The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

At this, Nubia gave Jonathan such a fierce look of warning that he took a step back.

  ‘You boys also?’ said Aristo after a short pause. ‘Are you also in love?’

  ‘Master of the Universe, no!’ said Jonathan.

  Lupus shook his head vigorously and pretended to vomit.

  Aristo nodded thoughtfully and looked at Nubia. ‘So it’s only you two girls I have to worry about?’

  Both girls were glaring at Jonathan, so he kept quiet.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Aristo, with a tight smile. ‘Lucky Flaccus, to have so many admirers.’

  ‘I don’t admire him!’ cried Flavia. ‘I told you: I hate him! I can’t be in the same room as him and I can’t stay here in Halicarnassus doing nothing when Mindius is escaping.’

  ‘We’re not doing nothing,’ said Jonathan. ‘We’re trying to reunite kidnapped children with their parents.’

  ‘Prudentilla and Flaccus can do that perfectly well without us,’ said Flavia. ‘And every moment we stay here, Biggest Buyer is taking my baby cousin further and further away.’

  ‘He’s my nephew,’ said Jonathan. ‘I care about him, too.’

  ‘Bato will catch Mindius,’ said Aristo. ‘He’ll be waiting for him in Ephesus.’

  Flavia rounded on Aristo. ‘How can you be so sure? Bato told us his two soldiers would catch Mindius, but they didn’t. And what if Mindius isn’t really going to Ephesus? Or what if he changes his mind halfway? Or what if Bato’s ship sinks,’– Flavia made the sign against evil – ‘and he never gets there?’

  Jonathan nodded. ‘Flavia’s right,’ he said. ‘There are a hundred things that could go wrong with Bato’s plan.’

  ‘We’re going to catch Biggest Buyer ourselves,’ said Flavia, ‘and save Miriam’s baby. I’ve got it all planned. We’ll take some of those horses we saw at Mindius’s villa and we’ll start for Ephesus today.’ She looked at Aristo. ‘You can’t stop us, so you may as well come with us.’

  Aristo stared back. ‘But I . . . we’ve never been to this province before,’ he stuttered. ‘It could be dangerous.’

  ‘It could be very dangerous,’ said Flavia, and Jonathan saw that her eyes had a bright, almost feverish gleam. ‘But the stakes are high and it’s worth the risk.’ As she turned to go, Jonathan heard her mutter to herself: ‘He told me he loved my courage . . . I’ll prove I’m braver than she is.’

  They left Halicarnassus around noon, riding on five of Mindius’s finest horses. Nubia was in the lead. She sat upon a magnificent black stallion that nobody else had dared to mount.

  Aristo had used some of Bato’s loan to buy provisions. They were wearing light, long-sleeved linen tunics and wide-brimmed straw hats to protect them from the merciless sun. Nubia and her three friends carried travellers’ baskets bought cheap in the market. Each basket contained a hooded woollen cloak, a spare tunic, a comb and a bath-set. Aristo had his leather travelling satchel with his lyre in it. He had also bought a gourd of water for each of them, and two hemp bags of sunflower seeds to stave off hunger on the road.

  Nubia had prepared enough horse feed for two days: a mix of barley, beans, fenugreek and vetch. She had learned how to make it in the stables of the Greens in Rome: it was especially good for stamina and endurance. She had also packed two of Prudentilla’s dolls: the one with yellow hair and the one with blue hair. She and Flavia were both dressed as boys, to discourage trouble. When in Egypt, Nubia had learned to walk like a boy, stomping rather than gliding, and pretending to be confident. But riding this stallion she didn’t need to pretend: on his back, she felt powerful and brave.

  ‘Heracleia, twenty-five miles,’ called Jonathan from the rear. He was looking at a milestone. ‘Ephesus, eighty-five.’

  They left the town and its tombs behind, the road always ascending. Nubia felt the horse’s muscles ripple as he effortlessly took the slope. The whole world throbbed with cicadas and the rhythmic clopping of hooves. She could smell the heady scent of thyme and the pungent aroma of horse. Despite the tragic cause of their quest, a bittersweet joy flooded her heart. She was with her friends and with her beloved Aristo.

  ‘What are you naming your horse, Flavia?’ asked Nubia, reining in her stallion so that Flavia could come abreast. ‘I am calling mine Tarquin. It is the name of a king of Rome but also reminds me of my brother Taharqo, like the horse.’

  Flavia looked down at her strawberry roan gelding and sighed. ‘I suppose I’ll call mine Herodotus.’ She gave a small smile. ‘Because he comes from Halicarnassus.’

  ‘Good choice,’ said Aristo with a smile. ‘I’ll call my little grey mare Calliope. Her hooves are very musical and she clips along like a verse of Homer.’

  Nubia smiled, too, and looked over her shoulder at Jonathan.

  ‘Mine’s as sluggish as the Tiber river,’ he grumbled from the rear. ‘And about the same colour, too.’

  ‘Call her Tiberina,’ said Aristo, and winked at Nubia.

  ‘What about you, Lupus?’ said Nubia happily. ‘What are you naming your pretty little bay mare?’

  ‘Unnnggh!’ said Lupus cheerfully, and they all laughed.

  As the road climbed, the air grew cooler and the scent of pines mingled with the spicy fragrance of the maquis. Sometimes the scenery reminded Nubia of Greece and at other times it might have been Italia, but then she would catch the strong scent of thyme and remember: they were in Asia, thyme-scented Asia.

  It was afternoon and there were few other travellers on the road. Of those they met, none remembered seeing three riders, one of whom was a giant on a black gelding.

  ‘They’re a day ahead of us,’ remarked Aristo. ‘I’d be surprised if someone travelling today had seen them.’

  Once a snake slithered across the road and Nubia’s horse reared up. But she calmed him with soothing words and a pat on the neck.

  ‘You ride very well,’ said Aristo, coming up along side. ‘When did you learn?’

  ‘I learned when I was young,’ she said. ‘I can ride camel, too.’

  ‘I’m impressed. You know, you’ve changed a lot in half a year. Your Latin is much better and your Greek is nearly perfect.’

  ‘I was in Egypt for two months,’ she said. ‘Everyone is speaking Greek there.’

  ‘Still, you picked it up quickly.’

  ‘I am having a good teacher,’ she said softly.

  ‘And you’re a talented girl,’ he said. ‘I mean: a talented young lady.’

  Nubia glanced at him. Because his mare was a little smaller than Tarquin, her eyes were level with his. She always felt powerful and strong on horseback and now she smiled and looked ahead again. She knew he was still looking at her and she felt her cheeks grow hot.

  As they reached the highest point of the pass, a sea breeze ruffled her tunic and cooled her face. Down below, she glimpsed turquoise water between the dark-green pine trees.

  Aristo slowed Calliope, so Nubia reined in Tarquin, too. The others came up beside them and, as the hoof beats ceased, Nubia could hear the soporific pulse of the cicadas, the breeze in her ears and the distant clank of goat bells.

  ‘Thalassa! Thalassa!’ quoted Aristo. ‘The sea! The sea!’

  Nubia remembered the quote from one of their lessons and she smiled. ‘Xenophon,’ she said, and felt his admiring gaze again. She urged Tarquin forward with her heels, and they continued down the winding road, catching glimpses of secluded bays to their left, between the pines.

  ‘I’m starving,’ called Jonathan from the rear an hour later. ‘Shall we have some of those sunflower seeds?’

  Aristo pointed. ‘That looks like a tavern down there in the shade of those pines,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Let’s water the horses and have a rest and something to eat in the shade.’

  But when they reached the roadside tavern, the inn-keeper came out shaking his head.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said in Greek. ‘You can water your horses in my brook and sit on my benches, but I don’t have a scrap of food to offer you. That proph
et and his people came through here late yesterday afternoon. Ate every crumb in my house. It was like a flock of locusts. Are you hoping to catch up with him?’ he added, as Nubia and her friends dismounted.

  ‘Actually,’ said Aristo, ‘we’re pursuing a young woman and a baby, travelling with a distinguished-looking man and a big body-slave.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Mindius!’ said the man. He turned his head and spat onto the dusty ground.

  ‘You know about Mindius?’ asked Flavia.

  ‘Everybody in this region knows about him,’ said the innkeeper. ‘He and his little entourage came by yesterday, too. Not long after the prophet and his crowd. Perhaps they want to be healed!’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Aristo drily.

  ‘Did Mindius say where he was going?’ asked Flavia.

  ‘Didn’t say anything at all,’ said the man. ‘They rode straight through as if an entire legion were on their heels.’

  The road descended as they left the coast and presently they were in a flat, fertile river valley, full of vineyards and fruit trees. Late in the afternoon, the terrain became hilly again, and Lupus and his friends passed an ancient citadel as the town was coming to life after the siesta. They stopped at a caupona to water the horses, and beneath the shaded awning Lupus drank a salted yogurt drink while the others snacked on green almonds washed down with sour cherry juice.

  The yawning serving-girl did not remember seeing Mindius, but she told them that the prophet had passed through at midday. He had wanted to camp outside of town, but the village elders had chased him out and couldn’t they see the mess his followers had made?

  ‘Still,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t all bad. Some of his followers were selling these handkerchiefs. They’ve been touched by the healer himself. I got myself one of the last ones.’ She opened a blue silk scarf to show them a small scrap of unbleached linen within. ‘This cost me a tetradrachm,’ she said, ‘but I don’t mind. I’m going to give it to my old granny. She’s not well.’

  Lupus stretched his hand towards the scrap of cloth and grunted, as if to say: May I see it?

  ‘What’s he want?’ said the girl, folding up the blue scarf with the magic handkerchief safely inside.

  ‘I think he just wants to look at it,’ said Flavia. ‘Right, Lupus?’

  He nodded and reached out again.

  ‘No you don’t!’ The serving girl tucked the blue scarf down the front of her tunic. ‘If you touch it the power goes out of it.’

  Lupus hung his head and tried to look pathetic but the girl’s resolve did not waver.

  But when they mounted their horses again, Lupus was so hopeful about catching up with the healing prophet that he found his mare’s jouncing almost bearable. Finally, at dusk, they overtook the prophet and his crowds on a forested hillside just beyond Euromus.

  There were perhaps two hundred people with the prophet, scattered among the pine trees of the slope. Beside some trees near the road stood horses and carts and even a camel. Several people were setting up makeshift tents.

  ‘Come hear the prophet!’ a woman called out to them, and it seemed to Lupus that she was looking directly at him. ‘Come hear Tychicus! He’s preaching the good news. He heals the sick and gives sight to the blind!’

  Lupus reined in his little mare and looked for the prophet called Tychicus. He thought he could see him at the very top of the slope, in a clearing among the pines: a stocky, bearded man in a turban and long blue tunic. The people around the man were sitting quietly and listening, those on the periphery were lying down, chatting, even preparing food.

  Could the prophet really heal the sick and make the blind see? Could he make the dumb talk? Could he heal Lupus?

  Jonathan had turned Tiberina; now he brought her up beside him. ‘Aristo and Flavia say we should press on,’ said Jonathan in a low voice. ‘Aristo says his map shows a tavern with stables at the port of Heracleia at the foot of Mount Latmus. It’s not far but we need to get there before dark. I’m sorry,’ he added. ‘I’d like to hear the prophet, too, but we—’

  Lupus angrily kicked his horse into motion; he knew what Jonathan was going to say.

  Jonathan felt bad about hurrying Lupus, but he had worries of his own. The voice in his head was becoming more and more insistent, perhaps because there were no distractions while riding on horseback, just the incessant throb of the cicadas and the clopping of horses’ hooves.

  They reached Heracleia at lamp-lighting time. It was a small port town at the foot of a granite mountain studded with strange tortured boulders. They found Endymion’s Tavern just outside the southern wall, and ate a spicy dinner of goat stew and flatbread.

  The landlord had not seen Mindius pass by, but because they were the only guests he lingered beside their table to complain about the mosquitoes and business falling off due to the harbour silting up and how the prophet and his hoards would descend on them the following day.

  ‘Lucky you got here when you did,’ he said. ‘They’ll be swarming like flies on a carcass tomorrow. I hope they pay.’ Jonathan didn’t mind the man’s chatter. When he was talking the voice was silent.

  Now the landlord was telling them that his name was Endymion, after the handsome and mythical shepherd loved by the moon goddess Selene.

  ‘Can you see the resemblance?’ he asked, wiggling dark eyebrows that met above his nose.

  Jonathan snorted but Nubia nodded politely. Lupus and Flavia were too preoccupied to respond.

  ‘Legend has it,’ said Endymion, ‘that my namesake still sleeps his magic sleep in one of the caves up there on Mount Latmus.’

  After dinner, Aristo improvised a song about Endymion while Nubia accompanied him on her flute.

  The landlord was so moved by their music that he offered them a special rate on their room.

  This room turned out to be a dormitory with eight straw mattresses on an earthen floor. It smelt faintly of urine because there was a vespasian in the corner and only one small window. At least there were no other travellers, so they had the room to themselves.

  Jonathan kicked off his sandals and lay down on his bed. It was dark now, and despite the heat and mosquitoes and prickly mattresses, the others fell asleep at once.

  But the voice in his head would not allow him any rest. Since they had left Halicarnassus it had grown stronger. And the more he tried to ignore it, the more it persisted. Now the voice spoke to him clearly, in a sneering tone:

  It’s your fault. It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t gone to Rome your family would be fine. Had to look for your mother, didn’t you? And what good did it do? It’s all your fault. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. You killed them. Burned them. Men. Women. Babies. Your fault. All your fault.

  Jonathan rolled onto his side and wrapped the greasy pillow around his head. But the voice was inside his head, not outside, and this did not help. The previous night it had woken him at the darkest hour with an insistent thought. You deserve to burn. You deserve to burn. Burn in fire. Burn in fire. Burn. Burn. Burn.

  Now the straw in the mattress was making him wheeze and a mosquito was whining peevishly, so he stood up, shook out his cloak, wrapped it around his face and lay on the packed earth floor. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. His muscles were stiff from riding and he was having trouble sucking enough breath into his lungs. Even above his own wheezing he could hear the voice taunting him again: You’re pathetic. Can’t even breathe. Can’t breathe. Why don’t you just die? You’re pathetic.

  Hot tears of self-pity spilled out and for a short time he indulged them. But then the voice began calling him a ‘pathetic cry-baby’, so he got up and slipped out of the room and onto the wooden colonnaded walkway with its view of the mountain looming behind the stables. A nearly full moon made the strange barren rocks on the mountain look like crouching giants. Jonathan found a battered wicker rocking chair in the colonnade. It creaked softly as he sat down in it. The night was warm and smelled faintly of stagnant water. From the south came the textured singing of
frogs in the marshy salt flats. A million stars throbbed in the sky above, attending the moon. Over to the west, above the sea, Jonathan could see the constellation of Leo, Nubia’s birth sign. Beside it was Virgo the Maiden. Whenever he imagined filaments of light connecting the stars of Virgo, the lines seemed to describe a squarish body with arms raised high and legs kicking out. It always made him think of a falling figure, more warrior than maiden. He had been born under that sign of the Zodiac, and it reminded him that in a month he would be thirteen and officially a man.

  Even if you live to be that old, sneered the voice, you’ll never be a man. Just a coward. A coward who deserves to die.

  Jonathan dug his fingernails into his scalp, squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to scream.

  If he had been looking, he would have seen a small figure emerge from the inky-shadowed colonnade and run silently across the moonlit courtyard towards the stables.

  But Jonathan’s eyes were closed and he did not see Lupus.

  Lupus had waited until the others were asleep.

  But now the moon was up and he used its light to creep out of the dormitory and across the deserted courtyard to the stables. The night was warm, the air thick and damp. Frogs croaked sleepily in the nearby marshes and mosquitoes whined around his ears.

  Inside the stables the air was hot and humid, heavy with the pungent scent of hay, leather and horse dung. One of the horses snuffled softly. It was the little bay mare he had been riding. She had put in a long day and he felt sorry for her.

  He stroked her flank and hummed softly. If he could have spoken, he would have whispered comforting words to her. He would have told her that they were only going a few miles south to the prophet’s camp. He would have told her that he was going to touch something much more powerful than a holy handkerchief. He was going to touch the prophet himself. If he could have spoken, he would have told the bay mare that this was one of the most important journeys he would ever make, because it might end with his healing.

  But he could not speak so he contented himself with humming and grunting as he saddled and mounted her.