Dream Boat (33 page)

Laid out on Penno's long low table was a hand-sized replica of Ra's famous barque, a bowl of holy water, a set of ten carved priestesses, two ivory musicians and two carved horn dancers. Puzzled, Claudia considered the arrangement as she dripped the irritant juices on his bed and rubbed petals, leaves and sap into the temple warden's mattress. Then she saw! Old Loppylugs here conducted his own religious ceremonies in the privacy of his room, inevitably acting out the role of High

Priest himself, and no doubt Penno made several changes -improvements! - in his little dramas. What other fantasies did he harbour? Men who are addicted to rites and rituals make ruthless killers. Like Min, they have a need to control.

Each of the superintendents here thrives on control - terrorising, intimidating, bullying, even prescribing drugs to keep the commune pliable. That's their job. It's why they were given these commands.

Claudia gazed round the bedroom of the Keeper of the Store. Give him one thing, she thought. He's a stickler for his own rules, the room was barren. No paintings on the walls. No tasselled drapes. A couple of spare tunics, nothing fancy. No jewels. Not even a razor for Geb! It therefore did not take her long to find his secret cache of letters, and there were only two.

You bastard. You killed her, and you didn't even bother coming to her funeral. You are no father of mine.

The second one was clearly a response to Geb's reply.

You are more evil than I thought. You killed my mother and now you lay the blame on her, you say she drove you to it. I hope you rot in hell, you vicious bastard.

The raw emotion was too much for Claudia. She felt the child's pain (instinctively she knew it was a son's), sensed the anguish in his heart. Mercy's feminine intuition had not been wrong. Geb
was
the type to beat his wife and he'd beaten her once too often, so it seemed. No, wait! Claudia was jumping to conclusions here. She only had Mercy's gut feeling that Geb had used his fists. There are many other ways to die . . .

But the son's suffering embedded itself like a fish hook as Claudia continued to doctor the clothes and bedlinens of the remaining members of the Holy Council and she could not dislodge the barb. Was it possible, she wondered, that Geb had joined the Brothers of Horus to clear his conscience through

their rigid, self-imposed regime of abstinence and penance? It might explain his violent temper and the punishment he inflicted cold. Through suffering, was he saying, you too can achieve blessedness? The notion did not sit well with his loutish behaviour.

Blast! Zigzagging back and forth, she realised she'd missed a room. Neco's! Bugger, she'd used up all her irritants, as well! She imagined the Chief Scribe's superior air when it became obvious he'd escaped the mass contagion. By heaven, he was a smug bastard now, he'd be bloody unbearable then! Stupid cow, how could you have overlooked him? Neco, of all people, would keep his documentation neat and tidy. Any sales slips would not be hard to find - Claudia's hand was on the door when she realised someone was already in the room. She put her ear to the woodwork and heard a thwack, followed by a whistle, followed by a groan. Thwack, whistle, groan. Thwack, whistle, groan.

Her immediate thoughts were of Min, and the girl whose rape she had not prevented. She'd not fail another girl, whatever the consequences. Without hesitating, Claudia burst in.

She had indeed interrupted something nasty. The whistle was caused by the breath being expelled through the scribe's crossed teeth. The groan was pain. But the cause of the groan was a three-tailed knotted rawhide lash with which a kneeling, naked Neco thrashed himself.

No light, no sound, no scent ever penetrated the charcoal shed, except when the hatch was opened either to fling in new supplies or shovel out existing stocks. Flavia, curled foetus-like in the corner, wanted to die.

She was hungry, weary, dirty, hot and thirsty - yes, above all, she was thirsty. Merciful Minerva, help me, she pleaded in her dark and silent tomb. I didn't mean any of this to happen.

She was beyond tears now.

Curled up in a ball, staring into blackness, she had no concept of time. It seemed like days had passed, and her throat was dry and dusty from the coals, the thirst was killing her. What's happening to me? she cried. Why hasn't anyone come to open up the hatch? They need coals for cooking, for the bakehouse, for hot water for the Pharaoh's bath house. Why has no one come to take the charcoal? How much longer must I wait?

Her nails were split and broken from picking at the wood, her knuckles and her shoulders were raw, but the bolt on the outside of the hatch stayed fast. She had cursed it, pleaded with it, prayed to every god and nymph, but nothing changed. What had started out as Flavia's refuge had become her prison.

She daren't think about what would happen to her, once they found her. Geb would ridicule her in public, black and drenched with her own sweat, her hair plastered to her body. Then he'd beat her. He had promised her a hiding for that scald, even though it had been an accident. After this, he'd thrash her for everything from insolence and disobedience to throwing his

horrid schedule out of kilter. She began to tremble. She'd seen the lash he used. Three strips of rawhide knotted at the tips.

Someone said that he once used so much force that the knots became embedded in the victim's flesh and that he'd had to hook them out with his little finger. She shuddered in the dark. Please spare me that.

Memories of Marcellus flooded in. Julia. Suddenly Flavia didn't hate them any more. She wanted them to take her home.

None of this would have happened, she sniffed, if only they'd sent those two thousand gold pieces like I asked. With collateral behind me, I wouldn't be in this mess, cowering like a common criminal, a cornered rat. I wouldn't have to gut pigs and slave in the hot kitchens. Oh, no - a thought occurred to her - after this, Geb would not allow her back inside the kitchens! Sweet Janus, he'll send me to the fields. I want to go home. Please. She clamped her hands together and squeezed up her eyes. Please let me go home . . . I'll be good, I promise. I'll marry whoever you want me to, I won't run away again, I swear upon my father's grave.

Her father! Oh dear Jupiter, if I die in here, she thought, I'll have to face my dad across the River Styx. He'll be furious that I've let the family down, brought the name of Seferius into disrepute - and Flavia daren't imagine what he'd say about her friendship with that smelly street urchin called Flea.

Tears began to roll again. They were hot and salty and tasted of the bitter charcoal. She wanted to be sick. She wanted to be home. Home and warm and safe, looked after by her slaves and wrapped in cool, fresh linen towels. She wanted—

What was that?

In the blackness, Flavia tensed. Someone was twitching at the lock.

'Help!'

She scrabbled over the slippery coals.

'Help me, let me out!'

Clunk! The bolt flew back. The hatch opened slowly, and she recoiled at the brilliance of the light which flooded in.

'So then.'

Flavia shielded her eyes. The voice was one she recognised, but she could not make out the face. That voice, though . . .

'That's where you've been bloody skulking!'

Flavia must surely be mistaken. Why would this person be the one to rescue her? It made no sense.

'Come on.' A firm hand closed around her wrist and jerked. 'Out you get!'

Junius winced when the crowd surged forward because someone caught him on the hip where that vicious Dungeon Master had landed several kicks. White fire thrashed behind his eyes, muzzing up his vision, but he hadn't told the doctor, let alone his mistress.

His throat constricted. When he arrived here, in the commune, he'd been worried that he might not find her among the herd, but - inwardly he smiled - it wasn't very difficult in the end. Who else marched around as though she owned the place, nose in the air and chin held high?

He was now convinced something bad was going on. Six girls had vanished to date, and he felt sure another girl, the little laundress, was a casualty.

Junius was worried for his mistress.

'Stay here,' she'd said. 'Watch for my signal. This way, we can all get out together.'

So here he had remained. Alongside the woman from Brindisi, whose grey hair would not obey the rules and coil up in a bun, and resisting her every effort to go and change his merchant clothing for Egyptian costume. But it wasn't his out of place clothes making Junius jittery.

It wasn't right, the bodyguard doing nothing while the mistress laid her life out on the line.

It should be him, who took the arrow for her. Him, who stopped the slingshot meant for her.

Around him, the crowd were cramming forward to give their praise to Ra, to strew petals on the temple steps and swear allegiance to Osiris, through his son on earth, Mentu.

Since leaving Gaul, Junius had seen some bizarre spectacles, but this was way beyond him, this business about worshipping a boat . . .

Where the hell was she?

His eyes roved round the commune, alighting that fraction longer on the supervising staff who had been coming and going with such regularity throughout the so-called resurrection. He distrusted them all - the hairy one, the shiny one, the fat one, the bony one. He paused. Hang on a minute. The weirdo, the one with the wonky teeth and the lip. He was missing.

And so was his mistress.

He chewed his thumbnail and shifted his weight from foot to foot. His mind heard again the command to stay put, the way it brooked no contradiction, and Junius rubbed his good eye. Which would be worse? he wondered. To stay while her life might be in danger, or disobey the order and try to seek her out in the crush?

'It's a miracle, isn't it?'

Beside him, Mercy's eyes glowed with fanaticism.

'Mentu dies and is reborn before our very eyes, he will lead us to eternal resurrection, and soon, when darkness falls, we'll celebrate his rebirth with the Festival of Lamps.'

She wrapped her solid arms around him and hugged him tight.

'Isn't this the happiest moment of your life?' she asked.

Junius said nothing.

Marcus lay on his back in the granary, unaware of the setting sun, the lamps which flickered round the temple compound, the heavy summer heat which throbbed, the sticky breeze which brought sickness to the city. Sprawled on the grain and wearing a dead man's clothes, he was unaware even of the bloodied bruise just above his ear from the blow which had laid him out, unaware of ribs which had cracked when he had pitched forward on a heap which was by no means as soft as it appeared - or as he would have wished.

In his unconscious state, he did not dream.

He did not know that, back in Rome, his faithful steward, Tingi, had tracked down the groom who had left his household six months before his wife sold off the slaves and was about to divulge some interesting revelations. Revelations that would lead, although Marcus did not know it, to the identity of the murder victim - a distant cousin of his uncle's who had come to stay before Orbilio had taken over the house. The groom, having fathered eight children of his own, had recognised the signs of the girl's - shall we say - condition straight way, and his wife mentioned rumours about the cousin's affair with the master of the house. How the cousin and the wife had had a blazing row one night, resulting in the cousin leaving shortly afterwards.

Neither could Marcus, in his cocoon of oblivion, know that his boss was sitting, at this very moment, in the theatre, unable to concentrate on the comedy by Terence, because it niggled him that any scandal attached to Marcus might blow back in his own face. Suppose Orbilio
had
killed his wife and bricked up her body in the plaster? How would that reflect on the Head of the Security Police, who had checked his references and found them impeccable? While the audience clutched their sides and howled, his boss was wondering whether he'd acted too hastily in drawing attention to the body in Orbilio's storeroom. Mopping at his brow, he glanced across to the box where Augustus sat with his wife and daughter and a few close friends. Suppose word got back to him? Presumption of guilt went very much against the Imperial grain and the Head of the Security Police must - like the late and Divine Julius's wife -be above suspicion. He shuffled miserably on his cushion. He had never found Terence funny, anyway.

Night fell and Marcus, lying on his back, snored softly in his coma and did not see the human shadow which fell over him.

Luckily for him, he hadn't heard about the fate of spies. That they were condemned to die by the Ordeal of the Lakes, first by being roasted in a fire. Then by being boiled alive.

Marcus did not see the figure which leaned over him.

He slumbered on . . .

All across the valley, the exhilaration and excitement generated by a whole day packed with festivals and games and culminating in their Pharaoh's proof of immortality slowly gave way to a different kind of optimism. Soon, the vigil would begin. Ten thousand tiny lights would flicker through the night, guiding Ra's boat through its perilous journey in the Realm of Dark. The flames would scare away the Serpent of the Void and navigate a safe route through the Twelve Gates of the Underworld.