Dream Boat (23 page)

She blew her nose hard.

She wished she'd never come here.

She wished she'd never
heard
of the Brothers of Horus.

She wished someone would come to rescue her.

She wished she could get out. Go back home.

But in her heart, she knew that she couldn't. That, somehow - she couldn't say why - but somehow Flavia knew she was destined to stay in this valley for ever.

Claudia had tried sailing with the current. It had not found her Flavia and goddammit, the sand in Junius' hourglass was running perilously low. She looked at Geb, standing four-square in front of the doorway to the kitchens, his damp hair sticking to his forehead and decided to sail upstream.

'My puppy is only eight weeks old.' Oops. Her elbow accidentally nudged Geb's bandaged body as she swept past. 'I'll check the kitchens anyway!'

Perhaps flinching slowed him down. Perhaps Geb was the type to note a grudge and retaliate later. Perhaps he truly didn't care. Either way, Claudia swept unchallenged into the hustle and the bustle, the clouds and the condensation and, using her search for Doodlebug as cover, checked out the kitchen staff. Patently unused to charcoal ovens and iron griddles, to spits and spatulas and strainers, nevertheless they were having a whale of a time. Gales of laughter mingled with chopping, pounding, pouring, whisking, while controversy over which way up the gridiron went combined with tastings and testings and estimates on quantity.

'Where's that clumsy bitch sloped off to?'

Geb had either forgotten Claudia, or his priorities lay elsewhere. He was intent on finding the girl who'd mistaken him for a herring and dressed him with anchovy sauce.

'When I get my hands on her, I'll stripe her hide, she'll think she's a bloody zebra for a week! Have you finished yet?' He turned his bellowing on Claudia. 'I told you, before, you won't find a live animal inside my kitchens.' He swiped his damp fringe out of his eyes. 'Now you're in the way and I've a fucking schedule to adhere to.'

No Doodlebug. No Flavia!

Since kohl around the eyes wouldn't last a minute in this vaporous atmosphere, faces were scrubbed and clean and

clothes were comfy tunics. Claudia would have picked Flavia out at once.

If she 'd been here.

Big cats keep quiet at night. The night is for listening. For waiting, for sleeping, for hiding. The night is for keeping your own counsel and your own silence. The night means not giving yourself away.

Different codes applied to those caged up inside the dark caverns under the arena. They had not been fed for a week and they were mad with starvation, with anger, with fear and with loathing. They did not know when they would eat, indeed, if they would eat. They roared their resentment at the whole human race, and few in Rome failed to hear it.

For those humans chained in underground chambers nearby, the echoing rage was especially bloodcurdling.

In his shackles, the Armenian who'd been brought in earlier sat in a pool of filthy sludge which showed no signs of draining away and listened to the angry beasts roaring their hatred into the hot summer night. He had no fear of death, not after the cruelty his master had put him through these past seven years, and was merely glad that, in killing him, he had spared others a similar ordeal.

Aye, he thought, flexing his stiffening muscles. It's a strange thing, life. Never how you plan it. Subservient by nature, the Armenian had only ever wanted to serve others. Finally, in his last act on earth, it looked as though he had. But in a manner more intricate than he could have imagined.

He was not afraid of death, or what lay beyond it. Once Saturday was over, the real adventure would begin.

So while the prisoners around him cursed and prayed and sobbed and raged, the Armenian closed his ears to the big cats' savage growls and plaintive roars which echoed into these subterranean chambers and set his mind to wondering what crime the prisoner who'd occupied these chains before him had committed.

And what sort of adventure he was having now.

Did you know, ears never stop growing? Everything else - lungs, bones, lips, veins - reaches a certain stage and then cuts out. Ears, it seems, were never given guidelines. Or maybe they're programmed to quit at the age of 125, only no one lived long enough to find out.

Quite what the individual facing Claudia would look like when he clocked up his century, she couldn't imagine, but elephants sprang to mind. As did rabbits, and not necessarily because bunnies have big ears. His whole face was rabbity. That sort of softened wedge shape which, while attractive in small children, becomes off-putting in an adult.

'. . . feeling unwell, I can take you to Shabak.'

'What?' Mesmerised by the length and breadth of the ear flaps, and intent on rattling the gates to the temple compound, Claudia had paid scant attention to his wittering. He seemed to be concerned for her health. 'No, I'm fine, I'm looking for my puppy.'

'He won't be in there.' Long, twig-like fingers pulled her away. 'I'm Penno, the Temple Warden and Chief Petitioner, Servant of the High Priest, and unless they're for sacrificial purposes, beasts are forbidden to set foot on sacred territory.'

You aren't.

Maybe it was the ceremony earlier, with those realistic animal masks flickering in the torchlight, but all the men Claudia had encountered tonight conjured up images of beasts. For if Geb was the Barbary ape on two legs, then surely Shabak, with his narrow waist, narrow hips and (alas) narrow shoulders was

the monkey - and now she had Penno's coneylike features to contend with!

It's this place, she thought. It's overloading my imagination, I'll be hallucinating next.

The rain had eased off temporarily, but the storm still cloaked the hills, sending out brilliant splashes of white and ominous rumbles of thunder. And the heat throbbed like a kettledrum, and the cicadas rasped in the waterlogged grass, and dolphins leaped through hoops in Claudia's stomach.

She shook herself free of Penno's grip and hoped it was the lightning which twisted his face into a sinister leer. 'The storm will frighten him,' she said, 'I need to check for myself.'

Dammit, I'm down to a few hours.

'Sister.' There was an edge to the temple warden's voice. 'Only initiates are allowed inside these walls outside of the times of prayer and petition, that's why the gates remain locked. Your dog's not in there, believe me, and even if he was,
you
wouldn't be.' The tone softened, became almost wheedling. 'It's late, my child. You'll be tired. I'm sure he'll come home in the morning.'

It
was
late. Without a herald to call out the hour or stars to check the time by, Claudia could not be certain, but she imagined it was more than two hours past midnight. Only one window in Mentu's wing showed a light, otherwise the whole commune slept, and the temple warden had every right to be suspicious of a member wandering around at this time of night. The question is, what was he doing prowling about on his own?

A celestial rumble broke overhead, signalling the storm's intention to return. Back in Rome, there'd be brawls and barter, the lowing of oxen pulling the delivery drays, wheels clattering, crates banging, shouts, ribald laughter, singing from the taverns, creaks from overburdened axles. Thunder would not get a look in!

'Ordinarily,' Penno said, 'I'd be a gentleman and escort you back to your quarters. Unfortunately -' he jangled a set of keys,

-
'Ra will return to us in less than three hours and there is much work to be done. Excuse me.'

With a curt nod he disappeared behind the wicker gate, and at least that answered her question. Tomorrow (today!) was the start of the month of Ibis. There'd be another festival to prepare for. A public holiday to organise. More prayers. More ritual. More opportunity to befuddle brains and step up the mental treadmill so that people became too scared to come off.

Mentu's scam might be earning him a packet, but the number of people he was damaging was growing by the day. Zer canvassed Rome, but there would be other Zers dotted around, bringing in members from Naples, Ancona and, like Mercy, from Brindisi. Damaged individuals, who Mentu and his money-grubbing cronies sought to damage further.

Damage . . . and possibly worse.

Six girls, Mercy reckoned. Six girls aged between fifteen (Donata) and twenty-two (Berenice) had skipped this valley without trace and, if gossip was to be believed, Berenice had deliberately poisoned her five-month-old son before leaving.

Leaning her back against the high temple compound wall, Claudia felt something lumpy dig into her flesh. What the . . . ? It was an ear. Glory be, it was a pottery ear stuck on the wall. How very odd. Her hand followed the contour of the wall at the same level, until she'd counted ten cemented at regular intervals on to the stonework. Ears? At first, she couldn't believe it, but yes. Human ears made of terracotta . . . and as she walked the perimeter, she cast her mind back to dinner. To something Mercy had said about the wall needing to be high to keep evil and impurity from Ra's holy place of worship. And since mortals were only allowed to worship Ra through an intermediary god, there was the facility for them to come at any time when access to the temple was barred to whisper their hopes and prayers (and indeed worries, should they have them!) to any one of the Ten True Gods who would always be on hand to listen to their pleas and pass the message on to Ra, through his holy son, Osiris.

Meaning, Claudia assumed, this was some form of spying!

She wriggled her finger deep into an earhole and was not surprised to find it wasn't stopped by masonry, only by the fact that her finger wouldn't reach that far. She plucked a scabious, growing underneath the wall. Well, well, well. Wouldn't you know, that stem just kept on going! He was a wily old bugger, Mentu. What odds that behind each ear would be one of his cronies, writing down everything the petitioner said? Reporting back.

Claudia's thoughts returned to the six missing girls as she stared up at the sky. Heavy clouds, black as Hades, hung over the valley, muting the zigzag flashes. Mercy's explanation didn't make sense. Tonight's charade showed that young men in their muscular prime don't make it through the double barriers. What chance had pampered young women? And the Berenice business bothered her. 'Touched' had been Mercy's description, but to feed hemlock to your baby and simply walk off was way, way beyond 'touched'.

The rain began to fall again. Chip. Chip. Chip-chip-chip. What was Claudia to make of the so-called tragic accident, in which a boy who'd tried to escape had been cut to pieces by Mentu's thugs? Was it truly an accident? Or an convenient way to dispose of a problem?

As the hot raindrops hammered down, Claudia began to have a very bad feeling about Mentu's paradise valley.

And it didn't help that she could not locate Flavia.

Morning.

Prayers were over. Petitions were over. Ra had been duly venerated, despite today's Boat of the Morning docking more like a humble fishing vessel than blasting in, a trireme in full sail, all trumpets blazing. But at least the storm had abated, the rain temporarily holding off, and who really cared whether dawn burst in on a rip tide or simply sidled into its berth and dropped anchor? The Great God had returned, he had battled the serpent of the night and traversed the twelve realms of the underworld, let us be thankful. Praise be to Ra.

Claudia pressed her hands over her eyes and tried to control the churning within. Executions commenced in nine hours' time. She could not let Junius die.

Her skin was clammy, her mouth dry, her stomach sick with anxiety. This was her fault. She should never have made him don that toga in the first place, she should have foreseen the problems.

The knot inside tightened. She could not even pin this one on Flavia! True, the wretched girl had set the train in motion with her phoney kidnap and her demands, but it was Claudia who had given her bodyguard his orders. It was she who shouldered the blame. He was a slave, a Gaul, a foreigner, with no option but to do as he was commanded by his mistress. Claudia's eyes misted. She'd lost count of the times Junius's pained look of protest had returned to haunt her.

'Madam! I'm a slave! If I'm caught wearing the toga . . .' She remembered laying down that bowl of dates, fresh

and sticky from their oasis homeland, and suggesting Junius consider the matter from a counter position.

'Not what might happen if you're caught. What I'll do to you if you don't.'

The threat had been issued light-heartedly and Junius, used to her ways, would have taken it as such.

Junius.

She would never nibble another date again! The very thought made her stomach heave.

How old was he? Twenty? Twenty-one? He'd hardly lived! He should be looking towards raising a family, to rafting his way through the white waters of life. He did not deserve to die because he'd been found draped in a piece of white wool. He did not deserve to die simply because some silly bitch told him to wear it.

Intense blue eyes swam before her, the sandy coloured hair, strong hands which hovered like hawks over his dagger. Oh, shit . . .