Second Act (33 page)

Listened.

Heard nothing.

Dymas was employed by the Security Police for his streetwise ways and his cunning, his brute strength and his resilience. Orbilio cursed the man who gave him the job. In the blackness, the only breathing he could hear was his own. Below, in the street, men wished each other goodwill. He remained motionless, straining for sounds. Dymas knew every square inch of this apartment. Orbilio’s sole advantage was that he had his back against the wall.

The strike came out of nowhere. At the last moment, he saw the blade plunging through the dark. He ducked. Could not contain the grunt that escaped when the herbalist’s stitches snapped as he twisted. One all, he thought dully. Blood dribbled down the outside of his leg and pooled at his feet. He waited. Dymas would have expected him to move. For that reason he hadn’t. Seconds dripped by like lead. Then, Jupiter be praised, a lull in the traffic coincided with Dymas’s strike. Orbilio swung his dagger. Steel clashed against steel.

‘Sloppy, very sloppy.’ Dymas was laughing. ‘I can fucking smell you.’

Vinegar and turpentine. Of course. The blades locked and Orbilio’s free hand balled into a fist, driving into Dymas’s side. The Greek jerked like a puppet. So then. That was where the food vendor’s wife had landed her blow. Without waiting to think what it would cost him, Orbilio thudded his boot into the wound. Dymas reeled backwards and Orbilio tumbled on top of him. Closing his forearm round the Greek’s throat, he forced Dymas’s head back, exposing the throat.

‘You haven’t the strength,’ Dymas hissed.

It was true. But Orbilio had the strength to call out. Immediately, four legionaries burst into the room. The one at the back carried a torch.

‘Drop the knife, Dymas.’

The Greek had no choice. Reluctantly, he released the dagger in his hand.

Marcus turned his head to the soldiers, was conscious of blood pumping from the wound in his side and sweat pouring down his face to blind his eyes. ‘Did you get all that, sergeant?’ he rasped.

‘Every word, sir,’ the soldier said, grinning. ‘Although you took your bloody time calling us inside, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

When Orbilio released his grip on the rapist, his whole body began to shake like a poplar. ‘This was something I had to do myself.’

As one of the soldiers stepped forward with chains, the hobnails on his boots slipped in the pool of Orbilio’s blood. It was all the time Dymas needed. He lunged for his dagger. Marcus used every last ounce of his strength to prevent him from falling on it.

‘No chance,’ he growled. His victims weren’t going to be cheated. ‘Last time I arranged for the rapist to be executed by lions. For you, Dymas, I’m working on something rather more protracted.’

But for now it was Saturnalia Eve, and despite the hour he owed Claudia a visit. He needed to thank her for talking to the victims today, for helping him out, for taking such an interest in the case, to tell her she was right and—

Who was he kidding?

Hell, he just needed to see her.

Thirty-Five

Claudia opened her eyes to blackness and the sound of a percussion orchestra on their first practice run. It took her a while to work out that the cymbals and drum rolls were inside her head, and that the blackness came from lying face down on a pile of thick fleeces. The fleeces had been washed, and they were soft and comforting, like floating on a cloud, and smelled slightly oily. She tried to sit up, and found that her furs had been stripped from her, her arms tied behind her back, her ankles bound and memories of being trapped down Pepper Alley flooded back. Looking round, shivering from the bitter night air, she realized she was in some sort of shed, possibly a warehouse, lit by a single oil lamp placed on the floor.

‘I’m so glad you are able to join us, Mistress Seferius.’ The voice was cultured and deep, imbued with natural authority. With his thumbs looped into his belt, he was tall, well built and, under other circumstances, Claudia would have described him as handsome with his thatch of blond hair and distinctive patrician attire. Beside her, white as a ghost, Erinna had hauled herself into a kneeling position on the fleece cloud.

‘My apologies for the rude form of transportation.’

The kidnapper was leaning almost nonchalantly against a stack of soft, bulging sacks and, although Claudia could not make out the colour of his eyes, she recognized triumph dancing in them.

‘Unfortunately, I’m not sure a direct invitation would have been accepted, and—’ he indicated Claudia’s head ‘—I must apologize, too, for my boys’ manners. They can be a little over-enthusiastic at times.’

The air was dry and dusty and she wanted to sneeze. Instead, she lifted her chin to face him.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What do you want with me?’

But even as she asked the question, she knew it wasn’t for ransom.

And in the end it wasn’t the kidnapper who answered.

‘His name,’ Erinna said quietly, ‘is Sextus Valerius Cotta and it’s not you he wants. Is it, Senator?’

*

Autumn. The air was sticky. Leaves hung limp on the trees surrounding Cotta’s estate in the Alban Hills. Amber. Scarlet. And rust. Over the horizon to the east, the sun was just starting to rise. Soft, golden and mellow. A few birds sang, magpies chattered and an old boar snuffled for acorns. Rabbits scampered over the clearings as the first slanting rays of liquid gold penetrated the patchwork canopy, and the air was ripe with the scent of beechnuts and sweet chanterelles. Crashing through the undergrowth, the Digger noticed none of the season’s sultry beauty. Fear gave wings to her heels. Any second now, the news would break. They would set the dogs on her. The human kind, as well as the estate hounds, and she remembered what happened last time she tried to break free.

It had been different then.

For three years, Erinna had worked with the old man as he concocted his recipe for the Elixir of Immortality. Like the Senator, she thought it was nonsense, but the old man was defiant and besides, he would argue, if not life everlasting, then another half century would suffice. Fifty years? Was he serious? He was bent and crippled as it was, his chest wheezed like a pair of ancient bellows and his eyes were rheumy and dim. In five years, never mind fifty, he’d be blind, shrivelled and bed-bound and what life was that? But Erinna had grown fond of her master and knew the old man cared for her in return. For a slave, a kind master is all you can ask for.

‘The Poseidon Powder is the key,’ he would cackle merrily. ‘Once I’ve cracked that, I’m immortal.’

Saltpetre, this strange salt of Petra, was apparently the only substance which could adequately dissolve the vermilion cinnabar crystals, which in turn were crucial to the fabled elixir, and it was for just one pouchful of this precious white powder that he had scoured the earth and shelled out a small fortune. What he had bought, though, rendered him almost delirious with delight and he was happier than Erinna had seen in a long time at the prospect of finally fulfilling his dream. That fateful afternoon, Erinna and the old man had been experimenting with the ingredients as usual.

‘Are you sure about this, master?’

This wasn’t the first time she’d questioned his formula. Recent chest pains had prompted him to start taking shortcuts. Erinna worried, and with good reason. White nitre hadn’t been named after the Earth-Shaker for nothing.

‘Oh, stop fussing, gel, and pass me the honey.’

He had given up trying to dissolve the red grit a fortnight before. Either the formula was incorrect, he said, or the whole thing was a hoax, and the old man hadn’t given credence to the latter. The Orientals possessed the secret of eternal life, this was a fact, and after many years of experimenting, he was absolutely certain that he was finally on the right track.

‘This’ll make your fortune, gel,’ he would tell her. ‘When I die, you receive your freedom under the terms of my will. You can sell the formula and be rich.’

Watching the chemicals bubble and fizz, Erinna knew she would never be rich. But freedom…? That was another matter entirely. Around his room, this self-styled laboratory sited as far from the domestic area as his son could organize without insult, bowls and jars, phials and philtres cluttered every available shelf space and table. The Senator claimed he kept the laboratory clear of the house because of the smell, which was pretty noxious, Erinna had to agree. Personally, she tended to think that the Arch-Hawk was ashamed of his father’s eccentric dabblings.

‘Are you sure you’ve roasted the iron pyrites correctly?’

‘Yes, master,’ she’d replied patiently. ‘And I collected the vapour and recrystallized it according to your exact instructions.’

No wonder they called it fools’ gold! But with each pain in his chest, each wheeze in his lungs, the old man grew progressively tetchy, and his hands were no longer steady enough to hold a spoon to his own mouth without spilling. For three years, Erinna had undertaken the intricacies of his chemical experiments that his failing body could not.

‘Hmph.’ A bony finger tapped impatiently. ‘Then
I
don’t know what’s wrong.’

This was a regular exchange, and Erinna saw no more reason to pay particular attention that afternoon to his grumblings than to any of its predecessors.

‘Maybe that Arab didn’t give us the true salt of Petra,’ he suddenly said. ‘That’s it! I’ve been swindled, this isn’t Poseidon Powder at all. That dirty wog bastard has diddled me!’

‘Calm down, master.’ He was getting overexcited again. Any moment and another claw would rip at his heart. ‘The Arab didn’t cheat you, you watched yourself when he scooped up the powder.’

But the old man was beyond listening. ‘I’ll have to test it,’ he said. ‘Light that brazier, gel.’

‘Let’s test it tomorrow,’ Erinna suggested.

She hadn’t liked the look of the old man’s colour, but knew he wouldn’t have the estate physician near his laboratory, not after the names he had called the elixir, and the master was a proud old duffer, for all that.

‘
Now!
I’m going to test it
now
,”
he said shrilly. ‘If the powder burns with a purple flame, then it’s genuine. If not, I’m going back to Petra and have that Arab’s intestines strung out on a clothes line.’

Slaves cannot argue with their masters. They can only render the place as safe as possible. Leaving him poring over his brew of realgar, honey and sulphur above a brazier which she hadn’t yet lit, Erinna scooped up the limewood box, the only orderly apparatus in the room, and took it away for safe keeping in his bedroom. Accidents had happened before. Acid burns, fires, small explosions inside the cauldron. They could laugh about it now, but at the time it wasn’t funny, having your eyebrows singed ginger and watching your dinner explode. Senator Cotta had no idea of the amount of furniture that had been quietly smuggled out in smouldering pieces.

Returning from his quarters, Erinna was walking along the shade of the portico when she was blown backwards off her feet. The old man, too impatient to wait for her return to test out his powder, had lit the brazier himself.

Poseidon, the Earth-Shaker, had spoken.

Even as the dust rained down on her head, Erinna was astute enough to realize that, had she not removed the lime-wood box, she and the whole house would have blown up. Hundreds of lives would have been lost. Very little saltpetre, she had learned, was required to create an explosion. It was the combination of the ingredients which rendered them volatile. That, and the fact they were mixed in a small, metal container. When the container exploded, so did everything round it, and paradoxically, the smaller the container, the greater the explosion.

Erinna did the only thing she could think of. She ran.

They caught her, of course. Just outside Frascati, and she knew the Senator would execute her for murder, because the old man had most certainly not died from natural causes. She had screamed her bloody head off, kicked and screeched and called for help, because with the old man’s death she was officially a freewoman now, she was entitled to trial by jury. But the townspeople decided this was none of their business. They viewed her desperate fight only in terms of light entertainment.
The bastards had actually laughed.

To her surprise—no, to her astonishment—the Senator didn’t charge her with murder when they dragged her back. Instead he shut her in a storeroom and asked her, very politely, what formula the old man had used. And in that moment, Erinna understood everything. She saw that, in the explosion, the Arch-Hawk had seen a fast track to his expansion plans—

Terrified now, truly terrified, she prevaricated. Told him she didn’t know the precise formula, that the master wouldn’t disclose his secrets to a mere slave, but the Senator wasn’t fooled. They both knew she had been his instrument.

Three days passed. Cotta tried every trick in the book and it didn’t matter to him that she was free now. He needed the formula and Erinna was the only person who possessed it. How much saltpetre to sulphur, what ratio of honey to realgar, and so on. As she continued to bluff it out, he offered riches and made threats in return. But Erinna wasn’t stupid. His patience would not last for ever and he would turn to other methods to extract the information he needed. Hand twisting or the bastinado. In any case, Erinna was dead. He would not, could not, afford to let her live now. Whatever he promised.

Her only chance lay in escape.

Strangely, it wasn’t that hard. Like most sensible interrogators, Cotta employed violence as a last resort. More results were obtained by keeping the questioning friendly, and for that reason Erinna was allowed a certain privacy for her ablutions. Foolish. Very foolish. Claiming an urgent need for the latrines, she knocked her jailer unconscious with a block of wood and picked up a couple of small, but precious objects from the atrium as she fled. Cotta owed her that much, she thought. With that gold statuette and the ivory carving, she could get to Alexandria and disappear.