The Raven and the Rose (34 page)

And Julia’s sister apparently loved him.
 

Two sets of hands were better than one. Even if he managed to escape he still had to get Julia away from her jailers before they carried out her execution.
 

“What do you have in mind?” Marcus asked.

“Is there only one guard?”
 

“More than one is not necessary. The only access is that road coming up the hill and it’s a sheer drop the other way.”

“And the lock?”

“It’s a simple turnkey, but the guard always stays outside, he never gets close enough to grab his belt.”

Both men looked up suddenly as they heard voices outside the cave. Marcus smiled as he recognized one of them.

“What...?” Verrix began, and Marcus silenced him with a gesture.

“Be quiet! That’s Septimus, a friend of mine.”
 

“What’s he doing?” Verrix hissed.

“Listen!”

They listened. Septimus had a leather bottle of wine, and he was trying to persuade the guard, whom he knew from Senator Gracchus’ gladiator school, to take a drink. This went on for a while, with the guard feebly protesting his duty, until he finally succumbed to temptation.

“What’s going on now?” Verrix whispered.

Marcus crawled into a tenuous position on a ledge, pressing his nose to the grids of the gate, where he could just see the two men conversing.
 

“Be still and I’ll tell you,” Marcus muttered. He reported to Verrix as he saw Septimus matching the other man drink for drink until the guard was reeling. When Septimus thought he was drunk enough he walked behind the guard and braced his hands together, lacing his fingers tightly, then struck him on the back of the neck.

The guard toppled like a felled tree and Septimus snatched his keys. He ran to the cave.

“I thought that Samnian would never go down,” Septimus muttered thickly as he unlocked the gate. “He must have the constitution of a Parthian camel. I had to keep him going and I’m not too steady myself.”

“Am I glad to see you!” Marcus said, throwing his arms around his friend.

Septimus stared as Verrix came piling out of the cave behind Marcus.

“Him too?” he said.

“He’s coming with me.”

“What are you doing with Larthia’s slave?”

“Long story. Will you lock the gate before those dreamers in back wake up?”

Septimus locked the gate and then replaced the keys on the un- conscious guard’s belt. Septimus then came back to Marcus and handed him a goatskin pouch.

“Forty gold pieces,” he said. “That’s all I could put my hands on today.”

Marcus took the bag and stashed it inside his cloak.

“How will you explain this?” Marcus asked him, indicating the drunken guard.

“At the moment, I don’t know. I’ll think of something. It will be as outrageous as I can make it, I never miss an opportunity to give my father another reason to disinherit me.” He took off his weapons sheath, which contained his sword and knife, and handed the belt to Marcus.

“You’ve been a good friend, Septimus. I don’t know how to thank you,” Marcus said, buckling on the belt.

“No need. It’s my belief that you can never do enough for the man who’s saved your life.” Septimus grinned.

“Will you two just kiss each other and get it over with?” Verrix said impatiently. “We don’t have much time.”

Marcus glanced up at the night sky. It would not be night much longer.

He embraced Septimus again and said, “I’ll never forget you,
amicus animae
.”
 

“Go!” Septimus said.

Marcus and Verrix sprinted off down the hill.

* * *

Mark Antony was working late in his office at home. He looked up in surprise as his steward admitted a distraught pontifex maximus into the torchlit room.

“Paetus Sura, what brings you out at this time of night? Is there something I can do for you?” Antony said, putting aside the edict he was reading.

“Something you can do for me? Marcus Corvus Demeter has escaped from the Esquiline prison!”

“Is that so?” Antony said, leaning back in his chair, folding his hands at his waist.

“Yes, that’s so, and I want to know what you are going to do about it!”

Antony opened his hands. “What CAN I do about it?” he asked innocently.

“Send a deployment of soldiers after them!”

“Them?”

“Demeter has a Gallic slave with him, the Sejana’s lover, accused of stuprum. They escaped together.”

Antony pursed his lips. “The Gaul has good taste,” he said judiciously.

“Is that all you can say?”

Antony sat forward again and picked up the scroll he had been reading. “I think Larthia’s sister is prettier, but there’s no accounting for individual preference.”

Sura stared at him. “Do you think this is funny? Demeter flouted our laws by defiling a Vestal and now he’s at large, probably on his way to rescue that little tart from the death she so richly deserves. At least send reinforcements to the burial site to make sure he doesn’t snatch her.”

Antony shrugged. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the men to spare, there are still pockets of resistance all over the city, conspiracy loyalists who might erupt at any moment.”

“Are you serious? You can’t spare two men?”

“Julia Rosalba will be attended by the Spanish guards assigned to her when she was arrested. Not to mention the formidable Livia Versalia, who is well worth ten of my men on any given occasion. That’s enough.”

“You’re on their side, aren’t you?” Sura demanded, eyeing Antony narrowly. “You want them to get away.”

“I am on MY side, pontifex, and it is not in my best interest to send my soldiers to an execution when they are needed elsewhere. That is all.”

Sura didn’t move.

Antony looked up at him. “I said, that is all. And if I find out that you have done anything to contravene my wishes in this matter it will not go well for you, I assure you.”

Sura made a disgusted sound and stomped noisily out of the study.

Antony smiled, silently wished Demeter the speed of winged Mercury, and went back to his paperwork.

Chapter 11

“What are you going to do with that?” Verrix asked, as Marcus stripped off his uniform and rolled it into a ball.

“I’m going to hide it. In case anyone comes after us I don’t want it to be a marker for the route we took.” Marcus rolled aside a rock and stuffed the red tunic under it, then replaced the rock, kicking dirt around the edge to disguise the fact that it had been moved. Then he took the woolen tunic Verrix handed to him and belted it tightly around his waist. Verrix, now attired only in his shift and trousers, looked down the hill at the stable on the edge of the forum.

“Are you sure Postumus isn’t there at night?” he asked, peering through the almost unrelieved dark.
 

“He has a house near the Via Flaminia.”

“But he must leave somebody there to make sure no one steals the horses.”

“There’s probably just a stableboy, Postumus is too cheap to keep a night staff. Come on.”

They picked their way down the rest of the elevation, their footing unsure without light to see. Marcus had been tempted to steal the torch from the wall outside the prison, but he knew that it would flash like a lighthouse fire if anyone did come after them.
 

Going in the darker was slower, but safer.

It seemed an eternity before they were standing in back of the stable. The pungent aroma of many horses confined together and the occasional stomping and neighing of restive animals was punctuated by the rumbling of carts in the street out front.

“Where’s the entrance?” Verrix asked.

Marcus nodded to the left. “I wish we could just wake up the attendant and pay for the horses, but if we do that whoever is in there will remember us.”

“Let’s go,” Verrix said.

They crept around to the double doors, which were barred from the inside. On the plain front of the wooden structure they saw a small trap door used for feed deliveries.

“There,” Marcus said.

They kicked it in; the stableboy sleeping inside on a bench jumped up at the noise and then shrank back against the wall when he saw the two intruders crawl through the door.

“So much for stealth,” Verrix muttered. “He’ll be sure to remember us now.”
 

Marcus didn’t have time for the niceties; he lunged forward and grabbed the boy’s tunic.

“Get me your two best horses,” he said. “Now.”

The boy stared back at Marcus, his eyes like saucers.

“There’s a gold piece in it for you,” Marcus added, and the boy, realizing that they weren’t going to kill him, bolted down the stable aisle. In short order he was leading two mares to the front as Marcus and Verrix waited impatiently.

“Get me the bridles and blankets,” Marcus barked, reaching inside his tunic for the money pouch Septimus had given him. When the horses were outfitted Marcus handed the boy the coin and added, “Now open the door.”

The boy obeyed, and as he and Verrix led the horses into the street Marcus said, “You didn’t see anyone. You fell asleep and when you woke up the horses were gone.”

The boy nodded vigorously.

During the whole encounter he had not said a word.

“That money will keep him quiet as long as it takes for him to hear the first threat,” Verrix said.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be long gone by the time Postumus arrives to open his shop.”

“Where are we going?” Verrix asked.

“Porta Collina,” Marcus replied shortly.

Verrix nodded. It was one of the many gates to the city which stood in the outlying districts and fed the major roads into the forum. This one lay across the Tiber, near the gardens which Caesar had recently given to the public in his will. The fastest route to it was to ride around the flats beyond the seven hills and then enter the city, because the streets at night were so clogged with carts, not to mention the roaming gangs of cutpurses who might also slow, or stop, their progress.

“Let’s go,” Marcus added.

They led the horses away from the forum, walking with them for several miles until they had left the settlements behind and there was nothing but scrub grass and open fields in view. At Marcus’ signal they mounted, riding bareback except for blankets, controlling the animals with their leg muscles.
 

Verrix was by far the better rider; the Roman army lacked an efficient cavalry, indeed many of its officers could not even ride, but the Gauls were mounted brigands, able to do almost anything from the back of a horse. Marcus kept up with his companion, since he had learned to ride as a young boy in Sardinia, but as he glanced up at the sky he was glad he had run into the slave when he had.

He hated to admit it, but Verrix was an asset.

He kicked the horse’s flanks with his heels and spurred him on urgently.

The sky was getting lighter.

* * *

“Are you ready?” Margo said quietly to Julia, who smiled humorlessly.

“I’m dressed,” she said. “I don’t think it’s possible to be ‘ready’, do you?”

Margo glanced over her shoulder at Livia Versalia, who was standing at the door, waiting with the two Spanish guards to escort Julia from the fanum.

“May I have a minute alone with her?” she asked Livia.

Livia hesitated, then nodded. She stepped out of the detention cell and closed the door.

Margo produced the vial of arsenic from the folds of her gown and pressed it into Julia’s hand.

“I got this from your sister’s slave. Drink it as soon as they seal you in,” she whispered. “It will all be over quickly, you will not suffer.”

Julia took the poison and tucked it into the bodice of her gown. Then she embraced Margo, holding the other woman close and saying softly, “I love you, Margo. I don’t think I would have survived my first years as a Vestal if it weren’t for you. The only thing I regret about all of this is leaving you behind to live here without me.”

“Why did you do it, Julia?” Margo sobbed. “Is anything worth this punishment? Anything?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Julia said gently, stepping back from Margo. “Just know that I made a free choice to do what I did, and I’m not sorry.”

Margo clung to her a little longer, then let her go, wiping her eyes with the end of her sleeve as Livia opened the door again.

“Time to go,” she said shortly.

Julia walked forward, a slim figure in her white stola, a thin silk palla over her arms. Livia and the guards fell in behind her as she left the cell.

The only other witnesses permitted at her execution would be the rest of the Vestals and her sister Larthia.

Two carriages awaited them in the temple square. Livia and Julia sat in one, which was driven by the first guard, and the five other Vestals got into the other with the second guard. As they drove off in the gloomy pre-dawn, the horses’ hooves clopping on the paving stones, Julia looked her last at the scene which had been daily life to her for the last ten years. The merchants, loading their stalls to get ready for sunrise, looked curiously at the vehicles as they passed. Those who recognized the Vestal crest might have known what was happening, but most were too preoccupied with presenting their merchandise to give the little caravan more than a passing glance.