The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  Simeon strummed the last chord and when the applause died down, the bearded man said in a loud voice, ‘Well played, Simeon!’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Simeon with his gap-toothed smile. And then froze.

  Jonathan saw a look of panic flit across his uncle’s face and he suddenly realised why. The bearded man had addressed him by name, not in Latin but in Hebrew. And Simeon had replied in the same language.

  ‘Oh Pollux!’ Flavia heard Bulbus grumble, as they rounded a corner on their way back from the baths. ‘Looks like we have more visitors.’

  As Flavia leaned out of the litter to look, it tipped alarmingly to one side. She heard Bulbus curse as he tried to compensate for the sudden shift of weight.

  ‘Stop the litter!’ cried Flavia, and when Bulbus and Caudex obeyed, she leapt out and ran towards the two figures standing in the shade of the porch.

  ‘Aristo! Lupus!’ she cried and threw her arms around her tutor. ‘I’m so glad to see you!’ She let Aristo go and hugged Lupus, too.

  ‘You girls are in big trouble.’ Aristo tried to scowl.

  Flavia tipped her head to one side. ‘Then why are you smiling?’

  ‘I’m not,’ he grinned, and they all burst out laughing.

  ‘Guards!’ The Emperor Titus’s younger brother slid off the dining couch and landed lightly on his feet.

  Immediately, two soldiers stepped in from the garden and clanked to attention.

  ‘Is your name Simeon ben Jonah?’ Domitian asked Jonathan’s uncle.

  There was a terrible silence. The bearded dinner-guest eased himself from the couch and moved to stand beside Domitian. This time he spoke not in Hebrew but in Latin. ‘Of course he is. I recognise him, even though he’s cut his hair and shaved off his beard. Don’t you know me, Simeon?’

  Jonathan looked from the bearded man to his uncle. It was so quiet that he could hear the waterfall splashing into its trough at the back of the room.

  ‘Yoseph ben Matthias,’ growled Simeon, and rose slowly to his feet. Jonathan stood, too.

  ‘Precisely.’ The bearded man smiled round at the other diners, as if pleased that he had been recognised. ‘But now I am the Emperor’s servant and have taken his name. You may call me Titus Flavius Josephus.’

  Domitian moved forward until his face was inches from Simeon’s. Jonathan could smell the wine and garlic on Domitian’s breath as he said, ‘Josephus, are you sure this man is an assassin?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Josephus. ‘I’m sure. Everyone knows Simeon the Sicarius.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Domitian, and turned away. ‘Guards! Find out what they know. Then crucify this one. As for the boy . . . brand him and put him with the other Jewish slaves. And no need to bother the Emperor.’

  *

  Bulbus was lighting the oil lamps when Sisyphus stepped into the dusky light of the grape arbour courtyard.

  ‘Ah,’ he said with a smile. ‘You must be the famous Lupus. Pleased to meet you at last. Flavia and Nubia have told me all about you. And you are Aristo?’

  Aristo nodded. ‘I hope you don’t mind two more guests.’

  Sisyphus raised his eyebrows and said something in Greek.

  Flavia’s tutor laughed and replied in the same language.

  ‘Hey!’ cried Flavia. ‘Don’t do that. I hate it when people speak a language I can’t understand.’

  ‘You should understand it,’ said Aristo with a grin. ‘We’ve been studying Greek together for over three years.’

  Flavia scowled. ‘I know. But I don’t understand when you talk fast.’ She turned back to the secretary. ‘Sisyphus,’ she said, ‘Aristo and Lupus found a message left by Jonathan. We were right. Jonathan has gone to the Golden House. But not to get information about his mother. He actually thinks she’s alive! He must have gone to search for her. But Jonathan’s sister Miriam is sure their mother is dead. She thinks it’s some kind of trick!’ Flavia stopped to take a breath.

  ‘Why would someone go to all this trouble to trick Jonathan?’ asked Sisyphus.

  ‘Maybe Simeon is trying to trick Jonathan into helping him kill the Emperor!’ said Flavia.

  ‘That is a very real possibility,’ said Aristo. ‘Nobody expects a deadly assassin to have a boy with him.’

  ‘Did you find out how to get into the Golden House?’ Flavia asked Sisyphus.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But I’ve brought some scrolls back with me. We can look at them tomorrow, as soon as it gets light.’

  ‘Good,’ said Flavia brightly. ‘Now that we’re all together, I’m sure we’ll rescue Jonathan from the assassin’s clutches in no time at all!’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said Agathus, as he and Jonathan watched a slave heat the branding iron in a brazier full of red-hot coals. ‘If Josephus hadn’t intervened they’d be torturing you by now.’

  Jonathan sat shivering in his loin cloth. He didn’t feel lucky. They had shaved his head and searched him for lice. They had opened his mouth to examine his teeth. They had stripped him of all his possessions, including the bulla which showed he was freeborn and his ruby ring. They had even taken away his lemon-scented handkerchief. The only thing they hadn’t taken was his mother’s signet ring, stuck tightly on his little finger.

  Agathus saw Jonathan looking at the ring. ‘It will come off soon enough,’ he said. ‘I imagine you’ll lose quite a bit of weight in the next few days.’

  Jonathan stared stupidly at the steward and then looked back at the metal rod glowing red in the coals.

  A slave was about to brand his left arm with the Emperor’s seal. Then he would become the property of Titus Flavius Vespasianus.

  ‘Your friend’s lucky, too.’ said Agathus. ‘He’ll live. If he survives the torture.’

  Jonathan felt ill. The bearded man named Josephus had persuaded Domitian not to kill Simeon but merely to put out his eyes and cut off his big toes. That way, Josephus had said, he’ll be blind and lame and unable to hurt anyone, but we can still enjoy his beautiful music.

  ‘Are you going to be sick again?’ Agathus put his hand on Jonathan’s bare shoulder.

  Jonathan shook his head. ‘Nothing left to throw up,’ he muttered.

  The slave was approaching with the branding iron.

  Agathus squeezed Jonathan’s shoulder and handed him a leather belt.

  ‘Here, boy. Bite on this. The pain will be quite severe.’

  Jonathan placed the leather strap between his teeth and then took it out again.

  ‘My handkerchief,’ he said, nodding towards his clothing at the end of the rough wooden bench. ‘Can I bite on that instead?’

  ‘I suppose, if I fold it several times . . .’ The slave stopped and waited for Agathus to bring the cloth. Jonathan inhaled its lemon fragrance to give himself courage, then clamped it between his teeth and watched the red-hot end of the branding iron move towards his shoulder.

  It was not the pain that made him pass out, but the smell of burning flesh.

  ‘Useless!’ cried Flavia, throwing down the scroll. ‘There’s nothing here!’

  It was late afternoon three days later.

  Flavia and Sisyphus were in the senator’s library. Scrolls lay spread across the table. Most of them contained architects’ plans or accounts of Nero’s reign.

  Aristo and Lupus stepped wearily into the study. They had been prowling the Palatine Hill, disguised as a young patrician and his slave boy.

  ‘Anything?’ Flavia looked up at them with wet eyes.

  Lupus shook his head and Aristo angrily pulled the toga from his shoulders. ‘I don’t know how citizens can bear to wear these things,’ he said, tossing it onto a chair. ‘They’re insufferably hot.’

  ‘It is one of the senator’s winter togas,’ murmured Sisyphus, rising and going to the chair. ‘He’s taken his light summer togas with him.’ He shook out the toga and carefully began to fold it.

  The light dimmed momentarily as two more figures appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Nubia, Caude
x!’ said Flavia. ‘Any luck?’

  Nubia shook her head. They’d been trying to find an entrance to the part of the Golden House on the Oppian Hill.

  ‘Big wall all round it,’ grumbled Caudex and wandered off towards the kitchen.

  ‘We’ll never find him!’ Flavia slumped into a chair and bit her lip to keep from crying. ‘I’m a terrible detective.’

  The others sat dejectedly at the big oak table.

  After a while Sisyphus spoke. ‘My grandmother, may Juno bless her memory, was a very wise woman. When I was a boy, I once lost a figurine that was very precious to me. I looked for it everywhere. Then one day she said, Sisyphus, if you stop looking for it, it might find you.’

  ‘Did it work?’ asked Flavia.

  ‘As a matter of fact, it did. I went to visit a friend the next day and there it was. She’d borrowed my figurine without asking.’

  ‘How does that help us?’ sighed Aristo.

  ‘Well,’ said Sisyphus. ‘Tomorrow is the last day of the Ludi Romani. I suggest we take the day off and go to the races.’ He shuddered dramatically. ‘Much as I hate them. If nothing else, it may give us a break and a fresh perspective.’

  Lupus whooped. Nubia sat up straight, too. She longed to see the horses run. Flavia glanced at Aristo and he gave a small nod.

  ‘All right,’ sighed Flavia. ‘I suppose it can’t hurt.’

  *

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked a little girl’s voice in Aramaic.

  Jonathan didn’t even bother to look up. ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ he replied in the same language.

  ‘It looks like you’re scrubbing the latrines.’

  ‘Then I suppose that’s what I’m doing.’ He stopped for a moment and closed his eyes. The throbbing pain in his left arm seemed to be getting worse, not better.

  ‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonathan, trying not to retch at the smell. After a moment he said: ‘Where is here, anyway?’

  After they branded him he had passed in and out of consciousness. He vaguely recalled being taken some distance to a cubicle just big enough for him to lie down in. For two days an enormously fat female slave had left bowls of wheat porridge outside his door. This morning she had tossed a scrubbing-brush into his cell and told him to clean the latrines down the hall.

  ‘You’re in the Golden House,’ said the girl’s voice.

  Jonathan snorted as he scrubbed the holes cut into the long wooden bench. ‘Some Golden House.’

  ‘My name’s Rizpah. What’s yours?’

  ‘Jonathan.’ Suddenly he stopped and said slowly. ‘The fat lady said I’m supposed to be in isolation for a week until I’m no longer unclean. She told me nobody comes here at this time of day. So what are you doing here? And how did you get in?’ He turned to peer at her in the dim light of a small, high window. ‘You didn’t come through the doorway . . .’

  The little girl named Rizpah sat on the polished oak latrine behind him, between two of the holes.

  Jonathan had never seen such a curious person.

  She was tiny, the size of a five-year-old, but he guessed she was older, at least Lupus’s age. She had perfectly straight white hair and her eyes were pink. Her skin was so fine that it was almost translucent. She wore a grubby black tunic with a white border.

  ‘You’re one of the Emperor’s slaves, too,’ he observed.

  ‘Of course.’ She swung her feet and drummed the wooden latrine with her heels. ‘You’re handsome. I like you.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘Shaved head, festering brand on the arm, all covered with . . . I’m very handsome today.’

  ‘What’s it like out there?’ she asked presently.

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘Rome.’

  Jonathan peered at her. ‘You’ve never been outside?’

  Rizpah shook her head. ‘I hate the sun. Anyway I like it here. It’s cool and dark here. I’ve lived here in the Golden House all my life,’ she added. ‘Here I was born and here I’ll die.’ She seemed to be quoting someone.

  ‘And they call me a pessimist,’ muttered Jonathan. He resumed scrubbing. ‘Any other gems to brighten up my day?’

  ‘I know how you could get out of here.’

  Slowly Jonathan put down his scrubbing brush and turned to face her. ‘Rizpah,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you how much that would brighten up my day.’

  Nubia sat forward in her seat and looked over the rail down onto the race track below. Then she looked across the sandy track at the strange sculptures in the central divider. She especially liked the immensely tall needle of red granite in the middle of the central island, and the seven gold dolphins at one end.

  Finally she looked around at the people behind her and across the track and on either side.

  ‘I have never seen so many peoples,’ she murmured.

  ‘I know,’ said Flavia, and then turned to Sisyphus. ‘How did you get such good seats?’ she asked. ‘Right at the front by the turning post, and in the shade?’

  ‘They’re not mine. They’re the Senator’s,’ said Sisyphus. ‘He’s got eight seats so that he can take Lady Cynthia and the howling brood. And we won’t be in the shade for long, I fear. It’s still early.’

  ‘Behold!’ cried Nubia. ‘The horses.’

  As the first of the chariots emerged from the shaded starting gates and moved into the sunshine for their parade lap, trumpets blared and a huge roar erupted from the onlookers. Nubia covered her ears, but as the first chariot approached she forgot about the noise and leant forward.

  ‘Behold!’ she cried. ‘It is the Titus!’

  ‘Yes,’ shouted Sisyphus. ‘Today is the last day of the festival, so the Emperor himself leads the procession.’

  Titus rode in a golden chariot pulled by two magnificent white stallions. Dressed in purple with a gold wreath on his thinning hair, the Emperor himself held the reins. In the chariot beside him stood a rigid young man, dressed in golden armour. He seemed curiously pale and stiff to Nubia, and his eyes gazed ahead unseeing.

  ‘Is that a statue?’ shouted Flavia.

  Sisyphus nodded. ‘It’s the famous gold and ivory statue of Britannicus. He and Titus were boyhood friends, until Nero poisoned him.’

  Nubia leaned further over the rail. Now the different teams were approaching.

  The Blues came first, each team of four horses stepping proudly and tossing their manes as if they enjoyed the adulation of the crowd. Next came the Greens, the Reds, and finally the Whites. Each chariot was trimmed in its team colours. As the third red team came nearer, Nubia gripped the rail.

  ‘I like those horses.’ Nubia brought her mouth close to Sisyphus’s ear, to make herself heard above the continuing cheers of the crowd.

  ‘Oh no, my dear.’ He shook his head. ‘Not the red team. Only sailors and cart-drivers support the Reds. You simply must support the Blues.’

  Nubia frowned. ‘But their horses are not so good.’

  Sisyphus scowled. ‘Oh, very well,’ he said. ‘If you insist.’ He pushed along the row and stomped up the steps towards one of the arches.

  ‘What did you say to him?’ asked Flavia. ‘I’ve never seen him get angry before.’

  Nubia looked worried. ‘I only said I am liking the Reds.’

  Now the third red chariot was passing directly below them. Nubia saw that its driver was an African boy not much older than she was. He wore red leather and like the other charioteers, he had tied the reins around his waist.

  She tugged at Flavia’s sleeve.

  ‘Why does he tie himself to horses? What if he is being dragged?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Flavia.

  ‘Nubia,’ said Aristo, raising his voice to make himself heard above the cheering. ‘Do you see what he’s holding in his hand?’

  Nubia saw the flash of bright metal. ‘A knife?’ she said.

  ‘Exactly. If he gets pulled out of the chariot and dragged along he’l
l cut himself free.’

  Nubia shuddered.

  Some time afterwards – she had no idea how long – the young charioteer passed again, but this time his teeth were bared in a grimace of wild joy and he was driving for all he was worth, well ahead of the eight remaining chariots. It was the final lap. A huge wave of cheering swept the circus. Nubia felt her spirit lifted up and carried along by it and then she heard herself crying at the top of her lungs: ‘Come on the Reds! Come on the Reds!’

  She hadn’t seen Sisyphus return, but she was suddenly aware that he was on his feet beside her and he was screaming for the Reds as loudly as everyone else.

  ‘Great Juno’s peacock, but it’s hot! It’s usually much cooler this time of year.’ Sisyphus fanned himself vigorously with a papyrus fan and smiled at them. ‘We should probably be going soon. Avoid the crush. Still, we’ve done very well today. We’ve made a tidy profit.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Flavia absently, cracking another pistachio nut with her teeth. She had poured the nuts onto her lap and was studying the papyrus twist they had come in: it had faint writing on it.

  ‘We’ve made nearly a thousand denarii. That’s more than the rent I get for these seats.’

  Flavia’s head jerked up and she saw Lupus looking wide-eyed, too.

  ‘We’ve made a thousand denarii?’ she said. ‘How?’

  ‘Simple. I’ve been betting on all the horses Nubia recommended. So far she’s been right about them all.’

  Flavia, Aristo and Lupus stared at Nubia open-mouthed. She looked equally surprised.

  ‘My dears. Where do you think I’ve been rushing off to before each race? The latrines?’

  Aristo said something to Sisyphus in Greek and he replied in the same language. Abruptly he stopped and looked at Flavia.

  ‘Why are you giving me that injured look?’ Sisyphus said to her. ‘Oh all right.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Aristo said he thought that only senators and citizens were allowed to sit in these seats. And I said he was correct, but that I have an arrangement with the steward. The senator rarely attends the races so these valuable seats would sit empty. If it weren’t for us.’