Black Salamander (21 page)

‘This way,’ Arcas said puffing.

And now they clip-clopped up the exposed grey rock, Arcas leading the way with a confidence which even Theo couldn’t help admire. Grudgingly he looked at Orbilio, and felt it would have been better, this escape, just him and the Silver Fox and Hanno. Why couldn’t he have just led the bloody civilians to the overhang? Not him, he has to be a bloody hero, doesn’t he?

Hours later, when they were sure they’d given their followers the slip, they circled back to where the convoy huddled in admirable silence, despite the passage of so much time.

‘How did they know?’ Maria demanded, gaping at the
tatters of her ruined wardrobe. ‘How did they know to come after us?’

But Arcas was exhausted after his ride and his reply was both in Sequani and terse to the point of rudeness as he flopped down on his back. It was left to Junius to translate.

‘He said that news of thirty-three Roman citizens wandering in the Spider’s little onion patch soon gets around.’

Maria shot the guide a venomous glare. ‘He said something else as well.’ No fooling her.

‘I did indeed,’ Arcas replied dryly, his eyes still shut. ‘I said these men were after trophies, but may Dis help them when they take your head, madam, the bloody tongue will keep on wagging. Now quit your prattle, the lot of you. If we’re to avoid ending up as keepsakes on a shelf, I need to think.’

*

As moonlight showed silver through the scudding clouds, the murderer thought, ‘This is going better than I hoped.’

True there had been times this afternoon when naked fear outweighed the prospect of a new Republic and the riches that went with it, but everyone’s familiar with the saying: no pain, no gain. How very true. To achieve one’s ambitions, sacrifices must be made—although when that bunch of savages came charging down this afternoon, even Galba’s agent had wondered whether they might not end up the sacrifice themselves.

However, there’s another saying, isn’t there? All’s well that ends well—and goddammit, if this doesn’t prove to the rebel chieftains that the diversion wasn’t for real, then Nestor’s killer would eat the Silver Fox’s roped gold torque.

In fact, I owe that white-haired woodsman a lot, the agent thought, allowing a warm glow of satisfaction to wash over. More than he’ll ever know.

In fact, Arcas’s first action, upon recovering his breath, had been to lead the frightened band of travellers away from the shelter of the overhang because they needed water, he said, especially the horses, and this limestone rock was like a leaky skillet. Water pours out everywhere, provided you know where to look—and Arcas did, of course. He’d led them to this waterfall, a wondrous natural beauty where an underground river erupted from a cave at the foot of a vertical cliff face, its gushing torrent at least six paces across. The water fell in a breathtaking triple cascade, settling in a deep green pool at the bottom, at which point it danced off down the valley in a series of foaming white rapids.

The sight took everybody’s breath away, and in this gently wooded canyon where birds sang and mayflies trapped the light on rainbow-coloured wings, the terror of their brush with the headhunters faded. They drank, they bathed, they feasted on smoked tongue and hunks of cheese, they sang, they laughed. They were glad to be alive.

Bar the brick-maker, of course. Reduced to a wreck of a man, he couldn’t stop crying. His whole body shook, he mumbled as though delirious and his wife, beside herself with worry, couldn’t—wouldn’t—be comforted. For them, the Sequani war band was the final straw.

But we all have to live, and after the terrors of this
afternoon, the party only had so many resources to spare. Variously they offered sympathy, support, tried to ease them, tease them out of it—but you have to see a spark of response, no matter how faint. Tired, irritated, weary by turn, they left the unhappy couple to it and tacitly agreed that a good night’s sleep might do the trick.

High above, between the fast-moving clouds, stars twinkled, teased, then disappeared, and with the waterfall hissing just a hundred yards away (not too close, Arcas warned, wild animals come here to drink) the agent’s eyelids closed in happiness. Around the mountain, all manner of barks and cries filled the warm night air. Foxes, wolves, lynx, bears, snarling out their territories, protecting their young. But the agent found them comforting. These sounds comprised the agent’s alibi. Testimony of further delay. As indeed would be the garbled reports of the convoy when they finally arrived in Vesontio. Sighing deeply before drifting into sleep, the agent reflected that everything was indeed running
very
smoothly.

XXI

‘What will you do with the money you make?’

‘Money?’ The glass-blower jumped from half-asleep to wide awake. ‘What money? I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Wild eyes jerked round the camp, but few were awake. The hour was still very early.

‘From the contracts we’ll procure in Vesontio.’ The slipper-maker was sitting up, arms locked around his knees.

‘Oh.’ The glass-blower visibly relaxed. ‘That.’

‘We’ll be famous after this little episode,’ the slipper-maker said.

‘Notorious more like.’ The glass-blower laughed, knuckling the sleep from his eyes.

‘No, no. Once word trickles round about our exploits, people will come up to me and say, “weren’t you the slipper-maker who fought off a band of headhunters?” and one thing will lead to another, and then it’ll be “oh, these are the slippers made by that chap who fought off the headhunters, you know” until everyone in Vesontio will want a pair to tell their friends about.’

‘You might have a point,’ the glass-blower said thoughtfully. ‘In which case, I’d…I’d buy me a litter hung in yellow drapes, that’s what I’d do first. Let people
see they’re dealing with a man of substance. Mind, Volso
won’t net much trade, will he, poor sod? I mean, who’d consult an astrologer who couldn’t see his own misfortune coming?’

‘I heard that,’ Volso growled, throwing off his makeshift blanket. ‘Croesus, man, how many times do I have to explain I’m not a bloody soothsayer, no cross-my-palm-with-silver merchant! Astrology is long-term planning, studying the stars to map out future options. It’s a science, not some bloody magic trick.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ In the glass-blower’s opinion, fortunetellers were all the same. They put out a load of guff and charged you through the nostrils for the privilege. ‘What about you, Clemens?’ The little tub of a priest was stirring under the crab apple, scratching his belly and flattening what was left of his hair. ‘Do you feel this will help your cause?’

‘Undoubtedly.’ Abandoning his toilette, he puffed up like a cobra. ‘You see, because Marcus has the necessary contacts and his boss’s brother wants the job,’ Clemens’s tongue flickered round his lips, ‘he had already boned up on Jupiter’s Priest, and has tipped me a few of the wrinkles. I tell you, folks, any one of you who’s in Rome for the games in September will see me at the head of the inaugural procession.’

‘You sound pretty damn confident,’ Volso said.

‘I am, I am.’ Clemens almost bounced on the spot. ‘Test me, ask me anything,’ he urged. ‘Come on, anything at all—ask me about the bed that I must sleep on, the sacred oracles, the relics. I know every taboo on barbering’—he shot a grateful glance at the mosaic artist, slumbering peacefully on a bed of fragrant pine needles—‘my newly cut hair must be buried beneath a fruit-bearing tree, my—’

‘All right, all right,’ the cadaverous astrologer said, and everyone was grateful to him for shutting Clemens up. ‘But haven’t you forgotten something, Clemens? Like the fact you need a
wife,
for instance?’

Sniggering broke out among the party, especially among the women who couldn’t see Clemens’s podgy little fingers lighting any female fire.

‘That’s already in hand.’ Clemens sniffed. ‘Arranged through her father before I left Rome.’ He stood up, turned to the party, his hair still spiked and tousled, and drew himself up to his full height. Which wasn’t very far. ‘May I remind you this post is the most prestigious in the whole collegiate,’ he said. ‘It’s a role I covet more than life itself, and what’s more, one I intend to fill.’ His eyes travelled round the group, but found not the respect and admiration they expected to see shining back at him, they found themselves staring into doubt. Worse, patronizing doubt! ‘I
will
be Jupiter’s Priest,’ he blurted, in the manner of a child whose spinning top had just been whisked off him in mid-whizz. ‘You wait.’

There-there-of-course-it-will smiles settled upon the faces of his audience and tears of frustration welled up.

‘I will. I’ve been assured on the highest authority,’ Clemens spluttered, his chubby cheeks aflame, ‘I have the dowry to prove it.’ Then, with a gasp, as though he’d said too much, he spun away, his sandals stomping down the track, his long white robe billowing behind him.

‘Anyone else need cheering up?’ quipped the slipper-maker. ‘Our astrologer friend is just the chappie to lift a body’s spirits.’

‘How was I supposed to know he felt so prickly about it?’ Volso snapped. ‘Gemma.’ Good idea. Change the subject! ‘How are your parents this morning?’

‘Now you mention it, I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘Dex and Maria took me under their wing last night, to give me a bit of a breather.’

‘Dexter,’ corrected Maria. ‘His name is Dexter, if you don’t mind.’

‘He’ll be will be all right, won’t he? My dad?’ But it was to neither Volso nor Maria that she addressed her concern. It was to the bookbinder.

‘Of course he will,’ Dexter gently reassured her, ‘providing you don’t expect miracles, Gemma. Your father’s had a breakdown, these things take time to correct and you have to be prepared to be patient.’

She summoned up a thin and grateful smile, and he ruffled her hair. Maria’s eyes rolled heavenward.

‘Has anyone been at my laudanum?’ Titus said, tipping the contents of his satchel over his outspread cloak and rummaging a finger through the drawstring sacks.

‘Dexter doesn’t require flashy gimmicks to sell his skills,’ Maria said, fixing the spice merchant with a glare. ‘Quality will out!’ She turned to Iliona, who was coiling her long, dark ringlets round her long, dark fingers. ‘I could have married the son of a senator, you know. Of course, when I say son, the boy was actually a by-blow, not really what I wanted to introduce into the family, even though he was patrician on his father’s side—’

‘You haven’t seen it, have you?’ Titus asked his wife, who leapt at the chance to help him look for his missing lumps of gum. ‘Now the effects are wearing off, the injured men are jumpy, and I don’t like the look of that ankle. It should have healed better than that, I fear an infection’s set in.’

‘The advocate I could have married had a limp,’ Maria said, sniffing some of the resins. ‘Not that I’d consider for one second a husband with a disability, but he’s done frightfully well for himself, I gather. Grand house on the Palatine, hundreds of slaves and I think, yes,
he
has a litter with yellow drapes,’ she told the glass-blower. ‘Or are they green?’

Claudia, who during this whole interchange had pretended to remain asleep, could stand it no longer and slunk off for an early morning dip. The pool at the foot of the cascade should look wonderful this morning, a rich opalescent green, foaming white where the waters fell, but quiescent and enticing where the basin levelled out to paint reflections of the aspens and the firs, the glorious yellow flag irises and the silent, unmoving spectre of the heron at the margins. The sky was mottled with white cloud, but the blue background was a distinct improvement on the past few days, and maybe the sun could be coaxed out for a little while today. Maybe if someone pointed out to him that this was, after all, July? She glanced back over her shoulder. Most of the party, exhausted from both the efforts of escaping the headhunting Sequani and the subsequent celebration of the fact that they were still alive, slumbered on, or, if they’d woken up to Maria’s dulcet tones, were careful to maintain the pretence of sleep. Even Drusilla merely let out a faint miaow when Claudia disturbed her.

Arcas, as always, maintained his distance. Nevertheless it came as a surprise when she ran across him on her way to the waterfall. He had lit himself a small fire and was hunkered over it, toasting cheese on a stick.

‘The pool,’ he said, noting her towel, ‘is that way.’

Damn! Yet it was so easy to get lost, the woods, the rivers, these wretched canyons all looked the same, and noises were deceptive here, she found. Like the hoot of an owl, you could never quite place the sound of running water…

About to retrace her steps, Claudia heard a woman say, ‘You surprised me yesterday.’ Incredibly, the voice appeared to be hers.

‘Really?’ Arcas sliced off the melting drips with his knife and held it out to her.

The warm cheese was delicious on her tongue. ‘I thought you’d be enrolling in the Spider’s secret army.’

‘I am a huntsman, not a warrior,’ he replied, his blue eyes raking her curves as she crouched down beside him.

‘Silly me, what made me think you were,’ she said, leaning her elbow on his quiver, bow and sword.

A ghost of a smile softened the stern line of his jaw. He dipped the point of his knife in a cup, speared a dried boletus which had been soaking in beer and covered it with the dripping melted cheese.