The Sacrifice Stone (13 page)

He spoke with utter certainty.

‘But wouldn’t an evil man pretend to be good, in order to enlist your help? Surely they have abundant cunning, these spirits.’

‘No doubt. It’s unreasonable, but I know he’s not evil. Anyway, I’ll know soon. He’s brought me down here, shown me that the places he put into my mind exist in reality — one of them, anyway — and no doubt he’ll tell me in due course what I have to do.’ He sighed again, sounding very weary. ‘Whatever happened that upset him, it happened down here.’

‘How do you know?’

He looked at her. ‘Because his presence is far, far stronger now. Before, at home, he was always vague, shadowy — I could never really make out his face. Now, I see him as clearly as I see you.’

She swallowed. It would have been easier to keep silent, but she found she couldn’t. ‘What does he look like?’

‘He’s tall, broad-shouldered. In the Legion, he was among the biggest. He has dark hair, greying now, and rather deep-set brown eyes. I used to see him in a legionary’s uniform — leather breastplate, helmet, skirt with metal strengthening bars and those heavy-soled sandals that the Romans wore as military boots — but, down here, he’s dressed in a toga. Usually.’ He broke off. ‘That’s about it.’

She couldn’t speak. After a moment he took her hand again. ‘Do you think I’m quite mad?’

‘Because you’re haunted by a Roman who has a mission for you? I ought to, that’s for sure.’

‘But you don’t?’ he asked hopefully.

His tone touched her: putting her other hand on top of their fingers clasped together, she said, ‘Well, if you’re mad, so am I. He frequented the amphitheatre, would you say, and that ghastly place we went to today?’ He nodded.

‘Then there’s no doubt. I’ve seen him too.’

INTERLUDE

ARLES

AD 175

13

I got used to having Theo around very quickly. Someone had taught him how to make himself useful — taught him well, too; whether it was sweeping the yard or buffing leather, he did the task thoroughly, with no scrimped corners.

Callistus, who deigned to come in to clean, launder and cook for me — when he hadn’t anything better to do — was clearly puzzled by the new addition to my household. Reasoning that Theo would only be a temporary guest, I said something vague about him being a distant relation; in retrospect, I wished I’d thought up a better story, since Callistus was a dreadful old gossip and probably spread calumny about me and my new young boy at the first and every subsequent opportunity.

As for Didius — he was the bath servant of a neighbour who also attended a select group of other customers — his eyes lit up at the sight of the boy. ‘
Lovely
upper torso development,’ he remarked as he was massaging my shoulders one night. I knew he wasn’t referring to mine — on arrival he’d spotted Theo splitting kindling on the block by the gates.

‘Keep your mind on the job,’ I told him sternly. ‘You’re not pummelling hard enough.’

‘The youngster’ll be ready for my attentions when he’s filled your log basket. I’m saving myself.’

Didius was incorrigible. But I’d known him long enough to appreciate that most of it was just talk — he had a kind heart. ‘He won’t be using the bathhouse just yet,’ I said quietly. ‘He may take a while to settle down, and I don’t want to suggest anything he isn’t happy about.’

I realized instantly I’d left the way to misunderstanding wide open. Sure enough, Didius plunged off down it. ‘Mmmm,’ he sympathized, ‘it doesn’t do to rush these delicate matters.’

I reached up to remove his hands from my shoulders, sitting up and wrapping the towel round me. Then, for the second time in a week, I reasserted my heterosexual preferences.

Didius was slightly huffy — ‘You really can’t blame me, sir, for getting the wrong idea’ — and I rewarded him with a larger than usual tip.

The glance he gave Theo from under his darkened eyelashes as he left was wistful but resigned.

What I’d said to him about giving Theo time to settle down applied in a wider context than use of the bathhouse. Whisking him away from Arelate had been impulsive, yes, but I’d known what I was doing. I didn’t know much about him, it was true, but thirty years’ experience of men, in the legions and afterwards, had given me the ability to size people up quickly. I wasn’t always right, but this time I was — instinct had told me Theo was a good lad who’d run up against bad luck, and, until he felt like telling me more, that was enough to be getting on with.

For the first week or two I concentrated on feeding him. Gods, how he ate! As the edge came off his extreme hunger, he seemed to remember some table manners, so that sharing a meal with him became more of a pleasure and less of an endurance test. The evening he accepted a small glass of wine, I felt we were getting somewhere.

He’d said he didn’t drink, so it was only to be expected that even a small amount of alcohol would loosen his tongue. Soon I realized that my problem wasn’t going to be encouraging him to talk, but getting him to stop.

He began with a rather hesitant but quite charming little speech. I was touched because, very obviously, he’d prepared it in advance.

‘You have made me very welcome in your house, even though you knew nothing of me except that I was a thief, and I’m very grateful.’ He paused, eyes wide with alarm; I guessed he’d forgotten his words. He gulped, then rushed on: ‘I’m strong and willing to work hard, so if you think of any tasks I can do for you, please tell me.’

His face red, he bent his head and went back to his food.

‘Thank you, Theo. That’s a good suggestion, and I’ll think up some things for you to do.’ We were approaching sensitive ground: I had to get a few things straight between us. ‘Of course, we don’t yet know how long you’ll be here.’

His head shot up again, and I saw panic in his eyes. ‘I’m not going back!’

I had the feeling it had burst out before he’d had time to think. ‘There’s no question of my making you go back, wherever it is you came from. As far as I’m concerned, you’re very welcome here. But I think we should consider some alternatives.’

I hated saying that, especially as it made his open, friendly face close up. ‘Like what?’ he said sullenly.

‘Such as you settling in a new town somewhere and getting a proper job. Such as me making enquiries to see if I can find some reputable farm where you could live and work. That sort of thing.’

He looked brighter. ‘I’d like that. I know about farming.’

I would have lit on that as a clue to his past, except that I’d already realized he had a rural background: no town lad chopped wood like Theo did, and when we’d strolled through the fields he’d known wheat from barley, which was more than most people did.

‘That’s one possibility, then. You’d prefer the country to the town?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded furiously. ‘I didn’t like Arelate at all.’

‘No, it tends to be over-civilized. Or so its inhabitants would have you believe. But you couldn’t go back to Arelate even if you wanted to, since you’re a wanted criminal there.’

Instantly I wished I hadn’t said it: he went white, and I knew the spectre of the amphitheatre still haunted him. ‘They won’t get me here, will they?’ he said nervously.

‘They won’t. Only a few men know I live here, and none of them is likely to come across your fat merchant friend.’ Privately I doubted whether Fatso would have pressed charges in any case, given the strong possibility that he’d been trading outside the law, and he was even more unlikely to now that the person he’d have taken action against had gone missing.

He said suddenly, the amphitheatre obviously still dominating his thoughts, ‘It’s not right, what they do to the animals. Especially the bulls.’ He met my eyes. ‘I know about bulls, they’re my friends.’

Bulls lived out on the delta. Another clue. ‘They’re fine creatures, those wild bulls, I agree,’ I said casually.

‘And the horses.’ His expression had gone dreamy. ‘I could ride before I could walk,’ he said proudly. ‘They used to let me help break in the ponies, because I was light and I didn’t have heavy hands.’ He glanced down at his hands, which were square and short-fingered. ‘I talk to them, see, that way you make an animal your friend and it’s not always trying to hurt you. I talk to all animals.’ Abruptly he broke off.

No wonder he didn’t like Arelate: the amphitheatre confronted you virtually anywhere you went, and an animal-lover like Theo wouldn’t be able to stop his mind running straight to the thought of suffering, bloodshed and slaughter.

I said, careful not to sound too interested, ‘I suppose you kept pets.’

He grinned. ‘Of course. When I was small I made a pet of everything, but Mother —’ This time the abrupt stop was accompanied by obvious emotion: he closed his eyes, and I saw his throat heave as he swallowed.

I wondered if the emotion was because his mother was dead. That might explain why he had run away. But was he ready for an enquiry?

I sat and watched him struggle with his grief. Then I said, ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but if you do, I’ll help you if I can.’

He sat for an instant longer. Then he said, ‘I miss her.’ He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, and a tear rolled down his cheek.

‘Is she dead?’ I asked gently.

‘No!’ His eyes opened and shot to mine. ‘No! She’s not!’

‘I’m sorry. I thought that might be why you were sad.’

‘No.’ He took a deep shuddering breath. ‘I’m sad because I miss her, and because I’m worried about her. She hasn’t got me there any more, and —’

I waited, but he couldn’t bring himself to go on.

‘Is it out of the question for you to go back?’ It was worth a try.

‘I can’t!’ he shouted.

‘All right! I promised to help you, remember?
And
that I wouldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to.’

‘Sorry,’ he muttered. Then, straightening up, he said, ‘She’s a widow. My father was a fisherman, and his boat got lost. There’s this
bastard
called Gaius, he owns our house. He likes Mum, and I think she likes him. But I
hate
him, he only pretends to be nice to me when Mum’s there and the rest of the time he treats me like shit.’

I’d rarely heard such hatred in a grown man’s voice, never mind a child’s. I wanted to sympathize, but it would have undermined the courageous face he was struggling to maintain. It was, I guessed, only the fierce emotion that had stopped him breaking down.

‘In what way?’ I asked calmly. It seemed important that I knew.

‘He gives me work to do that I can’t do well enough, just so he has an excuse to beat me.’

‘He beats you?’

‘I just said so! Look, if you don’t believe me!’ He was up and raising his tunic before I could stop him: across the shoulders and over the thin ribcage were welts, some fresh, some already old scars.

It looked as though this Gaius had been around for a while.

I waited until my own fury had subsided, then reached out and poured more wine into Theo’s glass. Gods, he looked as if he needed it.

‘So, basically you ran away because Gaius was mistreating you, which solves one problem but raises another, in that you’re now concerned about your mother. Is that right?’

He nodded.

There was something else I wanted to know, but asking the question needed delicacy, given his shaky emotional state. ‘Did — You said Gaius pretended to be nice to you when your mother was there. Did she never see through his act?’

What I’d wanted to say was, How in Hades could she have let those beatings go on?

Unfortunately he seemed to know: I hadn’t been subtle enough.

‘Don’t you criticize her! She didn’t know about Gaius
because
I
didn’t
let
her
!’

The thought ran through my head that Theo’s father must have been a decent man, to have produced a son with the inherent chivalrous desire to keep the more cruel facts of life away from the womenfolk.

‘I didn’t mean to criticize her,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m sorry if that’s how it sounded.’

He grunted an acknowledgement. I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t pursue it.

There was a rather awkward silence. I heard my own words ring out in my head: I promised to help you, didn’t I?

Right at that moment, there didn’t seem much I could do.

*

I’d thought things were going quite well — in fact I’d decided on whom to talk to over finding Theo a permanent home and was about to make a first approach — but then he went missing.

It’s a truism that you don’t miss something till you no longer have it, and this seems to apply equally to a person as to your favourite knife. I’d been calmly making plans to send the boy away — admittedly, not far away — but, when at noon I finally went across to his room to get him out of bed and he wasn’t there, for a moment I was hit with a depth of feeling I thought had gone for ever when Marcus died.

Fortunately, I was alone; the sort of search I instantly set off on would have taken some explaining. He’d taken my horse, so I had to hire one; funny that, even when I was forking out a ludicrous amount of money for a sad old relic that didn’t look as if it could make it to the end of the street and back, it didn’t occur to me that my own horse was gone for good. I’d come to trust Theo: I knew I might be in for a huge disappointment, but I was certain he’d gone off for a good reason and that, in time, he’d come back. Accompanied by my horse.

He’d told me he wouldn’t steal again, and I believed him.

Of course, I didn’t know where he’d gone. I had an idea and, after circling the village for a while in a fruitless search for tracks, I turned the old nag’s head south.

I finally admitted it was hopeless midway through the afternoon. If he had indeed gone where I thought — and it was only a hunch — there were innumerable routes he could have taken. And I didn’t even know exactly where he’d have been heading, even if my hunch was right.

Eventually I let the poor old horse do what it had been trying to do all day and turn its head for its stable. Gods, it was the only time I got it up to a grudging canter. I collected my deposit — that crook of a horse dealer tried to make me pay more because I’d got his animal muddy, but I pointed out it was a damned sight cleaner than when I’d picked it up, since I’d banged quite a lot of the caked dirt off it when we stopped for lunch — then I went home.

Theo came in just after midnight. I heard him creeping around in the stable — animal-lover that he was, he rubbed down and watered my horse before seeing to his own needs.

He was filthy, and he looked as if he’d been crying. I think he expected I’d be waiting for him — he came straight up to where I was sitting, in front of a nearly empty jug of wine, and sank down on to the floor. Irrelevantly, I noticed he was sitting on the head of my beautiful mosaic dolphin.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.