It was my turn to look astonished. In the light of everything that had happened, why had that possibility not occurred to
me
? I looked at him weakly. ‘I think we’d better have Hirsus fetch that key.’
Meritus nodded. ‘Hirsus, see to it.’
For a moment I really thought the red-headed priest was going to protest, so unwilling did he look, but in the end he bowed his head and walked reluctantly away, accompanied by one of the servants with a torch.
The sevir turned to me. ‘I did not know whether to open up the shrine again and get the little statue out or not. It would be wanted for the ritual parade, but in the circumstances . . .’ He sighed. ‘I hoped for instructions from the pontifex. You know that he ordered a procession here?’
‘I did. He wanted me to be a flagellant.’ For a moment, I had a foolish hope. Perhaps, now, the procession would be cancelled and I’d be spared. But as soon as I had formed the thought, I knew that it was doomed. With another body at the shrine, the pontifex would think my penance more desirable, not less. And as for the crowds, when they once heard of it . . .! I listened to the rumbling murmurs in the street and shuddered. Was it my imagination, or were they louder now?
The sevir gave a thin smile. ‘Well, we shall see. Let’s hope that your famous reasoning is right, and that this unfortunate man is still alive. Though, I confess, I see no hope of it. Here is Hirsus coming now. I see he has the key.’
The sub-sevir was hurrying towards us, carrying the key on a metal tray. Even then he was handling it gingerly, holding it with the tips of his fingers and away from his body, as if it had been in the fire and was too hot to hold. He was clearly anxious to be rid of it, but Meritus did not take it from him. Instead he signalled for a lighted torch, then, holding the flame above his own towering head, led the way around the altar to the shrine.
We followed him, like a small procession in ourselves: Hirsus – still carrying the key – Scribonius, the other two torch-bearers and myself. The sevir made directly for the door, and the rest of us would have followed him, but Scribonius paused at the water bowl.
‘Forgive me, sevir,’ he said, in his pedantic voice, ‘but we must not neglect the rituals. Particularly now!’
A look of impatience crossed Meritus’s face, but he returned, and handed the torch back to a waiting slave. Hirsus, meanwhile, had plunged his hands into the water as if he could not wait to cleanse himself, but as he brought them out again he gave a wail.
‘Merciful Apollo! What have I done to deserve all this? Look! Look! Oh, Mercury!’ He had fallen to his knees and was sobbing wretchedly, his hands outstretched and real tears coursing down his face.
The rest of us looked at each other uneasily, and then Meritus gave a cry. ‘By Great Jupiter! He’s right! Look at the water there!’ He seized the torch again, and in its light we saw what he had seen. The liquid in the bowl looked merely dark and shadowed, but Hirsus had plunged his hands in it and cupped them to bring water to his face. Streaming between his fingers in the torchlight was a little slippery string of something darkish and congealed, and round it the water was faintly tinged with red.
There was blood in the ritual cleansing bowl again.
Hirsus had turned away, retching, and I thought that he was about to repeat my morning’s desecration of the grove. Meritus ignored him. He motioned for Scribonius to pick up the key which Hirsus had set down beside the water urn, and strode up to the door, still brandishing the torch.
‘Open it,’ he commanded, and we watched while Scribonius fumbled with the complicated lock. At last we heard the levers tumble, and Scribonius turned to look at us. His face in the torchlight was grim and set. ‘Sevir,’ he said desperately, ‘the rituals! We none of us are cleansed.’
‘Stand aside!’ Meritus’s voice was thunder. ‘Stand aside, I tell you. What have you to hide?’
Scribonius looked despairing, but looking at Meritus’s face he saw that it was hopeless to resist. He said helplessly, ‘On your authority, then. So be it, Sevir Meritus. But if there is catastrophe, don’t say I did not warn you. We defy the rituals at our peril.’
He looked back towards the water basin, as if he intended to wash his hands as a sign that he ritually cleansed himself from responsibility, in the way that priests and magistrates sometimes do. But – one could almost see the process in his face – the memory of what was in the bowl dissuaded him. In the end he simply fell back, and allowed Meritus and me to pass.
I admit that my heart was pounding and my throat was dry as the sevir pushed back first one door and then the other. In the interior, the embers of the altar-fire still glowed faintly, but the rest of the shrine was by now completely dark. He raised the torch, and I was almost reassured to see the faint glimmer of something pale and motionless, lying there huddled on the floor. Something covered in a cloth, a lifeless bundle at the altar’s foot. Not a disappearing corpse, this time, at least. I felt a surge of something like relief.
‘Let us have some more light, here!’ Meritus commanded. Despite his fierce attempt at self-control, this ordeal was having its effect on him. His face was a mask of tension and alarm.
But he still held authority, and – although there was a dreadful chill about the place – the two temple slaves came in at once, holding their torches so that we could see. One of the boys, I noticed, was quivering so much that he could hardly hold the flame steady.
He was right to be alarmed. The bloodstained bundle on the floor was sickening. As soon as I could see it clearly in the light, I realised that Hirsus had been right. There was no hope of life. The blood was almost dry by now, great rivers of it, which had run down in all directions from the head, so that only small portions of the pale cloak could still be seen – mockingly pale against that darkening stain. The folds of stuff had collapsed upon themselves, and it was hard to believe that something so meagre and reduced had ever been a man. There was the faint stench of death upon the air, foul and rotten-sweet.
I moved a little closer, like a viper fascinated by the charmer’s pipe. I could make out the outline of the man – there was the shape of the head, the arms, the knees, even a pair of bony feet barely concealed beneath the bloodstained cloak. But there was something unnatural in the angle of the back . . . And that smell . . .?
I glanced at Meritus. He was looking at me fixedly and I knew that the same thought had come to him. He nodded faintly and I bent forward, mastering my terror, and lifted back the dreadful blood-soaked cloth.
This time it was Scribonius who screamed. ‘Merciful Jupiter, have pity on us all!’
Hirsus, at the door, merely moaned and rocked himself. ‘It can’t be true,’ I heard him mutter stupidly. ‘It can’t, it can’t, it can’t! Whatever else, he cannot have come to this!’
Even Meritus gave a strangled cry. ‘Great Mercury!’ and I saw that there was sweat on his brow, while the little slave who had been trembling before simply dropped his torch and fled whimpering into the night, careless of the threat of fire or of the overseer’s lash.
I picked up the brand, almost without conscious thought, and lifted it aloft as if more light could somehow alter the truth of what I saw.
Under the bloodstained cloak there was nothing but a pile of bones, some of them with scraps of rotting flesh attached. Yet the shape of the once-living man was there – as if some supernatural power had come and stripped away blood and sinew where he lay.
How long we might have stood there, gazing stupidly at the horror on the floor, I cannot say, but we were interrupted by a sudden noise. A thunderous knocking sound, a bellow, shouts, and then – amazingly – a hush. Even the murmur of the crowd had ceased.
Meritus shot me a glance. ‘Listen!’ But we had no need of his instruction to make us strain our ears. Even Scribonius had ceased his chant to hear.
Fresh noises now. The clank of hobnails on the temple court, the measured tread of marching feet. I knew, with a sudden lifting of the heart, what it meant. Junio and the soldiers had arrived! Only a contingent of armed guard could have brought about that immediate compliance from the crowd, and gained such instant admittance from the slaves who held the gate.
As I looked out through the open doorway of the shrine they came into sight – a dozen soldiers under the command of a small, stocky man. He seemed to have forsworn torches and had marched them in darkness across the court, and was now drawing them up into a small formation, three abreast, beside the outer altar. The light of our torches glinted on their armour, on their drawn swords, and on the helmet, with the sideways plume, of the centurion in charge.
He finished barking his commands and stumped to the doorway of the shrine. But there he stopped. The army are, by virtue of their oath, obliged to worship the Imperial gods, and he seemed to feel that some gesture of respect was needed. Rather awkwardly, he pulled off his helmet, revealing a short-cropped head and swarthy face.
‘Well then,’ he said, in the deep guttural Latin that betrayed his Rhineland origins, ‘what have we here? Which of you is Libertus?’
Hirsus found his voice again, and pointed at me triumphantly. ‘That’s him!’ he cried in a high, cracked tone, as if the appearance of the guard had given him sudden confidence. ‘He’s the one who’s brought all this about! Do your duty, officer. He has disturbed the safety of the state – brought down the anger of the gods – and now the crowds are calling for his death. Under the old laws of popular acclaim, he must be tried before the people’s court, or at least brought before the magistrates.’ He looked about him, as if pleased by his own display of bravery.
‘I have orders from Marcus Septimus to report to you, citizen!’ The officer took a step towards me and in doing so appeared to see, for the first time, the raddled pile of bones on the floor. He looked aghast. ‘Dear Jupiter. What in Dis is going on here? A dead body at the temple, I was told. Surely, by all the gods in Gaul, this can’t be it?’
‘It is, it is!’ That was Hirsus again, babbling now as if he could not stop. ‘This is immortal vengeance, officer. There was a body here – a proper body, not this heap of bones. I saw it with my own eyes, earlier. And so did both these other seviri here. And now see what the gods have done to it.’
The centurion paled. He backed away a little, and I saw his fingers tighten on his sword-hilt. ‘Is this true?’ He rounded on the priests. ‘You saw it, both of you?’
‘Not clearly.’ Only a tremor in Meritus’s voice betrayed the effort of his self-control.
Scribonius had lost some of his dry pedantic drawl. ‘I did. I saw it,’ he said urgently. ‘Not the whole body, just a huddled cloak – but it was a body – I could see the leg. And the ankles underneath the robe.’
I looked at him, appalled. If that was true . . .!
‘Sorcery!’ The centurion let go of his sword and backed away. This is outside my powers, his expression said, as clearly as if he’d uttered the words. ‘Did anybody else see anything?’
‘I did, master!’ That was Junio’s voice.
I looked over and saw him for the first time, standing in the darkness at the entrance to the shrine, behind Hirsus and the smaller of the slaves. He could have come no further if he’d tried. There was not room in the little temple for us all.
‘Junio!’
They stood back then, to make room for him, and he made his way forward, further into the shrine. Even then he hung back at the door, looking embarrassed and uncomfortable – this was not a place where freemen often came, much less humble pavement-makers’ slaves. And only then as wretched penitents, come to present their prayers and offerings. No wonder Junio looked hesitant.
‘Well?’ the centurion demanded, more cocksure now that he had someone whom he could safely bully. He seized Junio by the arm and pushed him forward so roughly that he fell on his knees beside the macabre thing on the floor.
Junio looked from the pile of bones to me. ‘It is as I told you earlier, master – there was a dead body here at the temple. That is all I know. As soon as I discovered it I came to find you, and you sent me into the town to fetch the guard.’
The centurion aimed a half-hearted kick at him. ‘Is that the man you saw? That’s what we want to know. Speak up, slave, or we’ll find ways of making you.’
I could see Junio thinking how best to answer this. The wrong answer, or anything that could be construed as blasphemy, could quickly have him whipped, and with the crowd baying for my own imprisonment there was little I could do to protect him.
‘It is impossible to know,’ he said at last. ‘This could be anyone, if the gods have had a hand in it. But the body that I saw didn’t look like this. And it wasn’t wearing a cloak, either. It looked more like – I don’t know – a priest. And if it’s the same body, I don’t know what it’s doing here. It was outside, when I saw it – lying behind the temple in the grove!’
‘Nonsense!’ Hirsus’s voice had become a squeak. ‘This is some story you have devised, to save your wretched skin. And your master’s too, no doubt. I must have been in the grove immediately before you – you followed me into the high priest’s house – and I saw nothing.’ Everyone was staring at him, and his pale face flushed. ‘Ask Marcus Septimus,’ he said. ‘Ask the high priest, ask anyone.’ He looked at me with loathing in his eyes. ‘Ask this citizen, he was there!’
‘It’s true that I was in the high priest’s house,’ I said. ‘And Junio followed Hirsus in. But if my slave says that there was something in the grove, then I believe him.’
‘Then he must have put it there himself!’ Hirsus retorted. ‘What was he doing in the temple court at all? I didn’t see him there.’
‘Nor did I,’ said Meritus thoughtfully.
‘I thought I saw someone in the grove,’ Scribonius supplied. ‘After Hirsus had found the body here. When you had gone with the attendant, sevir, to get the key and lock the shrine. I thought nothing of it until now – just supposed that it was one of the temple slaves going over by the back path to the pontifex. They were scurrying everywhere, at the time – taking messages about the procession that he’d ordered. But that person was moving, so it couldn’t have been the body that Libertus’s servant saw – unless, of course, he murdered him himself.’