A dying light in Corduba mdf-8 Read online

  I had to find Quadratus before this was done. I wanted him in one piece, pristine and unrolled.

  I had crossed the river at Corduba. My journey would take me into the long line of gentle hills that had been a constant backdrop to our stay. In a gentle arc from west to east they closed off the Baetis valley on its north side, stretching from Hispalis to Castulo, and were pockmarked with mineral works almost all the way. Tumbling rivers with wriggling lakes ran through the hills. Transhumance paths, the ancient drove-roads for moving cattle every season, crisscrossed the terrain. I moved up into cooler air, amongst oak and chestnut trees.

  I travelled light, camping out if it was more convenient, or begging a night in a contractor's but where I could. There were two roads going east from Corduba. I was all too conscious that while I took the upper route through these pleasant hills, Helena Justina was travelling the lower, along the river parallel with me. While I was constantly nipping up byways to ask after Quadratus at isolated workings, she made a steadier progress not too far away. I could almost have signalled the carriage.

  Instead here I was, miserable as death, barely in contact with humanity. I hated it when the stubbly speculators only produced morose grunts for me; I hated it more when they were hungry for gossip and wanted to delay me for interminable chats. I ate cheese and hard biscuit; I drank mountain stream water. I washed if I felt like it, or not if I felt perverse. I shaved myself, never a success. It was worse than the army. I was surly, solitary, famished and chaste.

  In the end I realised Quadratus was not bothering with the smaller individual mines. Only the big show would do for the famous Tiberius; he must have gone straight to the huge silver mine with its complex of hundreds of shafts let to numerous contractors, which lay at the far eastern end of the mountain range. He probably travelled by way of the river road, and stayed in decent mansios. Still, he would not be as desperate as I was, and he lacked the verve and efficiency to cover as much ground. I might yet head him off.

  It was a cheering hope. It kept me going for half a day. Then I knew I had to face the kind of scene I had sworn to avoid for ever, and I felt myself break into a sweat.

  It was the smell that turned my stomach first. Even before the appalling sights, that sour odour of slaves in their filth made me want to retch. Hundreds worked here. Convicted criminals who would slog it out until they died; it was a short life.

  I could hardly bear to enter the place, remembering how I too once laboured to hew out lead-bearing rocks with inadequate tools on a pitiful diet amidst the most sordid cruelty. Chained; flogged; cursed; tortured. The hopelessness of knowing there was no relief from the work and no chance of escape. The lice. The scabs. The bruising and the beatings. That overseer, the worst man I had ever met, whose mildest thrill was buggery, and his biggest triumph watching a slave die in front of him.

  I was a free man now. I had been free then – only enslaved from choice and for an honourable motive, though there are no grades of degradation on a chain-gang in a silver mine. Now I stepped down from a sturdy horse, a self-assured man with position in the world. I had rank. I had a formal commission with an imperial pass to prove it. I had a wonderful woman who loved me and I was fathering a little citizen. I was somebody. The mine perimeter was guarded, but when I announced myself I was called 'legate' and provided with a polite guide. Yet when that smell hit my gut I was nearly thrown back to three years ago. If I relaxed, I would be a trembling wreck.

  I was led through a busy township in the shadow of mountains of slag. As we passed the cupellation furnaces, the smog and the ceaseless dints of the hammers left me almost demented. I seemed to feel the ground trembling under my boots. I was told how here the shafts reached over six hundred feet deep. The tunnels chased seams of silver underground for between three and four thousand feet. Deep down below me the slaves worked, for it was daylight. There are rules. No mine may work at night. You have to be civilised.

  Below ground there would be huge polished mirrors to reflect the bright sunlight from above; beyond the reach of the sun the slaves carried clay lamps with vertical handles. Their shift lasted until the lamps ran out; never soon enough. The lamps used up the air and filled the tunnels with smoke. Amongst this smoke the slaves toiled to free the lumps of ore, then carried the backbreaking weight of esparto bucketfuls on their shoulders in a human chain. Up and down from the galleries, using short ladders. Pushing and shoving in lines like ants. Coughing and perspiring in the dark. Relieving themselves when they had to, right there in the galleries. Near-naked men who might never see daylight for weeks on end. Some endlessly trudged treadmills on the huge waterwheels that drained the deepest shafts. Some struggled to prop up the galleries. All of them coming a little closer every day to an inevitable death.

  'Stunning, isn't it?' enquired my guide. Oh yes. I was stunned.

  We came to the procurator's office. It was manned by a whole battery of supervisory staff. Men with flesh on their bodies and clothes on their backs. Dean-skinned, well- shaven men who sat at tables telling jokes. They picked up their salaries and enjoyed their lives. Visiting overseers cursed and complained as they took their breaks above ground, while they boasted about pacifying new convicts and keeping the old hands at their hard work. The supervising engineers, silent men scribbling inventive diagrams, worked out new and astonishing achievements to be turned into reality underground. The geometrists, who were responsible for finding and evaluating the seams of silver, completed dockets in between putting their feet up and telling the most obscene stories.

  It was a room where people constantly came and went; nobody took any notice of a newcomer. Arcane discussions were going on, occasionally heated though more often businesslike. Huge movements of ore and endless shipments of ingots were being organised through this office. A small army of contractors was being regulated here, in order to provide a vital contribution to the Treasury. The atmosphere was one of rough and ready industry. If there was corruption it could be scandalous and on a massive scale, as I had proved in another province. But we had had a new emperor for two years since then, and somehow I doubted that more than harmless fiddling went on here. The profits were enough to cushion greed. The importance of the site ensured that only the best staff appointments were approved. There was an unmistakable aura of watchfulness from Rome.

  It did not include supervision by the quaestor, apparently.

  'Oh yes, Quadratus was here. We gave him the grand sightseeing tour.'

  'What? "This is an ingot; here's an Archimedes screw" – then sending him down the deepest shaft on a wobbly ladder and suddenly blowing out the lamps to make him shit himself?'

  'You know the score!' the procurator beamed admiringly. 'Then we bluffed him with a few graphs and figures, and booted him out to Castulo.'

  'When was this?'

  'Yesterday.'

  'I should catch up with him, then.'

  'Want a look around our system first?'

  'Love to – but I need to get on.' I managed to make my refusal sound polite. Seen one, you've seen them all.

  Castulo would be a day's ride away. Quadratus himself had told me his father had interests there, in the tight little mining society which had tied up all the mineral rights for a radius of twenty miles or more. The mining sites were smaller than here, but the area was important. Some of the wealthiest men in Hispania were making their fortunes at Castulo.

  I nearly escaped without incident. I had left the office and was looking for my guide. Apparently he worked on the principle that if he got you in, you could find your own way out while he sloped off for a gossip with a friend.

  Then a man came towards me. I recognised him immediately, though he did not know me. A big, shapeless bully, just as sly as he was merciless. He seemed heavier than ever, and shambled with even more threat in his ugly gait. His name was Cornix. He was the slave overseer who had once made a habit of singling me out for torture. In the end he had nearly killed me. Of all the pig-ignorant debauched thugs i
n the Empire he was the last man I would ever wish to see.

  I could have walked right by him; he would never have realised that we had met before. I could not help my start of recognition. Then it was too late.

  'Well! Well! If it isn't Chirpy!' The nickname froze my blood. And Cornix was not intending me any favours when he leered, 'I've not forgotten I owe you one!'

  LXIII

  He had two beats of time to reduce me to a jelly, but he missed his chance. After that it was my turn.

  I had made a bad mistake with Cornix once: I had escaped his clutches and publicly humiliated him. The mere fact that I was alive today was because in my time as a slave I had continually outwitted him. Since I had been shackled, starved, despairing, and close to dying at the time, it was all the more commendable.

  'I'm going to smash in your head,' he told me, in the same old sickening croak. 'And after that, we'll really have some fun!'

  'Still the tender-hearted giant! Well, well, Cornix Who let you out of your cage?'

  'You're going to die,' he glowered. 'Unless you've got a girl to rescue you again?'

  This kind of delay – with its attendant danger – was the last thing I could afford. The girl who had once rescued me was heading for the coast, in a condition where she sorely needed me.

  'No, Cornix. I am alone and unarmed, and I'm in a strange place. Obviously you have all the advantages.'

  I was being too meek for him. He wanted threats. He wanted me to defy him and force him to fight me. One or two people were already watching. Cornix was yearning for a big display, but it had to be my fault. He was the kind of rowdy who only picked on slaves, and then covertly in corners. His official role was as a tough manager who never put a foot wrong. In Britain his superiors had been told the truth eventually, and it must be due to me that after the shake-up I organised there he had had to roam abroad to find himself a new position. Just my luck he had found it here.

  'I'm glad we've had this little chat,' I said very quietly. 'It's always good to renew acquaintance with an old friend!'

  I ruined away. My contempt was iron-hard and just as cold. Refusing to antagonise the bastard was the surest way to achieve it. There were tools and timber everywhere. Unable to bear my forbearance Cornix grabbed a mining pick and came after me. That was his mistake.

  I too had sized up possible weapons. I caught up a shovel, swung it, and banged the pick from his grip. I was angry, and I had no fear. He was out of condition and stupid, and he thought he was still dealing with someone utterly exhausted. Three years of exercise had given me more power than he could cope with. He soon knew.

  'You have two choices, Cornix. Give up and walk away – or find out what pain means!' He roared with rage and rushed me with his bare hands. Since I knew where Cornix liked to put his snag-nailed fingers, I was determined not to let him get in close. I used my knee, my fists, my feet. I released more anger than I even knew I had, though dear gods, I had lived with the memories long enough.

  The nick was short. It was nasty. Slowly his oxen brain realised more was called for than he generally had to use. He began to fight harder. I was enjoying the challenge, but I had to be careful. He possessed brute strength, and he had no qualms about how he used his body. I was staving him off with punches and kicks when he bore down on me and grappled me. His roars and the familiar smell of him were churning me up. Then I broke free for a moment. Someone else took a hand. A bystander I had hardly noticed stepped forward adroitly, and passed me a gallery prop. The roughhewn round timber weighed something terrible, though I hardly felt it. I swung the pole at chest height, with all my force. It felled Cornix with a pleasing crack of broken ribs.

  'Oh nice! I learned that from you, Cornix!'

  I could easily have brought the timber down on his skull. Why sink to his level? Instead, I raised the prop above my head and crashed it down across his shins. His scream sang sweetly in my ears. When I left he would never be able to follow me.

  Suddenly I felt a lot better about a lot of things.

  I turned to thank my rescuer and had a shock. For the second time I had escaped that brute's clutches through intervention of a female kind.

  I knew I had seen her somewhere, though she lacked the kind of beauty that my brain catalogues. She was of an age where her age had ceased to matter, though clearly full of spirit and energy by the way she had helped me out. She looked nothing, just a dumpling you could see selling eggs on a market stall. She wore a brown outfit with extra swaddlings in unbleached linen, topped by untidy swags of straw-like hair emerging from a scarf. A battered satchel was slung across a bosom that wouldn't raise excitement in a galley-slave who had just set foot on land for the first time in five years. Eyes of an indeterminate colour were surveying me from a face as lively as wet plaster. She showed no reserve about being here on a site that seemed otherwise exclusively for men. Most of them had not even noticed her.

  'You saved my life, madam.'

  'You were coping. I just threw in some help.'

  'We must have met before.' I was still gasping. 'Remind me of your name?'

  She gave me a long stare. While I blinked back at her she stretched out one pointed shoe, and drew a sign in the dust with her toe: two curved lines with a smudge in between them. A human eye.

  'I'm Perella,' she said matter-of-factly. Then I remembered her: the surly blonde who had originally been booked to dance for the entertainment of the Olive Oil Producers of Baetica.

  LXIV

  Without another word we turned away from the procurator's office, leaving Cornix writhing on the ground. No one made a move to help him. Wherever he went he was a man with enemies.

  Perella and I walked right through the mine environs to the gate where I had left my mules. She had a horse. She mounted without help. I swung up with an element of slickness too. For once.

  We rode single file – me leading – down the one-way road from the settlement towards the major cross-country route through the Mariana mountains. When we reached a suitable quiet spot I signalled and reined in.

  'I've been dodging another Spanish dancer, name of Selia. Nice little mover with castanets, and even better with a cleaver in her hand. She won't be titillating men any more though – or murdering them either. She's learning new dance steps in Hades. MI the breath's been squeezed out of her.'

  'You don't say!' Perella marvelled. 'Persons unknown, would that be?'

  'I believe so.'

  'Better keep it that way.'

  I let her see me looking her over. She was bundled up like a wet cheese. I could not see a weapon. If she carried one it could be anywhere. Her satchel, perhaps. But if she killed Selia, she had adequate skills even without weapons.

  'I'm not after you, Falco.'

  'You've been trying to track me down.'

  'Only when I had a moment. You dodge about a lot. Falco, if we're intending to have a cosy chat we could get down and sit under a tree.'

  'Far be it from me to refuse to exchange sweet nothings with a woman in a wood!'

  'You don't look happy on a mule.'

  Apt, though I was not sure I wanted to be cosy with Perella; still, she was right about me hating life in the saddle. I dismounted my mule. Perella jumped off her horse. She unwound a large sturdy shawl which formed one layer of her garments and spread it on the ground. Equipped for everything. Obviously if I wanted to vie with such a specialist I would have to improve myself.

  We placed ourselves side by side like lovers on a picnic rug: lovers who had not known each other very long. Midges started to take an interest immediately.

  'Well, this is nice! All we need is a flagon of wine and some rather stale rolls, and we can convince ourselves we're a couple of skivers enjoying a holiday.' I could see Perella was not one for light-hearted quips. 'Last time I saw you I believed you were a regular dancer who had lost an engagement due to trickery. You never told me you were employed by the Chief Spy.'

  'Of course I didn't tell you. I'm a professional.' />
  'Even so, eliminating the beauteous Selia just because she pinched your dinner-date seems to be taking your rivalry too far.'

  The woman regarded me with those mud-coloured eyes. 'What makes you think I killed her?'

  'It was very neat. Professional.' I lay back with my hands folded under my head, gazing up through the oak tree boughs. Bits of leaf flittered down and tried to land in my eyes, while I felt that old forest dampness starting to seize up my joints. Going home to hold conversations sensibly in wine bars became an attractive thought.

  She sighed, squirming on the rug so she could still see me. 'Too flash, that Selia. So painted up that everywhere she went she was unmissable.'

  'Good intelligence agents know how to blend in, eh? Like informers! So the flash lass has had her lamp snuffed out by the decent working girl?'

  Perella still managed not to admit it. 'Her time was up. I reckon the young fool quaestor had sent for her from Hispalis to finish you off, Falco.'

  I owe somebody a thank-you then.'

  She showed no interest in my gratitude. 'My bet is, Selia thought he was losing his nerve and she intended to do for him as well. If he talked she would have been in trouble.'

  'Letting her remove Quadratus would have solved a problem.'

  'If you say so, Falco.'

  'Well, let's be practical. Apart from whether it's likely anyone can persuade a judge to try him, when any judge in Rome is liable to have his inclination to do so suborned by large gifts from Attractus – somebody has to catch the bastard first. You're chasing round the mines now, and so am I. I'm definitely looking for Quadratus, and you're either after him – or me.'

  She turned around and grinned at me.