The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  ‘Great Juno’s peacock!’ exclaimed Flavia. ‘Look at that.’ She parted the filmy purple curtain at the front of the Imperial litter and the three of them rolled over onto their stomachs, gazing out in wonder.

  Above and before them lay an immensely long palace built into a green wooded hill. It was fronted with a row of dazzling golden columns that blazed in the late afternoon sunlight.

  ‘There must be a thousand of those columns,’ breathed Flavia. ‘Do you think they’re solid gold?’

  Lupus shook his head and made a painting motion.

  ‘Just gilded? Still, that’s a lot of gold paint . . . Now we know why they call it the Golden House.’

  Above the yellow-tiled roof of this dazzling complex, on the crest of the hill, she could see fountains, a portico of smaller white columns and seven palm trees planted in a circle.

  The bearers puffed as they carried the litter up marble steps between green terraces.

  ‘Great Juno’s peacock!’ cried Flavia again. ‘A peacock.’

  ‘Behold! Its tail is spreading,’ whispered Nubia. Flavia could tell from Lupus’s round eyes that he had never seen a peacock before. Somewhere behind the fragrant shrubs which lined the stairway, another peacock uttered its haunting cry.

  Now the litter had reached the top of the marble steps, and the highest terrace came into view. Several long reflecting pools lay at the foot of the long portico, doubling the golden columns. A dozen exotic wading birds with curved beaks and orange-pink feathers stood in the pools among clumps of papyrus and floating water lilies.

  Nubia uttered a word Flavia didn’t understand.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those birds are from my country,’ said Nubia.

  The four burly slaves carried the litter between two of the reflecting pools, then set it down beneath the portico. It was afternoon now and the golden columns threw dark shadowed bars across the walkway. As Flavia climbed down from the litter, she noticed for the first time that the bearers were female.

  Holding her beribboned tambourine, Flavia followed one of the female bearers into a huge domed space.

  ‘The octagonal room,’ breathed Flavia, tipping her head back and putting up her free hand to keep the garland on her head. The immense dome and large circular skylight gave the room a breathtaking sense of space and light. Beneath the dome, dozens of dark-haired women worked at colourful tapestries. Some of them had already put down their shuttles, beaters and wool; they were beginning to form a semi-circle around a central platform beneath the dome.

  ‘That’s where you sit,’ the litter-bearer said to Flavia, indicating the platform. ‘Play half a dozen songs,’ she continued in a husky voice, ‘take a break, play six more, then we’ll carry you back to the Palatine. Oh, and if the Emperor appears, you don’t need to bow or acknowledge him in any way. Unless, of course, he approaches you. In which case, the correct way to address him is “Caesar”.’

  ‘All right,’ murmured Flavia politely. She led the other two up to the platform where cushions were already set out.

  ‘This is it,’ she whispered to Nubia and Lupus. ‘Keep your eyes open for Jonathan or Simeon. Or anything suspicious.’

  As Susannah the Beautiful approached, Jonathan took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the bush.

  ‘Oh!’ she cried out and her hand went to her throat. Then she saw Rizpah and spoke in Aramaic.

  ‘Rizpah! You frightened me. You mustn’t leap out of the shrubbery like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Susannah.’ Rizpah shaded her eyes with both hands and screwed up her face against the brilliance of the garden.

  ‘Who’s this?’ asked Susannah, looking at Jonathan with interest, but before either of them could answer, her eyes widened.

  ‘Jonathan?’ she whispered. ‘Is it you?’

  Nubia glanced at Lupus and Flavia to make sure they were ready. They nodded back at her and she lifted the flute to her lips.

  First they played the ‘Song of the Traveller’, a song from Nubia’s native land. Then they played ‘The Raven and the Dove’, a song their friend Clio had taught them. Under Nubia’s fingers this popular song took on an exotic flavour.

  Nubia set aside her flute to sing the ‘Dog Song’, while Lupus drummed, then she and Flavia took up their instruments again for the last two songs, both of which Nubia had composed herself. The first she called ‘Sailing Song’ and the second, her favourite, she called ‘Slave Song’. She could never play this last without shedding a tear and when she looked up she saw that most of the women from Jerusalem also had wet cheeks.

  Nubia felt a touch on her arm. Flavia nodded towards a man standing behind them on the extreme left, leaning against one of the golden columns.

  The man’s eyes were closed and his face turned up towards the diffused light of the dome.

  Although he wasn’t wearing his purple toga or golden wreath this time, Nubia recognised him. ‘Titus?’ she whispered.

  Flavia nodded.

  *

  Jonathan tried not to cry out as his mother threw her arms round him, but he couldn’t help flinching.

  ‘Oh, Jonathan!’ she drew back and looked at his shoulder in horror. ‘I’ve hurt you. Dear Lord! Titus didn’t say you’d been branded! Oh my poor son.’

  ‘The Emperor knows about me?’ said Jonathan, taking a step back. Although she had spoken to him in Aramaic he used Latin.

  ‘Of course.’ She followed his lead and replied in Latin. ‘They look for you everywhere.’ Her Latin wasn’t very good. ‘Simeon tells us how brave you’ve been, how you are willing to risk your life—’

  ‘Simeon? He’s all right? They haven’t tortured and blinded him?’

  ‘No, no.’ Susannah stepped forward and took Jonathan’s face between her cool hands. He caught a whiff of her scent. It was no longer lemon blossom, but something different: rose and myrtle. ‘Your uncle Simeon is good,’ she said. ‘He is on the Palatine. Josephus warns Titus before they torture him.’

  ‘Josephus!’ Jonathan stepped back again, away from her touch. ‘That’s the name of the man who betrayed us.’

  His mother let her arms fall to her sides. ‘Josephus doesn’t know Simeon comes to help,’ she said. ‘He thinks your uncle assassinates the Emperor. Josephus is loyal to Emperor.’

  ‘And I see that you are loyal to the Emperor, too.’

  ‘Jonathan. Do not hate Titus. He is good man.’

  ‘He murdered thousands of Jews, destroyed Jerusalem and burned down God’s temple!’ cried Jonathan.

  ‘And he is most sorry.’

  ‘Oh. He’s sorry. Well then. That makes it all right, doesn’t it? So now you can kiss him and tell him it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Jonathan. Please do not.’

  He turned his head aside, fighting to hold back the tears. ‘I came to find you. To warn you. To take you back to Miriam and father. And I find you in the arms of that monster . . .’

  ‘Jonathan. You are dear, precious son. I am so sorry.’ She took his hands. ‘Please, my Jonathan. Tell me. How is sister Miriam? And father? And you?’

  Lupus was watching one of the slave women closely. He had noticed her even before they began to play. The way she had walked to her cushion had attracted his attention. Was she Jonathan’s mother? No. There was no look of Miriam or Jonathan about her face.

  Perhaps he had seen her somewhere before?

  As he drummed he let his gaze slide round the other women’s faces. Most had their eyes closed or were weeping. But this woman’s eyes beneath her black headscarf were cool and calculating; unaffected, even by the ‘Slave Song’.

  She must have felt his gaze, for as she looked at him she modestly covered the lower half of her face with her scarf. For a moment their gazes locked. That’s odd, thought Lupus: one of her eyes is half brown and half blue.

  ‘Alas! My heart is wretched.’ Lupus heard Nubia whisper to Flavia. ‘Because I have no more songs. They will know we are not real music players.’

&nbs
p; ‘Don’t worry, Nubia. We’ll just play them again.’

  Lupus saw that the Emperor was approaching their low platform. At the same time he noticed the woman with the strange eye had risen to her feet. Another woman – one with fluffy brown hair – gripped her hand, but the first woman shook it off and walked slowly towards the golden portico.

  The Emperor was standing before them now, talking to Flavia. Lupus ignored him, turned his head to watch the woman move towards the columns. He knew there was something else strange about her.

  Just before she disappeared from sight, a breeze blew up the hem of her black robes. Lupus saw a hairy and well-muscled calf, and below it, a soldier’s sandal.

  Rizpah must have slipped back into the shadows because Jonathan sensed that he and his mother were alone now. He sat on the chair the Emperor had occupied earlier and allowed her to hold his hands.

  Jonathan reverted to Hebrew to tell his mother about his childhood without her, how they had moved from Pella to Rome and then to Ostia. He told her about Flavia, Lupus and Jonathan. He told her that Miriam was engaged to a Roman farmer who had probably lost everything in the eruption of Vesuvius. He told her his father was well, but lonely.

  Finally, Jonathan told his mother how he had dreamed of her in the Cyclops’ cave, waiting to be rescued.

  ‘Mother. It was my fault that you stayed in Jerusalem and were taken captive. But now I can fix it. I think I can find a way for us to get out of here.’

  ‘You do?’ she said vaguely, and then: ‘But, Jonathan, why do you think it was your fault?’

  ‘Simeon said you stayed in Jerusalem because of me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I overheard Simeon tell father you stayed in Jerusalem because of me.’

  His mother turned her head and stared into the Cyclops’ cave.

  ‘Then he knows.’

  ‘What are you talking about? What did I do to make you stay?’

  ‘No.’ She looked back at him and he saw that her eyes were full of tears. ‘It wasn’t you, my son. Nothing was your fault. You were only a toddler. A dear, sweet little boy.’

  ‘Then . . . I don’t understand.’

  His mother stood. She walked to her loom and reached out to touch the wool stretched taut across it.

  ‘I did a bad thing, Jonathan. I never wanted you or Miriam or your father to know.’

  ‘What? What did you do, mother?’

  Jonathan’s mother looked at him and then beyond him. He turned to see what she was looking at.

  A figure stood in the bright garden, watching them through the columns. It was one of the Jewish slave women. She was dressed in black and had pulled her scarf across her face. It seemed one of the women of Jerusalem had come to offer her hand in friendship.

  Then his mother’s dark blue eyes opened in surprise. Following her gaze, Jonathan saw that the woman in black came not in friendship but in malice.

  In her hand she held a curved, razor-sharp dagger.

  ‘Aiieeee!’ Lupus struck the assassin at the back of the knees.

  ‘Oof!’ The figure in black collapsed.

  Lupus rolled aside to avoid being crushed, grasped the figure’s headscarf and yanked. Long hair tumbled out as the assassin’s head flew up and then cracked down hard onto the marble walkway.

  Lupus’s flowered garland had slipped down over his eyes. With a grunt of disgust he tore it from his head and threw it away. Luckily, the figure on the floor was stunned. Lupus saw long hair and heavy eye-liner, but the stubble on the assassin’s cheeks confirmed what Lupus had suspected: it was a man. And although he was fine-boned with delicate features, he was tough. Already he was shaking his head and struggling to sit up.

  The knife.

  Lupus had to get the knife away from the assassin. He had just lunged for it when a foot stomped hard on the assassin’s wrist. The knife spun across the shaded marble path and into the shadows of a cave-like room.

  ‘Lupus! Give me your hand!’ The voice was Jonathan’s.

  Lupus grasped an extended hand and was lifted to his feet.

  It took him a split second to recognise the slave-boy who had helped him up. Jonathan seemed taller and thinner. His shaved head made his eyes look huge. And he had a strange expression on his face.

  Lupus grunted and leapt back as the assassin struggled to his feet. Then for a second time he kicked the man hard in the back of the knees. The man went down again, this time onto all fours, his long hair screening his face.

  ‘Jonathan!’ Lupus heard a little girl’s voice and the sound of metal on marble and suddenly Jonathan held the dagger in his hand. Someone in the shadows had kicked it back to him.

  Still on all fours, the man in the black robes looked up. Jonathan was breathing hard, half crouching and holding the curved dagger in his right hand. Somewhere a woman was screaming. Lupus could hear the approaching slap of running feet on marble and the sound of a jingling tambourine.

  So could the assassin.

  He looked round, like a cornered beast, his long hair flying about his shoulders. Then he rose and turned and ran through the garden courtyard towards the vaulted rooms near the front of the palace.

  Lupus ran after him.

  Jonathan knew he had to get his mother to safety. As soon as he saw the assassin fleeing, he ran up to her. She was cowering in the shadows behind her loom.

  ‘Come on, mother! I know where we can hide,’ he said, then turned in amazement as he heard a familiar voice shout:

  ‘There he is!’

  As if in a dream he saw Flavia and Nubia run through the sunlit garden. They were both wearing flowered garlands with coloured ribbons streaming out behind. Flavia held a beribboned tambourine in one hand; it jingled as she ran. Neither of them saw him standing in the shadowed vault, gripping his mother’s wrist.

  Two muscular women in shiny breastplates came hard on the girls’ heels and then the Emperor himself, red-faced and gasping.

  ‘Titus!’ whispered Jonathan’s mother. She took a step forward, but Jonathan pulled her back, almost roughly. Still holding her by the wrist, he set off through several dim, empty rooms, pulling her after him.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Here.’ He pulled her into a small triangular room. He remembered Rizpah telling him Nero had once used it to display a statue of a sleeping satyr, but now the room was empty.

  Jonathan stopped, panting hard. ‘We’ll be safe here for a while. Then Rizpah will show us the way out.’ Still holding her hand, Jonathan turned to his mother. ‘First, tell me . . . what was the bad thing you did?’ His breath came in wheezing gasps. ‘Why didn’t you . . . escape with us?’

  His mother looked at him and then dropped her head.

  ‘There was a man,’ she finally said.

  ‘A man?’

  ‘I loved him.’

  Jonathan realised he was still holding her hand. He dropped it.

  ‘He was a famous freedom-fighter. His name was on everyone’s lips. They called him Jonathan the Zealot.’

  ‘His name was Jonathan?’

  She nodded.

  The odd shape of the room made him feel slightly unbalanced, and not for the first time, he wondered if he was dreaming.

  ‘Am I . . . named after him?’

  His mother hung her head and nodded again.

  Jonathan felt cold. He could see each black and white chip in the mosaic floor with terrible clarity. Finally he took a deep breath and asked: ‘Was Jonathan the Zealot my real father?’

  ‘There he is!’ shouted Flavia.

  When Lupus had jumped off the platform she had followed him without hesitation. She hadn’t even put down her tambourine.

  She and Nubia had run down the colonnade after Lupus, the golden columns flashing by on their left. Suddenly Lupus had veered right, and they followed him across a hot, grassy courtyard, into a complex of brightly painted, high-vaulted rooms. There they lost him, until a woman’s scream directed them to an inner garden courtyard. A
moment later a long-haired man in black robes ran past, closely pursued by Lupus.

  Flavia heard footsteps behind her and glanced back. Two of the muscular female litter-bearers and Titus himself had joined the chase.

  ‘There he is!’ she shouted to them again.

  She followed Lupus through a large vaulted room and suddenly they were at the front of the palace again, at the golden portico.

  Flavia stopped for a moment, hugged one of the golden columns with her left arm and looked around, panting. There! The assassin was splashing through the reflecting pool, sending the exotic pink birds into a panic. They squawked and flapped and tried to fly away, but in vain: their wings had been clipped.

  Suddenly the man slipped and fell with a splash, then staggered to his feet. His black robes clung to his body and they could see his masculine build. Lupus was almost upon him now. Flavia gasped as the assassin swung round to strike Lupus a glancing, backhand blow.

  ‘Lupus!’ She pushed away from the column and ran to help him, Nubia close beside her.

  Lupus had fallen into the pool. But a moment later he was up, shaking himself off like a dog, then resuming his pursuit of the assassin, who had doubled back and was running up marble stairs to the upper level. Flavia and Nubia were close behind Lupus now, close enough to see drops of water flying off his soaked green tunic.

  Flavia took the stairs two at a time, her tambourine jingling with each step, trying not to slip on the scattered pine needles.

  ‘Behold!’ Nubia panted and Flavia caught a glimpse of the assassin turning to run along the long upper portico of white columns. Lupus was right behind him.

  Hampered by his dripping black robes, the assassin was running awkwardly now; once he almost tripped. He stumbled along the portico, then veered between the columns and into a small, angular garden. Beyond a circle of palm trees in the centre of the garden, Flavia saw another portico with thick green woods beyond. Woods thick enough to hide any fugitive.

  The assassin saw it, too, and made for it, heading towards the ring of palms.