‘Lentulus?’ Kag prompted.
‘I was told by Curtius to escort this Lentulus to the old Caesar house,’ Brasus said. ‘Curtius told me I was not to go in, but wait outside the porter’s gate and then escort him wherever he wanted to go after that.’
‘Who told you?’ Drust asked Curtius, who squinted at him.
‘Marcus Ulpius Ralla,’ he said quietly.
‘Himself?’
Curtius nodded. ‘Came down to the Ludus in the dead of night, alone save for a torchman and a single lictor. Asked me to send a fighter with the man he brought with him, this Lentulus. I was to ask no questions and obey the instructions of Lentulus to the last syllable.’
A senator comes down to the Flavian training schools in the dark, practically alone. That in itself would make what he wanted stink like a privy, as Curtius had noted.
‘What happened?’ Kag asked the big Dacian, who shrugged.
‘I took him to Caesar’s house and waited. He was inside only a few minutes…’
‘He had no trouble getting in?’ Kag asked thoughtfully.
‘Na. Porter opened the gate soon as he said his name.’
‘Then what?’
‘I had to take him down to the Circus. He spoke to the guards and got in the gate. Then I come back here and told Curtius.’
‘The Circus? At night?’
Brasus shrugged. ‘I thought he was living there. Didn’t talk like a slave, mind, and didn’t look like a driver. I thought he was a groom or a horse dealer.’
‘It circles round and eats its own tail,’ Kag muttered gloomily.
‘Tell him all of it,’ Curtius prompted sharply, and Brasus looked guiltily around, then fell into a whisper.
‘When this Lentulus came back to the porter’s gate there was someone with him. Big man, who patted Lentulus on the cheek like he was a clever dog or a favourite son and told him to hurry, that there were men out and about round the domus.’
‘Did you see any?’ Kag demanded, and Brasus shook his head.
‘What did this man look like?’ Drust asked, and Brasus glanced once more at Curtius as if for approval.
‘I knowed who it was, yer honours. It was a general and a senator called Antyllus. I’d seen him before when he’d come to a dinner Ulpius Ralla put on. I fought Serpicus at it – you remember, Curtius? Put on a good show.’
‘You did,’ Curtius agreed and then jerked his head in the direction of the other gladiators. ‘My thanks, lad. Go and enjoy yourself – not a word, mind. Not one word to anyone else.’
The Dacian lumbered off and Curtius watched him go, then sighed.
‘Hoplomachus,’ Kag declared and Curtius confirmed it. Of all the gladiator styles, the hoplomachus was the most armoured, the slowest.
‘Tried him at everything else,’ Curtius went on moodily. ‘He’s won a few, but his footwork is leaden.’
‘Why is he set to look for Lentulus now?’ Drust asked and Curtius frowned.
‘Because the same man who ordered him to escort Lentulus now wants him found. It seems everyone at the Caesar house died the same night.’
He looked at them with his watery eyes. ‘That you?’
Drust shook his head. ‘One of ours got caught in it. Manius – you recall him?’
Curtius nodded. ‘Sorry for your loss. Heard about your wife too – you have had a sore time of it.’
‘No Antyllus at the Caesar house, though,’ Kag said softly and Curtius acknowledged it.
‘Want me to ask around?’
Drust shook his head. ‘That will bring the attention of the man who did them all at the Caesar house. Pale man, white-haired, not nearly as old as he looks and deadlier than Cleopatra’s asp. If you hear of him, keep clear and send word to us.’
Curtius nodded sombrely, then squinted at them.
‘I can get word to Lentulus all the same. Through the drivers. Tell him you mean him no harm.’
Drust nodded acknowledgement. ‘I mean him no harm.’
Kag said nothing and his silence shrieked like a library; Curtius either ignored it or did not notice, just held out his cup and had it filled. He beamed.
Drust toasted him. ‘Fortuna smile on your men these games.’
Curtius frowned. ‘Unlikely. Two days from now, the racing starts at the Maximus and the Emperor is determined to keep the crowds in the Flavian. He has ordered twenty pairs to fight to the last pair standing – a perfidiae harenam.’
‘A circle of treachery,’ Kag said softly. ‘No rules, no referees.’
Curtius shrugged bony shoulders.
‘What can you do?’
* * *
They walked warily back to The Place and Drust was pleased to find men on the gates and in the grounds, alert and ready. He was less pleased at how fretted he was, how every shadow held the beast of Verus.
The others, back from the Circus, agreed.
‘I felt naked all the way here,’ Quintus confessed.
‘Didn’t find Lentulus,’ Dog said moodily, pouring wine. ‘You?’
‘A sniff of something,’ Kag said, ‘but when it was laid out it was a threadbare weave.’
‘So – we wait for Lentulus to bang on the door and remind us of how we made a promise not to cut his throat for what he did to us?’
Ugo shook his head with disbelief. ‘That’s the plan?’ he added.
There was a thundering bang on the double gates. Then another. And another. Vatia came skidding up, eyes wide.
‘People at the gate.’
‘You say so?’ Kag spat back scathingly.
‘Names?’ demanded Dog, and Vatia worked his mouth a few times and then said, ‘Fish.’
‘Gaius Tullus,’ Silanus interrupted, cuffing Vatia back to the gate. ‘Some of his lads with him – he has the area for a mile all round the Basilica Aemilia.’
‘Fish?’ demanded Kag and Silanus shrugged.
‘He’s a fish merchant. Has a shop in the Basilica.’
Gaius Tullus was a burly man with a fringe of hair round a bald pate. He had chins, a nose that wobbled and – what Drust found strangest of all – the glaucous eyes of a fresh-landed fish. Perhaps you get to look like them after a while, he thought.
There were four others with him, a sensible precaution in a Suburan night, all of them hump-shouldered, bellied, crook-noses whose weapons had been removed at the door. They did not seem much bothered by that, which soothed Drust a little. Gaius Tullus came right to the point, tossing a fat leather purse onto the table; it chinked heavily.
‘This is the time for dues to be paid,’ he said.
‘For what?’
Gaius Tullus shrugged. ‘For wagons to transport fish from Ostia. For permission to roll them through this area up to the Basilica. For the keeping of the accord.’
The accord turned out to be Flaminius extorting coin on the promise of not hijacking fish or beating up the transport drivers, no more. Kisa went through the scrolls and lists and came up with the numbers, which were eye-watering. Drust made no sign of that, simply nodded then stood up; Gaius Tullus and his retinue eyed him warily.
‘Flaminius is dead, so is this debt. For the wagons, I will take an honourable price as is proper for rental. For the continuation of the accord – only this.’
He stuck out his arm and, slowly, Gaius clasped it by the wrist. Drust called for wine, they talked about this and that, and finally Gaius Tullus stood up and looped his cloak round one arm, signalling to one of his men to light up a torch for the journey home.
‘I had heard you were a fair man,’ he said, ‘and now have it proved. I give you this, then, as a measure of friendship – men came to me with your name in their mouths. They wore homespun and tried to look bland as old dust, but if anyone had bawled out “Attention!” they’d have stiffened and banged their studs.’
‘Vigiles?’ Kag asked tentatively. Gaius snorted.
‘Neither that rabble nor the Urbans. These were Praetorian or I do not know garum from allec.’
They watched the double gates close on him and then looked from one to the other.
‘We should double the door guards,’ Dog growled. ‘Put more men patrolling the grounds.’
‘Unlikely to need them,’ Kag responded. ‘You heard the man – bland as dust and talking quietly. They wanted to find out more; if they wanted to drag us off, they’d have a ram at the gates.’
Kag was right – but the ram might be on the way, so Dog wasn’t wrong. Drust said as much, then declared he was tired and would sleep, which was only half a lie.
He lay in Servillius Structus’s old bed, feeling the strangeness of it; here was where his mother had lain. Perhaps it was where she had died giving birth to her stillborn son – Servillius Structus’s son. My half-brother…
Like Praeclarum, he thought suddenly, if birth was what you could call what happened to her. He felt her all that night as a chill loss all down the side she had favoured to lie next to him.
Sleep was crushed out of him by all of that and the weight of everything that had happened, occupying The Place, dealing with other gang leaders, becoming a power, unlooked for but – Drust was forced to admit it – less unwanted day by day. He sat in the chair of the man who had once held him as a slave. He slept in his bed, counted his money, dealt with his old contracts. He felt the presence of the Fat Man everywhere he turned.
Morning brought relief – and Lentulus.
* * *
He arrived alone at the big front gates and was let in by Stolo, who brought him into the main room where people yawned and threw grumbles and olive stones. All talk stopped when they saw him.
‘Lentulus,’ Stolo announced with a sneer, though he was least qualified, Drust thought, to have such a grimace.
‘I was told I would be unharmed.’
His voice shook like the rest of him, though he was trying hard not to hunch like a cursed dog; he kept glancing over one shoulder until Drust realised it was an act worn to a nub by repetition. Here was a hunted man who trembled like a fly-bitten horse.
‘You are safer here than out there,’ Drust pointed out, and had it confirmed with a nod like a nervous tic.
‘I know it.’
‘You could have saved all this by coming with us at the Circus,’ Kag added, and again there was that quick, birdlike nod.
‘I know it,’ he answered and raised his hands to let them fall back to his sides. They shook, Drust saw – I would not want to be shaved by this man now.
‘Well, you know whom we seek,’ Dog growled, but he shoved a bowl of wine forward; Lentulus took it, drank it down in one and shoved it back for a refill.
‘I can take you to Antyllus,’ he said. ‘He is at a villa on the Ostia road – do you have horses?’
‘About a dozen,’ Kisa chimed in. ‘Drays, though, with no proper riding tack.’
‘We have straddled worse,’ Quintus noted.
‘Get them all ready,’ Drust ordered. I will not go out with fewer men than I can muster, he thought. Not with Verus, Praetorians, the gods know what else lining up to stick us with sharpness…
‘Why is Verus hunting you down?’ Kag demanded.
‘He hunts Antyllus and anyone who had knowledge of what the general knows. Like your friend…’
He stopped, shook his head and wiped fingers across his face as if trying to tear free a veil or a vision.
‘They fought at Caesar’s house. Your mavro was spying on all of us, but was ambushed. Carbo the porter and Antyllus himself rushed in to tackle the man who did it, wanting to know more – but Carbo was killed and Antyllus got cut. I got him away.’
He stopped, stared unseeingly for a moment or two. ‘That creature…’
‘Why is Verus doing this?’ Drust demanded.
‘He has been set to it, of course. By his master.’
‘Why?’
Lentulus shook his head. ‘I will let Antyllus tell it. If he wants to reveal all, so be it. If not, then I will not speak on it either.’
‘You little fuck,’ Kag exploded. ‘If you don’t tell all you know, I will hang you by the heels and flay you with a blunt knife…’
Drust laid a calming hand on Kag’s shoulder and he stilled to silence and laboured breathing, but the point had been made. Lentulus wobbled but Drust had to admire the way he rocked back to steadiness.
‘Antyllus has asked for this meeting,’ he said. ‘He is dying, I think, so we had best waste no time.’
They had ten mounts in the end and Drust picked men to come with the Brothers – all but Kisa, who was left in charge of the Place. The rest plodded off, kicking the unyielding flanks of the big cart-pullers and managing scarcely more than a reluctant trot.
At the Ostian Gate, Drust half expected to be hailed and stopped by the Urban guards, but they were too busy coping with the melee of four-wheelers, beasts, drivers, hauliers and traders all waiting for dark to enter the City. It helped that several of them belonged to Drust now, along with the men that crewed them.
It took them most of the rest of the day to get down the road, with the Tiber looping back and forth, and they stopped only once, to feed and water the horses and themselves. On the way, Lentulus was not as tight-lipped as he had promised, but almost all of it was about Antyllus.
He had inherited the mad, bad and bold of his illustrious ancestor and his father, Drust learned. Gambling had ruined the family, be it on the races, the munera or just dice – well, they had inherited all that from the master of the bad gamble, Marcus Antonius himself. Thanks to him and the ones who came after, the family estates were all gone and this villa had been little more than an overseer’s house for the last resource of the gens, the salt pans outside Ostia.
The day was sliding to blue dim by the time they reached it, just where the road started across the raised causeway of the salt flats into Ostia proper. A wind had risen, low and mourning to itself, hissing and whining through stunted shrubs dotting a landscape of raised earthworks and stinking pools of saltmarsh mud.
The villa itself was in darkness; there were no slaves left, no attendants of any sort, Lentulus declared, and Antyllus relied only on secrecy to keep him safe. Kag, as always, was unconvinced and kept looking backwards. If you are leaving tracks, you are being followed…
Lentulus agreed, not only by his now well-worn nervous tic of looking over his shoulder, but with terse words. ‘Julius Yahya has persuaded the Mother to set Praetorians on me. They will have been watching.’
The villa porter’s gate was broken to matchwood long since, which allowed them to lead the big, tired horses in. Drust had Silanus take charge of the four men brought with them, while the rest of the Brothers and Lentulus started towards the atrium of the main building.
Leaves whirled in the sighing wind and it was dark; they had torches but did not want to light them until they found out if anything lurked in wait. Weapons up, they crept forward, following Lentulus into a room until all of them caught a tendril of a smell they knew well enough – sweet and rotted.
‘Spark up that torch,’ Drust ordered, and Kag worked his firestarter, the big wheels of sparks scarring their eyes. The torch flared, the flames twisting in the wind and throwing lurid shadows of themselves everywhere. Something clacked, so disturbingly like those birds in the Dark of the north that Ugo gave a grunt and stiffened.
‘Reeds and the remains of the garden,’ said a voice, and everyone froze in place, weapons up and ready. It was a wisp of what had once been, Drust thought. The voice of a man with his ankle grabbed firmly by Dis Pater…
‘Nothing grows well here,’ the voice went on tiredly. ‘The salt kills it. You can taste it on the wind…’
All Drust could taste was the stink of rot. He moved forward and gestured to Kag to bring the torch. When the flickering light fell on the bed and the figure, no one spoke or moved for what seemed the longest time.
The face was a ravaged hawk, the ski
n stretched too thin over the bone, so that it looked painful, as if it might split at any moment. The eyes were laired deeply in their sockets, and in daylight he would be the colour of old cream; in the light from the torch he looked like a mummer’s mask left too long in the rain.
Kag flicked back the fetid bedcover and they all blanched at the reek, at the sight of the belly wound, red-lipped like a poxed whore. There is no coming back from this, Drust thought, and it must have shown in his face, for the figure on the bed groaned with what everyone realised was laughter.
‘You are too late,’ he said. ‘Your revenge has been done for you.’
‘Justified,’ Drust responded blankly. ‘But that’s only half the reason I came all this way.’
Antyllus tried to raise a hand but was too weak; Drust saw he did not have long.
‘Good men died because of me – Mus for one. Your wife for another. I am sorry for them all.’
‘Keep that for the gods you will stand and face,’ Kag spat back.
‘It was my idea to take her as a hostage,’ Antyllus said, as if he had not heard Kag at all. ‘Otherwise you would all be dead, which was the preferred option of my staff.’
Here Lentulus shifted uncomfortably.
‘I was told, of course, that a deputation was on the way to me, to find out what I was actually doing. Then I heard what the headman Erco did, and how you all fought out of it. That was when I knew what Julius Yahya had done to me.’
‘Julius Yahya?’
‘Of course. He arranged it all.’
‘Arranged what?’
Antyllus groaned his bitter laugh. ‘You don’t play the game, do you?’
‘What fucking game? Stop speaking in riddles, curse you…’
Quintus stilled Dog with a slight touch, but it was as if Antyllus was unaware of anyone other than himself and Drust.
‘I am a senator,’ he said, his voice suddenly strengthening. ‘Do you know how those are made?’
‘Bile, greed and viciousness,’ Drust answered.
‘That and coin – more than a million sesterces. Men who need help meeting this requirement are given grants. Should they mismanage their funds, they are expected to step down.’
Beasts From the Dark Page 21
