Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate

by S. J. A. Turney

  To some extent the solitude he'd had at the ship's rail had been a cathartic time, if he was honest with himself. The news of Crispus' demise had come as a tremendous shock to him and the group's troubles had immediately expanded to fill all their waking thoughts, leaving him no time to ponder or grieve until aboard the ship and watching the gulls and the grey water in silence.

  The thought that Crispus had been sent to Elysium in Gaul cut him all the more with the deep personal fear that, had he not severed his ties with Caesar and returned to Rome, he could have been there to stop it. It felt as though he had abandoned his friend and thus indirectly caused his death.

  By the time the ship had reached Puteoli, he had finally come to terms with the loss, though a funeral feast and libations were overdue, and he would move the world itself if he had to in order to arrange a night with Priscus and Varus and the others.

  A clatter as a bag was mishandled onto the dock drew his thoughts back.

  As the others disembarked and the ship's crew unloaded the horses and their bags, Fronto looked along the jetty at the port - one of the busiest and most impressive in the Roman world - and then back to the city beyond, all narrow maze-like alleys and twisting vertiginous streets. Rome was a place of wide avenues and well-ordered streets - well, in the wealthier areas anyway - but almost none of Puteoli was designed like that. The city dated back to the days of the Greek settlers, before Rome's influence had reached this far south, and it suffered the design flaws of that artistic and disorganised people.

  Despite the presence of the low-lying port and the sea-front part of the civic area behind, much of the city rose on high cliffs and spurs and from the jetty created something of the impression of looking up into the seats of a giant theatre arcing across before them.

  "Where do we go?" Balbus asked, his voice catching. The man had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the journey, more with nerves born of the news he carried for his daughter than the pain he himself felt.

  Fronto nodded to himself. He'd forgotten that Balbus had never been here before.

  "We'll have to make our way up through the city. From here, just past that bloody great arcaded building and to the right of the baths' cistern - that great square thing past the white roof - you can just see the curved top of the amphitheatre. We head up to there and turn right just past it. The road from there leads out towards Neapolis and we stop about a three quarters of a mile along the cliffs. If we'd come in from the southern direction, I could have shown you the villa. You can see it from the sea."

  He realised he was starting to enthuse, despite everything, and Balbus was in no mood to hear of Fronto's love for his home. Instead, he turned to the others. Elijah held Balbina by the hand. The girl's eyes were unfocussed, unseeing - almost glazed, but the Jewish physician never let her spend a moment alone or uncared for, acting more as a brother or uncle than a medicus, comforting her and encouraging her to interact. It wasn't working, but something needed to be done.

  Galronus, Masgava and Palmatus were in conversation about fighting methods, as seemed their norm. They made a strange trio - a Roman born, a Belgic chieftain and a dark-skinned Numidian - but they seemed to have settled into an easy friendship, and one that was equally extended to Fronto and Balbus.

  "When we get to the villa - assuming all's normal - it might do us some good to look around it first with an eye to its defence" Fronto announced. "We can deal with returning to the ladies afterwards. I would be happier if we at least scout the place out first and decide how we're going to approach the coming storm."

  The three warriors broke off their conversation and looked over at him. "First," Galronus replied "we need to make sure the ladies are safe and whole."

  Balbus turned to face them all. "I will go and see the womenfolk. I need to speak to Lucilia and give her the news, and I would prefer to do that before you all settle in there; with a little privacy. You all see to the defence plans - you don't need me for that."

  "Nor I" added Elijah. "With your permission I will bring your daughter."

  Balbus nodded and managed a weak smile for his blank-faced child. Elijah strolled over to join him as the porters loaded their bags onto the horses' flanks and settled them in place. As soon as all was ready, the six men and their young charge mounted up, Elijah lifting Balbina into position in front of him.

  Without exchanging a word the group set off, clattering along the jetty and into the streets of the city. Fronto spent most of the first few hundred paces trying not to vomit again; to keep his insides where they belonged. Balbus rode with a singularity of purpose, his brow low and eyes burning with loss, anger and the fear of the coming exchange with his daughter, keeping his horse close to Fronto and Galronus, both of whom knew the way from the port and rode easily and confidently.

  Behind them, Elijah, Palmatus and Masgava chatted amiably as they rode, their gaze slipping around them to take everything in.

  Slowly, the cavalcade of six horses and their riders wound their way through the city and up the slope towards the rolling skyline of volcanic hills. Strangely, though they felt the need to hurry against the possibility of their enemies reaching the villa before them, this last stage had seen them slow, their reluctance to deal with what they might find and what they knew must come bringing hesitation to their every step.

  Within the next quarter of an hour they had passed the amphitheatre, its arcades silent on this day without games, and turned on to the Neapolis road. A short, silent ride further, during which the new visitors took in the impressive scenery, and the group turned off the main road.

  "We're heading back towards the sea?" Palmatus enquired.

  "Yes. The villa's a cliff-top one."

  "Seems surprisingly sparse out here" the former legionary noted. "I'd have thought that with the climate all these slopes would be covered with vines and villas.

  "Puteoli region's not over welcoming of strangers" Fronto said with a wry smile. "The ground smokes, bubbles and moves in places. Only long-term locals or brave adventurers sink their money into villas here. We have tremors in the land every few years, too - some are quite bad. Parts of our villa have been repaired three or four times before now and a few years ago we had to rebuild the barn."

  "Delightful" Palmatus noted, the news of the terrain drawing his attention towards what looked like a forest fire in the distance to their left - a haze of white smoke wafting up into the grey sky. "The ground smokes, you say?"

  Fronto turned and looked off to the north-east at the haze rising from the rolling hill tops.

  "That's Vulcan's Forum. Never stops. The more superstitious call it Hades' Gate - they think it's the way down into the underworld. Personally I think it's the very ground rebelling against us cultivating it. As I said: not welcoming, although the mud and steam's supposed to be good for ailments. Lucilia's dragged me up there 'for my health' before now and we used to play up there as children."

  "Delightful" Palmatus repeated, eying the haze suspiciously.

  "There's the villa" Fronto announced, reining in his horse on the crest of the slope. The others peered ahead at the Falerii's family holdings and Masgava whistled through his teeth.

  The villa proper consisted of a surprisingly large double-storeyed main building with north and south wings embracing a courtyard garden that was enclosed with just a low wall, a single simple gate allowing ingress from the road. Beyond, and connected to the villa by terraced walkways were a low, wide building that could only be a bathhouse from the smoking chimneys, a large structure reminiscent of rural warehouses and farm stores with a squat quadrangular building attached, and a small porticoed structure facing the sea. The land all about was cultivated with vineyards and vegetable plots and dotted with occasional small sheds, and a herd of goats roaming a slope, contained by a low fence.

  But it was not the sizeable and wealthy villa, nor its cultivated surrounds, that drew the gaze of the new arrivals; it was the terrain.

  The buildings had been co
nstructed on terraces gradually stepping away towards the sea, connected by stairways and paths, and beyond the final grassy lip, simply open air all the way down to the crashing waves far below. Puteoli centre was visible off to the right as a distant, low-lying mass by the water, so far down it gave the impression of being part of another world. Baia and Misenum watched jealously from across the water.

  Palmatus swallowed noisily. He pictured a man rolling down the slope beside that house. If he picked up enough momentum and failed to grasp one of the terrace edges in his descent, he could quite simply roll past the entire complex and then out over the cliff and into nowhere.

  The very thought of the drop he couldn't quite see beyond that grassy horizon made his backbone shiver.

  "Your family picked a magical place for a villa. Hope none of them ever sleep-walked!"

  "Not the surviving ones" Fronto replied with a straight face, and Palmatus could not decide whether or not he was being serious.

  Figures moved around the courtyard garden, going about their daily tasks and the sight was instantly reassuring. Clearly they had beaten their enemies here and things were running normally. Balbus turned. "You all do your planning. Elijah, Balbina and I will go inside and meet with the ladies. Give me half an hour."

  Fronto nodded and clasped his friend's arm. "Fortuna go with you Quintus. Be gentle."

  He and the three other warriors watched the two men and the girl descend to the courtyard, where they were greeted by one of the slaves. Fronto deliberately paid no further attention to them. Some things had to come first, given the trouble heading their way, and this would hardly be a happy reunion.

  "As you can see," he announced to the others "it's quite defensible in some places, but hopelessly open in others. Peaceful area, you see. Never expected to have to defend it, so it's a residence with no thought for martial security."

  Masgava nodded. "What are the buildings?"

  "Come on. I'll show you."

  Fronto kicked his horse into life and took them off to the west, skirting the built-up area on the city-side. In the same fashion as most rural villas, the outer faces of the Falerii's home were plastered in white with small windows at regular intervals, their shutters thrown back to allow in the light. Both storeys of the main building were of uniform shape and construction and the roof was of good red tile. As they passed around the side, they could see the arcaded portico that ran along the rear on the ground level, an entrance in it allowing access to the path which forked and ran down to the next terrace and other buildings.

  "The main house is far larger than it ever really needed to be" Fronto noted. "This villa doesn't come from the Falerii you see - came from my great-grandmother's side. She was from a rural family of modest equite rank but with an almost bottomless purse. She and her brother believed that half the battle for acceptance into the elite was having an impressive house. They failed, of course, though her daughter married my grandfather - who was insufferably noble but low on available money. It was a marriage made in social-climber's heaven. So we ended up with a pleasant and rather over-sized country estate and everyone was happy."

  "Just the two entrances?" Galronus enquired.

  "Hardly. Three off the central courtyard - a main public one, a private one into the apartments, and a servants' one. There's two at the rear, out onto the portico, too - one for the family and one for the slaves, but the portico has only the one way in or out, so I guess you could call it one."

  "Not easy to defend" Palmatus observed. "One man could hold the portico entrance, but an agile warrior would just climb in through the arches. So to be sure, you'd need a man at each inner door. That would leave us with three for the front. That's just one for each door into the courtyard. A man at every entrance but no reserve."

  "There will be other men. But you don't think we could hold the perimeter wall to the garden?" Fronto enquired, already convinced of the answer, but seeking confirmation.

  "Wall's too low and too feeble. Even if you stockade it or build it up, the whole thing was covered with vines. Looking at how well-tended and neat they were, they'll have been there a long time and they'll have screwed the stonework. A well placed shield barge would probably bring down a section of the wall."

  "So that would be all of us with one door each" Masgava frowned. "Rather thinly spread. Can we discount the house for defence and concentrate elsewhere, or do you have plenty of other guards?"

  Fronto shrugged. "There should be a small army of hired swords if Posco's done his job right."

  "That makes things easier, then."

  "Perhaps" Fronto said, kicking his horse forward again. "But present company excepted, I'm no believer in the quality and loyalty of hired swords. The sort one might hire in port cities are not the finest to be bought, loyalty-wise, and despite having plenty of money and his heart in the right place, Posco's no judge of a fighting man. Until I've looked them in the eye and seen them at the palus, I'll reserve judgement."

  The cavalcade veered to the right, descending the slope towards the cliff between the edge of the nearest vineyard and the bath house that clung to the terrace, resting on vaulted substructures. The baths were bigger than any such private establishment any in the party had laid eyes upon - almost as large as the main villa building.

  "Big baths" Palmatus noted, trying not to look too closely at the cliff edge coming ever closer at the bottom of the slope.

  "Got its own pool for swimming and more than one of each bath. While my great grandmother was one for glory and ostentation, my grandfather took his bathing rather seriously."

  "Only two doors there?"

  "Three. But I've had bad experiences fighting in bath houses recently. I'd rather avoid that. Besides, it's quite dark in there apart from the natatio, which has windows big enough for someone to climb in."

  "So we rule that out" Galronus nodded. "What's that place?"

  Fronto looked ahead to the small porticoed structure on the lowest terrace.

  "My mother's sun house. Just three small rooms and a portico. Three windows; one door. Only real way of accessing it is from the cliff side."

  Palmatus swallowed noisily and eyed the edge. "Has no one ever thought to put up a fence or a rail?"

  "Why?"

  "I dunno. To stop some poor bastard rolling off it onto the rocks?"

  Fronto smiled. "No. But the sun house is probably the most defensible place. The only other buildings out at the other side are the barn and stables. Too many arches, doors and windows there. Or there's the caves, of course."

  Galronus and Masgava looked at one another and the big Numidian raised an eyebrow. "Caves?"

  "There's a small system under the grass off towards the left. There are stairways down into them from two of the small sheds you keep seeing in the fields, and three holes in the cliff side about a third of the way down."

  Palmatus shuddered. "Doesn't sound good. Hate to be trapped in them."

  Fronto scratched his head. "Good fall-back position, though." He scanned their surroundings and his gaze fell upon the bulk of the main building, towering above them higher up the slope. Behind it, he could see the distant haze of the steaming ground in the vast crater of the Forum Vulcani. Slowly a smile spread across his face.

  "Of course it doesn't have to be anywhere in the villa."

  "What?"

  "Well we've just been thinking how to defend the villa. What if we just quit the villa and drew them somewhere different? Problem with the villa is we think too traditionally and we have to consider what to do with the women and the slaves and servants, and everything else. We're very constricted - like being besieged in a fort. And if everything goes wrong, there's no way to escape."

  Galronus shook his head. "And if we plan to meet them elsewhere and they come here first, what if they ransack the house?"

  "I don't think they will if they know we're not here. These people are murderers and killers - and probably rapists - but I doubt they're thieves. Thieves would be too care
ful to sign themselves up on something like this. Besides, Pompey and Berengarus will have selected the more brutal prisoners to set on us. I think they'll be intent on blood, not robbery."

  "So what do you think?" Palmatus asked, trying not to let the relief at the possibility the cliff-side may no longer be involved show on his face.

  "The Forum Vulcani… the door to Hades. I know this is going to sound stupid, but I know the place like the back of my own hand. My friends and I used to sneak away as children and play there against the wishes of the elders."

  "You think it would be better?" Masgava asked.

  "I think so. There are a dozen hazards for the unwary thrown in by nature, let alone anything we do. Admittedly, the dangers tend to change from time to time, so we'll have to familiarise ourselves with the place as we prepare, but I think it might be just the thing." He grinned at Masgava. "You put me back on the right track, my friend, and you've taught me a few things, but now we need to marry your ingenuity and adaptability with my experience at strategic defence. I think we might be able to spring a surprise or two on them."

  "And what of the women and servants?" Galronus asked quietly. "You can't put them in the same danger, and you can't leave them in the villa, in case you're wrong and the killers come straight here to rummage around."

  Fronto nodded as he kicked his horse into life again. "Our family has associates all around the bay. Most of my actual friends are in Rome or serving in the military or on the staff of various governors, but their parents will look after the family for us. We'll send them with most of the hired blades off to the Sennii over in Baia or the Tineii at Cuma. They'll be safe and totally out of the way, which will allow us to concentrate on our work. What do you think?"