Black Salamander

by Marilyn Todd

  In fact, Arcas’s first action, upon recovering his breath, had been to lead the frightened band of travellers away from the shelter of the overhang because they needed water, he said, especially the horses, and this limestone rock was like a leaky skillet. Water pours out everywhere, provided you know where to look—and Arcas did, of course. He’d led them to this waterfall, a wondrous natural beauty where an underground river erupted from a cave at the foot of a vertical cliff face, its gushing torrent at least six paces across. The water fell in a breathtaking triple cascade, settling in a deep green pool at the bottom, at which point it danced off down the valley in a series of foaming white rapids.

  The sight took everybody’s breath away, and in this gently wooded canyon where birds sang and mayflies trapped the light on rainbow-coloured wings, the terror of their brush with the headhunters faded. They drank, they bathed, they feasted on smoked tongue and hunks of cheese, they sang, they laughed. They were glad to be alive.

  Bar the brick-maker, of course. Reduced to a wreck of a man, he couldn’t stop crying. His whole body shook, he mumbled as though delirious and his wife, beside herself with worry, couldn’t—wouldn’t—be comforted. For them, the Sequani war band was the final straw.

  But we all have to live, and after the terrors of this afternoon, the party only had so many resources to spare. Variously they offered sympathy, support, tried to ease them, tease them out of it—but you have to see a spark of response, no matter how faint. Tired, irritated, weary by turn, they left the unhappy couple to it and tacitly agreed that a good night’s sleep might do the trick.

  High above, between the fast-moving clouds, stars twinkled, teased, then disappeared, and with the waterfall hissing just a hundred yards away (not too close, Arcas warned, wild animals come here to drink) the agent’s eyelids closed in happiness. Around the mountain, all manner of barks and cries filled the warm night air. Foxes, wolves, lynx, bears, snarling out their territories, protecting their young. But the agent found them comforting. These sounds comprised the agent’s alibi. Testimony of further delay. As indeed would be the garbled reports of the convoy when they finally arrived in Vesontio. Sighing deeply before drifting into sleep, the agent reflected that everything was indeed running very smoothly.

  XXI

  ‘What will you do with the money you make?’

  ‘Money?’ The glass-blower jumped from half-asleep to wide awake. ‘What money? I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Wild eyes jerked round the camp, but few were awake. The hour was still very early.

  ‘From the contracts we’ll procure in Vesontio.’ The slipper-maker was sitting up, arms locked around his knees.

  ‘Oh.’ The glass-blower visibly relaxed. ‘That.’

  ‘We’ll be famous after this little episode,’ the slipper-maker said.

  ‘Notorious more like.’ The glass-blower laughed, knuckling the sleep from his eyes.

  ‘No, no. Once word trickles round about our exploits, people will come up to me and say, “weren’t you the slipper-maker who fought off a band of headhunters?” and one thing will lead to another, and then it’ll be “oh, these are the slippers made by that chap who fought off the headhunters, you know” until everyone in Vesontio will want a pair to tell their friends about.’

  ‘You might have a point,’ the glass-blower said thoughtfully. ‘In which case, I’d…I’d buy me a litter hung in yellow drapes, that’s what I’d do first. Let people see they’re dealing with a man of substance. Mind, Volso won’t net much trade, will he, poor sod? I mean, who’d consult an astrologer who couldn’t see his own misfortune coming?’

  ‘I heard that,’ Volso growled, throwing off his makeshift blanket. ‘Croesus, man, how many times do I have to explain I’m not a bloody soothsayer, no cross-my-palm-with-silver merchant! Astrology is long-term planning, studying the stars to map out future options. It’s a science, not some bloody magic trick.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ In the glass-blower’s opinion, fortunetellers were all the same. They put out a load of guff and charged you through the nostrils for the privilege. ‘What about you, Clemens?’ The little tub of a priest was stirring under the crab apple, scratching his belly and flattening what was left of his hair. ‘Do you feel this will help your cause?’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’ Abandoning his toilette, he puffed up like a cobra. ‘You see, because Marcus has the necessary contacts and his boss’s brother wants the job,’ Clemens’s tongue flickered round his lips, ‘he had already boned up on Jupiter’s Priest, and has tipped me a few of the wrinkles. I tell you, folks, any one of you who’s in Rome for the games in September will see me at the head of the inaugural procession.’

  ‘You sound pretty damn confident,’ Volso said.

  ‘I am, I am.’ Clemens almost bounced on the spot. ‘Test me, ask me anything,’ he urged. ‘Come on, anything at all—ask me about the bed that I must sleep on, the sacred oracles, the relics. I know every taboo on barbering’—he shot a grateful glance at the mosaic artist, slumbering peacefully on a bed of fragrant pine needles—‘my newly cut hair must be buried beneath a fruit-bearing tree, my—’

  ‘All right, all right,’ the cadaverous astrologer said, and everyone was grateful to him for shutting Clemens up. ‘But haven’t you forgotten something, Clemens? Like the fact you need a wife, for instance?’

  Sniggering broke out among the party, especially among the women who couldn’t see Clemens’s podgy little fingers lighting any female fire.

  ‘That’s already in hand.’ Clemens sniffed. ‘Arranged through her father before I left Rome.’ He stood up, turned to the party, his hair still spiked and tousled, and drew himself up to his full height. Which wasn’t very far. ‘May I remind you this post is the most prestigious in the whole collegiate,’ he said. ‘It’s a role I covet more than life itself, and what’s more, one I intend to fill.’ His eyes travelled round the group, but found not the respect and admiration they expected to see shining back at him, they found themselves staring into doubt. Worse, patronizing doubt! ‘I will be Jupiter’s Priest,’ he blurted, in the manner of a child whose spinning top had just been whisked off him in mid-whizz. ‘You wait.’

  There-there-of-course-it-will smiles settled upon the faces of his audience and tears of frustration welled up.

  ‘I will. I’ve been assured on the highest authority,’ Clemens spluttered, his chubby cheeks aflame, ‘I have the dowry to prove it.’ Then, with a gasp, as though he’d said too much, he spun away, his sandals stomping down the track, his long white robe billowing behind him.

  ‘Anyone else need cheering up?’ quipped the slipper-maker. ‘Our astrologer friend is just the chappie to lift a body’s spirits.’

  ‘How was I supposed to know he felt so prickly about it?’ Volso snapped. ‘Gemma.’ Good idea. Change the subject! ‘How are your parents this morning?’

  ‘Now you mention it, I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘Dex and Maria took me under their wing last night, to give me a bit of a breather.’

  ‘Dexter,’ corrected Maria. ‘His name is Dexter, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘He’ll be will be all right, won’t he? My dad?’ But it was to neither Volso nor Maria that she addressed her concern. It was to the bookbinder.

  ‘Of course he will,’ Dexter gently reassured her, ‘providing you don’t expect miracles, Gemma. Your father’s had a breakdown, these things take time to correct and you have to be prepared to be patient.’

  She summoned up a thin and grateful smile, and he ruffled her hair. Maria’s eyes rolled heavenward.

  ‘Has anyone been at my laudanum?’ Titus said, tipping the contents of his satchel over his outspread cloak and rummaging a finger through the drawstring sacks.

  ‘Dexter doesn’t require flashy gimmicks to sell his skills,’ Maria said, fixing the spice merchant with a glare. ‘Quality will out!’ She turned to Iliona, who was coiling her long, dark ringlets round her long, dark fingers. ‘I could have married the son of a senator, you know
. Of course, when I say son, the boy was actually a by-blow, not really what I wanted to introduce into the family, even though he was patrician on his father’s side—’

  ‘You haven’t seen it, have you?’ Titus asked his wife, who leapt at the chance to help him look for his missing lumps of gum. ‘Now the effects are wearing off, the injured men are jumpy, and I don’t like the look of that ankle. It should have healed better than that, I fear an infection’s set in.’

  ‘The advocate I could have married had a limp,’ Maria said, sniffing some of the resins. ‘Not that I’d consider for one second a husband with a disability, but he’s done frightfully well for himself, I gather. Grand house on the Palatine, hundreds of slaves and I think, yes, he has a litter with yellow drapes,’ she told the glass-blower. ‘Or are they green?’

  Claudia, who during this whole interchange had pretended to remain asleep, could stand it no longer and slunk off for an early morning dip. The pool at the foot of the cascade should look wonderful this morning, a rich opalescent green, foaming white where the waters fell, but quiescent and enticing where the basin levelled out to paint reflections of the aspens and the firs, the glorious yellow flag irises and the silent, unmoving spectre of the heron at the margins. The sky was mottled with white cloud, but the blue background was a distinct improvement on the past few days, and maybe the sun could be coaxed out for a little while today. Maybe if someone pointed out to him that this was, after all, July? She glanced back over her shoulder. Most of the party, exhausted from both the efforts of escaping the headhunting Sequani and the subsequent celebration of the fact that they were still alive, slumbered on, or, if they’d woken up to Maria’s dulcet tones, were careful to maintain the pretence of sleep. Even Drusilla merely let out a faint miaow when Claudia disturbed her.

  Arcas, as always, maintained his distance. Nevertheless it came as a surprise when she ran across him on her way to the waterfall. He had lit himself a small fire and was hunkered over it, toasting cheese on a stick.

  ‘The pool,’ he said, noting her towel, ‘is that way.’

  Damn! Yet it was so easy to get lost, the woods, the rivers, these wretched canyons all looked the same, and noises were deceptive here, she found. Like the hoot of an owl, you could never quite place the sound of running water…

  About to retrace her steps, Claudia heard a woman say, ‘You surprised me yesterday.’ Incredibly, the voice appeared to be hers.

  ‘Really?’ Arcas sliced off the melting drips with his knife and held it out to her.

  The warm cheese was delicious on her tongue. ‘I thought you’d be enrolling in the Spider’s secret army.’

  ‘I am a huntsman, not a warrior,’ he replied, his blue eyes raking her curves as she crouched down beside him.

  ‘Silly me, what made me think you were,’ she said, leaning her elbow on his quiver, bow and sword.

  A ghost of a smile softened the stern line of his jaw. He dipped the point of his knife in a cup, speared a dried boletus which had been soaking in beer and covered it with the dripping melted cheese.

  ‘Ceps, we call them, these dark forest mushrooms,’ he said, holding out the knife to Claudia. ‘You can dry morels, parasols, field mushrooms, earth balls, but always ceps are the best.’

  Claudia inhaled the fiery, sweet aroma and let the combination of hot cheese and juicy mushroom dance upon her tastebuds.

  ‘With these,’ he said, ‘every meal becomes a banquet.’

  Then suddenly he was on his feet, throwing out the contents of the cup and kicking over the little fire. ‘I must see to the horses,’ he said gruffly, and before Claudia had even swallowed her second mouthful, he was gone. Striding through the woods to where the mules were hobbled.

  She watched his broad, strong back, the mane of white hair tied in a queue at the nape, the band of fox fur on his arm. Why ‘Silver Fox’? Simply because his hair had turned prematurely grey? Or was it more on account of his guile and cunning? When he’d told them about the Spider’s rebel forces fighting under the ancient insignia of red and gold (riches through blood, how barbaric!), his voice had taken on a slightly wistful quality, and yesterday, when he had looked around his little clearing, armed to the teeth and surrounded by dead sheep, Claudia had felt sure he intended to sign up with them. Guile and cunning were surely prerequisites for any insurrection?

  And yet…

  I’m a huntsman, he’d said, not a warrior. Hm. More Lone Wolf than Silver Fox, she mused, picturing the weather-beaten skin, the easy lope, the musculature straining through his shirt. Maybe his survival instincts earned him his nickname? Arcas was born to these wild tracts of forests, had bonded with them. A hunter, trapper, guide. Whatever was required, he’d turn his hand to, and he knows every inch of this stunning terrain, she thought. Like a young girl knows her lover—

  Lover. She rolled the word around in her head. Lover. Arcas was an enigma, that’s for sure, but any commitment would be as deep as it was permanent.

  The very opposite of Clemens! What made him yearn so badly for the job of Jupiter’s Priest? One thing. A smile lit her face, it would thwart the ambition of that weasel who headed the Security Police, and that, she felt sure, was why Orbilio so assiduously coached little Clemens. Anything to spike his boss’s guns.

  Meanwhile, it was clear that the Salamander had lured Clemens into smuggling by offering him the money to pay for a dowry to a man desperate enough to want a son-in-law who was Jupiter’s Priest, and that the Salamander also had sufficient clout to ensure the fussy little list-maker got the plum job itself. All Clemens had to do was deliver a certain deerskin pouch.

  ‘That’s where you’ve been hiding?’ Orbilio’s mouth was smiling, although his eyes were not. ‘Junius was worried, he thought you were going for a dip.’

  ‘No, I’m taking my towel for its morning constitutional,’ she said, leaving him to make what he could of her sprawled leisurely across Arcas’s weaponry, munching chunks of his cheese. ‘Although I might manage a swim on the way back.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, if I were you,’ Marcus cautioned, ‘there’s something in the water.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of sharks.’

  ‘You’ve swum with enough of the loan variety,’ he granted her, ‘but I’m talking about fish.’

  Claudia bit off another hunk of the nutty flavoured cheese. ‘I assume there’s some point to this story.’

  ‘There is.’ Orbilio knelt down and broke a piece off for himself. ‘You see, it would appear your faithful bodyguard gave you a head start to the waterfall then followed discreetly behind. Somewhere along the line you must have given him the slip, and from his tone I gather this is not the first time, but what concerned Junius more than the absence of his mistress was seeing two fish, floating face down in the pool.’

  ‘Orbilio, you have my undivided apathy.’

  ‘Then suppose I point out that the floating fish were the brick-maker and his wife?’

  Cheese spluttered everywhere. ‘Dead?’

  ‘Very much so. Both of them. And the first thing Junius noticed, when he hauled them out, was a sickly sweet smell.’

  ‘Laudanum.’ No wonder Titus couldn’t find it.

  ‘Exactly. It seems the brick-maker and his wife had consumed the entire remnants of his supply.’

  ‘Good grief! Driven to despair, they drugged themselves stupid and made a suicide pact!’

  ‘Ah. Well. That was the first thing I thought. The instant Junius broadcast the alarm, your trusty investigator made a rapid examination of the corpses. Despairing, yes. Drugged, undoubtedly. But suicide doesn’t account for the bruising on their shoulders. The bare fact is,’ Marcus said gravely, ‘the brick-maker and his wife were murdered in the early hours.’

  Whether they took the laudanum willingly or not he couldn’t say, but their heads had certainly been held under the water until they had drowned.

  XXII

  ‘Drink this.’ Dexter pushed a grape-green phial at the brick-maker’s bereaved daugh
ter. ‘No, Gemma, drink it,’ he said firmly, steering the liquid between her reluctant lips and holding her shoulders while she shuddered.

  Gemma wasn’t the only one to need a shot of Arcas’s home-made liqueur, a golden distillation made from yellow grassland gentians, deceptively sticky and sweet until you swallowed it, after which, however, it was like swilling raw naptha. Nectar of the gods it might not be. Effective was another matter. Colour flushed Gemma’s tear-stained cheeks, albeit in two bright red splotches.

  Out of sight, the heavy thwack of the huntsman’s axe resonated through the forest as the men cobbled together a double pyre for the funeral. Sniffing noisily, the glass-blower’s wife wove garlands of oak leaves to wreathe round the heads of the dead, while a couple of the other women dressed the brick-maker and his wife in a clean change of clothes and combed their hair. Maria slipped a coin under each of their tongues to pay the old ferryman who’d be rowing their souls to Hades, and Clemens, in the absence of cypress, was using spruce and fir to purify the cremation site, gentian liqueur in place of wine.

  ‘This rather buggers things up,’ Titus said to Claudia, stacking more logs on the pyre. ‘Sending out the biggest smoke signal imaginable to the Sequani headhunters—look-we’re-here, X marks the spot. And where’s our Silver Fox while this is going on? Marcus is the one swinging the axe, not him.’

  ‘He’s aware of the hazards,’ Claudia explained, tossing on a pile of twigs. ‘For the past two hours he’s been out laying a false trail, and believes that by the time the rebel forces spot the fire and then follow his bogus spoor, we’ll be well shot of the danger zone.’

  ‘I bloody hope so,’ Titus said, wiping the sweat from his brow, but nevertheless keeping sure that that single hank of hair remained over his eye. ‘He’s picked a good spot, right down in the valley, but this is going to be one hell of a bonfire.’

  Claudia grunted noncommittally, because inside she felt sure the wily Silver Fox had no intention of leaving a giant blaze aflame. There would be no time to see the funeral through to the end, the area was too dangerous to linger until the fire died of its own accord, then wash and purify the bones, wrap them up and take them away for proper burial later. It would be dusk before this pyre burned itself out, and one more hour in this place was risky, much less another night. She suspected that, once the group was out of sight of the fire, Arcas would backtrack to douse the flames. It would be hard luck on the brick-maker and his wife, their remains ending up a grilled supper for wild beasts. But at least Gemma would be spared the grisly knowledge.