Suddenly Lupus grunted and pointed at the riders.
‘What?’ said Jonathan, squinting.
In the dust Lupus wrote the name: IPALACEN
‘Great Juno’s beard!’ exclaimed Jonathan. ‘You’re right. Narcissus! It’s our host from last night. And his three sons. He’s not a slave-trader!’
Jonathan and Lupus looked at each other in wide-eyed alarm for a moment.
Then Jonathan leapt to his feet and waved his arms. ‘Stop!’ he cried. ‘You’ll be killed! Stop!’
‘No, Jonathan,’ cried Narcissus, ‘get down!’
But instead of causing Ipalacen and his sons to slow down, his action made them spur their camels towards Jonathan and the pit.
‘Stop!’ cried Jonathan.
But it was too late. The riders were onto the tarpaulin now, and he saw the terrible effect of his trap. The camels were pitching forward, their riders crying out in surprise. And now the groans of camels and the screams of men rose up with a cloud of grey dust. Jonathan wheezed and coughed and wrapped the tail of his turban over the lower half of his face.
Suddenly a huge dark shape emerged from the dust-cloud and charged directly towards him. Jonathan felt someone pull him down and it was only by some miracle they weren’t trampled by the terrified camel. Jonathan glanced over his shoulder to see the riderless creature running northwest, its saddle dragging behind.
Narcissus released his grip, and Jonathan stood up, his knees trembling violently.
Three camels writhed in the pit, and two men were struggling to their feet. Two others lay silent and still: one crushed beneath a camel and the other with his neck at an unnatural angle. Jonathan shuddered. His plan had been horribly effective. A heavy man in a dirty pink robe was staggering out of the pit, his right arm dangling uselessly by his side. He was uttering curses and heading straight for Narcissus.
Without a word Narcissus ran forward and his blade flashed in the bright sun.
Ipalacen slumped to his knees and something like a dirty pink ball tumbled down and bounced back into the pit.
Jonathan cried out in horror. It was Ipalacen’s head.
‘What’s happening?’ cried Flavia from the jouncing back of her fleeing camel. She glanced over her shoulder at the cloud of dust rising into the air on the horizon. ‘Oh, Nubia! What if they catch us?’
Flavia was holding tight to Nubia and she could feel her friend’s whole body trembling. She remembered that most of Nubia’s family had been killed by slave-traders.
Flavia risked another glance behind and her heart nearly stopped as she saw a black camel racing towards them. ‘Look, Nubia! They’re catching up!’ she cried.
Flavia felt Nubia’s body tense as she twisted to look, then relax. ‘No,’ said Nubia. ‘Behold, that camel has no rider.’
Assan peeled off from the trotting line of camels to intercept the runaway camel. He managed to slow it down and catch the dangling reins. Then he shouted something and pointed towards a clump of date palms further north.
‘He wants us to go there,’ said Nubia. She made Selene veer right, along with the other camels, and they soon reached the palms.
‘We’ll wait here!’ cried Assan, coming up beside them on camelback. He turned to the merchants. ‘We men will hide among the palms, in case the marauders are still coming. You girls wait behind us.’ He turned frightened green eyes on Flavia. ‘If we must fight, and if you see we are losing, then you must flee to those mountains. Understand?’
Flavia and Nubia nodded, and Casina on her camel beside them.
Presently they saw some dark dots approaching in the shimmering heat haze. Gradually these dots became six camels, three of them riderless. As the shapes grew bigger and clearer, Nubia could see that one of the camels had two riders on its back.
‘Behold!’ cried Nubia happily. ‘The Jonathan and the Lupus!’
‘And I see Narcissus,’ cried Casina.
‘Praise Juno!’ cried Flavia. ‘That means they’ve vanquished the slave-traders.’
Flavia and Nubia hugged each other and smiled at Casina.
Among the palms, Assan and the merchants were rising and moving forward, so Nubia urged her camel forward too. Casina’s camel followed, and when they reached the others in the shady grove they all three dismounted.
Narcissus was the first to ride into the palm grove and his camel was the first to kneel. He dismounted and strode forward, like Achilles returning from battle. He gave Casina a quick hug, then slapped Hanno and Barbarus manfully on their backs.
‘We got them!’ he laughed. ‘Killed them all and captured two camels. I see you got the runaway.’ He gestured towards the black camel.
‘Who were they?’ cried Casina.
‘Slave-traders, all right,’ said Narcissus. ‘They were bent on evil.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Macargus and the boys. They did not seem to share his elation, but climbed off their camels dejectedly.
‘Jonathan! Lupus!’ Flavia and Nubia ran forward. ‘Are you all right?’
Jonathan glanced back at Lupus, then nodded. ‘We’re all right,’ he said, and added under his breath. ‘We’ll tell you about it later.’
Flavia looked past him to see Iddibal approaching. The sinister black figure was wiping his sword.
‘Behold!’ said Nubia. She pointed to the southeast and they all looked to see vultures spiralling down from the blue sky.
Macargus nodded, his eyes inscrutable beneath his indigo turban. ‘We have no time for burying them,’ he said. ‘And we have no time for talking now. Their friends are perhaps soon coming after us. We must leave caravan trail. If you need to do latrine, now is the time. We must leaving as soon as possible.’
As Macargus led the caravan south, they rode into a different kind of desert. The hard-baked grey earth gave way to yellow dirt with stony hillocks, a few acacia trees and many stunted shrubs. The sun grew bigger and redder as it sank to the horizon and soon it sent the long distorted shadows of camels stretching out to their left.
Macargus called a halt as they reached a dry riverbed. Nubia nodded to herself as the camels carefully picked their way down into the wadi. It was bone dry down here, but full of low scrubby brush for the animals to graze on. It was also sheltered. Perhaps most importantly, they would be invisible to anyone in pursuit.
There was no summons from Narcissus to practise a pantomime, and she saw Jonathan walk up to the top of the opposite bank. His footsteps sent pebbles scuttling back down. She and Flavia followed and sat beside him at top of the bank. He was staring west, towards the setting sun, with his back towards the camp.
‘We made a terrible mistake,’ he said, without turning his head. ‘It wasn’t slave-traders. It was our host from last night.’
‘That fat man in the pink turban?’ said Flavia with a shudder. ‘The one who wanted to marry me?’
‘Ipalacen?’ whispered Nubia.
Jonathan nodded. ‘Him and his three sons.’
A figure joined them on the crest of the dune. Lupus. He sat silently on the other side of Jonathan.
‘One of the sons was crushed by his camel,’ continued Jonathan in a flat voice. ‘The other broke his neck when he fell. But two were still alive. Ipalacen came charging up out of the gully and before any of us could do anything . . .’ Here Jonathan broke off and rested his turbaned head on the tops of his knees.
‘What?’ whispered Flavia.
Lupus used the side of his hand to make a slicing motion across his throat.
‘Someone kills him?’ asked Nubia.
‘Narcissus.’ Jonathan was still staring down and his voice was muffled. ‘He chopped off his head and it bounced like a ball.’
‘Oh!’ cried Nubia and Flavia together.
Jonathan lifted his head and stared west. The sun hovered above the horizon like a huge blood-bloated tick, squashed by the invisible thumb of a giant.
‘The third son was still down in the gully,’ said Jonathan. ‘One of our men, the one in black—�
��
‘Iddibal,’ said Nubia.
‘Yes. Iddibal cut the son’s throat. Without one word. Just cut his throat.’
Lupus grunted wrote in the dust with his finger: THEY WERE SLAVE-TRADERS. NARCISSUS SAID SO.
‘I don’t think they were, Lupus,’ said Jonathan. ‘They weren’t even armed. Ipalacen had that jewelled dagger stuck in his sash, but that was all.’
Flavia frowned at Jonathan. ‘But if they weren’t slave-traders, why were they chasing us?’ Suddenly she gasped. ‘Great Juno’s peacock!’
Jonathan turned his head to look at her and Nubia saw that his eyes were red-rimmed beneath his black turban.
‘You think you know why?’ he asked.
Flavia nodded. ‘Last night, when the fat man offered Narcissus a fortune for me, Narcissus whispered that I should pretend to agree so that he could get the money and then later he would help me escape. I said no, of course. It’s a terrible idea.’
‘In so many different ways,’ said Jonathan.
Lupus scribbled in the dust: HE WAS PROBABLY JOKING
‘I thought so too,’ said Flavia. ‘But what if Narcissus did agree to sell me after all, and then took the money. Maybe that’s why Narcissus was in a such a hurry to leave this morning. Maybe that’s why they were pursuing us. Ipalacen paid Narcissus and he wanted his goods: me!’
All four were silent for a while. The setting sun had burst and was bleeding into the horizon, shrinking by the moment.
‘What do we do?’ asked Nubia.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ said Jonathan. ‘We have to get our money and luggage back, and that means we have to get to Volubilis. This caravan is the only way. Especially now that we’re in the middle of the desert. Also, Ipalacen’s family might be after us and they’ll assume we were all in on the scheme.’
‘That is why we camp in wadi,’ murmured Nubia.
‘In what?’
‘Wadi is what we call dry riverbed. From ground level nobody can see us.’
The sun was a shrinking pool of blood on the horizon. The sky above it a livid purple.
‘Come,’ said Nubia, rising to her feet and brushing off her robe. ‘It is becoming dark soon.’
‘You’re right,’ said Jonathan. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it now. Let’s go and eat.’
‘But how can we just go and sit and eat with Narcissus?’ cried Flavia. ‘If my theory is right, then he’s a cheat, a liar and a murderer.’
Lupus angrily shook his head at her. He used his sandalled foot to scuff out the previous messages he had written in the dust. Then he squatted and wrote a new one with his finger: I TRUST NARCISSUS. I THINK THOSE MEN WERE BENT ON EVIL.
‘Nubia’s good at sensing what people are like,’ said Flavia, and turned to her friend. ‘What do you think about Narcissus? Is he good or evil?’
Nubia considered. ‘I do not think he is evil, but I think he hides something,’ she said at last.
‘Hmmph!’ said Flavia, and turned back to the livid horizon.
‘Listen, everyone,’ said Jonathan, ‘If Lupus is right, then we have nothing to fear from Narcissus. But if Flavia is right about Narcissus, and if he suspects we might betray him, then he could murder us, too. Either way, we’ve got to behave as if everything is normal and treat him exactly as we have in the past.’
In spite of Jonathan’s warning to treat Narcissus normally, Flavia could not bear the thought of eating dinner with him. So she decided to sit with the merchants. She had been travelling with them for over a week but had not yet exchanged more than a polite greeting. They were chattering away in a foreign language but when she approached them with her wooden bowl of barley porridge, they all smiled up at her. One of them had a jolly, light-brown face beneath a white turban, and he moved over to make space in their circle. Flavia sat beside him.
‘Salvete!’ she said.
‘Hello, Roman girl,’ they replied.
‘Flavia,’ she said. ‘My name is Flavia Gemina, daughter of Marcus Flavius Geminus, sea captain.’
‘I am Zabda,’ said the jolly one in the white turban. He smiled – showing bad teeth – and introduced her to the others.
They all spoke either good Greek or fair Latin, and she discovered that they had set out from Alexandria and hoped to reach Volubilis. They had been travelling for nearly two months, selling and buying along the way. They took turns telling her about their adventures and warning her about the evil spirits of the desert.
‘Are there really evil spirits in the desert?’ asked Flavia, putting down her empty bowl.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Zabda. ‘We have all encountered them. Some call them ghuls. Others call them jinns. But I call them demons.’
‘What do they look like?’
‘They are invisible!’ cried a long-nosed merchant in a black turban. ‘Sometimes they will mount a camel, and the poor creature – feeling a rider but seeing nobody behind – will run for days and days in pure terror until finally it drops dead. I have seen it happen.’
Several of the other merchants nodded their agreement.
‘Some of them look like beautiful girls,’ said Baricha, who had bushy black eyebrows beneath an orange turban. ‘Once I was wandering in the desert, separated from my comrades, when I saw an oasis. I could see it all! The bright pool of water. The lush palm-grove. And dusky maidens with jars of water on their heads. But just as I reached it: pouf! It disappeared! It was a mirage, caused by succubae: demons who take the form of lovely women.’
‘A mirage?’ said Flavia.
‘Yes. A trick of demons in the desert. You see something that is not there.’
‘I saw a demon once,’ said Zabda. ‘And heard it, too. It was a ghul, a shadow of the night. It had glowing orange eyes and pointed ears. And it made an eerie, whooping noise. They say whenever you hear that sound, someone will soon die.’
Flavia shuddered.
‘Oh, look, now you’ve gone and frightened Miss Roman girl,’ said Baricha. ‘Senna tea?’ He held up a long-spouted brass teapot that had been sitting in the coals of the fire.
‘Thank you,’ said Flavia. He handed her a small thick glass and continued pouring for the others.
‘Oh, it’s delicious!’ cried Flavia a moment later.
‘Sweetened with syrup of figs,’ explained Zabda as he accepted his.
‘More?’ said Baricha to Flavia, at the sight of her already-empty glass.
‘Oh, yes please!’ said Flavia.
Baricha raised his caterpillar-like eyebrows, but said nothing as he topped her up.
The merchant in the black turban asked Flavia about life in Italia, and soon Flavia was telling them about Titus’s massive new arena in Rome, how she and her friends had witnessed the games, and how she had escaped from hippos and crocodiles.
Presently she held out her cup for a fifth helping of tea.
‘Are you sure?’ said Baricha.
‘If you don’t mind,’ said Flavia, and launched back into her tale.
Finally she noticed that her friends were rising from the other fire to prepare for bed, so she excused herself to join them.
The next morning at dawn Flavia discovered the effects of too much senna tea.
All that day almost on the hour, the whole caravan had to stop while Flavia dismounted and ran to squat in the riverbed. Nubia always offered to come with her but each time Flavia refused: it was too horrible and embarrassing.
‘Oh, Juno!’ she groaned, as she lifted the hem of her blue caftan for the tenth time that day. ‘Why me?’ She swatted away a buzzing fly.
‘We’re stopping here for the day, Flavia!’ called a voice. Flavia looked up in horror to see Jonathan standing on the bank of the wadi. It ran east to west and they had been following it all day.
‘Jonathan!’ She angrily stood and pulled down her caftan. ‘Don’t spy on me!’
‘I’m not spying,’ he snapped. ‘I just wanted to warn you that we’re all about to come down here to camp, like last nigh
t.’
Flavia glared at him, then turned and marched across the riverbed, up the opposite slope and towards the north. The sun was still fairly high, about three handbreadths above the horizon, and she finally found a shallow dip behind a stunted bush.
Her bowels cramped painfully, but nothing came. She was as empty as the water-skin hanging from her shoulder.
She knew everyone was annoyed with her because the caravan’s water was almost finished. Macargus had been hoping to reach a well today, but her frequent stops had slowed the whole caravan. She knew they would blame her for having to ration their water. There would be no brewing of senna tea tonight.
‘It’s not my fault,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Nobody told me senna tea was a laxative. Why are those merchants carrying it anyway? Why would anybody want to buy senna leaf?’
Finally she rose and sighed. She was just about to turn around and set back to the camp when she saw a clump of date palms and a pool of water only a few hundred yards away in the opposite direction of the wadi. Was it a mirage?
She rubbed her eyes, but she could clearly see the pool of water glinting in the sun. She could even make out something like white foam on its surface, and little islands rising up from it. An entire lake! She turned to run back to camp, then hesitated. Better to make absolutely certain it was real. She didn’t want people to be even more annoyed with her than they already were.
Flavia had crested half a dozen hillocks, but the lake seemed no nearer.
But now the sun was only a handbreadth from the horizon and she knew she must go back to camp, lake or not. She sighed and turned and began to retrace her footprints, quite clear in the sandy earth.
A moment later she stopped with a cry of delight. Before her, a herd of tiny gazelle swarmed past, heading west. There must have been two hundred of them flowing past in an undulating wave. Every so often one of them would spring up high above the rest, his hooves and horns gleaming in the setting sun.
Flavia was enchanted and watched them out of sight. At last they were gone and now the sun was almost touching the horizon. She hurried on towards camp.
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 208