Furies (34 page)

“So? What’s it to you?”

“One of them’s gone missing. A girl named Heraïs. Know where she might be?”

“I took her back to the city the other night like I promised.”

“He lie, she here!” Tisris cried, her voice quavering.

The freedman glared at her. “And this one stole my boat, didn’t you whore!”

“What you do to her?” she screamed.

“Enough,” Aculeo said to the girl. “There’s a hetaira named Neaera I’m looking for as well. She may have come here a few weeks ago.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Mind if I look around a bit?” Aculeo asked.

“Why don’t you just bend over instead and we’ll see if my sword fits your sheath,” the freedman growled, his eyes dark with anger. The dog was frothing at the mouth as it danced on its hind legs, its thick, muscular neck straining against the rope.

Aculeo watched him for a moment, considering the situation. Any confrontation would surely lead to bloodshed. With himself and a terrified porne against three of them and an enraged Molossian dog, the odds weren’t particularly encouraging.

Callixenes carefully watched them walk back down the path towards the barge, stroking the grip on his rusted sword as they went.

“Where Heraïs?” the porne asked Aculeo, clutching at his arm.

“Not here.”

“But … why we go now?”

“Because there’s nothing more I can do here.”

“We need look for her.”

“No, we need to go home, understand? I’ve wasted enough of my damned time coming here in the first place.”

“But Heraïs …”

“Heraïs probably returned to Alexandria as you did. Or if she was halfway clever, she ran as far away from all of this as fast as she could. All I know is she’s not here.” Tisris looked up at him, eyes filled with despair. “Let’s go,” he said.

The porne clung to him the whole way back to the barge, as did the bloodthirsty cloud of mosquitoes. And from the muddy bank, the strange slave girl crouched, watching them, moving her lips, though no sounds came out.

It was near nightfall by the time Aculeo returned to the narrow Street of the Marble Workers, hungry, filthy, covered in maddening bug bites and too drained to want anything more than to crawl into his foul little bed and fall into unconsciousness. He limped towards his darkened doorway and stopped. Someone huddled there in the shadows. He took half a step back, wary now. He realized it was just a girl though, a threadbare cloak wrapped around her shoulders, her bare feet filthy from the street. Then he noticed her face.

“Tyche?”

The girl opened her eyes and looked up at him, startled. Relief flooded across her face and she fell to her knees, pressing her paper-dry lips to the back of his hand over and over again.

As she ate what little Xanthias could forage from the pantry, Tyche told Aculeo how the pornes had all been sent away from Gurculio’s house the night of the symposium after the festivities wrapped up. Panthea and her harelipped slave, Geta, had finally turned up at the Blue Bird right before dawn. There’d been a mad rush to clear everything out and the pornes were told that whatever they couldn’t carry on their backs would have to be abandoned. There was no word as to where they’d be going. Tyche had been terrified, given Neaera’s disappearance and all the stories of the missing pornes. She managed to slip away in the midst of the confusion and had been living on the streets since then.

“I’m sorry to burden you,” she said. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“I’m just happy you’re safe,” Aculeo said. “Did Panthea or Geta ever speak of Gurculio’s death?”

“Gurculio’s dead?” the girl asked in surprise.

“He was murdered the night of the symposium.”

“Oh.” She looked so small, so vulnerable, with dark circles like bruises under her eyes. She looked like she was ready to collapse. Aculeo helped her to her feet and led her to his bedroom where she fell asleep almost instantly.

“Was Panthea involved in Gurculio’s murder?” Xanthias asked, watching the sleeping girl.

“Yes.”

“Why would she have done it?”

“I’m not sure,” Aculeo said with a yawn. “But then, I’m not sure of anything these days.”

“What shall we do with the girl?”

“Let her sleep for now, we’ll worry about it later. I’ll take your pallet. You take the floor.”

“Of course, Master. The floor is so much more suitable than a bed for my frail old bones.”

“Oh stop it.”

“I almost forgot, a messenger left this for you.” Xanthias held out a scrap of yellow papyrus.

“I don’t want to know,” Aculeo said. He hesitated before finally accepting the note and opening it. He recognized the spidery scrawl instantly.

‘Come to Necropolis!
NOW
!’

“The Necropolis,” Aculeo groaned, slumping against his bedroom doorway in utter exhaustion.

“Does this mean I shall have to sleep on my old pallet after all?” Xanthias said in mock disappointment.

“Sleep where you like, old man,” Aculeo snapped, heading to the door again. Where else should I go on such a night as this but the City of the Dead, he thought miserably. I’ll feel right at home.

“Sekhet?” Aculeo called, heading down the steep staircase within the smooth walls of the Necropolis’ cave entrance.

There was no answer, just a scuttling sound. Rats most likely. Possibly jackals. A pleasant thought. At the bottom of the steps was a narrow passageway cut into the rock, heading off into the darkness. I remember that, Aculeo thought, taking a deep, shaky breath. The walls felt like they were ready to swallow him, steal his air, crush his lungs, bury him alive. He felt his chest grow tight, his breathing rapid, shallow, his head spinning. He closed his eyes, forced himself to breathe slowly, deeply.

He followed the long passageway, touching the dimly torchlit walls with his fingertips, feeling it twist this way and that. “Sekhet? Are you there?” Still no answer. Did I miss a turn somewhere? It seems to go on forever. Curse this place! And curse Sekhet, the old crone!

He walked another few minutes that felt like hours, until at last he saw a dim light up ahead. The passageway emptied into a large chamber with four doors facing one another, a crescent moon carved in the pediment above each of them. He could make out the rough cut walls, the high ceiling that had been roughly hewn into a vault. There was a hole carved in the ceiling through which a splash of moonlight spilled, though it had travelled from a very long way up. How deep into the ground have I gone, he wondered. How sturdy are these walls? If they were to suddenly give way I’d be crushed beneath all this rock, unable to breathe, unable to move … his chest was growing tight again. Breathe!

Three of the doors were partially ajar and seemed to dip down lower than the floor of the chamber, leading further down into the darkness. The fourth door was open and led down another long, dark corridor. “Sekhet?” he called at the doorway. Nothing but quiet. 

He had gone just a few steps down the corridor when he heard a rustling overhead. He raised his free hand warily and felt something brush across his skin, followed by a cacophony of high pitched squeals. He ducked down, covering his head, feeling a thousand leathery creatures slap against his arms and back, their wings thrumming through the air, flapping against the back of his head. When it was over, he looked up at last, saw the last few bats disappear into the chamber behind him, spiralling overhead towards the high ceiling. He shuddered and moved on.

“Sekhet!” Aculeo called again, an unintended note of anxiety colouring his voice.

“In here,” came the muffled reply from up ahead. Finally, he thought, more relieved than he cared to admit to hear the sound of her voice. There was a large room at the end of the corridor with several chambers leading off of it. Two of the chambers were lit up with yellow torchlight. And there was Sekhet, standing next to a short, squat man with a shaved scalp polished to a coppery sheen.

She looked at Aculeo, appraising him, not altogether impressed by what she saw. “You’re pale. And sweating. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Any pains in your chest? Your left arm?”

“I told you I’m fine.”

“You’ll end up in here yourself soon enough at the rate you’re going,” Sekhet said, nodding towards a number of cremation jars sitting in niches carved into the rock walls. Cremation, while considered a loathsome taboo among the fellahin, was nonetheless the preferred method among Romans and Greeks and was therefore still regularly performed at the Necropolis.

“This is my nephew, Paheri,” she said, indicating the man standing next to her. “He’s a Man of Anubis.” The Men of Anubis, the Egyptian jackal-headed god that ruled over the journey into the afterlife, were the priests who dealt with embalming and mummification of the dead. Paheri nodded politely. “How did your journey go with Tisris?”

“A waste of time. A miserable freedman and his miserable slaves on his miserable fucking farm.”

“Ah? Well, a worthy try at least. Come, this should make up for it.”

Behind them, a mummy had been laid out on a stone funerary table. The table had been carved in the form of two lions facing forward with the mummy’s head fitting into a basin between the lions’ tails, a drainage channel running down the centre and feeding into the basin.

“Who is it this time?” Aculeo asked.

“Just be patient,” Sekhet snapped.

“This is most unusual,” Paheri said uneasily. “It’s bad enough to be doing this after the rituals have been completed, but outsiders are not supposed to observe our practices. It is against the word of Anubis. If anyone catches us…”

“There won’t be anyone down here this time of night and you know it.”

“Still…”

“Shall I have a talk with your wife? Or worse, with her mother?”