The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  ‘So you and the steward rent them out?’ whispered Aristo.

  Sisyphus nodded. ‘We split the profits. But we only rent them to very respectable families who will behave themselves and not lean dangerously over the parapet flicking pistachio shells onto the race track, Lupus.’

  Lupus sat back and grinned at them.

  Sisyphus scowled at Lupus, but there was a twinkle in his eye as he turned away. Then he gasped. ‘Great Juno’s peacock! Is that Celer sitting over there by the Imperial Box? I thought he’d died years ago. Flavia! It’s Celer!’

  ‘Celer who?’

  ‘Not Celer who. Who Celer. Marcus Vibius Celer. The architect. The man whose plans you’ve been studying for the past few days?’

  ‘It’s Celer!’ cried Flavia. She leapt to her feet, scattering pistachio shells everywhere.

  ‘Yes.’ Sisyphus nodded. ‘It’s definitely time you lot went home. Can you possibly take them, Aristo?’

  ‘I think I can find the way,’ said the young Greek.

  ‘It’s easy,’ said Flavia. ‘We just follow the big aqueduct back up the hill.’

  ‘As for me,’ said Sisyphus, ‘I’m going to pay my compliments to old Celer over there. He owes me a few favours. And if anyone knows about secret passages or entrances to the Golden House, it will be him. After all, he built it.’

  Jonathan was moving through blackness with nothing to guide him but the hand of a small girl.

  ‘How do you know where you’re going?’ Jonathan said into the void. ‘And how did you find these tunnels?’ He heard his voice echoing back from the moist plaster walls.

  ‘I told you,’ came Rizpah’s voice. ‘I’ve lived here all my life. There are tunnels everywhere. Some of them are blocked up now but most aren’t. Mother said the Beast built them.’

  ‘The Beast?’ Jonathan’s Aramaic was a bit rusty. His father always insisted on them speaking Hebrew at home.

  ‘The Beast. Neeron Kesar.’

  ‘Oh. You mean Nero.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Rizpah. Is your mother here?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Could I see her?’

  She must have stopped, because he bumped into her.

  ‘Sorry, Rizpah.’

  ‘Jonathan.’ He could tell from her voice that she was trying to be patient with him. ‘Do you want me to get you out, or do you want to meet my mother?’

  ‘Are there other women with your mother?’

  ‘Of course. They weave wool in the octagonal room.’

  ‘Rizpah,’ he said into the void. ‘I want more than anything to get out of here. But I came to Rome to find my mother. Her name is Susannah. Is there a woman named Susannah ben Jonah with the others?’

  There was such a long pause that if he hadn’t been holding her moist little hand he would have thought himself alone.

  Finally Rizpah’s voice came out of the blackness. ‘There is a woman called Susannah the Beautiful. But she is not with the others. She weaves on her own.’ He felt her hand clench in his as she added, ‘They call her the Traitor.’

  As Flavia and her friends emerged from the shaded exit of the Circus Maximus and stepped into the blistering heat of a Roman afternoon, they scattered a group of feral cats who had been scavenging a discarded lunch. Most of the cats fled, but one of them – a tortoiseshell – looked up at them with round eyes.

  ‘Great Juno’s peacock!’ Flavia exclaimed. ‘Feles!’

  ‘What?’ said Aristo. Lupus echoed the question with his bug-eyed look.

  ‘Feles . . . driver of cart?’ said Nubia.

  ‘Yes! I’m so stupid!’ Flavia hit her forehead with the palm of her hand. ‘That cat reminded me of him. Feles told us his girlfriend is a slave in the Imperial Palace on the Palatine Hill. She might know how to get in. I should have thought of this days ago.’

  ‘Never mind, you’ve thought of it now,’ said Aristo. ‘How do we find her?’

  ‘We’ll have to ask Feles. He stays at the Owl Tavern just inside the gate.’

  ‘Which gate?’

  ‘The gate with three arches by the big white pyramid.’

  ‘That’s the Ostia Gate,’ said Aristo. ‘It’s not far.’

  Lupus held up his wax tablet:

  WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

  ‘Rizpah,’ whispered Jonathan. ‘I think I can see light up ahead.’

  ‘It’s the octagonal room,’ came Rizpah’s voice. ‘That’s where my mother is.’

  They were crawling along a low tunnel. As they moved forward, the blackness brightened to grey and then gold. Presently they reached the square end of the tunnel.

  Jonathan peered out, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the light. He found he was looking down onto a vast octagonal room full of women weaving at looms. The weavers filled the space below him and the five large alcoves around it.

  Above the courtyard rose a vast domed roof, covered with rough concrete, lit golden by the light pouring through a large circular skylight. The beam of sunshine illuminated the wool-dust suspended in the air, and to Jonathan it looked like a fat gold column that had tipped to one side.

  From somewhere to his left came the sound of falling water.

  ‘What is this place?’ whispered Jonathan.

  ‘I think this used to be the Beast’s dining room,’ said Rizpah. ‘My mother calls it the Pavilion, because when she first came there was cloth inside the dome and it looked like a big tent. I don’t remember. I wasn’t born then.’ She pointed. ‘That’s my mother over there, the one with the fluffy brown hair. See? The one working on the red and blue carpet. Her name is Rachel.’

  All the women wore black robes, as if they were in mourning. A few had pulled black scarves over their hair but most had left their heads uncovered.

  ‘And Susannah the Beautiful?’ asked Jonathan.

  Rizpah looked at him with her pink eyes. ‘She isn’t here.’

  ‘I know. But can you take me to her?’

  Rizpah nodded. ‘Yes. Do you want to see her now or talk to my mother first?’

  ‘I’d like to see her now.’ Jonathan’s heart was pounding.

  ‘Then we have to go further on,’ said Rizpah. ‘She’s in a special place we call the Cyclops’ cave.’

  Flavia and her friends found the Owl Tavern between two lofty tenement blocks on a street so narrow that it probably only saw the sun at midday.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ said Aristo, pulling aside the curtain of the litter so that Flavia, Nubia and Lupus could climb out.

  The smell of sour cabbage mingled with the sickly-sweet odour of human sewage. Flavia squealed as something dripped on her shoulder, but it was only some wet washing hung overhead.

  ‘At least we have Bulbus and Caudex to protect us,’ she said, trying to breathe through her mouth.

  Aristo looked around. ‘I still don’t like it. Let’s find this Feles quickly and get out.’

  ‘Yes,’ lisped the innkeeper a few minutes later. He was a hideously ugly man with a harelip and a lazy eye. ‘Feles is here. Only he’s not here. He took his girl to the races.’ The innkeeper smiled and his lip split even further to revealed orange teeth, the result of pink wine stains on yellowing enamel.

  ‘We’ve just come from there,’ said Flavia, looking him steadily in his one good eye so that she wouldn’t have to look at the rest of his face. ‘The races should have finished by now.’

  ‘Then he’ll probably be back any moment. Shall I get you a jug of wine while you wait?’

  ‘No,’ said Aristo hastily. ‘We must get back. But could you give Feles a message? Ask him to go to the house of Senator Cornix on the Caelian Hill. It’s the house with the blue doors at the foot of the aqueduct.’ He flipped the innkeeper a copper coin.

  The others turned to go, but Flavia stayed a moment longer and forced herself to look back at the innkeeper.

  ‘Please tell Feles,’ she said politely, ‘that Flavia Gemina needs his help.’

  ‘Be
careful, Jonathan,’ said Rizpah, ‘it’s slippery here.’ The space they were moving through now was not so much a tunnel as a channel. Water ran between them along a shallow concrete trough. On either side of the running water was a space just big enough for them to crawl on their bellies. Rizpah wormed her way expertly along the right-hand bank of the channel, Jonathan moved more laboriously on the left. They were heading towards a chink of light the shape of an eye.

  Presently, the chink grew bigger and brighter and Jonathan could hear the sound of foaming water. The brand on his left arm throbbed and his elbows were raw from pulling himself forward along the rough concrete, but he ground his teeth against the pain and moved steadily on.

  Abruptly the water fell away, splashing onto sculpted rocks and into a pool.

  As his eyes adjusted, Jonathan found himself looking into a large vaulted room designed to resemble a cave. The floor was polished black marble and the walls encrusted with shells, pumice and imitation pearls. Stalactites of sculpted plaster hung from the ceiling.

  At the far end of this long, man-made cave he could see columns silhouetted against the bright inner garden beyond. The soft greenish-yellow light which filtered in from the courtyard was reflected off the pool and formed wobbling rings of light on the stalactites.

  At the brighter end of this bizarre room a solitary woman sat before a loom. Jonathan could not see her face, because she had just turned her head towards the garden, but he saw that she wore the black robes marking her out as a slave of Titus. Her head was uncovered, and her black hair as smooth as silk.

  Presently, the woman turned her head back towards the loom. When Jonathan saw her profile, his heart pounded so hard he thought he might die. She was beautiful, like Miriam, with the same dark eyebrows, straight nose and full lips.

  He knew it was his mother.

  As he watched, a man appeared in the garden, his stocky body silhouetted as he passed through the columns and approached the woman. Her head turned again, she rose and stood with her back to Jonathan.

  The man walked to the woman and took her hands in his. She was as tall as he, and he looked directly into her face. The man shook his head and put his arms around the woman, patting her back as if to comfort her.

  He was powerfully built, with a square head and sandy hair. And although he was not wearing his purple toga or his golden wreath, Jonathan knew the man embracing his mother was the Emperor Titus.

  When Flavia and the others returned from the Owl Tavern, they found Sisyphus waiting for them in the atrium.

  ‘Where have you been?’ His eyes were shining.

  ‘To an inn near the big pyramid by the Ostia Gate,’ said Flavia. ‘Our cart-driver’s girlfriend is a slave at the Imperial Palace and we were trying to find him.’

  ‘Any luck?’ Sisyphus giggled.

  ‘No,’ said Aristo, ‘but by the sound of it you have.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Sisyphus clapped his hands together. ‘Miss Flavia. Do you remember the plans of the Golden House we pored over? How some of the walls were shown with double lines?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Flavia. ‘A black line next to a red line. We thought that meant the walls were extra strong.’

  ‘No, no, no! Celer told me the red lines mark the location of secret tunnels!’

  ‘But that means,’ said Flavia, her eyes wide, ‘that there are dozens of tunnels all over the Golden House!’

  ‘And remember we puzzled over one or two red lines wandering off into the gardens? Those must be the places where the tunnels lead from the inside out!’

  ‘Or,’ said Flavia, ‘from the outside in!’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me the Emperor and my mother were lovers?’ said Jonathan to Rizpah.

  They had wriggled back to one of Rizpah’s secret dens, between the octagonal room and the Cyclops’ cave.

  ‘They aren’t lovers,’ she said. ‘All the women think they are but I know they’re not.’

  ‘It looked that way to me.’

  ‘They’re just friends. He visits her and talks to her every day but he doesn’t spend the nights. Sometimes I hide here and listen to them talking.’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Since Berenice left. Five or six months.’

  Jonathan groaned and leaned back against the damp wall. All these years, he had believed his mother was dead. But she had been right here in Rome, less than fifteen miles from Ostia. And Titus, the greatest enemy of the Jews, had been with her daily for half a year: talking to her, holding her hand, gazing into her eyes.

  Jonathan felt sick. He was finding it hard to breathe. He closed his eyes, calling to mind the day he had first met Titus on the beach south of Stabia, less than a month ago. On that occasion, Titus had hurried back to Rome as fast as he could. To be with her?

  Jonathan opened his eyes.

  Everything his uncle Simeon had told him made sense now.

  Leaning against the opposite wall, Rizpah was watching him steadily. Light filtered in from somewhere above. He could see a pile of rags beside her, presumably her bed. Near it were a few flat loaves of black bread and a ceramic jug.

  ‘Rizpah,’ he said, still trying to breathe. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you. I have to tell someone and I don’t know who else to tell.’

  ‘Then tell me,’ she said. ‘But first, drink this.’ She held out the clay jug.

  He nodded and drank straight from the jug, long and deep, and came up gasping.

  ‘And eat this.’ Rizpah tore a piece of bread from the dark loaf and handed it to him.

  ‘I can’t. If I eat it I’ll just throw it up.’

  ‘No you won’t.’ Her tone was surprisingly firm. She pushed it into his hand. ‘Eat it,’ she said.

  The bread was leathery but tasted of honey. It was good.

  ‘And you need one more thing,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This.’ Rizpah reached into the pile of rags and extracted a tiny ball of grey fluff. She placed it in Jonathan’s lap. It was warm and it mewed.

  ‘A kitten,’ said Jonathan, and held up the tiny creature. The mother cat lifted her head from the bedding and studied Jonathan. After a moment she lowered her head again to attend to the rest of her litter.

  Jonathan cupped the tiny creature in his hands and held it close to his filthy black tunic. As the kitten felt the warmth of his body and the beating of his heart it began to purr.

  ‘It’s impossible,’ whispered Jonathan, shaking his head.

  ‘What’s impossible.’

  ‘That something this tiny could make a noise so loud.’

  And then, at last, he wept.

  ‘Yes, I used to be a slave in the Golden House,’ said Feles’ girlfriend Huldah. ‘But Queen Berenice didn’t like me, so she sent me away to the Imperial Palace on the Palatine Hill. I much prefer being a slave there. I get one day a week off and I can meet Feles when I go to the markets.’

  Feles and Huldah had arrived at the fifth hour after noon, just as dinner was being served.

  Flavia frowned. ‘But isn’t the palace on the Palatine part of the Golden House? I mean, the plans showed . . . isn’t the Golden House spread over three hills?’

  Huldah shrugged and tore at her chicken leg with small white teeth. She was extremely pretty, with a curvaceous figure and slanting black eyes. ‘Not sure,’ she said with her mouth full. ‘All I know is that we call it the Golden House. It’s not on the Palatine. It’s part of the Esquiline Hill. The one the other side of the new amphitheatre. We call it the Oppian.’

  ‘The banqueting pavilion!’ cried Sisyphus. ‘Celer told me. It was an enormous complex full of nothing but dining rooms for Nero to entertain his guests and show off his works of art.’

  Aristo nodded. ‘So who exactly lives in the Golden House on the Oppian Hill?’

  ‘It was Berenice’s quarters,’ said Huldah. ‘Just far enough from the official palace to be discreet, but close enough for Titus to visit her. Or vice ver
sa. After the destruction of Jerusalem she asked Titus to spare all the noble women of Jerusalem. So he did. We were his gift to her.’

  Huldah sucked the last shreds of meat from her chicken leg and took a handful of olives.

  ‘Berenice looked after us,’ she said, refilling her wine cup. ‘We wove beautiful carpets and told each other stories and sometimes we had music. Some of the women even have their children with them. They have their own slave school. And Titus let us observe the Sabbath and keep the feasts.’ She spat an olive stone onto her plate and grinned. ‘We only lacked one thing.’ Here she slipped her arm round Feles and gave him a squeeze: ‘Men.’

  ‘Do you ever go back there?’ asked Flavia.

  Huldah snorted. ‘You’ll never get me back there. Besides, once you’re out of the Golden House, you can never go back. You’re unclean, or something.’

  ‘So nobody goes there?’

  ‘Nobody but Titus and female musicians. He gets bad headaches and music is the one thing that helps. Oh, and sometimes we had child entertainers. But no men. We were like the Emperor’s harem, except Berenice was the only one he ever visited.’ She pouted.

  ‘Why did Berenice send you away?’ asked Sisyphus, then added in a conspiratorial tone. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’

  Huldah looked up at him from under thick eyelashes and popped another olive in her mouth. Then she grinned. ‘Why do you think? Berenice was jealous of me. I was fifteen, she was almost fifty. She saw Titus looking at me once. Then ecce!’ Huldah spat the olive stone across the courtyard. ‘I was out of there like a bolt from a ballista.’

  Lupus guffawed.

  Feles looked at Huldah. ‘You are beautiful enough to be an empress, you know.’

  Huldah shrieked and elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Oh you!’ She took a long drink of wine and as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand the copper bangles on her arm jingled. ‘I just love my little tomcat.’ She squeezed Feles round the waist again and nibbled his earlobe. ‘Couldn’t do without him now.’