The Song of the Gladiator (22 page)

 

Claudia picked up a new stylus, drew a line and made a further entry:

 

Claudia closed her eyes. Logic dictated a connection, she thought, but where was the evidence?

 

Claudia put the stylus down and leaned back, stretching out her legs to ease the cramp. She recalled the fierce discussion in the council chamber after the prisoners had been removed. Constantine had been furious that his mother had taken full responsibility for defending the villa. He had been supported by his officers, and even Rufinus had nodded in agreement. Helena, however, had remained calm and composed, arguing that the attack, by definition, was secret, composed of a modest force which, if surprised, could be defeated. The attackers would have had to move through woodland, during the dead of night. Such conditions were most favourable to her Germans. Finally, and on this point Helena would not concede, there was a traitor in the villa. If the attackers had been warned, they would have withdrawn and waited for another day. As it was, she had frustrated the attack and sent a powerful reply to Licinius. Sharp discussion had followed, but Helena had won the day.

Constantine then raised a question which had also concerned Claudia. If the House of Mourning had been fired by the traitor who had lit the other beacon lights, who was missing from the villa that night? Gaius Tullius went to check, returning sometime later, whilst Helena was still arguing with her son, to report that no one had left, although he could not be certain as most of the guards on picket duty had been massacred during the assault.

Claudia’s stylus skimmed across the piece of parchment. She sanded it and moved to a new piece. Outside she could hear voices and realised the villa was stirring. She got up and stretched, then crouched back into the corner, making herself comfortable. She picked up the writing tray and wrote the final heading.

 

Claudia chewed on her lip. In a few days’ time Murranus would fight Spicerius, and if victorious face Meleager. She wrote down that fateful name and scored a line beneath it time and time again. She could feel a surge of emotion, not so much hot and angry, more cold and calculating. She felt like a swordsman studying an opponent, watching for his weakness, wondering where to strike. She threw the stylus down to distract herself, and tried to review what she had written, but she kept going back to that dreadful meeting. Had Meleager recognised her? Rufinus said he had been in the villa some time. Was it he who had attacked her? Drawn that crude painting on the wall?

Claudia suddenly found it difficult to breathe, as if someone was pressing on her chest. She got to her feet, rolled the pieces of parchment into a scroll and squeezed them into the square wallet on her belt. She left the chamber to walk the corridor. She passed one of the guards and paused, thinking about the oil lamp that had been thrown into her room. Who was allowed into the imperial quarters? A slave hurried by carrying two jugs of water; such individuals were let through without a second glance. Was that what her attacker had done? Pretended to be a servant or slave? She continued walking and found herself in the peristyle garden. The sun was beginning to rise, drying the paving stones, flooding that beautiful garden with light which glimmered in the pool and reflected on the marble pillars. The flowerbeds seemed to come to life in a dazzle of colour, the birdsong was clear from the bushes and shrubs around the garden. Claudia found a dry seat and sat down facing the rising sun. She half closed her eyes, drinking in the beauty.

‘Good morning, Claudia.’ She started as Athanasius, his face heavy with sleep, sat down beside her. ‘I’m sorry if I made you jump. I rose early. All this excitement from last night. What happened?’

Claudia told him about the attack, keeping the details as vague as possible. Athanasius, hitching his robe around his shoulders, listened with a half-smile as he realised she wouldn’t tell him much.

‘I’m searching for Septimus,’ he said when she had finished. ‘I haven’t seen him at all. I’m a little worried. Where could he be?’

Claudia kept silent; she really wanted to be alone.

‘Oh, sometimes he wanders off.’ Athanasius nudged her playfully. ‘He too likes to be alone. What a beautiful place. I remember the debate here and, afterwards, you talking to that slave.’

Claudia stiffened.

‘You know the one.’ Athanasius kept his voice level. ‘He is responsible for the House of Mourning. Last night, at the supper party, I tried to make friends with Justin and, to be fair, he tried to do the same. He said something very curious about that slave . . .’

‘Narcissus?’

‘Ah, yes, Narcissus. Justin believed he’d seen him before, in Capua, a slave of a rather large Christian family. The head of the house was a funeral manager. Justin was sure Narcissus worked for him.’

Claudia tried to suppress her shiver.

‘And there’s something else. The afternoon Dionysius died—’

‘Murdered,’ Claudia retorted, ‘Dionysius was murdered.’

‘Ah yes, so he was. Well, I went down to the House of Mourning. The windows on either side were shuttered whilst the door was locked from the inside. In the Christian tradition, it is a just and holy thing to pray for the dead. I wanted to kneel by Dionysius’s corpse and recite a few prayers. I was surprised the door was locked, so I knocked and knocked until my knuckles turned sore. Eventually the door opened, and Narcissus stood there looking very guilty. He claimed to have fallen asleep. I told him to stand aside and went in. I glanced around, but there was nothing amiss. The old man lay wrapped in his sacking, Dionysius was stretched out on his slab like a piece of meat. Now there was something about that chamber . . . I have been to Egypt, Claudia, I visited the Necropolis on the West Bank of the Nile. I’ve been to their embalmers’ shops; that’s what it smelled like.’

‘Did you notice anything else?’

Athanasius closed his eyes. ‘A large chest in the far corner, nothing else. After I’d finished my prayers, I went out.’

‘Did you notice anything untoward? Please, Athanasius, think.’

‘Just the corpses. Dionysius looked dreadful, mouth gaping, eyes half open. He looked as if he’d been soaked in blood. One thing I did notice, the ropes and gag the killer had used were piled on the floor just beneath the slab. When Justin was trying to be friendly last night, I told him how I’d been to the House of Mourning to pay my respects, and how the fire had had nothing to do with me. Justin didn’t accept that; however, he did say that he too had gone down there to pray. This time the House of Mourning was locked from the outside and the slave Narcissus was sleeping under a sycamore tree, a beer jug next to him. Justin also demanded to see the corpse; Narcissus wasn’t very pleasant about it.’

Athanasius got to his feet.

‘Do you remember the poems of Juvenal?’ He smiled down at Claudia. ‘He once posed a question: who shall guard the guards?’

‘And?’ Claudia asked.

‘In your case, little one,’ Athanasius bent down, ‘you must ask the question: who spies on the spies?’

The philosopher walked away.

‘Claudia?’

She whirled round. Burrus and Gaius Tullius were standing at the entrance to the peristyle garden. The German was dressed in his shaggy fur cloak; Gaius had put on a leather breastplate, a sword belt wrapped round his waist, marching boots on his feet. He carried a helmet under his arm which displayed the imperial scarlet and black plume. He beckoned with his hand.

‘Claudia, the Augusta has asked me to seek you out.’

She got to her feet and walked over.

‘We are to walk the track down to the coast. The Augusta was quite specific. You are to accompany us. She says you have sharp eyes and perhaps will see things we would miss.’

‘Not in a forest she won’t,’ Burrus grumbled.

‘Do you want to collect your cloak?’ The Captain ignored the German’s interruption. ‘Before we leave I want to show you something.’ And, spinning on his heel, Gaius Tullius marched away, leaving Claudia and Burrus no choice but to hurry on behind. They skirted the palace going across to the ruined House of Mourning. Gaius didn’t stop there but led them both into a clump of sycamore trees, a rather wild, untended part of the garden where the unruly brambles and gorse stretched up to the curtain wall. He pushed his way through these, Burrus behind opening a path for Claudia.

At one point Claudia paused and squatted down to examine some bones, lamb and beef, with dried scraps of meat still clinging to them. Nearby, rolled up in a ball, was a soiled napkin and, under a thorn bush, an earthenware wine jug.

‘Someone’s been feasting.’

Gaius came back to stand over her. ‘The servants are always stealing away to eat the food they’ve filched, but that’s not important. Come on . . .’

They reached a small clearing just before the wall. Gaius pointed to the strong, reinforced Syrian bow lying on the ground, an empty quiver and, beside it, an earthenware pot blackened by fire.

‘I found these this morning,’ he explained, ‘or rather, my men and I did. We decided to search the grounds for anything suspicious. There was always the possibility that one of the attackers had broken through and might be hiding here.’

Claudia went across and picked up the bow. The wood and cord were soaked, as were the quiver and the earthenware pot, which still reeked of pitch and fire.

‘This must have been here some time,’ she murmured. ‘What do you think, Gaius?’

The Captain’s smooth-shaven face showed the strain of the previous night, his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

‘I wish the Augusta had trusted us,’ he replied, as if talking to himself. ‘I mean no offence, Burrus.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I suppose I’m trying to prove myself. I suspect the bow, the quiver and pot of fire were used by the traitor. The House of Mourning was not a beacon fire, but on the night it was destroyed, the traitor used the confusion to loose fire arrows into the air.’

Claudia, squatting down, stared at the bow and the wall, then back in the direction they had come. What Gaius said made sense, but it still left the question of who had started the beacon fires.

‘Burrus!’ She beckoned the mercenary forward. ‘We will not be walking through the woods. No, no, Gaius,’ she held up her hand, ‘I will explain to the Augusta. I want you to send your best men into the woods, Burrus. I want them to stay away from where the battle took place. Tell them,’ she gestured with her hand, ‘to scour the area to the left of the path as you leave the villa.’

‘What are they looking for?’ Burrus asked.

‘Signs of encampment, perhaps two or three men living in the woods. They must have left a camp fire, dug a small latrine pit. They were probably soldiers, or perhaps even travelling tinkers or pedlars. If they did set up camp it would be fairly recent. Search for fire pits, scraps of clothing or food.’

Burrus nodded and hurried off.

‘And me?’ Gaius grinned. ‘Do you have orders for me?’

‘Yes, Captain, in fact I do.’

She paused as Athanasius’s voice drifted across the grass. ‘Septimus? Septimus?’

‘He’s been searching for him,’ Gaius groaned. ‘Knowing these philosophers, Septimus is probably sleeping it off somewhere.’

‘I want you to find Timothaeus,’ Claudia declared. ‘I want to talk with him about the wanderer in the woods.’

‘The old man who was found dead on the track outside the villa?’

‘The same,’ Claudia replied.

As Gaius strode off, Claudia went back to re-examine the bow and quiver and the small pot used to carry fire. She was now genuinely puzzled and intrigued why Narcissus would lie. He had told her he had left the House of Mourning, filled his stomach, drunk too much and gone to sleep it off some distance away. She now believed he was lying and wondered why. But there again, she reflected grimly, she had a number of questions for her new-found friend.

A short while later Gaius came marching back, Timothaeus hastening beside him. The steward looked rather ill and unkempt, his face unshaven, his tunic stained.