The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  The fight was over at once, and the four contestants were roughly separated and impartially seized.

  “Not me, asses!” spluttered Decius. “Do you not recognize me, Tribonius? Bid them take their hands off me!”

  “What, you, old comrade!” cried the centurion of the watch. “What is all this about? It sounded as if old Hannibal’s elephants were trampling about down here. What has been happening?”

  “I am under the Emperor’s own orders,” replied the released Decius. “I am acting as a bodyguard – his bodyguard,” he added, pointing to Sollius.

  Tribonius stared at the slave fixedly.

  “What is he doing at this grille?” he demanded, and his tone was both suspicious and truculent. “It is all very well, Decius, but I am in charge here, and I have a right to know what you are all up to. How did any of you get into these vaults? First tell me that. Not through us, anyway! Is there another way down? If so, it should have a sentry posted, and I must see to it.”

  Decius opened his mouth to reply, but Sollius forestalled him:

  “That can wait,” he said impatiently. “There is work to be done here in the Emperor’s name.”

  He produced his tablet of authority. Tribonius took and examined it in amazement, stared at Sollius, and from Sollius to Decius.

  “I told you,” said the latter, who was beginning to enjoy the bewilderment of his fellow centurion and to appreciate his own favoured position beside the investigating slave, “I am his bodyguard, and he is on the Emperor’s business. I am under his orders; and now you are, too!”

  He laughed, and saluted Sollius in a half-mocking fashion, yet Sollius felt that the Prætorian’s contempt for him, nevertheless, was rapidly thawing. Decius then summarily took the tablet from the still doubtful Tribonius, and gave it back to the slave with a wink and a flourish.

  “It is always good to have a pass!” he said.

  Sollius was again staring at the man with the lamp, the light of which was no longer necessary, since one of the soldiers was carrying a torch that blazed over a wide area. The whole grille was illuminated until it seemed like a huge spider’s web iridescent with a bloody dew.

  The man with the lamp remained still and silent. Suddenly he blew out his lamp, and let it fall. Being of clay, it flew into a dozen pieces on the stone floor, and the oil made a little puddle, redly gleaming in the flame of the torch. It might have been a pool of blood from some murdered man.

  “I think that is enough,” he said in a raised, overbearing tone, and he took his gladiator’s helmet from his head. The two centurions and the soldiers at once gasped, stiffened and saluted. It was the Emperor’s son. Sollius remained quietly at the grille, and he was smiling with a kind of sly passiveness.

  Commodus took a pace or so forward.

  “Take forth these men,” he commanded, “and execute them without further delay. I charge them all with complicity in the thefts from Rome’s treasure which this slave has been investigating at my father’s order. I not only charge them, but myself bear witness against their deeds, and as Cæsar I now judge them.”

  The centurion of the treasury guard was obviously embarrassed, for there was no legality in the young Cæsar’s command, and yet it was already widely known that the wrath of Commodus was more dangerous to awake than a sleeping tiger’s. He looked at Decius, but found no help in his fellow centurion’s expression; he then looked at Sollius, as if pleading for guidance.

  “Did you not hear, centurion?” rasped Commodus.

  “Cæsar – ” said Sollius.

  “What is it, slave?” cried Commodus, turning to him irritably. “I shall tell my father that you unearthed the plot and exposed the chief villain, Gaius Rutilius Marcianus yonder. By other ways I had come to the same conclusion – ”

  Marcianus started, opened his mouth to speak violently, but meeting the young prince’s hard, level gaze, thought better of it and remained silent, and Commodus turned again to Sollius.

  “You will not lose by this if you are circumspect,” he went on, stressing his words. “What more can you wish? I shall speak well of you to the Augustus. If I did not, your master would be mulcted of a slave, I can tell you that! – but you can die more happily – and much older,” he added, his eyes fierce, but his lips smiling.

  “Cæsar,” persisted Sollius, and he could not prevent his limbs from feeling as though made of water, “the Augustus has put this matter into my hands, and I must report to him before anyone can be condemned for his guilt. Your sacred father will then know how to punish.”

  Commodus stared at him.

  “You address me as ‘Cæsar’,” he said, “but clearly have no idea what Cæsarship means!”

  “Sir,” answered Sollius, “under your permission, I am but seeking to obey the Augustus.”

  Commodus bit his underlip, but if he had flushed, the torchlight was too red for any addition to his cheeks to be noticeable.

  “We are to hear,” he burst out contemptuously, “a slave’s suggestion, ha! Well, give it, give it! Let us hear this impertinent wisdom!”

  “Have the three arrested, sir – even as they are already – and let my report be made to the Emperor this night – and in your presence, Cæsar – and everything will then be accomplished with speed and efficiency – except one thing,” he added underbreath to himself.

  “What is that you are murmuring?” demanded Commodus, frowning and glowering with suspicion.

  “That even if we have found the culprits, Cæsar, we have not recovered what they stole,” Sollius replied meekly. “But where it is hidden, no doubt, torture will get from them,” he added, glancing sideways at Marcianus, who started, and turned impulsively to the Emperor’s son, but his movement was immediately checked by the soldier at his side.

  “Cæsar!” implored Marcianus. “You will not allow this – you cannot allow it! Why, you yourself, Cæsar – ”

  “Silence!” Commodus broke in shrilly. “All shall be thoroughly sifted; justice shall be done, Gaius! Centurion,” he ordered, “take those two men to the Mamertine. You, Gaius, accompany me! I will be responsible for him,” he said in a lower tone to Tribonius, “and will deliver him myself to the Emperor’s will. You, slave, do as you suggested: go to my father at once. I shall meet you in his presence. Tell everything that you have seen here – and I will confirm it. Gaius, with me! Come!”

  Taking Marcianus firmly by the arm, Commodus went up quickly into the temple above, and the commands which he had given to Tribonius were put into action at once and without question.

  “We, Decius,” said Sollius, “are for the Emperor’s palace: let us get there as soon as we can.”

  Though the hour was considerably after midnight, Marcus Aurelius was reading and meditating still, and was at once accessible. Sollius was admitted to the Emperor’s private study by Alexander, the Greek secretary, while Decius posted himself with the other guards in the gilded and painted corridor. Complete silence reigned in the vast palace, and only a single lamp was burning by the Emperor’s marble writing-table. Alexias was not present.

  “Well, Sollius?” asked the Augustus, turning to him somewhat wearily, and rubbing his tired, heavy eyes. “So you have something to report?”

  Sollius was silent for a brief instant before replying. He had so great a veneration for the wise and benevolent Emperor that he hesitated to bring pain to his noble heart, and what he had to tell, he knew, would bring nothing but pain.

  “Have no fears and no hesitations,” said Marcus Aurelius, as if he had read the slave’s doubtful thoughts. “Tell me everything. Should I have employed you if I had not desired the truth, the full truth?”

  Carefully and completely the slave related what had taken place as far as the arrival of the treasury guard upon the clamour raised by Decius, but at that point in his narrative he paused, and glanced at the Emperor as though inviting question or comment. Marcus Aurelius had been listening with his head propped upon his hand as he leaned a little forward at t
he marble table, and when Sollius paused, had given a sigh.

  “I know Marcianus,” he breathed slowly. “He is a young man of parts and charm, and one of my son’s – friends. Alas, that Rome’s inner society should be touched in this unsavoury matter! But that is what I had feared, Sollius; yet I had to know and be certain. It was my duty to know and be certain. I can tell you now why I employed you. An official, or a courtier, would have been tempted to hide what implicated the man of rank; you, a slave, would have no such inhibition.”

  The imperial study was an inner chamber beyond a larger chamber, with two entrances, the one – that by which Sollius had been introduced – from the corridor, and the other through an archway from this larger chamber, into which the more private apartment could be thrown open, on occasions of council or reception, by the lifting of the hangings between. These, of a richly woven purple, were now drawn; but though Sollius had heard no sound, he was suddenly conscious that a listener was standing on the other side of these hangings in the large room beyond them, and he thought that he could very easily guess who that listener was.

  Abruptly the Emperor asked the question which Sollius had been dreading:

  “Who was the man in the gladiator’s helmet? Did you see his face? Did you find out?”

  Sollius knelt.

  “It was the Cæsar!” he answered.

  Marcus Aurelius started, and covered his face with his two hands.

  “What was he doing beneath the temple?” he muttered. “Was he there to protect his friend from his wrong-doing? It must have been so. Was it, Sollius?” he asked earnestly, lowering his hands, and fixing the slave with a pleading scrutiny.

  As Sollius looked up into the Emperor’s face, he caught a slight movement in the folds of the purple hangings, as if a hand had been laid on them preparatory to someone’s entrance, but as though, nevertheless, the man waiting still hesitated to make his appearance. But it was the Emperor’s features which held the kneeling slave’s deepest attention, and what he read in them struck him to the heart. That the master of the world, so constant and indefatigable in working for its well-being and happiness, should himself be so unhappy and so apprehensive of shame, and that his noble affections should be in such danger of that most horrible of disillusionments, the knowing his nearest and dearest to be unworthy of trust and even love: all this troubled Sollius in the depths of his soul. He could not add the final words which would reveal truth in its naked hideousness.

  He rose, and keeping his eyes steadfastly away from the hangings, answered the Emperor’s question with deliberate care.

  “As I understood,” he said in a clear voice, “the Cæsar had had his own suspicions of his friend, and had been playing a part to trap him. You employed me, O Emperor, to solve the mystery, but you owe your son a great deal of the evidence.”

  “You give me great comfort,” sighed Marcus Aurelius.

  As he spoke, the hangings were lifted, and Commodus made his entrance.

  “My dear father,” he said humbly, and went across and kissed the Emperor’s cheek.

  “My son,” murmured Marcus Aurelius, and fleetingly laid a hand on the young man’s scented garments with a briefly lingering, pathetic fondness.

  “Has this good slave reported on our adventure of to-night?” asked Commodus, glancing round at Sollius with a faint, satiric smile.

  “Fully, as I think,” returned his father. “I shall not forget his services.”

  “Nor I,” murmured Commodus, lowering his gaze bashfully as he added: “Services to you and the Roman State are services to me also.”

  “There will, I am confident,” said Sollius quietly, and not daring to glance even flickeringly at the young Cæsar, “be no more thefts from the imperial treasury.”

  “You have deserved well of Rome,” answered Marcus Aurelius, smiling. “I shall tell Sabinus so, and your reward shall turn one slave into a rich man.” He smiled again, and went on: “The Cappadocian and the Samnite strangler shall be tried in secret and, if found guilty, executed. What have you done with Marcianus, my son?” he asked. “You took him away with you, I understand, under your personal arrest.”

  “That is so, father,” replied Commodus, and his meekness suddenly put on a mask of sadness and diffident unease. “I grieve to announce unwelcome news, but as I brought him through the streets – we were both cloaked against the common gaze of night-prowlers – he broke into a swerving run to escape. My Gaulish freedman was with me, and thinking that he was doing right, he threw his knife at once at the fugitive – the Gauls are very swift with the knife! – and it took Marcianus between the shoulders. It hurts me that Gaius should be immune from Rome’s justice!”

  “He is dead?” asked the Emperor.

  “He is dead,” answered Commodus, and turned and gave Sollius a direct look of arrogant complacency.

  “Then I am foiled of magnanimity,” said Marcus Aurelius with a sigh. “However, the mystery is cleared up, and the distressing matter closed. I am grateful to the gods. Do you think,” he asked abruptly, speaking to his son, “that the stolen jewels and gold will be found at your dead friend’s villa?”

  “We can search it, father,” replied Commodus gravely, “but I have no hopes of finding them. He was a clever man – always too clever for me, at any rate,” he sighed.

  “What say you, Sollius?” asked the Emperor.

  Sollius gave a swift look at the Cæsar, and then answered:

  “I do not think, sir, that any investigation into the whereabouts of the stolen treasure will ever succeed.”

  “Then you would not undertake it?”

  “I would not undertake it with any hope, sir,” answered the slave firmly.

  “I see,” muttered Marcus Aurelius, frowning a little, and then he rubbed his eyes more wearily than ever. “I see,” he repeated. “Return to your master’s house, Sollius, and tell him that I am well pleased with you. Where are you going, my son? Stay with me while I put away my tablets – ”

  The slave left the Augustus and the Cæsar together, and dismissing Decius to his barracks, since he no longer needed a bodyguard, he returned alone to the house of his master.

  “But who did steal the treasure?” asked Lucius the next day, after Sollius had narrated all that had happened.

  “If the lord Commodus had not lifted his lamp at exactly the right place in the grille where the thieves had broken in,” answered Sollius, “I should not perhaps have known for a certainty that he himself was one of them, and I should have looked for the true accomplice of Marcianus – oh yes, he was the other of the two – in vain. I did little in this investigation, Lucius; they gave themselves away to me – probably out of the fear that I was really cleverer than I am!”

  “Does the Emperor guess, think you?”

  “I hope not,” sighed Sollius. “Had you only seen his face you would have lied to him as I did.”

  “And the treasure is lost?” asked Lucius.

  “Quite lost,” said Sollius. “None of it will ever be seen in Rome again. No doubt, however, it will turn up in different thievish hands, dispersed in various parts of the Empire,” he concluded, smiling at his own ironic thoughts, “and current coin will have taken its place – we know in whose private coffers. The arena, at least, and the fashionable gambling-houses will receive the final benefit of the criminal daring of a good man’s son. It is the way of mankind under the indifference of the gods!”

  In most of this Sollius was right, but not in everything. For instance, one portion of the treasure was seen again in Rome. For Sollius received a token of approval from the lord Commodus, a valuable and curiously barbaric jewel, which the slave was sure in his own mind had once formed part of the treasure brought as part of the tribute to the Roman people by the great Pompeius after his victorious campaigns against Mithridates of Pontus.

  A BYZANTINE MYSTERY

  Mary Reed and Eric Mayer

  Mary Reed is an ex-patriate Brit (or more appropriately an ex-pat Geordi
e) who moved to the United States in 1976. She had already made a name for herself in the small circle of British science-fiction fans for her delightful ramblings in the amateur magazines. In America she began to develop her writing in a variety of fields, with a special interest in food and the weather (a predictable British trait).

  Her first published fiction was a detective story involving food, “Local Cuisine” (1987). Here, in collaboration with her husband Eric Mayer, who helped provide much of the plotline, Mary has written a story specially for this volume set in the volatile days of the Byzantine Empire.

  John the Eunuch, Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian though he be, yet served a higher lord than his temporal ruler. Thus it was that, in the dog watches of a January morning which would normally be as dark as any other in Constantinople, were it not for the lurid glare of the Church of the Holy Wisdom of God burning to the ground, upon receiving an urgent summons to attend the emperor, he first finished the ceremonial meal being served beneath the starred ceiling of the Lord of Truth’s underground sanctuary.

  When John finally emerged, pulling his cloak closer against the chill of early morning air, he found a dark-robed and visibly shaken underling waiting by the entrance, torch in hand. Its guttering flames revealed a face know to John, although he had never seen it so pallid.

  “Anatolius, what ails you?” he asked softly, thinking that to be summoned at this hour by the Emperor’s private secretary meant there was more to be dealt with than household accounts or the ongoing riots. He said as much as they hurried along a flagstoned path crossing the grounds of the Great Palace. Out under a clear sky, the noise from the rioting was louder, drifting in huge gulps of incoherent rage over the palace walls as the wind shifted. Clouds of smoke could be seen blotting out patches of stars, and an occasional scream cut through the distant hubbub like a knife through a sacrificial bull. A few sparkling tracers marked the passage of windwhipped embers near the burnt-out gateway to the complex, heavily guarded by the Royal Bodyguard.