Dream Boat

by Marilyn Todd

  Claudia reeled. She pictured the guards. Noble watchmen, my armpits! Those were mercenaries, trained killers, Mentu openly admitted it. She thought of the scimitars. The double perimeter fence. Stakes to repel the enemy. High gates. And she thought, if three well-built young men can't escape this ring of steel, what chance has a girl?

  Stranger still, what chance have several girls?

  And at night?

  Moreover, why would a young mother, even under pressure, kill her own baby? Why wouldn't she simply abandon him? He'd be in good hands, for heaven's sake!

  A hymn had broken out, with clapping and much waving of arms, and despite the throbbing heat and torrential warm rain, gooseflesh rose on Claudia's arms.

  The sooner she got Flavia out of here the better, but the sky was black as night and only the temple platform was lit. Under this awning, she couldn't see diddly, let alone Flavia. She'd have to wait until supper.

  But time was fast running out.

  This is Friday night. Junius will die tomorrow afternoon.

  And suddenly Claudia knew she'd need something stronger than palm wine to sustain her through the next few hours. She'd need courage, she'd need strength, she'd need all her wits about her, because this wasn't going to be as straightforward as she'd

  hoped. But more than that, Claudia felt that what she really needed was a scimitar like the guards carried.

  Because right now six henchmen stationed on the far side of the hills didn't seem like any protection at all.

  Chapter Twenty

  An eagle owl, swooping over the seven hills of Rome, had a clear view of the wreckage left behind by the midsummer storm. Flash floods. Clogged and overflowing drains. A tenement struck by lightning, palls of smoke and flames ripping through the night along with the sickly stench of burning flesh from those trapped inside.

  The owl did not wish to singe its feathers. It moved on. Soaring above streets whose stinking, rotting refuse had been flushed downhill by the torrential rains, piling the debris against buildings and in the doorways of those not privileged enough to live higher up on the bluffs, the owl's penetrating amber scrutiny picked out some interesting enough titbits in the wreckage - a drowned kitten, several live rats - but the bird was a creature of the open woods and forests and in any case of a size more attracted to fawns and wolf cubs. It was simply passing through.

  Northwards it swept, on silent, eerie wings, over the shrine tended by the Vestal Virgins, above the coins twinkling at the bottom of Juturna's healing pool, above dungeons awash under two finger widths of filthy water. The owl could not see, even if it wanted to, the small phalanx of soldiers splashing their blood-stained prisoner through the foetid underground chambers of this former stone quarry. The prisoner was a slave, an Armenian, who'd stabbed his master twenty-seven times in the chest and neck and stomach. His only regret was being captured before he'd been able to stab him another twenty-seven.

  'Name?' the Clerk asked wearily.

  The prisoner sympathised. It was late. It was hot. Outrageously hot, the storm hadn't cleared the stickiness, if anything it had added to it. The Clerk would be tired, because weather such as this forces a man to breaking point and as long as the jails continued to fill (which they would, while this heatwave continued), the shift would get no reprieve. Standing ankle deep in sludge, the Armenian wondered whether the Clerk might be sickening for marsh fever. He looked ghastly. Haggard. Lined. As though he carried some terrible burden. The prisoner regretted his lack of consideration, not killing the vicious bastard at a more convenient hour so men like the Clerk could go home to their wives and their families.

  He did not wish to cause any trouble.

  He gave his name.

  'It's a sad day,' said the Clerk of the Dungeons, staring past the shackles and the soldiers, 'when decency is repaid with inhumanity.'

  The prisoner, smelling his master's blood on his hands and tunic, saw no point in trying to explain to this hollow-eyed Roman the true definition of savagery.

  'Yes, sir,' he said meekly, his heels sinking deeper into the sludge.

  What use was there in telling them he was glad the cruel bastard was dead and that in killing him, he'd spared others the same ordeal? He really did not wish to be any trouble. Saturday was not far away. He watched the gaunt Clerk lay down his nib. No point in trawling for remorse where it didn't exist, even though a grovelling apology always went down well with the crowds. The Armenian was under no illusions as the guards led him away.

  Nevertheless, he felt for the Clerk, wearily rubbing his temples and feeling the strain of this terrible heatwave.

  Poor overworked sod hadn't even written down the prisoner's name.

  To the north and west, rain continued to lash at the Cradle of Ra, flattening the remaining unharvested barley and swelling

  the apples and the berries and the pears. Seth, dry inside his cave, had almost finished bandaging Donata's corpse, only the neck and head remained. Ideally, he would have had the bodies professionally embalmed, but the logistics of arranging that were far too complex. For a start, he'd have had to travel to Egypt and that was out of the question, and in any case, even if, by some remarkable coincidence, he had found an embalmer locally, he'd have had to keep the man prisoner in this cave while the repellent business was being conducted.

  Impossible. Not only would the fellow be permanently trying to attract attention, he'd have the use of a very sharp knife!

  And besides, Seth leaned back to admire his handiwork, he was not sure he'd want to know about brains hooked out through the nose, organs removed through the flank. Messy. Unnecessary. The job for a butcher, and for heaven's sake, this cave was no slaughterhouse! His disciples took their own lives, quietly and willingly, the decision entirely theirs. Because not everyone, he acknowledged impartially, would want to be deified, to sit at Seth's Holy Table for eternity. He wouldn't force them, no, no, no, but my word, he had chosen wisely. All six had favoured the path to blessedness, and Seth promised each and every one that they would not regret their decision in the afterlife.

  Nevertheless, the smell in the cave was fast becoming intolerable.

  He secured the last of Donata's bandages and replaced the heavy cow mask. There were, he knew, other ways of preserving the body, which did not require professional help. One could, for instance, inject the corpse with oil of cedar through the anus and insert a bung. So powerful is the action of the oil, that it liquefies the soft internal organs, but while Seth did not believe himself squeamish, there was no way he could bring himself to remove that loathsome plug and then dispose of the contents.

  Alternatively, he could do what the poor settle for in Egypt, simply pickle intact bodies in a bath of natron. Only how would

  he get his hands on the substance? So much salt would attract attention.

  His only solution was to move fast.

  The rain hammered down, channelling itself into waterfalls on the rocks, as Seth stood naked in the doorway of his cave. The same cave which had kept the ancient Etruscans dry all those centuries ago and whose paintings still survived in brilliant colour on the walls. Leopards. Lions. Dancers. As grand an entrance to the underworld as Seth could wish for.

  He stood there, watching the night. The realm of darkness over which he was Lord and Master. Seth, the Sorcerer, the Measurer of Time. To be fair, he had no real complaints at the speed at which his project was forging ahead. Six down. One earmarked. No problem. Three more was all he required, maybe two, because one of the girls in the laundry was starting to look as though she could be talked into something. Also, he had studied carefully the new arrivals Zer fetched in today. Three of those four recruits had been female - and one of those, Seth reflected happily, was just up his street.

  In the meantime, though, he must return to the commune. He'd be missed if he didn't leave now.

  But the next time he visited his cave, he resolved to bring herbs to hang here - basil, balm, oregano - to mask the stench, while he bandaged Bereni
ce.

  The first real flutterings of panic began to beat inside Claudia's breast. Supper, including the palm wine, had come and gone, and still she had not caught a glimpse of Flavia. Or Flea, for that matter. In fact, Flea, in particular, because the thief would know how to move around unseen and two pairs of eyes are always better than one. The reward for helping would be that Flea could keep Doodlebug, but even the puppy was nowhere to be seen.

  The commune was carried along on its own sinister current.

  Claudia was being swept along with it.

  Resistance was useless. She had tried a direct assault, the

  I'm-trying-to-find-my-friend-Flavia routine, only to have it quickly pointed out that no one used their old Roman names here and they were very sorry, unless she could tell them her friend's Egyptian name . . . and of course she could not. The fact that Flavia was a recent arrival counted for bugger all, as well. Immediately a newcomer arrived at the commune, she was Egyptianised in dress and hair and face paint. Claudia wasn't too sure that Egyptian women wore their hair in buns, but then again, there wasn't much about this place which was genuinely Egyptian when you boiled it down! This was Roman life pasted over with a veneer of the exotic. Nothing threatening, nothing too alien, just Egypt sanitised and repackaged and sold back to them as sun worship. This commune was nothing but a token gesture.

  Nevertheless, the machine was brutally efficient. New members arrived and were assimilated instantly.

  For her part, Claudia had been adopted by Mercy's 'cell', an ominous title for an innocuous group comprising women aged between sixteen to sixty in age, and in mentality between nought and nil. Sitting with them over supper, she realised their brains were nothing more than sponges which had soaked up Mentu's teachings and Mentu's rites and rituals, with the result that what seeped out was simply a re-hash of Mentu's mindless drivel.

  Indoctrination, brainwashing, call it what you like (Mentu, incidentally, called it 'instruction'), had purged them of whatever demons they'd carried on their backs before they came, so that now they were so clean of their old life that they almost squeaked, and with all this holiness and blessedness and paths to righteousness dripping off their tongues, Claudia feared she might be physically sick.

  The cells were (predictably) ten apiece, Claudia filled Berenice's place, and that made a good starting point. She might be able to track Flavia that way, because she was also recently arrived and was bound to have filled a vacancy. Were Claudia to establish who had disappeared before Berenice, she might hit home.

  'Oh, that was Donata,' Mercy said, topping up the palm wine. 'Odd creature, thought herself a cut above the rest of us and very conscious of her squint.'

  A ripple of muted giggles rang round the cell, suggesting that Donata had had good reason to be sensitive. But when Claudia tracked down Donata's cell, she found that her place had been taken by Zer's acolyte from Rome who had arrived with her today, and that was depressing, because she was beginning to run out of leads.

  Leads!

  Knocking back a shot of palm wine, she set off for the kitchens. Where else would a young puppy aim for?

  'Sister.' The greeting was gravelly and low, and not quite as touchy-feely-friendly as the voices in the refectory. Anywhere else, and you might think it was a warning.

  Claudia turned a beaming smile upon the voice. Geb, who else, she thought, remembering Mercy's description: a Barbary ape on two legs. The description was apt, too. He had it on his chest, and he had it on his back, and he had it in great tufts underneath his arms. Even the hair on his head, damp and plastered down, was straggly, having grown beyond its natural length. Claudia suppressed the shudder which threatened to engulf her. Civilised men razored off their body hair, kept their skin supple and oiled. But the fact that Geb was hairy (how could one man grow so much fur, did he feed it?) didn't necessarily mark him down as a wife-beater. Mercy would be prejudiced. And the reason Claudia could see so much of his body was that at the moment he was stripped to the waist while a second man with blue-black, slicked-down hair wrapped a bandage round his torso with practised fingers.

  'Oh, dear.' She frowned. "That looks nasty.' Actually, she couldn't see the wound through the thick wodge of linen.

  Geb. Keeper of the Central Store, in charge of the smooth domestic running of the commune. Geb. A kind of godfather figure. The hairy godfather, who might well have allocated chores to Flavia.

  'Less serious than it looks,' said the second man. His skin

  was dark, verging on swarthy and there was a blue stubble line round his jaw. 'Light scalding, no more.'

  'Light?' growled Geb. 'That lousy bitch tipped half a ruddy pan of sauce over me.'

  'An accident, I'm sure,' and now the second man held a warning in his voice, except this time the warning was for Geb. He glanced up at Claudia and she noticed his clothes were damp at the back from the rain. 'You're new here, aren't you?'

  She wondered how he could tell. 'Yes,' she gushed. 'Praise be to Ra.'

  'Praise be to Ra,' they both echoed back, but the enthusiasm was dim.

  'Put your finger there,' the bandager instructed his patient.

  'I can't reach.' Geb winced as he twisted, and Claudia stepped in to fill the breach.

  'Allow me,' she said cheerfully, holding the linen while the knot was tied off. Neither man smelled of anything except the regulation commune unguent - cloves and myrrh.

  Neither man offered his thanks, either! The first concentrated on checking his new fabric skin, the second on rolling up the remaining bandage and stuffing it, plus a pot of creamy yellow unguent, back inside his satchel. 'I'm Shabak,' he grunted. 'Doctor, dentist, apothecary. Any problems, see me.' And with that he was off, striding down the corridor, his blue jaw shiny in the lamplight.

  'Want something, do you?' Geb refused her offer to help him back in to his shirt.

  'My puppy,' she said. The search for Doodlebug would take her to places where Flavia might be skivvying. 'I expect he's in the—'

  'No brother is permitted personal possessions.'

  'I know that and you know that,' Claudia trilled, 'but unfortunately Doodlebug is too young to read the rule book. He'll be pining for me.'

  'I dare say,' Geb said dryly. 'But he won't be doing it in my jurisdiction. Only animals allowed inside my kitchens are dead ones.'

  And just in case she didn't get the message, Geb, the hairy godfather, the Keeper of the Central Store, stood with his broad hands on his hips, blocking her way.

  On the other side of the wall, a fifteen-year-old girl who hated the name she'd been allocated, sobbed into her greasy, splattered tunic. It was an accident, surely Master Geb could see that? She'd turned round, struggling with the heavy pan and with the burning heat which was coming through to her fingers, despite the cloth around them, and she'd cannoned into him.

  It was an accident.

  Around her, pans and skillets clattered and scraped, iron upon iron, bronze upon bronze. Steam and smoke bubbled up from the ovens and cauldrons and washbowls, obscuring the overhead hanging bunches of herbs, the smell of frying fish and baked bread, roast goat and garlic vying for attention. Now that the main hall had been fed, it was time to serve the Pharaoh and his Holy Council, and they didn't settle for poxy beans and onions and a chunk of braised pork!

  The reminder of the cooked pig made her snivel louder. So much for equality. Flavia sniffed. Tasks are allocated according to contribution, and hers had been a few trinkets. Bastard! Not for the first time, she cursed her foster father for diddling her out of the ransom. Stingy, rotten, skinflint bastard. Thanks to him, she was scrubbing dishes and . . . and tipping anchovy sauce over the Keeper of the Store!

  With a wail, she ran out of the kitchens, tears of self-pity streaming down her cheeks as she hunkered behind the charcoal shed.

  'I didn't mean it! I didn't mean to scald him!'

  She gulped back the sobs. They said he had a fearful temper, Master Geb. Not the type who beats you then forgets it. Geb liked t
o simmer for a while and then devise the punishment.

  She blew her nose hard.

  She wished she'd never come here.

  She wished she'd never heard of the Brothers of Horus.

  She wished someone would come to rescue her.

  She wished she could get out. Go back home.

  But in her heart, she knew that she couldn't. That, somehow - she couldn't say why - but somehow Flavia knew she was destined to stay in this valley for ever.

  Claudia had tried sailing with the current. It had not found her Flavia and goddammit, the sand in Junius' hourglass was running perilously low. She looked at Geb, standing four-square in front of the doorway to the kitchens, his damp hair sticking to his forehead and decided to sail upstream.

  'My puppy is only eight weeks old.' Oops. Her elbow accidentally nudged Geb's bandaged body as she swept past. 'I'll check the kitchens anyway!'

  Perhaps flinching slowed him down. Perhaps Geb was the type to note a grudge and retaliate later. Perhaps he truly didn't care. Either way, Claudia swept unchallenged into the hustle and the bustle, the clouds and the condensation and, using her search for Doodlebug as cover, checked out the kitchen staff. Patently unused to charcoal ovens and iron griddles, to spits and spatulas and strainers, nevertheless they were having a whale of a time. Gales of laughter mingled with chopping, pounding, pouring, whisking, while controversy over which way up the gridiron went combined with tastings and testings and estimates on quantity.

  'Where's that clumsy bitch sloped off to?'

  Geb had either forgotten Claudia, or his priorities lay elsewhere. He was intent on finding the girl who'd mistaken him for a herring and dressed him with anchovy sauce.

  'When I get my hands on her, I'll stripe her hide, she'll think she's a bloody zebra for a week! Have you finished yet?' He turned his bellowing on Claudia. 'I told you, before, you won't find a live animal inside my kitchens.' He swiped his damp fringe out of his eyes. 'Now you're in the way and I've a fucking schedule to adhere to.'

  No Doodlebug. No Flavia!