Black Salamander

by Marilyn Todd

  ‘Please!’ Her wail rang raw in his ears. ‘You have to tell them how it is with me!’

  A million visions flashed through Orbilio’s head. Execution. Public. Gruesome and protracted. A spectacle. Messy. The strength and resilience that Remi possessed by the bucketload, those very qualities would be used against her, to prolong her public agony.

  ‘What of my bairns?’ She was sobbing openly now. ‘Who’ll care for them? Once word gets back…’

  She didn’t need to finish. Once word got back that their mother was a traitor, the occupying Romans would have little pity, the children could starve in the gutter for all they cared. And as for the Treveri! Knowing Remi had grassed on their chieftain’s son…well, let’s just say the children would fare better under the Romans.

  Orbilio stared at a large iron poker on the wall, splattered with flaking brown spots, and swallowed hard. ‘There—’ It was no good. He cleared his throat and started again. ‘There’s only one way I can help you, Remi,’ he said, keeping his eye on the poker. Around him, the tiny chamber seemed to dissolve. ‘I can’—shit!—‘send in hemlock.’

  From the corner of his eye he saw her arms fling themselves round her body as she started rocking, forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards, that lustrous red mane covering her face, and the hairs on his nape prickled. During this whole interview with Remi, not a single sound had intruded from the catacombs outside. None of the carpenters’ hammering, no laughter from Big Buckle and the warder, no hobnailed boots echoing down the corridor. These thick stone walls and solid door had made the room soundproof, but not to obstruct sounds coming in, to prevent anyone outside, from hearing what went on in this squalid, dark chamber…

  The silence dragged into eternity—‘To think,’ Remi said, and her voice was muffled, ‘that an hour ago I believed the worst that could happen was ending up some fat old man’s bedmate.’ She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and her tortured eyes bored into his. ‘I trusted you, policeman. Goddammit, I actually trusted you.’

  The room swam. ‘You’d never have told me about the map if I’d levelled with you.’ Something wet ran down his cheeks, and when he licked it away, it was salty.

  ‘Well.’ She gulped back a sob and drew herself upright on the floor. ‘Maybe that’s why it’s the Roman Empire and not the Treveri Empire.’ Her breath came out in a series of staccato sighs. ‘After all, you were only doing your job. I know.’

  He thought of Augustus, and of Claudia, and rasped, ‘It’s not that simple, Remi.’

  ‘So you told me before. Think I don’t listen?’ It was a courageous stab at defiance, but her trembling lower lip gave her away. There was a pause. A long pause. Then finally, ‘I appreciate your offer, policeman. About the hemlock, I mean. But let’s be realistic. The chances of my receiving whatever you send in here have to be slim, and if one of your own men dies accidentally…well, I don’t need to draw pictures, do I?’

  An eagle ripped at Marcus’s gut. Despite everything, it was his safety she was concerned for! Tears dripped unchecked on his tunic. How could he face himself after this?

  ‘On the other hand.’ She closed her eyes and her lashes quivered like reeds in a gale. ‘There is one favour you could do me.’

  ‘Name it.’

  She fought for breath, and eventually won. ‘You could put that thumping great dagger in your scabbard to good use.’

  ‘I—’ Around him, the walls closed in like a bearhug. He couldn’t breathe. ‘Remi. I beg you. Don’t ask that of me.’

  ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘If you care one iota for justice, you won’t hesitate.’

  His limbs had turned to stone, his muscles to rock. To move even his eyelids was painful, and he was cold. Icy cold.

  She swallowed hard. ‘If you have any feelings for me—’

  ‘Sssh.’ With his thumb, he wiped away the tears which dribbled down her battered cheek and drew her to him, his mind running over the manner in which he’d betrayed her, knowing all the while that she was doomed, yet deliberately giving her the impression that if she talked about the treasure map, she might walk free…

  He thought of the way she’d been singled out in Treveri, desperate for cash to keep her farm and family alive, only to be sold out by one of her tribesmen… He thought about her stoic acceptance of her fate, and that, having understood she was destined to die in this alien place, still had compassion left over for him… Then Orbilio thought of how she ought to be. Nineteen and alive, those green eyes dancing with laughter, singing to her children and feeding the chickens and baking bread as field hands brought in the barley…

  ‘Give me the names of your children,’ he rasped. ‘I’ll see they’re fostered anonymously and won’t want for money.’

  The silence was broken only by the sound of the blood thundering past his temples. Then a voice like gossamer said, ‘You’re a good man, policeman.’

  Her arms were shaking when she held out her wrists, soft side upwards but Remi didn’t wince once when his blade sliced the veins.

  For what seemed an eternity, they watched the life pump slowly, inexorably, out of her body as the lamplight flickered and cast dancing shadows on the stone walls.

  ‘Will you pray with me, policeman?’ Her voice was growing faint, her eyelids flickered. ‘To Great Father Dis? He’s—’

  ‘—god of the underworld, the great hammer god, the god from whom all Gauls are descended. I know.’ He couldn’t see her for the salt water in his eyes, but as he stroked the fiery red braids he prayed to Dis and his consort, Aveta to be kind to this girl, who had been caught in the crossfire when she’d only been trying to keep a roof over her head.

  He did not know at what stage in his prayers he noticed the blood was no longer pumping.

  ‘Remi?’ Her skin was whiter than parchment, almost blue, and her bruised and battered face had been made younger in death. It was as though he cradled a child in his lap. And he shook his head that a girl so full of life and living, joy and giving, could have been designated a traitor—

  Gently he leaned over and kissed her pale cheek, begging her forgiveness, even though he knew she’d given it, and promised that he would remember her every day of his life by leaving, in Gaulish tradition, fresh fruit out every day for Aveta.

  For perhaps another hour he remained seated on the bloodied floor, remembering again Remi’s courage, her bravado, her indomitable selflessness, even at the end, and knew in his heart that the vows he’d sworn today were sacred.

  And he thought of another silent vow he’d once made. To Claudia Seferius. And he thanked mighty Jupiter, King of Heaven and Deliverer of Justice, that she was safe.

  ‘Orbilio?’ The hammering at the door made him jump. ‘Orbilio, there’s a message here from Helvetia concerning a man called—it looks like Libo, is that right?’

  Libo. Libo? Oh, the undercover agent accompanying the delegation to Vesontio.

  ‘What—’ Orbilio’s larynx couldn’t function properly. ‘What does it say?’ he asked wearily. Presumably confirmation that they’d arrived safely. He stroked a strand of red hair away from Remi’s lovely, battered face and slipped her figure-of-eight ring on to his own little finger.

  ‘It reports that Libo is dead, sir. Stabbed in the heart.’ There was a pause. ‘And that part of the convoy’s gone missing.’

  VI

  Violent emotions, like natural phenomena such as tornadoes and tidal waves, cannot sustain the momentum for too long and it was the same with Claudia’s party. The sheer terror they had experienced when the mountaintop slipped into the gorge had passed, and now—unlike nature—something was required to fill the void left behind.

  For Hanno, the reality that his grandson lay dead in the foot of the canyon suddenly struck home, and he plodded unseeing down the track shaking his wispy white head from side to side uncomprehendingly as thin tears dribbled down his leathery cheeks, and it was left to Clemens, the stumpy fat priest, to console the old muleteer. ‘Better life…happi
er…Elysian fields…’ drifted back, but it was doubtful Hanno was even aware of half of what was said.

  ‘Best see to the horses,’ he muttered. ‘Old Hercules there seems to be limping,’ and off he went, immersing his grief in his work.

  For others, especially the women, shock had set in, leaving them shaking and numb and unable to function properly. Their minds were befuddled, their limbs not co-ordinating, and they huddled in the back of their traps, curled into protective balls as the snaking convoy made its way down to the river, where they at least could make camp for the night.

  Most of the group, however, found grumbling more worthwhile.

  ‘What do you mean we’re lost?’ Maria’s shrill voice rang out along the valley. ‘Of course we’re on the right road. We had an escort and you, young man,’ she jabbed Theo in the gap between his scale armour and the red scarf which prevented it chafing his neck, ‘were an integral part of it!’

  The fact that Maria was barely five years older than the legionary didn’t seem to penetrate. ‘I’m aware of that, madam.’ He even addressed her as though she were some middle-aged matron. ‘And believe me, no one’s sorrier about this mess than I am.’

  I’ll say, thought Claudia, trudging behind. He’ll be mucking out stables for the rest of his career after a monumental blunder like this. Theo, more than anyone, will be keen to get us back on track. He’ll never make centurion otherwise.

  ‘Then will you kindly explain how it was we managed to depart from the main road?’ Maria demanded.

  Theodorus scratched under his bronze cheekpiece. ‘Well…’ He glanced back along the precipitous gorge, to the huge scar left by the landslide. ‘I…’ His fingers slid under his neckguard. ‘To be honest, madam…’

  ‘You haven’t a clue. Typical.’ Claudia heard Maria sniff loudly. ‘Three of you, and no doubt each imagined the other two knew what they were doing. Tell me, Theodorus, am I close?’

  His breastplate seemed to lose some of its gleam. ‘Visibility has been poor—’

  Maria snorted, and dropped back to walk alongside Claudia. ‘Men,’ she said. ‘They’re all the same, utterly incompetent, and my husband’s no better, either. Look at him, thirty-four years old and he’s stumping along like an old carthorse, and—oh, for heaven’s sake, do you see who he’s walking with? Dexter,’ she called. ‘I say, Dexter! Come here, will you.’

  A skinny individual with protuberant collarbones and lacklustre, floppy brown hair sidled up next to his wife.

  ‘Dexter, you should not be associating with the likes of that smelly muleteer, not a man of your social standing. The person you ought to—’

  ‘Hanno said he might have something for my bad knee.’

  ‘Horse liniment?’ Maria’s voice could have cracked glassware. ‘You’re not rubbing that on your skin. The smell will never wash off.’

  ‘I thought it was your stomach which was giving you gip?’ Claudia said. Anything to muzzle Maria.

  ‘Oh, it does.’ Dexter seemed to perk up. ‘I’m taking mustard and I drink nettle tea twice a day, then someone said sodium pills should help and that I ought to be able to get some from a man behind the basilica in Vesontio, and also I eat a lot of cucumber and turmeric sauce.’

  Small wonder his digestive tract was rebelling.

  ‘The wet weather’s affecting my chest, too,’ he added cheerfully. ‘For the past three days, I’ve been drinking a horehound infusion before breakfast, which funnily enough seems to be helping my earache.’

  You’ve got earache? Claudia’s mouth turned down at the corners. Jupiter alone knew how many other complaints might be troubling Dexter, but Claudia would have pulled her own teeth out rather than ask.

  ‘I could have married a merchant, you know,’ Maria said, battening down a wayward hair which had had the temerity to try and escape. ‘In fact, I had my pick of husbands. Auctioneers, barge owners—’

  ‘Confectioners, dentists.’ Claudia presumed Maria was working her way through the dictionary.

  ‘—even the son of a senator.’

  Claudia had been wrong about the ‘c’. Not confectioners. Cobblers.

  ‘But you know what it’s like at sixteen. You meet this young bookbinder and think, yes he’s the one for me, and you have glorious visions of a few years down the line when he’s got a shop of his own, men working under him and magistrates climbing over each other to come through the doors, because they wouldn’t trust their vellum to any man but Dexter…’ Maria’s tirade ended in a hawking sound in the back of her throat. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have married beneath me,’ she said.

  By the time she’d stopped to evict an imaginary stone from her shoe, Claudia was behind Iliona and Titus’s rig. The Cretan girl’s bangles jangled louder than the harnesses on the two mules and their voices were low, so Claudia couldn’t catch what they were bickering about. Only that, like everyone else, they were less than happy with the situation though whether, as with Maria and Dexter, that encompassed their marital status, who could say?

  Peppery smells wafted out of the spice merchant’s cart, cinnamon, cardamom, cumin and mustard, as well as a tantalizing hint of more exotic resins and gums, such as myrrh and terebinth and mastic. Claudia wondered how it was that Iliona managed to override them and retain only the scent of the herb which cascaded down her native Cretan hillsides. When Iliona threw her hands in the air, her bracelets of gold and crystal and glass sent out tunes to rival a troupe of travelling musicians, Claudia smiled to herself. Iliona may have left the island, but the island had never left her.

  She wore only shades of lilac, be it from the palest, almost white, to the deepest violet, to remind her of the crocus which grew nowhere else but on Crete and brightened up the winter from November through to when it was time to weed the grain fields. The embroidery on her bodice invariably represented griffins or bulls.

  ‘Now what, eh?’ Claudia heard the slipper-maker mumble to the glass-blower, when the first of the gaggle reached the bottom of the valley.

  Good question. According to Theo, the directions his dead comrade had been given were specific. Zigzag down the gorge and cross at the wooden bridge. Here you’ll find the road turns back on itself and you simply follow the river upstream for five miles, then take the first fork leading right. After that it’s more or less a straight run to Vesontio.

  ‘So you admit you knew we were separated from the main delegation?’ Maria shot straight for the jugular, and for once Claudia agreed with the old bag. Somewhere along the line, Theo and his fellow legionaries must have become aware that they were the only three soldiers around, which is why they’d had to rely on third-hand information from Helvetians who had no time for Rome.

  Claudia shivered, and it was not from the cold (anything but, in this humid ravine.), it was because she had begun to appreciate just how carefully this strategy had been planned.

  ‘Once the army realizes we took the wrong road,’ Theo assured the worried group, ‘they’ll come after us.’

  ‘And what happens when they reach the part which has fallen away, eh?’ one of the drivers piped up. ‘By the time they’ve built even the most rudimentary—’

  ‘Rope bridges will see them across swiftly and safely,’ Theo began, but Maria cut him short.

  ‘Then why didn’t we make a rope bridge ourselves and go back the way we came in, if it was the wrong road?’

  Love her or hate her, thought Claudia, there are no flies on the bookbinder’s wife.

  ‘Because our ropes went down with the pack mules,’ Theo said miserably, managing to look an appealing thirteen, despite the preponderance of armour, and Claudia was convinced more than ever that the order the procession had travelled in had been carefully contrived. The pack mules going down had been no accident. ‘I propose we make camp here, at this crossing. It’ll be dark in less than three hours, therefore we’ll have to wait until morning before retrieving our dead and, with your help, Clemens, we can give them a decent burial and put our trust in Neptune
that the army reaches us the following day. Is everyone in agreement?’ he asked.

  ‘I think that’s pretty obvious.’ A tall, somewhat cadaverous individual pushed his way to the front. ‘What other option is there? Of course we wait here.’

  Beside him, Titus looked short and quite plump, whereas he was of perfectly average height and build. ‘And live off what, Volso? Your astrological scribblings? Can we spit-roast your zodiac bull? Make chops of your zodiac ram?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a shot at his zodiac virgin,’ a voice from the back jeered, and Titus pre-empted any titters with a venomous glare.

  ‘The point is,’ the spice merchant pressed on, ‘we have no food, no blankets, and most of all, no guarantee the army’ll be here for three or four days while we, in the meantime, sit straddling the border between two warring tribes.’ He shot a sideways glance at Theo. ‘Correct me if my assessment is wrong.’

  The legionary coloured. ‘We can eat the horses,’ he said weakly.

  ‘And you have a better plan, I suppose?’ Volso sneered.

  ‘Well. Considering this is the route the Sequani use when travelling between Vesontio and Bern,’ Titus reasoned, ‘it strikes me the army are unlikely to be worried once they hear we diverted ourselves off along here, because we’re still headed in the right direction. One or two soldiers will be despatched as scouts,’ his eyes swivelled up to the scar on the landscape, ‘but my guess is that when they realize what’s happened, they’ll just expect us from the south instead of the west.’

  ‘I get you,’ chipped in the glass-blower. ‘You think the army will come that way,’ he jabbed his finger upstream, ‘to meet up with us.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Titus said, pursing his lips. ‘Sitting on our arses doing nothing, we might just as well have targets hung on our backs.’