The most impressive courtyard was a canal garden, built into the southern slope of the hill. At the far end of the garden a waterfall splashed out of a mosaic and shell fountain set between two platforms. Mats and cushions could be laid on these platforms to make couches for an outdoor triclinium. The waterfall fed into a shallow canal running lengthwise through the middle of the garden. Lush grape arbours gave shade on either side of this canal, along with peach and carob trees.
‘That must be why they call it the Villa Vinea,’ said Flavia, looking up at the grapes hanging from the vines.
Nubia nodded, then smiled as Lupus jumped up onto a marble bench and then stood on tiptoes in order to pick a grape.
Mindius’s villa also had a vegetable garden courtyard with blue-veined marble pillars for the colonnade. Painted marble oscilla hung between these columns. These revolving discs had pictures of medusas and satyrs on them, to scare away birds. A massive fig tree shaded a third courtyard with a circular mosaic of Orpheus surrounded by animals. The fourth courtyard boasted a swimming pool with four lofty date palms: one at each corner. As they came into the palm tree courtyard, Lupus pulled off his tunic and leapt into the pool, wearing only his loincloth. He landed like a boulder from a ballista, splashing them all.
The friends and Aristo laughed, and even Bato gave a half-smile as he brushed drops of water from his toga.
‘The Villa Vinea reminds me of Cordius’s villa,’ murmured Flavia.
Nubia nodded her agreement. Cordius was the patron of Flavia’s father. He had an opulent townhouse in Ostia which occupied an entire insula. At the thought of Ostia, a sudden wave of homesickness washed over her. Even though she had grown up in the desert, she had grown to love Roman houses, with their secret inner gardens, colonnaded walkways and splashing fountains. The thought of Ostia also made her think of her beloved dog Nipur who must be wondering why she did not return to him. Nubia swallowed hard and blinked back tears.
Bato showed them the villa’s small but luxurious bath complex. There were changing rooms, a frigidarium and a small domed caldarium of apricot-coloured marble. Next to the bath complex was a marble six-seater latrine with a trough of running water piped from the baths complex.
In the tablinum, a luxurious study off the canal garden, everything gleamed, for the pens, inkwells and even the bronze oil-lamps were gilded.
‘It’s like the palace of Midas,’ said Flavia, picking up a scroll with gilded bosses at each end. It was a scroll of Herodotus, written in Greek.
‘Who is Midas?’ asked Nubia, examining a gilded quill pen in wonder.
‘He was a king of Phrygia,’ said Flavia. ‘One of the gods said he could have any wish he wanted. So Midas wished that everything he touched might turn to gold.’
Lupus came in, dripping wet and leaving damp footprints. He had heard Flavia’s last words and pretended to be Midas, touching various objects and jumping back in delight as they turned to gold.
‘To become rich!’ said Nubia.
‘At first he thought so,’ said Flavia. ‘But then it all went wrong.’
Lupus picked up an apple from a bowl on the desk and pretended to crack a tooth in trying to bite it.
‘Oh!’ said Nubia.
‘That’s right,’ said Flavia. ‘Food turned to gold and wine turned to liquid gold.’
‘And there were other problems,’ grinned Jonathan, as Lupus approached with his finger extended. As soon as Lupus touched him, Jonathan obligingly pretended to become a statue.
‘Alas!’ cried Nubia.
‘Exactly,’ said Flavia. ‘When Midas’s only daughter ran into his arms, she was turned to gold, too. Luckily the gods took pity and reversed his wish.’ Flavia put the scroll back in a niche. ‘Later, Midas was cursed with hairy pointed satyr ears,’ she said.
‘Served him right,’ said Jonathan, unfreezing. He looked around. ‘What does Mindius need such a big house for, anyway? He’s not even married.’
‘Not that we know of,’ said Bato. ‘My guess is he entertains potential buyers here.’
Next Bato took them to the carpet factory. Constructed like the one in Halicarnassus, it was little more than a wooden shack, hot and dim.
‘The weavers are all boys,’ said Bato, leading them out of the stuffy building to the stables next door. ‘Last night we unchained them and fed them. They sleep in here.’
After the stench of the carpet factory, the scent of the stables was glorious and Nubia exclaimed with joy to see her beloved Tarquin and the other horses they had ridden from Halicarnassus. There were three other horses here, too, and she knew these must belong to Bato and his soldiers. As Nubia ran forward to greet Tarquin she saw inside some of the stalls and gasped. She had presumed the stalls to be empty, but they were full of boys, fast asleep on the hay. Each horse had its own stall, but the boys had to share, three or four together. Nubia counted twenty of them, aged four to nine.
‘Poor lads are exhausted,’ Bato explained. ‘We arrived at dusk the night before last and they were still at work. The overseer and most of the other villa staff ran off when we got here. But Daphne the cook stayed behind and offered to help us. She belongs to some local guild. She told the leader of the guild and he’s organised a delivery of clean tunics for the boys.’
‘What is a guild?’ asked Nubia over her shoulder; she was stroking Tarquin’s nose. ‘I always forget that word.’
‘A guild is just a group of people who share a philosophy,’ said Bato. ‘They often work in the same trade and worship a particular god or goddess. Most of the guilds in this city revere Artemis.’ He turned to Jonathan. ‘The tunics should be here in the next hour or two. In the meantime, will you and Lupus take the boys to the baths? Spend all morning. Get them to leave their old lice-infested clothes on the ground outside, not in the changing room. I’ll get one of my men to burn them. When the boys are clean we can move them into the bedrooms.’
‘Have they eaten?’ asked Flavia.
Bato nodded. ‘Last night Daphne the cook made them a veritable feast. That’s why they’re all still sleeping.’ He looked at Aristo. ‘I hope you’ll stay and help me. There’s plenty of room and until those imperial notices come down it’s probably the safest place for the children.’
‘Of course we’ll stay,’ said Aristo. ‘We are very grateful.’
While Jonathan and Lupus took the boys to the baths, Bato showed Flavia, Nubia and Aristo the slave quarters at the back of the main building. Compared to the stables, the small individual cubicles were luxurious, with rush sleeping mats and cool, plaster-lined walls.
‘This is where the chosen few slept,’ said Bato grimly. ‘They’re waiting in the fig tree courtyard. Aristo, you can speak to the two boys.’ He turned to Nubia and Flavia. ‘Will you speak to the girls?’
Nubia nodded and Flavia said: ‘Of course.’
Bato took them back to the Orpheus courtyard with its cedarwood benches beneath the shade of an ancient fig tree. It reminded Nubia of Flavia’s garden in Ostia and she felt another sudden pang of bittersweet homesickness.
The twelve favoured children ranged in age from six to thirteen, the eldest being twin Persian boys called Darius and Cyrus. These children were not thin and grubby like the carpet-weavers; they were clean, plump and well groomed. And they were all strikingly beautiful.
All twelve children spoke Greek, but only one seemed to understand Latin, a lovely looking girl of about eleven with curly brown hair and eyes the colour of sapphires. Although she obviously understood what they were saying, she would not tell them her name.
Nubia asked Aristo if he had brought her travelling basket. He nodded and disappeared in the direction of the atrium. A few moments later he was back, with her basket and Flavia’s. Nubia reached into her basket and pulled out the two dolls which Prudentilla had given her. She handed the blue-haired one to the girl who understood Latin.
‘My name is Nubia,’ Nubia made her doll say. ‘I am from Nubia but also from Italia. What is your
name?’
The blue-haired doll was silent.
‘Where are you from?’ asked Nubia gently, still using her mustard-haired doll. ‘Can you nod or shake your head?’
The girl with sapphire-coloured eyes made her doll nod.
‘Are you from here?’
The girl’s doll shook its head.
‘Egypt? Greece? Italia?’
The girl made her doll nod its head.
‘You’re from Italia? So are we. We are from Ostia, the port of Rome.’
‘So am I,’ the girl made her doll say. ‘I’m from Ostia, too.’
‘You’re from Ostia?’ cried Flavia. ‘What’s your name?’
The girl lowered her eyes.
‘What is your name?’ Nubia made her doll ask the girl’s doll.
‘Sapphira,’ said the girl’s doll.
‘Oh!’ cried Flavia. ‘When I was younger there were rumours that a girl called Sapphira was kidnapped by Venalicius and sold to a Syrian merchant!’
Sapphira was silent, her eyes still downcast.
Nubia moved her doll forward. ‘I was captured by Venalicius, too. Some bad men killed my family and brought me to him.’ She made her doll speak softly.
Flavia took the hint and addressed Nubia’s doll rather than Sapphira’s. ‘What did Venalicius do to you?’
‘He put a chain around my neck,’ Nubia made her doll say. ‘He sold me naked. I felt very ashamed.’ Nubia turned her doll to face Sapphira’s: ‘Did Venalicius take you, too?’
‘Yes,’ said Sapphira’s doll in an almost inaudible voice. ‘Venalicius brought some of us to Rhodes, to a dwarf. He sent me to Halicarnassus, to a man called Mindius. He brought me here. I hate him.’
‘Did he hurt you?’ Nubia’s doll asked Sapphira’s doll.
Sapphira’s doll was silent.
‘The other children weave carpets,’ said Nubia’s doll after a moment. ‘What do you do?’
‘They train us to sing and dance,’ said Sapphira’s doll. ‘They teach us to serve at dinner and to give massage in the baths.’
‘Do you like doing that?’
Sapphira gripped her doll tightly and shook her head. Then she began to grind its wooden face against the marble bench. ‘No,’ she whispered, erasing the doll’s painted features. ‘I hate it.’
In addition to Sapphira, there were nine other little girls in the special slave quarters of the Villa Vinea. Nubia’s Greek was now almost as good as her Latin and she was able to comfort them, too. Soon she had them all making dolls with scraps of wool from the carpet factory and bits of one of Mindius’s old tunics. She had also found three kittens in a corner of the large kitchen.
The girls were happy sitting in the shade of the fig tree with Nubia and their dolls and the kittens, so Flavia went to find the boys. She was not as good as Nubia at comforting the little girls and she wanted to be doing something useful, not just sitting in the shade and playing dolls. Every moment her baby cousin might be further away.
Flavia found the carpet-weaving boys in the canal garden, sitting in the dappled shade beneath the grape arbours. They were clean and bathed and fed. One of Bato’s soldiers had shaved their lice-infested hair. A few of the older ones were wearing Mindius’s tunics but most were wearing the new tunics donated by someone called Aquila the Tentmaker. But even clean and wearing new tunics, the boys were a heartbreaking sight. Many of them had swollen red eyes and scarred fingertips. Some of the older boys were hunched over, like little old men. Many had hacking coughs. Jonathan had told her that almost all of them had weals on their backs from being beaten with rods.
Flavia stood in the shadow of a column and watched them.
Jonathan sat on the right-hand platform of the summer triclinium by the mosaic wall-fountain. He was holding a gilded abacus from Mindius’s tablinum and showing a few of the older boys how to do simple calculations. Three sat on the platform opposite him and two on the soft grass. All five were watching him with shining eyes. A loud burst of laughter came from another corner of the garden, and Flavia turned to see Lupus sitting in the shade of a carob tree with the rest of the boys. They were throwing dice and gambling for carob pods.
Aristo emerged from Mindius’s tablinum, his wax tablet in hand. All morning he had been going back and forth between the boys’ courtyard and the girls’, writing down as many details as he could about the children. Soon Bato would post some details of the children in the forum, holding back one or two vital facts, enough to make sure the people who claimed the children were really their families.
Already, three of the boys had been claimed by fathers saying they had been too afraid of Mindius to rescue their sons.
‘Probably sold their boys to him in the first place,’ Bato had grumbled. ‘And they’ll probably work them as hard on their farm or in the fullers’.’
‘At least they’re with their families,’ Aristo had replied.
Seeing Aristo come out of the tablinum gave Flavia an idea. Maybe she could find some clues in Mindius’s study. She moved along the shaded colonnade towards the wide doorway.
But when she went in, she saw Bato sitting at the gilded table, going through papyrus sheets which looked like accounts. He looked up at her and gave a tired smile.
‘How goes it with the little girls?’ he asked.
‘Nubia’s with them. They love her. She’s so gentle and kind. The carpet-boys love Lupus. Some of the older ones even like moody old Jonathan.’
‘Yes,’ said Bato. ‘You’re all doing—’
‘Sir!’ said a man’s breathless voice from the doorway. ‘We’ve just had a sighting . . . of Mindius. He’s been travelling . . . with that prophet . . . Tychicus . . . for the past few days.’ It was the soldier with the fierce blue eyes.
‘What?’ cried Bato.
‘A cobbler . . . from the harbour agora . . . swears it was him.’
Bato cursed. ‘He must have known he was being followed and decided to hide among the crowds. A clever move.’
‘Great Juno’s peacock!’ exclaimed Flavia. ‘We rode right past him! If we’d stopped we might have caught him!’
Bato’s chair scraped on the marble floor as he stood up. ‘Is Mindius still travelling with the prophet?’
‘No, sir!’ The soldier had caught his breath. ‘My informant said he was on his way to a Hierapolis.’
‘Hierapolis?’
‘Town about a hundred miles west of here, sir. Hot springs and a temple to Diana.’
‘Was he alone?’ Flavia asked the soldier. ‘Was Mindius alone?’
‘No.’ The soldier’s blue eyes flickered sideways to Flavia, but he addressed his reply to Bato. ‘Had a woman with him. And a baby, too.’
‘And a huge bodyguard?’ asked Bato, taking his toga from the chair.
‘No sir, according to my source it was just the three of them. Mindius, the woman and the baby. On two horses. Making their way to Hierapolis.’
Bato looked at Flavia. ‘I should have told you before, but I didn’t want to worry you,’ he said.
‘What?’ said Flavia. ‘What should you have told us?’
‘Before I left Halicarnassus, I asked that dwarf Magnus why Mindius had taken your baby cousin.’
‘And?’ said Flavia.
Bato looked down at the floor and his jaw clenched. ‘He said that Mindius intended to offer the child as a sacrifice to the gods.’
‘Nubia!’ cried Flavia, running into the Orpheus courtyard. ‘Mindius has taken Miriam’s baby to a place called Hierapolis! He’s going to sacrifice Popo to the gods! We have to go!’
Nubia was sitting with some little girls on a cedarwood bench in the shade of the fig tree. She looked up at Flavia, her golden eyes wide. ‘I did not think Romans sacrifice babies.’
‘We don’t! But Mindius is evil!’
As Nubia rose from the bench, one of the little girls – Euodia – wrapped her arms around Nubia’s legs. ‘Don’t go, Nubia!’ the little girl cried in Greek. ‘Don’t go away.’<
br />
Nubia looked down at the girls, then back up at Flavia.
‘Hurry, Nubia!’ cried Flavia. ‘Bato says we can come with him, but only if we leave right now. I told him we’d follow him anyway, so he might as well take us. The boys are coming, too,’ she added.
Now two of the other girls were hugging Nubia’s legs. The youngest sat with her thumb in her mouth looking up at Nubia with liquid dark eyes. Nubia glanced down at Sapphira. A few moments ago she had been smiling and petting one of the kittens. Now her face was an expressionless mask.
‘I will stay here with Sapphira and the girls,’ said Nubia. ‘You go.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Flavia. ‘You’re the best rider of us all.’
‘I am sure. I will stay here. They need someone to care for them until they are reunited with their families.’
‘But, Nubia, we’re a team.’
‘I am still in your team,’ said Nubia. ‘But the girls need me. I will wait for you here, with them.’
She sat back down on the cedarwood bench. The little girls clutched Nubia and glared up defiantly at Flavia, as if she were the enemy.
Flavia swallowed hard and quickly turned away, before Nubia could see her tears.
‘What’s happening, Flavia?’ Aristo emerged from between two columns, followed by some of the carpet-boys. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Lupus and Jonathan and I are going with Bato to save Popo from Mindius,’ said Flavia. ‘And there’s nothing you can do or say to stop us.’
Aristo sighed and closed his eyes and shook his head. Then he looked at Nubia. ‘You, too?’
‘No,’ said Flavia, in a low voice. ‘She’s staying here with the children. Aristo, maybe you should stay with her.’
‘What?’
‘Bato said he’s trying to find someone reliable to help Daphne look after the children,’ said Flavia. ‘But until he does, the children trust Nubia. Will you stay and protect her?’
‘I’m supposed to be protecting all of you.’ He looked at Flavia. ‘And it’s your father who employs me. By all the gods, you’ve just got out of prison!’
‘I’ll dress as a boy,’ said Flavia. ‘And Bato and two of his best men will be with us. If anyone asks they can say we’re in custody. Aristo, I have to save Popo. Please stay with Nubia and the children?’
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 247