A Body in the Bathhouse (24 page)

We took the service road around the palace, going up carefully on the eastern side, then along the north wing, past the secure depot. Walking on the metaled road was easier than tripping across the site, with its mud and fatal pitfalls. A young fox let out a bloodcurdling scream from nearby undergrowth. When an owl hooted, it sounded like a human wrongdoer signaling to lurking friends. Noises carried alarmingly.

“We are mad,” Aelianus decided.

“Quite possibly,” whispered Helena. She was unperturbed. We could hear that my supposedly sensible lady was now thrilled to be up and at an adventure.

“Face it,” I told her brother. “Your sister never was the docile type who would happily fold tablecloths while her men went out to spend, bet, feast, and flirt.”

“Well, not since she noticed Pertinax doing all those things without her,” he conceded. Pertinax had been her short-lived first husband. Helena hated to have a failed marriage, but when he neglected her, she took the initiative and issued a divorce notice.

“I saw her reaction, Aulus, and I learned from it. Whenever she wants to play outside with the boys, I let her.”

“Anyway, Falco,” Helena murmured silkily, “I hold your hand when you’re scared.”

Something quite large rustled away in the undergrowth. Helena grabbed my hand. Perhaps it was a badger.

“I don’t like this,” Aelianus whispered nervously. I told him he never liked anything; then I led my companions silently past the specialist finishers’ huts.

The mosaicist had his window shuttered tightly; he probably still mourned his dead father. From the fresco painters’ hut came a smell of toasted bread; someone inside was whistling loudly. We had already gone by when the door was flung open. I sheltered our lantern with my body; Aelianus instinctively moved closer to help block the light. A cloaked figure emerged and, without a glance our way, skipped off in the opposite direction. He was a fast, confident walker.

I could have called out and initiated a deep argument about crushed malachite (which is
so
expensive) as against green earth celadonite (which fades), but who wants to start libeling “Appian green” with a painter who is known to thump people?

“Your Stabian, Falco?”

“Presumably. Toddling off to thump your brother again.”

“Or serenade Hyspale?”

“I bet he hasn’t even noticed her. He and Justinus are on a promise with a wine-bar dainty called Virginia.”

“Ooh, I can’t wait to tell Claudia!” Aelianus sounded as if he meant it, unfortunately.

Helena gave me an angry shove. I moved on.

We found the line of carts. Poking about strange transport wagons in pitch darkness, when the owners of the wagons may be waiting there to jump you, is no fun. An ox sensed our presence; he started lowing with a mournful bellow. I could hear the tethered mules stamping. They were restless. If I had been a carter here, I would have come to investigate. No one moved. With luck, that meant no one had stayed here to watch the wagons. Not that we could assume anything.

“Helena, we’ll explore. Listen for anyone coming.”

Not long after we first started searching, Helena thought she heard something. We all hushed. Straining our ears, we did hear faint movement, but it seemed to be retreating from us. Had someone spotted us and gone for help? It could have been horses or cattle nosing about.

“Pretend that like rats and snakes: ‘They are more scared of us than we are of them.’ ”

I ordered Aelianus to resume, but told him to hurry. With our nerve almost going, we hopped from vehicle to vehicle. The empty carts were no trouble. We checked them for false bottoms, feeling fools as we did so. We found nothing so sophisticated. Other carts were carrying goods for sale—wicker chairs, hideous mock-Egyptian side tables, and even a batch of soft furnishings: ugly cushions, rolls of garish curtain material, and some ghastly rugs—all made to lousy standards of workmanship, in what was thought to be provincial taste by people who had none themselves. Other cheapjack entrepreneurs like Sextius must have made their way here on the off chance. If they failed to find a buyer in the King, they then drove into town and tried to flog their merchandise to the towns-people. In exchange, the canny Britons probably tried to palm off the sellers with fake amber and cracked shale.

Not wanting to leave signs that we had searched, we had problems with these carts. Still, we poked beneath the merchandise to our best ability. One of us would heave up the crude produce, while the other quickly scrabbled underneath. It would have helped if Aelianus had bothered to prop things up as he was supposed to, instead of letting a lady’s armchair crash down on my bent head. Woven basketware is damned heavy.

“Steady on! Some tribal spearsman’s daughter is going to find her new bedroom seat covered with my blood—”

Luckily, I only had a sore noddle. The scent of blood was the last thing we needed. Because just at that moment a crowd of men rushed from the darkness, yelling at us—with the unleashed depot guard dogs baying ahead of them.

We had nowhere to go. It was a thousand yards back to the safety of the King’s old house.

I pulled Helena up onto the furniture cart, shoved her right down among the wicker chairs, and told her to lie still in this fragile testudo. Aelianus and I jumped to the ground and scattered, trying to draw off the dogs. I never saw where he went. I took the one open route in front of me.

I got a brief clear run to the campsite. Crashing through undergrowth, I burst into the clearing where various outcasts lurked on the fringes and no doubt preyed on the building site. Some had quite decent tents with ridge poles; some had nothing but branches bent over and covered with skins. A group of bonfires burned listlessly. It was all I could hope for out here. I grabbed myself a burning branch and stirred up the nearest blaze, and as the sparks flew, light illuminated the clearing. I managed to pick up a second lit brand. Then I turned to face the guard dogs as they raced towards me through the trees.

XXX

T
HEY WERE
big, fierce, black-haired, long-eared, angry curs. They hurtled heavily towards me at full pelt. As the first reached me, I leaped back right over the bonfire, so his pads must have been singed as he jumped over. He felt nothing, apparently. I made wild feints with the live brands. Snarling, he sought to dodge the flames but still snapped at me.

Startled heads had popped out from some of the bivouacs. Other dogs careered up and attacked the tents. This was hard on the occupants, but distracted the other dogs from chasing me. I was left with my lone attacker. I roared and stamped.
You have to outface them
, someone had once told me. …

My attacker was barking ferociously. Men arrived, shouting. The blanket-wrapped lumps who lived in the benders had come to—I glimpsed pans and staves being whacked around violently. Then I stopped looking as the terrifying dog launched straight at my throat.

I had crossed the fiery brands in front of me. Ends out, I rammed them at his mouth. It did at least make him miss his aim. He crashed onto me; we both bowled over backwards, and I kept rolling. I hit a hot cauldron. The pain seared my arm, but I ignored that. I grabbed its two loop handles, tore it from its hanging hooks, and flung the whole thing at the dog as he squirmed around. Either the heavy vessel hit him or the boiling water scalded. He turned tail for a moment, whining.

A second’s grace was all I needed. I was on my feet. When he leaped again, I had wrapped my cloak around my hand and torn down a spit that was roasting a rabbit over the fire. I speared the dog with it; he expired at my feet. No time for shame. I ran straight at the group of men who had brought the dogs as they tried to round up the others. They were too surprised to react when I kicked them aside. While they milled about, I broke free of the campsite.

Back in the woods, I took a new direction. Stumbling, skidding, and cursing, I ran headlong. Bushes tore at me. Brambles clawed my clothes. Desperation gave me more courage and speed than any pursuers. The ground underfoot was deeply treacherous and I was in darkness. A few near invisible stars served to show my orientation but offered no light. I lurched free of cover, and knew from the noises and the smells of dung that I had somehow reached the tethered beasts. I dragged a mule around by the head and cut his rope with the knife I keep in my boot. Judging direction from memory, I rode past the parked carts.

“Helena!”

She popped up, still holding the lantern. What a girl. Wasted as a senator’s daughter. Perhaps even wasted on being my girl. I should have let this Amazon deal with the dogs. One look from those scathing dark eyes and they would have cringed into submission. Me along with them.

Hoicking her skirts and tucking the loose folds of cloth well into her girdle, she stepped off the cart sideways, sliding behind me onto the mule’s back as if trained in a circus act. I felt her arm around my waist. With her free hand she held out the lantern to glimmer faintly on the track ahead of us. Without pausing, I geed up the mule and set off back to the old house.

“Wait—where’s Aulus?”

“I don’t know!” I wasn’t uncaring, but I had to save Helena. She was worried stiff about her brother, but I would sort him out later.

Helena groused, but I kept the mule heading homewards. Security flares on the building site soon lit our way more safely. We arrived at our dwelling place, shed the mule, and bundled ourselves indoors. We were both shaking.

“Don’t tell me—”

“You are an idiot, Falco. So am I,” confessed Helena with fairness as she shook out her skirts.

I was wondering how in Hades I could find Aelianus, when Maia and Hyspale both appeared. We told them nothing was the matter, so they knew something was wrong. Anyway, they would have realized when we were then disturbed by violent hammering at the outside door.

I opened up. I did it cautiously, sneaking a quick look-see for dogs. Magnus and Cyprianus, the surveyor and the clerk of works, were standing there. They both looked furious.

“What a surprise at this time of night, lads!”

“Can we offer refreshments?” asked Helena weakly. I hoped I was the only one who could see from the light in her eyes that she was nearly laughing with mild hysteria.

They were not here to socialize. “Have you been out just now, Falco?” Magnus demanded.

“A gentle stroll …” My scratched arms and legs, and Helena’s wide eyes, must have given us away.

“Have you been by the delivery carts?”

“I may have ambled that way. …”

“Intruders were disturbed by the guards from the depot.”

“What? Your dog-keepers? How lucky they were on hand to prevent trouble! What do these intruders say for themselves?”

“That’s what we have come to ask you,” growled Cyprianus. “Don’t mess about, Falco. You were there; you were recognized.”

I reminded myself I was the Emperor’s envoy and had every right to investigate anything I wanted. Guilt undermined me, nonetheless. I had been wrong-footed. Now I had a burned arm; canine teeth had ripped my tunic; I was hot and breathing hard. Worse, in my search I had found nothing. I hate wasted effort.

“I don’t have to answer you tonight,” I said quietly. “I have imperial authority to skulk—I could ask, what were
you
doing out there with a bunch of savage dogs?”

“Oh, why are we arguing?” raged Magnus suddenly. “We are all on the same side!”

“I hope that’s true!” I scoffed. “We can’t have it out at this time of night. I suggest a site meeting with Pomponius tomorrow. Now it’s late; I’m tired—and before you go, there was somebody else on the prowl near the carts. What have you done with that young man who accompanies the statue-seller?”

“We never got him. What’s he to you?” demanded Magnus.

I kept up the pretense that Aelianus was a stranger. “He looks wrong. He hangs about. He seems to despise the artwork that Sextius is supposed to be selling—and if you must know, I don’t like the color of his eyes!” Neither Magnus nor Cyprianus looked fooled. “I want him found, and want to interrogate him.”

“We’ll have a look for him,” Cyprianus offered fairly helpfully.

“Do that. But don’t beat him up. I need him in a condition where he can still talk. And I want him first, Cyprianus: whatever his game is, he’s mine!”

It did no good. I found out next day they had looked half the night for him. There was no trace of Aelianus anywhere.

I went out at first light, trawling all around the site. There was flattened undergrowth everywhere, but Aelianus had vanished. By then, I had realized that even if Magnus and Cyprianus had found him, they would never have handed him over to me until they had knocked out of him anything he had to say. They would extract more than that too. They would want him to incriminate himself—whether he was guilty of anything or not.

At least if he was dead in a ditch, none of us had pinpointed the ditch. Only as the site came alive in the morning did I make myself reluctantly try the last place where he might be. Slowly I dragged myself to the medical hut and asked Alexas if anyone had brought him a new corpse.

“No, Falco.”

“Relief! Thanks for that. But will you tell me if you get one?”

“Someone in particular?” the orderly asked narrowly.

There was no point in pretending any longer. “His name is Camillus. He’s my brother-in-law.”

“Ah.” Alexas paused. I waited with my heart sinking. “Better look at what I have in the back room, Falco.” That sounded grim.

I whipped aside the curtain. My mouth was dry. Then I swore.

Aulus Camillus Aelianus, son of Camillus Verus, darling of his mother and dutifully loved by his elder sister—Aulus, my sullen assistant—was lying on a bunk. He had one leg heavily bandaged and a few extra cuts for emphasis. I could tell by his expression as his eyes met mine he was bored and in a bad mood.

XXXI

“L
OOK WHO’S
here! What happened to you?”

“Bitten.”

“Badly?”

“To the bone, Falco. I am told it could go seriously septic.” Aelianus was dismal. “Men have died from less, you know. Alexas patched me up. I have to keep off this leg for a while—but I’ll be kicking people with it soon!” I could tell who he wanted to kick.