Black Salamander

II

Imagine thunder. Imagine a stampede of wild Camargue stallions. Imagine earthquakes and a volcanic eruption. Now put them together. The very ground shook beneath the wheels as the driver cracked his whip. The mares bolted forward, and as her nails dug deep into the grain of her maplewood seat Claudia thanked Jupiter for the skill of her driver.

With the stone trackway potholed and scarred and treacherously steep, coated with an ooze of wet mud that had turned it into an oil slick, only the driver’s expertise kept this light trap on its course. Twice the wheels skidded. Drusilla’s cage slid to the left, it slid to the right. The axle caught on a rut. Rocks crashed behind them, clattering, splintering, bouncing down the ravine. Horses screamed on the perilous bend and Claudia clung to the rig as the wheels bounced high off the ground and crashed down again. We’ll turn over, she thought. A wheel will spin off. How far now down the gorge? A hundred feet to the bottom?

Boulders the size of a stable block thundered past, ripping up sixty-foot pines, oak trees and beech. Fragments broke off, thumping, thudding, wrecking their way to the riverbed.

‘Gee up! Gee up there!’

The mares needed no encouragement. Their eyes wild with terror, foam flecking their cheeks, they galloped ever closer to the wagon in front. Claudia’s clenched knuckles were white, she daren’t breathe. One slip from a rig up ahead and the whole column would go down like gates in a gale, plummeting into the void…

Sweet Juno, could they truly outrun it?

Nestor had gone. At the first yell of the soldier, he was off, faster than a bullet from an Iberian sling, his eyes still watering, his face as red as a turkey-cock’s wattle. Idly she wondered whether things like this had happened before on his travels, whether rock falls were a regular occurrence?

‘Madam.’ The canvas was jerked open, rain began driving into the cart. ‘You have to get out.’

‘About bloody time, I must say.’ Claudia stared at the bleached face of her bodyguard, hurling himself into the jostling rig. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Backtracking up the road like you told me,’ Junius puffed, grabbing the handle of Claudia’s trunk. ‘Come on. Quick!’

‘Brilliant. When that creep Nestor started pawing me, where were you? Sightseeing!’ At her feet, Drusilla howled like a banshee. ‘What’s the point of having a bodyguard, if he’s not around to protect your body?’

‘Sightseeing?’ His left hand closed over the strap round the cat’s cage. ‘You gave me specific orders to- Oh, the hell with it, just jump, will you?’

Claudia stared at the young Gaul. ‘Has your mind been possessed by a lunatic’s?’ With mares at full pelt, wagons racing behind and boulders bouncing down the hillside like inflated pigs’ bladders, Junius tells her to jump? ‘I’ll be pulped like an olive for oil.’

‘This whole mountain is going!’

Shit. Slinging her precious satchel over her shoulder, Claudia scrabbled on to the footboard. Rain and dust slammed into her face.

‘You what?’ the driver said when she told him. ‘Bleedin’ ’ell, are you sure?’ But Junius’s pinched face answered for him. ‘Then forget jumping, we must stop the column. Pull up!’ he yelled, standing upright as he hauled on the reins. ‘Stop your carts!’ The authority in his voice caught their attention. ‘Stop your carts!’

Junius wasn’t the only one who’d seen what was about to take place. A horseman surged his way up the path, past quivering mules and women wailing in fright, ignoring the confused shouts of the drivers. ‘Get out,’ he yelled. ‘Everyone out!’ There was more than a tinge of panic to his voice. ‘Huddle close as you can to the rock.’

From deep inside the mountain came a low menacing growl. Claudia glanced up. Typical of the countryside, massive overhangs of granite jutted out, the softer limestone below having eroded away. Above, some of the fissures were gaping wider and wider, and it was this Junius and the others had spotted.

Suddenly, June or not, she was shivering.

‘Croesus,’ somebody cried. ‘The mountain’s coming right at us!’

Claudia found herself slammed flat against the rock face, a man’s body pressed against hers. Not Nestor. There was no flab on this man. And it was for protection, rather than lust.

With just one warning rumble, the whole hillside started to tremble and then, as though a giant hand sliced it through with a sword, the outcrop began to slip its moorings. Slowly at first. As though reluctant to leave home. But then it found freedom-and flight.

Day became night as great crashing boulders roared past. Horses shrieked, soldiers bellowed out instructions, men were shouting as their womenfolk wailed. Whole trees were uprooted, gouging out the mountain road and sending down mudslides in great slimy torrents.

For what seemed an eternity, stones hurtled down, branches, tree roots, great chunks of soil, until the only sound left was the rain, spitter-spattering down on the wreckage. Low moans and groans rippled along the stunned line of travellers, muted sobbing broke out, the occasional whimper. Even the panic-stricken horses had been numbed into pitiful snickering. Claudia clung to the rock like a limpet as the pitchy air slowly cleared, leaving an incongruously pleasant smell of freshly turned earth in its wake.

‘Thank you, Junius.’ She spat out a mouthful of rock dust and pine needles. ‘You can move away any time you feel like it.’

‘Oh. Right. Yes.’ The young Gaul gave an embarrassed cough as he took a pace backwards.

Claudia wedged a finger between her teeth to stop them chattering and gave a tight-lipped nod of thanks to the man who had just saved her life. Ever attentive, always on hand, Junius’s eyes never seemed to leave his mistress, not once and on occasions (this was one of them) Claudia was given to wondering whether his feelings were perhaps more than professional… Then she remembered, and laughed. Hell, she was three, maybe four years older than him, and with muscles like iron and his Gaulish good looks, he’d have his pick of young women. His obedience, his obsessive reliability, simply reflected a pride in his work.

The dust settled quickly in the downpour and Claudia finally prised herself away from the security of the rock face to confront the chaos which surrounded her. A string of pack mules had taken the full force of the blast, cascading to their deaths in the chasm below. Five rigs had also crashed down, hers included, and forty paces of mountain road had-or were about to-give way. A red-haired young groom gingerly tried to unhook some of the horses, but before the first two were free of the reins, another section of road collapsed, tossing carts, mules and groom down the ravine like carved wooden toys. Their screams rang harrowingly in Claudia’s ear, and she had to steady herself not to pass out.

With jelly-like legs, Claudia made her way back up the line where, miraculously, Drusilla was fine and where Junius and the driver were both being hailed as heroes. Quite right, too. Clemens, a little, round, list-maker of a priest, was conducting a head count and Theodoras, representing the army, took stock of the damage. Glancing over the precipitous edge, Claudia grimaced at the tangle of trees and smashed rocks which blocked the narrow valley, and at the twitching bodies of mules, their blood staining the canvas ripped from mangled rigs. One wheel spun slowly, as though turned by an invisible hand.

She shuddered.

The road behind was impassable-hell, it was not even there-and the party had neither equipment nor manpower to shift the blockage below.

They were trapped.

In the background Clemens’ voice was reassuring shell-shocked journeyers that fatalities were lower than feared. One muleteer, he said, plus one of the drivers and two soldiers had died trying to usher the civilians to safety. We must all give thanks, he said. Make sacrifice, now, to the Lares, for protecting us on these perilous roads She blocked off his trumpery. Give thanks? For being trapped in this canyon? The sides were too steep for horseback, they’d have to scramble on foot, and in any case, where the hell were they? That’s why she had sent Junius to backtrack on the route. Already she had her suspicions…

As the drone of the little priest continued, Claudia found her legs could no longer support her, and she stumbled to the nearest wagon. At the front, the horses, still skittish, shifted from hoof to hoof as they whinnied and shied, and she wanted to tell them, put a sock in it, show some gratitude, can’t you see half of your cousins are dead? Wearily, her hair and her tunic plastered to her body with rain which had finally begun to ease up, Claudia slumped against the brake pole.

What have you got yourself into this time?

Without bothering to sweep the soggy canvas aside, uncannily intact apart from a layer of mud, she leaned into the rig. A drink. Whoever it belonged to, they had to have wine on board. Shaking fingers fumbled over the luggage in the dark interior. An overturned trunk. A shoe. What’s that? Oh, a writing tablet. That’s no bloody use. A carved wooden goblet. A comb. A foot. A razor. Did I say foot? Claudia yanked back the awning. Holy shit, it was a foot. Cold, clammy, a very dead foot. Swallowing hard, she followed it upwards. She knew that leg, surely? The short, stocky body…?

Salty tears filled her eyes. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been gasping for breath, his face as pink as a ripe pomegranate. She gagged at the lump in her throat. Now he was cold. Icy cold. And there was no breath left in his lungs.

Oh, Nestor. You of all people! Surely a seasoned traveller had the sense to get out of the way? And then she realized that here he was, lying flat on his face in a cart, suggesting that his heart had given way. Poor old sod. Who’d have thought he’d have been so terrified of a rock fall?

Something lurched in her gut.

Janus, Croesus, he’d been in agony the last time she saw him, and then came the landslide. Independently, they’d have had no impact on his health, but together? Together they’d buggered his heart. Inadvertently, Claudia had helped kill him.

She scrubbed the tears from her eyes. This had really turned into a nightmare.

‘I’m so sorry.’ She gulped. ‘Oh, Nestor, I am so very sorry.’

Truly, he’d been nothing more than a troublesome pest, a lonely man in search of cheap thrills. He’d meant no harm with his touching-some chaps couldn’t help it. Like sniffing hemp seeds, or drinking too much, they were simply hooked on the act. Had she known the architect had a weak heart…

Accustomed now to the gloom inside the cart, Claudia frowned. Hold on. She scrambled closer, towards the top section of his waxy, lifeless body. Holy shit! Nestor hadn’t succumbed to a dodgy heart at all.

The entire back of his head was caved in.

*

Claudia wriggled out of the cart, pulled down the flap and signalled Junius away from a sacrifice to gods in which, as a Gaul, he didn’t believe.

‘Tell me what you found when you backtracked,’ she demanded, dragging him behind a rig, where they couldn’t be seen.

His handsome face puckered up and she noticed he took care to speak in a low undertone, darting a glance now and then to make sure no one had noticed their absence.

‘Your suspicions were justified,’ he said grimly. ‘I rode back as far as the last town we stayed in, checked with the servants, the townsfolk, the soldiers patrolling the streets, and the story’s identical. Two days had elapsed since the first part of the delegation passed through ahead of us.’ He paused, darting a glance over her shoulder. ‘Will you…tell the others?

‘Tell them what?’ Claudia shrugged. ‘That this little group has somehow become separated from the main body of the convoy? So what, they’ll say. Our samples and supplies are plodding behind in a column of ox-carts, they’re already a week in arrears. They’ll blame the rain and the mudslides and, for all I know, Junius, that might be all there is to it.’

She had to believe that. She had to.

Indeed, so illustrious was the cavalcade, so vital this celebration of a half-century of mutual co-operation between Roman and Gaul since Caesar’s invasion, that soldiers had been sent ahead to clear the convoy’s passage. How else could they have made such tremendous progress with fresh horses on standby at every post station and the army quickly disposing of overturned carts or wagons with locked spokes that might impede their advancement? Concord and unity comes first, was the message. But the weather, oh, the weather. That had cost them ten, maybe fifteen miles every day and the journey had been fraught from the start. Heading north, across the Lepontine Alps, a lyre-maker of great skill and even greater musical ability had been swept away by the river, his body never sighted again.

‘I don’t think so.’ The young Gaul chewed at his lower lip. ‘I’ve been thinking back over this expedition. We were definitely together at the Finster Pass, remember the celebrations when the guide pointed out we’d reached the highest point of the journey, and someone timed just how long it took for the delegation to file past?’

‘I do. The whole cavalcade took an hour.’

‘Right. Well, after that we swung north-east again, to follow the southern shores of the Twin Lakes, but-’

‘-when we stopped at the City-Between-the-Lakes overnight,’ Claudia’s heartbeat had picked up in speed, ‘there was some trouble in accommodating us all.’

‘Exactly.’ Junius looked grim. Much older than his twenty-two years. ‘And don’t you think it odd, in retrospect, that it was the patrician classes-the rich oil merchants, the goldsmiths, the silversmiths-who kept moving? The ones with the great entourages, their hairdressers, masseurs and stewards? Why not push the artisans on? Or lodge them with smallholders overnight?’

‘None of us questioned the road conditions which kept us kicking our heels for another half-day in the town,’ she continued, ‘and by the time we’d reached Bern we were so relieved to be out of the rain, we never gave a thought to the vanguard.’

‘Who had already moved on,’ Junius said. ‘Ushered through by the army, but where were the soldiers yesterday? Did you count any legionaries lining the route?’

‘Sweet Jupiter.’ Claudia’s stomach flipped over. ‘Two of today’s casualties were soldiers!’ She stared at her whey-faced bodyguard, his hair still damp and spiky from the rain, and wondered whether she had the courage to voice her worst fears. She drew a deep breath. ‘Junius, you’re familiar with this type of terrain.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Is it possible,’ she asked shakily, ‘that this landslide was no accident?’

‘Sabotage?’ There was a shocked pause. ‘I don’t honestly know,’ he admitted at length. ‘Maybe…I suppose by driving a wedge into the right fissure, you could weaken a whole section-but why? Robbery?’

‘Hardly.’ Claudia hugged her upper arms tight to her body. ‘The valuable stuff’s in the ox-carts.’

‘Would bandits know that?’

‘I’ve no idea what the saboteurs might know or might not, but one thing’s for sure. There’s no way back through this gorge, the road’s gone, and down there the whole valley is blocked.’ She felt cold, she felt dizzy. ‘And that’s not the worst part,’ she said flatly.

Sure a rock fall could cave a man’s head in. Easily, like cracking an egg. But not while he’s protected under a heavy layer of canvas.

Claudia looked her bodyguard squarely in the eye. ‘You see, Junius, we appear to have another little problem on our hands.’

One of our group is a killer.