Scandal Takes a Holiday Page 30

  My scribe. He was mine by now. I was determined not to give up on him until I knew his fate.

  “Spare a copper for a bath!”

  In the littered shade at the back of the most prestigious buildings, there are beggars. This wit knew how to suggest his request should be granted urgently; he was filthy. In fact he was so filthy he looked as if he had covered himself with grime on purpose. Anyone charitable would shoo him to hot water and a strigil. (Anyone who then thought twice would remember that most towns offer free public baths. This beggar was dirty from choice.)

  I held up a coin. Then I gave it to him. There was no point holding back; he would just say what I wanted to hear in order to obtain the money. “Seen anyone leave the temple just before I came around the corner? Which way did he go?”

  A grimy arm, swathed in dreadful rags, waved vaguely down the Cardo Maximus, toward the far Laurentine Gate. The man was probably drunk. He looked too verminous to question at close quarters. I had to decide whether I believed him. With nothing else on offer, I set off up the road.

  “I’m Cassius!” he croaked after me.

  “I’ll remember!” I lied, fleeing. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck with a madman with dangerous politics. Having a bust of Cassius in your house still counts as treason. On the birthdays of Brutus and Cassius, all sensible men are very careful not to hold dinner parties that could look like memorials.

  Compared with the Decumanus, the Cardo was a narrow little street, gently sloping downhill and deeply shadowed by the buildings alongside it. I had been here before, though I was riding not walking, as I went to see Damagoras. One of the houses near the Temple of Rome and Augustus had been a smoking ruin, the morning Gaius Baebius and I first encountered the firefighting bullies of the builders’ guild. I had also come here during my temple hunt. The road to the Laurentine Gate had become a motif of this mission.

  Cassius did not let me down: I was halfway to the Gate when the traffic coming toward me thinned and ahead of me I saw a boy. I recognized the slight figure: Zeno. Zeno, from the gatehouse, that thin little street rascal whose mother was Pullia, the Cilician kidnappers’ drugs queen. Walking alongside Zeno and talking to him earnestly was a well-built elderly man. I knew him too. It was my Uncle Fulvius.

  Fulvius had one hand on Zeno’s shoulder. The boy looked up at him with a trusting expression. Pullia had been in custody now for several days. Lygon was only captured today, but he had never himself lived at the gatehouse, and he had appeared indifferent to Pullia’s child. Without his mother, Zeno would have had to fend for himself. Fulvius must have befriended him.

  Maybe they knew each other even before Pullia’s arrest. If Caninus was correct in identifying my uncle as the negotiator, “the Illyrian” used a young boy as his runner. All along, little Zeno could have been that boy. Now, if the Diocles ransom demand did, after all, come from the Cilician gang, the pair could be going to meet Mutatus.

  Even if not, there were good reasons to investigate what a young child was doing in my uncle’s company.

  I followed them hotfoot. I wondered if they were heading outside the Gate, so my day would be ending as it began, at a necropolis.

  Sitting in a tomb in the pitch dark had been bad enough. Now, had I but known it, I was heading somewhere worse.

  LX

  When they turned off the Cardo it was just before the town Gate, but even though they were not going to the necropolis I had a gloomy premonition.

  I knew this place. I had been here one quiet morning, during my extended search for temples. It was no use to me then, and I would rather not have had it become significant now. Fulvius and Zeno had entered the sanctuary of the Great Mother: Cybele. That was bad enough. Even before I got there, I could hear that this was not a quiet occasion.

  The old city walls provided one boundary for a large triangular area; it was bigger than any other temple campus I had seen at Ostia, bigger than any religious sanctuary in Rome’s crowded public areas, apart from the sacred heights of the Capitol and Arx. We entered this haunt from the Cardo, halfway along, through a row of little shops. Directly opposite, stood the main Temple of Cybele. A corner to my left had a cluster of other buildings, one of which I knew was the shrine for Attis. Cybele kept her castrated consort at a distance, although a colonnaded portico beside the old city wall did provide a sheltered route for their eunuch priests to meet. A jumble of buildings on my right were, I thought, for adherents of the cult. Maybe the priests’ living quarters if, as at Rome, this exotic cult’s celebrants were kept away from daily life lest Eastern mysticism contaminate our sturdy Western values.

  My task now was hopeless. The sanctuary was far too busy. People were everywhere; as a meeting place where kidnappers and victims could be unobserved, this site had been chosen cunningly. I could not now see Fulvius and the boy. Nor could I spot Mutatus, nor anyone who might be meeting him. I had had some ideas of whom to expect. The presence of my uncle—wherever he had disappeared to—had implied that I was dealing with the old gang still. Caninus must be correct: Uncle Fulvius was “the Illyrian” and this would be, after all, yet another exchange manipulated by the same people as all the rest.

  A cult initiation was apparently due tomorrow. Priests in their long effeminate robes were milling about, some escorting a large black bull to the pen where he would spend the night before sacrifice. He was led in a short procession, with Eastern music and dancing—and he sensed that all this fuss foretold something dangerous. Maybe he could smell the blood of his predecessors. At any rate, the colorful costumes and unusual surroundings were badly upsetting him. He started bellowing and tried to break free. He was a big lad. Luckily they had him secured with more than flower garlands; stout work with ropes contained him until he was half dragged, half shouldered into the pen. Lustral water was splashed about; he did not care for that too much either.

  All this took place in the complex of small temples to my left. There was further activity in the long colonnade. I would never identify anyone I wanted here.

  I pulled the toga I was wearing up and over my head like a man attending a sacrifice; it offered some anonymity. Nobody who knew me as an informer would be expecting to see me in formal dress—well, not unless he already knew I had been to a funeral today. I set off straight across the open grass, heading for the main temple in the far corner of the site.

  It was late afternoon. The sun was above the temple, making it a dark outline only. Anyone there was lost from sight, invisible against the building. However, if they looked this way they would see me, a well-lit togate figure, striding toward them in the open, quite alone. If I was approaching villains, they might not suspect I still had Petro’s spare sword hidden in my clothing. On the other hand, if they knew why I was tracking them, they might guess I would come armed. They would be armed themselves. Since they were in a religious complex, their weapons would be hidden too. Any number of them could be lurking here. They were likely to know me; I might not recognize them.

  I reached the Temple of Cybele. Discreetly, I searched it. The toga helped make me acceptable. The Great Mother had a rectangular temple of modest proportions, within which she reclined in her turreted crown; she turned a calm gaze upon me as I invaded her silent sanctum. In the presence of powerful women, informers are respectful men; I apologized for disturbing her.

  Empty-handed, I strode back outside. Impatiently I shook the toga from my head, to feel less muffled; I ran a hand through my curls, still caked with salt from my enforced dip yesterday. From these gray temple steps, I now had the light in my favor. It should have been a magical time: early evening, with the August sun still hot and some hours from setting, the sky deep blue above, the strength of the sunlight not yet lessening, though the day was now passing toward a late dusk. The stones of the temple beamed warmth. Absorbing the atmosphere as my nightmare feeling grew, I was aware of the sea, close by behind me, and the town running away to the left.

  Many of the people who were in the sanct
uary moments ago had already vanished. Those who remained walked about quietly. The music had stilled. Within the campus all was now peaceful. Sounds from the town and the port and the nearby gate to the open country seemed to come from another world. I could smell wild oregano. Seagulls gently soared overhead.

  I stood still, watched and listened. My right hand found its way through the heavy folds of the toga to the sword hilt.

  Then, as I continually scanned the enclosure, searching for someone I recognized, at last I thought I glimpsed Uncle Fulvius. He was right at the opposite end of the campus, moving around the huddled sanctuary of Attis. I jumped down the steps of the Great Mother’s temple, and on light feet began running through the long colonnade.

  Fulvius had been making his way around the shrine. I thought he had gone into the building—but when I arrived, panting, I had no luck there. I started to searched the area. This corner of the sanctuary was full of nooks, well-heads, altars, and mysterious entrances. Devotees did not need to have tile labels on the doorposts as if the buildings housed physicians or accountants. But I could not tell what anything really was.

  There was one dreadful possibility: I knew I had to find it. The rites of Cybele are as dreadful as the rites of Mithras, and one is very similar. Somewhere nearby must be a tauroboleum pit: a man-high hole underground into which initiates must descend. There they would stand alone in darkness for a ghastly test of their devotion.

  It would be some kind of cellar, with a grid above the underground pit; upon that grid tomorrow, priests would slaughter the great bull who was still bellowing mournfully in his pen nearby. His spilled blood would rain down onto the novice, who stood alone in pitch darkness, being showered from head to foot with stinking gore. The rite of removing initiates from the pit in their foul robing of bull’s blood was notoriously repulsive.

  I found the tauroboleum. At the back of the Temple of Attis was a tower built into the corner of the city wall. Part now formed a narrow shrine. Pine trees cast a perfumed shadow. Inside, niches held statues of Cybele’s consort, signified by his starry Phrygian cap and his pine cones. The nave was already lit with lamps, adorned with flowers, and scented with incense.

  As soon as I entered I knew this was the place to which the Illyrians had once brought the terrified Rhodope. Ahead of me were steps, as she had said: a short flight down which they must have struggled with the girl as they tried to force her to enter the dark, arched mouth of the tauroboleum pit. Initiations must be rare. On days when this shrine was out of use, its remote tauroboleum—a kind of ghastly drain or culvert—would have made a perfect hideaway. Any cries from victims would go unheard. And afterward, the women who had been imprisoned here would be utterly traumatized, their future silence assured.

  I was standing inside the dimly lit shrine when I thought I heard someone outside. I was torn, but the tauroboleum pit was nearer than the exit, so I moved that way. Descending the steps, I had to crouch low to peer inside; it was too dark down there to see anything, though a faint glow from the lamps behind would have outlined me. Outside the shrine a voice called “Who’s there?” I nipped down the steps. Too late, I heard movement, then hands reached up to grab my garments, pulling me down and underground. Someone dug me painfully in the ribs and shushed me. We were squashed too tight for me to draw my sword. Not that I wanted to. My companion was not threatening me. Well, not in the usual way.

  Somehow I knew who was in here with me: It was Fulvius. I was coping well with this development, until someone up above us in the shrine suddenly slammed shut a metal door on the pit and locked us in.

  “Marcus, you damn fool!” muttered Fulvius. “That was bloody careless—we’re really stuck now.”

  I refused to see this as my fault, but what he said was true. Our prison was damp, musty, and not built for two. We could stand up, but this pit was constructed for one man alone. I could not help remembering that when I was small, people had told me to avoid Uncle Fulvius because he disliked children. Many years later I had realized that that was the family way of saying he liked little boys too much. Now I was trapped in a pit in the dark with him.

  O Mother!

  LXI

  We can’t see much, but light is getting in through the grid and so is air—” To my surprise, my uncle seemed to be taking charge. Now he began calculating odds. I was the ex-soldier; that was my job. “There’s one of him, and two of us—”

  “I have a sword, though no room to use it.” We were packed in very tight. Fulvius could not avoid knowing that I had come armed.

  “We are safe enough down here.” My uncle was a complaisant swine.

  “That’s nice,” I said sarcastically. “Some maniac has locked us in and we’re stuck until they come with the quaking initiate tomorrow morning.”

  “Scared, Marcus?”

  “Only of what I am about to find out—I really want to know,” I said, as patiently as possible, “what your position is in this. I was told by Caninus that you are the Illyrian.”

  “You were told wrong.”

  “So put me right.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “How should I know, Uncle?”

  “There is an alternative—”

  I got it in first: “The Illyrian could be Caninus himself?”

  “Oh, smart boy!”

  “So the navy is not investigating the ransom scam—”

  “Maybe they are,” said Fulvius. “What do you think I am doing here?”

  My uncle was an agent? “Can you prove this statement?”

  “I don’t have to prove it.” When I said nothing, Uncle Fulvius insisted, “You have never seen me damned well dressed like a woman.”

  “Face paint and slippers are just not your style? Such a relief for the family! All I know is, you were going to Pessinus but you got on the wrong boat—”

  Fulvius chuckled. “I got the boat I wanted. Did you meet Cassius?”

  “No—” I remembered the beggar behind the Temple of Rome and Augustus. “Cassius? … Of course—I thought the grime looked self-applied.”

  “He likes to throw himself into things,” Fulvius boasted. An innuendo I preferred to ignore hovered crudely. “Cassius and I have been together for a quarter of a century.” Well, that answered one question. They were a stable couple.

  “Mother will be so pleased you have settled down! Cassius was on the boat, I take it. The boat you decided was the right one?”

  “He was on the boat.”

  “I am happy for you, Uncle. But we’re wasting time. We need to get out of this.”

  “We have to stay put.”

  “Sorry, Uncle, I’d prefer not to make Cassius jealous by lingering—” I tried shoving the door. Uncle Fulvius allowed me to exhaust myself, grunting in protest as I crushed him.

  “Shut up and sit tight. The shrine above is the meeting place. Zeno told me. When the money is handed over, we can listen and collect the evidence.”

  “Zeno was the boy runner?” I was getting my breath back. “You befriended him? So where is Zeno now?”

  “A priest of Attis is feeding him hot milk and sesame cakes.” That did not reassure me. Still, the child could be extracted later. Extricating us might be more difficult.

  “Will your Cassius bring help?”

  “Of course.” That was reassuring, but I still did not like being trapped underground in the dark. Waves of panic swept over me. There must be drainage, but caverns that have been drenched in gore acquire a horrendous smell. I fought claustrophobia. If initiates could stand this in isolation, I could live through the fear … Possibly.

  “Whatever did you have for lunch?” demanded my uncle pompously. I was breathing in his face; there was no alternative.

  “Funeral fare.”

  “Onions.” Oh, Fulvius was fastidious. Now I wanted to laugh.

  While we waited for something to happen, I nagged my uncle to tell me about his role in this fiasco. He said he worked for the navy, as a corn factor; Pa had tol
d me that. And I knew that the army—so presumably the navy too—often made use of their corn factors to gather intelligence. Fulvius had been involved with supplying troops for years. From Salonae, where he lived, his contacts were with the Ravenna Fleet. “He was at Ravenna—”

  “Caninus?”

  “Got it!”

  “I am an informer, Uncle. Whatever you’ve heard from the family, I happen to be good at it … I find this unlikely”—I found it appalling—“but are you saying you do similar work to me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “No need to be secretive. I was an army scout. Now I take on imperial missions.”

  “Good for you, boy!” Fulvius changed the subject, without admitting anything. “Our paths never directly crossed until now.”

  “Well, I’m glad that this business has not ripped up old friendships … So he tells me you are the Illyrian—and you say it’s him.”

  “You just listen to me,” ordered Fulvius.

  “Perhaps I will—” Or perhaps not. “How did Caninus go bad?”

  “He made the wrong friends when he was supposed to be monitoring the Illyrian seaboard.”

  “Wrong friends? When we talked at that bar with Geminus, you were defending the coastal folk yourself.”

  “I was explaining what has happened to the dispossessed,” argued Fulvius. “The men you call pirates come from poverty-stricken communities, where the options are few. Young lads off the land are sent to sea because it is the only option.”

  “Cotys and the others—the Cilician community—seem happy with their lot.”

  “Don’t despise them as riffraff,” said Fulvius. “There was a long tradition of coastal groups giving shelter to men fleeing poverty—often seamen of talent who simply found they could not get a ship. What you call pirate ships were high-class vessels, manned by the best-quality mariners.”

  I had picked up a nuance. “One of those communities gave refuge to you and Cassius?”

  “Oh, Salonae is perfectly civilized!” Fulvius cried angrily. “But I know people in Illyria. I know the good and the bad. I had been to Dyrrhachium. So I was asked to keep an eye on Cotys unofficially, when he seemed to have been lured into new, unacceptable ventures. I soon spotted that he was being protected by a bad apple in the Ravenna Fleet. When Caninus got himself transferred here, ostensibly to shadow Cotys, then I was asked to shadow him.”