The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  He took a deep breath, then another, and saw the stars return to their places. He found that he had fallen to his knees beside the omphalos. He stood on trembling legs and waited for his heart to slow a little. Then he limped out from behind the egg-shaped altar, quietly descended the stairs and followed the ghostly white shape of the priestess as she moved up the curving path towards the fountain.

  As he followed her between statues and altars his mind raced. How could it be his mother? Of all the sanctuaries in all the world, what were the chances of him finding her here? And yet . . . This was Apollo’s greatest sanctuary and she had dedicated her life to that god. His heart was racing as fast as a rabbit’s but as he rounded a curve in the sacred path, it almost stopped.

  In the murky dusk before him crouched a fully armed soldier, his sword out and ready, his shield in his left hand, and his eyes glinting with malice.

  ‘How do you see the Pythia if she’s behind a curtain?’ Flavia asked Mystagogus.

  ‘You don’t. But I have seen them before. They are woman of about fifty years old with grey hair and looking most ordinary.’

  ‘They? I thought there was only one.’

  ‘No. There are three of them.’

  ‘Three Pythias?’

  ‘It is tired work. When one exhausts the next takes over. They take turns.’

  ‘But you asked her the question.’

  ‘Yes. The priest made me write out the question on a thin piece of lead. Then he reads it loudly outside curtain.’

  ‘Did he read the question exactly as I wrote it?’

  Mystagogus put down his piece of chicken and reached into his belt pouch. He pulled out the scrap of papyrus with Flavia’s question.

  HOW CAN THE ROMAN GIRL FLAVIA GEMINA UNDO THE CURSE WHICH ARISTO FROM THE TOWN OF CORINTH PUT ON HER FATHER BEFORE HE TRIED TO KILL HIM?

  ‘The priest used my exact words?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mystagogus, taking a sip of mulsum. ‘He asks it in loud voice. I hear priestess murmuring behind her curtain and then I smell something sweet that makes me little bit dizzy. These are the fumes from the rock.’

  ‘And then? What did the Pythia say?’ Flavia asked Mystagogus. ‘Tell us, please!’

  Mystagogus smiled, wiped his mouth with his cloak, and took a parchment scroll from a cloth belt pouch. It was the size of his index finger and tied with a red ribbon. ‘She speaks most softly,’ he said, as he extended the scroll, ‘so it was difficult to understand her. But the two priests speak one to the other and then they write the Pythia’s answer in Greek hexameter.’

  ‘In Greek?’ wailed Flavia, taking the parchment.

  ‘Yes, but they also translate it into Latin, as you see.’

  A frown creased Flavia’s forehead as she pulled off the ribbon and read what was written on the parchment.

  ‘What does it say?’ asked Nikos.

  ‘Read it out loud, Flavia!’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Yes, read it,’ said Nubia.

  Flavia looked up at them and then back down at the parchment. Then she read it.

  ‘For Flavia Gemina. Ponder the god’s answer and act wisely:

  ‘No man or woman has ever tried to kill your father,

  ‘And no one ever will. Polydeuces’s brother will live long and prosper,

  ‘And he will regain his reason on the day it rains from a clear sky.’

  Flavia turned to Mystagogus, ‘But it doesn’t say anything about Aristo or the curse!’ she cried. ‘It’s nonsense! It’s just wool fluff!’

  Lupus froze, muscles coiled, waiting to see which way the guard would go.

  The soldier’s eyes glared out at Lupus from the eye holes of his bronze Corinthian helmet, but he remained perfectly immobile. He was obviously going to let Lupus make the first move.

  With his ankle twinging, Lupus knew it would be difficult to outrun the guard. But not impossible. So he feinted right, then left, ready to move in the opposite direction the soldier might go. But the soldier was not fooled. He remained frozen in his crouched position, still as a statue.

  Abruptly, Lupus realised that he was a statue.

  He felt the hot rush of blood to his cheeks, and he was glad no one had seen him make a fool of himself. Silently cursing his own stupidity, Lupus brought his face close to the statue’s and looked into the eye holes of the helmet. The statue’s eyes were probably made of some semi-precious stone, highly polished to make them look wet. Lupus slowly put his forefinger through the eye-hole of the helmet and touched the glistening eyeball, just to be sure. Yes, it was made of cold smooth stone.

  Lupus patted the statue on its bronze shoulder and limped up the path after the priestess with the jar.

  ‘Lukos!’ The water jar fell and shattered as it struck the granite lip of the fountain. ‘Oh, Lukos, my son!’ Now his mother’s arms were around him, smooth and cool and strong. He could smell her scent: honey and pine.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Apollo!’ she cried. ‘Thank you for bringing my precious son to me.’ She hugged him tightly, then pushed him away and gazed down at him. ‘Open your mouth,’ she whispered. ‘I must see. No, it’s too dark. Come up here!’ She took his hand and pulled him almost roughly along the path and back up the steps of the temple to where the torches burned.

  Standing beside the massive columns in the flickering golden light, he saw her dear, beautiful face – the face he thought he had forgotten – now perfectly familiar again.

  She held the sides of his head in her cool hands and tipped his face up and made him open his mouth and she gazed inside. Then she threw back her head and wailed. There was so much anguish in her cry that Lupus began to sob, too. Not for himself, but for her.

  ‘The Pythia’s answer is nonsense!’ repeated Flavia Gemina in disgust, throwing the parchment scroll down onto the table. ‘Utter wool fluff!’

  ‘It is not Pythia’s answer,’ said Mystagogus. ‘But Apollo’s.’

  Jonathan picked up the parchment.

  ‘Read it again,’ said Atticus.

  ‘No man or woman has ever tried to kill your father,’ read Jonathan, ‘And no one ever will. Polydeuces’s brother will live long and prosper, And he will regain his reason on the day it rains from a clear sky.’ He raised his eyebrows at Flavia.

  ‘What does it mean?’ Nikos frowned.

  ‘It is ambiguous,’ said Nubia.

  ‘It’s not ambiguous!’ cried Flavia. ‘It’s wool fluff!’

  ‘Yet this is how the oracle always speaks,’ said Mystagogus. ‘In riddles.’

  ‘Waiter!’ called Atticus. ‘Bring us more mulsum! Hot and spiced, and well-watered for the children. Now, let’s study this line by line. You have to know how to interpret these things. Read it again, Jonathan?’

  ‘No man or woman has ever tried to kill your father . . .’ began Jonathan.

  ‘See?’ said Flavia, swallowing angry tears. ‘Right away they got it wrong. So how can we believe the rest? It’s all nonsense. I spent the last of our money from pater’s strongbox on a goat for that stupid oracle and on the rooms at this inn. I don’t even know if we can afford to go back to Corinth now. It’s been three days and who knows what’s happened to pater! Maybe his wounds have festered and maybe he’s . . . Now we’ll never catch Aristo or find out how to undo the curse.’

  Flavia felt the ache in her throat as she tried to fight back hot tears. Nubia’s arm was around her and someone put a warm beaker between her hands. She took a sip of the spicy liquid. It was good. Beneath the table she suddenly felt Tigris’s tail thumping against her feet and she looked up to see Lupus standing in the doorway.

  He had a strange look on his face, as if he had just seen something miraculous.

  ‘Master Lupus!’ cried Atticus. ‘Where have you been? Are you all right?’

  Lupus limped forward, as if in a trance, and he put his wax tablet carefully on the table.

  Jonathan picked it up and his eyes widened as he read it. ‘You found out what the Pythia told the fugitive? And where
he’s gone? But how?’

  Lupus took his bronze stylus and leaned over the wax tablet on the table. A PRIESTESS TOLD ME he wrote, and his hand trembled as he added two final words: MY MOTHER.

  The waiter brought warm honey cakes as they questioned Lupus. By asking questions requiring the answer yes or no, and with some help from gestures, and a few words scribbled on his tablet, they learned that he had been hiding in the precinct when he saw a priestess and heard her singing a familiar song. When he caught up with her at the fountain she recognised him at once. She knew he was in Delphi but because she could not leave the temenos, she had asked the god to bring Lupus to her.

  ‘How did she even know you were here?’ asked Flavia.

  REMEMBER PHRIXUS? wrote Lupus on his tablet.

  ‘Phrixus?’ said Jonathan. ‘The slave who was with old Pliny when he died?’

  Lupus grunted yes.

  ‘The slave who is being set free by young Pliny?’ asked Nubia.

  Lupus grunted yes again, and wrote:

  HE STOPPED IN SYMI LAST MONTH, ON THE WAY TO ALEXANDRIA. HE FOUND MY MOTHER AND TOLD HER HOW VENALICIUS DIED. HE TOLD HER ABOUT ALL OF YOU AND WHEN SHE HEARD THE PYTHIA TALKING ABOUT THE QUESTION ASKED BY A GIRL CALLED FLAVIA GEMINA—

  ‘She knew you would probably be here with me!’ cried Flavia.

  Lupus nodded.

  ‘Did you ask her about Aristo?’

  Lupus grunted yes. He told them how, in the torchlight of the temple of Apollo he had shown his mother the picture of Aristo painted on the back of his tablet.

  ‘That’s the man your friend Flavia wanted to know about?’ she said. ‘The bad man who hurt her father? All the other priestesses are talking about him.’

  Lupus nodded.

  ‘The other priestesses say a man came to the sanctuary around noon today. He was clinging to the omphalos in the forecourt and babbling about the Kindly Ones. He began to alarm the tourists and pilgrims. So the priests took him and bathed him in the Castalian Spring and gave him fresh clothes and then took him in to see the Pythia.’ She lowered her voice even more. ‘Did you know she prophesies from a chasm?’

  Lupus shook his head.

  ‘An earthquake closed the vent beneath the god’s temple during the reign of Tiberius. For several years the Pythia was dumb. She could not prophesy. Then they discovered another vent. It took them a long time to build the tunnel. The fumes there are not as good. Some say the god does not speak through her anymore, but I believe he does.’

  Lupus nodded, looking up into her beautiful face framed by honey-coloured hair.

  ‘Now I will tell you what she told the fugitive.’ His mother glanced around then put her mouth so close to his ear that he could feel her soft warm breath. ‘The oracle told the fugitive that his case would be heard in the city of Orestes’ trial, that he would face his accuser in the House of the Maiden, and that he would receive the verdict in the Cave of the Kindly Ones.’

  His mother’s eyes filled with tears and she kissed his forehead. ‘The man who hurt Flavia’s father left this evening. If you are to help her, my dear son, then you must depart at dawn tomorrow.’

  In the torchlit dining room of the Castalian Inn they all stared at Lupus.

  ‘Oh Lupus,’ cried Nubia, ‘I am so happy you find your mother at last.’

  Lupus nodded and lowered his eyes. He had not told them everything. He had not told them how his mother dropped her water jug when she saw him and how she had wailed when she gazed into his tongueless mouth. He did not tell them all the things she had whispered in his ear and how she had covered his face with kisses, weeping all the time. He did not tell them that she was learning to read and write and that she had taken his wax tablet and written the words I LOVE YOU in trembling Greek.

  ‘Thank you, Lupus,’ said Flavia, giving him a quick hug. ‘For leaving your mother to tell us where Aristo has gone. But where has he gone?’ She looked at his wax tablet and read, “The site of Orestes trial, the House of the Maiden, the Cave of the Kindly Ones . . .”’

  ‘Athens,’ said Jonathan. ‘He’s gone to Athens.’

  ‘Of course,’ cried Flavia. ‘The Maiden’s House is the Parthenon on the Acropolis: the temple of Athena, who is also known as the Maiden.’

  ‘I think the site of Orestes’ trial was the Areopagus,’ said Atticus. ‘A hill just below the Acropolis.’

  Jonathan nodded. ‘That’s where the Cave of the Furies . . . er, Kindly Ones is, and it’s where Orestes was finally judged after he murdered his mother.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ cried Flavia. ‘Even I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I’ve been doing research,’ he said with a smile, and tapped his papyrus codex. ‘Aeschylus,’ he said. ‘The Eumenides. I bought it in the Roman market while you were haggling for the sausages.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Castor and Pollux,’ breathed Flavia, lifting her face to the ceiling. ‘Thank you!’ She opened her eyes and looked at the others. ‘We’ll need to raise some money. I think we’ll have to sell two of the mules—’

  ‘No!’ cried Nubia. ‘Not the mules! They have been most faithful.’

  ‘Can you think of another way to raise money by tomorrow?’ Flavia looked around the table.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nubia. ‘We can sell carruca.’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea, Miss Flavia,’ said Atticus. ‘With its new harness, the carruca will fetch quite a nice price. We could ride the mules, doubling up. It will only take us half the time to reach Athens as it would have done travelling in the carriage.’

  ‘You mean ride on their backs?’ said Flavia in a small voice.

  ‘Yes. But if we leave at dawn and ride hard we might reach Athens by tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Well then,’ Flavia sighed, ‘we’d better go to sleep then. Especially as we’re leaving at dawn.’

  Lupus stood and shook his head.

  ‘What?’ cried Flavia. ‘You’re coming with us, aren’t you?’

  Lupus nodded.

  ‘You are coming with us?’

  Lupus nodded again and bent forward to write on his tablet.

  BUT TONIGHT I MUST RETURN TO MY MOTHER.

  SHE IS WAITING FOR ME.

  They left Delphi at the first light of dawn on the following day. Nubia and Flavia rode Piper at the front, followed by Jonathan and Nikos, who each had a mule to themselves, but had to carry the blankets and backpacks. Atticus and Lupus took up the rear on Cinnamum. Lupus had spent all night in the temenos with his mother. He was too exhausted to answer their eager questions and had fallen asleep almost instantly. Now his head lolled back on Atticus’s shoulder.

  The day was overcast but warm, and from the trees on either side of the road came a torrent of birdsong. The mules’ hooves beat a steady rhythm on the packed earth road. Flavia and her friends had to raise their voices to be heard as they greeted approaching pilgrims and asked if they had passed a certain man on the road.

  Lupus heard none of it. He half woke when they stopped for lunch outside Thebes but he fell asleep as soon as they set off again and he did not completely revive until the sun was low in the sky.

  ‘Oh!’ groaned Flavia, splashing her feet in the stream. ‘I’ve never been so stiff and sore in my entire life.’

  ‘If you think it’s bad now,’ said Atticus. ‘Just wait until tomorrow. You’ll be in agony.’

  They had stopped to water the mules at a clear stream near a village beyond a ruined fortress, when Lupus had kicked off his sandals and plunged in, tunic and all. Jonathan and Tigris had joined him, but Flavia and Nikos found a grassy patch under a tall poplar tree.

  ‘This is as good a place to camp as any,’ said Atticus. ‘Water and shelter if it rains. I think I’ll walk into the village for some bread and maybe cheese.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ride?’ said Flavia. They looked over towards the mules, tethered to three poplar trees further down the stream. Nubia had taken off their packs and was stroking them with the flat of her hand.

>   ‘I’ll walk,’ said Atticus. ‘I’ve had enough of riding mules for one day. Especially with a sleeping nine-year-old in my arms.’

  Flavia smiled at Nikos as Atticus limped off towards the road. A plate of clouds had covered the sky since noon, but now the sun sank below it and sent his slanting golden light to make the leaves of the trees glow like emeralds.

  ‘Good swim?’ said Flavia to Lupus as he splashed out of the stream and came towards them. ‘Do you feel better?’

  Lupus nodded and gave her a thumbs up. He went to the pile of luggage by the mules, found a rolled up blanket, brought it back and unfurled it on a sunny spot in the grass beside them.

  Jonathan flopped down beside him, soaking wet and wheezing a little, and a moment later Tigris ran up and shook himself off.

  ‘No, Tigris!’ giggled Nikos. ‘Don’t do that right here!’

  ‘He always does that,’ said Nubia, coming up to join them. She put down their knapsacks and Jonathan’s bow and arrows. ‘He bespatters the tunics.’ She spread her palla beside the boys’ blanket, and sat facing the west with her eyes closed, letting the sunshine warm her face.

  ‘Why don’t you and Nikos come into sun?’ she said to Flavia. ‘It is most wonderful.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Flavia. ‘I’m getting horribly tanned as it is. I don’t want to look like a field-slave.’

  ‘I got sunburn,’ said Nikos, ‘even though it was cloudy most of the day.’ He pinched his rosy forearm.

  ‘I wonder how much further it is to Athens?’ mused Flavia.

  ‘About twenty-five miles,’ said Jonathan, ‘according to the last milestone we passed.’

  ‘Can’t we make it by this evening?’ asked Flavia. ‘Atticus said we could reach Athens by the evening.’

  ‘He said we might.’ Jonathan rolled over onto his stomach and undid his pack and pulled out his guidebook. ‘Great Neptune’s beard,’ he said a few moments later. ‘We covered nearly seventy miles today. No wonder we’re so exhausted.’

  ‘If we’ve travelled nearly seventy miles,’ said Flavia, ‘then why haven’t we caught up with him?’ She kicked her bare feet furiously in the stream. ‘This is so frustrating!