Loreticus: A Spy Thriller and Historical Intrigue Based On Events From Ancient Rome (Lost Emperor Trilogy Book 1)

by J. B. Lucas

  Jed gave Marcan a push between the shoulder blades. It took an explicit instruction from his head to his feet to lift off the ground and to start walking, but move he did. With each step, the stage was eaten up until he walked behind Balthasar. He could hear the flames crumpling the air around the torch as the crowd went silent to judge him.

  “The emperor!” cried Balthasar.

  “Boo!” “Faggot!” “Cheat!” roared the crowd, completely taking Marcan by surprise. He stopped and turned to look at the jeerers, who showed nothing more than planes of their faces in the torchlight. He could see teeth, cheeks, shadowy eyes. “You look nothing like him! He’s tall and handsome!” The last wisecrack brought a stream of chuckles from around the gathered crowd. His bodyguard gave him another gentle push, as one nudged an ox or a cow, and Marcan kept moving. He stood on his spot and Jed took position behind him to signal he was the emperor’s man. Balthasar cried out names as the other actors and their henchmen arrived on stage. “Ferran!” “Antron!” “Loreticus!” “Iskandar!” All but the last received cheers and boos, Iskandar appearing on stage with a tatty tunic under his gold to reflect his humble background. Marcan was hard put to understand who was supposed to be the hero of the story. He had always presumed he, the tragic victim, was the point of sympathy, but by the crowd’s judgement everyone on stage demanded damnation.

  “And then we have our ladies,” continued Balthasar. “The beautiful genies of the court who might resemble certain girls from your own town.” Two handsome young girls were brought on stage, one with thick, curly blonde hair and a face made up to look pinched and muscular. The other was boyish, her hair wrapped up to seem to be cut at shoulder length. “Dess,” introduced Balthasar, gesturing in the direction of the blonde. Half-hearted boos and catcalls came from the crowd, followed by a deep-voiced warning from what must have been the actress’s beau. “Alba,” indicated Balthasar to the other. There was a choral response from the female half of the crowd, sympathetic girls and protective mothers extending their love to the lovelorn empress.

  “And so, to the tale,” boomed Balthasar, once more in his masterful tenor. The actors scurried around the stage to position themselves for the first act. “The emperor has awoken from a drunken sleep, to find Dess in his bed and his wife’s servant knocking on his door . . .”

  Marcan blundered through his lines, grateful he was out in the first act, happy the story was so fresh that no-one noticed his premature exit. Immediately he sourced wine and downed two cups without breath, then turned to watch the play unfold.

  Its currency gave it weight and appeal but also left it with an open-ended fourth act which Balthasar wrapped up with a clever soliloquy. The crowd departed, and the troupe tidied up the valuables and started towards the common sleeping tent.

  “You managed it,” stated Balthasar as he fell in line with Marcan.

  “I don’t understand this drama lark yet,” he returned. “Everyone on stage was such a villain. Why do people pay to come to see the play?”

  Balthasar smiled and said nothing for a moment. “Wouldn’t you be rich and powerful if you could be?” he asked.

  “Not if it came with that company, no,” Marcan said. “What you don’t have is always more attractive than what you have. Let the villagers dream of being in the court for a night. You can dream of being a carefree actor for a summer.”

  Chapter 11

  Marcan’s dramatic skill and his nerves improved as the weeks wore on and as he settled into his lightweight role. They performed every few nights as they passed through larger villages, or after they had corralled together enough hamlets to get a buzzing audience in one place. Before every performance, Balthasar apologised to the audience for the rough edges. He explained they had changed some lines based upon intelligence from “credible sources at court” and rumours received “minutes before they arrived”, and the cast was thus unprepared. This small fabrication meant even the most jaded fish wife paid close attention in case of a new nugget of information.

  As the end of their season neared, Marcan’s skin had settled into a dark ruddiness and the hair on his arms had bleached. A vibrant energy coursed through his body, washing out residual aches and stiffness, cleansing him of a nostalgia he wasn’t aware he had been carrying. Thus was he free of age and concerns.

  Balthasar took pride in Marcan’s spiritual emancipation and appeared to share his energy whenever they were together. Something of the man spoke to Marcan, encouraging him to feel a camaraderie with the elegant old actor. His humility perhaps, thought Marcan. His discretion certainly.

  In each village, Balthasar went ahead to scout for any trouble that might be kindled by their political play. Army veterans settled in these rural villages, and if they had served with one of the generals there might be a reaction of loyalty or disdain. He cast one or two of the local girls to step into the roles on stage and gave them the full day to tell their friends.

  On one morning, when a summer rain had woken the troupe early, Marcan asked to accompany Balthasar. Hundreds of people had seen him perform, and his confidence was growing. But like most instances of courage, it was more potent as a notion than when put to the test and Marcan fought a sickening paralysis as they entered the main market square. A strange confidence remained with him that he wasn’t lost forever, that this innate but slow destiny would drag him to something unique, something glorious, something that would be played with respect on stages across the country. And yet memories came unbidden, the vision of a pack of fellow men barking and growling, chasing him to spill his blood. It was a putrid mixture of emotions which kept a permanent knot in his chest, stealing sleep and cheer. His feet slowed, sweat shone on his forehead and he began catching people’s gaze to see if they still thought him the fallen emperor, Marcan the Whore. Wherever he looked the familiar face of the scandalous ruler posed proudly in profile in clay on walls.

  Balthasar saw his discomfort and guided him to a tavern table. They sat, and Balthasar shielded Marcan from the passing villagers with his bulk.

  “I shouldn’t have come in,” he stated. Balthasar observed him without response. He felt a disappointment in Balthasar. Somehow his grey hair didn’t seem so elegant in the daylight, and the loss of this aura suddenly turned the rest of him into a mundane fake. Unlike Marcan, the exposure to the sun had aged Balthasar, but the complex astuteness remained in his eyes and his plump-lipped mouth. His control of everything remained, almost as if he commanded the village that surrounded him. “You look concerned,” muttered Marcan without conviction. Balthasar nodded perfunctorily to the serving person over Marcan’s shoulder, who had been hovering at a nearby table.

  Perhaps it was his deep paranoia, perhaps his little gods were knocking on his skull, but a prickle in his back made Marcan pay attention. There was something about to happen and he became aware of the sunlight, the wooden table, the thick skin on Balthasar’s hands. Then she was at the end of the table and she considered him without interest, but her eyes struck Marcan with such force that he stared. He drew in every detail he could, rifling for what made him feel like this. She was fair, her skin pale for someone in this region, her eyes the darkest blue. Bow lips moved more than they needed to as she talked to Balthasar, her collar bones bouncing slightly as she laughed with easy amusement at a quip. And then it was there, on the outside curve of her eye, that he stopped.

  That shape was his, it belonged to him so thoroughly he wanted to reach out to touch the memory. She turned to look at him, and with a cold sensation, he realised it wasn’t the perfection he had imagined. It was merely a beautiful imitation of something. He dropped his gaze.

  “Whatever he’s having,” said Marcan without turning back to her.

  A moment’s discomfort as she nodded and looked back to Balthasar. Getting no response, moved back inside. The two men eyed each other.

  “You know,” said Balthasar, “you are incredibly dry.” “Balthasar, I’m not a funny man. I’m a worried man.” “If a ma
n isn’t worried about something, then he’ll just go and find something to be worried about. Often as not, he’ll get married so that he doesn’t need to look too far in future.”

  Marcan remained stony faced.

  “The maid would make an ideal Alba,” he continued with a shrug. “We would have the best-cast performance in history in terms of lookalikes.”

  Marcan remained still, eyeballing the edges of his thumbs and hands. Then the waitress returned and he glanced at her and was saddened the earlier flash wasn’t repeated. Balthasar started to speak, but Marcan stopped him before he could extend his invitation for the play that evening. In a simple gesture of calm uncertainty and pain, Marcan laid his hand on the old man’s arm. The waitress paused after Balthasar’s start to the conversation, hovered as if expecting him to speak, then placed down their clay plates and wooden mugs.

  “Want to tell me anything?” asked Balthasar, his voice low in his throat.

  “No.” Marcan paused, now taking in again the details of his surroundings to refresh his senses. “I don’t know. My mind needs to think for a while before my mouth can talk.”

  Balthasar smiled. “If only more of my crew were like you,” he chuckled.

  But throughout the meal, Marcan’s mind kept to itself, lurking at the back of his skull. It gave him no insight, jealously examining the imprint of the girl’s eyes as if to find whether what they signified could be seen in a certain light. He spent time searching for something else that offered the same jolt, some other bait to bring his memory back. Everything was dull and unfamiliar.

  He decided to confront his fear and to walk the streets of the town on his own, listening to the voices and noises from open windows, sliding out of the way of running children, looking for something familiar.

  The town was a prosperous one. The children wore rich cloth, and the public areas were clean. The freshly buffed red buildings were square, their walls and corners making up the parameters of the streets he followed. They were all exactly the same architecture, low and elegant. The brickwork was tightly constructed, flat to his touch, and well-pruned and well-watered ornamental trees sat outside every front door in a universal fashion. Marcan tracked his walk in his mind, two streets parallel to the main rectangular plaza. In a village this size, he must be reaching the edges of the merchants’ quarter. The quality of the houses demonstrated the riches gathered by these outlying pastoral regions from the capital, which had to buy its food from its country cousins.

  He spun when he heard grating behind him, as if a workman was smoothing the bricks and mortar into place. This fear pervaded him, stripping him of intelligence or honour.

  The scraping had been chainmail on the brick. Saguinas pressed himself flat against a warm wall, out of sight of the man he recognised immediately. Jed had been right. Here was the king of kings, drifting around a remote village in a clueless stupor. Saguinas was no politician, but he knew who would pay for this man’s whereabouts.

  Antron’s gold would only be determined by whether he brought the emperor back alive or otherwise. Saguinas closed his eyes, breathing deliberately through his disfigured nose. He crouched, peeked around the corner again and saw his target had resumed his leisurely, complacent amble. He stared at the imperial spine, the huge expanse of unprotected flesh between his shoulder blades, and the brown nape of his neck. He itched to stick a knife in there and claim his prize.

  A dog came out of the shadows, or so Saguinas thought. The shape came nearer and faster and he turned too late to catch the fist which pummelled into his blindside. A cheap blow, but one which sent him staggering. The attacker was inexperienced and didn’t follow up with a stab to stop the veteran from retaliating. Saguinas righted himself, took stock of the youth before him, a blue dot painted between his brows.

  “Well well well, a little zealot spy,” he mocked. The boy was skinny and frightened. Two long steps, as Saguinas swallowed the ground up and took the boy by his neck in his meaty, calloused hands. He slapped the boy hard on his ear, paralysing him in pain. Saguinas pinned him up against the wall, rummaged through his clothes and then spat in his face.

  “Do you want to tell me anything?” The boy shook his head. “Following me or him?”

  “A curse on you and your bigoted family,” shouted the boy. Saguinas swiftly drew his knife and slipped the blade between the boy’s ribs as if he had been popping a pie.

  Marcan heard the scuffling and started to move towards it, worried that someone was in danger. He loosened his neck, feeling a certain excitement in an impending fight. Small movements in the dust guided him, dry clouds floating briefly past the corner of the house. There was a groan, and Marcan sped up.

  Blood pooled in the dirt on the street, spreading strangely in the scuffed tracks. Marcan looked down at the little boy, perhaps only a teenager, still alive but losing blood in a wide, deep cut. He had seen that type of wound before; something was familiar about that exact cut, as if he had been trained to do it. He looked up, around. In front of the boy, peering imperiously, was the portrait of the Emperor Marcan, forged in a colossal red clay disc.

  Marcan quickly left, made a long turn around several buildings to come back to the square, and saw Balthasar. Beside him stood the waitress who had unnerved him so powerfully. She looked up as he came, and her face split into a dazzling smile which somehow made her more distant. She was no longer the person he was thinking of.

  “It seems, dear Marcan, I must be your Alba tonight,” she said and laughed carelessly. “I’m so excited,” she continued, turning back to Balthasar. “Thank you thank you thank you.” With a pious peck on his cheek, she dashed into the shadows of the bistro.

  They studied each other. Balthasar quickly saw the fright in Marcan’s face.

  “What?” exclaimed the older man. “Forget your lines again?” He flapped a hand for Marcan to sit down.

  Marcan realised that he had been holding his breath. He exhaled, making a sound with his lips.

  “I’m lost, Balthasar, lost. Violence seems to follow me as tightly as my shadow and I haven’t got a clue why.”

  “You told me that you were a naughty whore.”

  “Not funny. And I might have said ‘bad whore’ rather than ‘naughty’. Isn’t there someone I could turn myself over to? This country can’t be so civilised without some sort of reliable administration.”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Balthasar with a smile. “We’re famous for being able to start a fight, not our ability to run a peaceful country.”

  “That’s not good enough. That’s your disappointment in life coming out.”

  Balthasar leant forward, his eyes rich, framed by his light hair and straight beard. “I’m not the one disappointed with my life. What can I offer you?” he purred, reading Marcan’s expression incorrectly. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Be angry at me all you like but whatever sins you committed are not my fault. You aren’t the type to live in ignorance for as long as you have, not without choosing to, and that self-denial is eating away your peace of mind.”

  “I’ve not chosen any of this,” snarled Marcan. “To say that I am running away is a cheap assumption. Someone owes me my old life back. I’m going to be killed well before I know who I am.”

  “No-one owes you anything,” returned Balthasar. “But you know what’s missing is big. You feel it inside you, and you certainly show us every day with your sense of ‘godly destiny’. It is only your lack of nerve now which stops you. You haven’t asked me a single question about who I think you are.”

  Marcan’s dark eyes pinned Balthasar now, examining his face. What did this old man know? He had presumed Balthasar wasn’t bright enough to help. He was just an old warhorse.

  Marcan released his fingers, spanning his palms and feeling the air enter the creases in his skin. He wondered for a moment whether the groomed man opposite him knew anything about the violence he’d witnessed.

  “Maybe I don’t know how to ask the questions,” Marcan said. “And fr
om you, I expected a more helpful response.” Balthasar’s smile returned, and Marcan saw the sharp folds by the man’s eyes, and the furrows of skin running into his beard.

  “You are younger than I ever thought,” Balthasar said, his smirk back. “I have had so many seasons to make me wise enough to know I can’t hide from my demons. I buried them and forgot about them. Not everything needs to be solved or fixed. Some things just need to be thrown out with the rubbish.”

  “Turds in the stream,” offered Marcan. He glanced again at the exit of the avenue. He had a choice – tell Balthasar about the dead boy or run. There was nothing helpful that could possibly come from being involved with the local militia.

  Balthasar eyed him, weighing up his humour. “No, don’t be so negative about these things,” he replied wagging a finger. “You forget how fond I am of my bowel movements.” Marcan moved his gaze to Balthasar, assessing his sudden seriousness, his judgement. Was his fear so clear on his face?

  A sip of his sun-warmed wine. A small change of expression, a change of tone. “Get rid of those things in your life that don’t add to your happiness. Just make sure they don’t ruin your life.” Another drink. “Maybe that’s no solution for you, of course.”

  “Why not?”

  Balthasar ignored him and turned to the square in front of them. The market stalls had started to pack up as the heat rose. Fish that had been brought from the nearby coast was under threat of turning bad, and amphorae of wine were becoming hot to the touch. Sweating merchants and buyers turned back home for their siestas, fresh ingredients for lunch elbow-pinched against their ribs.