The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  Alma screamed.

  ‘Great Jupiter’s eyebrows!’ exclaimed Gaius, and rushed forward to help Caudex.

  Scuto was sniffing the beggar’s legs and wagging his tail.

  ‘All lost,’ the stranger croaked. ‘Ship sunk and everything lost.’ As Flavia reached the bottom step, he lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes above the peeling, sunburned cheeks were the same grey-blue as hers, and already tears were filling them.

  ‘Pater!’ Flavia gripped the railing with one hand. ‘Pater, is it you?’

  ‘Yes, my little owl,’ said the sea captain Marcus Flavius Geminus.

  Then he collapsed.

  Jonathan’s father, Doctor Mordecai ben Ezra, looked up at the people crowding into the bedroom doorway.

  ‘He’s still unconscious,’ said Mordecai, straightening up from the bedside of Flavia’s father. ‘From the looks of him, he’s suffering from hunger and exposure. It’s obvious he’s been shipwrecked.’

  The doctor rinsed his hands in the copper bowl which his daughter Miriam held.

  ‘I would guess that the cuts on his legs and feet were made by sharp coral.’ Mordecai dried his hands on the linen towel over Miriam’s arm. ‘And I’m afraid they’re infected. If we don’t act immediately,’ he glanced at Flavia’s father and lowered his voice, ‘we may have to amputate his feet.’

  Mordecai spoke Latin with an accent and Nubia didn’t understand the word he had just uttered. ‘What is amputate?’ she asked Flavia.

  ‘Cut off.’ Flavia’s face was very pale.

  ‘Just tell us what to do.’ Gaius stepped forward and looked down at his unconscious twin brother.

  ‘Will you go to the market with Miriam, Gaius? I’ll make her a list of healing foods. She’ll know which stalls are most likely to have them. Also, when he wakes up, he’ll need lots of liquids. Alma, can you make him chicken soup?’

  ‘Of course, Doctor Mordecai.’ Alma looked relieved to have something to do and retreated from the dim bedroom.

  ‘Just broth, to start,’ called Mordecai after her. ‘Plenty of garlic.’

  ‘Right you are,’ came her voice, already halfway downstairs.

  ‘Aristo, can you buy some strips of linen? His wounds will need a fresh dressing.’

  ‘Right away,’ said Flavia’s tutor, a young Greek with curly hair the colour of bronze. He, too, hurried out of the room.

  ‘Flavia. Nubia.’ Mordecai turned to the girls. ‘Go down to the beach and fill some buckets with sea-water, as clear as possible.’

  The girls nodded.

  ‘When you get back you must sponge his feet and legs with the seawater. It won’t be a pleasant job, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s all right, Doctor Mordecai,’ said Flavia and then turned to Nubia. ‘Is that all right?’

  Nubia nodded.

  ‘Better take Caudex as your bodyguard,’ added Mordecai.

  ‘What about us, father?’ asked Jonathan. ‘What can we do?’

  Mordecai looked at the boys, his heavy-lidded eyes as dark as the turban above them. ‘You have the most unpleasant job of all,’ he said. ‘I want you to search the gutters of the meat market. Bring me back some nice young maggots. And make sure they’re still alive.’

  Nubia stood on Ostia’s hot beach for a moment, just where the small waves washed up onto the shore. She liked the feel of the water sucking the sand from under her feet. It tickled. And it was deliciously refreshing to have the blue water cooling her legs. She had changed back into one of her ordinary tunics – the faded apricot one – because it was short enough to allow her to wade in up to her knees.

  She used to hate the sea. For most of her life she had lived in the desert. Her first glimpse of the sea had been at the port of Alexandria, when the slave-dealer Venalicius angrily pushed a girl from her clan into its blue depths. The girl had still been chained and she had drowned before Nubia’s eyes.

  But now that Lupus had taught her to swim, Nubia was no longer afraid of the sea. She moved forward, beyond the little waves that foamed up onto the sand, and lowered the wooden bucket into the water. When it was full, she turned back to the shore.

  Her puppy Nipur was sniffing something on the beach. Since the volcano, bits of flotsam and jetsam had been washed ashore almost daily, some of it very unpleasant. Flavia was already there, her bucket filled, also staring down at the object.

  ‘What is it?’ said Nubia, splashing back towards the beach.

  ‘Only a medusa,’ said Flavia.

  ‘A what?’ Nubia looked at the transparent blob with its tangle of greyish-white strings.

  ‘A jellyfish. Don’t touch it! It can still sting, even though it’s dead. They call them medusas because the tentacles look like Medusa’s snaky hair.’

  Nubia nodded. Flavia was one of the cleverest people she knew. She was always reading scrolls and knew almost as much about Greek mythology as their tutor Aristo.

  Scuto came up to investigate, his tail wagging and his new ball in his mouth. He gave the jellyfish a quick sniff and then retreated. He knew from experience what they could do.

  ‘Filled your bucket?’ said Flavia.

  Nubia nodded.

  ‘Then let’s get back.’

  ‘I can’t believe how hot it is for October,’ said Jonathan, as he and Lupus slipped behind the stalls of Ostia’s meat market.

  Lupus grunted. The air above the white stone pavement shimmered with heat and the stench of blood and rotting meat filled his nostrils.

  Jonathan’s puppy Tigris strained at his rope lead, nose down, urgently following an invisible trail.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Jonathan. ‘Find the maggots! Ugh! It smells revolting here. Still, I suppose it’s good maggot weather.’ He ignored an over-the-shoulder glare of a fat pork butcher and scratched the stubble on his head. ‘I wonder why my father wants maggots? I don’t know of any balms or medicines which have maggots as an ingredient . . .’

  Tigris barked, startling a group of feral cats who had been scavenging in the gutter. The cats scattered, then turned to watch the boys from a safe distance. Lupus squatted to examine the object of their attention. Tigris came forward to sniff it and Lupus gently pushed the puppy away.

  ‘Ugh!’ Jonathan lifted Tigris into his arms. ‘Why did God make flies? And maggots . . .’ He gazed down at the rotting chicken leg. Dozens of white maggots writhed in the rancid meat.

  Lupus pulled out his handkerchief, a rather grubby one that smelled faintly of lemon blossom, and carefully wrapped the chicken leg in it. Then he stood and nodded.

  ‘Well done, Tigris,’ said Jonathan, and kissed his puppy’s nose. ‘You’re a good maggot-hunter.’

  Lupus patted Tigris, too, and the boys started back towards Green Fountain Street.

  As Lupus and Jonathan made their way through the crowded forum, Lupus glanced warily around. In his begging days he had learned to be constantly alert, always aware of his surroundings and any possible danger. Old habits died hard.

  It was almost noon and the forum was crowded with people finishing their day’s work before returning home for a light meal and short siesta. It was still as hot and heavy as summer and a layer of charcoal smoke from the morning sacrifices hung over the forum. Everyone blamed the eruption of Vesuvius two months earlier for the unusually hot autumn and lack of rain.

  On Lupus’s left rose the gleaming white temple of the Capitoline triad: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. On his right stood the basilica where only a few weeks earlier Jonathan’s father Mordecai had been imprisoned for hiding a suspected assassin. According to Miriam, they had officially released Mordecai by having a scribe announce that he had been cleared of blame and was free to go.

  A similar ceremony was taking place now on the steps of the basilica. Lupus glanced over to see who was being released.

  The prisoner was a barrel-chested man in a filthy grey tunic. His head was wrapped in linen strips, stained with dried blood. He was facing the scribe and the magistrate with his back to Lup
us, but as he turned Lupus’s stomach writhed as if it were as full of maggots as his handkerchief.

  The man gazing around the forum with a blind eye and a twisted smile was the person Lupus hated most in the world: Venalicius the slave-dealer.

  ‘Venalicius is here in Ostia!’ cried Jonathan, and rushed past Caudex to cry out again, ‘Flavia! Where are you?’

  ‘Upstairs in pater’s room,’ came Flavia’s voice.

  Jonathan took the wooden stairs two at a time, with Lupus and the dogs close behind him.

  ‘Flavia!’ Jonathan cried, then stopped as he saw she had her finger to her lips.

  Marcus Flavius Geminus was sitting up in bed and Jonathan’s father was standing beside him with a razor-sharp blade.

  ‘Hello, Jonathan. Hello, Lupus.’ Marcus’s voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘Hello, Captain Geminus,’ said Jonathan. ‘Welcome home.’

  Lupus nodded his greeting.

  Jonathan glanced down at Flavia and Nubia, who were sponging Marcus’s wounded feet. Then he wished he hadn’t.

  ‘Not a pretty sight, is it?’ whispered Captain Geminus.

  Jonathan swallowed and tried to smile.

  ‘Did you get the . . . what I asked for?’ said Mordecai.

  Lupus nodded and held out his handkerchief.

  Jonathan stared at the razor in his father’s hand.

  ‘You’re not going to amputate his feet, are you?’

  Mordecai smiled. ‘No, I was just about to shave him. But now I have something more important to do.’ He put down the razor and turned to Captain Geminus. ‘I must ask you to put aside your prejudices, Marcus. I have used this method before and it is remarkable. I would like to put maggots in the infected wounds on your feet.’

  ‘Ugh!’ squealed Flavia. ‘No!’

  ‘Flavia,’ croaked her father. ‘Let the doctor finish.’

  Mordecai took a deep breath. ‘The maggots eat the dead flesh . . . the rotting flesh. But they do not eat the healthy skin. In a few days the maggots will be fat and the remaining flesh will be whole and healthy and ready to heal.’ Mordecai opened Lupus’s handkerchief and nodded with satisfaction. ‘I will only do this,’ he continued, ‘if you consent. However, I must warn you, I believe it is either maggots or amputation.’

  They all looked at one another and the four friends breathed a collective sigh of relief as Captain Geminus whispered, ‘Maggots, please.’

  ‘What were you in such a hurry to tell us?’ Flavia asked Jonathan a short time later. Mordecai had applied the maggots to her father’s wounds and bound his torn feet loosely with strips of clean linen. Shaved and shorn, her father had drunk a bowlful of chicken soup and was now fast asleep in his darkened bedroom.

  Downstairs in Flavia’s cool, marble-floored triclinium Doctor Mordecai, Aristo and the four friends were sipping mint tea.

  ‘We wanted to tell you that Venalicius is here,’ Jonathan said. ‘Lupus and I just saw him being set free on the steps of the basilica.’

  ‘Venalicius!’ Flavia and Nubia stared at one another in horror. ‘But he was arrested in Surrentum after he tried to buy freeborn children as slaves. Why is he back in Ostia?’

  Mordecai put down his cup of mint tea. ‘They brought him back here to stand trial,’ he said. ‘Ostia is his home and his base of operations.’

  ‘You knew about this?’ said Flavia.

  Mordecai nodded.

  ‘You knew Venalicius was in Ostia?’ Jonathan stared at his father.

  ‘Yes. I knew.’

  Lupus gave an odd choking sound, and Aristo patted him on the back.

  Because Lupus was tongueless, sometimes food and drink went down the wrong way. Apparently not this time, thought Flavia, for Lupus writhed away from Aristo’s patting and pointed at Mordecai accusingly.

  ‘Yes, Lupus,’ said Mordecai quietly. ‘As I think you’ve just guessed, my cellmate last month was Venalicius.’

  ‘What?’ cried Flavia.

  ‘Last month,’ repeated Mordecai. ‘While you were in Rome. You remember that I spent a week in the basilica after I was arrested? Well, I wasn’t alone.’

  Aristo said something to Mordecai in Greek and the doctor replied in the same language.

  Lupus stared at them in disbelief, then snarled and lifted his empty cup as if to smash it against a wall. Jonathan caught the younger boy’s wrist and said:

  ‘Whoa, Lupus! What’s the matter?’

  Lupus gave Mordecai a withering look, slammed his cup onto the table and stomped out into the garden.

  ‘Why were you speaking Greek and what did you say?’ asked Flavia. She stared out into the bright garden at Lupus, who was pacing angrily back and forth under the dappled shade of the fig tree.

  ‘Last month,’ said Aristo, ‘Lupus and I brought Mordecai some medical supplies, when he was being held in the basilica. I just asked Mordecai if he had used them to bandage Venalicius’ ear, the one Lupus nearly cut off.’

  ‘And I said that I had,’ added Mordecai. ‘That sometimes an act of kindness speaks more than a thousand words, and that no man is beyond redemption until he dies.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Flavia,’ said Aristo. ‘I know you hate it when I speak Greek. But Lupus hates Venalicius so much that he tried to kill him last month. I was trying not to upset him.’

  ‘It didn’t work,’ remarked Jonathan.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Flavia slowly, ‘I think Lupus understood every word you said!’

  Lupus needed to get out of the house. He needed to breathe. He needed to think.

  He knew Scuto’s lead hung just inside the kitchen doorway. Alma smiled at him from the hearth as he pulled it off its nail. It was rare that Scuto actually went on the lead, but its jingle always alerted him that it was walk-time.

  Immediately four wagging dogs appeared at Lupus’s feet: big black Ferox, the two smaller black puppies and medium-sized Scuto, ball in mouth.

  ‘Are you going to take the dogs out, Lupus?’ called Flavia from the triclinium.

  Lupus nodded and glanced over at them. They were all watching him, probably talking about him, too.

  ‘Thanks, Lupus,’ called Jonathan.

  Lupus ignored them and unbolted the back door.

  Flavia’s house was built against Ostia’s town wall, and the back door was built into this thick wall. It led straight into the graveyard and for security reasons there was no latch on the outside.

  Jonathan – whose house was virtually a mirror image of Flavia’s – had invented a small wooden wedge to prop his door open. He had made a similar one for Flavia’s house. Lupus now kicked this wedge into place and let the door almost close behind him. Then he stepped outside the town into the hot afternoon.

  Scuto and the two puppies had already raced through the door and now sped through the golden grasses towards their favourite umbrella pine. Ferox, still recovering from a knife wound to the chest, limped beside Lupus as he made his way past the tombs of the dead towards the Laurentum Road.

  Once, not so long ago, Lupus had tormented Ferox by slinging stones at his rump. But Ferox’s wound had made him gentle. He had either forgotten or forgiven the offence. Lupus ruffled the top of Ferox’s head and the big dog rolled his eyes back and panted. His tail went steadily back and forth.

  Strange, thought Lupus, how a wound can make a gentle creature fierce and a fierce creature gentle.

  Presently they reached the road and Ferox squatted in some horse grass to do his business.

  Lupus discreetly turned away. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled the spicy scent of the sun-bleached grasses and pine resin. The buzzing of the cicadas was thin and brisk. Autumn was coming. His heart had stopped pounding and he no longer felt quite as sick as he had when Mordecai had confessed showing kindness towards Venalicius.

  A moist nose butted his knee in mute appeal. It was Scuto. Flavia had brought her dog a ball as a souvenir from Rome and he was besotted with it. Scuto dropped this ball in the dusty pine needl
es at Lupus’s feet, then backed away and gazed up at Lupus expectantly.

  Lupus picked up the ball and threw it hard towards the dunes. Scuto and the two puppies pursued it joyfully and Ferox ambled across the road after them.

  As Lupus followed, he allowed himself to remember his first ball. It had also been leather, sewn from two pieces of pigskin and filled with dried lentils. His parents had given it to him on his sixth birthday, a beautiful mild day in the middle of February, two and a half years ago.

  Lupus and his father had stood before the bright sea, laughing and tossing the ball back and forth. With each catch they had taken a step away from one another. Eventually his father had become a dark silhouette against the dazzling water behind him. Then Lupus’s mother had called them and presently half the village had gathered beneath their grape arbour to feast on suckling pig. Lupus still remembered the salty sweetness of the meat, roasted on a spit and glazed with honey, a rare delicacy on the island. That was when he still had a tongue and could taste food.

  He remembered how happy his father had been that day: half closing his green eyes and showing his white teeth whenever he laughed. And his mother Melissa. So beautiful and full of love.

  A few months later all that had been taken from him by the man who called himself Venalicius. Lupus’s heart started pounding again. He bent to pick up Scuto’s ball, then threw it with a grunt of rage, as hard as he could. He and Ferox followed the dogs and presently they topped a dune with a view of the water.

  Lupus clenched his fists and stared out at the Tyrrhenian Sea, its blue so deep it was almost black. Many times before he had promised the gods he would get revenge. This time he silently vowed to do something about it.

  The next day, Lupus paid a visit to the Baths of Thetis. He knew most of the people who visited this baths complex. In his begging days, before he had consented to live with Jonathan, the bath attendants had let him sleep by the furnace and scavenge scraps of food left behind by the clientele.

  Sometimes a young changing-room slave had given Lupus a few coppers to help him guard the clothes. Now this same slave – his name was Umidus – stared down at Lupus with a frown.