Black Salamander

XIX

‘We must move through the woods,’ Arcas said, tightening the saddle strap on his stocky red and white horse. ‘It’s too dangerous to travel by road.’

‘How can it possibly be dangerous?’ Maria snorted. ‘The Helvetii are miles away, aren’t they?’ Behind her, Dexter whimpered that he thought he was getting a migraine.

‘Those ugly bastards know better than to set foot over the river.’ The Silver Fox passed the flat of his hand across his windpipe in a cut-throat gesture to emphasize his point. ‘It’s Sequani loyalists we want to avoid.’ He patted the stallion on its solid, rotund rump then turned his attention to his pair of pack horses.

‘Why should we want to do that?’ Titus looked up from where he was grinding laudanum in a mortar. ‘They’re-you’re our allies.’

‘You haven’t heard?’ Arcas continued to ram the hams, sausages and smoked tongues he’d cut down from his rafters into a hessian sack. ‘The Treveri are in rebellion. Fires, riots, sabotage, murder, ambush, you name it, they’re putting it in practice.’

‘Maybe so, but they’re doing it a hundred miles north of here.’ In the absence of wine, Titus stirred beer into the sticky sweet laudanum before measuring it into two cups to dose the injured drivers. Claudia noticed that the intervals between medication were growing increasingly shorter.

‘Seventy,’ the trapper corrected, stuffing a second sack with vegetables. ‘But word is, the legions are worried. Troops have been sent from Vesontio to crush the rebellion and, flying the colours of our ancient insignia, the Spider is crawling out of his web.’

‘I don’t like spiders,’ Dexter muttered. ‘Arachnophobia, y’know.’

‘You wouldn’t like this one, that’s for sure.’ Arcas snorted, knotting the sacks and throwing them over the first horse. ‘He gets his nickname from the web he casts, drawing in every dissident Sequani because, strange as it seems,’ he shot Theo a sharp glance, ‘not everyone adores their Roman tax collectors.’ He paused to check the knots. ‘When the Treveri started playing up, the Spider swung his underground army into action. You won’t mistake them when you see them. They fly the gold globe in a circle of red. Riches through blood, that’s their motto.’

Again Claudia noticed that Orbilio had contributed nothing, content, it seemed, to assist Hanno load the pack mules. Claudia caught his glance and with one raised eyebrow signalled have-you-heard-of-any-Spider? To which the reply was a subtle news-to-me facial twitch. But the keenness of his eye also said he didn’t disbelieve the Silver Fox.

‘Rebel, did you say?’ Maria asked. ‘I don’t believe a word of it! We’ve never heard of any revolutionaries terrorizing the area, have we, Theodorus?’

The soldier, buffing up his helmet with his sleeve, was forced to agree with her for once. ‘Military intelligence has never mentioned him,’ he said, though his voice made it plain that just because this was fresh, it wasn’t necessarily untrue.

‘I say we take our chances with the road,’ Maria said, leaving no doubt that she considered this backwoods route a ploy to justify the Silver Fox’s exorbitant fee.

‘Me, too,’ Volso cried. ‘We’ve lost enough time as it is.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ the slipper-maker whined. ‘This man is our guide, we either trust him or we don’t.’

‘There’s thirty-four of us,’ the glass-blower reminded them, ‘no ragbag bandit’s going to tackle that. Not with the army in Vesontio.’

‘What army?’ Titus said. ‘You heard him, it’s a skeleton force.’

‘STOP.’ Arcas held up both hands and made a slashing motion. ‘That’s enough, all of you. I am not in your Senate, listening while you debate from dusk till dawn, neither am I some servant at your beck and call. Bicker all you wish, but be warned.’ He reached for a pitcher and with his dagger jabbed a small hole near the bottom. Beer gushed out in ugly, noisy spurts. ‘I leave when this is empty,’ he said, striding off to his roundhouse. ‘Either through the woods or on the road, the choice is yours, but decide quickly.’

‘Well,’ Maria said.

‘Well?’ Titus asked.

‘A vote,’ Theo sighed. ‘Who’s for the main road? Sixteen. So who’s for taking Arcas’s route? Sixteen.’ A flash of annoyance crossed his freckled face. ‘Who hasn’t voted? Oh.’ He gave a shamefaced laugh. ‘Me. Well, I feel we should go with the guide. Seventeen to sixteen, we follow the Fox’s trail.’

‘Young man, I’m not sure this is a joking matter.’ Maria’s finger jabbed her rebuke every bit as sharply as her voice. ‘Our lives depend on this decision-oh, will you listen to the Blubber Family back there? Can’t you lot put a sock in it?’

Her scorn only served to fuel the sobs of Gemma and her parents, neither of whom had adapted at all well to life since leaving the body of the convoy. Far from adventure being the making of the man, the brick-maker had become a gibbering wreck, barely able to speak without quivering, and his agitation was reflected in the behaviour of his wife, who clung to her daughter, weeping noisily, leaving Gemma to gulp back her own sobs.

‘Right then.’ A tightly packed quiver on his back, his bow in hand, Arcas pulled his oak door shut and secured the cattle hide over the porch. A long sword hung from his belt in an ornate scabbard. ‘What’s it to be?’ He cast a judgmental eye over the jug, where only a thin trickle remained.

‘The woods,’ Theo said.

Arcas grunted as if to say of-course-it-is, then strode towards the nursing ewe, dozing with her lazy arching horns resting against the low wall of the roundhouse. Claudia’s eyes widened. She froze. Oh, no! She could see before any of the others what he was about to do…the drawing of the dagger, the separation of the first lamb, the moving of the second, the lifting of the mother’s trusting chin…

Blood spurted in all directions. Quickly, cleanly, Arcas slit the throats of the two baby lambs and left them where they lay.

Gemma said, ‘I’m going to be sick,’ and didn’t disappoint her audience.

Maria hissed, ‘Barbarian!’

Most simply stared.

Blood still pumped from the lifeless body of the ewe, seeping into the fluffy fleeces of her newborn lambs. Claudia swallowed hard and looked away.

‘I don’t know what you’re gawking at,’ Arcas growled. ‘They’re my sheep, not yours.’ His eyes caught Claudia’s and held them. ‘I’ve been shunned,’ he muttered, and she saw that explanations were a stranger to him. ‘What was I supposed to do, leave them to starve to death?’

He glanced back at the limp and bloodied corpses, at the roundhouse, at the sharp point of the thatch, and Claudia knew he was looking at this place in farewell. Goosepimples crept up her arms. The holiday spirit, she reflected, hadn’t lasted long.

‘Now in the name of Father Dis, will you get going?’ Arcas barked, snapping free the tether of his horse. ‘And for gods’ sake, keep close together. You.’ His gimlet gaze singled out Orbilio. ‘You had better bring up the rear. Make sure they stay in line.’

‘I’ll do that.’ Theo shouldered his way to the front of the group. ‘I have the training and experience.’

Arcas secured his rolled-up cloak over the pommel and swung into his saddle. ‘That’s another thing,’ he said. ‘There are too many of you to deal with individually. From now on, I deal only with the man in charge. Him.’ His eyes fell on Marcus.

Theo erupted like a volcano. ‘Now listen to me,’ he began.

‘I told you,’ Arcas said, swinging his horse away. ‘I listen to him.’

‘Not me,’ Marcus said amiably. ‘I design mosaic floors.’

‘Then the rearguard might provide inspiration for your work.’

‘Now you just wait a second.’ Theo was as puce as a plum. He snapped on his helmet to add weight to his argument. ‘I’m Rome’s representative here-’

‘Take your hand off me, soldier boy.’ Arcas’s tone was mild. The warning came from the eyes. The set jaw.

‘How dare you! How dare you humiliate me in public, you bastard? Theo shouted, and this time it was Volso who was forced to calm him down.

‘Croesus, lad, you told me not to antagonize the Silver Fox, look at you, you moron.’

‘Theo, it really doesn’t matter who brings up the rear,’ Titus reassured him, ‘so long as we reach Vesontio alive.’ He shrugged at Iliona, who shrugged back. They couldn’t see the problem. But Claudia could.

The Silver Fox was enjoying himself.

*

An hour’s ride from the roundhouse, the forest opened out to reveal glimpses through the trees of the tall grey sentinels of rock which towered over them, but here, Jupiter be praised, there was open space between the soaring, wooded cliffs for pasture. Wide acres for short-horned cattle to graze-small, rangy black beasts which resembled goats more than cows-chomping away on the lush water-meadows beside the silvery brook which cut through this valley. Not that Arcas led the group across the flower-filled meadows. Hugging close to the woods, he circled round.

‘I don’t trust that man,’ Maria confided to Claudia. ‘I feel sure that any minute now he plans to rob and butcher us.’

‘Wouldn’t he have had more of an advantage on home territory?’ Claudia murmured.

‘Hmmm.’ That was Maria’s way of saying she had a point. ‘But I don’t go for that tripe about spiders coming out of their webs. I mean, how would he know?’

‘Possibly,’ Claudia suggested sweetly, ‘because he’s Sequani.’ Shunning, after all, did not entail being rendered deaf and dumb. Each village, under its petty chieftain, would have its jungle drums.

Ahead of them, Dexter was telling Gemma to keep an eye out for asphodel, it always worked for him when he’d been sick, and Claudia thought he might just as well tell her to wash her feet and drink the water for all the benefit she’d get.

She glanced at Maria, glowering at her husband’s back. Too often one had to remind oneself that the bookbinder’s wife was only thirty, she seemed every inch the matron, yet she was not an unattractive woman. Straight of shoulder, straight of talk, her complexion was good, heaven knows her face was handsome enough. Of course, if she kept at it the way she was now, in twenty years’ time her mouth would be a downward arch supported on pillars of deep lines, her eyes hard instead of comely. And what of Dexter? Hair which was floppy and brown in his early thirties would probably have receded into baldness, no doubt he’d be rubbing his head with wolf’s fat mixed with bitumen or something, and still moaning about non-existent ulcers, warts and coughs. Every day would be born another ailment, and still Maria would despise him Claudia wondered when they’d last had sex.

They weren’t a bad-looking couple, she thought. They weren’t even bad. Just mismatched. Grown apart. Neither finding support from the other and filling the vacuum the best they could. She with her snobbery, he with his hypochondria.

‘I wish he’d spend less time with that wretched human fountain,’ Maria sniffed, right on cue, ‘and cultivate the company of a merchant like Titus instead. He looks to have his wits about him.’

More than that, he looked to have his hand on Iliona’s bottom!

‘Gemma’s parents have let her down badly,’ Claudia said. The brick-maker kept mumbling over and over that he couldn’t go on, he wanted to die, those lambs were the very last straw. ‘They’ve all but gone to pieces, Gemma’s simply looking for a father figure.’

Maria cast a critical eye over the girl’s lumpy frame. ‘She’s already got one,’ she said.

Claudia’s head was throbbing, and not from the ride. Vigilance, she thought, is taking its toll, I am on my guard all the time. Could Was Dexter the traitor? Maria? Titus? Iliona?? You cannot rule out one half of a couple, because while the killer’s success hinged on working alone, a spouse gave an excellent alibi. Not, she felt, that the other party would be aware they were married to a murderer. Both Titus and Iliona would be doing this for the other, while in the case of Maria and Dexter, separate ambitions would carry them forward. As to those travel ling alone, well, there was Volso-what price being acknowledged the Dictator’s astrologer? Oh, the fame! The accolades! Clemens’ target was the most influential post in the priesthood. Hanno could expect to run the commercial stabling side of the new Republic in return. Theo’s military training could have him heading the Praetorian Guard, promoted to general, maybe even given a province to run.

Then there was the glass-blower, the slipper-maker, the drivers to consider, the other tradesmen and their women travelling with them. Cliques had formed, even in a group as small as this, Claudia couldn’t befriend them all… She rubbed her aching head and wished she’d never seen that wretched salamander seal.

When they reached the river Arcas said that, for safety, they must follow where it wound round the canyon. The sky was beginning to break up, faint patches of blue appeared and disappeared, but it was sufficient to turn a dull brown ribbon of water into a stream bejewelled with silver and blue lapis lazuli, diamonds and emeralds and pearls. They stopped for lunch, the woodsman’s own smoked hams and great, flat cheeses wrapped in fir bark-not the heavy, crinkly parts, but the papery insides after the outer layer had been stripped off, leaving everyone to remember that nothing was ever wasted in this country. Swallows dipped and dived for midges, kites mewed and made circles above. The lowing of the cattle drifted on the gentle breeze, which brought with it the scent of thyme and yellow gentian.

Sluicing her hands and face in the clear mountain stream, Claudia turned to find herself staring into the tall boots and russet coloured pantaloons of their guide. From here she could see the intricate engraving on his sword-the product of sophisticated granulating and acid techniques, showing the tree of life between two rearing ibexes. The reason she could see them, standing so completely tall and still, was because he happened to be leaning on the weapon at the time.

‘Do you always serve lunch off the hilt of your sword?’ she asked. There was a sweet, sharp, almost fiery smell about him, which at first she could not place. Then it came to her. Mushrooms. Dried boletus mushrooms, carried in a pouch hung round his waist.

‘I’ll give you some advice,’ Arcas said, squinting into the distance. ‘Not that you, of all of them, need it, but I’ll tell it to you, anyway. Trust no one,’ he said. ‘Hear me? Trust nobody.’ He turned and flashed her a grin, the first she’d seen. ‘But as I say, you already know that, as does he.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of Orbilio, nuzzling one of Arcas’s stock red horses. ‘Now I suggest we pack up and get going.’ She heard him suck in his breath as he sheathed his heavy weapon. ‘Very, very fast.’

‘Wh…?’ The question died on Claudia’s lips.

In the distance, a hoarde of shiny insects shimmered over the open green pastureland. The insects rode in war chariots, gesticulating wildly, the erratic sunlight glinting off their bronze armour and their broadswords, brandished high.

The armoured war band were closing that distance with alarming speed.