The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  Then Aristo plunged his whole head and shoulders in the tank and rose up with the water pouring off him like some river god. He had four days’ growth of beard on his tanned cheeks and Nubia had a sudden desire to reach up and touch it, to see if it would be rough or soft under her fingertips. He was smiling around at them and for a moment his smile shone on her and it was like looking at the sun. She could not endure its brilliance and had to look away. As she turned, her eye caught a movement through the bronze bars of the sanctuary. A grey-haired man stood scowling in at them.

  ‘Atticus!’ she cried, and the others turned to look.

  ‘Atticus!’ cried Flavia. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Where was I?’ he shouted, as the priest unlocked the gate and let him in. ‘The question is where were you? You frightened me to death running off like that. One moment you’re beside me, the next you’ve vanished, apparently swallowed up by the earth, and I’m running around like a headless chicken! Are you up on the Acropolis? No, you’re not. Are you on the Areopagus? No, you’re not. So finally I go back to the stables and find Jonathan stalking up and down with a face as dark as Hades.’

  Jonathan grinned. ‘But we stopped being angry and started getting worried when you weren’t back by sunset,’ he said. ‘Then Lupus came and explained what had happened.’

  ‘Jonathan insisted we get torches and set off to find you,’ said Atticus. ‘The Sanctuary of the Kindly Ones looked completely deserted, so we tried the Acropolis and let me tell you, it’s not easy to get into after dark. We searched for hours, but no sign of you there. So we came here. I helped these two over the wall and Tigris squeezed through the bars of the gate. Then nothing for hours! Oh, dear!’ he added, mopping his nut-brown face with a cloth. ‘Life on dry land is too much for me. Who’s for sailing back to Corinth today?’

  Flavia stared at Atticus, and he grinned.

  ‘I asked around yesterday,’ he said. ‘There’s a ship that leaves for the Isthmus at noon. If we catch it and if the wind is fair we’ll be in Cenchrea this evening. You can all come,’ he added, looking at Aristo and Dion. ‘The captain says there’s plenty of room.’

  ‘Can we take mules?’ asked Nubia.

  ‘Yes, we can take the mules back to Helen.’

  ‘Oh, Atticus!’ cried Flavia. ‘You’re wonderful. That means we’ll be with pater tonight.’ She clapped her hands and jumped up and down.

  Suddenly she stopped and looked at Nubia. ‘What about Megara?’

  ‘She turned up at the stables, too,’ said Atticus. ‘She apologised for what she’d done.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She was the one who cut the harness,’ said Atticus. ‘She said she only wanted to slow us up, not send us rolling over the precipice. Poor thing. I gave her a few coins and told her to go to the baths.’

  ‘Are you talking about little Megara?’ said Dion. ‘Our next door neighbour?’

  Aristo nodded. ‘She tripped me up yesterday, just as I was about to catch you. She was trying to help you escape.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’ asked Dion.

  Flavia smiled. ‘You’ll have to ask her that.’

  ‘Is there anywhere to have breakfast around here?’ said Aristo. ‘My resurrection has given me quite an appetite. I’m absolutely ravenous.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Flavia, dipping her warm flat bread into the creamy white mixture in the black-glazed bowl. ‘This is like ambrosia.’

  ‘What is ambrosia?’ asked Nubia.

  ‘The food of the gods,’ laughed Flavia. ‘What’s in this?’

  ‘Yogurt, cucumber, dill weed and garlic,’ said Atticus. ‘Lots and lots of garlic. Have you ever tasted anything so good?’

  ‘Never,’ said Flavia. ‘This bread is wonderful, too.’

  The seven of them and Tigris were sitting at a table in the sunny colonnade in front of the Hydria Tavern by the Tower of the Winds in the Roman Agora.

  ‘Here, Tigris,’ said Jonathan. ‘Try some ambrosia on bread.’

  Tigris wolfed it down and wagged his tail.

  ‘It feels as if I haven’t eaten in days,’ said Dion, and pushed his empty plate away. ‘Excuse me, miss!’ he cried into the tavern doorway. ‘Could you bring me another bowl of this? And some more bread?’

  ‘Me, too!’ said Aristo.

  ‘Why not?’ said Jonathan.

  Lupus nodded enthusiastically and Tigris barked.

  A plump serving girl came out with a basket of bread and three bowls of garlic yogurt. Before she turned to go, she flashed Dion a dimpled smile.

  ‘She liked the look of you, little brother,’ whispered Aristo as she disappeared back into the tavern. ‘See? You can easily attract a girl, a far better one than Tryphosa.’

  ‘I suppose Tryphosa is a bit of a tramp, isn’t she?’ said Dion, dipping a piece of warm flat bread in the yogurt mixture.

  Aristo grinned and nodded. ‘Wait for the right girl, little brother,’ he said. ‘She’ll come along.’

  At that moment Flavia saw a slender figure appear from behind a blue-painted column. The young woman was looking at Dion, and the eyes above her veil were beautiful, long-lashed and dark. Dion stared back at her, his piece of bread poised between plate and mouth.

  Flavia frowned. The woman’s kohl-lined eyes looked familiar. Tigris seemed to think so, too. He was sniffing her feet and wagging his tail. Then Flavia saw a beggar-boy in a faded green tunic hopping up and down behind the woman and she felt a grin spread across her face.

  ‘Aristo’s right,’ said the young woman to Dion. ‘Sometimes the right girl is right in front of you.’

  She pulled the veil from her face.

  Dion’s jaw dropped. ‘Megara?’ he said. ‘Is that you?’

  Flavia saw that Megara had been to the baths. Her skin was clean and pale, and her lips stained pink with some kind of berry juice. She looked beautiful.

  Megara nodded and giggled. ‘Is there enough ambrosia for me?’ she asked, squeezing onto the bench beside Dion. ‘I’m starving.’

  Three hours later – a little past noon – a ship called the Nereid set sail from Piraeus. It bore eight passengers, four mules and one dog across the glittering blue Saronic Gulf towards the Isthmus of Corinth.

  They docked in Cenchrea at sunset and it was just growing dark when the four eager mules trotted up the familiar gravel drive of Helen’s Hospitium towards their own stables. Syriacus looked up from lighting the torches either side of the main doors and when he saw them coming he hurried inside. By the time they had dismounted and reached the main entrance they saw Helen standing in the golden rectangle of the lighted doorway. She stood stiffly and twisted her hands together.

  One look at her face confirmed Flavia’s fears.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss,’ whispered the monkey-faced doctor Agaclytus. ‘I’ve done everything I can, but it’s been nearly a week and he shows no sign of recovering his memory. He just sleeps and sleeps. I believe that with every day that passes, the chance of him remembering grows less. I am truly sorry.’

  Flavia stood looking down at her father. In the torchlight, his face looked pale and thin against the red embroidered cushion, and he was frowning in his sleep.

  ‘Even in your dreams you look lost,’ whispered Flavia. She bent her head and heard the doctor’s footsteps going quietly away. ‘Pater,’ she whispered, ‘I’m so sorry! I tried to find the person who cursed you so that I could stop the curse, but there was no curse, and now I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do to help you remember. I’m sorry, pater. I’m so sorry.’

  Flavia suddenly recalled riding in a cart past Italian vineyards on a sunny morning, watching her father and his brother Gaius on horseback, laughing and talking together, looking like Castor and Pollux. That had been less than a year ago. The contrast between the image of his handsome laughing face in bright sunshine and the pale thin face in this dim room hurt her heart.

  She felt as if she had cried a lifetime’s worth of tears over the p
ast week, but more were welling up behind her eyes and she was too tired to stop them. She cried and cried and her tears fell hot and wet onto her father’s sleeping face.

  ‘Flavia?’

  Her father was looking up at her with reproach in his grey eyes.

  ‘Flavia,’ he whispered. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Oh pater!’ cried Flavia. ‘You know who I am!’

  He nodded, and Flavia hugged him gently, so she wouldn’t hurt his wounds.

  ‘I was having the worst nightmare,’ he said. ‘It was terrible. I dreamt I was wandering in a maze and couldn’t find my way out.’

  ‘It’s all right now, pater,’ said Flavia. ‘You’re out of the maze. You’re going to be fine and we’re going to take you home to Ostia as soon as the doctor says you can travel.’

  Five days later, on the Ides of May, the Delphina set sail from Lechaeum for Ostia.

  Greece sank beneath the horizon at sunset while they dined on Atticus’s chicken and chickpea stew. Later, when the stars pierced the dark blue canopy of the heavens, they sat on the polished bench beside the long table and prepared to play music.

  Nubia was pretending to practise the fingering on her cherrywood flute but she was secretly watching Aristo from under her eyelashes. He was tuning Jonathan’s barbiton.

  ‘Oh Flavia,’ said Jonathan. ‘I forgot to tell you something. I think the Pythia’s prophecy for you might have been right after all.’

  Flavia looked at him and frowned. ‘No man or woman has ever tried to kill your father,’ she recited, ‘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.’

  ‘See?’ he said. ‘No man or woman ever tried to kill him. Dion tried to kill Aristo, not your father.’

  Flavia’s eyes grew wide. ‘You’re right, Jonathan! Also, Polydeuces is the Greek name for Pollux. Castor and Pollux are the Gemini, the Twins!’ She pointed to the constellation which hung above them in the night sky.

  ‘And your father is the younger of two twins,’ said Aristo, glancing up from the ivory peg he was turning. They all looked towards Captain Geminus swinging gently in the hammock they had strung between the deckhouse and mainmast. Without opening his eyes he raised a hand and waved at them.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Flavia, with a laugh. ‘As the younger twin, he’s more like Castor than Pollux. He’s like Polydeuces’s brother so that means he’ll “live long and prosper”. Oh, what a good prophecy! Did you hear that, pater? You’re going to live long and prosper! But I still don’t understand the part about it raining from a clear sky. It wasn’t raining the evening pater regained his senses.’

  ‘Were you crying right before your father woke up?’ asked Jonathan.

  Flavia’s grey eyes grew wide. ‘How did you know that?’

  He grinned. ‘Apart from the fact that you’d been leaking like a sieve all week? It was something I read in the guidebook, in the section about Delphi. There was a man who wanted something badly, I forget what. But the Pythia told him he would get it on the day it rained from a clear sky. Of course it never did rain from a clear sky. He got so depressed that he went home and laid his head in his wife’s lap. It upset her to see him so sad and she started weep for him and as her tears fell on his face he suddenly realised that it was raining from a clear sky because her name was Aethra, which means “clear sky”.’

  ‘This feels true,’ said Nubia to Flavia. ‘I often think that your eyes are the colour of the sky.’

  ‘Great Juno’s peacock!’ whispered Flavia. ‘You’re right. The Pythia’s prophecy came true. The god really did speak through her.’

  Aristo handed Jonathan his barbiton and took up his lyre. ‘Are we ready?’ he asked. ‘Who wants music?’

  ‘I do,’ came Captain Geminus’s voice from the hammock, and they all laughed again.

  Jonathan began to play, plucking notes so deep that Nubia felt rather than heard them. Flavia jingled her tambourine softly and Lupus’s drumming was as steady as a heartbeat, so that it was almost transparent. It was as if they were afraid to intrude on the sound of her flute as it entwined itself with the honeyed notes of Aristo’s lyre. Soon their music filled the sails, the night, the world. It was like a heady perfume that made Nubia want to swoon.

  It seemed to her that she and Aristo had never been so in tune with one another. But when she looked at him, utterly lost in his music, she suddenly realised that he was not thinking of her but of someone else. He had no idea how she felt about him. It was because he didn’t know that he could abandon himself so completely to the music. If he ever found out how she felt, it might spoil their music, which was as important to her as air or food or water.

  She knew then that she must keep her love for him hidden. It would be like a knife in her heart, twisting each time he spoke to her or smiled at her, but if that was the price to pay for moments like this, then she would endure it.

  *

  Academy (uh-kad-em-ee)

  Greek word for the garden near Athens where Plato taught; other schools of philosophy and rhetoric later came to be called academies after it

  Achaea (a-key-uh)

  after Rome destroyed Corinth in 146 BC, most of Greece became a Roman province known as Achaea with rebuilt ‘Roman’ Corinth as its capital (see map)

  Acrocorinth (uh-krok-oh-rinth)

  the dramatic mountain that rises above Corinth; it was the site of a sanctuary and the notorious temple of Aphrodite, attended by beautiful priestesses

  acropolis (uh-krop-oh-liss)

  literally: ‘highest point of a town’, usually the site of temples and sanctuaries and very often fortified; the most famous one was the Acropolis of Athens

  Aegean (uh-jee-un)

  sea between modern Greece and Turkey

  Aegeus (aj-ee-uss)

  mythological king of Athens and father of the hero Theseus

  Aeneid (uh-nee-id)

  epic poem by the Roman poet Virgil about the Trojan hero Aeneas

  Aeschylus (ess-kill-uss)

  Greek tragic poet who flourished in the fifth century BC; he wrote the Eumenides

  Africus (aff-rick-uss)

  wind from the south (strictly south south-west) which often brings stormy seas

  Agamemnon (ag-uh-mem-non)

  king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks who sailed to fight against Troy

  agora (ah-gore-ah)

  Greek for ‘forum’ or ‘marketplace’

  Alexandria (al-ex-and-ree-ah)

  port of Egypt and one of the greatest cities of the ancient world

  altar

  a flat-topped block, usually of stone, for making an offering to a god or goddess; often inscribed, they could be big (for temples) or small (for personal vows)

  amphora (am-for-uh)

  large clay storage jar for holding wine, oil or grain

  Aphrodite (af-fro-dye-tee)

  Greek goddess of love; her Roman equivalent is Venus

  Apollo (uh-pol-oh)

  god of the sun, music, disease and healing; his special sanctuary was in Delphi

  Areopagus (air-ee-op-a-guss)

  hill at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens; this is where Orestes received judgement for his crime in Aeschylus’s play the Eumenides

  Artemis (are-tem-iss)

  Greek goddess of the hunt, known as Diana in the Roman world

  Athena (ath-ee-nuh)

  Greek name for Minerva, goddess of wisdom and war

  Attica (at-ick-uh)

  famous region of Greece; with Athens as its major city; part of Achaea in the first century AD

  barbiton (bar-bi-ton)

  a kind of Greek bass lyre; Jonathan’s ‘Syrian’ bass barbiton is fictional

  Boeotia (bee-oh-sha)

  literally ‘cowland’; flat, grassy region of Greece around Thebes

  brazier (bray-zher)

  coal-filled metal bowl on legs, like an ancient radiator

&n
bsp; carruca (kuh-roo-kuh)

  a four-wheeled travelling carriage, usually mule-drawn and often covered

  Castalia (kass-tale-yah)

  a spring of freshwater on Mount Parnassus, sacred to Apollo

  Castor (kass-tur)

  the mortal one of the mythological twins, the Gemini; Castor is famous for taming horses and Pollux for boxing

  caupona (kow-pone-uh)

  an inn, tavern or retail shop, usually one which sold alcohol

  Cenchrea (ken-cree-uh)

  (or Cenchreae) Corinth’s eastern port; one end of the diolkos was here

  ceramic (sir-am-ik)

  clay which has been fired in a kiln, very hard and smooth

  Ceramicus (kare-ah-mee-kuss)

  district of Athens near the Dipylon Gates where potters had their workshops

  Cithaeron (kith-eye-ron)

  mountain near Thebes where the infant Oedipus was exposed by his parents

  Clytemnestra (klite-em-ness-tra)

  wife of Agamemnon, she murdered him the night he returned from Troy

  Cnidos (k’nee-doss)

  famous town with a double harbour on a promontory in Asia Minor (modern Turkey)

  codex (koh-dex)

  the ancient version of a book, usually made with papyrus or parchment pages

  Colonia Corinthiensis (kol-lone-ee-uh kore-inth-ee-en-siss) Colonia Laus Julia Corinthiensis was the official name given to Corinth when it was re-established as a Roman colony in 44 BC by Julius Caesar

  colonnade (kol-a-nade)

  a covered walkway lined with columns

  Corinth (kore-inth)

  prosperous and busy Greek port situated on an isthmus between the Ionian and Aegean seas; destroyed in 146 BC by Mummium, it was re-established as a Roman colony and capital of the Roman province of Achaea (Greece) in 44 BC

  Craneum (kra-nay-um)

  name of a cypress grove which grew in front of the city gates of Corinth

  Croesus (kree-suss)

  king of Lydia in the sixth century BC; attacked the Persians and was defeated

  Cromyon (krow-me-on)