Curse of the Purple Pearl

by Adrian Speed

  “I did say that, but lead poisoning was a negligible suspicion level,” Sir Reginald said. “He is not just an emperor, he's a warlord. Almost his entire life has been spent on campaign, drinking water fresh from streams, or stored in goat skin flasks. He hasn't drunk enough water from lead to be poisoned that way.”

  “But it could have been put in his food recently,” I suggested.

  “That is possible, but I doubt it,” Sir Reginald said. “Lead poisoning would be more suspicious than other forms of poisoning. Its symptoms of madness are well known to the Romans.”

  “If they know about lead poisoning why do they still make all their water pipes out of lead?”

  “Two reasons,” Sir Reginald held up his fingers. “One, they don't have a better material to make it out of. Wood leaks and it will be centuries before iron casting techniques are good enough to use iron as the Victorians do. Two, they do not understand that lead seeps into the water supply from the aqueducts. Most people who die of chronic lead poisoning at this time do so from drinking wine stored in lead casks, which even Romans think is a silly idea.”

  “So, not lead poisoning?”

  “You saw his teeth for yourself.” Sir Reginald's voice slowed down, like a toy almost out of clockwork. “Definitely...not...lead poisoning. I say, look here.” Sir Reginald snatched something up off the desk, a tiny figurine of a god, less than a palm high. “What do you make of that?”

  “I thought we weren't allowed to touch the household gods,” I said.

  “This isn't one of their household gods,” he said. “Take a look.” He handed it over. It was male, wearing only a beard, with a thunderbolt in its hand, and much cruder than the ones in Lucilla’s chamber.

  “Jupiter?” I guessed the name of the god.

  “Zeus,” he corrected me.

  “I thought they were the same thing.”

  “Well, the Romans believe that other gods, such as the Greek gods, are incorrect reflections of their own belief system,” he explained. “Zeus is the Greek Jupiter, but that doesn't mean that the two are the same. No self-respecting Roman would worship Zeus instead of Jupiter.”

  “How can you tell this is Zeus then?”

  “Well, put simply, Jupiter would usually wear clothes. Zeus usually does not. What does that tell you?”

  “That Marcus Aurelius liked Greek things?”

  Sir Reginald’s sigh at my failure cut deeply into my soul. “That this statue is not the late emperor's. Just look at how it was made. This is a piece of bronze that's been teased into shape by some cack-handed village smith. Even if the emperor wanted a statue of Zeus, for whatever reason, he would have one made by the finest Roman bronze casters. So we must ask ourselves, why is it here?”

  “I don't know,” I said after a moment's thought.

  “I don't either!” He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Isn't that wonderful? The only person it could belong to is Actis, the Egyptian scribe, but why would he leave his God here? This is the key, Hannah; this is the key to the mystery of the Purple Pearl!”

  “I thought we were trying to figure out how Marcus Aurelius died, and why,” I said.

  “So we were.” Sir Reginald drew back from me and began to pace the room, tapping his cane on the floor. “All the pieces are here, I am sure of it. There are no more clues to find. What do you think?”

  “Well Commodus definitely has the best motive,” I put the god down on the desk and looked at my phone. “He is a young, arrogant man who often argued with Marcus Aurelius. He is now the emperor and it just so happens to be not long after he turned eighteen. That said, Commodus is big and strong. If he lost his temper he wouldn't come up with elaborate schemes to kill the emperor without being seen. He'd just strangle the old man. And he has a pretty good alibi, if we can trust dice throwers as witnesses.”

  “Go on, keep talking, it's helping me think.” He waved a hand at me while he paced.

  “Lucilla’s alibi relies on slaves, and we've established Bruttia wouldn't hear anything if Lucilla sneaked out here last night,” I mused. “Lucilla is rich enough to bribe the guards. Or beautiful enough. But I don't see a motive; she'd have much more power as the emperor's daughter than the emperor's sister. Brothers and sisters are not exactly known for getting along.”

  Sir Reginald nodded. “Excellent, continue.”

  “Tiberius Claudius wouldn't do it. He cares too much about the stability of the empire.” I rested my index finger against my teeth, lips just apart, while I thought. “And Commodus does everything wrong, in his view. If Tiberius Claudius was going to kill Marcus Aurelius, for whatever reason, he would make sure he was next in line for the throne first.”

  “Capital, go on.”

  “Frankly, I suspect Bruttia. No girl is that dumb. At least, no girl who marries an emperor.”

  “Possible, entirely possible. No alibi, and every motive, she's empress now.”

  “But we still don't know how. And unless we steal the body and go forwards in time to the twenty-first century to get a pathologist's report, we're probably not going to find out.”

  “I have done that before. Although, I went forward to the twenty-fourth. They have, in my opinion, the best pathologists. But I doubt we could carry his body to the time-machine without causing a riot, and they wouldn’t believe the results anyway.”

  “And the guard on the door swears no-one but the scribe came in or out, and he doesn't have any gold or jewels that he could have been bribed with.”

  “And yet someone was definitely in here. The dropped papers with the red fingerprint.”

  “The unintelligible fingerprint,” I reminded him.

  “And something else about that guard, when I got up close to him, he smelt of...lard.”

  “Lard?”

  “Pork. Pig fat.” Sir Reginald clicked his tongue. “That was...odd.”

  “So he smelt like pigs, so what?”

  “He didn't smell like pigs, my corn-rose,” Sir Reginald gave me a pitying glance. “He smelt like the inside of a pig.”

  “Well, fine, but I don't see how it helps.”

  “It's all here, Hannah.” Sir Reginald stopped pacing and struck the ground hard with his cane. “I know we have every piece of the puzzle. If we can only set them out in the proper order we would have it. I need...” Sir Reginald checked his watch, “more time.”

  “What?”

  “I need more time to think,” Sir Reginald said. “We have all the pieces here, I just need some time to put it all in the right order.” He snatched up his cane and tapped his hat. “And thankfully Hannah my dear, we have a time-machine. We have all the time in the world.”

  “Wait, what do you mean?”

  “I mean we go somewhere else while I have a good long think about things. You should as well. Have a long think, I mean.”

  “You want to leave? For how long?”

  “Days, weeks, months. I doubt it will be years.” Sir Reginald span the cane in his hand and brought it down hard on the tiles. “Yes, that's what we're going to do. Come along, back to the time-machine.” Before I had time to protest Sir Reginald was already striding up the steps to ground level.

  “But we can't be gone for days!” I complained as I followed him into the sunshine. “This needs to be solved now!”

  “Now for the Romans, my dear,” Sir Reginald said. “But not for us. We will spend however long we need some-when else and when we have the solution we will return to less than a second after we left.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing!” said Sir Reginald. “Ah, Quintinius.” Sir Reginald approached the General who was in nervous discussion with a centurion. “Quintinius, I require my horses.”

  “Horses? You're leaving?”

  “I require solitude to think.”

  “But—”

  “I will return within half of one hour,” he insisted. “I'm sorry to disappear, truly, Quintinius, but I don't have the mystery solved yet and I need to think. When I return, I
swear to you, I will have it.”

  Quintinius sighed and closed his eyes. “You stepped out of legend into real life,” he said after a few moments. “I sent that courier never expecting you to arrive. I just didn't know what else to do. And yet here you are. If you need a few moments of solitude you take them.” Quintinius turned to the centurion. “Send someone to fetch Regulus and Hannah their horses.”

  A few minutes later Sir Reginald vaulted into his saddle, holding his cane as a crop, and a team of legionaries vied to help me into mine.

  “Come Hannah, we must make haste,” commanded Sir Reginald as he spurred his horse into a trot. I struggled to keep up; few horses are willing to go straight from a standing start to a trot without cajoling. The sound of horses’ hooves on paving stones echoed around the fort, now awake. We had been in the fort barely an hour and a half and yet the sky had gone from white to blue. We galloped down the Roman road south towards the copse of woodland where we had left the time-machine. The column of smoke was visible climbing into the sky even from the fort. It took less than a quarter of an hour to close the three-mile distance.

  “Oh marvellous, we're still up to pressure.” Sir Reginald vaulted from his horse, rolling onto the time-machine as he landed, and stood and braced himself on the time-machine's controls. “Another advantage of steam, my dear, once a boiler is up to pressure it will stay there for a great many hours without further work.”

  “Yes,” I said without emotion. Trying to rein my horse back from a gallop was difficult enough, but when it was the most disagreeable horse in Europe and there were no stirrups it was nearly impossible. “I, however, appreciate that even something as basic as a diesel generator has the advantage that it turns on with the flick of a button, not an hour's worth of boiler stoking.”

  “But as I explained, my corn-rose, a diesel engine cannot be as easily refuelled as a coal boiler—”

  There was a dull thump and he turned to see me collapsed in a heap of mouldering leaf litter, thankfully face up. “No time for lying about, Hannah.”

  “I didn't have much choice.” I struggled to get up while my horse, finally rid of its mistress, contented itself by eating some grass on the forest floor, looking contrite and not at all like a mad monster whose personality would be better suited to a tiger.

  “The longer we spend in 180AD the more time we waste,” Sir Reginald said. “There's plenty of time to waste later, so come along.” He extended a hand and pulled me upright and aboard.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as I brushed myself clean of rotten leaves and sighed; my coat had been new at the start of winter.

  “The 1330s,” he said, twisting knobs and flicking switches. “Always one of my favourite times to visit. There's hunting, and fishing, and falconry, and jousting–”

  “And plague, and famine, and war, and the slaughter of peasants,” I muttered.

  “No, that's the 1340s.” Sir Reginald shot me a dark look. “Well,” he sighed, “except for the peasant slaughter. But I try to avoid that.” He locked the time and spatial coordinates in place with a pull on one of the large brass levers. A slight frown passed over his lips. "And I'm sure Henri mentioned something about..." he muttered, hands hesitating over the controls.

  “Well, let's go,” I said. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  “It certainly is.” Sir Reginald snapped out of it and hauled on the time-travel lever. The machinery burst into life. Lightning and flames engulfed us, and with a slight pop there was nothing left in the copse but two disinterested horses and a puff of smoke.

  Chapter VIII

  Dew drops hung on fresh grass in eastern France. Light rain had fallen in the night and the morning sun had yet to burn the moisture away. Every motion made grass squeak. It was a landscape of wide plains and hills like wrinkles in a blanket, every hilltop sat carpeted in trees, and villages and peasant farms dotted the plains. Occasionally the land fell away where a river cut down through the silt and rock into a steep valley. Smoke rolled up from the villages and clouds formed in the high atmosphere around the horizon.

  On a crisp May morning, 1335AD, the only sound in the deserted pastures was the thunder of hooves beating into the turf. It cracked the silence like an earthquake.

  “Now this is real riding,” I laughed as my hair billowed out behind me. The stallion ate up the landscape as if it had never galloped before. It leapt over fences and tore across fields, sending sods flying and filling the air with water shaken from leaves. “A proper saddle, stirrups and a real horse!”

  “Hannah! Slow down! The falconers cannot gallop at that speed!” Sir Reginald's voice carried after.

  “Then I'll come back,” I yelled into the wind, my reply too distant for him to hear.

  Sir Reginald turned to the falconers who were trotting on ponies, hooded birds on their wrists. “I'll have to restrain her. I'll return in a minute.” Sir Reginald briefly tilted his hat to them, jammed it back hard onto his head and then spurred his horse into a canter, chasing my distant figure.

  I was nothing but a distant flash of azure and gold as Sir Reginald encouraged his horse into a full gallop with a strike of his cane to its rump. The poor creature was a riding horse built for long distance and charging was the last thing on its mind, but there was no other way to catch up with me.

  Almost five minutes later Sir Reginald's horse caught up with mine, a mess of flailing legs and foaming mouth, coat tails flapping in the gale. The landscape blurred, and Sir Reginald couldn't help but feel vulnerable to it. One bad fall at this speed and he would be dashed to pieces, his brains spread across the landscape as assuredly as any crash of motorcars.

  “Corn-rose,” said Sir Reginald, somehow keeping his tone calm even as he shouted. “The falconers have ponies, and in either case, they cannot ride like this without terrifying the birds.”

  “I said I'd come back,” I shouted guiltily, leaning close to my horse's neck and whispering for even more speed. The pair of us shot through the pasture like a champagne cork, cows scattering for safety.

  “Well, if nothing else there is another more pressing concern, my dear,” Sir Reginald panted with the patience of mountains, even as his insides felt like scrambled egg.

  “Oh yes?”

  “You're scaring the game away,” Sir Reginald pointed to the flocks of birds taking wing. Pheasants flew through the fields; sparrows, finches and starlings scattered to the four winds. Even pigeons so swollen and jaded that a gunshot would struggle to disturb them were escaping the noise of my mad gallop.

  “Oh.” I sank back in the saddle and pulled on the reins. My horse slowed to a canter and Sir Reginald shot forwards, struggling to restrain his own horse. Eventually the two of us managed to rein in our horses to a walk. My stallion stamped the ground snorting. He wanted to run and never stop running, and it took patient cooing noises to calm him down.

  “I believe you may have been given Henri's charger there,” said Sir Reginald looking the horse up and down. “That or our dear benefactor is a woefully poor judge of a horse's character.”

  “He's got the spirit of a Mongol Khan,” I slapped the horse's neck. “I think I might call him that.”

  “His name, my dear, is Martinique.”

  “Mongol Khan is a better racehorse name.”

  “Racehorses are named by cockney and Irish gamblers, and the men who profit from them.” Sir Reginald shook his head. “The horse's name is Martinique.”

  “Oh, you're no fun,” I sighed. “I know I can't rename the horse.”

  “Well, good.” Sir Reginald readjusted his suit. The cravat needed retying. “It's a good thing I caught you when I did,” Sir Reginald said as his fingers focused on their delicate task. “Another five miles in this direction and you enter the lands of the Duke of Lorraine.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I wouldn't have gone that far.”

  “My dear, at that speed you would not have noticed another five miles.” Sir Reginald shook his head and fluffed the cravat until it bill
owed as he liked it. Today he wore one of mauve silk, bright as flower petals. “The Count of Bar has been kind enough to allow us into his home and he is more used to our extravagance. If the Duke of Lorraine found a strange woman galloping across his land with hair unfurled he might be less willing to listen to your story and go straight to hanging you for horse thievery.”

  “I can handle myself,” I said, miming a one-two punch.

  “So you keep saying.” He sighed and shook his head. “Shall we return to the falconers we've abandoned?” He waved a hand back down the valley towards the plain. “It is possible the game you scared away is returning.”

  We trotted back. It was our second week in the fourteenth century but we couldn't look more out of place. Sir Reginald's top hat was unlike anything the peasantry had ever seen before. My hair still refused any attempt to tame it, to the infuriation of the servants who had tried to plait it every morning. I left it hanging loose and tried not to think about how this announced to the entire medieval world that I was a wanton woman.

  I had accepted medieval dresses from Henri's wife, Yolonde. Today's was blue wool, warm yet soft, tied with a belt at the waist and allowed to drape loose, but I wore my trousers under that. I’d also refused to part with my twenty-first-century underwear. The day I gave up the comforts of modern underwear would be shortly after Hell's second annual frost fair.

  Sir Reginald had refused any fourteenth-century clothing, although I noted he had slipped on a ring bearing a coat of arms when he thought no-one was looking. He seemed to have a never-ending supply of freshly laundered and pressed suits. His patent leather shoes always shone, the black wool never faded, and his top hat was always brushed smooth, as if the clothes grew out of him as an extra layer of skin.

  We took almost an hour to rendezvous with the falconers. Gerome and Jean were both short, dark-haired men with eyes as hard as their birds. They wore the blue and yellow livery of their master the Count of Bar, however ridiculous, but they were no-nonsense men. If a falconer ever lost his head he might find an eagle trying to rip out part of his face. Several dogs that looked like spaniels trailed behind the falconers, and each falconer had a hooded bird on his left arm.