The Chariots of Calyx

Chapter Seventeen

I followed the slave-boy down the stairs, but by the time I got out into the yard he’d disappeared. I asked the gatekeeper where he had gone, but the man had clearly decided that his best protection was to have become suddenly blind and deaf. He offered a dozen alternative solutions, all equally implausible, but I could get no sensible information out of him, although I was sure that he could have told me where the boy had really gone, if he wished.

This was disconcerting, but, I reminded myself, the internal affairs of the factio were not my immediate concern. My task was to confront Fortunatus, not to chase after errant slaves. I nodded a curt farewell to the guard and went out of the gate with the intention of going straight to the tavern I had been told about. I would send Junio, who was doubtless waiting in the street, back with a further message to my bargemaster to explain where I had gone. Knowing Junio, in fact, I was rather surprised that he hadn’t managed to talk his way into the factio headquarters, as I had done: but perhaps the guard had tried to reassert a little of his authority by deliberately keeping my servant outside the gate.

‘Junio,’ I began, but there was no sign of him.

I looked in all directions, but the alleyway was empty.

For the first time I felt a stirring of alarm. I had told Junio to come here, and it was not like him to delay in carrying out my orders. I hurried back to the guard, but if he had been unhelpful earlier he was doubly so now. To listen to his account, one would suppose that he had never seen a strange slave in the alleyway in his entire life. His manner had changed too. He delivered his information in a toneless voice, and with a marked reluctance to meet my eyes. In fact, he gave me the impression of being increasingly worried about something and I soon realised that no amount of questioning, governor’s warrant or no governor’s warrant, was going to make him change his story.

I was seriously anxious now. Had something happened to Junio? There was something mysterious about this factio, and I was disturbed by the way my attendants kept disappearing. First Superbus, and now this. There was only one thing to be done. I abandoned all thought of finding Fortunatus and set off towards the warehouse and the barge as fast as my aged legs would carry me.

I was halfway down the alley when I heard a hissing whisper. ‘Citizen?’

I looked around, but for a moment could see nothing, only the blank walls and the empty alley. Even the gatekeeper from the factio had gone back to his guardroom under the arch, and was nowhere to be seen. I felt a little prickle at the nape of my neck. At the far end of the narrow street, where it met the major thoroughfare, the life of the town went on. Pedestrians with bundles, men on donkeys, traders with handcarts jostled by, but few of them spared a glance for the little alley, and certainly none of them had spoken. In any case that voice had surely been behind me?

‘Over here, citizen!’ I realised uneasily that the sound was coming from a tiny alleyway, scarcely wider than a man, that ran down beside the carpet-maker’s shop — one of those narrow passages that are used in most big cities for the disposal of waste: stinking refuse which is piled there until the rains and rats take it away, or the farmers come with night carts and carry it off — for a small fee — to fertilise the fields. The entrance to this one was so heaped up with rubbish — an accumulation of building rubble as well as damp scraps of wool, food, and human excrement — that I had scarcely noticed it was there.

‘Citizen!’ I saw him at last, lurking behind a pile of broken stones, and let out an audible sigh of relief. It was not Glaucus, or an enraged Eppaticus, merely an aged slave, dressed in the distinctive blue of Fortunatus’ factio, who was gesturing urgently to me as though speed and secrecy were a matter of life and death.

I moved over to him, frowning. ‘What. .?’

He was old and frail, much older than I was by the look of him, and a few white wisps of hair hung round his ashen face. He was so thin and pale that he might have been a fugitive, apart from the smartness of his tunic. There was something almost pathetic about him. Perhaps that is why I felt suddenly more confident, and went towards him, instinctively lowering my voice to match his own.

‘What do you want?’

‘You are looking for someone, citizen?’

I nodded. It was not a difficult deduction, perhaps, but I did not think to question it. ‘Have you seen Junio? My servant?’ I said anxiously.

He reached out then and seized my arm. ‘This way, citizen. At once. There is no time to be lost.’ He let go of my wrist, and turned away down the narrow passage, threading his way through the filthy rubbish heaps. I hesitated a moment, but he stopped and beckoned me again, more pressingly than ever.

I clambered over the slag pile at the entrance to the lane and followed him. I could hear my heart thumping with anxiety. What had they done to Junio? Where had they taken him? And who were ‘they’?

The old man turned a corner and stopped beside a narrow door. It was neglected and unpainted but stout enough, and the building it led to seemed in reasonable repair. He slid back the bolt, taking care to make no noise, eased the door quietly open and stood aside. His voice was no more than a conspiratorial murmur. ‘In there, citizen, quickly. Before it is too late.’

He sounded urgent and almost without thinking I plunged past him into the passageway. A flight of stone steps opened at my feet, and in the semi-darkness I almost tumbled down them, but I recovered myself in time.

My guide, still standing at the doorway, waved me on. ‘Do not make a noise, citizen!’ he hissed. ‘Down there! Make haste! Be quiet — and be quick.’

I was beginning to share his agitation, and I obeyed as quickly as I could. The only light was from the open door, and the steps were steep, but I groped my way downwards into the dark below. The wall beside me was cold and damp — there seemed to be rotting vegetation under my fingertips — but the thought of what they might be doing to Junio spurred me on. I looked up. The old slave was still at the door, watching my progress anxiously. ‘Tell me when you are safely down.’

I almost stumbled a dozen times, but I reached the bottom at last. I felt cautiously forward with my foot — then, with increasing confidence, my hands. I seemed to be in some sort of unlit passageway, the floor uneven and littered with stones as if the building was abandoned. Not that I expected furniture.

‘I’m here!’ I called up softly to my erstwhile guide.

For a moment I thought he had not heard me. Then with a faint click the outer door closed to, and I found myself in blackness so total that I could not make out my hand before my eyes. The old slave had set himself a problem, if he hoped to come down those steps in the dark, I thought. I waited, expecting to see a flintstone strike and the sudden glow of tinder in the dark. Nothing happened.

I waited. I could hear my own breath now, and smell the dank smell of vegetation and decay. Still there was no sound from above me. The thumping of my heart seemed fit to burst my ribs. Then, faintly but distinctly, I heard a noise — the unmistakable scrape and clunk of the bolt being pushed across.

Even then I could hardly bring myself to believe what I had done. I had walked — without coercion, of my own accord — headfirst into a trap. Of course, when I came to consider it, I should have known better. Following an unknown slave down an unused alley in an unfamiliar city — the merest child would have known better. The man had not offered me a single piece of information or identification — he had simply preyed upon my fears and I had followed him. It was as simple as that.

And now I was a prisoner. In what seemed to be a disused building, too. The outer door was bolted behind me, and even if I could grope my way up the steps again there was no way of getting out. It was shaming as well as frightening. I felt my way back to the bottom step and sat down heavily.

I tried to think. Rather too late, as I was well aware, but better now than never. Even so, I could come to no conclusion. I had been deliberately led away and locked into a cellar by a man I had never seen before. It seemed to make no sense at all. Perhaps I had merely fallen prey to one of the gangs of thieves who doubtless operate in London, as they do in every big town. Considering how easy it had been, I was lucky not to have been set upon and robbed earlier.

Except, of course, that there had been no attempt to rob me. Kidnap me then, and demand money for my return? Perhaps these were slave-traders, and I was to be sold back into servitude. I hoped that I had been merely seized for ransom. In that case someone would come and talk to me, if only to find out where to send demands. Anything was better than being left here to rot, or die of thirst and hunger. Already the morning was drawing on, and — because I was alarmed and there was no possibility of obtaining water — my mouth was already desperately dry.

I hardly dared to contemplate the obvious — that my investigations had brought me too close to the murderer for comfort, and someone — in the Blue factio presumably — had wanted me locked up and out of action, perhaps for good. If that was the case, there was no certainty that anyone would ever come. For who would think of looking for me here?

Perhaps it was that which spurred me into action. At least I could explore the place I was in. It would not be easy. I had expected my eyes to become accustomed to the gloom, but there was little sign of that. There was not a chink of light from anywhere, and the blackness seemed more impenetrable than ever. I got up and tried a few tentative steps with my arms outstretched, but the floor was so uneven that I almost fell. My hands, however, had touched nothing but a void — the basement, whatever it was, seemed bigger than I’d thought. I wished I had made some attempt to measure distances — as a pavement-maker I should have thought of that.

I got down on all fours. The loose stones on the floor dug into my knees, but I was more confident like this and by sweeping the ground with one hand I was able to clear the worst of the obstructions. I was anxious about finding my way back to the steps — ridiculous if I was to be left here to die, but at least it gave me a point of reference — so I found the wall and edged my way forward, feeling my way by that.

A very few shuffles brought me to a corner, and finally to another. This was not a corridor at all, then, but a room — built as some kind of storage space perhaps. That must be it. I was in a cella — a sort of underground storage room sometimes found in larger houses built on rising ground. I began to feel around for any sign that something might once have been kept here, and almost at once my guess was confirmed. One of my hands discovered a large circular space set in the floor a little further from the wall — the remains of one of those huge sunken amphorae which one sometimes finds in larger houses or in villa courtyards for storing oil or, occasionally, wine.

I pushed up my toga sleeve (the gods alone knew what state my proud new garment was in by now) and reached my arm down to its full extent, but whatever had been stored in there had long since disappeared. A sniff of my fingers suggested that it had once been wine — turned to vapour for the gods, perhaps, since the container had been left without a lid. Certainly, it was not about to slake my thirst.

Further groping told me that there was another buried amphora a little further off, and then a third — all equally empty. The discovery had lent me hope, however. This place had once been used by a living household. Although it clearly was deserted now, it was unlikely the only exit was the door I had come in by. A household needs to reach its storage space. I felt my way back to the wall and began my blind exploration again, with renewed energy.

The second wall was so much longer than the first that I was beginning to imagine that I had lost my bearings altogether in the dark. I could hear my own breath, unnaturally loud, rasping like a harried horse. Panic was beginning to overcome me. I fought it down, forcing myself to think rationally — telling my tortured brain that, at the very worst, the wall I was following would eventually bring me to the steps I’d started from.

Why that should have seemed like an improvement, I do not know — I can only report that in that black, dank, foul-smelling pit of obscurity any certainty was better than none. I groped my way onwards with increasing desperation, until my questing fingers found an alteration in the wall. Wood instead of stone? It might be so. A frame. A hollow. A door, then? I dragged myself upright and ran my hands all over the area, almost crying with relief.

It was a door — I could feel the planks of wood. My hands could find no fastening — presumably it was bolted from within — but I located what felt like the edge of a plank and pushed with all my might. The thick wood did not yield an inch. I tried again, thumping against it with all my strength, using my arm, my foot, my whole body. I even took a few steps back and made a run at it. This time I thought it did shudder a fraction at the top, but it was my frame rather than the door’s which was taking the brunt of the damage. Perhaps I could lever one of the planks away? I still had my eating knife in my belt.

With a strength born of desperation I reached upwards, feeling for the corner of the outside plank. Ugh — my fingers sank into a nest of something soft which yielded under my touch and sent little scuttling somethings up my arm and into my tunic, so that my skin and hairs crawled with them. In the oppressive dark that was the final horror, and I found myself sobbing aloud and slapping at myself in a frenzy. Only spiders, I tried to tell myself; but my voice and body seemed briefly to have taken on a life of their own, and I could hear myself moaning as I flapped and stamped, rather as I have heard criminals do on their way to face the beasts. I tried to control myself, but I seemed to have lost the power — as if I were witnessing someone else’s panic and the frenzied noises I emitted were not of my own making.

It was not my most heroic moment.

But the worst was yet to come. My frenzied stamping had taken me away from the friendly comfort of the wall, and when I had at last managed to regain command of myself — my fingers damp and gritty with what felt like a thousand tiny arachnid corpses — I found that I had completely lost my sense of direction. I reached out my hands again, tentatively this time, but they met nothing but blackness. Mercifully the floor seemed rather clearer here.

I took a step forward, and stumbled over something at my feet. Something large and heavy: soft but stiff, and very, very cold. It appeared to be lying in a pool of moisture. I bent down to investigate. Something, when I explored it further, that seemed to be man-shaped. Something that was not breathing. Something. . dead.

I was fumbling desperately by this stage. ‘Junio?’

I traced the feet. Sandals — just like the ones my slave had worn. The body was lying on its front and there seemed to be loose rope around the ankles. My hands moved up. A servant’s tunic and a leather belt. Wrists, cruelly bound together with a length of rope. I could hardly bear to go on, but I had to know. My fingers reached the neck, and found the chain and name disc that every slave must wear. Short, wet, matted curly hair. Sickened, I turned the body over and reached out for the face — dreading that my hands would trace the boyish features I knew so well.

What I found was a soft and shattered mess. I leapt back as though stung by a million spiders. I could almost see the hideous mosaic of splintered flesh and bone. This time I did not shout or sob. I opened my mouth, but I could make no sound at all.

Some emotions are too terrible, even for grief.