Marcus fitted the key to the lock and the door swung open. The shrine was a tiny building, no more than a few feet square. There was a small silver statuette of Augustus in a niche, a life-size bronze statue of Commodus in an alcove at the back, and a small marble altar in the centre. Nothing else.
Of the body of a
legatus
there was no sign whatever.
There was a stunned silence.
Marcus whirled around. ‘What is the meaning of this disgrace,’ he demanded, but Meritus was staring at the altar and shaking his head in disbelief. Astonishment seemed actually to have diminished him in stature.
‘Excellence,’ he stammered, ‘this is impossible. I left him here and locked the door myself. I spoke to you, Trinunculus, as soon as I came out.’
Trinunculus nodded. ‘That is so, Excellence. I was attending at the door.’ He turned to Marcus. ‘The sevir sent me off to find a temple slave, while he went to find the Priest of Jupiter.’
‘So for a few moments there was no one at the shrine?’ my patron said, looking at me with the triumphant air of a viper-tamer producing an unexpected snake from his sleeve.
Trinunculus looked as though his face would crumple. ‘On the contrary, Excellence, Hirsus and Scribonius were outside all the time. Oh, by all the deities . . .’
The sevir quelled him with a look.
‘Hirsus and Scribonius . . .?’ Marcus asked.
‘My two assistant Imperial priests,’ Meritus explained, with some return to his previous confident manner. ‘They were already standing by, preparing the noontime sacrifice. It is the custom to offer a small bird, or something similar, but today there was to be a bigger sacrifice, because the auguries were to be read.’
‘Ah yes, of course, the auguries!’ Marcus let his disapproval show.
‘Permit me, Excellence,’ the older of the other priests piped up. He was a small, thin man with a rim of greying hair – he seemed half the size and twice the age of Meritus. ‘The senior sevir is permitted to read the entrails in the temple, under certain circumstances laid down in the laws. And certainly I felt that it was justified today. Because of that dreadful sound we heard this morning – I see now it was an omen of this death. But of course, we didn’t know that at the time.’ His Latin had the prim precision of a scholar.
Marcus glared him. ‘And who are you?’
‘I am Scribonius, Mightiness. Auxiliary sevir at this shrine. And I assure you there was no impropriety. We are shortly expecting the visit of a very senior priest and it was . . .’
Marcus brushed all this aside. ‘So you were in the courtyard all the time?’
Scribonius nodded. ‘Naturally, Excellence. There is much to do before a sacrifice. It is all laid down strictly in the ritual. All of the implements to be cleaned and blessed. Dry herbs and kindling for the offering – it would be terribly inauspicious if anything was out of order.’ In the circumstances that sounded unfortunate, and he tailed off helplessly.
Marcus was still frowning. ‘And is there no other entrance to the shrine?’ It was an obvious question. Almost every temple has a discreet door at the back, for the use of the priests. Once through that, of course, the body might be smuggled out though the ‘Emperor’s Entrance’. It would be very risky – there were people in the courtyard and in the high priest’s house – but it was at least an explanation.
Meritus’s face cleared. ‘Of course. There
is
a small door there, behind the statue of the Emperor, though it has never been used in my experience. That is why the image I donated was placed in front of it.’ He crossed to the life-size statue as he spoke, and then stopped, frowning. ‘But the door is still fastened from the inner side – see for yourself, Excellence.’
My patron signalled for me to confirm his words, but of course the priest was right. The little door was fastened by a heavy wooden bolt, and it was clearly drawn across. I tried to open it, but the bolt was stiff. ‘I don’t think anyone went this way, Excellence,’ I said. ‘It couldn’t have been bolted from outside, anyway.’
‘In that case . . .’ Meritus stopped, and shook his head. ‘I still cannot believe it. It is impossible – simply impossible – that anyone could have moved that body out of here. I locked the other door myself, in full sight of everyone, and there has been someone at the outer altar ever since.’ He raised his huge hands helplessly.
I looked around the little shrine, but I found no inspiration there either. There was no other way out that I could see. There were window spaces, of course, but windows in Roman temples are designed to let out sacrificial smoke rather than admit the light – mysterious semi-darkness is part of the atmosphere – and these windows were no exception. They were narrow slits, high up under the eaves and very small. A committed young acrobat might just have manoeuvred himself through those apertures, but I could not imagine anyone else doing it – especially not someone carrying a corpse with him.
The other priest, who had not spoken yet – a nervous-looking man with a pale face and a shock of reddish hair – suddenly let out an anguished wail. ‘It is a judgement, a judgement from the gods. First that appalling moaning sound this morning, and now this. We are all cursed, all of us. Oh, blest divinities, have mercy on us all!’ He moved past us to the altar, flung himself to his knees and began sobbing hysterically.
‘Be quiet, Hirsus!’ Meritus was sharp. ‘If we have angered the gods we must make a proper propitiation. Whatever has happened, it is clearly no ordinary matter. You are unlikely to help by making an exhibition of yourself – and now see. You have sullied your sacrificial robes.’
Hirsus glanced down at himself in distress. It was true – in flinging himself to his knees in that fashion, he had knelt in something that I should have seen before, a dark stain in the shadows at the altar’s foot. He touched the place with an exploring hand, and the fingers came away dark with a red and sticky substance.
Hirsus gave a helpless sob. ‘Now I will have to purify myself again.’ He staggered back towards the entrance, drunk with terror, and I heard him splashing himself with the water from the basin I had seen.
Marcus looked at me uneasily. Disappearing bodies were one thing, but that blood was real enough.
Meritus was clearly thinking the same thing. ‘So there was a body here,’ he said slowly. We must have all looked startled, because he hurried on. ‘A real body, not merely the illusion of one. I was beginning to wonder, for a moment, if I had been afforded a vision. But the corpse
was
here, just as I thought it was.’ He seemed slightly relieved by this conclusion.
The balding priest, the one they called Scribonius, piped up again. ‘This is the result of taking short-cuts with the rites – I told Hirsus we should have started the prayers again after he fumbled and dropped the sacrificial knife. But he wouldn’t pay attention. And now see what has happened. The next thing we know there will be comets in the sky – it’s all attested in the manuscripts.’ He had few teeth, but his thin lips smiled with a kind of ghoulish satisfaction at his predictions having proved correct.
‘This can’t be all Hirsus’s fault,’ Trinunculus put in, with unexpected decisiveness. ‘There was that dreadful noise as well. Perhaps he couldn’t help dropping the knife – that is a kind of omen in itself. Oh, Great Jupiter preserve us. This must all be some kind of portent. Something serious. And at this shrine, too, among all the others. The priestly college warned of this sort of thing. Do you think it is a threat of some kind to the Emperor?’ He hesitated. ‘Should we send a warning to His Imperial Mightiness?’
There was a terrible pause. All of us, I imagine, were thinking the same thing. If this really was a dreadful warning from the gods – and even I could think of no other rational explanation – then clearly Commodus should be told. But warned of what? That his fears of conspiracy were justified? Or that his lifestyle – cruelty, opulence, lechery and debauchery – had attracted the anger of his fellow gods? Whatever the message, it would be a brave man who carried it to Rome. And a very dead one, shortly afterwards. Commodus has a reputation for dealing briskly with bringers of unwelcome messages.
It was Meritus who broke the silence. ‘Surely, the chief priest told me only this morning that there was an ambassador visiting Britainnia? Perhaps he could . . .’
Marcus’s face cleared. ‘Of course! Fabius Marcellus! The very man. We should send word to him at once. Indeed, he is on his way here at this moment.’
Meritus frowned. ‘The body that I saw was an imperial legate,’ he said slowly. ‘That was clear from his seals and documents. If this was an omen . . .’
‘Then he must be stopped,’ Trinunculus finished. ‘That’s the meaning of the portent, surely! If the ambassador comes here, he will die. You are right, sevir, he must be warned at once.’
There was an almost audible sigh of relief from everyone at this more convenient interpretation. Marcus said, ‘Of course!’ Meritus looked as if a load had lifted from his head, and even Scribonius almost managed a smile. Hirsus, who had rejoined us, dripping from his ablutions, cried ‘Thank Hercules!’ in a dramatic tone and threw himself to his knees before the altar again, promising offerings to the deity if the Emperor was spared. (Ironic, I thought, to offer a god sacrifices for preserving himself.)
After a moment Hirsus got to his feet. He had sullied his robe again, I noticed. I looked at Marcus. He was discussing with the sevir ways of sending a warning message to Ambassador Fabius, and seemed at ease again, but I could not share his evident relief. Interpretation of the ‘sign’ did not make the disappearing body any less a mystery. I bent to look more closely at that sticky stain – and as I did so my hand knocked something shiny at the base of the altar. I picked it up. It was a ring, a heavy seal-ring with the imperial insignia blazoned on it. A little lopsided, but a handsome thing. The sort of ring an ambassador might wear.
I got slowly to my feet, and held my find out for everyone to see.
There was a little pause. Then Meritus took the ring from me. ‘I think, Excellence, with your permission, the high priest should see this.’
Marcus nodded. ‘I will take it to him. And we can make arrangements for the message to be sent to Fabius, from both of us.’
‘I should be grateful,’ Meritus returned. ‘I should attend to purifying the shrine. Finding a dead man here was bad enough, but then to touch his blood and then his ring! The omens for the shrine are terrible. We must cleanse ourselves, and it, at once. The four elements, you think, Scribonius?’
The thin priest nodded. ‘The four elements at least, sevir.’
‘Very well. Salt, Hirsus, and herbs – at once. And purify yourself again before you go. You, Scribonius, fetch a temple slave, since this floor must be scrubbed and cleansed by fire. Then you can purify the place with incense smoke. And you, Excellence, will you join us for the sacrifice?’
To my relief my patron shook his head. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that the high priest should hear of this at once. He should have finished the noonday sacrifice by now. We will leave you to your ablutions. Trinunculus here will show me where to go.’
The sevir nodded. ‘As you please, Excellence. Though, I think, a little more ash upon your forehead as you leave?’ He led the way to the outer altar, and supervised Trinunculus as he scooped up a handful of the still-warm dust and rubbed it reverently on our hair and faces. ‘I would anoint you myself, only I have touched the ring, you know, and Scribonius would declare my hands unclean.’ As we left him he was plunging the offending hand into the water jar.
Trinunculus led the way, back across the courtyard to the central temple. ‘I still don’t understand,’ he said, as we approached the podium and climbed the steps towards the inner cell, ‘what can have happened to the body.’
I nodded. I had been thinking much the same thing. ‘Always supposing,’ I said suddenly, ‘that it was a corpse at all.’
The others were looking at me in astonishment.
I was thinking aloud. ‘Because a man is lying in blood, it does not follow that the blood is his – especially in a place like this, where sacrificial animals are offered every day. And I noticed myself how extraordinarily chill the water was. If a man wanted to make himself seem cold . . .’
‘Is there,’ Marcus said, ‘anywhere in there a man could hide?’
Trinunculus looked baffled for a moment. Then he smiled. ‘That statue of the Emperor, perhaps. I believe it’s hollow. Meritus would know – he gave it to the temple when he was appointed. But even if it were, how could a man possibly get into it? It would have to come apart somehow.’
‘Perhaps it does,’ Marcus said. ‘Libertus, go and have a look.’
I gulped. Walking into the priests’ section of the temple was one thing. Manhandling a statue of a god – even a god I did not personally believe in – was quite another. Especially when someone was already dead. I considered begging to be spared the honour, but then I looked at my patron’s face. I swallowed hard and took a reluctant step towards the grove.
And as I did so there emerged – it seemed from the very columns around us – a high, unearthly, throbbing wail. A terrible inhuman sound that made my blood run cold.
I thought of men in torment, and was suddenly reminded – for no reason that I could explain – of the legend of that defiant old Icenian in the arena, screaming his last among the ravening dogs, and of his curse on all things sent from Rome. All things sent from Rome . . .
The sound faded, quivered, rose to a climax and died again.
Marcus or no Marcus, I turned tail and fled back towards the entrance gates. Even then, when I arrived at the safety of the veranda, my patron was there before me, with Trinunculus hard at his heels. The poor little slave boy, whom we had left there waiting our return, had thrown himself to his knees with my towel over his head, and was gibbering with fright.
And so, I must admit, was I.
Trinunculus was the first to recover his composure. He took a long slow breath, settled his novice’s wreath more firmly on his head (it had fallen sideways in his hurry), and said with as much priestly dignity as he could muster, ‘That was the peculiar sound we told you about, Excellence. I wonder what trouble it foretells this time.’