Jail Bait

XXVIII

In his office on the Aventine, in the shadow of the Temple of Minerva, Sabbio Tullus’ nephew rinsed the vomit from his mouth.

It was the dust, it had to be. Desiccating marble dust from the warehouse next door. You could see it in the air, making the whole room white and hazy like cobwebs spun across the walls. Day after day, this distorted, fuzzy view was enough to make anyone throw up, never mind the torrid heat. There was nothing to worry about.

In the street below, the timekeeper called out the hour. Midnight. Mopping the perspiration from his face, the young man was surprised how damp his handkerchief was when he went to fold it up. Caused by the vomiting, that. Makes one sweat like a racehorse. That, and the diarrhoea, of course.

When he tried to stand up, his knees refused the rest of him permission and he sank back against the hard maplewood chair and rested his head on the desk. Not surprising, this bout of the squits. It was all that bloody fruit juice he’d been knocking back, because any kind of wine had made him hoarse. Come to that, so had the fruit juice, be it apple, peach or cherry, but what was the alternative? Milk, curdled before it left the cow? Water, warm and brackish? Or that foul beer the Egyptians drank, which made his stomach heave?

Lifting his head, he checked his appearance in the mirror. In the cobweb haze of this marble-dusty room, his skin appeared yellow, but he knew that couldn’t be the case. Picking up a gavel on his desk, he hammered on a metal plate. The dwarf came running.

‘You can take this bucket away,’ he instructed. ‘But bring a fresh one, in case.’ Several times before, he thought he’d finished being sick…

‘Very good, sir.’

The dwarf withdrew, leaving the nephew toying with the mirror. Praise be to Mars, he didn’t have the bloody plague, that’s all he was grateful for. No livid rash breaking out on his stomach. Nevertheless, he peered down his tunic, double-checking with the mirror. Told you. You’ve got the squits because of all that fruit. You’re throwing up because you’re weak from diarrhoea and from being stuck inside this hot, dry, dusty room. That, coupled with the strain of waiting.

He sighed. He was this close to changing the course of the Empire, this close, and when he got his papers back, then he’d see a difference in his health. A very rapid upturn.

‘You must drink, master,’ the dwarf cajoled, setting down another bucket. ‘Drink to keep your strength up.’

The nephew felt a glass of pressed bilberries against his lips and he tried to swallow, to wash away the sour taste of bile, but half the liquid dribbled down his chin. That’s all he was bringing up, of course. Bile. Black and stinking, it made his head pound like bloody thunder and he could barely stand of late, but that would pass. Like those ridiculous hallucinations his manservant assured him were simply the product of a stomach empty for too long. Hell, he was even getting used to seeing multi-coloured haloes round the lights and double, sometimes treble, vision when people moved about, like the dwarf just now, helping him out of his stained shirt, and sometimes it seemed normal, viewing things as though he was peering down a rabbit hole. But the dwarf was right. He really ought to start keeping something down, because a couple of times of late he’d been haunted by strange, disturbing visions. The faces of demons springing out of the walls, with teeth like a rabid jackal’s, snarling, foaming…

Delusions come with fever. Fever comes with vomiting. Vomiting comes from diarrhoea-a side effect of fruit juice which is the only thing I can take because of nerves.

Which will settle when I get that fucking paper back!

He slumped forward and closed his eyes, imagining how his fortunes would change. He had just nine more days before the Senate reopened after its unofficial recess, before Augustus made his pronouncement about the future of the Empire. Nine days.

‘Janus!’

Slavering wolves began rising out of the desk, snapping at him with their sharp incisors, baying for his blood.

‘Go away,’ he screeched. ‘Get away from me!’

Diving off his chair, he flung himself under the desk, coiling into a ball, his eyes screwed shut, and after a while, a very long while, the howling died off and the desk was a desk once again.

‘Master, what’s wrong?’

‘What?’ For an instant he feared the delusions were back, but no. It was the face of his servant, made uglier with the pucker of concern. ‘Oh. I… dropped my pen-’ Sweat poured down his face, soaking his tunic as the dwarf helped him back to his chair. Fucking hallucinations. The quicker he got this sorted out, the better.

Nine days, didn’t he say? Retching another stream of black bile into the bucket, he considered the timescale was ample, providing he recovered what that Seferius bitch had stolen.

‘No delivery from the fat man?’ he rasped.

‘N-no,’ the dwarf replied, and the nephew wondered, was that also a figment of his imagination, that hesitation? He thought he heard, a few moments ago, an interchange between his servant and the man who smelled of cardamom. And through the fuzzy lamplight, he also thought he saw a piece of parchment, lying on a silver plate on the table in the hall. His mistake, surely. The dwarf was a model of efficiency and no doubt the fat assassin was already back in Atlantis, taking care of unfinished business. It was more than either of their lives were worth, to double-cross him.

‘Master. Please. You must replenish lost fluids.’

‘I can’t,’ he gasped, ‘keep anything down.’

‘Try, master. This is good chicken broth.’

‘It tastes bitter.’

The dwarf tutted and pressed the bowl to his lips. ‘Your tastebuds are out of sorts, sir. Come now,’ there was a distinct edge to his voice, ‘drink up.’

Swallowing the filthy brew, the nephew wondered what drove a woman, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, to steal his letter then just sit on it. What the hell game was this tart playing? Was she holding out for him to divorce his wife and marry her, to share in the power and the glory of the next phase of the Empire?

Think again, he told her a few minutes later as he spewed noisily into the leather bucket. If you could see me now, you’d see I’m wearing black, in mourning for my dearest Uncle Tullus. What path I take, after wreaking my cataclysmic change, is up to me, and so is who I walk with on that path, but one thing is quite certain.

There will be no witnesses left behind to testify to this fiasco. Ask Uncle Tullus, if you don’t believe me.

Behind him, the dwarf smiled.