by Peter Tonkin
‘And you saw nothing?’ he asked the doorkeeper. ‘At least four, I would have thought. Large men. Soldiers or gladiators. Four coming in. Six coming out, given that they’ve taken Telos and Cyanea. And you saw nothing?’ For the first time, he was beginning to lose faith in Telos’ judgement of people.
‘About the middle of the first watch,’ explained Vitus, ‘there was a big fight outside the fish stall down towards the basilica. The end one, near the Macellum fruit market. Couple of whores going at it like gladiatrices. I went down to look. So did half the Forum. They put on quite a show. I’m surprised Caesar didn’t come out of his quarters in the Domus Publicus for a look.’
He was probably still at dinner with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus his magister equitum, thought Artemidorus, who followed Caesar’s movements as closely as possible, information added to by meetings with and messages from Enobarbus. The last one of which should be somewhere among the rubbish on the floor, a tiny piece of parchment covered in the tribune’s favourite code. Apparently the recently appointed praetor peregrinus, Decimus Brutus Albinus, was there as well – two of Caesar’s best generals and closest allies. Truest friends to both co-consuls Caesar and Marc Antony. Though only Caesar had been at dinner; Antony, as ever, out and about. But Artemidorus did not allow the knowledge to distract him from the matter in hand. ‘The old days were the best,’ he said grimly. ‘When they chained ostiari to their door post like dogs.’
Vitus shrugged. ‘You may have a point,’ he admitted. ‘But on the other hand, I wasn’t going to start confronting four big thugs – no matter who they were bringing in or bringing out. Especially as gladiators are allowed to carry swords in the city. And all I’ve got is a club.’ He slapped the thigh of his bad leg. ‘I had more than enough of swords on the docks in Alexandria.’
‘I know you did,’ allowed Artemidorus. ‘But at least you might have seen them. Witnesses are in short supply.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Then again,’ said Artemidorus. ‘We might have some witnesses yet.’ He nodded towards the inner door that led to the second room. ‘Who did Telos sub-let to?’
‘Young couple with a baby. He’s a baker.’
‘Let’s find out what they know. They must at least have heard something. These walls are thin as parchment.’ As he spoke, Artemidorus crossed to the door. Knocked.
A silence, four heartbeats long. ‘That’s not good,’ he observed grimly. ‘That should have woken the baby at least…’
He pushed the door and it swung inwards.
He and Vitus stepped in together. The combined light of the candle and the oil lamp revealed all too vividly the contents of the tiny room. The destruction here was worse than in the outer room. And amongst the wreckage of the rickety furniture and all too modest possessions, there lay three bodies in an identical state of disrepair. A scarce-bearded baker, his child bride and their newborn baby, Artemidorus calculated. All so young. And none of them ever going to get any older.
At least Telos and Cyanea were not adding to the carnage in there. Or to the mess.
Puella came through with the doorkeeper’s horn-sided lamp, adding more light. Revealing more detail. She gasped and retched. Vitus’ dog Canem whimpered. The doorkeeper looked down at the lake of blood and body fluids slowly seeping through the floor. Suddenly the road to success and safety Artemidorus promised looked more like the road to hell.
‘This explains why the tenants downstairs are complaining of leaky ceilings,’ Vitus said. And his observation did nothing at all to calm Puella’s sudden fears.
*
‘Of course I’ll have to report this,’ Vitus observed dolefully, down at street level once again. ‘And yes, I’ll try and keep you and the woman out of it. But it won’t be easy.’
‘Abduction and murder. I’d be surprised if it was easy. Call on me if you need to. Just not Puella. Not that you’ll know where she is in any case.’
‘Right.’
The three of them were lingering in the doorway of the insula, looking out at the rain-soaked bustle of the Forum. Artemidorus was burning to be gone. A valued colleague and a woman he loved were in the hands of men who thought nothing of slaughtering whole families on the chance they might have witnessed something.
‘The local magistrate’s not the sharpest blade on the battlefield, though.’ Vitus warned. ‘He’ll probably just reckon your friends killed the young family for some reason and then took off to avoid capture. He likes to keep things simple. He’s pretty simple himself, our aedile Sextus Albanus.’
‘That could work for us,’ mused Artemidorus coldly. ‘He wouldn’t need to call anyone if he likes the simple version. Whether it’s true or not.’ He raised the lantern he had taken back from Puella and hefted the bundle of wax tablets wrapped in a couple of rags from Cyanea’s bedding. ‘Let’s be off.’
‘Where are we going now?’ asked Puella, her quiet voice shaking. Still overcome with the sheer horror she had witnessed upstairs. No doubt beginning to see a pattern in all of this. A path like the one the Thracian poet Orpheus took seeking his lost love Eurydice. A path that led directly down into the depths of hell. ‘Where are we going next?’
‘To the Carinae.’ Artemidorus answered gently. Using the tone he found most effective in calming frightened horses and talking to young legionaries in the moments before their first battle. ‘There’s a man in the Carinae district we have to see. It’s a nice quiet, respectable place. You’ll be safe there.’
‘As long as there’s no trouble overflowing out of the Subura,’ warned Vitus. ‘It’s that kind of night. The gods are really restless. Everyone I’ve talked to thinks it augurs something bad coming.’ He looked up, as though he could see up to the bloodbath on the top floor. ‘The bad things may have started already.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve even heard – you won’t believe this but I swear I heard it when I was watching the battle of the whores…’
‘You heard what?’ Artemidorus was getting impatient and he let it show in his tone.
‘That one of the lightning bolts hit the menagerie at the Circus Maximus and broke open some of the cages there. On top of everything else, there may even be some wild beasts loose in the streets. Lions. Tigers and such…’
As Artemidorus led Puella through the Forum once again, Vitus’ words echoed in his mind. As soon as they moved out of the bustle outside the Basilica Aemilia and the Macellum market beside it and the darkness closed down on them, he began to suspect that they were being stalked. There was a tightness across his shoulders he had felt before. A familiar, almost ghostly warning that he had come to respect. It had saved his skin on more than one occasion.
Puella clearly felt the same. She spent as much time looking over her shoulder as looking ahead. Both of them probed the shadows at the outer edge of the little circle of light cast by the dead doorkeeper’s lantern. Pausing each time lightning struck. Probing the further reaches revealed by the instants of greater brightness. The roaring of the thunder took on a dangerous tone. As though the storm itself were some great beast hungry for their flesh. The constant rushing and sluicing of the rain began to sound like the measured breathing of a massive predator. Drooling in anticipation of feasting on them. It was as though Vitus’ warning had transformed the hunters they feared. From the much more likely footpads or slave-catchers. To the wild animals from the menagerie. It was strange. But it was what they were beginning to suspect.
Artemidorus became more and more uneasy, his mood darkened by the clear and mounting terror in his companion. Never had the gentle uphill path to the Carinae district seemed so lengthy. So complicated. So full of unexpected sounds and shadows. The open squares of the minor forums seemed especially threatening. For the walls on either side of the narrow, up-sloping roadways at least gave an illusion of protection. The lesser forums, however, were simply arenas full of shadows. Impenetrable beyond their fragile bubble of light. Full of endlessly threatening possibilities. Soaking and almost frozen once
again, Artemidorus felt his scrotum tighten with a nervousness he had not experienced in years. And the sensation in his shoulders intensified as though there were ghosts trying to hold him back. But, he wondered, was he frightened for himself? For his companion? Or for his lovely, beloved Cyanea in the hands of nameless, numberless brutal murderers? The more he tried to reason it out, the worse his fears seemed to become.
So that it came almost as a relief when a band of men entered from one side of the biggest of the squares. Just as the two fugitives entered it from the other. For an instant, Artemidorus considered approaching them. Then his situation as a murderer accompanying a runaway slave brought him to his senses. He shaded the lantern with his parcel of tablets and pushed Puella back.
The new group of men rushed into the centre of the square and stopped there. Artemidorus was able to make out some details now. A circle of slaves and a couple of freedmen all holding lanterns and flambeaus. A set of lictors carrying their ceremonial fasces. Emphasising the central figure’s importance and authority. But there were no axes in the ceremonial bundles, the spy noted. His standing and power were limited. As were those of almost everybody in the city. Within the Servian walls and the pomerium. In the centre, a tall man wearing a ceremonial toga with dark edges. An important figure, clearly, to be dressed like that and attended by so many. He suddenly pulled his toga wide. Uncovered the front of his tunic beneath it, then tugged the neckline down to offer his naked breast to the storm.
‘Great Jove, god of thunder and the lightning bolt, I call on you now!’ shouted the man in the toga. His voice wavered with excitement bordering on hysteria. His words carried even over the roaring of the wind and the pounding of the rain. His upturned face in the light of the flambeaus all around him seemed to be composed of Greek fire. Golden drops sprang up from his high forehead into a wavering halo and streamed down off his sleek hair. Bursting into his face and making his eyelids flicker. Running down his neck over his breast. Between his trembling fists and into the wadded cloth of tunic and toga. As though he was bathed in liquid flames.
‘If what I do or what I plan offends the gods, then take me now, great Jove. Throw down one of your thunderbolts and take me. Take me here and now!’
The circle of men around him fell back a pace. Even the lictors. But their wariness, though understandable, was misplaced. Either Jove did not hear or did not care. Or even, possibly, approved of what the shouting man proposed. Certainly, the next great thunderbolt fell far from the square. Somewhere out by Tiber Island, if Artemidorus was any judge. He hoped his colleagues in the VIIth had done nothing to upset Jove either, for it looked as though the thunderbolt could well have fallen on them.
Instead, completely unexpectedly, a storm of hail came lashing down. Chunks of ice which seemed as hard and sharp as leaden slingshots came hurling out of the upper blackness. Artemidorus felt the sting of them on his back and shoulders – and even through his leather cap. Puella gasped and hissed with pain. The man in the forum got the full force of it in his upturned face. With a cry of surprise and discomfort, he pulled his clothing straight and strode on, face down. His footsteps through the dancing whiteness on the ground at first faltering but then more purposeful. His actions once again becoming commanding and decisive. The vicious hailstones bouncing off his head and shoulders – as well as those of the men who followed him. After a moment, the hailstorm passed and he even seemed a good deal taller.
As the little crowd left the square and darkness surged back once again, Puella asked, ‘Who was that? Do you know who that madman was?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘That’s the man in whose household my missing friends Telos and Cyanea were working undercover. Did you not recognise him?’
Puella paused a moment, frowning with thought. Then her expression cleared. ‘Of course!’ she said. ‘He visited Lord Brutus many times and we visited him as well. I served them wine and honeycakes. That was Lord Gaius Cassius!’
‘Right. That was Cassius,’ Artemidorus nodded. ‘Off somewhere we can’t spare the time to follow – but up to no good, I’ll bet.’
*
The darkness that flooded back after Cassius and his retinue vanished seemed more threatening than ever. The lamp was clearly on its last legs – either starved of oil or drowned with rain. The storm intensified. The rain fell on them so fiercely that it hurt their shoulders, bruised as they were by the hailstones. Artemidorus considered lending Puella his leather cap – for that was protecting his head from the deluge. The lightning seemed almost continuous. The thunder never let up. As the stench from the Forum fell behind them, so a strange new odour began to fill the air, and Artemidorus was put in mind of the sea. Of the various ships in which he had sailed, in one capacity or another. Everything from Cilician pirate liburnian vessels to the huge quinquereme battle ships of the Roman fleet. Everything from helpless captive to military optio. But always in disguise or undercover. Never quite what he seemed to be. Just like now, in fact.
Artemidorus’s train of thought was interrupted by Puella. She grabbed his arm. ‘Look!’ she whispered. ‘What is that?’ Just for the briefest instant, at the boundary where the wavering light and the gathering darkness bled into each other, two unblinking discs of brightness appeared and disappeared almost as swiftly as the lightning. Even as the twin points of brightness vanished, it seemed to Artemidorus that some part of the darkness moved.
‘Where are we going now?’ asked Puella. And, in the same breath, ‘Is it far?’
‘We’re going to see the haruspex and augur Spurinna,’ he answered. ‘And, no; it’s not far. He’s a knight of the rank of equitum and he lives in a villa not far from here.’
‘Why are we going to see an augur? From the look of your recent past, you really don’t want to know what your future is likely to hold.’
‘I’m not getting my future predicted. Or yours. He’s a colleague. We work together.’
‘Oh.’ She fell silent, clearly pondering the conundrum of why an aristocratic augur and a spy disguised as a common freedman would ever want to work together.
Side by side, they crossed the rest of the square, almost running – with some relief – into the mouth of the next narrow roadway. And straight into the middle of the gang that was waiting there. Half a dozen strangers surrounded the pair of fugitives with practised ease. Two dark lanterns were uncovered, putting the guttering glow of the one Artemidorus carried to shame. ‘What have we here?’ demanded a rough voice. The sudden brightness revealed an enormous man with the shoulders and arms of a bear.
Artemidorus didn’t hesitate. He threw his lamp at the giant and charged after it. The lantern smashed into the massive footpad’s chest. Oil sprayed over his clothing and flames licked hungrily at it. He should have burst into flames. Would have done so if there had been more oil and less rain. As it was, the lamp burst and died at once. The gang leader was surprised but by no means incapacitated. When Artemidorus hit him with the full weight of his charge, shoulder to belly, he staggered backwards. But he stayed upright and secured his footing by wrapping the spy in a bear-like embrace. The pair of them reeled back into the shadows but the rest of the gang followed, the light from their lanterns revealing a crossroad. Where there was just enough room to let them gather round the wrestlers. The bundle full of Telos’ tablets flew into the flooding gutter and washed back to Puella’s feet as she looked around, assessing their danger and seeking an escape.
The men not holding lanterns were carrying weapons. And at least one had a club that looked even heavier than the dead doorkeeper’s. The runaway slave realised that there was almost certainly no way out of this for either of them. The spy who had promised to protect her was going to be beaten to death, either by his huge opponent’s fists or by his gang’s clubs. And she was going to be taken back to Lord Brutus’s household after all. Probably only marginally more alive than her would-be guardian. She turned to run but the nearest gang member caught her arm. A big, dark man with a dangerous-look
ing club. Who passed her to one of the others. Who held her captive as they watched Artemidorus begin to die.
*
Artemidorus drove a fist into the footpad’s groin, but the huge man only grunted and tightened a grip that threatened to upend the spy altogether. And break his neck, crush his ribs or shatter his skull on the stones of the road. The first club blow smashed down across the small of his back.
Artemidorus twisted his neck, looking for the club wielder. And found he knew the man. Like the giant holding him, the club wielder was familiar; he just could not quite place the face.
‘No!’ bellowed his huge opponent. ‘I want this one all to myself. First a little fun with him. Then a little fun with his woman. It’s been a busy night after all. And although I’ve had some exercise, I know you boys were upset not to get your hands on the girl. Well, not so much your hands…’
The club man fell back a step or two, his half-familiar face twisting into an ugly leer.
The giant relaxed his hold on Artemidorus for an instant, then grasped his tunic forcefully enough to tear the seams, and threw him down the roadway. As he landed, Artemidorus staggered backwards into the arms of the rest of the footpads who, with a raucous cheer, hurled him forward.
As he stumbled towards the titan standing at the crossroads, Artemidorus at last recognised his opponent. Like Scorpionis had been in his time, this was a favourite of the arena. Another gladiator named for his technique or aspect of his craft. This was the gigantic boxer Cestus, named for the metal-spiked leather bands that he wore round his fists and up his forearms. Which, the staggering spy noted, he was wearing now. His eyes widened with the revelation. If this was Cestus then his sidekicks also would be gladiators. And the club wielder’s name was…