'Would you like me to speak to him?'
No, don't worry. Marius and I are on good terms.' She smiled. Even without the jewels which normally weighed her down, she was a fine young woman, the more so when she felt cheerful and pleased with herself. Her veil fell back; her hair was loose for the funeral and the softened effect made her look even more appealing. She turned away and walked back to Marius, a slim figure with a firm step.
I was intending to find Marmarides, to tell him that our ways must finally part, thank him, and settle up for the carriage. First, I finally persuaded Helena to go indoors. She rose, a little stiff from sitting so long, her shape thoroughly awkward nowadays. I walked with her, taking her slowly to her room. Then, while she was washing her face in a basin, I went to the shutter and quietly opened it. I whistled under my breath; Helena came to look out with me.
Marius Optatus and Aelia Annaea were standing together under an almond tree. They were fairly close, talking quietly. Aelia was probably explaining her scheme for taking Helena to the coast. She had removed her veil and was twirling it casually from one wrist. Marius held on to a bough above his head; he looked even more relaxed. From his attitude, I suspected Marius was harbouring masculine plans.
He spoke. Aelia responded, perhaps rather pertly, for she tilted up her chin. Then Marius slipped his free arm right around her waist and drew her to him while they kissed. It seemed a popular move with Aelia. And when Marius slowly let go of the almond bough to embrace her even more closely, it seemed that his love for the lady's gold mine might actually be slightly less important than the love he felt for her.
LXII
I told myself it was not going to be like the last time. Mines are simply places where ores are produced. In that respect they are no different from glass factories or pig farms. Or even olive groves. There was no reason for me to start sweating with terror simply because I had to visit one or two mines. Time was short. I would not be staying. A couple of questions to ascertain the location of Quadratus - whether he was there, or had already called there, or whether the local foreman had heard he was on his way. Then all I had to do was say a nice hello to him, present him with the evidence, extract his confession, and lead him off. Simple, really. I should be feeling confident.
I could not help remembering what happened to me that other time. Something I hate to talk about. A nightmare to endure, then a cause of other nightmares for decades afterwards.
It had been my first mission for the Emperor. Britain. A province I had served in earlier. I thought I knew everything. I thought I would have everything under control. I was proud, cynical, efficient as an eagle stripping carrion. The first thing that happened was that I met a wild, contemptuous, patrician young divorcee called Helena and long before I noticed it, she had knocked every certainty of the previous thirty years from under me. Then I was sent undercover to the mines. For reasons that had made sense to everybody else, I was sent in disguised as a slave.
In the end it was Helena Justina who rescued me. She would not be doing that again. The last time her crazy driving of a pony cart had almost scared me more than all my sufferings in the silver mine as she raced me to a hospital before I died of exposure and cruelty; now she was herself being carried at a delicate pace along the Via Augusta to Valentia and then north towards a port called Emporiae. From there I would be taking her by sea around the southern coast of Gaul - a route that was famous for storms and shipwrecks, yet the quickest way back home.
Three years. Nearly three years I had known her now. I had changed and so had she. I liked to think I had mellowed her. But she had mellowed herself to begin with, when she let herself feel concern for a man she had at first heartily despised. Then I had found myself falling too. I recognised my fate; I plunged straight in. Now here I was, riding up into the hills of another mineral-rich province, older, mature, responsible, a seasoned state official: still stupid enough to take on any task, still put upon, still losing more than I ever gained.
It would not be like the last time. I was more fit and less fanatical. I distrusted too many people, including those who had sent me here. I had a woman and a baby to care about. I could not take risks.
I had visited the proconsul to tell him my intentions. He listened, then shrugged, then told me I seemed to know what ought to be done so he would not interfere. Same old routine. If it worked out well, he would want all the credit; if I got into difficulties, I was on my own.
The proconsul's staff, who did seem to have decent orders about helping me in my mission, had supplied me with a set of mules. Even better, I had been given a map, and what must be the briefing on mineral deposits that they prepared for the proconsul when he took up his post. From it I learned in detail what I had previously tried to avoid knowing.
Whereas the silver mines of Britain had proved to be disappointing, the landmass of Hispania was blessed with enormous riches. There was gold, gold in fabulous quantities. It had been estimated that the great state-owned mines of the northwest produced as much as twenty thousand pounds of gold every month; they were protected by the sole legion in the province, the Seventh Gemina. Besides gold there was silver, lead, copper, iron and tin. In Baetica there were old silver mines at Carthago Nova, silver and copper mines near Hispalis, gold mines at Corduba, cinnabar at Sisapo, silver at Castulo; in the ore-laden Mariana mountains - to which I had been told Quinctius Quadratus was heading - there were hundreds of shafts producing the finest copper in the Empire and an extravagance of silver too.
A few older mines remained in private hands, but the Emperor was easing out individual ownership. Most of these establishments were now under government control. A procurator administered the sites; contractors or local mining societies could take a lease on identified shafts on payment of a hefty sum and a proportion of the minerals they produced. Presumably the keen new quaestor imagined he had tripped off on his scenic tour in order to audit the procurator. Unlike his cowardly action in abandoning Rufius Constans under the weight of a grinding-stone, questioning the rule of a high-powered imperial career officer was decidedly brave. I myself was not even looking forward to telling the procurator - if I met him first - that Quadratus had devised such a plan. He might be a senator- elect, and the proconsul's deputy, but compared with the man he was venturing to spy on he was a mere temporary figurehead. Any ferret-faced freedman with equestrian status in a salaried post would wrap the quaestor round a scroll baton and send him home at the bottom of the next dispatch-rider's pouch.
I had to find Quadratus before this was done. I wanted him in one piece, pristine and unrolled.
I had crossed the river at Corduba. My journey would take me into the long line of gentle hills that had been a constant backdrop to our stay. In a gentle arc from west to east they closed off the Baetis valley on its north side, stretching from Hispalis to Castulo, and were pockmarked with mineral works almost all the way. Tumbling rivers with wriggling lakes ran through the hills. Transhumance paths, the ancient drove-roads for moving cattle every season, crisscrossed the terrain. I moved up into cooler air, amongst oak and chestnut trees.
I travelled light, camping out if it was more convenient, or begging a night in a contractor's but where I could. There were two roads going east from Corduba. I was all too conscious that while I took the upper route through these pleasant hills, Helena Justina was travelling the lower, along the river parallel with me. While I was constantly nipping up byways to ask after Quadratus at isolated workings, she made a steadier progress not too far away. I could almost have signalled the carriage.
Instead here I was, miserable as death, barely in contact with humanity. I hated it when the stubbly speculators only produced morose grunts for me; I hated it more when they were hungry for gossip and wanted to delay me for interminable chats. I ate cheese and hard biscuit; I drank mountain stream water. I washed if I felt like it, or not if I felt perverse. I shaved myself, never a success. It was worse than the army. I was surly, solitary, famished and chaste.
In the end I realised Quadratus was not bothering with the smaller individual mines. Only the big show would do for the famous Tiberius; he must have gone straight to the huge silver mine with its complex of hundreds of shafts let to numerous contractors, which lay at the far eastern end of the mountain range. He probably travelled by way of the river road, and stayed in decent mansios. Still, he would not be as desperate as I was, and he lacked the verve and efficiency to cover as much ground. I might yet head him off.
It was a cheering hope. It kept me going for half a day. Then I knew I had to face the kind of scene I had sworn to avoid for ever, and I felt myself break into a sweat.
It was the smell that turned my stomach first. Even before the appalling sights, that sour odour of slaves in their filth made me want to retch. Hundreds worked here. Convicted criminals who would slog it out until they died; it was a short life.
I could hardly bear to enter the place, remembering how I too once laboured to hew out lead-bearing rocks with inadequate tools on a pitiful diet amidst the most sordid cruelty. Chained; flogged; cursed; tortured. The hopelessness of knowing there was no relief from the work and no chance of escape. The lice. The scabs. The bruising and the beatings. That overseer, the worst man I had ever met, whose mildest thrill was buggery, and his biggest triumph watching a slave die in front of him.
I was a free man now. I had been free then - only enslaved from choice and for an honourable motive, though there are no grades of degradation on a chain-gang in a silver mine. Now I stepped down from a sturdy horse, a self-assured man with position in the world. I had rank. I had a formal commission with an imperial pass to prove it. I had a wonderful woman who loved me and I was fathering a little citizen. I was somebody. The mine perimeter was guarded, but when I announced myself I was called 'legate' and provided with a polite guide. Yet when that smell hit my gut I was nearly thrown back to three years ago. If I relaxed, I would be a trembling wreck.
I was led through a busy township in the shadow of mountains of slag. As we passed the cupellation furnaces, the smog and the ceaseless dints of the hammers left me almost demented. I seemed to feel the ground trembling under my boots. I was told how here the shafts reached over six hundred feet deep. The tunnels chased seams of silver underground for between three and four thousand feet. Deep down below me the slaves worked, for it was daylight. There are rules. No mine may work at night. You have to be civilised.
Below ground there would be huge polished mirrors to reflect the bright sunlight from above; beyond the reach of the sun the slaves carried clay lamps with vertical handles. Their shift lasted until the lamps ran out; never soon enough. The lamps used up the air and filled the tunnels with smoke. Amongst this smoke the slaves toiled to free the lumps of ore, then carried the backbreaking weight of esparto bucketfuls on their shoulders in a human chain. Up and down from the galleries, using short ladders. Pushing and shoving in lines like ants. Coughing and perspiring in the dark. Relieving themselves when they had to, right there in the galleries. Near-naked men who might never see daylight for weeks on end. Some endlessly trudged treadmills on the huge waterwheels that drained the deepest shafts. Some struggled to prop up the galleries. All of them coming a little closer every day to an inevitable death.
'Stunning, isn't it?' enquired my guide. Oh yes. I was stunned.
We came to the procurator's office. It was manned by a whole battery of supervisory staff. Men with flesh on their bodies and clothes on their backs. Dean-skinned, well- shaven men who sat at tables telling jokes. They picked up their salaries and enjoyed their lives. Visiting overseers cursed and complained as they took their breaks above ground, while they boasted about pacifying new convicts and keeping the old hands at their hard work. The supervising engineers, silent men scribbling inventive diagrams, worked out new and astonishing achievements to be turned into reality underground. The geometrists, who were responsible for finding and evaluating the seams of silver, completed dockets in between putting their feet up and telling the most obscene stories.
It was a room where people constantly came and went; nobody took any notice of a newcomer. Arcane discussions were going on, occasionally heated though more often businesslike. Huge movements of ore and endless shipments of ingots were being organised through this office. A small army of contractors was being regulated here, in order to provide a vital contribution to the Treasury. The atmosphere was one of rough and ready industry. If there was corruption it could be scandalous and on a massive scale, as I had proved in another province. But we had had a new emperor for two years since then, and somehow I doubted that more than harmless fiddling went on here. The profits were enough to cushion greed. The importance of the site ensured that only the best staff appointments were approved. There was an unmistakable aura of watchfulness from Rome.
It did not include supervision by the quaestor, apparently.
'Oh yes, Quadratus was here. We gave him the grand sightseeing tour.'
'What? "This is an ingot; here's an Archimedes screw" - then sending him down the deepest shaft on a wobbly ladder and suddenly blowing out the lamps to make him shit himself?'
'You know the score!' the procurator beamed admiringly. 'Then we bluffed him with a few graphs and figures, and booted him out to Castulo.'
'When was this?'
'Yesterday.'
'I should catch up with him, then.'
'Want a look around our system first?'
'Love to - but I need to get on.' I managed to make my refusal sound polite. Seen one, you've seen them all.
Castulo would be a day's ride away. Quadratus himself had told me his father had interests there, in the tight little mining society which had tied up all the mineral rights for a radius of twenty miles or more. The mining sites were smaller than here, but the area was important. Some of the wealthiest men in Hispania were making their fortunes at Castulo.
I nearly escaped without incident. I had left the office and was looking for my guide. Apparently he worked on the principle that if he got you in, you could find your own way out while he sloped off for a gossip with a friend.
Then a man came towards me. I recognised him immediately, though he did not know me. A big, shapeless bully, just as sly as he was merciless. He seemed heavier than ever, and shambled with even more threat in his ugly gait. His name was Cornix. He was the slave overseer who had once made a habit of singling me out for torture. In the end he had nearly killed me. Of all the pig-ignorant debauched thugs in the Empire he was the last man I would ever wish to see.
I could have walked right by him; he would never have realised that we had met before. I could not help my start of recognition. Then it was too late.
'Well! Well! If it isn't Chirpy!' The nickname froze my blood. And Cornix was not intending me any favours when he leered, 'I've not forgotten I owe you one!'
LXIII
He had two beats of time to reduce me to a jelly, but he missed his chance. After that it was my turn.
I had made a bad mistake with Cornix once: I had escaped his clutches and publicly humiliated him. The mere fact that I was alive today was because in my time as a slave I had continually outwitted him. Since I had been shackled, starved, despairing, and close to dying at the time, it was all the more commendable.
'I'm going to smash in your head,' he told me, in the same old sickening croak. 'And after that, we'll really have some fun!'
'Still the tender-hearted giant! Well, well, Cornix Who let you out of your cage?'
'You're going to die,' he glowered. 'Unless you've got a girl to rescue you again?'
This kind of delay - with its attendant danger - was the last thing I could afford. The girl who had once rescued me was heading for the coast, in a condition where she sorely needed me.
'No, Cornix. I am alone and unarmed, and I'm in a strange place. Obviously you have all the advantages.'
I was being too meek for him. He wanted threats. He wanted me to defy him and force him to fight me. One or
two people were already watching. Cornix was yearning for a big display, but it had to be my fault. He was the kind of rowdy who only picked on slaves, and then covertly in corners. His official role was as a tough manager who never put a foot wrong. In Britain his superiors had been told the truth eventually, and it must be due to me that after the shake-up I organised there he had had to roam abroad to find himself a new position. Just my luck he had found it here.
'I'm glad we've had this little chat,' I said very quietly. 'It's always good to renew acquaintance with an old friend!'
I ruined away. My contempt was iron-hard and just as cold. Refusing to antagonise the bastard was the surest way to achieve it. There were tools and timber everywhere. Unable to bear my forbearance Cornix grabbed a mining pick and came after me. That was his mistake.
I too had sized up possible weapons. I caught up a shovel, swung it, and banged the pick from his grip. I was angry, and I had no fear. He was out of condition and stupid, and he thought he was still dealing with someone utterly exhausted. Three years of exercise had given me more power than he could cope with. He soon knew.
A Dying Light in Corduba Page 36