The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  Flavia and the others turned to see a middle-aged man of medium height wearing a tunic of the Greens. He had shoulder-length sandy hair and a large flat nose. He was holding a horse-whip made of green leather and Flavia noticed that his green wristband was made of jade, not linen.

  ‘Salve, Urbanus,’ said Scopas. ‘Yes. These are the friends of whom I have spoken.’

  Urbanus smiled at them. ‘Then I want to thank you for bringing me the most talented young groom I’ve ever known. This lad understands the horses better than any man here. He’ll go far.’ Scopas flinched as Urbanus patted him on the shoulder. ‘So why are you all here? Just visiting?’

  ‘They are good at solving mysteries,’ said Scopas. ‘I sent them a letter so that they will find Sagitta.’

  Urbanus raised a sandy eyebrow. Then he caught sight of Nubia, still in Pegasus’s stall and stroking his neck. ‘Master of the Universe!’ He turned to Scopas. ‘I’ve never seen him allow anyone but you to get that close. Does the African girl know him?’

  ‘We saw Pegasus when we were in Surrentum,’ explained Flavia.

  Urbanus turned to her. ‘And you are . . .?’

  ‘My name is Flavia Gemina, daughter of Marcus Flavius Geminus, sea captain. This is my tutor Aristo and those are my friends Jonathan and Lupus. And that is Nubia. In June we were guests at the Villa of Publius Pollius Felix,’ she added.

  ‘You know the Patron?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Flavia, lifting her chin a fraction. ‘His eldest daughter Pulchra is a very close friend of ours.’

  Urbanus shook his head. ‘Well, next time you see him, tell him he cheated me. He said this horse was an experienced racehorse from Mauritania. But so far the creature is afraid to run.’

  ‘This is not correct, sir,’ said Scopas. ‘I harnessed him this morning and he ran an excellent circuit with Bubalo, Latro and Glaucus.’

  ‘He did? You did?’ Urbanus’s smile seemed almost angry to Flavia.

  ‘I can confirm that!’ piped a voice from behind them. A chinless boy with spiky black hair – presumably a stable boy – was passing with a leather bucket of water. ‘Scopas hitched up Glaucus in the captain’s position with Pegasus as his yoke-mate and the four of them ran beautifully. That one’s raced before,’ he added, nodding towards Pegasus. ‘No doubt about it.’

  ‘Glaucus in the captain’s position,’ murmured Urbanus. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? He’s always had a great heart.’ He looked at Scopas. ‘So you made Glaucus and Pegasus iugales?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Scopas. ‘Glaucus gives Pegasus courage. They are good yoke-mates.’

  Urbanus nodded thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps we can run that team at the Saturnalia, if we can’t find Sagitta. Still,’ he said, ‘I wish we could find him. He’s a brave runner, with a good heart. And I miss him.’ Here he turned to Aristo. ‘The opening games are the day after tomorrow. If you want to join the search, I suggest you take your pupils and start looking right away.’

  ‘Before we go,’ said Flavia to Urbanus, ‘do you have any idea where Sagitta could be, sir? Any sightings? Any clues?’

  Urbanus shook his head. Some other grooms and stable boys had gathered around him. ‘Sagitta disappeared five days ago,’ said Urbanus, ‘the day we arrived. We like to settle the horses a week before the races, so they can get used to their new stalls.’

  ‘So the horses don’t usually live here?’ asked Jonathan. He was wheezing a little.

  ‘Live here? On the Campus Martius? Of course not. The estate of the Greens is in Nomentum. We only come to these stables for the races. When the Ludi Romani have finished we’ll all pack up and go back to our stud farms. Only the scribes and accountants stay here.’

  ‘Do you have a theory about who might have taken Sagitta?’ asked Flavia. ‘Who had the motive, means and method?’

  Urbanus shrugged. ‘Any of the other factions would have the motive. Our alpha team is – was – unbeatable. But now, without Sagitta . . .’ He glanced at Pegasus. ‘It’s good that he can be harnessed to the others, but it takes a team of horses weeks to learn to work together. Sometimes months.’

  ‘But how could they have got in?’ wheezed Jonathan. ‘The person who took him, I mean?’

  ‘That’s a mystery. You’ve seen how tight our security is.’

  ‘Lupus got in,’ said Flavia.

  ‘Who?’

  Lupus grinned and waved his hand.

  Urbanus frowned at him. ‘The guards probably thought you were a sparsor. Besides, getting in is one thing. Getting out again – with a stallion who doesn’t know you – is another matter. Unless you’ve got a gift like hers.’ He nodded at Nubia who was coming out of Pegasus’s stall. ‘But not many people have.’

  ‘What if somebody from one of the other factions did manage to get in?’ asked Flavia. ‘And what if they were somehow able to take Sagitta out? Have you searched their stables?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Urbanus. ‘But others have – bounty-hunters wanting the reward. If Sagitta was in one of the other stables, I’d know about it by now. And don’t waste your time investigating the different stud-farms. Others have been searching there, too. People have been swarming over Rome, like ants on an anthill. If you can find Sagitta where none of them have been able to, it will be a miracle.’

  ‘Do horses make the Jonathan wheezy?’ said Nubia, as they emerged from the Stables of the Greens into the blazing sunshine of a Roman afternoon and the throbbing of cicadas.

  Jonathan stopped by the glass-beaker stall in the shade of an umbrella pine and nodded. ‘Maybe the horses . . . or maybe all that hay . . . and dust . . . makes my asthma . . . worse. Just need . . . a few moments . . .’ He opened the small herb pouch around his neck and inhaled. Nubia caught a whiff of the ephedron that brought him relief.

  ‘Well,’ said Flavia. ‘We’ve got one good motive for the abduction of Sagitta; without him the Greens’ best team is useless. Another faction must have taken him. I think each of us should hang around the other stables. Try to infiltrate and get information.’

  ‘What is infiltrate?’ asked Nubia.

  ‘It means to get in,’ said Flavia.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be any good at infiltrating the other factions,’ wheezed Jonathan. ‘If I go back in one of the stables I might have a bad asthma attack.’

  ‘And my back tooth hurts like Hades,’ said Aristo, touching his jaw and then wincing. ‘I’ve got to find a tooth-puller.’

  ‘After we infiltrate,’ said Nubia with a frown, ‘how do we exfiltrate?’

  Aristo shook his head. ‘As your appointed bodyguard,’ he said, ‘I forbid any infiltrating or exfiltrating.’

  ‘But Aristo!’ protested Flavia.

  ‘Give me a denarius and I’ll tell you where Sagitta is!’

  They all turned and looked down at the one-legged beggar sitting against his shady patch of wall. He rattled the coins in his copper beaker and smiled hopefully up at them. Something about his wide brow and straight nose reminded Nubia of a statue of Jupiter she had once seen. It occurred to her that beneath the beard and grime and terrible scars, his features were noble.

  Jonathan raised his eyebrows at the beggar. ‘You know how to find a horse worth a hundred thousand sesterces and you’ll tell us for one denarius?’

  ‘Yes!’ The beggar nodded cheerfully.

  Lupus barked with laughter.

  ‘If you know where Sagitta is,’ said Flavia, without looking directly at the man’s scarred face, ‘then why don’t you find him yourself?’

  The beggar gestured first towards his stump and then towards the gnarled wooden crutches leaning up against the wall beside him. ‘Can’t move very fast. And what would I do with half a million sesterces? All I need is my daily bread.’

  Nubia felt a surge of pity for the noble beggar. She glanced over at Aristo to see his reaction; he was exploring his tooth with his tongue.

  ‘Just one denarius,’ said the beggar. ‘Please?’ He looked at Nubia.

 
‘Come on, everybody,’ muttered Flavia. ‘Let’s go somewhere else, where we won’t be overheard.’

  But Nubia couldn’t bear to leave the crippled man with nothing. She fumbled in her coin purse. It contained a copper brooch, half a dozen pitted dates, and one silver coin. It was the denarius with Pegasus on it that Flavia had given her. How could she give him that? But it was the only coin she had, and he needed it more than she did.

  ‘Nubia! No!’ hissed Flavia, and she mouthed the words, ‘He’s lying. He just wants your money.’

  ‘But he needs it,’ whispered Nubia and bent to drop the silver coin in his cup.

  ‘Thank you, kind miss,’ said the beggar, and turned intelligent dark eyes up at her. ‘You’ll find Sagitta at the southern end of the Aventine Hill. Look in the portico gardens by the little temple of Venus on the Clivus Publicius. The temple stands at the foot of two tall cypress trees.’

  Across the street, the twin beggar boys leaped to their feet and scampered off in the direction of the theatre.

  ‘I suggest you follow them.’ The beggar gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘Or they’ll get to Sagitta first.’

  Flavia turned to stare after the twins, then she looked back at her friends, and for a moment Nubia saw hesitation in her wide grey eyes. But only for a moment.

  ‘Come on!’ cried Flavia. ‘After them!’

  ‘Eureka!’ Flavia burst from between the columns of a shady portico into sunny formal gardens.

  Startled by her cry, a big horse looked up at them. He was a reddish-brown chestnut with a thin white stripe on his forehead and four white socks. He stood in the shade of two lofty cypress trees beside a small round temple.

  A panting Lupus began a silent victory dance and Nubia stared wide-eyed at the beautiful stallion, her chest rising and falling after the exertion of the chase.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ gasped Aristo, emerging from between the portico columns a few moments later.

  A rope tied to an elegant Ionic column rose up from the lush grass as the horse backed away, startled by their sudden arrival.

  ‘Impossible,’ wheezed Jonathan, close behind Aristo. He had untied his herb pouch and was breathing from it. ‘That was . . . too easy.’

  ‘Easy?’ said Flavia, shrilly. ‘You call that easy? We almost lost sight of those curly-haired beggars half a dozen times. If it hadn’t been for Lupus’s sharp eyes—’

  ‘Speaking of . . . those little beggars,’ gasped Jonathan, ‘where have they gone? They should have got here . . . well before us. We had to stop . . . and ask those litter-bearers . . . where the temple was.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter where they are! We’ve found Sagitta! At least, I think it’s Sagitta. You do think it’s Sagitta, don’t you?’ She looked round at them wide-eyed.

  Lupus nodded enthusiastically. He pointed at the horse, traced a vertical line on his own forehead, then pretended to fire an imaginary bow and arrow. The horse backed further away, snorting nervously.

  ‘Of course!’ breathed Flavia. ‘He’s called Sagitta because the mark on his nose looks like a white arrow.’

  ‘This horse is Sagitta,’ said Nubia. ‘I am certain.’

  ‘That one-legged beggar was right,’ said Flavia, and looked at Nubia with awe. ‘The gods rewarded you for your compassion, Nubia. Oh, thank you, Castor and Pollux!’ She ran eagerly towards the horse but he reared and snorted and pawed the grassy turf with his front leg.

  Flavia took a hasty step back. ‘I think you’d better do it, Nubia.’

  Nubia nodded and moved forward slowly, speaking softly to the horse in her own language.

  The big chestnut snorted again and backed away from her, until the rope tethering him to the column was taut as a bowstring. Nubia sensed his pain and fear, so she stopped moving. Continuing to speak words of reassurance to him, she reached into her belt-pouch and pulled out a golden-brown date.

  The horse tossed his head and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He snorted again, but more softly this time.

  Nubia continued speaking to him in her own language, calmly but firmly, showing the date on the palm of her hand. ‘Nobody move,’ she said in Latin.

  The stallion took a tentative step towards her.

  Without taking her eyes from him Nubia said, ‘Someone hurts him. Can you see?’

  ‘Where?’ said Flavia in a loud whisper.

  ‘On his forelegs. Above white socks.’

  ‘By Hercules,’ said Aristo. ‘It looks as if his legs have been burnt.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nubia quietly. ‘Someone is burning hair on his legs with fire.’

  ‘Oh, the poor thing!’ gasped Flavia.

  The stallion stretched his neck and took the date from Nubia’s hand with soft quivering lips. Then he came even closer as she slowly brought out another.

  Nubia spoke softly to the horse and fed him dates. When the dates were gone, she stroked him firmly but gently, and Flavia saw a shudder run through his whole body. Presently his trembling ceased and he allowed Nubia to lead him to the column. She untied his rope and brought him to the others.

  ‘Sagitta,’ said Nubia, ‘I would like you to meet my friends Flavia, Jonathan, Lupus and Aristo. Now, let us take you back to the Stables of the Greens and your friends. They are missing you greatly.’

  It was almost dusk by the time they reached the Theatre of Pompey. By now they had acquired a straggling crowd of street urchins, shop-keepers and women in togas. Nubia and the big chestnut led the rowdy procession. The stall-holders at the perimeter of the Campus Martius stopped packing up and cheered when they saw the missing racehorse. Their shouts brought men pouring out of the stables of the Blues and Whites.

  As they approached the Stables of the Greens, Nubia saw Flavia glance towards the umbrella pine which had sheltered the glassware stall and the one-legged beggar. The tree was silhouetted against the fading sky and there was nobody at its base.

  ‘Look, Nubia,’ said Flavia. ‘Your beggar’s gone.’

  ‘He was probably one of the gods in disguise,’ wheezed Jonathan. ‘Maybe Jupiter. The old lady was probably Minerva and the twins were Castor and Pollux.’

  ‘Here comes the head-trainer Urbanus,’ said Aristo behind them. ‘Now we’ll find out if he was serious about that reward or not.’

  Urbanus had come charging out of the green-roofed building, his sandy hair swinging and his green tunic flapping. But as soon as he saw them, he stopped so abruptly that Scopas and four other stable boys bumped into him. ‘I can’t believe it!’ he cried. ‘You found him! You found Sagitta!’ Then he saw the horse’s forelegs. ‘But what have they done to you, old boy? Master of the Universe, they’ve tortured him! Burned his legs . . .’

  ‘Hippiatros knows how to make a cooling poultice,’ said Scopas. ‘We must put it on his legs.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Urbanus over his shoulder. ‘Find Hippiatros and have him prepare a poultice right away.’ He stroked Sagitta’s neck and the horse shivered but did not flinch. ‘You’ll have a whole day to rest before the Games, won’t you, my beauty?’ Urbanus kissed the horse’s nose and Nubia saw tears in his eyes. ‘You’re back and that’s all that matters. Praise the Lord.’

  ‘And then,’ said Flavia over dinner that evening, ‘Urbanus took us into his tablinum and gave each of us a bag with two hundred gold coins. Twenty thousand sesterces! Each!’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Senator Cornix. ‘May the gods be praised!’

  ‘We could barely lift the bags,’ said Flavia. ‘In the end we hired an eight-man sedan-chair and walked along beside it.’

  ‘Bags of gold ride inside,’ explained Nubia.

  ‘With the curtains firmly closed!’ added Flavia, and laughed as Lupus stood up and mimicked the litter-bearers staggering under the weight.

  Flavia waved her left arm, showing off a green linen wristband. ‘They also gave us these passes. So we can go back to the Stables of the Greens any time we like!’

  ‘It was too easy,’ muttered Jona
than, shaking his head. ‘Something not right about it all.’

  ‘What are you going to do with all that gold?’ said Aulus Junior. He wore a sour expression.

  ‘We haven’t decided yet,’ said Flavia.

  I OWN A SHIP wrote Lupus on his wax tablet. I MIGHT INVEST MY SHARE IN THINGS TO SELL OVERSEAS

  ‘You own a ship?’ Senator Cornix raised his eyebrows at Lupus.

  ‘May I see your bag of gold?’ said Aulus Junior to Flavia.

  She lifted the bag from her lap and heaved it over to her cousin. The soft leather bag was as big as a man’s head.

  ‘Are there really two hundred pieces of gold in there?’ asked Flavia’s nine-year-old cousin Hyacinth.

  ‘One hundred and ninety-nine, to be exact,’ said Flavia. ‘I gave the litter bearers a gold coin to share out between them.’

  ‘Twelve and a half sesterces each,’ muttered Jonathan, and shook his head. ‘Far too much for half an hour’s work.’

  ‘Jonathan’s right,’ said Senator Cornix with a frown. ‘That was overly generous of you, Flavia. We’ll have a great hoard of litter-bearers camping outside the house tomorrow. You should leave financial matters to the men.’ He dabbed his mouth with a napkin. ‘I suggest you give the rest of your gold to your father. He’ll know how to invest it. Females are incapable of managing money.’

  Flavia’s smile turned to a scowl and she was just about to make a sharp retort when Sisyphus came into the dining room waving a wax tablet bound with a green ribbon. ‘Pleased to report no litter-bearers camping outside the house, master.’ He winked at Flavia. ‘And this message has just been delivered by a charming young man wearing a tunic of the Greens.’

  ‘By Hercules!’ exclaimed Senator Cornix, looking up from the tablet a moment later. ‘It says that Castor and his trainer would be delighted to attend a banquet here tomorrow afternoon. But how . . .?’

  ‘I may not know how to manage money,’ said Flavia tartly, ‘but I remembered the name of your favourite charioteer. I hope it’s all right that I invited him.’

  ‘All right?’ A huge smile spread across his face. ‘My dear girl, it’s the best news I’ve had all year!’