The Alexandrian Embassy (4 page)

Servius wheezed a weak cough. ‘It goes without saying that the best place to plant your seed is where you want it to grow.'

Magnus frowned and drained his cup. ‘Are you trying to be philosophical, because if so that was a pretty poor attempt. Of course I need to plant it with Sempronius.'

‘But that's not where you really want it to grow, is it?'

Magnus looked at his counsellor, considering his remark. Over the fifteen years that he had been the patronus of the South Quirinal he had come to value his second-in-command's advice based on an encyclopaedic knowledge of the inhabitants of the dark underbelly of Rome. ‘You're right, brother: Tatianus is where I want that notion to take hold. If he thinks that I can't come up with the money then he'll start trying to offload the shipment as quickly as possible.'

Servius essayed a smile which appeared as more of a grimace on his wizened face. ‘Precisely; and provided you also plant the
idea that Sempronius would be a likely alternative purchaser then the whole matter should take care of itself very quickly.'

‘But how do I do it without having a formal meeting and then mentioning Sempronius by name? Tatianus is bound to tell him that I suggested him and then he's bound to suspect it's a trap.'

‘Where does Tatianus go when he's not doing business in his house?'

Magnus thought for a few moments. ‘The normal places: the baths, theatre, games and all that sort of thing.'

‘Yes, but what else? What did you notice about him? About the decoration in his room?'

After a brief pause to recollect, Magnus pointed his index finger at his counsellor. ‘The statuettes of the gods; he has a lot of them.'

‘Yes, he's a very religious man so he does all the things that religious men should do.'

‘Such as observing all the festivals, and tomorrow is the Ides of May.'

‘Indeed, and we shall be celebrating the Mercuralia in honour of Mercury, the god of merchants and commerce, amongst other things; and what do all merchants do on that day?'

Magnus grinned and shook his head slowly in awe at the way his counsellor's mind worked. ‘They sprinkle their heads, merchandise and places of business with water taken from the well at the Capena Gate, and because they have to draw the water themselves we can guarantee that at some time tomorrow Tatianus will be at the Capena Gate. In fact he said that he wouldn't be home until the third hour that morning so he'll be at the gate first thing. I've just got to work out how to take advantage of that.'

Night was three hours old but the streets of Rome were none the quieter for it. Magnus, with Marius and Sextus for company and protection, watched a group of half a dozen men make their way up the Vicus Longus. All were hooded and all had the bearing of men used to violence; a couple had limps from old wounds and one was missing three fingers on his left hand. One had a bulging sack slung over his shoulder.

‘The lads watching the West Viminal were sure that they came from that brotherhood's headquarters?' Magnus asked Marius, raising his voice to make himself heard against the rattle and clatter of mule- and ox-drawn carts and wagons.

‘Yes, brother. As soon as they appeared to be heading in this direction they sent one of the errand-boys racing up here with the news. There's no doubt about it: they're out to do no good in the area.'

‘Well, they don't look like they're on a shopping trip, that's for sure. But there're not enough of them to threaten the tavern; so what do they want?'

All three turned away and leant against the open bar of a street wine-seller's establishment as the six heavies approached.

‘There you go, Magnus,' the owner said, placing a jug of wine and three earthenware cups on the counter. He then turned to the old slave working with him. ‘Come on, Hylas, you lazy sod, get a move on with those victuals.' He looked apologetically at Magnus. ‘I'll get you some bread and roast pork as soon as my idiot slave wakes up; no charge, obviously.'

‘Thanks, Septimus,' Magnus said, edging his head around to try to get a closer look at the intruders as they passed close by but their hoods were too deep. ‘Have you ever seen any of them before up here?'

Septimus looked at the men as they passed and waited until they were out of earshot. ‘Hard to say, Magnus, I couldn't see their faces; but there were a couple of strangers hanging around earlier today, big lads who had the look of ex-gladiators about them. One of them had a limp and his mate was missing a few fingers, I seem to remember when I served him; although how many and which hand I don't recall.'

‘Did you catch any of their conversation?'

‘Not really, we were very busy at the time and, what with Hylas being about as dozy as a slave can get without actually dropping down dead, that means I'm rushed off my feet and have very little time for chit-chat or eavesdropping.'

‘Pity.'

‘I did notice that they were always looking up the hill in the
direction of your tavern and after they'd had a couple of jugs of my roughest they moved off in that direction. That's the lot, I'm afraid, Magnus.'

‘Don't you worry, Septimus my lad; that may be very helpful. About what time was this?'

‘The third hour or so.'

Magnus turned to Marius and Sextus. ‘They found poker-boy's body soon after dawn and took the implement to Sempronius, who would have seen it at the end of the first hour. The timing fits.'

Marius nodded whilst Sextus, judging by his strained expression, struggled to get to grips with such advanced arithmetic.

Magnus downed his wine and then grabbed some pork and a hunk of bread as Hylas placed the plate of food in front of him. ‘Come on, lads, let's follow the bastards and see what they're up to.'

Keeping a dozen paces behind the suspicious group, Magnus and his companions tracked them along the Vicus Longus as it made its way up the Quirinal Hill. Just before they arrived at the junction with the Alta Semita, the intruders stopped and took a deep interest in a reinforced door out of sight of the main street at the end of a recess, a couple of paces deep, in the wall. ‘That's one of the back doors to the tavern,' Magnus hissed as they watched the men from a distance. ‘How do they know about that? We haven't needed to use it in ages.'

Having tested it with a crowbar extracted from the sack and found it to be solid, the intruders moved on up the hill.

‘I think they're planning to give us a painful shock by taking us in the rear, lads, if you take my meaning? My guess is that they're heading for the back door on the Alta Semita to see if they can force an entrance there. If we hurry we could be there to meet them.'

The group carried on up the hill, past the tavern's south wall, skirted around the tables and benches set outside the building at the apex of the forty-five-degree junction and then turned left along the Alta Semita.

Magnus stayed in the shadow of the south wall as he watched the intruders disappear behind the northern wall. ‘Quick, lads!'
He ran through the outside tables, signalling to the brothers drinking and playing dice to follow him, and pounded through the tavern's front door, causing a lull in the raucous atmosphere within. On he went, through the gradually widening room as it expanded, following the diverging courses of the two roads encasing it, and then out through a curtained doorway and right into an ill-lit corridor. ‘Break out the weapons box, Sextus,' Magnus ordered as he turned left into the room at the far end of the corridor in which he conducted brotherhood business.

‘Break out the weapons box; right you are, Magnus,' the brother replied, digesting his orders and then picking up a heavy box from just inside the door as Magnus ran to a further door on the far side of the room, its key already in the lock in preparation for a quick getaway. He turned the key, opened the door, crossed another, longer corridor and rushed through the dark chamber, infused with the lingering smell of burnt flesh, which had been the scene of the previous night's brutalities.

Here Magnus slowed and, signalling to the men racing behind him to do likewise, he listened. From the adjoining room could be heard the distinct sound of wood being worked on by metal. ‘Dole them out, Sextus,' Magnus said, nodding to the weapons box clasped in the huge brother's ham fists. ‘And close the door behind us, Marius.' The one-handed brother quietly pushed the door to, shrouding the room in almost complete darkness.

Taking the first sword from the box, Magnus crept forward to the door at the far left side of the room and put his ear to it. Listening, he slid his hand over the wood and found the key, again ready in position should this escape route be urgently required. ‘They're almost in, by the sound of it. There's only one way out of that room and it's through this door; let's make it easy for them.' He turned the key and the lock clicked; a moment later came the sound of splintering wood from the room beyond. ‘Keep tight against the walls, lads,' Magnus hissed at the eight or so brethren veiled by gloom. ‘Let's try and get all six of the arse-sponges.'

Magnus pulled back into the corner opposite the door as the handle was tried from the other side; there was a dull clunk and then a tall thin chink of dim light materialised as the door was
slowly pushed ajar. The chink widened and then was filled by the silhouette of a bulky man; he paused and listened – none of Magnus' brethren dared breathe.

After what seemed like an age, the intruder stepped through into the room, his mates close behind. ‘We go through this room and then across a corridor,' he whispered as he trod gently forward and the last of the shadows passed through the door.

‘No you fucking don't!' Magnus shouted as he ground the tip of his blade into the nearest silhouette, rolling his wrist as it punctured flesh and muscle; a roar of pain, guttural and prolonged, was his reward. His brothers took his lead and descended on the shadowed figures from all angles, hacking and stabbing wildly in the dark at the surprised and confused intruders who, despite their disadvantage, very soon rallied with the three remaining on their feet managing to get back to back. Weapons clashed with ringing reports and men grunted and cursed in the blackness as a wounded intruder moaned pitifully somewhere on the floor. The three survivors, swiping their blades before them to discourage their attackers from closing with them, edged back the way they had come. Slowly they retreated, their forms indistinct in the gloom, defending every assault with lightning-swift ripostes that gave credence to Septimus' assumption that they were men trained for the arena.

‘Easy, lads!' Magnus shouted as he realised that there would be no way that they could break through the gladiators' guard in the near absent light. ‘Pull back and let the bastards go.'

His brethren obeyed the order as the three survivors stepped back through the door and then, after a brief pause, turned as one man and ran off, out into the street and on into the night.

‘Minerva's dry dugs, they were good,' Magnus puffed as he slammed the remains of the shattered back door closed behind the fleeing intruders.

‘What do you want us to do with the wounded one, brother?' Marius asked, kicking the moaning, prone form and eliciting a cry of pain. ‘Would you like me to heat up my poker?'

‘No, brother, we know where he came from; just make sure he doesn't go back there, if you take my meaning?'

The wet sound of honed iron slicing through muscle and cartilage was followed by a protracted gurgling as Servius and another brother entered the room with an oil lamp each, illuminating the dying man as he drowned in his own blood, his throat a gaping gash.

‘Is everyone all right?' Magnus asked as Servius knelt down and pulled the sack from the intruder's weakening grip.

His brothers examined themselves for wounds and to their surprise found none.

‘We've got a couple of problems, Servius,' Magnus said.

‘No back door,' the counsellor replied, rummaging in the sack.

‘I'll have that mended and reinforced before morning; Marius will see to that. No, it's more that we haven't got a back door that isn't known about.'

‘Then you'd better make another one.'

‘Where?'

‘In a different place.' Servius nodded to the wall opposite the ruined door. ‘What's on the other side of that?'

Magnus scratched his head and frowned. ‘I imagine it's just a deserted courtyard full of shit and stuff. Perfect. I'll have the lads knock a door through.'

Servius shock his head. ‘People can see a door; just have them remove the mortar from the bricks so that a couple of blows from a sledgehammer will knock them down.'

‘That's a nice idea, brother. I'll have them do the same in a couple of other places too. What have you got in there?'

Servius tipped the contents of the sack onto the floor; an earthenware jar, about the size of a man's head, fell out wrapped in bundles of rags. ‘It looks like they were planning on torching the place.' He picked up some rags and held them to his nose. ‘Oil.' Then he pulled the stopper from the jar, immediately releasing a pungent scent that Magnus did not recognise. ‘I'll wager that, whatever this is, it can burn fiercely; I'll have a little play with it somewhere safe.' He refitted the stopper and then looked up at Magnus. ‘You said that we've got a couple of problems?'

‘Yeah; the other is how did the leader of those bastards know his way through this building in the dark? I heard him say: “We
go through this room and then across a corridor.” How did he know that without someone telling him?'

‘Or without having been here before?'

‘True, brother, very true. And that's an even more disturbing thought.'

The Capena Gate was busy the hour before dawn the following morning; scores of merchants and traders pushed and shoved each other to get to the well at the foot of the Caelian Hill, sandwiched between the city walls and the line of the Appian Aqueduct, to the left of the gate. Each one was keen to draw the water with which Mercury was sure to bless their business ventures and each one wanted to complete the task as quickly as possible so as not to be away from those ventures for longer than necessary. In the cutthroat world of Roman commerce, time definitely was money and therefore manners came into little consideration when it came to waiting one's turn in the scrimmage that passed for a queue. The priests of Mercury, standing on a dais overlooking the well, in torchlight, offered prayers to their favoured deity as his special day dawned; even their presence did nothing to help restore a semblance of order to this thoroughly un-reverential scene. Just to the right of this chaos, the centurion of the watch had the men of the Urban Cohort under his command inspect every cart coming through the gate. Most were given a cursory search but occasionally, at random, one was given a rigorous frisking much to the annoyance of the carter, who knew that he had only an hour to make his delivery and get his vehicle out of the city before the daytime ban on beast-drawn vehicles came into effect – unless, of course, he had access to expensive stabling within the walls.