Imperial Vengence, page 36
‘You know I can’t let you leave here,’ Gratianus said.
‘You’re not supposed to let me leave, no.’
The tribune grimaced, rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, then glanced behind him. ‘The gateway at the far end, on the left,’ he muttered quickly. ‘There are stairs, dropping down to the slope above the Circus Maximus. They won’t try and stop you if you’re on the way out… I can only give you a few moments before I raise the alarm…’
With only the briefest nod of thanks, Castus gathered his cloak around his body and ran. Along the portico above the garden, the sunlight flashing between the pillars, he reached the gateway and swerved, nailed boots skating on the tiled floor. In the sudden gloom he plunged down the narrow stairway, remembering to slow as he reached the bottom and passed the sentries guarding the lower gate. One of them called after him, but he was already crashing down the steps that dropped into the shadowed ravine below the massive arches of the circus, breaking into a run once more as he hit the cobbled street.
Breath burned in his chest, and with every step he felt the pain in his legs and back. He had left his horse on the far side of the Palatine Hill; no time to go and find it now. Somebody stepped from a shop doorway and Castus slammed them aside, hearing the yell of abuse as he ran onward. The street followed the lower arches of the circus all along the southern flank of the Palatine; there were stalls in the arches, selling hot pastries, sausages and wine by the cup, and mobs of people swirled around them. A few glanced as Castus as he ran, some of them calling out jokes.
At one of the exits from the stalls, a group of covered litters stood waiting, the bearers idling in the shade of the arches waiting for custom. As Castus approached, a skinny man in a conical cap stepped from the shade and waved his arm, grinning through broken teeth. ‘Late for dinner, dominus?’ he cried. ‘For only two nummi we’ll get you there quicker than a good lawyer can get a rich man off a bribery charge!’
Castus checked his pace, stumbled over to the nearest litter and slapped his palm down on the box. ‘You know the Sessorian Palace?’ he gasped.
The man’s grin slipped as he noticed Castus’s sword and the torque at his neck. ‘Make it double?’ he said.
‘Make it fast,’ Castus told him, scrabbling in his purse for coins, then swung himself down into the box of the litter. Heaving breath as he dropped onto the worn horsehair padding, he dragged the curtain across. Sitting awkwardly with his knees drawn up, he felt the beams creak beneath him as the bearers lifted his weight. How, he wondered, did people travel comfortably in these things? Then, with a lurch and a swing, they were moving.
Sunlight filtered through the threadbare red curtain, and Castus closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the padding of the seat. The bearers were moving at a jog, the man in the cap striding before them to clear a path through the throng. Very soon, Castus felt the angle of the litter change; they were moving uphill now, climbing the slope of the Caelian. When he glanced through the gap in the curtain he saw the tall brick piers and arches of an aqueduct above him. They passed through a district of gloomy apartment blocks, then the buildings fell away and the litter was jogging along a broad paved road between garden walls and orchards. Castus let the curtain drop. He pressed his hands to his face, muttering prayers. Fortuna the Homebringer, let me see my wife and family again in this world…
29
‘The Augusta Helena is sleeping, excellency,’ the eunuch said with an ingratiating smile. ‘She often does, during the hottest part of the day. But you may pass your message to me.’
The eunuch was named Olympiodorus, Castus had learned, and was the procurator of the domus augustae; his pattered crimson robes and the massive jewelled brooch at his shoulder proclaimed his status. He was also very nervous, and failing to hide it.
‘My message is not for the Augusta Helena,’ Castus told him. ‘I’m here to see Fausta, the emperor’s wife.’
‘Fausta, ah!’ the eunuch said, the agitation jumping in his voice. ‘I’m very sorry, excellency, but that will not be possible either…!’
Something was not right at the Sessorian Palace, and Castus had noticed it the moment he strode through the main vestibule and into the atrium. The palace stood in a tract of gardens just inside the city wall, and resembled a country villa built on a lavish scale, the halls and porticos gleaming with polished marble and colourful mosaics. The perfect retreat for an emperor’s elderly mother, or an emperor’s condemned wife. The cordon of guards at the main gate had shown no signs of agitation, and allowed him to pass without challenge when he told them he was carrying an important message from the Palatine. But inside the building the mood of tension was palpable; at the margins of his vision Castus could make out the slaves and attendants peering at him from the doorways with fear in their eyes. Had news of his approach reached them already? He was sweating heavily, red-faced from the heat and the exertion of the last few hours, but that was not the cause. No, he thought – this was something else.
‘Where is she?’ he demanded, taking a step towards the eunuch. ‘Take me to her now and I won’t trouble you any further.’
Olympiodorus raised his hands, beseeching. ‘Dominus, please, I cannot...! The domina Fausta is… bathing!’
Castus frowned, peering past the eunuch into the sunlight of the central garden court. A figure drew his eye: a slave girl, hunched between the pillars of the garden portico. She was weeping, covering her face with her hands. Olympiodorus had noticed the direction of Castus’s stare. He gulped visibly, and took a quick sidestep to block his view.
With one fast movement Castus drew his sword, reaching out with his left hand to seize the eunuch’s jewelled brooch. He dragged and twisted, pulling the cape tight around the eunuch’s neck, then levelled his blade at his throat.
‘Take me, now,’ he said quietly.
He could hear the shrieks of dismay from the adjoining halls, the sound of running feet on marble, but the Augusta Helena kept no armed guards inside her residence. Four smooth-faced Syrian youths with curled hair and silver-tipped staves had accompanied Castus from the vestibule, but they did not appear willing to put up a fight. Castus gave the brooch another twist, and the eunuch gasped, his eyes on the polished steel blade.
‘This way, excellency!’ he croaked.
From the entrance atrium they paced rapidly out into the garden portico. Castus kept a fierce grip on the eunuch, shoving him stumbling ahead of him. The four Syrian youths, and a crowd of other palace servants and slaves, followed warily behind. Castus noticed that the weeping girl had vanished.
‘Send word to the Augusta!’ the eunuch managed to gasp as they walked. One of the Syrians nodded and jogged away in the other direction. Castus prodded at the eunuch’s back with his sword tip, hurrying him on.
Leaving the garden court, they passed through a smaller pillared atrium, then into the vestibule of the baths. The group of female bath attendants waiting in the vestibule shrieked at their appearance, pressing themselves back against the walls.
‘Which bath?’ Castus demanded. One of the attendants pointed, and he shoved Olympiodorus forward again.
‘Really, dominus, this is… ah! Most irregular!’ the eunuch gasped.
Castus grunted, prodding him again with the sword. As they passed through the cold baths, between the plunge pools, he could feel the damp heat in the air. The tiles beneath his feet were unusually warm. Shoving the eunuch ahead of him, he paced on into the octagonal hall that led to the hot baths. The heavy doors at the far end were closed, a bar laid across them, and at either side stood a fat man in a loincloth. Eunuchs, but they had the bulk of gladiators. Both of them were gleaming with sweat.
‘What’s happening here?’ Castus hissed, dragging Olympiodorus closer. ‘Why are the doors barred?’
‘The orders of the Augusta Helena, dominus!’ the eunuch said. ‘The doors must remain closed, and no one is to enter – or to leave!’
Castus felt the heat on his face, the heat of the tiled floor burning up through the soles of his boots. For a moment he stared at the doors, utterly baffled. A chill breeze rushed across the nape of his neck, and fresh sweat broke on his brow. Behind him, the crowd of slaves and attendants that had followed him through from the garden were gathered in the doorway of the cold chamber, staring in frightened anticipation.
With a roar of fury, Castus grabbed the eunuch by the hair and shoved him to his knees. ‘Open the doors at once!’ he bellowed, his voice resounding from the domed ceiling. ‘Open, or I’ll kill every one of you and paint the walls with your blood!’
He flourished the sword at the crowd of onlookers, then brought the blade down against the eunuch’s neck. Olympiodorus let out a shriek, cowering.
‘Open the doors!’ the eunuch cried. ‘Open them – God protect us!’
Without a word, the two doorkeepers threw the bar from the doors and hauled them open, stepping away quickly. Heat blasted from the opening, then a rolling wave of steam. Castus turned away, raising his arm to cover his face as perspiration washed his whole body. Olympiodorus had pulled free of his grip and slid away across the floor as the crowd behind them fell back.
Coughing the hot wet air from his lungs as he sheathed his sword, Castus stumbled into the fog cloud. He snatched up the bar from the floor – the wood was hot to his touch – and hurled it forward into the chamber, so the doors could not be sealed behind him. Then he pulled a fold of his cloak up over his nose and mouth and stepped across the threshold.
*
He was in a small circular chamber, a sudatorium with a mosaic pavement and a stone basin in the centre, although for a few moments Castus could make out nothing more through the dense steam. The floor burned like the embers of a pyre, and the walls of the chamber radiated a fierce heat. Fanning his hands before him, he blinked and stared into the hot white fog. To his left was an apse, with white marble steps down into a semi-circular pool. The surface of the water was seething, steam curling upwards into the saturated air. With the heat pressing on him, it took several moments for Castus to notice the body sprawled on the steps.
Fausta was naked, lying on her side with her unbound hair flowing black over the marble. Gasping, Castus dropped to kneel beside her. She must have crawled from the hot pool and then fallen onto the steps, overwhelmed. Impossible to tell if she still lived. Clenching his teeth, he got an arm beneath her, and the hot tiles scalded the back of his hand. Her body was limp, her soft flesh burning, slippery with sweat. He lifted her to his chest and struggled upright, carrying her in his arms as he stumbled back out of the chamber.
Gasps and cries from the crowd in the octagon hall as he emerged from the steam. Castus kept moving, carrying the body on through to the chamber of the cold baths. ‘Take her!’ he shouted to Olympiodorus. The eunuch quailed, stammering, but Castus shoved the woman’s body into his arms. He ripped his cloak from his shoulder and spread it over the tiled floor, then took Fausta from the eunuch’s cringing grasp and laid her down upon it.
‘Bring water!’ he cried, kneeling beside her again. ‘Cold water – and salve!’
She lay on her back, and he covered her lower body with the hem of the cloak. Now he could see her face, the blood flowing from her nostrils, her mouth opening as she struggled to draw breath.
‘Domina,’ he said, taking her hand and leaning closer. ‘Domina, can you hear me?’
Her eyes opened, unfocused for a moment. Then she recognised him, and he felt her grip tighten on his hand. A cough racked her body. Castus could see the livid red marks of scalding on her skin, the blood staining her teeth as she tried to smile.
‘You,’ she said in a faint pained croak.
Trembling, Castus reached into his belt pouch and took out the small carnelian ring that Crispus had given him. Fausta’s eyes widened as she saw it. A long breath sighed from her. Castus eased her hand from his grip, then slid the ring back onto her smallest finger. Her chest was still, her eyes blank. He stooped over her and lightly kissed her brow, then covered her face with the cloak.
‘She’s gone, then,’ a voice said. ‘I did not intend it.’
Raising his head, Castus saw the woman standing in the far doorway. She was old, with a dry brown face, and dressed all in white silk with a golden Christian amulet around her neck. It took only a moment for him to recognise the woman he had last seen two years before in Thessalonica. The emperor’s mother, Helena Augusta.
The slaves had returned with cups and flasks of water, and Castus waved them angrily aside. Too late for that now. Kneeling beside the dead woman, he stared at the figure in the doorway.
‘You did this,’ he said. ‘You ordered this! You told them to bar the doors and heat the bath beyond human endurance. You murdered her!’
The old woman made a tutting sound, curtly shaking her head. She appeared entirely without remorse, entirely in possession of herself. ‘She entered the baths of her own free will,’ Helena said in a crisply accented voice. ‘Intending, I believe, to purge the child she carried inside her. You’re quite correct that I ordered the chamber sealed and the furnaces stoked higher. I wanted her to suffer, yes. I wanted her to experience the consequences of her sinful ways. But the heat alone would not have killed her. I suspect she took certain herbs or potions to induce the purge, and the combination proved fatal.’
‘Say what you like,’ Castus growled, getting to his feet. ‘You murdered Fausta, just as your actions, your agents, caused the death of your own grandson!’
Helena merely shrugged. ‘That, too, I did not intend,’ she said. ‘I loved my grandson, naturally, before that woman’s perversions turned him to evil. But my agent Innocentius went too far with his investigation. He exceeded his mandate most grievously.’
She already knew. Castus gaped at her as the last traces of steam wreathed the air around him. And if she knew, the emperor himself must already have known that Crispus was dead. Fausta as well. Was that why she had tried to kill her child?
‘How?’ he managed to ask.
‘Innocentius caught up with us two days ago,’ Helena said. ‘At Ocriculum, on the road towards Rome. He gave his report in confidence, of course. Fausta only learned of the death a few hours ago.’
Of course. And doubtless the emperor had concealed the news from all but the closest circle of his court. Clearly he had planned to wait until after the Vicennalia was concluded before making a public announcement.
‘She claimed, you know,’ Helena went on, nodding towards the body under the cloak, ‘that my grandson forced himself upon her. As if he would do such a thing! She hoped it would save her from her husband’s wrath, but she was wrong.’
Castus glanced down at the body, holding the pain gripped inside him. He could not blame Fausta; if she knew that Crispus was already condemned, she would have been desperate for any way to escape punishment herself. Jutting his jaw, he drew himself upright and faced the old woman again.
‘Whatever you say,’ he told her, his voice booming from the walls, ‘it makes no difference. You’re responsible for both their deaths. And if you’re really a Christian, you’ll burn in their fiery hell for this.’
Helena narrowed her eyes. ‘Strong words,’ she said. ‘But I know my God better than that. And I know you, Aurelius Castus. You are a soldier; you understand duty, as do I. As a mother, I have a duty to protect my son. Constantine has a soft heart. But I do not, and I will take action when he hesitates.’
A man came running through the halls, one of the Syrian youths. Dropping to his knees, he slid to a halt before Helena. ‘Augusta!’ he cried, lowering his forehead to the tiles. ‘There are soldiers at the gate, demanding admittance!’
‘Tell them they must wait,’ Helena said. ‘As you can see, we have suffered a domestic tragedy here.’
For all his fierce loathing for this woman, Castus could not help admiring her cool composure. Helena, too, wore the mask of command. And with Fausta gone, her authority was absolute.
‘Speaking of Innocentius,’ she said, ‘he has displeased me with his recent actions. He becomes impertinent in his demands, and knows too much about our affairs. I would be happy if he were silenced.’
‘I’ll silence him gladly,’ Castus said. ‘But not for your sake. Where do I find him?’
‘Oh, no need for that,’ Helena said with a thin smile. ‘I understand he’s intending to find you. When last I heard from him, he was on the way to Salona. I believe you have a villa near there?’
Castus’s heart clenched, blackness pressing in his skull. He scrubbed his fingers across his scalp as the wave of nausea and dread flowed through him. ‘When?’ he gasped.
‘As I say, he has two days’ start on you, by the Flaminian Way. But you seem a tenacious man indeed – if you travel with the same speed as you arrived here, you may outpace him.’
How was it possible? Castus had left the Phaselus at Aternum, ordering the crew to wait for him there. But he was still in Rome, and the emperor’s men were at the gates. Already another messenger was running from the entrance hall.
‘Olympiodorus,’ Helena said to the eunuch procurator. ‘Conduct his excellency Aurelius Castus to the stables, via the cryptoporticus. Provide him with a horse, and see that he reaches the Praenestine Gate without hindrance. Do it on my authority.’
She turned back to Castus, regarding him with a cold clear eye. ‘This matter has gone far enough,’ she said. ‘Say nothing of what has happened here to anybody. Track down Innocentius and rid me of him, and I will speak favourably of you to my son. I may be able to influence his judgement of you.’
Castus took a long breath, and shuddered as he exhaled. He glanced down once more at Fausta’s covered body. Then he strode from the hall, brushing past Helena. The eunuch was already moving ahead of him, beckoning.
As he passed through the baths vestibule, Castus broke into a run.
30
With a fresh southerly breeze on her quarter, the little Phaselus had made a fast crossing of the Adriatic. Putting out from Aternum the previous evening, the helmsman had sailed her through the night, navigating by the stars, and by late afternoon the high coast of Dalmatia was visible on the far horizon. As the islands off the bay of Salona slipped by, the boat turned north and ran up around the forested cape that hid the cove and the villa. Castus sat stiffly on the stern bench as the oarsmen guided the little vessel in towards land. He laid his sword across his knees, and felt the renewed swells of fear in his chest.
