Shadows in the Night (21 page)

Just as he was finishing, we heard hoofbeats, and to my astonishment, Felix came riding up, accompanied by an armed servant, a giant of a man. Felix, on a horse? A pretty unusual sight these days, but he rode well, like any Roman gentleman. When he saw me he dismounted with a flourish, but without his usual smile.

“Aurelia, dear heart, I came as soon as I heard.”

“Heard?” I asked stupidly, my mind still on the wall.

“About how you were attacked last night. Are you all right? Were you hurt? Oh my dear!” he exclaimed, catching sight of the wall. “How horrible! When was this done?”

“In the night.”

“Jupiter’s balls! It’s—” he stopped suddenly. “It’s quite dreadful,” he finished lamely.

“Yes, it is. But some water and elbow-grease will clean it all off. And I can always get a new cloak.”

“You’re so brave, my dear! We heard you’d been attacked. The town’s positively humming with rumours. Some farmer found your carriage, more or less wrecked, and your mules and horses dead, and we all thought….Well, never mind. Here you are, safe and sound. Now let me look at you.” He took my face between two fingers and studied it seriously. “You seem none the worse, except is that a teeny bruise on your cheek?”

“One of the barbarians hit me, but really I’m fine. It could have been a lot worse.”

“Oh, you poor thing. But you’re all right otherwise? They didn’t do anything else.…I mean, they had no chance to….” He paused dramatically.

“No.” I smiled in spite of myself. “They had no chance to, you dreadful old gossip! Thank the gods. And thank the cavalry, who turned up just in time.”

“So what happened? Don’t keep me in suspense!”

“Come inside, and I’ll tell you.”

I told Taurus to inspect the rest of the buildings, and also the orchard and paddocks, and to report to me if he discovered anything amiss.

It’s hard to stop being an innkeeper even in a crisis; the first thing I did when we came into the house was get us both some breakfast, which we ate in my study. I knew that Albia had organised food for the other guests in the dining-room, but I felt happier talking to Felix in private.

“It’s good of you to come so early,” I said. “Especially as you normally don’t open an eyelid till noon!”

“I must confess—” he helped himself to more bread— “that usually the only sure way for me to admire the rosy fingers of dawn is to stay up all night. But when the news came, I simply couldn’t relax until I’d seen you with my own eyes. Do tell me what happened!”

I told him briefly, and he listened excitedly, and in the end said, “We were right, weren’t we? At the meeting yesterday. These appalling men are going for travellers after dark. Well, I’m taking four strapping guards with me today, I can tell you. And we’re stopping for nothing!”

I passed him more cheese. “Today? Where are you off to?”

“To Eburacum. To the theatre.”

“Again? Clarus told me you were there two days ago.”

He clapped his hands. “Checking up on me, my dear? I knew it—you do care after all! O joy! Marry me at once!”

“Idiot! But I care enough not to want you taking risks on the roads just now. You’ll be careful, won’t you? Is it a special performance you’re going to see?”

“Yes, a new play for one of the officers’ wives—her birthday party I believe. A comedy called ‘Julia Joins the Cavalry.’”

“Don’t tell me, lots of jokes about new recruits who can’t get a leg over!”

“I’m afraid so. And the handsome hero getting his spear bent on night patrol. But my main reason for going is to see my friend Dardanio—he’s playing the randy general. You’ve heard of Dardanio, the actor? He’s brilliant! An old friend of mine. He’s been in the theatre since we were boys together.”

“I don’t get time for the theatre, I wish I did. I like a good comedy.”

“So do I. Why else do I spend so much of my life applauding Publius Silvanius and his antics?” His tone was bitter, not his usual teasing.

“Oh dear. Have you two fallen out?”

He looked contrite. “I’m sorry, that was beastly of me. No, of course we haven’t. It’s just that sometimes….” He hesitated, but this time it wasn’t a contrived dramatic pause.

“Sometimes?” I prompted.

“Publius has been very good to me. Generous, understanding. I couldn’t live the life I do if it wasn’t for his friendship. And his money. But—I know this sounds dreadfully ungrateful….”

I looked at him in his finery. He had a fashionable brick- red cloak and matching sandals, and his hair was as immaculate as always. But his yellow-green eyes were troubled. I thought, this is a Roman from an old aristocratic family, brought up to wealth and privilege at the centre of the world, and now he’s living on the bounty of a friend in a raw new province with barely a denarius to his name.

“Sometimes it’s hard to have to be grateful all the time,” I suggested.

He sighed. “That’s it exactly. I’m a Cornelius—our family is an old one, and a rich one. I should be….” He shrugged. “I had to leave Rome in some haste, you see. I couldn’t bring anything with me. Everything that belonged to my branch of the Cornelii was confiscated.” He took a huge sip of wine. He looked close to tears, real tears, not the turned-on waterworks of an actor.

“Tell me,” I said, “if you want to. I know very little about your life before you came here. Now, of course, you’re one of the leading men in Oak Bridges.”

“So they say. Three cheers and a fanfare of trumpets. Let’s drink to big fish in small ponds!” He raised his beaker.

“Better to be a big fish than a little one. So tell me.”

“Our family were at the court of the Emperor Nero. Oh, don’t say it, I know he’s regarded as a monster now, and he did go to pieces at the end. But he loved the arts. Especially the theatre and music. He tried to make Rome more civilised, more Greek. And all of us who loved the arts, loved him, too.”

“Some of his courtiers used to perform with him on stage. Did you?”

“I did a bit of acting, yes. And wrote some plays. It was wonderful.” Then the old mischievous Felix reasserted himself. “Mind you, most of us were pretty dreadful. We’d have got pelted with rotten fruit if we hadn’t had the Emperor in the company.”

“Was Nero himself good? I’ve always understood he was nothing special.”

“He could have been brilliant. He had talent, and to start with he made a terrific effort. He wrote songs, he rehearsed them day and night. He did all sorts of exercises to improve his breathing, and strengthen his voice. Then he realised that everyone would applaud him like mad whether he was good or not. So he stopped trying. And then, at the very end, I think he was just plain mad. Power can do that to a man.” He had regained his teasing smile. “It wouldn’t to me, though. Give me imperial power, I’d say thank you very much, and live happy ever after.”

I laughed. “With every other building a theatre, and you and your friends in specially created leading roles! But presumably life changed for you after Nero fell. He’d made too many enemies, and you were in line for revenge from everybody who hated him.”

He shuddered. “Yes. It was a horrible time.
”

I didn’t like to see Felix so upset, even though I doubted if many people would share his regret at the passing of Nero. “But all that is in the past, Felix. Twenty-odd years ago. Surely you could go back to Rome now, if you wanted to?”

“Well yes, I’d be safe physically, I suppose, but I’d still feel like an outsider, only half a man. Even if I could persuade some distant branch of my family, which managed to hang onto its lands, to help me out, everyone would start telling the old stories again. That I ran away, that I….Anyway, Nero’s friends are no better loved now, a generation later, even though we’ve got another tyrant on our glorious imperial throne these days. And this one’s got no redeeming features whatever!”

Gods alive, first I get Felix’s life story, then he starts spouting high treason! Just pretend you didn’t hear it.

“You’re too sensitive. These things blow over. Everyone will have forgotten.”

“Perhaps. But
I
can’t forget. When they destroyed Nero, they made the arts seem somehow contaminated, defiled, just because he had championed them. A city which does that is no place for me.”

“So here you are in Britannia, bringing Roman arts to people who’ll appreciate them better. That’s why you’re trying to get a theatre built in Oak Bridges?”

“It would be wonderful. I think Publius is quite keen, but of course it would need a great deal of money.”

“How about the other big fish in the Oak Bridges pond? Wouldn’t some of them chip in a few aurei in the name of culture? Balbus, maybe?”

“Balbus spend his hard-earned gold on a theatre?” He laughed. “Balbus wouldn’t recognise a good play if it jumped up and bit him! But listen, Aurelia, that’s reminded me of something I noticed outside just now. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the servants, but….” The dramatic pause was irresistible.

“Go on, what?”

“That graffito on your stable wall. It gave me quite a shock, and I don’t just mean because of the horrid message. Do you know who did it?”

“The Shadow-men, presumably.”

“Yes, but
who?
You haven’t seen that particular shade of green paint before?”

Something in his excited semi-whisper made me look at him keenly. His eyes glittered and he sat forward, tense as a cithara-string.

“You mean you have?”

“Yes. In Balbus’ shop.”

“
Balbus’?
” No wonder he was so excited. “Are you sure?”

“Dead certain. Oh dear, an unhappy phrase. Quite certain, yes. I complimented him on it.”

“But look, who’d use the kind of paint you decorate pots with for daubing words on a wall?”

“Ah no, it’s not his special pigment for making glazes. It’s the colour of his big display alcove, the walls and shelving. Don’t you remember? He had a whole new tier of shelves built and everything painted pale green, to show off that lovely dinner-ware he imported from Gaul, the white with the vine-leaf design.”

I did remember, and I thought he was right. “It’s very similar….It would be easy enough to check. But I can’t believe Balbus would help barbarian rebels. Can you? He lives for his business, and his business needs peace and prosperity. I know you’re not one of his bosom pals, but….”

“Perhaps it’s not him personally, but one of his workers.” Felix scratched his head. “He employs a lot of natives, of course, including his foreman, who lives behind the shop now. And then you see, there’s something else. It may be too trivial to bother with. I wouldn’t even have thought of mentioning it, if it wasn’t for the paint.”

“Well now you have thought of mentioning it, spit it out!”

“I’ve heard our dear potter is on rather good terms with some of the Brigantian aristocracy. The anti-Roman ones, I mean. Especially the older generation, who, as Publius puts it, haven’t accepted the finality of the Roman conquest. He visits them at home, that sort of thing.”

“Does he? How in Hades do you know that?”

He smiled slyly. “I pick up snippets of gossip here and there. From my friends, and my theatre chums at Eburacum.”

True, he had plenty of friends everywhere, and he made no secret of his love of gossip.

“But still….No, Felix, you can’t assume that just because he sells pots to natives, he sympathises with the Shadow-men. I agree he’ll trade with anyone, because he’s a businessman first and last, and he might not be too choosy about who he deals with. But he’s a Roman citizen. Which means he’s at risk like the rest of us.”

“Except that if he’s in league with the rebels, he’s at no risk at all, is he?”

“I can’t fault the logic, I suppose, but…surely not Balbus! I’d as soon believe it was Silvanius. Or you.”

Felix laughed and finished his beaker. “Yes. Of course you’re right as ever, my dear. I mustn’t let my prejudices get the better of me, must I?”

He departed soon after, leaving me with some unpleasant thinking to do. Prejudiced or not, he could have stumbled on something important.

I found Quintus Antonius in the garden, bathed and dressed, and looking almost back to normal, except that his bruises would still need a few days to disappear completely.

“Albia brought me breakfast in my room,” he explained. “Now I’ve had a breath of fresh air, and I’m ready for anything. Shall we walk around the garden?”

“Why not? I need something to calm me down. The morning hasn’t started well.”

I gave him the latest bad news, and when I told him about the torn-up bloodied remains of my cloak, he repeated Hippon’s question, “Are you all right?”

“I’ll survive. It’s getting a bit too personal, though.”

“I’m sorry,” he said seriously. “I’ve got you into this mess. I wish there was more I could do to get you out of it.”

“The words on the wall were painted.” I described them, and added Felix’s theory about Balbus.

“The pottery shop?” Quintus said. “I’ll maybe ride into town and buy a nice tasteful jug for my aged grandmother in Lindum. But as your young lad said, someone else could be using the paint to throw suspicion onto Balbus.”