Shadows in the Night (20 page)

They actually cheered me, and then dispersed, and as they moved off, Quintus came out of a far dark corner where he’d been sitting unnoticed.

“A good speech. You should be a general.”

“But I’m not, am I? I’m just a civilian, caught in the middle of someone else’s war, when all I want to do is get on with running a peaceful guest-house.”

He looked at me intently. “It’s not surprising you’re upset.”

“Upset? Me? Of course not!”

“You saw them kill Bessus?” he asked gently.

“Of course I saw it. It was….I can’t describe it….”

“Come and sit by the fire for a while,” he said. “Just till you’re ready to sleep.”

“Sleep! Fat chance of that! I keep going through what happened out there, over and over in my head. Hearing the tribunes cantering up, and being sure they wouldn’t find us, and then Bessus called out for help….He only got a few words out, before they cut his throat. He made a sort of gasping noise….I felt so helpless. I mean I’ve seen dead people before, but never a killing like that.”

“It was brave of him,” Quintus agreed. “And it certainly saved you. Junius told me.”

“Yes, but if I hadn’t been so stupid, provoking the gang leader with my silly remarks, I’d have been able to call out to Junius myself. I
should
have done!”

“Whoever called out,” he said softly, “would be dead now.”

I found I was shaking, and my legs refused to hold me up. I flopped down on a settle by the fire. Without a word he poured me a beaker of wine from one of the big jugs, and held it out for me. I drank the whole mug in one go. He poured more, and took a beaker for himself.

“It’s always bad, seeing someone killed in cold blood.” He sat down beside me, and took my hand. “In battle it’s different, it’s what you’ve trained for, and you’re carried along by the excitement of it all. You can kill enemies as easily as swatting wasps. But
you
weren’t on a battlefield. It’s hard to take, especially the first time. And it’s natural to feel guilty because you survived when someone else didn’t.” He drank some wine. “I felt the same after Pompeii.”

I couldn’t believe it. “After Pompeii? You were in
Pompeii?
”

“It was my home,” he answered sadly.

“It was mine too!”

We sat there, amazed. Out here on the remote edge of the Empire’s northernmost province, the river of fate had swept together two people from the same town in Italia. And not just any old unremarkable seaside resort; a town that no longer existed, having been destroyed in a day by an erupting volcano.

“Our home was in Pompeii,” I said, “but we weren’t there when Vesuvius erupted, we were staying with relations across the bay in Misenum. We saw the volcano erupt; fire and smoke, and ashes falling out of the sky, and then stones raining down. At first we didn’t realise how serious it was, and by the time we did…well, it was much too late to go home. We just had to make a run for it, with all the other refugees. Everything was lost. Our town house, the farm, all our friends….We went back, a month or so after the volcano died down, thinking to salvage what we could from the house. But we couldn’t even
find
our house. We couldn’t even find our own street!” I paused to drink more wine, trying to prevent my hand trembling as I raised the beaker.

“I know,” Quintus said. “I was actually in the town. I was just seventeen, still living at home. I got my grandmother out safely, and my sister and brother, and quite a few of the servants as well. Father told me to escort them to one of our villas inland. But he insisted on staying himself, to protect our house. He thought the eruption would stop soon, and then people would come back, and there would be looting if property was left empty. So he must have died there. By the time everyone realised the eruption wasn’t going to stop, it was too late for me to go back and find him. But sometimes I still think, if I’d tried harder to persuade him, if I’d offered to stay there instead of him, I could have made him leave. After twelve years, it still makes me feel bad.” He touched the emerald ring on his left hand.

“From your father?” I asked. “Your ring?”

“Yes. He gave it to me on my seventeenth birthday.” He sighed, twisting the ring so that the green stone flashed in the lamplight. “He was a good man, very straight, and a scholar, but….I don’t know, strict. Stern. Nothing I did ever seemed quite good enough. He always wanted me to have a political career and end up a senator. The gods know what he’d think of me now!”

We talked for a long while about our vanished life in Pompeii. We compared notes about the shops, the theatre, the temples, the gladiator shows, even the taverns.

“Not that I had any direct experience of those,” I said, “but my brother occasionally sneaked off to somewhere called the Harpy’s Cave when he was supposed to be at school.”

Quintus laughed. “The Harpy’s Cave! Gods, that takes me back. I used to go there—I think all the young lads did. It was an amazing place—the madam was an old crone, and the bar-room was done up to look like a real cave, complete with stuffed bats and spiders’ webs. It even had a narrow secret passage at the back leading out into an alley, so we boys could make our escape when our tutors came looking for us….It was a good life, wasn’t it?”

It was a very good life, and it was sad to think none of it was there any more, and yet I found it oddly comforting to remember it like this. It was years since I’d met anyone else who’d lost their home in that catastrophe, and it was impossible to explain it to somebody who hadn’t been through it. So I hadn’t talked about it, or let myself think about it, for a long time. And Quintus seemed to perceive things I didn’t fully understand myself, things about needing to have a home, somewhere permanent to belong to, and the desperate panic I felt now, thinking our life at the Oak Tree might be snatched away from us.

“Are we going to lose our home here too?” I asked him. “Are the barbarians going to force us to leave? I can’t let that happen, not again. I can’t. I
won’t.
”

“
We
won’t,” he corrected. “I’m with you in this, Aurelia. You know that. Whatever it takes, we’ll win in the end.” He bent close and kissed me. “I promise.”

Eventually he took me to the door of my room, kissed me once more, and went away.

When I was alone I cried. I cried for Pompeii, and the travellers the Shadow-men murdered, and for our dead slave; I cried for the sense of impending disaster I felt. It left me bone-tired, and eventually I slept.

Chapter XIV

Next morning I woke late, with a splitting headache and a feeling of dread. By the time I went outside, the sun had cleared the horizon and was chasing away a thin white mist from the river. Albia was organising breakfast, and had already sent Ursulus with men and mules to retrieve the carriage, assuming there was anything left to retrieve by now.

“Relia, you look half-dead still,” she greeted me cheerfully. “Go back to bed and catch up on some sleep. I can manage fine here.”

“Thanks, Albia, I might just do that. I feel pretty rough. I’ll see if a bit of breakfast wakes me up.” We were in the kitchen, and I picked up a piece of crusty bread, dipped it in some olive oil, and had taken just one bite when there was a tap on the outside door.

It was Milo, the oldest of the stable-lads. His mousy hair was tousled and his expression was anxious. “Please, Mistress, Hippon says can you come round to the stable yard straight away. There’s something he wants to show you.”

“What’s wrong, Milo? Are the horses all right?”

“Oh, they’re fine, Mistress. It’s—well, can you come, please?”

I abandoned breakfast and followed him to the stable yard, which was empty, except for a few half-groomed horses tied to the railings. I soon saw why when Milo led me around to the back of the stable building. There I found Hippon, the other horse-boys, and most of the older stable-hands. And I saw what they were all staring at.

Painted on the wooden back wall of the stables was a skull drawing, and beneath it two lines:

AURELIA MARCELLA WILL BE KILLED

GET OUT OR DIE

So it wasn’t a threat to “all Romans” now. It was a personal message for me! I stared at it, as if by sheer willpower I could make it disappear. But it was there, bright and clear for everyone to see. And then I looked down at the base of the wall. There was a dark green bundle of cloth, stained with something reddish-brown.

“Is that my cloak?” I could hardly get the words out. “They took it last night….” I bent to pick it up, but it was badly stained and still wet, so gingerly I lifted one end of the bundle, and it fell apart into dozens of small pieces; they had hacked it literally to ribbons, and doused it in some animal’s blood.

Hippon said quietly, “We’ve only just found this. None of the guards heard anything last night—I certainly didn’t. And yet….I don’t like to think what they might have done if they’d found any of us outside.”

“Especially me.” I thought suddenly of Titch’s remark yesterday: “I’ve never been that important before—for someone to want to kill me!” I glanced at the lad now, where he stood with the other horse-boys, looking unusually subdued. But he was fourteen, and at his age he knew that whatever the Fates threw at him, he’d be able to catch it and throw it back. I wished I had that resilience, but I didn’t. All I knew was that somebody was taking trouble to let me know that they wanted me dead.

“Are you all right, Aurelia?” Hippon asked.

“Yes, but…
merda,
Hippon….”

“I know. Awful. Why not go inside for a while; we’ll soon have this lot cleaned up, and the—the bundle thrown away.”

“No. No, we must try and find out who did this.” I made myself stand up straight and look steadily at the men and boys around me, and then survey the open area behind the wall. “I wonder how many of them there were? And if they’ve left any tracks? We could do with Hawk here, but I suppose it’s worth a look—no, keep still, you boys, don’t trample all over everything. Use your eyes, not your boots!”

I studied the ground, not seriously expecting to make anything of the footprints. There were plenty of them, mostly far too muddled to make sense of. But in one muddy patch a few feet from the wall I spotted a single clear left boot-print, with a worn heel, and some stitching missing from the sole.

“What’s that?” Titch’s sharp eyes had been busily scanning the area. He pointed to something shiny, and I nodded for him to pick it up and hand it to me. “A belt-stud, that is. Me dad has a belt with studs just like that.”

“So do half the men in the Empire, though. Especially men with army connections. Except, this one’s gilded, look. Usually they’re bronze.” It rang a bell, but I couldn’t think why. I just knew that somewhere, recently, I’d seen something decorated with ornamental gold studs. “It might have been there some time, of course.”

“But see where I found it, Mistress.” The boy pointed to the soft ground, which had blurred boot-prints in it. “If someone had lost it yesterday, them fellers last night would have trodden it into the mud. But it was on top of the mud, see?”

We found nothing else, and Hippon told his lads to get back to work and see to the horses. “We’ll need to think about guards for tonight,” he said. “If anything happened to the horses….Well, one thing at a time. The lads’ll soon have this wall cleaned up. Why don’t you get Taurus to look round the whole property, just in case….” He didn’t need to finish it.

“Yes, everything must be checked over. I’ll do it now.”

“Take one of the men with you then. We can’t be too careful.”

“Gods, Hippon, has it come to this—that I can’t even wander around my own house and land without a bodyguard?”

He shrugged. “Let’s just play safe, shall we?”

I sent Titch to find Taurus, who came ambling round in his usual unhurried way, and stared at the wall. Hippon read him the message. “That’s lousy,” he said. “And they’ve spoiled your good cloak. Trying to scare you, I suppose.”

Trying and succeeding, I wanted to say; but not in front of the servants. “I never liked that cloak much. Now I’ve got a good excuse to buy a new one.” It didn’t sound convincing even to me, but Taurus gave me a smile.

“Odd to use paint,” he remarked. “I wouldn’t have done. If I could write, that is.”

“What would you use?”

“A bit of white stone. There’s plenty of it about here.” He walked over to the paddock fence and picked up a piece of chalky stone with a sharp edge. He went to the wall and drew a line on it. It stood out clear and white on the brown planking; better than the paint, which was pale green.

“Paint would be harder to clean off,” I suggested.

“If I was writing on walls,” Titch said gravely, “and I used a bit of chalk, like Taurus said, then nobody would know it was me, but they wouldn’t know it was somebody else neither.”

“I’m sorry?”

“If I used paint, I can’t use me own, else people would know it was me. I’d use somebody else’s, and then when it’s recognised, he’ll get the blame instead of me.”

I saw where he was driving. “Somebody deliberately used this paint to throw suspicion on whoever owns it? Yes, you could be right. It’s a fairly unusual shade—green with a slight trace of yellow. It ought to be possible to find out where it comes from. Titch, get a knife and scrape off some of it onto…let’s see, onto my wax writing-tablet. If I think I see the same colour anywhere else, I’ll be able to do an exact check. “ I fished out a tablet from my pouch, and the boy scraped some green flakes onto it.