Dream Boat

Chapter Eighteen

Several things happened that Friday afternoon.

First, the clouds descended lower and lower, trapping the heat, funnelling the breeze and making the rancid air fouler yet.

The weather was showing signs of breaking at last.

In a wooden amphitheatre on the Field of Mars, the pallid Prefect failed to notice the perspiration which slowly weighted his elegant tunic. Transfixed, he watched his troupe of male actors rehearse a centuries-old drama and, to his utter astonishment, such was their professionalism that none of the audience noticed the wonky scenery and dodgy props, or even that the Serving Women lit their signal to the Romans from a crab apple tree not a fig.

Indeed, computing on a wax tablet during the intermission the cost of his production, the Prefect found the enterprise pleasantly profitable on all counts.

The same could not be said of the girl who had misled her foster parents into believing she was taking a starring role in the show. As rumbles of thunder rolled in the distance, Flavia leaned over the stoneblock latrine and was comprehensively sick. Why? she wailed. Why did they make her do that? Help out in the kitchens, they said, and she thought maybe peeling root vegetables, shucking peas, it sounded romantic, and besides, she rather liked the look of the boy who fetched hot loaves from the bakery.

Instead, they made her…

At the memory of the stinking, steaming, purple viscera spilling over the yard, Flavia vomited again, and wanted to die. It wouldn't be like this, she sobbed, if I'd had those two thousand gold pieces. Two thousand gold pieces buys you cushy jobs like potting honey, mixing perfumes, making sweet music on the strings of a lyre. Not gutting a..

At the very thought of the mess on the cobbles, she retched a third time, then a fourth, more noisily still. She hated it here. She wanted to go home. Nothing was at all like Zer had promised.

Zer had promised a new life, a world filled with happiness, where brother loves brother and the Pharaoh is father to all. He had said nothing about disembowelling a pig! Come to that, she thought gasping for air, he'd said nothing about everyone wearing identical workclothes, or attending prayers twice a day, or communal eating, or wearing these itchy reed sandals. He hadn't said she couldn't choose her new Egyptian name, either. She'd earmarked Nefertiti (for preference), Cleopatra as second choice — instead they addressed her as Magas. Ugh. She shuddered at the ugliness of the name. And why did women have to wear these horrid shift dresses, which only flattered the thin?

'Magas!' The voice was harsh and insistent. 'Magas, stop babying around. It's a pig! We need to eat, and you must pull your weight in the commune. Remember, child, we are all sisters of Ra.'

Flavia-Magas wiped her mouth with a sponge. 'I can't,' she wailed. 'I can't face that disgusting stench, I can't!'

'There's no such word,' snapped the voice. 'Now clean yourself up, flush out the latrines, and hurry back to your work. This is not the weather for guts to be lying out in the yard!'

'This ain't no weather to be outdoors in.'

The party was making excellent progress in the four-horse trap, the roads being quiet, the hills relatively gentle, when Flea blurted out her sulky protest. Claudia flashed a radiant smile at

Zer, which also encompassed his two mooning acolytes, and hissed under her breath to the thief, 'One more squeak and you'll be picking teeth from your tonsils.' Aloud, she said, 'Sweet child. So concerned for our health and well being.' She shrugged helplessly at the priest, whose shaven head ran with beads of perspiration. 'Wouldn't leave me, you know. I did try…'

Zer smiled his oily smile at the girl with the puppy sprawled across her skinny legs. 'We have no servants where we are going, but love and loyalty transcend all emotion. Ra will richly reward you.'

Translated, of course, as meaning Ra will richly reward olive groves in Campania and vines stretching across three hills of Frascati, and should the new recruit wish to bring her maid and a fat, un-house-trained puppy along, Zer would most certainly raise no objection, she could bring a troupe of dwarves and dancing elephants for all he cared. Zer's job was to ensure financial transitions flowed smoothly.

'Why don't you close your eyes, dear?' Claudia was anxiety personified. 'Rest a while?'

The question may have sounded solicitous to priestly ears, but the thief wasn't fooled. Substitute mouth for eyes, was the message. Bitch, she mouthed back, when Zer's head was turned, but Flea wasn't really sorry she was on this trip. It was kinda fun, tagging along with Claudia. She saw things she'd not normally get to see, people she'd never normally meet — well, not unless you could call cutting their purses a meeting! And it bloody hurt, binding up yer tits, it was nice to wear a proper breastband for a change, something which supported 'em, made them comfy, and besides, casing this place sounded cool!

She leaned her spine against the woodwork and considered the heavy, grey clouds overhead. There was this bloke, a master thief, who she could approach when she got back to Rome. He was that bloody smart, this bloke, he'd be able to fence the Emperor's personal seal!

The trap joggled along, its cargo of humans and bits and pieces for the commune bumping in time with the wheels. Cauldrons, griddles, in fact lots of iron stuff, she noticed. Three rolls of linen. A sack of hemp, a barrel of pitch, a block of salt — stuff they weren't able to produce on site. Can't imagine what Flavia would want with them. If it were Flea, she'd stick with Claudia, you'd get a ride and half with her, but there was no accounting for tastes, and — funnily enough — she was looking forward to seeing Flavia again. Talk about opposites attracting! But they'd got on well, Flavia and her. An instant rapport, although what Claudia would say when she copped hold of her, Flea didn't like to think, and Flavia deserved it, too. Narking should be punished. She should not have shopped Junius to the rozzers, that was out of order, that. Especially when she, a rich man's brat, would know it entailed certain death.

Idly, Flea fondled Doodlebug's floppy ears and wondered what it would take for Claudia to let her have him for keeps.

She shifted the dead weight of the sleeping pup and glanced at the creepy priest and his pair of followers. Barmy, them two. Pity they weren't wearing jewellery, she'd have whipped it off them in no time, gormless twonks wouldn't even notice! But there'd be stuff at this commune to nick and sell on, she'd stake her life on it. Flea's thoughts settled on the thief master in Rome. Play your dice right, girl, and you could make serious dosh out of this.

As it happened, they were trading in a very different currency in Rome.

Deep inside the dungeons — converted stone quarries which ran underneath Silversmith's Rise — the heat was fiercesome, the stench appalling and the Dungeon Master held half a peach under his nose as Orbilio's steward rattled off a list of his son's misdemeanours. The Dungeon Master listened attentively, amazed by both the range of his son's proclivities and the fact that Marcus Cornelius knew so much about them.

'All he is asking,' the steward concluded, 'is that you let the Gaul go in return for your son's transgressions being, shall we say — overlooked.'

The Dungeon Master considered the steward. A Libyan. A foreigner. A wog. And held the peach that bit closer to his florid nostrils. It was true, then, the rumour that Orbilio was under house arrest, else he'd have come down here personally. Orbilio wasn't the type to be put off by a bit of a stink! Carefully, the Dungeon Master made some holding remark while his mind worked gymnastics, then said (with a firm handshake), 'Tell Orbilio I'll do my best for the Gaul.'

He waited until the Libyan had left before strolling down the rank, stinking corridors to where shackled prisoners languished, raged, pleaded or sobbed against the implacable stone quarry walls. Strangely, Junius the Gaul had done none of these things. No protest, no struggle. In fact, the Dungeon Master believed he had not spoken one word since his arrest. In the spluttering light of a reed brand, the jailer studied the impassive face of the slave who'd been caught red-handed wearing the toga and noted that in spite of the filthy conditions, the intolerable air, the heat, the oppression, the beatings, hard blue eyes stared levelly back. The Dungeon Master tossed a ring of keys from hand to hand. Not a bloody flicker.

'Cocky bastard, ain't yer?' The type who gives the crowd good value for money when it comes to public execution.

Taking a good, long look at the Gaul made the warden's decision easier.

He sighed and wondered how it was that his son, his own flesh and blood, had become such a thoroughly bad lot. Where had they gone wrong, him and the boy's mother? More importantly, perhaps, where would it end? At this rate, someone would die, or at the least end up seriously injured. The warder wiped a hand over his face. What kept the scandal hushed up was an agent of the Security Police who wished to trade the life of a cocky young Gaul. No contest, was it? A half-smile lifted the Dungeon Master's top lip. Gaul… He sniffed the ripe peach. Yes, indeed. Now, were his son to leave, say, tomorrow for Gaul, or Iberia, anywhere distant, there would be no case to answer here, would there? His own position as Dungeon Master would not be compromised and whichever way the wind might then blow for Orbilio, the investigator's wings would be clipped.

The Dungeon Master looked at the scroll listing tomorrow's executions.

And patted it.

Who was he to deny the crowd a worthy competitor?

The Clerk of the Dungeons, delivering yet another batch of paperwork to the Dungeon Master, studied the execution roster, which seemed to be growing longer by the minute. Must be the heat, he reasoned. Tempers fray, feuds boil over, and it can only get worse, now the cloud cover's low. And wasn't that thunder he'd heard in the distance?

The Clerk toyed, just for a fraction of a second, with confiding in the Dungeon Master, man to man, as it were, that he owed Orbilio a favour for the time when he… ahem. Well, he would not mention the actual nature of the debt — not to this burly, tough ox — but the point was, he could perhaps let drop that he owed someone a favour, and that if the Dungeon Master could perhaps see his way clear to excusing a certain young Gaul…

Uh-uh. The fat bastard was more likely to throw him to the tigers as well, for trying to bribe an officer of the Empire!

Nevertheless, as he deposited the product of what some called bureaucracy, others a meticulous attention to detail, on the warder's cluttered desk, the Clerk genuinely regretted that he had not been able to repay the favour that he owed.

In his hidden cave high above the valley, Seth washed himself thoroughly and regarded Berenice. He was wondering now whether he had been right to make her his favourite. Look at her, the bitch. Slumped. Not so much as a shudder of protest when he ran his hands over her, not a ripple of revulsion in the engagingly innovative way he took her.

'God knows, I've tried, Berenice,' he said wearily.

A few tricks that he knew, plus a few more he'd invented, but pain no longer made any impact.

'You can't blame me, if I find myself a new favourite.'

One thing, though, it wouldn't be Flavia. Seth had watched the new arrival carefully, quickly marking her as a firm candidate for his dinner table. She was not the type to make friends easily and that was good, because once they bonded, these girls, there was no chance of picking off one of a crowd. He took loners. Misfits among the misfits. Girls whose abrupt departure no one noticed, much less grieved over, and this Flavia was a perfect candidate — indeed, Seth had already allocated a mask. The vulture. Appropriately ungainly, appropriately ugly, but then her face wasn't important. Only her expressions mattered to him, her reaction to his deviant attentions.

All the same, the Dark One wouldn't choose a lump like that for his consort in the afterlife! He really wished Berenice had tried harder today. Outside, thunder roared like the Minotaur.

'It's your own fault,' he said, 'that you're displaced.'

Berenice did not respond. She sat, staring numbly, mutely, as though looking beyond the Master of Darkness, the Sorcerer, the Measurer of Time. With the full force of his weight behind his hand, Seth sent her neck jolting sideways with a crack, but those dumb, numb eyes didn't register. As though Berenice was half-dead already, having given up the struggle for life.

Suddenly joy surged within him, and his loins stirred once more.

'Of course!'

Of course, Berenice would not fail him! Berenice wanted to be his favourite, his consort, it was her only way of telling him that she wanted — yes, wanted to die. To walk the chosen path with Seth. The others — he cast his glance round the table, at Thoth and at Horus, Bast, Isis, Hathor — the others he had left alone while they made their decision whether to live on and be damned to eternal desolation, or to struggle against his special knot which tightened with every effort and, in death, achieve blessedness.

His loins were positively jolting again.

Berenice was the only one who had actively shown him which path she wanted to take! Seth was a fool for not understanding before. Hadn't Berenice fed her own son a poisoned draught to be with him? Only through death could she find resurrection alongside her lord. Only through death could she find her true place for eternity.

Fire shot through his veins. Alone among the figures seated round his table, Berenice understood that the past stands for nothing, it's the future that's significant, and the future lay in Seth's magic hands. He knew now which god Berenice should become. Tenderly, he picked up the mask of the striking cobra, Wazt, the royal serpent who protected the Pharaoh by spitting her poison in attack, and he gently stroked the sacred scales.

'You want to die, don't you?' Seth ripped away Berenice's gag. 'Tell me, my child, how impatient you are to be with me!'

A flicker showed in the dullness of her eyes. 'Kill me,' she whispered. 'Please kill me.'

Seth made her beg while he raped her again.

The count was now up to six.

The sky had turned to an ominous purple as the group of travellers dismounted. Rain was surely only minutes away, it was dark as night in the hills, and all hands pitched in to secure the canvas awning over the trap. Nearly there, Zer said. Another couple of hours if it rains, less if the weather holds off.

All the same, they were glad to be stretching their muscles, Doodlebug in particular. He tried cocking his leg against one of the wheels and failed with spectacular success, and the look of pride and affection on Flea's face did not escape Claudia as nimble fingers threaded ropes round hooks, through eyes, pulling, knotting, testing the rainproof protection.

Satisfied with their efforts, the group clambered back on board, and Claudia thought, time is undoubtedly tight — just forty-eight hours before Junius is due to face death — but the commune is closer to Rome than I'd even dared hope. A band of hired henchmen (cynics might call them thugs) were following at a discreet distance, all she had to do was grab Flavia and ride off with the girl.

She glanced around the wooded, rolling hills, whose tops were smothered in granite grey cloud, and asked herself, what could go wrong?

Dash in. Dash out. Swear an oath.

Nothing on earth could be simpler.

The first of the raindrops fell as Marcus Cornelius assimilated his steward's report. The raindrops were the size of dinner platters, and sounded like someone was breaking eggs on the path. He listened wearily, and made the man repeat his account, and the rain came faster and faster, spattering the tiles and bricks and timbers which lay in wait for builders to transform them into his dream of a grand banqueting hall.

Whatever the Dungeon Master's handshake had been supposed to convey, Orbilio knew damn well the bastard would weasel out of his debt. There would be apologies, conciliations, excuses, mitigations, but that fat son of a bitch intended Junius to die, and since a man without honour is no man at all, Orbilio would deal with him later. It meant, of course, that the Dungeon Master had devised a way of saving his son's skin — presumably by sneaking the scumbag out of Rome — but Orbilio could deal with that later, as well. Well, no. He might as well see to it while he considered his next move.

He called for his secretary and dictated at speed, as the rain drummed on the roof.

In no time at all, his messenger's heels splashed through the streets to deliver an oilskin package which would ensure the immediate arrest of the Dungeon Master's son together with an investigation into the Dungeon Master's own financial affairs (with the specific objective of determining how so modest a wage could run a large country villa), and as the courier dodged the drips from the gutterspouts and vaulted the puddles, Orbilio considered the time scale ahead.

Twenty-four hours and the arena would be empty. Only the cleaners would remain, raking up sand sticky with the blood of the dead and hooking up the corpses to load them on to carts for the furnace. Tigers, lions, leopards would be skinned first, the stench would be vile, flies would swarm thicker than dust storms.

He could be wrong, of course, about Mentu's followers being forbidden to leave. Perhaps, now they were back in Rome, they were too ashamed to talk about their foolhardiness and mingled with contrition and anonymity in the backwater of family life? Balls. Nobody left because nobody could, and that would apply equally to Claudia Seferius. Marcus felt his mouth go dry. Her tongue might scare the spots off a cheetah and her glare strip the bark off an elm, but Orbilio was willing to bet that Mentu had armed guards stationed round the place, as well as drugs to keep recalcitrant members in line. He did not envisage for one second that she'd be home in time to save the Gaul.

He rubbed his knuckles into the hollows of his eyes. If he could solve the murder, that would free up his movements, but so far, his efforts had proved fruitless. A veritable army of scribes and secretaries, even his accountant, had been despatched to track down the slaves who'd previously lived in this house but although they'd located a handful, no one recalled any building work to that bloody storeroom. Bugger. Orbilio's main hope now lay in tracing a groom who'd bought his freedom about six months before the great auction and had set himself up as a mule doctor. He might recall something. The question was, where were the groom's stables located?

The hunt went on…

Lamps were lit round the atrium. Out in the courtyard, the legionaries at the back gate stamped their feet to shake off the trickles of water which ran down their legs, a dog's howl cut through the hammering of the rain and the thunder. The mother of the puppy, Orbilio imagined, conducting a head count and finding one mouth short at the teat!

Marcus watched the slanting torrent, the lightning whose brilliant flashes were blurred by the clouds. Jupiter, it was hot! Rose petals lay stripped and battered on the path, most of the herbs and flowers had been flattened by the rain, their heads bobbing in puddles slow to drain, and the clove-like spice of basil filled the air, along with the intoxicating scent of earth.

What would he be doing, were he not under house arrest, that was the question?

The body in the plaster would be high priority, but hardly topping his list. A visit to the jail would be pointless. No matter how hard he leaned on the Dungeon Master, the rotten bastard would still protect his son, covering if not condoning what the boy had done (and would, of course, continue to do, be it in Rome, Sardinia or Gaul). It was too late at this stage for bribes and escape from the dungeons was, by design, quite impossible. Shackles. Locked doors. Iron grilles. Armed guards. Quite impossible!

No. Were he able to walk free from his house, Orbilio would ride straight to the court of Mentu. He could not be certain that Claudia's life was at risk from the Brothers of Horus, but by the gods, he could not be sure it was not!

Very quickly she would be exposed as an impostor and whilst they would not dare imprison her, he did not doubt that at some stage — and soon — a tragic accident would befall her, her food poisoned, perhaps, or a snake might find its way in to her bed.

As the storm thrashed and writhed overhead, Orbilio thought of Junius. His vehement defence, his passionate protection, contrasting so starkly with the cool stare, the solid, unwavering stance. He pictured the hard blue eyes, the sandy hair, the solid musculature. It would be the cocky bugger's arrogance, rather than his dignity, which carried him through his ordeal in the dungeons and on Saturday, goddammit, the Gaul would walk with back straight and eyes uplifted into the baying crowd and, even as the jaws of death clamped over him, he would not blame his mistress for what befell him.

Marcus rubbed at his temples and acknowledged the pain in his chest for what it was. Jealousy. The thought of the boy pressing his lips, his hands, his body to Claudia's skin pierced him like a dagger through the heart. And maybe it was because he didn't want the Gaul to end up a martyr that Orbilio's eyes misted up, but whatever it was, Mother of Tarquin, he didn't want the boy dead. Not like that. Yet there was sod all he could do. Eight legionaries guarded his doors, vigilantes patrolled in the streets.

Junius was destined to die.

Claudia's life was in danger.

And Marcus Cornelius was powerless to act.

In desperation, he reached for the wine jug.

Tingi!' He called louder, and only partly to be heard above the pounding of the rain. 'TINGI!'

'What?' The steward came running. 'What is it you want, sir?' His eyes took in the pitcher of wine which had been full just a half hour previously, and the lopsided, foolish grin plastered on his master's slack face.

'Why, Tingi, old friend, I want what everyone else ish getting, this shecond night of the Games.'

The steward took a step back from the blast of the wine fumes.

'I want entertainment,' Marcus said, punching a limp fist into the palm of his hand, 'and if I'm not allowed out to enjoy it, by the godsh, I'll bloody well have it brought here.'

From the vestibule and from the courtyard came the sound of sniggering.

'By entertainment,' the Libyan frowned, silencing the guards with a glower, 'you mean…?'

'Women, Tingi.' Marcus reeled forward and clapped him on the shoulder. 'By entertainment, I mean women. Big, tall, lusty, busty girls. I want them to be able to sing, to dance, to tell dirty jokes, I want girls who can drink me under the table and then bonk me to oblivion, two at a time.'

'Two at a time?'

'Whatsha matter? Have I developed a stutter?'

He appeared to have developed a weave, though, and groped for a pillar which would support his drunken weight.

'There's only one course of action under circumstances like these. Throw a party.'

'Sir!' But the steward's protests were waved away.

'Hey…' Marcus slid gracefully down the pillar. 'Thish is my party, all right? I want my boss to know what a bloody good time I'm having under house arresh and that I don't give a tosh. So you jush make sure there's plenty of wine, Tingi, my old son, and even more plenty of women.'

The last words the smirking legionaries caught before he passed out were, 'Big women!'