David

by Barbaree Deposed

  The hissing of the other men in red grows louder and faster.

  Orestes starts to struggle, flailing his body like a fish out of water, but the red-cloaked men are holding him too tightly. Orestes stays put.

  The man in black bends down, aims his blade at Orestes’s mouth, inserts it and blood erupts from his lips.

  I close my eyes because I can’t watch. With my eyes closed, I notice I’m breathing fast and my heart is pounding. It’s like I’ve been running all day.

  Over the hissing chants of the men in red, it sounds like Orestes is drowning – drowning in his own blood. I bury my head into the grass. I keep sobbing. I don’t stop.

  Then a hand grabs my ankle. They start to drag me to the altar.

  Two men in red are holding Orestes on the altar. The man in black has a golden bowl below Orestes’s neck. It’s filled with black water.

  The man in black stands up and raises the golden bowl to his lips.

  I close my eyes.

  I can feel them drag me to the altar. I can feel two sets of hands position me onto my knees. I can hear the chanting speed up again, as the hissing snakes grow angrier. I can feel my mouth being pried open. My tongue starts to feel funny, tingly, as I wait for the steel knife.

  I think of Elsie – I’m not sure why. I remember how she would feed me pistachios and tell me ghost stories. I want to smile but my mouth is pried open.

  The hissing reaches a crescendo and then goes quiet. I wait for the blade.

  But then I hear a man yelling. It’s a screaming growl. A battle cry.

  The grip on my jaw relaxes. I open my eyes.

  The men in red are scattering. One or two are running away. The rest are running to the centre of the clearing, converging on someone or something I can’t see. But then they start to fall like flies and I can see in their midst – his sword swinging in furious swipes – Spiculus, my friend.

  One of the red priests grabs me by the collar. He stands behind me and then I can feel the point of his knife pinch my neck and warm blood trickle down to my collarbone.

  I look back to Spiculus and see he’s running straight at us, bodies of red priests strewn on the ground behind him. The man behind me yells at Spiculus in Greek, saying he’ll cut my throat, but Spiculus keeps running – running as fast as I’ve ever seen him run – and when he gets closer, instead of cutting my throat, the man behind me raises his blade in self-defence, pointing it at Spiculus. Spiculus launches himself at the man and I duck just in time. Spiculus’s momentum takes him and the other man down to the grass. Spiculus ends up on top, sitting on the man’s chest, and then he’s raining blows down like a hammer, one after the next. The red priest’s blade slashes in self-defence, cutting Spiculus here and there, but then his blade is gone and his arms go slack. Spiculus grabs a rock twice the size of his fist and drums it into the man’s scull, flattening it to a pulp.

  I hear the crunch of a twig to my right and I turn and see three more red priests, blades in hand, slowly walking toward me, growling for blood. But then Doryphorus is standing between the red priests and me. He doesn’t have a weapon. Spiculus gets to his feet and runs at the three red priests, rock still in hand. He crushs one skull, then the next. Behind him, another man lodges a blade into Spiculus’s shoulder. Without stopping to remove it, Spiculus turns and hugs the man, pulling him in tight. Then I hear his ribs snap and Spiculus drops him to the ground. The man goes limp and falls to the grass like a rag. Howling with rage, Spiculus pulls the blade from his shoulder and slits the man’s throat.

  Spiculus looks up at me and, when he sees I’m alive, he sighs with relief. Suddenly he tenses; he stands. He is watching something behind me. I turn and see on the crest of the hill, the remaining adherents scatter and disappear. One of them stops. The man in the black cloak, his face hidden in shadow, turns back and watches for a moment, and then he is gone.

  NERO

  21 September, first torch

  The forest, the island of Rhodes

  Doryphorus comes back for me when the fighting is done. He left me at the edge of the clearing, wrapping my arms around the trunk of a tree, and this is where he finds me moments later.

  It is not until he says, ‘He is alive,’ that I can finally breathe. He takes my hand and walks me into the clearing.

  Five men are dead, according to Doryphorus.

  Pushing sentimentality aside, supressing my desire to hold Marcus myself, I say, ‘Let us see if we can identify one of the bodies.’

  Doryphorus leads me to the corpses. He lets go of my arm and I listen as he struggles to remove their masks.

  When he’s done, I ask, ‘Well?’

  ‘I recognise one.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Marcellus’s nephew. Tullinus.’

  ‘The boy I pardoned? You see, Doryphorus, it rarely pays to be magnanimous.’

  *

  We return to the shack to discover it empty: Halotus has escaped.

  ‘How could this happen,’ Doryphorus says. ‘He was tied to the chair.’

  I can hear Spiculus crouch down to the dirty floor. He says, ‘There are footprints. Coming in . . . He had help.’

  ‘We acted rashly,’ Doryphorus says. ‘One of us should have stayed with Halotus.’

  ‘Marcus is alive,’ I say. ‘That is what matters tonight.’

  ‘What will we do?’ Spiculus asks.

  ‘Halotus remains procurator of Asia,’ I say. ‘He remains powerful and we have lost the element of surprise. We are not safe here in Rhodes.’

  ‘Are you saying we run?’ Doryphorus asks.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘We grow powerful ourselves. We wait. We bide our time. We choose where and when we next meet.’

  XXVI

  Trust Your Hackles

  A.D. 79

  CALENUS

  22 April, first torch

  The sewers, Rome

  I awake to the sound of rushing water and stone pressed against the left side of my face, cool and wet.

  I open my eyes and the world is dark; my mind is groggy and grey. My wrists are bound behind my back.

  Dark shapes argue, paces away.

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘Orders are orders.’

  The air is damp and musty; it stinks of ancient piss.

  ‘I know. Still . . .’

  We are in the sewers, somewhere, in one of the sections where a man can stand without hindrance. Nearby a lamp flickers with a sickly glow.

  How long have I been out? It must’ve been hours.

  A dark shape lumbers over. Fabius. He kneels beside me. ‘I’m sorry, old friend.’

  My mind is covered with foggy cobwebs. I try to say something witty, but all I can muster is, ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t talk to that bastard.’ A second dark shape waddles over. The miniature whore. She says, ‘Wasted words, on a corpse.’

  The third and final dark shape comes closer. My old friend with the scar. He’s holding a rusty knife.

  ‘I’m sorry, Calenus,’ Fabius says as he grabs my scalp and pulls, twisting my chin up, exposing my neck; my Adam’s apple feels naked and lonely, like having my cock for sale in the forum. ‘Bad timing, that’s all. Nothing to be done about it. Plans are set.’

  The man with the scar kneels and then points at his cheek. ‘Thought you got away with this, didn’t you?’

  The whore cackles.

  My wits are slowly coming back; there’s time yet to die with dignity. I meet the man’s eyes and say, ‘Never gave you a second thought.’ Nearly content with my last words, I add, ‘Cunt.’

  With that I close my eyes and wait for the steel to slit my throat.

  I have time for one thought: I can’t believe I lived this long. Ten years in the legions, two on the run, eight living hand to mouth in Rome, running errands for senators and then the Imperial family. I should have met my end earlier. It was good fortune to live as long as I did.

  The blade doesn’t come.

  I have time
for a second thought: I’m glad I lived long enough to meet Red. That was good fortune, the very best. I think of the way she’d rub my scar for good luck, and I smile.

  I keep waiting, but the blade never comes. Instead of feeling my neck peel open, I hear a yelp and a series of thuds, and then the iron grip holding my hair disappears and my head falls back to the bricks. I open my eyes.

  Behind me, someone is untying my wrists.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  In front of me, the man with the scar is lying on the ground, holding a gory wound, gasping for air. There is another man wiping his blade onto the dying man’s tunic. The light catches his eye patch and I realise it’s the Big Buck, Ulpius’s one-eyed freedman. Theseus.

  The man behind me helps me sit up before walking over to Theseus. In the lamplight, I see it’s Ulpius’s patrician boy, Marcus.

  A strange twist, I’d say. Very strange.

  The boy says to Theseus, ‘The girl ran off.’

  Another body is splayed out on the ground. Fabius. He’s rubbing his head and whimpering nonsense.

  Theseus sits on Fabius, straddling his waist. He grabs Fabius by the tunic and pulls him up, bringing one eye level with two. He says, ‘Who does Montanus work for?’

  Fabius’s face is white as a cloud. He looks around, trying to get his bearings. (He must have been hit on the head.) His eyes lock on his colleague – still gasping for air, one foot in Elysium now.

  Theseus gives Fabius a furious shake. ‘Who?’

  ‘Look at him,’ I say. I try to stand, but halfway up the grog returns tenfold, churning ear to ear, and I stumble back to the bricks. They wait until I’m ready to speak. After a moment, I nod my head at Fabius and say, ‘His wits are gone. Give him a moment.’

  They take my point: the boy helps me stand while Theseus drags Fabius to the wall and leans him against it. The boy hands me a skin of wine. I kneel beside Fabius and help him take a sip. When he’s done he says, ahhhhh, and wipes his mouth.

  ‘You were always decent, Calenus,’ Fabius says. ‘Always decent.’

  ‘I’d have said the same about you,’ I say. ‘Until today.’

  Fabius smiles. He looks up at Theseus and the boy who are looming over us. ‘What now?’

  Theseus says, ‘For a start, you can tell us who Montanus works for.’

  Fabius frowns. ‘Or?’

  Theseus shrugs.

  Fabius frowns. ‘Now how do I know that won’t happen anyway?’ He looks to me. ‘Help me out old friend, Calenus. I’ll share what I know, but I don’t want today to be my last. I need assurances.’

  I look at the other two and it’s the boy (not Theseus) who nods. ‘We will let you live, but you must leave Rome. Stay away until the summer.’

  Fabius looks to me to corroborate. I say. ‘You’ve my word, Fabius. Tell us what you know and you can go a free man. I’ll even help you fight your way out if these boys change their mind.’

  Fabius laughs and takes another draught of wine. ‘Hell of a day.’ He wipes his mouth. ‘Where do I start? First off, you should know Montanus isn’t a thief . . . well, I suppose he is, but he’s more than that. He’s a man of Minerva, an entrepreneur. There were a lot of soldiers out of work after the civil wars, after the man they backed lost, myself included. Montanus saw an opportunity there and he put us to good use. We do work for the trades mainly – getting rid of one man’s competition, setting fires, breaking arms, that sort of thing. But we also work for senators and knights. I’ve a few names for you –’ Fabius takes another sip of wine ‘– but the one I suspect you’re after is senator Marcellus.’

  ‘And why do you think Marcellus is who we are after?’ the boy asks.

  Fabius says, ‘Because for months this whole city has been talking about some terrible, bloody murder by the Tiber. I figured that’s what you were on about.’

  ‘So you were involved in the murder?’ the boy asks.

  Fabius raises his hands up to show his innocence. ‘Now don’t go putting the knife in my hands. All we did was deliver the man up. Montanus said “get me so-and-so”, so we went and got the man. We never drank his blood, or ate his insides, or whatever it is they did to him.’

  Theseus adjusts his eye patch. ‘Delivered up who? Who was killed?’

  Fabius says, ‘His name was Vettius, some knight from the Bay.’

  ‘Are you certain?’ the boy asks. ‘Where you there when Marcellus hired Montanus?’

  Fabius shakes his head. ‘No, I suppose I wasn’t. But I’m certain all the same. A few weeks before we grabbed the man, sometime in December, we went to see Marcellus, Montanus and I. Marcellus handed us a bag of coin the size of my arse and said, “Give this to Vettius. He’ll knows what it’s for.” We did as he asked and we didn’t hear anything for weeks. Then one day Montanus came back to the Spotted Pig and said we had to go south and nab Vettius. So we went and got the man, and we brought him north. We held him for nearly a week. Then we delivered him to a warehouse near the Tiber. It was the dead of night, cold as a Thracian’s tit. Montanus knocked on a door and three of them came out, red cloaks and golden masks. It froze my blood. Montanus followed them inside, dragging Vettius behind him, leaving the rest of us on the stoop. And that was that. Next thing we hear is they’d found some bloodied body near the Tiber, right where we’d left him. Montanus never said anything more about it and we didn’t ask.’

  ‘And what of the hand?’ Marcus asks. ‘Was that Marcellus as well?’

  Fabius shakes his head. ‘Uh, uh. You see this is where things get – what’s the word – convoluted.’ He takes another sip of wine. ‘A few months back Montanus took on a new customer. Some senator – at least, we think he’s a senator; he pays well enough – but we’ve never met the man. He sends people instead of coming himself, with instructions and coin. A girl usually.’

  ‘The girl from today?’ I ask. ‘The one with one eyebrow who met with Montanus?’

  ‘The very one.’ Fabius takes another draught of wine. He shifts his weight and grimaces. ‘We did a few jobs for this senator. We stole an urn, beat up a slave – small stuff. Then one day the girl – she calls herself Livia – one day Livia shows up at the Spotted Pig with a mutt and a ring, solid gold. She says the dog’s been trained. All we needed to do was get the hand of a grown man, put the ring on its finger, and then put the hand in the mutt’s mouth on a certain day, at a certain time, and let it go.’

  ‘Whose hand was it?’ the boy asks.

  ‘Can’t remember who exactly,’ Fabius says. ‘Some poor bastard who didn’t pay Montanus back money he’d borrowed. We killed him the day before, chopped his hand off and dumped the rest of him in the Tiber. Put enough rocks in a man’s pockets and he’ll be dragged half way to Ostia before he surfaces.’

  Marcus asks, ‘And what did this mysterious senator hire you to do next?’

  ‘He’s kept us busy all right. The very evening we set the mutt loose in the forum, Livia came back to see Montanus and asked us to kidnap two people on the Bay, a whore and a senator.’

  ‘Plautius,’ I say.

  ‘Indeed,’ Fabius says.

  ‘Just kidnap?’ Theseus asks.

  Fabius puts his hands up again, showing his innocence. ‘We didn’t have anything to do with him rowing a boat for three months. Livia wanted us to grab him, hold him for a while, and feed him information. So that’s what we did.’

  ‘What do you mean, “feed him information”?’ Theseus asks.

  ‘We locked him in a room and talked outside the door. We were supposed to keep saying “Caecina” and “Ulpius”, “the Turncoat” and “the Blind Man”, shit like that, again and again. Like they were the one’s giving us orders. Then we were supposed to let him escape – and we did. We made it easy for him. We left the door wide open. But instead of running to Rome and telling everyone what he’d heard, he went and found himself a job rowing a boat.’ Fabius shakes his head. ‘Not the sharpest of swords, that one.’

  ‘So that co
lleague of yours –’ I point at the man, now dead, who wears the scar I gave him ‘– I met him when he was bringing a woman north?’

  Fabius nods. ‘So I’m told. That’s what he told Montanus, after you tried to run.’

  ‘And why weren’t you there?’

  ‘I was with Plautius in Miscenum.’

  ‘And you never asked why you were doing any of these tasks?’ Marcus says.

  Fabius is indignant. ‘You inherited a pile, I can tell by the look of you. You’ve no idea what it’s like to work. Beggars can’t be choosers. And ask him –’ he points at me ‘– you don’t ask a man like Montanus, “And why are we doing such and such?”’

  ‘And who tried to kill Caesar’s daughter?’ Theseus asks, arms crossed, rubbing his chin. ‘Marcellus or this mysterious senator?’

  Fabius shrugs. ‘Can’t say for certain. Montanus doesn’t tell me everything. But I know the man who did it was one of Montanus’s. Poor bastard. He’d fucked something up, lost Montanus twenty thousand when he got robbed on his way back from Ravenna. Montanus said, “Kill the Widow and the debt is forgiven.” It was an impossible job, but he had no choice. You don’t say no to Montanus.’

  Fabius takes another sip of wine.

  I say, ‘A few weeks back, you said heavy work was coming. Do you remember? What did you mean?’

  ‘Nothing in particular. You just hear things, second-hand. And Montanus was buying up more arms for the boys, cuirasses and swords. I just had a suspicion things were going that way. I’ve told you all I know.’

  The questions stop and Fabius says, ‘If that’s all, I will be on my way.’

  Theseus and Marcus nod. Fabius stands and says, ‘Goodbye, Calenus. No hard feelings, I hope?’

  I shake my head. ‘Just buy me a cup next we meet.’

  He smiles before disappearing around the bend.

  When we’re alone, Theseus asks me, ‘And why did Montanus want you dead?’

  I shrug. ‘Hard to say.’

  Nice as these boys were for saving my life, there’s a chance their interests are different than Domitilla’s. I need to report what I know to her and only her. So I’ll buy them a cup, but as far as information, they can go jump in the Tiber.