Then Titch’s bugle called again. But no, wait! Even in my despair I realised the sound was coming from a completely different direction this time. Yet that was impossible, my ears must be playing tricks, deceived by the thick trees. There it came again—three short blasts, repeated several times. And that wasn’t Titch, it couldn’t be! Even at a fast run, he couldn’t have covered such a distance on foot. Gods alive, could it be real cavalry after all?
The sudden hope was almost too much to bear. Supposing Junius and Marius, riding back towards the Oak Tree….Holy Diana, I prayed, let it be them! But how could I attract their attention? They’d never find us without some help; they’d gallop by in the darkness. All the natives had to do was keep us quiet and hidden here. I wanted to call out, but I couldn’t. How stupid I’d been, to get myself gagged! Just when I needed to be able to yell for help….
But the slaves still weren’t gagged, and Bessus suddenly gave a piercing whistle, and then a loud yell. “Help! This way! Help here….They’re taking us off the road….” It ended in a horrible stifled gurgling noise as one of the natives cut his throat. But it was enough.
It was enough!
“We’re coming!” came an answering yell; the nearer bugle blew again, and now I could hear horses’ hooves on the road, faint but getting louder as they cantered closer.
Veric swore. “They’ll see the animals. Leave these here and scatter!” He shouted the last word, then he turned back to me and, as he released me, gave me one final hard blow across the face. “I’ll be back for you soon,” he growled, and then he began to run, following his men who had disappeared already.
I hardly heard him, because I was listening to shouts and hoofbeats, as down the dark track from the road came four men on horseback, and one boy, running.
It took forever to get home, because we had to go at walking pace. We only had four horses between eight of us, counting Bessus, because of course we would not leave his body behind for the barbarians to molest in the night. We tied him onto one horse, and Junius insisted that I ride another. To be honest I was glad to; now it was all over, my legs felt as weak as wax.
Junius helped me mount. “Are you all right, Aurelia? You’ve had a bad shock.”
I wanted to answer, “Oh yes, we’re tough as old boots, us innkeepers,” but that hardly seemed gracious. “Fine, thanks to you and Marius. And young Titch too, of course.”
As we plodded along, Junius explained how they’d returned to the mansio to find Albia very worried because I hadn’t come home. “She insisted someone came out to find you. And the fellow that was hurt, Valerius Longinus, was on the point of setting off to search. Well that was silly, given the state he’s in. So out we came without even stopping for a drink. And we could easily have missed you still, if it wasn’t for this young fellow.” Junius put a hand on Titch’s shoulder. “You did well, soldier.” Titch grinned hugely at the compliment.
At last we turned down the familiar Oak Tree track, and as we entered the bar-room everyone stood up and cheered. The customers and our servants came crowding round us, full of questions and congratulations. The soldiers went straight to the bar, Titch with them, and I heard Albia call out “Drinks on the house!” before she rushed up and flung her arms round me, laughing and crying at once. Next she embraced Junius, and they dissolved into a babble of explanations.
Marsus came over and said, “Am I allowed in here, Mistress?” The bar-room is normally off-limits to the farm slaves.
“You are tonight. Drink a toast or two to Bessus. He was a brave man, and he saved our lives. You were good friends, weren’t you?”
“We were brothers.”
“Brothers? I didn’t know that!”
“No, well, we kept it quiet when we were being sold off at the Eburacum market. Folk often don’t fancy buying two brothers. They say they can be troublemakers. But I’m glad I was with him….” He looked on the edge of tears. “He always was too reckless.”
“Not reckless, brave,” I said. “Go and drink to his courage. We’ll give him a good funeral tomorrow.”
And then Quintus Antonius came up and gently took my hand. “I’m so sorry, Aurelia,” he spoke quietly, under all the noise of celebration. “This is all because of me, I’m afraid. Are you all right?”
“I’ll survive. Tough as old boots, us innkeepers.”
“You were right, you know.”
“I’m always right. It’s a well-known fact.”
He didn’t smile. “You said that if you helped me, it would put you in danger. And that’s the very last thing I want. Tomorrow I’ll move on, find another base to operate from.”
“No.” Shaken though I was, I knew for certain that the one thing I didn’t want was for him to leave. “I promised to help, and I will. After all, as Silvanius is always saying, we Romans must stand together. Look, I’ve got a bar full of thirsty drinkers to see to. Let’s talk later.”
Predictably, the night developed into a party. Titch was hailed as the hero of the hour, and everyone fed him so much beer that I eventually took him to one side and reminded him gently of the great Julius Caesar’s views on drunkenness, and he went happily off to his bed. The tribunes and their men were celebrating too, but Marsus slipped away after a couple of beakers.
I myself was more upset than I cared to admit, and it took all my willpower to join in the jollity with a cheerful face and a smile for everyone. Wine might have helped, but I wanted to keep a clear head, so I made do with a couple of beakers till eventually the last of the local customers were safely on their way home.
I had one more task before I could relax. I called all our people into the bar-room, house servants and field-hands, everyone. I arranged for a rota of men, the two troopers and Hippon, to take turns on night-watch outside the main door. Then I told them all how important it was that we stayed alert and on guard against the Shadow-men, and the particular danger to travellers. Finally I made a point of how brave everyone had been on the road tonight. I praised Titch’s resourcefulness, and Bessus’ heroic call for help, which had cost his life. “I’m proud of you all, and Lucius will be too, when he hears about it,” I finished.
They actually cheered me, and then dispersed, and as they moved off, Quintus came out of a far dark corner where he’d been sitting unnoticed.
“A good speech. You should be a general.”
“But I’m not, am I? I’m just a civilian, caught in the middle of someone else’s war, when all I want to do is get on with running a peaceful guest-house.”
He looked at me intently. “It’s not surprising you’re upset.”
“Upset? Me? Of course not!”
“You saw them kill Bessus?” he asked gently.
“Of course I saw it. It was….I can’t describe it….”
“Come and sit by the fire for a while,” he said. “Just till you’re ready to sleep.”
“Sleep! Fat chance of that! I keep going through what happened out there, over and over in my head. Hearing the tribunes cantering up, and being sure they wouldn’t find us, and then Bessus called out for help….He only got a few words out, before they cut his throat. He made a sort of gasping noise….I felt so helpless. I mean I’ve seen dead people before, but never a killing like that.”
“It was brave of him,” Quintus agreed. “And it certainly saved you. Junius told me.”
“Yes, but if I hadn’t been so stupid, provoking the gang leader with my silly remarks, I’d have been able to call out to Junius myself. I
should
have done!”
“Whoever called out,” he said softly, “would be dead now.”
I found I was shaking, and my legs refused to hold me up. I flopped down on a settle by the fire. Without a word he poured me a beaker of wine from one of the big jugs, and held it out for me. I drank the whole mug in one go. He poured more, and took a beaker for himself.
“It’s always bad, seeing someone killed in cold blood.” He sat down beside me, and took my hand. “In battle it’s different, it’s what you’ve trained for, and you’re carried along by the excitement of it all. You can kill enemies as easily as swatting wasps. But
you
weren’t on a battlefield. It’s hard to take, especially the first time. And it’s natural to feel guilty because you survived when someone else didn’t.” He drank some wine. “I felt the same after Pompeii.”
I couldn’t believe it. “After Pompeii? You were in
Pompeii?
”
“It was my home,” he answered sadly.
“It was mine too!”
We sat there, amazed. Out here on the remote edge of the Empire’s northernmost province, the river of fate had swept together two people from the same town in Italia. And not just any old unremarkable seaside resort; a town that no longer existed, having been destroyed in a day by an erupting volcano.
“Our home was in Pompeii,” I said, “but we weren’t there when Vesuvius erupted, we were staying with relations across the bay in Misenum. We saw the volcano erupt; fire and smoke, and ashes falling out of the sky, and then stones raining down. At first we didn’t realise how serious it was, and by the time we did…well, it was much too late to go home. We just had to make a run for it, with all the other refugees. Everything was lost. Our town house, the farm, all our friends….We went back, a month or so after the volcano died down, thinking to salvage what we could from the house. But we couldn’t even
find
our house. We couldn’t even find our own street!” I paused to drink more wine, trying to prevent my hand trembling as I raised the beaker.
“I know,” Quintus said. “I was actually in the town. I was just seventeen, still living at home. I got my grandmother out safely, and my sister and brother, and quite a few of the servants as well. Father told me to escort them to one of our villas inland. But he insisted on staying himself, to protect our house. He thought the eruption would stop soon, and then people would come back, and there would be looting if property was left empty. So he must have died there. By the time everyone realised the eruption wasn’t going to stop, it was too late for me to go back and find him. But sometimes I still think, if I’d tried harder to persuade him, if I’d offered to stay there instead of him, I could have made him leave. After twelve years, it still makes me feel bad.” He touched the emerald ring on his left hand.
“From your father?” I asked. “Your ring?”
“Yes. He gave it to me on my seventeenth birthday.” He sighed, twisting the ring so that the green stone flashed in the lamplight. “He was a good man, very straight, and a scholar, but….I don’t know, strict. Stern. Nothing I did ever seemed quite good enough. He always wanted me to have a political career and end up a senator. The gods know what he’d think of me now!”
We talked for a long while about our vanished life in Pompeii. We compared notes about the shops, the theatre, the temples, the gladiator shows, even the taverns.
“Not that I had any direct experience of those,” I said, “but my brother occasionally sneaked off to somewhere called the Harpy’s Cave when he was supposed to be at school.”
Quintus laughed. “The Harpy’s Cave! Gods, that takes me back. I used to go there—I think all the young lads did. It was an amazing place—the madam was an old crone, and the bar-room was done up to look like a real cave, complete with stuffed bats and spiders’ webs. It even had a narrow secret passage at the back leading out into an alley, so we boys could make our escape when our tutors came looking for us….It was a good life, wasn’t it?”
It was a very good life, and it was sad to think none of it was there any more, and yet I found it oddly comforting to remember it like this. It was years since I’d met anyone else who’d lost their home in that catastrophe, and it was impossible to explain it to somebody who hadn’t been through it. So I hadn’t talked about it, or let myself think about it, for a long time. And Quintus seemed to perceive things I didn’t fully understand myself, things about needing to have a home, somewhere permanent to belong to, and the desperate panic I felt now, thinking our life at the Oak Tree might be snatched away from us.
“Are we going to lose our home here too?” I asked him. “Are the barbarians going to force us to leave? I can’t let that happen, not again. I can’t. I
won’t.
”
“
We
won’t,” he corrected. “I’m with you in this, Aurelia. You know that. Whatever it takes, we’ll win in the end.” He bent close and kissed me. “I promise.”
Eventually he took me to the door of my room, kissed me once more, and went away.
When I was alone I cried. I cried for Pompeii, and the travellers the Shadow-men murdered, and for our dead slave; I cried for the sense of impending disaster I felt. It left me bone-tired, and eventually I slept.
Next morning I woke late, with a splitting headache and a feeling of dread. By the time I went outside, the sun had cleared the horizon and was chasing away a thin white mist from the river. Albia was organising breakfast, and had already sent Ursulus with men and mules to retrieve the carriage, assuming there was anything left to retrieve by now.
“Relia, you look half-dead still,” she greeted me cheerfully. “Go back to bed and catch up on some sleep. I can manage fine here.”
“Thanks, Albia, I might just do that. I feel pretty rough. I’ll see if a bit of breakfast wakes me up.” We were in the kitchen, and I picked up a piece of crusty bread, dipped it in some olive oil, and had taken just one bite when there was a tap on the outside door.
It was Milo, the oldest of the stable-lads. His mousy hair was tousled and his expression was anxious. “Please, Mistress, Hippon says can you come round to the stable yard straight away. There’s something he wants to show you.”
“What’s wrong, Milo? Are the horses all right?”
“Oh, they’re fine, Mistress. It’s—well, can you come, please?”
I abandoned breakfast and followed him to the stable yard, which was empty, except for a few half-groomed horses tied to the railings. I soon saw why when Milo led me around to the back of the stable building. There I found Hippon, the other horse-boys, and most of the older stable-hands. And I saw what they were all staring at.
Painted on the wooden back wall of the stables was a skull drawing, and beneath it two lines:
A U R E l I A M A R C E L L A W I L L B E k i L L E D
G E T O U T O R D I E
So it wasn’t a threat to “all Romans” now. It was a personal message for me! I stared at it, as if by sheer willpower I could make it disappear. But it was there, bright and clear for everyone to see. And then I looked down at the base of the wall. There was a dark green bundle of cloth, stained with something reddish-brown.
“Is that my cloak?” I could hardly get the words out. “They took it last night….” I bent to pick it up, but it was badly stained and still wet, so gingerly I lifted one end of the bundle, and it fell apart into dozens of small pieces; they had hacked it literally to ribbons, and doused it in some animal’s blood.
Hippon said quietly, “We’ve only just found this. None of the guards heard anything last night—I certainly didn’t. And yet….I don’t like to think what they might have done if they’d found any of us outside.”
“Especially me.” I thought suddenly of Titch’s remark yesterday: “I’ve never been that important before—for someone to want to kill me!” I glanced at the lad now, where he stood with the other horse-boys, looking unusually subdued. But he was fourteen, and at his age he knew that whatever the Fates threw at him, he’d be able to catch it and throw it back. I wished I had that resilience, but I didn’t. All I knew was that somebody was taking trouble to let me know that they wanted me dead.
“Are you all right, Aurelia?” Hippon asked.
“Yes, but…
merda,
Hippon….”
“I know. Awful. Why not go inside for a while; we’ll soon have this lot cleaned up, and the—the bundle thrown away.”
“No. No, we must try and find out who did this.” I made myself stand up straight and look steadily at the men and boys around me, and then survey the open area behind the wall. “I wonder how many of them there were? And if they’ve left any tracks? We could do with Hawk here, but I suppose it’s worth a look—no, keep still, you boys, don’t trample all over everything. Use your eyes, not your boots!”
I studied the ground, not seriously expecting to make anything of the footprints. There were plenty of them, mostly far too muddled to make sense of. But in one muddy patch a few feet from the wall I spotted a single clear left boot-print, with a worn heel, and some stitching missing from the sole.
“What’s that?” Titch’s sharp eyes had been busily scanning the area. He pointed to something shiny, and I nodded for him to pick it up and hand it to me. “A belt-stud, that is. Me dad has a belt with studs just like that.”
“So do half the men in the Empire, though. Especially men with army connections. Except, this one’s gilded, look. Usually they’re bronze.” It rang a bell, but I couldn’t think why. I just knew that somewhere, recently, I’d seen something decorated with ornamental gold studs. “It might have been there some time, of course.”
“But see where I found it, Mistress.” The boy pointed to the soft ground, which had blurred boot-prints in it. “If someone had lost it yesterday, them fellers last night would have trodden it into the mud. But it was on top of the mud, see?”
We found nothing else, and Hippon told his lads to get back to work and see to the horses. “We’ll need to think about guards for tonight,” he said. “If anything happened to the horses….Well, one thing at a time. The lads’ll soon have this wall cleaned up. Why don’t you get Taurus to look round the whole property, just in case….” He didn’t need to finish it.
“Yes, everything must be checked over. I’ll do it now.”
“Take one of the men with you then. We can’t be too careful.”
“Gods, Hippon, has it come to this—that I can’t even wander around my own house and land without a bodyguard?”
He shrugged. “Let’s just play safe, shall we?”
I sent Titch to find Taurus, who came ambling round in his usual unhurried way, and stared at the wall. Hippon read him the message. “That’s lousy,” he said. “And they’ve spoiled your good cloak. Trying to scare you, I suppose.”
Trying and succeeding, I wanted to say; but not in front of the servants. “I never liked that cloak much. Now I’ve got a good excuse to buy a new one.” It didn’t sound convincing even to me, but Taurus gave me a smile.
“Odd to use paint,” he remarked. “I wouldn’t have done. If I could write, that is.”
“What would you use?”
“A bit of white stone. There’s plenty of it about here.” He walked over to the paddock fence and picked up a piece of chalky stone with a sharp edge. He went to the wall and drew a line on it. It stood out clear and white on the brown planking; better than the paint, which was pale green.
“Paint would be harder to clean off,” I suggested.
“If I was writing on walls,” Titch said gravely, “and I used a bit of chalk, like Taurus said, then nobody would know it was me, but they wouldn’t know it was somebody else neither.”
“I’m sorry?”
“If I used paint, I can’t use me own, else people would know it was me. I’d use somebody else’s, and then when it’s recognised, he’ll get the blame instead of me.”
I saw where he was driving. “Somebody deliberately used this paint to throw suspicion on whoever owns it? Yes, you could be right. It’s a fairly unusual shade—green with a slight trace of yellow. It ought to be possible to find out where it comes from. Titch, get a knife and scrape off some of it onto…let’s see, onto my wax writing-tablet. If I think I see the same colour anywhere else, I’ll be able to do an exact check. “ I fished out a tablet from my pouch, and the boy scraped some green flakes onto it.
Just as he was finishing, we heard hoofbeats, and to my astonishment, Felix came riding up, accompanied by an armed servant, a giant of a man. Felix, on a horse? A pretty unusual sight these days, but he rode well, like any Roman gentleman. When he saw me he dismounted with a flourish, but without his usual smile.
“Aurelia, dear heart, I came as soon as I heard.”
“Heard?” I asked stupidly, my mind still on the wall.
“About how you were attacked last night. Are you all right? Were you hurt? Oh my dear!” he exclaimed, catching sight of the wall. “How horrible! When was this done?”
“In the night.”
“Jupiter’s balls! It’s—” he stopped suddenly. “It’s quite dreadful,” he finished lamely.
“Yes, it is. But some water and elbow-grease will clean it all off. And I can always get a new cloak.”
“You’re so brave, my dear! We heard you’d been attacked. The town’s positively humming with rumours. Some farmer found your carriage, more or less wrecked, and your mules and horses dead, and we all thought….Well, never mind. Here you are, safe and sound. Now let me look at you.” He took my face between two fingers and studied it seriously. “You seem none the worse, except is that a teeny bruise on your cheek?”
“One of the barbarians hit me, but really I’m fine. It could have been a lot worse.”
“Oh, you poor thing. But you’re all right otherwise? They didn’t do anything else.…I mean, they had no chance to….” He paused dramatically.
“No.” I smiled in spite of myself. “They had no chance to, you dreadful old gossip! Thank the gods. And thank the cavalry, who turned up just in time.”
“So what happened? Don’t keep me in suspense!”
“Come inside, and I’ll tell you.”
I told Taurus to inspect the rest of the buildings, and also the orchard and paddocks, and to report to me if he discovered anything amiss.
It’s hard to stop being an innkeeper even in a crisis; the first thing I did when we came into the house was get us both some breakfast, which we ate in my study. I knew that Albia had organised food for the other guests in the dining-room, but I felt happier talking to Felix in private.
“It’s good of you to come so early,” I said. “Especially as you normally don’t open an eyelid till noon!”
“I must confess—” he helped himself to more bread— “that usually the only sure way for me to admire the rosy fingers of dawn is to stay up all night. But when the news came, I simply couldn’t relax until I’d seen you with my own eyes. Do tell me what happened!”
I told him briefly, and he listened excitedly, and in the end said, “We were right, weren’t we? At the meeting yesterday. These appalling men are going for travellers after dark. Well, I’m taking four strapping guards with me today, I can tell you. And we’re stopping for nothing!”
I passed him more cheese. “Today? Where are you off to?”
“To Eburacum. To the theatre.”
“Again? Clarus told me you were there two days ago.”
He clapped his hands. “Checking up on me, my dear? I knew it—you do care after all! O joy! Marry me at once!”
“Idiot! But I care enough not to want you taking risks on the roads just now. You’ll be careful, won’t you? Is it a special performance you’re going to see?”
“Yes, a new play for one of the officers’ wives—her birthday party I believe. A comedy called ‘Julia Joins the Cavalry.’”
“Don’t tell me, lots of jokes about new recruits who can’t get a leg over!”
“I’m afraid so. And the handsome hero getting his spear bent on night patrol. But my main reason for going is to see my friend Dardanio—he’s playing the randy general. You’ve heard of Dardanio, the actor? He’s brilliant! An old friend of mine. He’s been in the theatre since we were boys together.”
“I don’t get time for the theatre, I wish I did. I like a good comedy.”
“So do I. Why else do I spend so much of my life applauding Publius Silvanius and his antics?” His tone was bitter, not his usual teasing.
“Oh dear. Have you two fallen out?”
He looked contrite. “I’m sorry, that was beastly of me. No, of course we haven’t. It’s just that sometimes….” He hesitated, but this time it wasn’t a contrived dramatic pause.
“Sometimes?” I prompted.
“Publius has been very good to me. Generous, understanding. I couldn’t live the life I do if it wasn’t for his friendship. And his money. But—I know this sounds dreadfully ungrateful….”
I looked at him in his finery. He had a fashionable brick- red cloak and matching sandals, and his hair was as immaculate as always. But his yellow-green eyes were troubled. I thought, this is a Roman from an old aristocratic family, brought up to wealth and privilege at the centre of the world, and now he’s living on the bounty of a friend in a raw new province with barely a denarius to his name.
“Sometimes it’s hard to have to be grateful all the time,” I suggested.
He sighed. “That’s it exactly. I’m a Cornelius—our family is an old one, and a rich one. I should be….” He shrugged. “I had to leave Rome in some haste, you see. I couldn’t bring anything with me. Everything that belonged to my branch of the Cornelii was confiscated.” He took a huge sip of wine. He looked close to tears, real tears, not the turned-on waterworks of an actor.
“Tell me,” I said, “if you want to. I know very little about your life before you came here. Now, of course, you’re one of the leading men in Oak Bridges.”
“So they say. Three cheers and a fanfare of trumpets. Let’s drink to big fish in small ponds!” He raised his beaker.
“Better to be a big fish than a little one. So tell me.”
“Our family were at the court of the Emperor Nero. Oh, don’t say it, I know he’s regarded as a monster now, and he did go to pieces at the end. But he loved the arts. Especially the theatre and music. He tried to make Rome more civilised, more Greek. And all of us who loved the arts, loved him, too.”
“Some of his courtiers used to perform with him on stage. Did you?”
“I did a bit of acting, yes. And wrote some plays. It was wonderful.” Then the old mischievous Felix reasserted himself. “Mind you, most of us were pretty dreadful. We’d have got pelted with rotten fruit if we hadn’t had the Emperor in the company.”
“Was Nero himself good? I’ve always understood he was nothing special.”
“He could have been brilliant. He had talent, and to start with he made a terrific effort. He wrote songs, he rehearsed them day and night. He did all sorts of exercises to improve his breathing, and strengthen his voice. Then he realised that everyone would applaud him like mad whether he was good or not. So he stopped trying. And then, at the very end, I think he was just plain mad. Power can do that to a man.” He had regained his teasing smile. “It wouldn’t to me, though. Give me imperial power, I’d say thank you very much, and live happy ever after.”
I laughed. “With every other building a theatre, and you and your friends in specially created leading roles! But presumably life changed for you after Nero fell. He’d made too many enemies, and you were in line for revenge from everybody who hated him.”
He shuddered. “Yes. It was a horrible time.
”
I didn’t like to see Felix so upset, even though I doubted if many people would share his regret at the passing of Nero. “But all that is in the past, Felix. Twenty-odd years ago. Surely you could go back to Rome now, if you wanted to?”