Three Hands in The Fountain

LX

It was twenty miles, and probably more than that, from Rome to Tibur. As I rode out in the cold, grey early morning there was ample time for thinking. Most of my thoughts were bad. The easiest to bear was that I had totally misjudged events, and was making a pointless journey. Claudia would turn up; she might be safely at home already. If she had actually been abducted, Petronius Longus or somebody else might have seen it and arrested the man; while I was looking for Petro on the streets he could have been sequestered in some patrol house, applying hooks to the killer's anatomy. Or the vehicle searches that I had ordered might discover the girl before she came to harm. Her abductor might be arrested at the city gates. My last hope was that even if she was now on her way to Tibur, helpless and terrified – assuming she was still alive – I might manage to overtake her kidnapper..

I would find her. Nothing would stop me. But she was probably already dead. In view of what she might have had to endure first, I almost prayed that by now she was.

For the first few hours I saw nobody. I travelled out on the empty Campagna, the only traveller on the road. It was far too early even for the farmers to have woken. Now the mule had settled into his rhythm, the music of his galloping hooves soothed my panic. I tried not to think directly about Claudia, so instead I remembered Sosia.

Hers was another death I could have and should have prevented. She had grown up with Helena's family, another young girl they cherished, for whose terrible loss they would always blame me. We never spoke of it, but none of us would ever forget. Sosia and Helena had been very close. At first Helena had blamed me bitterly for her young cousin's death, though she had allowed herself to forgive me. How could I expect her to overlook the same fault a second time? Aelianus would by now have told her that Claudia had gone missing: every moment that passed on my solitary journey was a moment Helena would spend at home fretting over the dark fate of her young friend, losing faith in me and worrying about me at the same time. I had lost faith in myself before I left the Tiburtina Gate.

It grew light. I was riding into the sun. It shone low over the Sabine Hills, somewhere perhaps lighting a hovel where scores of poor women had been tortured, killed, and cut up. The tricky light made me more weary than I was already. Squinting into the glare sapped my fading concentration. It made me irritable and heartsick. I had spent too many hours riding against time on filthy quests to free the world of villains. Worse villains only arose to take their places. Fouler in their habits, more vindictive in their attitudes.

The people in the farmhouses were beginning to stir. I began to meet country carts. Most were coming the wrong way, towards Rome. Those I passed heading east delayed me frustratingly while I searched them. Angry at these hold-ups, which I dared not omit, I grew sick of cabbage nets and turnips, damson punnets and leaky skins of wine. Toothless old men who smelled of garlic held me up as they slowly pulled coverings aside. Excited youths with untrustworthy eyes stared ghoulishly. I asked them all if they had been passed by another vehicle; those who denied it sounded as if they were lying, those who thought they might have been were only saying what I obviously wanted to hear.

I hated the Campagna. I hated the dreamers and dawdlers who lived on it. I hated myself. Why did I do this? I wanted to be a poet, working in some peaceful library, cut off from the midden of humanity, absorbed in my own unreal world of the mind. (Supported financially by a millionaire patron in love with the arts. Falco? No chance!)

Midday found me well on, in fact already at Aquae Albulae. There my initial spurt ended. The mule was tiring rapidly. I too was stiff and half dead. I had been up all night. I desperately needed rest, and just had to hope the killer would pause on the road too. He couldn't know I was following.

I stabled the beast and plunged into the warm sulphur baths. I went to sleep. Someone pulled me out before I drowned; I snatched a couple of hours dead to the world on the masseur's slab, face down under a towel, with flies dancing themselves silly all over my exposed parts. Badly bitten and groggy, I came to, bought food and drink, and tried to swap my mule at a tiny mansio where they kept a relay for the official couriers.

'My journey's vital – for the state – but I came away too fast to collect a pass. I've found this in my purse, though -' The man in charge took the token I offered without curiosity. Aquae Albulae was a relaxed hole. 'Afraid it's time-expired.'

He shrugged, tossing it into a bowl. 'Oh dear, I'll have to say to the auditors "Which of the evil blighters slipped me that, then?" and look thick.'

'Also, it's made out to the Governor of Baetica,' I confessed.

'Nice fellow, I'm sure. That grey's a good horse.' 'Thanks! I hope my reinforcements will come through here soon. Tell them Falco says gee up, will you?'

I ate on the hoof.

Seven fast Roman miles later I was entering Tibur on the grey.

Now I was in the kind of quandary only I could impose on myself: I had come to catch a man I didn't know, who lived I knew not where, and who at that very moment might be doing the gods knew what to Claudia. In the absence of other bright ideas, I followed my only hunch. Even though all the latest evidence said it was the wrong tack, I turned past the sanctuary of Hercules Victor and took myself to Aurelia Maesia's house.

Time was running out. It must be mid-afternoon. Neither a horseman nor a driver could travel any distance in the dark. If I had to stop later, so would he. And he had a victim for company. Alive or dead. Perhaps alive now – but not for much longer once he stopped travelling.

Would he feed her? Would she be able to attend to her other needs? How could it happen, without his risking discovery? He must have her trussed up, silenced and out of sight. She had been with him for a night and almost a day now. Even if I managed to rescue her, she would never be the same again.

As I approached Aurelia Maesia's villa, I could only hope this would be where I found him. But by then, I was resigned to the fact that I had probably come to the wrong place.