, gasping.

  ‘Come on, then,’ said Flavia brightly. ‘It’s nearly time for dinner. I’ll bet you’re getting hungry. We’ll leave Rufus a message telling him where you’ve gone. OK?’

  Julia nodded absently. She was busy petting Tigris, who sat beside her with his eyes half closed.

  On the way down the mountain, Julia became quite chatty.

  She told Flavia that she and her brother Rufus were staying in the refugee camp with their grandparents. They had gone to search for early apples or figs. Then the scary men had come out of the bushes. Two of them. One had grabbed her and one had grabbed Rufus. But Rufus was brave and had kicked one so hard that he had fallen to the ground.

  Julia took a breath and continued.

  ‘Then I screamed my loudest scream and bit the other one on the arm and Rufus kicked him between the legs and then we ran and ran up the mountain and I couldn’t run any more and then we could hear the men behind us and Rufus saw the cave and said wait here don’t move I’ll be back, but he never came back.’

  ‘Well,’ said Flavia, ‘if he does come back he’ll find the message I wrote in the ash outside the cave. You’re sure he can read?’

  Julia nodded. ‘He goes to school,’ she said in a small voice, and then stopped on the path. ‘What if the scary men caught him and he never comes back?’ Her brown eyes started to fill with tears again.

  Flavia knelt in front of the little girl. ‘We’ll find him, Julia,’ she said. ‘Nubia and I are very good at solving mysteries. I promise you we will find your brother and bring him back to you.’

  The sun, enormous and blood-red, began to sink into the sea. Its dying rays lit the ash-covered mountains and cove, so that the whole landscape seemed to be bathed in blood. The sky above it was livid purple, the colour of an angry bruise. There would be no stars that night.

  In the camp, people moaned and wailed at the evil omen of a blood-red world. Some believed that Apollo the sun god was dying and that he would never rise again. Others were convinced that the end of the world was days away, or maybe only hours. They called out to their gods, they tore their clothes and they sprinkled ash on their heads.

  But among the wails of despair were shouts of joy. An old man and woman were hurrying towards Flavia and Nubia as they came down from the mountain.

  ‘Julia!’ cried the woman. ‘My baby!’ Her hair was streaked with grey, but she lifted her skirts like a girl and ran across the beach.

  ‘Grandma!’ Julia threw herself into the woman’s arms. Scuto barked and jumped up and down and the puppies raced after him.

  The old man ran straight past Julia and her grandmother. He was tall, with a lined, leathery face and thinning grey hair. He looked round wildly, glancing only briefly at the girls and then beyond them.

  ‘Rufus?’ he cried. ‘Rufus?’

>   Now Julia’s grandmother was on her knees hugging Julia and kissing the girls’ hands in tearful gratitude.

  The old man looked back at Flavia. ‘Where’s Rufus?’ he cried, ‘Where’s my grandson?’

  He must have seen the answer on her face. Before Flavia could explain, he ran up to the road and cried out in a hoarse voice: ‘Rufus! Rufus! RUFUS!’

  Nubia’s family had always lived in tents so she had been able to help Flavia’s household put up one of the best in the camp. It was made of an old ship’s sail, several cloaks and a large blanket, purchased from the owner of the baths, a chinless Etruscan named Scraius.

  Scraius had consented for Doctor Mordecai to convert the palaestra into a hospital and the solarium into a surgery. He also let the refugees use the toilets and fill their water gourds and jars at the seven pipes which brought mineral water down from the mountains. He could afford to be generous: a steady stream of people passed through baths from dawn till dusk bringing more business than he’d ever had before. The steam room was being repaired, but the hot room and cold plunge were still in use, as were the three mineral pools.

  Scraius had also allowed the doctor to pitch his tent against the outer colonnade of the baths, so he could be near his patients. Just inside the entrance of their tent, by one of the columns, Mordecai’s daughter Miriam had scraped a depression in the sandy ground. She had surrounded this hearth with flat stones and filled it with coals. Now she knelt over it, stirring a delicious-smelling stew in an earthenware pot. Nubia recognised the pungent aroma at once: goat.

  In the dim interior of the tent, Flavia’s tutor Aristo was lighting candles. With his curly, golden-brown hair and smooth, tanned skin, he always reminded Nubia of a bronze statuette of the messenger god Mercury which she had once seen in the market of Ostia. Aristo looked up at the girls and smiled.

  The girls smiled back but went straight to Jonathan, who lay on a low couch, the only one in the tent. The girls stood looking down at him and Flavia asked, ‘How is he?’

  ‘No better, I’m afraid.’ Mordecai sat cross-legged on a rush mat beside his son. ‘Did you find the amulet?’

  Flavia nodded. ‘Only one. Scuto found it. I hope it’s enough. And there are some other herbs you might be able to use . . .’

  ‘Thank you, Flavia and Nubia. And Scuto.’ Mordecai accepted the cloth shoulder bag with a little bow of his head.

  ‘Would you girls like some stew?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Flavia. ‘We’re famished.’

  ‘It is goat?’ asked Nubia.

  Miriam nodded. ‘Goat and chickpea.’

  Rush mats and cloaks had been spread over most of the sandy ground to make the floor of the tent. Flavia sat on one of the cloaks beside a man with hair the same colour as hers.

  ‘How are you, Uncle Gaius?’ she asked.

  ‘My ribs hurt like Hades, but Doctor Mordecai says that means they’re healing.’ He smiled ruefully, and then winced. The robbers who had cracked his ribs had also bruised his jaw and broken his nose. Beside him an enormous, black, wolf-like creature gnawed a bone.

  ‘How is the Ferox?’ asked Nubia, kneeling to stroke the big dog. Once Ferox had been the terror of Stabia. But he had almost died trying to protect his master Gaius from horse thieves, and a knife wound in the chest had rendered him harmless as a lamb.

  Ferox wheezed at Nubia, rolling his eyes and thumping his big tail twice on the blanket. Then he returned to his bone.

  ‘He has goat for dinner, too,’ observed Nubia.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ asked Flavia.

  ‘I bought it with the last of my gold,’ sighed Mordecai. ‘The vendor was asking a fortune.’

  ‘Father gave half the goat meat to that poor family in the tent next to us,’ said Miriam proudly, ladling a spoonful into one of their two bowls.

  ‘Miriam,’ chided her father gently, ‘we are told not to boast about our giving, or we lose the blessing.’

  ‘Sorry, father.’

  Flavia frowned. ‘How will we buy food now?’ she asked.

  ‘God will provide,’ said Mordecai quietly.

  There were only two wooden bowls and no spoons, so the girls used pieces of soft, flat bread to spoon the hot stew into their mouths. When the bread grew too soggy, they ate the gravy-soaked morsels.

  ‘Goat was delicious, Miriam,’ said Nubia, using a last piece of bread to wipe the bowl clean. She reached for the water gourd and took a long drink. The water was cold and fizzy and smelled of egg. It was so full of iron that it turned their tongues rust red. When Nubia had finished, Flavia took the gourd.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Flavia. ‘I’m getting used to the taste of this water.’

  ‘It’s very good for you,’ said Mordecai. ‘People come from all over Italia to take the waters here.’ He looked down sadly at Jonathan. ‘If only you would drink some, my son . . .’

  ‘Behold!’ said Nubia suddenly. ‘His eyelids butterfly.’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Mordecai. ‘I believe there are moments when he is closer to waking than sleeping. Flavia, pass me the water gourd, please.’

  Mordecai took the gourd and dribbled a few drops onto Jonathan’s cracked and swollen lips.

  ‘Drink, my son,’ he said. ‘Drink and live.’

  But the water merely dribbled down the side of Jonathan’s pale cheek and he did not wake.

  ‘Lupus!’ cried Nubia as the boy came into the tent. ‘What is happened to you?’ There were red scratch marks on his cheeks.

  Lupus shrugged. His eyes were red-rimmed and his face smudged with soot, but Nubia thought his green eyes looked calmer. He went straight to his friend Jonathan, lying as still and pale as a corpse, and looked down at him. After a moment he turned away in silence and sat heavily beside the girls.

  Miriam filled a bowl with stew and placed it on the rush mat in front of Lupus.

  ‘We’ve all eaten,’ she said. ‘This is yours.’ She handed him a piece of bread and a water gourd.

  From the corner of her eye, Nubia watched Lupus eat. He had no tongue and they all knew a careless bite could be his last. He chomped with his molars and threw his head back to swallow. If he wanted to chew on the other side of his mouth, he had to tip his whole head to one side. When he drank, he held the gourd at a distance and expertly directed a stream of water to the back of his throat.

  Nubia saw the others staring at him openly. Sometimes they forgot that he hated to be watched.

  ‘What is news?’ she asked Mordecai, hoping to distract them.

  ‘Two more deaths.’ Mordecai was grinding the amulet to a paste using a long, smooth stone and the second wooden bowl. ‘When people have no reason to live, they choose to die. One man was not very ill at all.’

  ‘And a boy has gone missing,’ said Miriam. ‘A boy named Apollo. His mother was looking everywhere for him.’

  Nubia gasped and looked at Flavia.

  ‘That’s strange,’ said Flavia. ‘Nubia and I found a little girl named Julia hiding in a cave in the mountains. She said some scary men chased her and her brother. And now her brother is missing, too.’

  ‘Is the little girl all right?’ asked Miriam.

  Flavia nodded and Nubia explained, ‘We take her to grandma and grandpa’s tent nearby.’

  ‘Maybe her brother was the same boy. The boy named Apollo,’ said Gaius.

  ‘No,’ said Flavia. ‘Julia’s brother is called Rufus.’

  ‘There is no end of men’s wickedness.’ Mordecai shook his head. ‘A terrible disaster occurs and straight away people take advantage of it. The villagers here have been asking huge prices for food and supplies. People strip jewellery from the bodies that wash up on the shore before they can be identified. Now it seems that someone is snatching children, no doubt to sell them into slavery.’

  ‘We’re going to find out what’s happened to the children,’ said Flavia. ‘I just need to think how to go about it . . .’

  Nubia wondered if Mordecai would object, bu
t he was busy smearing the amulet paste on Jonathan’s dry lips.

  There was a pause, only broken by Lupus’s chomps and smacks. Then a note, the sound of a string being plucked.

  Aristo held a tortoiseshell lyre on his lap. He was tuning it by tightening the ivory pegs which held the strings.

  ‘A lyre!’ cried Nubia. ‘Aristo, where are you finding it?’

  ‘Scraius, the owner of the baths, lent it to me. He says he rarely plays it. It only needed a little tuning.’ Aristo strummed the strings. A chord swelled and then died.

  ‘Will you pluck song for us?’ asked Nubia.

  ‘I will play if you will play.’

  ‘I will play.’ Nubia pulled the lotus-wood flute out from beneath her mustard-yellow tunic. It hung on a silken cord around her neck, always close to her heart, for it was her most treasured possession.

  ‘Good,’ smiled Aristo. ‘You begin, and I will follow.’

  Jonathan was hunting in a green, walled garden which stretched as far as the eye could see. He grasped his bow in his right hand and heard the reassuring rattle of arrows in the quiver slung over his shoulder. In his belt was his sling, and there were seven smooth stones in his pouch. The cicadas in the olive grove zithered a song and the sky above was as blue as turquoise. There was a scent of wild honey in the air.

  His puppy Tigris ran ahead, sniffing the sun-dappled trail and looking back every so often to make sure his master was following. Jonathan could not remember what they were hunting, but he trusted Tigris. Presently his puppy left the olive grove and raced down a grassy hill. Now Jonathan could really run, and he almost flew. Something was different, and suddenly he realised what it was. Usually when he ran he had to fight for air. But now it felt as if his sandals were winged, like those of the messenger god Mercury.

  There was no tightness in his chest, and he ran as he had never run before.

  Presently Tigris led him to a broad river, clear as crystal, with trees on either side. Jonathan stopped and stared. The fruit of the trees glowed with colours he had never seen before.

  And on the other side of the river was a city made of jewels, too vast and complicated for his mind to comprehend.