Hobnails clattered on stone, booted feet thundered down the passage. Gritting his teeth, rubbing at the rapidly swelling bump on his head, he went to the window. It was getting light in the east, and the rooftops were stained a rosy red. Before anyone came in, he climbed up onto the sill, and for the second time that night he half climbed, half jumped down into the backyard, then ran.
—8—
Nicopolis, suburb of Alexandria, Egypt, 2nd September 124 AD
Not far from the amphitheatre Flaminius found a secluded alleyway where he could lie low until the sun was fully risen. The resulting period of inaction gave him much needed time to think.
That fool of a waystation keeper had caused a panic. Civic guards had been patrolling the area for a long time after Flaminius’ getaway from the waystation, although they made only a cursory inspection of the alley, while he hid behind a pile of rubbish. Now the search had moved on. He had passed through the cordon. A while longer, and he was sure he could make a move. But where? The guards had gone on towards the city, which meant he would have trouble getting to Ozymandias’ house. If only he had taken up the Egyptian’s offer!
He had thought there was something fishy about these Praetorians when the prefect told him about their arrival. Why had Hadrian sent them ahead? He’d had word of potential assassins? Perhaps Avidius Pollio had sent him a message in Asia Minor—and yet, the legate knew nothing of recent developments: Flaminius had not been able to file a report during recent escapades. Equally, if he had reported to Probus in Rome, his warnings of assassins might have reached the emperor, what with the highly efficient communications system of the empire. But he had reported to no one. He hadn’t had the time.
So how did these Praetorians know? Were there other imperial agents at work in the city, men he knew nothing of? Was Hadrian playing so convoluted a game? And even if that was the case, why had the two Praetorians firstly tailed Flaminius, then tried to abduct him? He could not be blamed for killing one of them in self-defence, surely. But he knew that this wasn’t true. The Praetorians were above the law—so was he, but he was only a lowly imperial agent, not one of the emperor’s military elite. There would be no trial. He would be killed out of hand. Unless he could find some way to survive, to expose Arctos’ conspiracy. Yes, if he could go to the emperor as a man who had successfully foiled a plot against his life, the death of a Praetorian would be something his imperial majesty could wink at.
So that was it. He had to survive and continue his investigation. For that he needed friends, people who could help him. Ozymandias was on the other side of the city, and by now the civic guards of all Alexandria would be on the lookout for him. Who could he go to in these parts?
He glanced down the alleyway. The walls of the amphitheatre rose above the roofs. It was almost time for the beast fights to begin. The prefect would be in the imperial box. He would be difficult to reach. Besides, he was a highly successful career man, who wouldn’t risk his future advancement by sheltering a man who had killed one of the emperor’s guards. But maybe Flaminius would stand a chance with Apuleius Victor.
Decision made, he rose and hurried down the alleyway, not in the direction of the amphitheatre, but towards the gladiators’ school where the impresario still had his office.
Soon he was outside the building, a converted villa in the suburbs close by the amphitheatre, itself located around the corner from the camp. He had got there by a series of back alleys and side streets. Luckily, he had got to know the area well over the last few months, although he had spent most of his time in other parts of the province. He had been able to keep away from the roads leading to the amphitheatre; it had been filled with stragglers and latecomers on their way to celebrate the games of Hadrian.
Now he stood on the far side of the street. So many gladiatorial “families” had come to the city to celebrate the games, groups from as far as Cyrenaica and Syria, accommodation had to be provided elsewhere for most. Apuleius Victor, being premier impresario in Egypt and the vicinity, had taken over the official gladiators’ school while other families made do with rented suburban villas nearby. But now that his family had been either absconded or died of what, for gladiators, counted as natural causes (three feet of steel in the guts, for example), other families had moved in.
Apuleius Victor had retained his offices in the school, however, since he needed a base from which to coordinate his other, clandestine business. He owed Flaminius. And he was not without influence. He’d better help. Otherwise Flaminius would be on the run, or even become a prisoner of the civic guard, and the plot against the emperor might never be foiled. In which case, the empire would collapse into the chaos of a civil war from which who knows which ambitious senator would rise to seize control. Arctos? Or someone even worse?
Crossing the quiet street, Flaminius hurried round the side of the school, down another alleyway, alongside the wall that surrounded the school’s peristyle garden and practise arena. As he drew closer, the discordant music of blade on blade grew louder. Whichever family was now based in the school was preparing for their appearance in the arena.
A strange nostalgia knotted in Flaminius’ throat. He had only been a gladiator for a few days, but what days they had been! And who else was left? Petrus was dead. Syphax was dead—at Flaminius’ hands. Even Camilla the Amazon Queen was dead, interred by river pirates on an island in the Delta. Flaminius had been in too much haste to return to Alexandria to attend her funeral, or that of the many others who had died in the fight for Arctos’ encampment…
He spat on his hands and leapt for the tiled coping that ran along the perimeter wall. Seizing hold, he hauled himself up the stuccoed wall and peered over the edge. All was as he remembered it: to one side stood the practise arena, and through its gateway oiled figures were to be seen locked in combat. Otherwise the area was taken up by a luxurious garden.
On the other side was a colonnade, a portico and double doors leading into the school as a whole. No one was about. The gladiators were busy in the practise arena.
Flaminius swung first one leg over the wall, then the other, and jumped down into a flowerbed. Crouching for a while in the shrubbery, he scanned the gravel paths and marble benches, box hedges and tinkling fountains that lay between him and the colonnade. Nothing stirred. The sun beat down. Noon couldn’t be all that far off. Was Apuleius Victor in his office or at the amphitheatre? Flaminius wouldn’t know until he went looking for him. He rose and hurried on stiff legs towards the portico.
He crept along the marble passages in an eerie hush. The place was deserted. No gladiators, no impresario. He entered the dining chamber, where couches and tables were arranged upon a mosaic floor depicting the war of the Centaurs and Lapiths. Every evening before a show, the gladiators ate a ritual last supper, often accompanied by members of the public who—at least when Apuleius Victor was stage managing the celebrations—for an extra contribution to the widows and orphans fund, might spend the night in a strapping gladiator’s torrid embrace.
Housekeeping had taken a dive since the new family took over, and the plates of half eaten food and amphorae of wine had yet to be cleared away. Things were lax. Flaminius disapproved.
But he was starving. Fugitive on the run he might be, but one thing a life in the legions had taught him was to fill his belly whenever he had the opportunity. He snatched up half a cold Numidian chicken and tore into it ravenously, then washed the spiced meat down with a couple of gulps of wine from the amphora. Falernian, or he was no judge. Despite the barbarous way he devoured it, it was a marked improvement on the bean stew and vinegar he had had last night. All was silent except for the glugging from his throat and a very distant tintinnabulation of sword on sword from the direction of the practise arena.
Wiping his face with a fold of his tunic, absently noting that the latter was still spattered with the dried blood of the man he had killed, he snatched up a honey glazed ham and slipped it in his belt pouch for later. Time to find Apuleius Victor. If
he wasn’t here, and the silence—not to mention the fact that the slave had been so dilatory—suggested his absence, Flaminius decided to hide in the man’s office and wait for his return. He would be safe, surely. Arctos’ people would never think to come here, and nor would the civic guard.
He took a last long swig from the amphora. A distant door banged somewhere else in the school, and footsteps padded down the passageway.
The amphora slipped from Flaminius’ startled fingers and smashed in a cataclysm of Samian ware and white wine across the face of Eurytion, who was attempting to ravish the bride of Pirithous. The sound of its shattering broke the hush like the end of the world.
The footsteps speeded up. Flaminius glanced frantically around the dining chamber. Whoever it was, they were heading straight for him. He saw a drape hanging from one wall, where a window’s green glass showed a dim image of the peristyle garden. Flaminius shot across the chamber and concealed himself behind it.
Just in time. Someone entered the chamber, and halted in the middle. Straining his ears, Flaminius heard a sigh, followed by a curse.
Curious, he peeked out from behind the heavy drape. In the middle of the chamber stood the slave Apuleius Victor had employed to look after the gladiators, holding a brush and looking despairingly round at the mess. Shaking his head, he picked up the fragments of the amphora Flaminius had dropped and piled them up on one marble table.
Flaminius took a deep, relieved breath. Despite the recent noise, it seemed that the slave had not realised the amphora’s breakage had occurred so recently, no doubt ascribing it to the uproarious gladiators’ banquet last night.
As he tidied up, the slave rubbed painfully at his temples. Flaminius guessed that he had had his own party last night and had been sleeping it off in his cubbyhole elsewhere in the school. But why had Apuleius Victor not dragged him from his bed hours ago and flogged him for his negligence of duties? Things had indeed become lax in recent days.
The slave whistled tunelessly, piling up crocks onto a tray, then mopping up the spilt wine on the floor. Finding another half empty amphora he paused, looked surreptitiously about him—for a moment Flaminius was sure he had seen him—then drank deeply from it. He wiped his mouth just as Flaminius had done, pulled a face, then drank some more. Clearly, he was familiar with Aristophanes’ maxim,
Take the hair, it is well written,
Of the dog by which you’re bitten,
Work off one wine by his brother,
One labour with another.
It was a remedy Flaminius had found efficacious in the past. But he had no time to waste watching lazy slaves experimenting with hangover cures. Behind the drape, he fretted.
The slave was called out into the garden by one of the gladiators demanding a drink. Flaminius waited a moment longer, in the case the man came back unexpectedly, then shot out from behind the drape and across the chamber. He sighed with relief in the welcome cool of the shaded corridors that led to the gladiators’ lavishly appointed cells. At last he was outside Apuleius Victor’s door.
He tapped on it quietly. No answer. He tapped again, harder. Was the impresario in the imperial box with Haterius Nepos? Flaminius would have to wait for him. Looking ruefully at the lock, he remembered the last time he had tried to pick it[4]. He gave the door a tentative push, expecting no result. To his surprise, it opened to a crack.
He set both hands on it and pushed it as quietly as he could. As it creaked open, he heard the slave in the distance, whistling as he returned to his Augean labours in the dining chamber. Gritting his teeth Flaminius opened the door enough to slip inside, then pushed it shut behind him with equal care. He rested his arm against it and leant his sweat soaked forehead against the back of his forearm. Now all he had to do was wait for Apuleius Victor to return, then talk fast.
At least he had won himself a breathing space—unless the slave came in here to clean up, too. In which case—he patted the head of his sheathed dagger—he could take the fellow prisoner, or kill him if needed. He sighed. How ruthless he had become over the years.
He remembered how guilty he had felt after his first kill, a barbarian who had attacked his patrol in the hills of the Brigantians. Since then there had been so many deaths. A trail of corpses. He had killed men, he had killed women. He had killed a girl he had loved, and she had tried to kill him. And he would have thought that each death came easier, but every single one was the same; guilt, and horror, and self-loathing.
One day, he would inherit his family’s farm up in the Apennines, retire from the legions. Or else he would return to Britain, melt into the heather, settle down with the warrior woman Drustica. And then there would be no more killing.
Or would there? Drustica lived on the very frontier; the Wall was being built through her tribe’s traditional hunting grounds. Even with camps and forts and milecastles, were her people’s lands safe from attack by the fierce northern tribes? Even if Flaminius renounced his Roman citizenship and joined the Britons, the fight for survival would not end until he was killed.
He turned around, shaking these thoughts from his weary mind, about to sit down at Apuleius Victor’s big marble desk. He stopped short.
Sprawled across the desk was the impresario. A look of shock sat frozen on his face. Blood soaked his toga in the region of his heart, surrounding a diamond shaped hole in the fabric. Someone had stabbed him. Stabbed him to death.
—9—
Slowly, tenderly, Flaminius sat himself down on the stool the near side of the desk, gazing resentfully at Apuleius Victor’s pale, contorted features, the colour of wet clay. To his horror, he heard himself babbling, ‘Oh, of course, you had to get yourself killed, didn’t you? Thanks, friend. Thank you so much.’
He got a grip. Rising, he went to examine the cold, stiff, hours-dead corpse. That was definitely a stab wound in the man’s chest, and his toga was glued to his flesh by dry blood, but there was no sign of the murder weapon. There was also a funeral wreath of black bruises round the impresario’s neck, as if someone had tried throttling him before putting the knife in.
Or perhaps they had seized him by the neck in one hand—must have been a big hand! Maybe a gladiator’s hand? —and stabbed him in the chest with the other. A well-aimed thrust, right at the heart. It must have been a quick death, but Apuleius Victor didn’t seem grateful. His expression was one of shocked distaste, as if at a social faux pas.
Whoever had stabbed him had done so from up close. As Flaminius saw it, they must have been standing in front of him, grabbing him by the neck with one hand and stabbing him in the heart with a hastily produced dagger held in the other. They had been able to get right up to him without their victim suspecting their intentions. It must have been someone Apuleius Victor knew and trusted. But who? Not to mention why?
The door opened. Flaminius swung round, startled, to see the slave entering with a brush in his hand. The newcomer halted.
‘Sorry sir,’ he said abjectly. ‘You were so quiet in here I thought you’d gone out.’ He peered at his master’s corpse. ‘Is something wrong?’ His gaze went to Flaminius’ blood-spattered tunic. Then back to Apuleius Victor’s mortal remains. He dropped the brush and ran.
Flaminius tried to grab him, but the slave dodged round the door and hurried off down the passage, screaming at the top of his voice.
‘Jove!’ Flaminius muttered. Indecisively, he took another look at the body and moved towards it, then went back to the door and flung it open. In the distance, the slave’s shrieks were still audible. He was out in the garden by now. And people were answering him.
Flaminius ran.
He almost made it to the street outside. As he shot across the freshly cleaned dining chamber, bronzed, oiled, muscular figures flooded in from the direction of the garden and the training arena. Amongst them was the smaller figure of the slave.
He pointed accusingly at Flaminius.
‘That’s him!’ he said. ‘That’s the man who murdered my master!’
Two gladiators seized hold of Flaminius. He struggled in their grasp but to no avail. Another lumbered up, heavy brows furrowed in titanic puzzlement. He looked like a Gaul or a Briton.
‘Why did you kill Apuleius Victor?’ the gladiator rumbled.
Flaminius shook his head. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ he said patiently. ‘I found him dead.’
‘Where did you come from?’ another one of his captors said. ‘I didn’t see you come in. And there’s blood on you.’ His eyes lit on the dagger in Flaminius’ belt and before the Roman could stop him, he snatched it out.
There was blood on it.
The Gaulish gladiator looked at Flaminius. Flaminius looked at the gladiator.
The gladiator made a sign and they all trooped into Apuleius Victor’s office, dragging Flaminius with them, to examine the impresario’s mortal remains.
Silence hung heavy in the crowded little office. The eyes of all were upon Flaminius, the bloodstained dagger, the blood stains on Flaminius’ tunic, the bloody carcase lying on the desk behind him.
He had forgotten to clean his blade after—accidentally! —killing the Praetorian back in the waystation. An elementary mistake. Any raw recruit might make this kind of error, but Flaminius was a hardened legionary of several years and an imperial agent to boot. He could only put it down to his confusion and weariness last night.
‘Anyone can see that Apuleius Victor has been dead for a long time,’ Flaminius said, breaking the uneasy silence. ‘Several hours at least. His body is stiff. That’s a sign he died a while ago. I’ve only just come in.’
‘The stains on this dagger are not fresh,’ said the gladiator. He was in the wrong job, Flaminius thought; maybe he should get a job as a public informer. ‘Neither are the blood stains on your tunic. How do you explain them if you didn’t kill Apuleius Victor?’
The Archimedes Stratagem Page 7
