The Greek youth laughed. ‘That young lion is missing its parents. The man who sold it to me said it was taken as a cub. Nestling in the straw gives it comfort. Its misery will end soon enough in the arena at Halicarnassus.’
Big Thighs looked at the young lion and the lion stared back at him with solemn golden eyes. ‘Poor little thing,’ he said and moved on to the last cage. ‘And these apes? Never seen apes like these before. Their eyes look almost human.’ He made the sign against evil.
‘Keep your distance,’ warned the Greek. ‘Those are Libyan baboons. They’re particularly fierce. That green-eyed one nearly had my finger off the other day.’
Even as he spoke the green-eyed baboon launched himself at the small window of the wooden box, grunting angrily. The whole cage shook and Big Thighs jumped smartly back.
‘Keep my distance!’ he grunted. ‘Right you are.’ And to Sad Eyes: ‘All in order.’
Sad Eyes nodded, dripped some wax on the papyrus document and pressed his official seal into it. He handed the visa back to the young Greek without looking up.
‘Good voyage,’ he said, waving them on. ‘Next!’
‘Praise Juno!’ breathed Flavia an hour later. ‘We did it!’
She and her friends stood with Aristo at the stern of the Ourania and watched Alexandria recede. Flavia shaded her eyes; she thought she could see Nathan standing on the dock, a small figure in a white conical hat and sleeveless tunic. She waved her arm and the figure waved back.
Aristo sighed deeply. ‘Your friend Nathan has the last of my life’s savings. The visa and documents were almost as expensive as those animals. And our passage wasn’t cheap either.’
‘Pater will make it up to you when we get to Halicarnassus,’ said Flavia. ‘I know he will.’ She had taken the cushion from under her long tunic and now she was pulling off the black wig. ‘Oh, it feels so good to be out of that hot wig and veil!’ she said.
‘You can’t complain,’ said Jonathan. ‘Nubia and Lupus and I had to put on those smelly animal skins. That was horrible.’ He sniffed his own underarm. ‘Ugh! I need a bath.’
Lupus nodded, grinned and imitated an ape by pulling himself along the deck by his knuckles. Then he lifted his arms and sprang up and down on bent legs, making monkey-noises.
‘Lupus!’ said Flavia with a shudder. ‘Don’t do that! It’s too realistic.’
But the sailors were roaring with laughter, and when Lupus began to swing from the rigging, they all cheered. The Ourania was a small, elderly craft, but it was spotlessly clean and the crew seemed happy.
‘At least Nathan did a good job for us,’ said Flavia. ‘All those papers were perfectly forged.’ She batted her eyes mischievously at Aristo. ‘Even our wedding certificate!’ She felt Nubia stiffen beside her and quickly changed the subject: ‘And I don’t know how he found those animal skins.’
‘Not to mention the live zebra and the ostrich,’ added Jonathan, glancing back at the cages lashed to the deck.
‘I’m afraid I had to sell them to Captain Artabazus,’ said Aristo. He patted his coin purse and it jingled. ‘It was either that or land in Halicarnassus without so much as a quadrans.’
‘How much have you got?’ asked Jonathan.
Aristo shrugged. ‘Enough to last us a few days, if the gods are gracious.’
Flavia looked at the others. ‘Speaking of the gods, we should thank them that we got out of Alexandria safely. And we should also commit our quest to them.’
‘And pray we do not get shipwrecked again,’ said Nubia with a shudder.
Flavia nodded and closed her eyes. ‘Dear Castor and Pollux,’ she prayed, ‘thank you for helping us leave Alexandria. Please protect us from storms and may we not be shipwrecked again. And help us find pater, and Popo and Lydia.’
‘And the other children,’ added Nubia.
Lupus grunted his agreement.
Aristo closed his eyes, too. ‘Help us, Lord Apollo,’ he said, ‘and you, too, O Neptune.’
‘Dear Lord,’ prayed Jonathan. ‘Help us save the children.’ And then he said in a voice so low that Flavia almost missed it: ‘And help me atone for my sins.’
In his vision he sees Rome burn. On a citadel, the temple of Jupiter explodes and a cascade of fire roars up into the night sky. The cult statue groans in the heat, and cracks appear. The colossal head sways, topples, falls and rolls. It knocks down burning columns, bumps down the stairs past the altar, and finally comes to rest on one side, looking out over Rome with terrible blank eyes. Now the wind catches the flames from the temple and rolls them like waves, washing the city with fire. Men, women and children cry out in terror. The horses in their stables, the dogs in their kennels, the pigeons in their dovecote: all long to escape. Twenty thousand souls perish that night, among them a burning man who steps over the cliff and falls onto the traitors’ rocks below.
They reached the island of Rhodes on the evening of the third day. The Ourania was due to offload and onload cargo, and would not set sail until the following afternoon.
The next morning, they breakfasted in Rhodes Town, under the flapping awning of a tavern overlooking the town square. The sound of the wind chimes brought back all the memories of the previous year to Lupus.
The other three had never had a chance to see the fallen Colossus up close, and Aristo had never been to Rhodes, so after a morning at the baths, Lupus led them up the hill to the sanctuary of Apollo, where the massive bronze head lay on the ground.
On his previous visit, the rhododendron bushes had been in bloom. Now, in the pounding midday heat, the grasses on the hillside were dried and golden, and the rhododendrons dusty.
While Aristo and his friends examined the head up close, Lupus stood at a distance and watched them. He remembered how the little slave-dealer called Magnus and his big mute henchman Ursus had pursued him around the pieces of the fallen statue, and how they had tried to kill him. Lupus had trapped the little one and knocked the big one unconscious, but later they had both escaped. Lupus wondered if they had joined Biggest Buyer in Halicarnassus.
He turned and looked down the hill towards the votive tree, its thousand copper plaques blazing in the afternoon sunshine like a golden fleece. He had dedicated a plaque there, asking for healing for his tongue, and now he briefly considered going down to see if his prayer was still there. But how could his tongue be healed? The slave-dealer had cut it off in order to prevent him from naming a murderer. How could something that no longer existed be restored? Lupus angrily kicked at the dust and when he turned back, the colossal head swam in a blur of tears.
As the Ourania set sail for Halicarnassus with the afternoon breeze, Flavia stood in the bows, lost in memories of her own. She was thinking of Gaius Valerius Flaccus, the handsome young patrician who had helped them break the illegal slave trade in Rhodes the previous year. He had gone on to Asia to try to uncover the mastermind behind the operation, the man they had nicknamed Biggest Buyer. Later – back in Ostia – Flaccus had nobly defended a slave-girl charged with murder.
When he had proposed marriage to Flavia in February she had turned him down, not because she didn’t like him, but because she had impulsively made a vow never to marry. Now she felt a flush of shame at the memory of their last encounter. She could hear herself telling him she had renounced men and that she was going to be a virgin huntress like the goddess Diana. A virgin huntress! How childish he must have thought her.
She lifted her face to let the sea breeze cool her hot cheeks, remembering his response: Your arrow has pierced my heart. He had plucked one of the arrows from her quiver and broken it and kept the pointed half for himself.
‘Oh Floppy!’ she whispered. ‘Do you still have my arrow? Or have you found someone else?’ Beneath her feet, the Ourania’s deck gently rose, paused and dipped, rose, paused and dipped, as if expressing the slow heartbeat of the sea.
Out of the corner of her eye, Flavia saw a movement. Nubia and Aristo were standing a few paces away, speaking quie
tly together. Nubia’s short black hair was plaited and oiled, and around her shoulders she wore a fringed silk palla in orange, dark blue and gold. Aristo was smiling and Nubia’s golden eyes shone; she looked beautiful. Flavia felt a pang of jealousy, then instantly felt guilty for being jealous.
Presently, Aristo went back towards the stern and Nubia came to join her.
‘What were you and Aristo talking about?’ asked Flavia. ‘He seemed happy.’
Nubia pulled her palla around her shoulders. ‘He asked me to play music with him tonight. He says he wants to play joyful music since he discovers the four of us are still alive. He says for him the world has colour again.’
Flavia turned and caught her friend’s hands. ‘Nubia, don’t let this opportunity slip away. Tell him how you feel.’
Nubia lowered her eyes. ‘I am afraid,’ she said. ‘It is so wonderful that we can play music together again. I do not want to lose that.’
‘I know you’re afraid to tell him you love him, but . . . Listen, Nubia: I turned down Floppy when he proposed and—’ Flavia was surprised by the strength of emotion that suddenly overwhelmed her. Her eyes brimmed and her throat felt tight.
‘And you wish you had not?’ asked Nubia gently.
Flavia nodded and began to cry. ‘Oh, Nubia,’ she sobbed. ‘I think I love him. But what if he thinks I’m dead? What if he’s married someone else?’
The two girls embraced and held each other tightly as the ship rose and fell beneath them.
After a while Flavia pulled a handkerchief from her belt pouch and blew her nose. She stared towards the blue horizon and sighed. Her tears had brought some relief.
Nubia also stared ahead. ‘Chrysis said something to me when we were travelling together along the bank of the Nile,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The same thing you said. That I should be brave and tell Aristo how I feel.’
‘And you should!’ said Flavia, gripping her friend’s hands. ‘You are so beautiful and gentle. Any man would be lucky to have you.’
Nubia’s golden eyes were brimming now, too. ‘That is just what Chrysis said. But I must wait for the right moment.’
Flavia sighed and looked at her friend with deep affection. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But none of us know what the gods have in store for us. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Nubia, don’t wait too long.’
They passed Lupus’s home island Symi later that afternoon and the beautiful marble port of Cnidos in the golden evening. That night they anchored beneath a full moon in a cove of the volcanic island of Nisyrus. The faint eggy smell of sulphur mingled with the fresh green scent of pine trees on the shore.
The next morning they woke to the sound of a joyful dawn chorus of a thousand tiny birds in the conifers. The birds were still singing when they weighed anchor, and they took this for a good omen.
An hour before noon, the merchant ship Ourania sailed into a sunny port surrounded by hills. The slopes of the hills reminded Jonathan of the seating in a theatre and the harbour was like its circular blue orchestra.
‘Is this Halicarnassus?’ asked Nubia, pulling her fluttering shawl tighter around her shoulders. ‘Halicarnassus in Asia?’
‘According to Captain Artabazus it is,’ said Jonathan.
‘Halicarnassus!’ proclaimed Flavia. ‘Home of Herodotus the father of history and site of the tomb of Mausolus, also known as the Mausoleum, one of the Seven Sights of the world. Correct?’ She looked over her shoulder at Aristo who had come to stand behind them.
‘Yes, Flavia.’ He gave Jonathan a wink. ‘You’re correct. As usual.’
Lupus grunted and pointed towards a monument rising above the roofs of the town: a gleaming white pyramid raised high on columns and topped with a painted sculpture of two figures in a chariot.
‘Lupus is right,’ said Jonathan. ‘That must be the Mausoleum.’
‘But do you know what the first tomb of Mausolus was?’ said Flavia. ‘It was his wife, Artemisia!’
Nubia turned her golden eyes on Flavia. ‘How?’
‘She loved him so much that after he died she drank his ashes mixed in wine, so that she could be his tomb. His living tomb.’
Lupus pretended to gag and Flavia nodded sagely. ‘She died two years later, of grief.’
‘Or of drinking a dead man’s ashes,’ muttered Jonathan under his breath.
Flavia ignored him. ‘But before Artemisia died, she commissioned the most magnificent tomb in the world, and that’s it. She’s buried there, too, with her beloved Mausolus. And now it’s considered one of the Seven Sights of—’
‘You just said that,’ snapped Jonathan, ‘you don’t have to tell us a thousand times.’ The injured look on Flavia’s face immediately made him regret his words, but before he could find the energy to apologise, Captain Artabazus came up beside them and rested his hairy forearms on the polished rail.
‘Where are all the townspeople?’ He glared around as the Ourania approached one of the berths. ‘The whole place is deserted. Where’s the harbour master? Where are all the other sailors and captains? It looks as if a plague has struck.’
Jonathan saw the others make the sign against evil.
Captain Artabazus turned and addressed the crew in his seaman’s bellow: ‘Who’s willing to go down and find out what’s happening? Has anybody here had plague?’
‘I’ll go,’ said Jonathan, raising his hand.
Lupus grunted in alarm and Nubia whispered: ‘Jonathan! You have not had the plague.’
Jonathan shrugged. ‘I’ve had the fever,’ he said.
‘But that’s different,’ said Flavia. ‘Plague is much worse than fever.’
‘They’re right,’ said Aristo. ‘If there’s a plague then it would be suicide to disembark.’
‘I said I’ll go!’ snapped Jonathan. And under his breath he added: ‘If I die, I die.’
Half an hour later, Nubia followed Flavia carefully down the gangplank. She took Aristo’s outstretched hand and jumped lightly onto the wooden dock.
‘Where did you say everyone had gone?’ Flavia was asking Jonathan. ‘It sounded like you said the whole town’s at the theatre!’
Nubia looked around. She was in the great port of Halicarnassus, in Asia, but it looked very much like the port of Ostia out of season. There were only a few fishermen here, mending their nets, and some sailors playing knucklebones in the shade of a warehouse.
‘That’s right,’ said Jonathan. ‘Practically everybody is at the theatre. No point looking for your father, yet. Those fishermen told me all the offices are closed. We’re in luck,’ he added under his breath. ‘The customs’ stall is unmanned.’
‘Why is everyone at the theatre?’ said Aristo. ‘Today’s not a festival, is it?’
Lupus did a back flip and then took a bow like a pantomime dancer.
‘It’s not a festival and there’s no pantomime,’ said Jonathan, and nodded towards the fishermen. ‘They said a travelling magician is speaking there.’
‘Let’s go, then,’ said Flavia. ‘Maybe we’ll find pater there. But first, we need to give thanks for arriving safely.’
‘And we need to do it without being detected,’ murmured Aristo. He looked up at the sound of a whistle and saw that one of the sailors on the Ourania was about to toss down his leather travelling satchel. ‘Can you keep our things on board,’ he called out, ‘until I send someone to get them? I’m not sure where we’re staying yet.’
‘No problem,’ said the sailor. ‘We’re here until tomorrow morning.’
‘Wait,’ cried Flavia as the sailor turned back. ‘Do you know Halicarnassus?’
‘A little.’
‘Is there a temple or shrine to Neptune here? So we can make a thanks offering?’
The sailor pointed a muscular forearm. ‘Just beyond those shops there,’ he said. ‘Little temple to Poseidon. That’s what they call him in this part of the world.’
Nubia followed the others across the wooden docks a
nd past warehouses towards some shops on the north side of the harbour. The shops were shuttered up but one stall near the temple sold votive honey cakes and live doves.
Aristo paid for a white dove and took it over to the altar at the foot of the temple steps. There was no sign of the priest, so Aristo sacrificed the dove himself. Nubia averted her eyes as Aristo wrung the dove’s neck and dripped its bright red blood on the altar. She knew it was right to give thanks for their safe voyage, but she hated the way it was done.
As they started towards the theatre, Nubia glanced up at Aristo. ‘Why did you sacrifice the dove?’ she asked softly.
He sighed. ‘I vowed to give Poseidon a thanks offering if he brought us safely here. A dove was all I can afford.’
‘But why a living creature?’
‘They’re worth more than cakes or fruit. Because of the blood.’
‘But why blood?’
Jonathan answered: ‘Because the life is in the blood.’
‘Oh,’ said Nubia. She still did not understand.
On the other side of Aristo, Lupus grunted and pointed at a man pushing a cart in the middle of the street a short distance ahead of them. The cart was full of sesame-seed bread rolls, each about the size of a bracelet.
‘You’re hungry?’ Aristo said to Lupus. ‘And you want a sesame ring?’
Lupus nodded and Jonathan said, ‘I’m starving.’ He was wheezing a little because of the steepness of the hill they were climbing.
‘Me, too,’ said Flavia.
Nubia still felt slightly off-balance, as she always did after a few days at sea, and she was queasy from watching the sacrifice. Even so, her stomach growled.
Aristo grinned. ‘Here, Lupus!’ He flipped Lupus a drachma. ‘Catch him up.’
Lupus ran up the hill to catch the bread-seller. He was taking his bread rings and change when they reached him. The great Mausoleum loomed above them a few streets to their right. Nubia was glad to stop climbing for a moment and gaze up at it.
‘Do you know what’s happening up at the theatre?’ Aristo asked the bread-ring-seller when he had caught his breath.
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 240