Anno Mortis

by Rebecca Levene

  At first, he barely noticed the sound. But gradually it began to intrude on his consciousness, a dry, high-pitched chittering. He tilted his head, trying to identify the source, but it seemed to be coming from all around him. It was, he realised with an unpleasant shock, coming from inside the crates.

  There was something alive in there.

  A thin, cold sweat broke out on his chest and arms. His body rebelled at the thought of getting any closer to the source of that sound and he found himself backing away until he was leaning against the wooden wall of the warehouse.

  But this was ridiculous. Finding out what was in those crates was exactly why he'd risked so much to come here. And Julia had been right. There was something coming into Rome from Egypt that wasn't being recorded. Something living.

  It took a fierce effort of will to force himself forwards. His feet dragged through the sawdust, leaving long thin scuff marks behind him. He realised that he'd balled his hands into fists, and concentrated on unclenching them, one finger at a time.

  By the time he'd finished, he was standing beside the first crate. The sound was louder close to, a clicking and a scratching that grew more frantic as he approached, as if whatever lived inside could sense him. He licked suddenly dry lips, wishing he'd drunk more of Sextus's wine before he came here.

  The crate would be very easy to open. It was held shut with nothing but twine and a couple of small rocks on top to weight down the lid. He removed one of these, paused, removed the other - and now he could see the crate shaking. Vibrating, as if whatever was inside was flinging itself against the walls in a desperate attempt to escape.

  He waited a lot longer before starting to untangle the twine. It was only the sound of voices outside that startled him into action, and his fingers fumbled as he worked, shaking too hard to get a firm grip. He bit down on his lip, trying to get himself under control, and finally the knot began to work lose.

  He was pulling the last twist of twine free when the lid of the crate rose under its own power. He gasped and stumbled back, an instant later moving forward again, throwing himself against the lid to keep it closed.

  Too late. The crate gave one final shudder and the lid fell to the floor with a crash.

  For a second, Narcissus thought there was nothing inside but earth, little round balls of it, packed so tight the crate bulged at the sides. Then the first ball moved, stretching translucent brown wings behind it. The chittering grew in volume, louder and louder, and now Narcissus understood that it was the sound of legs rubbing against each other, against ridged carapaces, scratching against the walls of the crate.

  The first beetle launched into the air towards him, and a moment later a thousand more followed behind.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The beetles were everywhere, small dry legs pattering over his stomach and back and neck, crawling through his hair and under his clothes. They stank of the worst kind of filth. Narcissus froze into horrified immobility. And then, before he'd consciously decided to do it, he ran.

  He could see nothing, one hand over his eyes to protect them from the razor-sharp jaws of the beetles, and he hit the far wall with an impact that jarred from his elbows to his backbone. His fingers scrabbled, desperately searching for a door that wasn't there. Splinters of wood lodged painfully beneath his nails and he realised with a sick shock that he was making exactly the same sound the beetles had made inside the crate. Mindless creatures fighting to escape.

  Sweat was running down his back. He felt some of the beetles slipping, legs floundering for purchase in the moisture. It was the most horrible sensation he'd ever experienced. After that he couldn't think at all. He just ran, into another wall, then another, stumbling to his knees halfway across the floor only to push himself upright as a torrent of insects headed towards him.

  It was sheer chance that led him to the door, and for a second he didn't realise what it was. He'd almost pushed off again, driven by the overwhelming urge to run, run, run when he realised that it was metal beneath his fingers, not wood. Hinges.

  He felt the bodies of beetles squashed to a pulpy liquid beneath his hand as he fumbled, trying to find the handle, trying to get out. But all he found was more wood and eventually he was forced to take his hand away from his eyes.

  When he opened them, it was like a vision of Hades. The beetles were everywhere, blunt and brown and clinging. His own body crawled with them, five or ten thick so that he could barely see the skin beneath. He let out a muffled whimper of horror, unable to open his mouth for fear of letting the creatures in. But there, finally, he could see it, and he yanked the handle down with the last of his strength and tumbled out into daylight.

  All around him the beetles took flight, a black seething cloud heading high into the sky. A moment later they were gone, over the warehouse and away.

  He drew in a deep, shuddering breath of relief and fell to his knees, lifting his face to the sun and shutting his eyes.

  When he opened them, he saw the two guards. They were staring at him with expressions of shock slowly transmuting into rage.

  He didn't think there was any strength left in him. But he used what little he had to drive himself to his feet and stumble away, back towards the docks. He could feel runnels of liquid coursing down his cheeks and arms and he knew that not all of it was sweat. The creatures had bitten and scratched him, a thousand wounds that suddenly started to tell him how much they hurt.

  He had no breath left to cry for help, even if he'd been certain it would come. He could hear the guards at his heels. He didn't dare waste the time to snatch a look behind him, but he knew they'd been armed. He imagined their swords, poised above their heads for a killing blow, and his heart somehow found the strength to pump a little harder and his legs to run a little faster.

  A second later and he was in the maze of port buildings. He dodged right and left, jumping over abandoned barrels and sometimes weaving in and out of the buildings themselves, his breath like fire in his lungs. He didn't know where he was going - nearer the city, further away - only that he had to escape.

  Another warehouse loomed straight ahead of him, and he wrenched open the door and flung himself inside. He was so intent on his pursuers behind that he didn't notice the man in front until he'd run straight into him. They fell to the floor together in a tangle of limbs and Narcissus struck out without thinking, the primitive part of him that cared only about living overriding all civilisation.

  The other man caught his fist in his palm, wincing at the impact. "Easy," he said. "I can help."

  Narcissus tried to wrench his hand free, and after a moment the other man let him. "Who are you?" he gasped.

  The other man laughed. "Does it matter?" He was red-haired, a barbarian, with a sharp nose and a mobile, mocking mouth.

  Narcissus scrambled to his feet and the other man followed, moving with a grace that Narcissus couldn't emulate. "It matters to me," he said.

  The man bowed. "Then I am Vali, a stranger here. And you are about to be caught, unless you do precisely as I say."

  Narcissus opened his mouth to argue - then closed it again as he heard the sound of the warehouse door opening and guttural shouting in Egyptian. More than two voices now; the guards must have found reinforcements.

  He turned to Vali, though he didn't know how he could help. The man wasn't even armed.

  Vali smiled. "Some fights can't be won - only avoided." And then he stepped aside, and Narcissus saw that there was a crate behind him, half-filled with jars of olive oil. "I threw the rest out earlier. Plenty of room for both of us in here."

  There wasn't time to argue. Narcissus scrambled in, bleeding arms and legs jarring painfully against the awkwardly shaped glass, worse when the other man climbed in after, pulling the lid shut behind him.

  A second later he heard the Egyptians, moving through the building as they shouted incomprehensibly to each other in their own language. He held his breath, too afraid of being heard to ask Vali the hundred questions clamouring
for answers, but they circled in his mind as he crouched and shivered. And the loudest of them was: if Vali had already prepared their hiding place in advance, how had he known that they'd be needing it?

  The steps beneath the baths led a very long way down. Boda descended without any sign of fear, but Petronius could feel a sour lump of it in his stomach, and threatening to head north. He paused a moment to swallow it back, then scrambled to catch up. The only thing worse than being down here would be being down here alone.

  Boda waited for him at the bottom, squatting on her haunches with a look of supreme unconcern. They were in a natural cavern, chill and wet. It was too dark to make out much detail, but he saw the shadows of paintings on the wall, relics of a civilisation older than Rome's.

  "What is this place?" he whispered.

  Boda shrugged. "I don't know. But whoever built the bath house must have known about it."

  That was a sobering thought. The bath house had been here as long as Petronius could remember. He vaguely remembered his father telling him that it had been constructed as part of the public works Emperor Augustus had commissioned in the city. Thirty years ago? Fifty? Whatever Seneca was involved in, it didn't seem likely that it was just smuggling banned books from Egypt.

  Boda pointed to the far side of the cavern, where a tunnel could just be seen, snaking up. "The light's coming from that direction."

  Petronius was prepared to take her word for it. She seemed to know what she was doing. In fact, she didn't really seem to need him there at all. For a brief moment he entertained the thought of turning round, climbing back up the wooden ladder and leaving her to it.

  He'd never been this afraid before. He'd thought he had - he thought he was frightened last year when his father very nearly caught him in bed with his business partner's wife. This, though, was the real thing. His father would just have given him a beating. He had no idea what would happen if he was caught snooping around here, but he didn't think it would be good. His body could rot down here a very long time before anyone found it.

  Some of what he was thinking must have showed in his face. Boda was staring at him narrow-eyed and impatient. "Are you coming?" she snapped. "Or are you going?"

  And then again, he thought, Seneca could have come down here for some innocent - or at least safe - reason. Sexual recreation, perhaps. At the end of that tunnel he might be confronted with nothing more than the sight of the old man balls-deep in a woman, which would certainly be unpleasant, but definitely not fatal.

  "I'm coming," he said.

  She took his arm, guiding him over the uneven floor of the cavern. His sandals slapped on the wet rock, echoes of the sound bouncing from the walls. She frowned and motioned to her own feet, showing him how she slid them forward without lifting them. He copied her, and as the fear receded he realised that he was starting to enjoy himself. He was having an adventure, something he could tell Flavius the next time he boasted about his convoy being chased by Gauls all the way to the Rubicon.

  She released his arm when they came to the tunnel, too narrow for them to walk side by side. There was a sound from up ahead, a muffled babble of voices that implied more people than the four they'd seen enter, a lot more. Still, their chatter should cover any sound that he and Boda made.

  "So," he whispered, "what brings a lovely girl like you to a place like this?"

  She turned to frown at him, then said: "Quintus is hiding something, I know it."

  "Well, obviously." Her body blocked the dim light that shone back through the tunnel, and he trailed a hand against the wall to guide himself through the darkness. "What exactly do you think he's hiding?"

  "A reason why he'd arrange for one of his own gladiators to be killed. And why he'd mutilate the body afterwards."

  "Oh." He stopped, suddenly very sure that turning back was a good idea. Dead bodies, mutilated ones - these weren't the sort of adventure he had in mind.

  He turned to go, and found her hand clawing at his arm to stop him. He opened his mouth to protest and her other hand clapped over it. Her eyes bored into his, demanding something. Silence, he supposed. When he blinked acknowledgement she released him, dropped to her knees and gesture to him to do the same.

  Without her body to block it, he saw what lay ahead. The tunnel opened into another chamber, broader than the first, its walls carved flat and smooth. He couldn't see Seneca, but that wasn't very surprising. There were at least fifty people here and Petronius recognised a large number of them, the great and the good of Rome. They were chatting, laughing and drinking wine from crystal goblets, as if this was just another social gathering, an informal dinner party for close friends.

  But it wasn't. He counted twelve coffins, leaning against the walls at regularly spaced intervals. The guests ignored them, but Petronius was unable to look away, however much he might have wanted to.

  The coffins were open. Inside each, he could see bandage-wrapped corpses, and even from his hiding place in the tunnel he could smell the stench of death that wafted from them. All that, though, all that might have been bearable, if the corpses hadn't been moving.

  Publia tried not to look inside the coffins. She could see the movement out of the corner of her eye, the white flicker as bandaged arms and legs twitched, but she did her best to ignore it, as everyone else seemed to be doing. It wouldn't do to look like naïve yokels gaping in shock at these big city ways.

  Which was precisely what her husband was doing. "Antoninus!" she hissed, stamping on his foot to stop him gawping quite so openly.

  He turned to her, face blank with shock. "They're alive. They're dead - but they're alive."

  "Of course." She laughed gaily, in case anyone more important was listening. "I'm sure this sort of thing goes on in Rome all the time."

  "Does it?" He looked a little sick, though it had been his idea to join the Cult of Isis in the first place, and his business partner who'd proposed them for membership. Antoninus had seen it as a way of expanding his network of contacts, perhaps securing a few more lucrative contracts for his slave-importation business.

  Publia had understood that it could be much more than that. The Cult could be their route to social acceptance, to a class above the one they'd been born to. She couldn't say that she liked everything they stood for. She'd been brought up traditionally, to honour Jupiter and Juno, the divine parents of them all, and steer clear of foreign gods, who were seldom to be trusted. But all around her she could see evidence of the power of the Egyptian deities - and more importantly, of the power of those who worshipped them. If she and Antoninus played it right, her four-year-old son might not grow up to be a merchant like his father. He could be a senator, or even a consul. They just had to ingratiate themselves with the right people.

  There was one of them now: Seneca, who was said to have the ear of the Emperor himself. He didn't look like much, skinny and stooped, but Publia put on her best smile as she approached him. "An honour, sir - I can't tell you how thrilled myself and my husband are to be here."

  Seneca looked at her and Antoninus a long moment, clearly trying to remember who they were. Then something seemed to click in his memory and he smiled back. "The slave traders, of course. You're most welcome."

  "I've long venerated Isis," Publia said, gesturing to the cow-headed statue behind the altar. "It's such a relief to find others of a like mind."

  "Indeed. And for us it was like a blessing from the goddess herself to find a supplicant with such a plentiful supply of slaves."

  "I'm sure it was," Antoninus said dryly, and Publia stood on his toe again. She knew he'd bitterly resented the five slaves they'd been told they needed to offer to the goddess to secure their membership. And a final one tomorrow night, before their initiation would be complete. Expensive in terms of gold but cheap when you thought what it might buy them.

  "We were glad to dedicate them to the service of Isis," Publia said. "I hope they've proven useful - we did send you our very best."

  "Oh yes." A slight smi
le twitched at the corner of Seneca's mouth. "They were exactly what we required." His eyes wandered the room, sweeping over the twitching bodies in their coffins, and his smile widened.

  Publia followed his gaze. There were slaves mingling with the crowd, pouring the wine and handing round small snacks, oysters and stuffed dates, but she didn't think any of them were the ones Antoninus had supplied. She distinctly remembered that one of them had been a Nubian - she'd been fascinated by the deep blue black of his skin - and no one here looked like they hailed from south of the Mediterranean.

  "And now your initiation is almost complete," Seneca said.

  Publia paused, her eye caught by a flicker of movement to her left, in the entrance tunnel. Was it her imagination, or were there two figures crouching there?

  Seneca raised an enquiring eyebrow.

  "I think," she said, "that we have some uninvited guests."

  It took Boda a second too long to realise they'd been spotted. She'd been watching Quintus as he circulated through the crowd, trying to figure out his place among them. Respected, she decided, but not honoured. He bowed too low and smiled too ingratiatingly to be among equals.

  And then she saw the smile drop from his face, and his eyes darted towards her - just for a moment - before darting away again. He knew she was there and he'd been told not to show it.

  "Move," she said to Petronius. "Get up - we've been seen."

  He froze as a flash of terror crossed his face, already pale from what they'd witnessed. She knew she was faster and stronger than him. She could outrun him and leave him to slow their pursuers. He was a citizen of Rome, one of those who'd enslaved her, and she owed him nothing.

  But she still found herself dragging his arm to get him moving, then pushing him in front of her. Maybe it was because he was still so young. Or maybe it was because no one should be left to those things they'd seen, the twitching corpses in their wooden boxes.