The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  Lupus peeked over the lobe of the ear. He had hoped the dwarf wouldn’t be able to climb very well, but Magnus was coming up fast.

  On his hands and knees now, Lupus scrambled out of the ear and away from Magnus. The massive bronze curls offered good hand-holds and presently he had reached the first slanting ray of the sun god’s crown. The ray was almost as tall as the Delphina’s mast and up close its flat bronze surface was covered with a pitted crust of greenish metal. This patina gave Lupus’s fingers something to grip and he made his way carefully around it to the next ray. The strap of his sandal was cutting into his swollen right ankle, so Lupus reached down, and started to loosen the thong. As he did so he leaned forward, peering from behind the ray.

  There was Magnus, only a few feet away. The little man was moving straight for him.

  Using the rough surface of the bronze, Lupus worked his way behind the second ray and peered around it.

  Right into Magnus’s face.

  ‘Ahhhh!’ shouted Lupus and lurched forward towards the next ray. He felt the dwarf’s fingers brush his wrist and desperately writhed away. But his backwards step was clumsy and with a sickening flash of certainty he knew he was going to fall. As his sandalled foot slipped, he heard his own cry, felt the rough scrape of bronze on his thighs and chest, the wrench in his shoulders as his fingers found a grip on the statue’s cold bronze curls.

  He was dangling from the statue’s hair. Looking down, he saw the smooth bronze forehead and below it a dizzying drop: not twelve feet, but more like twenty or thirty. Looking up, he saw an even more terrifying sight. Magnus, his handsome face gazing down at Lupus.

  ‘This is better,’ said the dwarf with a smile, ‘We can make this look like an accident.’ He slowly moved his right foot forward and Lupus felt the hobnailed boot press down on the fingers of his left hand.

  Lupus gasped with pain and outrage. That was not fair!

  Suddenly he had an idea.

  He reached down with his right hand and undid the already loosened strap of his sandal. Then he flung the sandal at Magnus.

  ‘Boh!’ cried the dwarf as the sandal struck his wrist. The knife flew out of Magnus’s hand and his arms flailed wildly as he tried to regain his balance. But his foot slipped on the same bronze curl and he pitched forward.

  ‘Aiiieeee!’ cried the dwarf as he tumbled past Lupus.

  Heart pounding, Lupus pulled himself back up onto the hair of the Colossus and lay panting for a while. Presently he pushed himself up on his hands and knees and peered down.

  Below him Magnus was struggling to his feet on a ledge formed by the sun god’s nose.

  ‘You little pest!’ Magnus’s face was in shadow but Lupus could hear the fury in the dwarf’s voice. He was glad the dagger was out of play. Magnus was cursing now, trying to scramble up over one colossal eye back onto the crown of the statue’s head.

  Lupus hurriedly stood and limped back the way he had come, expecting the dwarf to tackle him at any moment. But as he slid back down the neck of the Colossus and eased himself to the ground it was not Magnus that knocked him over. It was something else.

  ‘Oh,’ groaned Jonathan. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Sextus betrayed us,’ said Flavia’s voice. ‘He’s working for Magnus and he knocked you unconscious. Are you all right?’

  ‘No!’ cried Jonathan. ‘I can’t see! I’m blind!’

  ‘You’re not blind. We’re in the Delphina’s hold. They’ve shut us up here without lamps.’

  ‘What’s that coughing and whimpering?’

  ‘There are about sixty children in here with us. They’ve loaded them on this ship, not the Medea.’

  ‘What’s your plan to get us all out of here?’

  Silence.

  ‘You do have a plan don’t you?’

  ‘Well, we think there are only two guards plus Sextus. They’re up on deck.’

  ‘Only three guards for sixty prisoners?’

  ‘Jonathan, you should see them. Even if they didn’t have chains around their necks, most of them couldn’t run. Some of them can barely walk.’

  ‘I thought Magnus only shipped out the pretty ones.’

  ‘Not this time, I guess. But Jonathan, we’re the only ones tied with rope and I think I’ve almost untied Nubia’s hands. It’s just hard—’ he heard Flavia grunt ‘—to untie a rope backwards in the dark.’

  Jonathan felt a stab of dread. ‘Tigris!’ he cried. ‘Did he get away?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Flavia, ‘but it’s been a long time now. I hope he’s all right.’

  ‘Arrrgh!’ grunted Lupus, pushing the creature away. Something had pinned him to the ground. Something with a hot tongue and doggy breath.

  Then he laughed with relief as he saw Tigris’s panting face looming over him. The big puppy’s tail was a blur in the moonlight and as Lupus staggered to his feet Tigris leapt up, too, and tried to lick his face.

  As Lupus patted Jonathan’s dog, an idea dawned in his mind.

  Hooking his finger in Tigris’s collar, he limped round to the front of the enormous bronze head and pointed up at Magnus, who was trying a different route down from the colossal nose. When the dwarf saw Tigris, he scrambled back up onto the nose and glared down. Tigris was not even a year old, but his father had been a mastiff and he was already bigger than most full-grown dogs.

  Lupus pointed to Magnus and then growled fiercely. Tigris looked up at Magnus and then at Lupus. Lupus growled up at Magnus again. Tigris growled at Magnus and Lupus patted the dog’s head. Then he gently pushed Tigris’s bottom, making him sit. But when Lupus started to limp back down the path towards the harbour, Tigris rose and began to follow him.

  Lupus patiently led Tigris back to the same spot, made him sit and uttered a commanding grunt. This time Tigris understood. He turned his head and whined as Lupus backed off, but he did not leave his post.

  ‘Well played, Lupus!’ came Magnus’s light voice. ‘You win. Just call off your mastiff. I need to get down to the harbour now.’

  Lupus ignored him and started down the path. The moon was rising steadily and the ship – his ship! – would sail within the hour. He didn’t have much time.

  ‘Melissa!’ The dwarf’s cry brought Lupus up short. ‘Your mother’s name is Melissa, isn’t it?’

  Lupus turned, his heart pounding. Magnus was still standing on the ledge of the sun god’s nose. He jerked his little arm up towards the grove.

  ‘She’s up there now. At the temple of Apollo. I’ve just seen her. Your uncle often spoke of her but I wanted to see for myself. I wanted to see her beauty before she died.’

  Lupus’s feet – one sandalled, one bare – took him back up the hill. Beside the path something caught his eye. Magnus’s dagger, gleaming in the moonlight. He bent, picked it up, slipped it into his belt, almost without thinking. Then he looked up at Magnus. The moonlight showed the dwarf’s handsome features and Lupus saw him smile. Was he dreaming? Was this some nightmare?

  ‘I know about the vow she made,’ Magnus spoke so softly that Lupus had to come even closer. Tigris wagged his tail but Lupus kept his eyes on the dwarf.

  ‘Zosimus wrote to me,’ said Magnus. ‘He told me how devastated you were when you heard she had left Symi. So I took the time to find her, because I must know everything about my enemies.’

  Lupus took a step closer and Tigris whined softly.

  ‘You know, Lupus, a few months ago, when I first heard that you killed one of my best agents, and that you had somehow acquired his ship, I knew I had made a powerful new enemy. Others might underestimate you but I would not. And I was right. Nothing I did seemed to stop you from coming here to Rhodes. That’s why I had to resort to finding your mother. Did you know she promised to sacrifice her life to Apollo if you survived? That was the vow she made and she’s about to fulfil it. The priest was sharpening the knife when I left.’

  Lupus tried to cry out ‘No!’ but it came out as a groan.

  Magnus pointed dramatically towards th
e east. ‘That full moon is her executioner, Lupus. As soon as it rose they began the ceremony. So call off your hound and go to her. If you hurry, you might be in time to save her.’

  Lupus shook his head, trying to clear it. Except in Greek plays, he had never heard of the gods demanding human sacrifice. Was his mother really about to die on the altar of Apollo? Or was this Magnus’s bluff to keep him away from the Delphina?

  Once the Delphina left the harbour, Magnus would be safe. There would be no evidence to convict him. The captured children would be gone forever, absorbed into the vast continent of Asia to become slaves, or worse. And his friends would disappear along with them.

  Lupus clearly remembered the first time he had seen Flavia, Jonathan and Nubia – three very different-looking children standing around his bed in the lamplight, looking at him with concern. They had accepted him and befriended him. They had laughed together, played music together, solved mysteries together. And one magical night the four of them had swum with dolphins. How could he abandon them?

  But his mother. His mother. They might be killing her now. How could he abandon her?

  The ground was tipping and tilting like the deck of a ship. He felt sick and found himself on his knees, his forehead pressed against the cool dust, his breath coming in panting gasps.

  He had a terrible choice. He could save his friends or he could save his mother. He couldn’t do both. God, please help me, he prayed.

  Instantly he heard a voice in his head say: You made a vow.

  Suddenly everything was clear. He knew what he had to do. Lupus stood on trembling legs and breathed deeply.

  ‘Run!’ Magnus was saying. ‘If you run you might be in time.’

  Lupus kicked off his remaining sandal and although his ankle still hurt like Hades, he ran.

  Flavia still hadn’t managed to untie Nubia, and the hope was dying in her heart when she heard an enormous thud and then scuffling on the deck above.

  Muffled shouts and curses, more echoing thuds, and then the quick rhythmic stamp of feet which must be a line of soldiers. Finally the sound of the hatch-cover being opened and her father’s wonderful voice calling ‘Flavia? Are you there? Flavia?’

  ‘Yes, pater!’ she cried. ‘We’re all down here! Help us!’

  All eyes turned towards the stairs as a flickering light appeared and a boy limped down into the dim hold.

  ‘Lupus!’ cried Flavia, Jonathan and Nubia together.

  Flavia saw his eyes widen as he looked around at all the children. Then a man’s legs appeared behind him, and a tunic with a narrow stripe on each side which Flavia recognised with a sob of relief. ‘Oh, pater! We thought they’d killed you!’

  ‘No, my little owl,’ he said, but his smile faded as he held out his swinging oil-lamp and saw the children – emaciated, filthy, and terrified – huddling among amphoras and sacks of salt. ‘By all the gods!’ he muttered, ‘when I get my hands on that miserable dwarf . . . Flaccus, would you help me get these children out of their bonds and up on deck.’

  ‘Master!’ cried Zetes, and Flavia saw Flaccus coming down into the light. There was blood on his tunic and an ugly gash by one of his dark eyebrows. He scanned the dim faces in the hold and his handsome face relaxed into a smile as he saw Zetes.

  ‘Where’s Bato?’ Flavia asked her father. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks to Flaccus’s skill as a boxer. Bato’s up on deck, helping the authorities.’

  ‘Pater!’ cried Flavia. ‘Sextus is up on deck, too! He betrayed us! Don’t let him go!’

  ‘I know. He attacked us, but Flaccus knocked him cold.’ Her father had been picking his way carefully through the whimpering children and now at last he reached her. He hung the oil-lamp from a hook on the beam above and gave her a quick, fierce hug. Then he began to cut the rope around her neck. Flaccus was beside her, too, cutting Zetes free with a knife.

  ‘What happened pater?’ asked Flavia. ‘Did you find Magnus?’

  ‘It was a trap,’ said her father grimly, loosening the loop around Nubia’s neck, before cutting it. ‘The little blind girl was working for Magnus. So was the waiter who served us breakfast this morning, and some of the coppersmiths. It seems half the people on this island receive money and favours from him. Lupus was clever to remember where the governor lived, and to find him. If he hadn’t come with reinforcements we would be dead.’

  ‘Lupus,’ said Jonathan, keeping his head still as Flaccus cut away the rope collar. ‘You saved us!’

  Lupus looked up at Jonathan with a strange bleak expression on his face.

  ‘Lupus saved us all,’ said Flavia’s father. ‘Apparently he trapped Magnus and his bodyguard up on the acropolis long enough for us to—’

  ‘Magnus has a bodyguard?’ asked Flavia, as her father started on the knot tying her hands.

  ‘Magnus is a dwarf,’ explained Flaccus. ‘He rides on the shoulders of his bodyguard, a big thug called Ursus, a mute. But if you see them together you think they’re father and son. That’s why I didn’t recognise him in the tavern.’

  Flavia’s hands were free now and she threw her arms around her father. ‘Oh, pater!’ She felt hot tears filling her eyes. ‘We were so frightened and – of course!’ she cried, pushing away from her father and looking up at Flaccus. ‘Magnus is a dwarf! That’s why they call him both Hector and Astyanax. Magnus is like Astyanax and the big thug is Hector.’

  ‘And Magnus rides on the shoulders of his mute bodyguard,’ said Jonathan, ‘just like Astyanax rode on the shoulders of Hector when they were fleeing Troy.’

  ‘That was Anchises, not Astyanax,’ said Flavia and Flaccus at the same moment, and smiled at each other.

  ‘What is mute?’ asked Nubia.

  ‘It means he can’t speak,’ said Flavia’s father. ‘He had his tongue cut out, like Lupus.’

  ‘How did you trap him, Lupus?’ asked Flavia, and then ‘Lupus?’

  But Lupus had gone.

  The moon was directly above by the time he reached the colossal head.

  There was nobody there. No Magnus. No Ursus. No Tigris. Just the huge head, eerie in the silver moonlight which cast the lower side of its face into inky shadows. The words of a poem – he could not remember which one – came into his mind: The rock that toppled the statue became a huge mountain and filled the earth.

  For a moment Lupus gazed at the head with its unseeing eyes, then he limped up the moonlit path between dark rhododendron bushes. No point hurrying. The ceremony would be over by now. And he dreaded what he might find.

  The path became marble stairs and his legs grew heavier with each step. Presently he reached the temple of Apollo. A huge dark cube surrounded by silent figures so vast that they blocked out the stars. Colossal statues. Like gods frozen with horror at what they had seen.

  Before the temple stood an altar, still glowing red with embers. He caught the nauseating sweet smell of burnt meat, and was almost sick. Then he recognised the smell of mutton and his racing heart beat a little slower.

  He did not hear the nightingale trill, or feel the warm night breeze ruffle his tunic, or see the tiny white stars of fireflies blinking among the rhododendron bushes. But something drew him past the altar towards the inky black pine grove beyond. And presently he reached a moonlit clearing with the marble statue of a robed woman at its centre.

  He froze. Three tiny deer were approaching the statue. Then the statue moved and Lupus saw it was a woman: a priestess with her head covered by her white palla. One of the tiny deer took some food from her outstretched hand.

  His heart was pounding violently again. Was it his mother? He stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight.

  All three deer froze – their small heads and big ears turned towards him – then they bounded off into the woods and only the woman remained. The priestess turned and pulled back her head covering to reveal white hair.

  Lupus’s heart sank and his shoulders slumped.

  The priestess smiled. ‘You
have come to find your mother, haven’t you?’ she said softly in Greek.

  He nodded, and saw tears shining in her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lukos, but you are too late.’

  IS SHE DEAD? Lupus’s finger trembled as he wrote in the cool dust at the foot of a pine tree.

  ‘Yes,’ said the priestess with a sad smile, ‘and no. Once you take a vow to Apollo you are dead to your old life. Devoted to the god alone.’

  Lupus tried not to sob with relief. He closed his eyes and offered up a brief prayer of thanks. Then he wrote: IS SHE HERE?

  The priestess paused and glanced away. ‘No. She has gone to another sanctuary of Apollo.’ She turned her gentle gaze on Lupus again. ‘But even if she was here, I would not be allowed to tell you. Nor would you be permitted to see her. She has been sanctified. Set apart. I will explain it to you. Come with me.’

  The priestess led him silently back to the clearing in front of the temple. She took a ceramic beaker from a niche behind the altar, and lifted a bronze jug from the coals on top and poured a draught of steaming liquid. From the smell he guessed it was spiced wine mixed with milk. But there was another scent, faint but familiar, that he could not place.

  ‘Drink this,’ said the priestess. ‘It will calm your heart.’

  When he had drunk, she led him to the foot of a tall umbrella pine. ‘I like to sit here on moonlit nights,’ she said. ‘If we are still, the deer will come to us again.’

  Lupus sat beside her on a soft cushion of dust and pine needles. He felt numb.

  ‘Many people make vows to the gods,’ said the priestess. ‘But few really honour them. And even then, it is only with a copper plaque or the blood of some poor animal.’

  Lupus leaned his head back against the rough bark of the tree and closed his eyes.