Shadows in the Night (45 page)

“You heard about them, did you? I’m glad. It’s such a pity when one’s triumphs have to remain secret. I’m gratified to know that the news reached the famous Quintus Antonius Delfinus.”

That was yet another shock. After all the trouble we’d gone to, the Shadow of Death knew Quintus’ true identity. I glanced at Quintus; he was tense, but then made an effort to relax and smile.

“Ah,” he said levelly. “So you know who I am.”

“Of course, dear fellow. I’ve known for some time.”

“You have?” Quintus sounded sceptical. “How?”

“Vitalis suspected something when he saw how efficiently you dealt with a couple of his drunken boys at the Oak Tree the other day. Actually he was quite impressed by the way you handled things, and he was sure you were a soldier. You said something about ‘a couple of hours with a Roman drill instructor’…not the sort of language bridge surveyors usually go in for. And why would a soldier go around pretending to be a bridge surveyor? Because he’s neither of those things, he’s a spy. So I asked my friends at the Eburacum garrison to check, and back came the answer: yes, there’s an investigator in the area calling himself Quintus Valerius Longinus, who is in reality a certain Quintus Antonius Delfinus, the scourge of all traitors. They said you have a formidable reputation. I can’t think why.”

Quintus merely shrugged. “It seems I’ve met my match,” he answered.

Felix’s cat-eyes glittered as he smiled his most mischievous smile. “Well, I’m glad you have the grace to admit it. And you didn’t have even a tiny suspicion about what I was up to?”

I was beginning to get tired of this, but it was obviously giving him great pleasure, and when threatened by a murderer, it’s only common sense to try to keep him sweet. I shook my head emphatically. “You’ve fooled us all, Felix, utterly and completely. That is, if this is real life, and not one of your silly jokes.”

“A joke? Oh no, certainly not a joke!” Suddenly his smile was gone, and his face was angry. “That’s where you’ve all been wrong, isn’t it, Aurelia? You’ve always thought I was a joke. Good old Felix, forever clowning about, making everyone laugh. Well nobody will be laughing now. Will they?”

We said nothing.

“
Will they?
” he barked.

“No, they won’t,” Quintus answered. “They won’t be laughing. They’ll be sad, just as I’m sad, when I think of the way a Roman nobleman from an ancient family has turned into a traitor.”

Felix leaned forward on his large throne. “Traitor,” he repeated slowly, almost musingly. “Yes, I know that’s how you think of it. A traitor to my ancestors. A traitor to the Empire. A traitor to the glorious future of Rome. Gods, I’ve had to listen to Silvanius banging on, day in and day out. ‘We Romans must stand together’! Who stood by my family when we needed help, tell me that? When Rome was torn by civil war after Nero died, Romans lost the habit of standing together, didn’t they? It was every man for himself, every clan for itself. Four different men grabbing at imperial power in the space of a year, like greedy babies reaching out for a bright toy! My family lost everything, and they didn’t deserve to. Now I’m going to put matters right.”

“But that’s all history, Felix,” I pointed out. “It’s twenty-odd years since Nero died. You were treated badly, but what’s done is done. How can you re-write twenty years of history?”

“I’m not re-writing history. I’m starting a fresh chapter, and I’m starting it here. Once we’ve driven out the Romans from Britannia, and we will, then this island will revert to its old freedom, ruled by tribal kings, but with one High King over them all, to hold them together and make sure they stay free.” He sat up straight in his purple robe. “Vitalis will make a perfect High King. The tribes love him, and they’ll follow him to battle and to death if he asks them to. He’ll play the part of High King to perfection. But
I
shall be writing his lines for him.”

“The High King on the throne,” Quintus said, “and behind the throne, in the shadows, his trusted adviser, the Shadow of Death.”

“Exactly so!” Felix crowed.

I had a clear image in my head of a native High King, dressed in ornate leather clothes and laden with gold jewellery, feasting in a timbered hall on joints of wild boar so massive he had to use two hands to lift them, throwing the bones on the earthen floor, and then swilling mead from a pewter mug. Night after smoky, noisy night, he’d be surrounded by boasting warriors and scheming Druids, while the bards sang stories of his greatness. I could picture Vitalis in that role, he was made for it.

But next to the High King, a shadow among the shadows, there was Felix, in his gaudy Roman tunic, reclining on a carved couch and eating dainty Roman dishes served on gold plates….

It would never work. Felix hadn’t thought this through. It was one thing being the power behind the rebellion while it was in progress—he could still enjoy his luxurious Roman life from day to day, and only adopt the ways of the Britons when he chose. But if the rebellion succeeded and the Romans actually did disappear, he’d be forced into a barbarian way of life for good. The natives, with their hatred of all things Roman, wouldn’t allow even the Shadow of Death to live in a modern villa and surround himself with well-trained slaves and elegant foreign luxuries. And as for the theatre…hadn’t he realised that if he actually could drive out all Romans, he’d be saying goodbye to Greek and Roman art forever? The ludicrousness of all this hit me with such force that I laughed aloud.

“Be quiet!” Felix almost shrieked it, sending echoes rebounding through the cave. “Don’t you laugh at me. Don’t you
ever
laugh at me again, d’you hear? I’ve put up with you people not taking me seriously all these years, but now I don’t have to. You’ll treat me with respect! Understand?”

I stopped laughing.

“I said, do you understand?”

“I understand, Felix. And I apologise. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Well you have offended me, and you’d better learn not to do it again! Down on your knees, and ask my forgiveness.” He reached behind his throne, and with a good dramatic flourish produced a sword. The lamplight glinted off goldwork in its hilt as he held it up.

This was too much, and my reply came out before I’d had time to think. “Oh, do be sensible, Felix. For one thing I can’t kneel down because I’ve broken my ankle, and for another, your theatrical friends would say you’re in serious danger of over-acting. If you’re going to play the part of Caesar, then for the gods’ sake play him as Gaius Julius, not Gaius Caligula.”

I heard Quintus suppress a gasp; he clearly thought I’d gone too far, and perhaps I had, or perhaps I knew Felix better than most. Either way I didn’t care; I’d nothing to lose, and I’d go down fighting, not kneeling to beg forgiveness.

The silence lasted somewhere between three heartbeats and three hours. Then, miraculously, Felix relaxed and laughed.

“Oh, Aurelia my dear, Publius is right. You always do talk such excellent common sense! I wish you’d taken up my repeated offers of marriage, you know. Ah well…I shall be quite sorry, when the time comes.”

Very comforting, I’m sure, but I preferred not to pursue that line of thought. Let’s get him back into his gloating, smug mood. “We’ve always been friends, Felix,” I said. “And I thought I knew you, as a friend, quite well. I’ve always considered you to be one of the most thoroughly Roman men in the Empire. Now I find you’re trying to drive all Romans out of Britannia.”

“Trying and succeeding.” He reached back and put the sword down behind his throne, and took another long swallow of his wine. “It can’t be done overnight, but it will be done in a year or two. All Romans will be killed, if they don’t depart. That’s not an idle threat, it’s a statement of fact. Including you, Aurelia dear, because you won’t leave. Even after I came to see you in person to ask you nicely.”

“I don’t understand.” My puzzlement pleased him.

“You didn’t recognise me, of course. You thought I was an old and illegal Druid.”

My surprise was genuine; I didn’t need to ham it up for his benefit. “Jupiter’s balls! That was
you?”

“People are so unobservant. You didn’t suspect a thing, did you?”

“No. I’ve never met a Druid before….Of course, you spoke to me in Latin; that ought to have told me something. But you’re right, I never suspected him—I mean you.”

“It was rather a good disguise. I had a little help from Dardanio.”

“Your actor friend?”

“If you knew anything about the theatre, you’d know that Dardanio isn’t just a fine actor, he’s an expert in costume and make-up. A real artist. He gave me some useful lotions and potions. You noticed how my eyes looked black?”

“Yes. It was all very convincing. But if you were that Druid, then you know my answer to your threats and your campaign of terror. I’m not leaving the Oak Tree.”

“It seems to me you’ve already left it,” he said.

There was no answer to that. We sat in silence, sipping our wine.

“Aurelia dear,” he went on. “For friendship’s sake, I’ll give you one more chance, although it’s more than you deserve. Will you give me your word that you and all your household will leave the Oak Tree, and get out of Britannia? If you do, I’ll give you
my
word that we’ll let you go in peace.”

“No thank you.”

He sighed. He appeared genuinely sad. But by now I knew how deceptive appearances could be, where he was concerned.

“It puzzles me,” he reflected, “why you put yourself through all this. You’re actually prepared to lose your life defending your little parcel of land and your few buildings, and your right to be an innkeeper, waiting on drunks from morning till night?”

“Sneer all you like,” I said, “but the Oak Tree is my home, and it’s where I belong. I love Britannia, and I want to live here, as a Roman settler, part of the Roman Empire. And whatever may happen to me, there are thousands like me, hundreds of thousands probably by now. You and your killers won’t ever succeed in driving us out.”

He got up and began pacing about the cave, his purple cloak swishing and swirling. As he strode around he moved in and out of the pool of light, and his appearance changed from a bright familiar friend into a dark brooding threat, and back again. And I suddenly saw that this was how his whole life was. He had divided it into two separate compartments, each with its own personality, and he could switch from one to the other as easily as walking in or out of the shadows.

I’ve mentioned in this report that I’ve been scared on occasion. But the way Felix frightened me was quite unlike anything else. The idea of someone I knew, or thought I knew, turning from friend to foe in the blink of an eye was so terrifying it made my head spin. While he paced I felt fear seep through me, paralysing, numbing.

What could I do? What was the point of even trying? And yet we had to try. We had to do something, to keep him in his brightly lit persona, as Felix the civilised urbane Roman, the former friend. Because from the flashes of temper we’d already seen, when he stepped from light to dark and became the ruthless Shadow of Death, we were in mortal danger.

Quintus broke the silence, and his familiar voice, calm and half-amused, jolted me out of my panic. “Felix,” he drawled lazily, as if making conversation at the dinner table. “Adviser to the High King of the Britons! Now I’ve heard everything! We underestimated you, all of us.”

“If you want real power in politics, you don’t need to be a Caesar or a tribal king,” Felix answered. “You can achieve whatever you like as an adviser, as long as the king needs you. I’ll be the ruler in all but name, because I can help the natives drive the Romans out, and keep their freedom afterwards. They need me, and they know it. The Shadow of Death needs the Chief—but equally, the Chief needs the Shadow of Death.”

Felix sat down again and picked up the wine-jug. “Do have some more of this excellent wine, my dears. It’s from near Pompeii—well near where Pompeii used to be. I thought, for our first meeting here, I’d provide something special. I hope you approve. Aurelia, tell me what you think, truthfully. You’re a connoisseur of wines.”

I told him it was very good, and again, as I complimented him and he refilled my glass, I had the strange feeling that we could be making small-talk at his villa. Except that the surroundings were richer, and darker, and very much scarier.

Quintus leaned forward, holding his glass between his hands and gazing at Felix with close attention. “Felix, there’s something I’ve always wanted to know about the Shadow of Death and the way he operates.”

“Indeed? The all-seeing, all-knowing investigator still has a teeny question unresolved?”

“About a hundred of them, actually,” Quintus smiled. “You pulled the wool over my eyes, I’d be a fool to deny it.”

“Ask away then.” The smug look on Felix’s face was sickening, but also encouraging. I listened as Quintus threw out more bait, like a fisherman on a river bank, waiting for his prey to swim in close.

“This business of the masked figure—or figures, I should say. Who helped you there?”

“Dardanio created the mask for me. I wear it as a symbol, like a legionary standard in a way. And of course it helps keep my identity secret. Only Vitalis and a few senior men have ever seen me without it.”