"Please, have you seen a soldier and a baby, a brown horse..."
The man whose arm she'd grasp shook his head. Sibyl kept asking. "That way," somebody finally said, "several minutes ago. Shouting for a priestess of the Magna Mater."
Sibyl swayed. "Thank you..."
As she ran, she tried to listen for her name above the babble of night noises in Herculaneum's streets. Staked out in the entrances to dark little alleyways and slouched beside the winestalls, painted whores did a trade nearly as brisk as the winesellers and sausage vendors. Some of the men looked nearly as scared as the prostitutes. These disappeared into dimly seen doorways to make frantic love, which sometimes could be heard above the street sounds as Sibyl passed hurriedly by. Other men lounged on the streets beside the women and caressed them beneath their short tunicas and joked and teased and plied them with wine until the prices went lower.
Sibyl barely heard music that drifted down from rooftop gardens to mingle with the roar in the streets. She concentrated on watching the shadows and the men in them and tried to ignore the crawling sensation between her shoulderblades. Somewhere just ahead, surely. She risked a call.
"Charlie! CHARLIE!"
Nothing.
Sibyl gained the basilica and paused again to catch her breath in the political heart and soul of Herculaneum. The basilica was where justice was dispensed, from the tribunal seat. Sibyl doubted that either Charlie or herself could find justice from that tribunal seat tonight, not even if the magistrates had kept the court open. If either of them were captured with slave collars locked around their throats, they wouldn't live to tell their story.
An archway next to the basilica led, as had been surmised, into the Forum, which was completely unexcavated in her own time. So much of the city lay in that direction. "Please," she caught the arm of a man coming from that direction, "have you seen a soldier carrying a small child? He has a brown horse and—"
"No. Let go of me, girl!"
He swung the lantern he carried at her. She ducked and ran the other direction, straining to see through the crowd for a tall, red-haired figure with a bad limp. Equestrian statues towered overhead at the entrance to the basilica. A bronze chariot and bronze horses loomed out of the near-darkness. The basilica was closed for the night and would not be reopened for nearly two thousand years.
Sibyl ran past the temple of the priests of the deified Augustus and the Forum Baths, across a narrow street from the House of the Wooden Partition. She asked a group of men standing on the corner and one of them pointed toward the sea. She cut down a side street past the House of the Mosaic Atrium, which overlooked the Mediterranean next to the House of the Stags, with its soaring sun terrace which overlooked the rooftop of the Suburban Bath and the Mediterranean beyond.
And ran slam into a tall man emerging from a narrow alleyway. "Hold," the man cried, steadying her. "You've nearly fallen, there, girl."
Sibyl dragged air into her lungs and glanced up—
Into Tony Bartlett's wide, shocked eyes.
"You!"
Sibyl twisted against his grip.
He hit her.
She landed in a heap at his feet, cringing from another blow. Her traitorous body remembered the beating Bericus had given it, didn't want another...
Tony laughed and dragged her to her feet.
"Well, well. Such a resourceful little sibyl, aren't we? Bericus will be so pleased to have his new pet back."
"Let me go! My God, Tony, isn't it enough to maroon me two thousand years in the past?"
He tightened a hand through her hair. He smiled slowly, the kind of smile a corporate shark wore when announcing a hostile takeover. "Oh, no," he whispered savagely. "Not nearly enough."
"But I can't possibly threaten you—"
He hit her again. Sibyl went to her knees, ears ringing, mouth bleeding.
"I didn't think you'd get rid of that memory block, but you did. Either those Army drugs aren't as good as Jésus thought, or you're a lot tougher than you look. Not that having your memory will do you any good. Not now." He smiled down at her. Sibyl whimpered.
His gaze lingered on the torn, transparent linen which revealed far more than it hid. Tony smiled directly into her eyes. "I'm in no great rush, Sibyl, dear. We have all evening." He dragged her up, pulled her against him. Tony's hand against her breast was almost worse than Bericus' brutal treatment. She thrashed against his iron-hard grip, then flinched involuntarily when he raised the back of his hand. Tony laughed softly and leaned closer, lips all but brushing her earlobe.
"I know how much you wanted me, when we were here before," he breathed. "I used to watch you work, Sibyl, in those tight little shorts, digging up all those lovely manuscripts for the old man." His smile sent chills down her back. She strained away as far as his grip would permit. His hand caressed her again, leaving her shaking. "I couldn't possibly leave without giving you what you want, Sibyl."
She gave a strangled sound that was part laugh, part choked disgust. "Me—want you—"
He slapped her, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. She bit his hand in reflex, hard enough to draw blood. Tony backhanded her, sending her sprawling to the street. Sibyl lay where she'd fallen, deeply dazed by the blow. Her whole face ached. Not even Bericus had hit her that hard. Tony cradled his hand, then narrowed his eyes into dangerous slits. Very softly, he said, "You will pay for that before you die."
"Better not waste any time, then," she said thickly. "I'd sure hate to see you trapped here with me." The taste of his blood—and her own—was bitter on the back of her tongue.
Astoundingly, he chuckled. "Waste time? I have all the time in the world, Sibyl. Do you?"
She did not share his humor. Sibyl turned her face away and huddled miserably on the street. She didn't have the strength to stand up again and he clearly knew it. Bartlett, still chuckling, hauled her up and dragged her, stumbling, into the two-story villa owned by Publius Bericus.
She halted abruptly, just across the threshold. Her cheeks went cold. A tiny shiver crawled up her spine. She had been here before. Two thousand years from now—and three weeks ago.
The House of the Stags... .
She knew without looking that beyond the atrium would be one of two dining rooms. She knew the size and shape of the central garden that ran from the "front" of the house toward the sea, where wide windows had been placed on both stories to catch the spectacular view. She knew the outline and dimensions of the second dining room at the seaward end of the house, overlooking an arbor right on the primary terrace wall, almost overlooking the Suburban Baths.
Bericus undoubtedly spent many an enjoyable evening on that terrace or out in the arbor, watching the spectacular sunset over the Mediterranean and fondling whatever pet he'd brought into town with him. She even knew the number of rooms off the hallways that surrounded the garden, both downstairs and on the second floor.
In the entrance room where she now stood, hot air and occasional drifts of ash fell through the compluvium, a square hole in the ceiling. The frescoes on the walls were vivid, unscorched. Tony watched, smirking, as she touched painted, lifelike forms. And there were the statues, the famous one of the dogs bringing down the stag, for which the house was named, and the drunken Hercules, reeling backwards in wine-befuddled clumsiness, holding his naked genitalia in one hand in the classic moment of weakness so beloved by pagans, who were delighted by portrayals of virtuous, civilizing power momentarily falling into a state of ordinary humanity... .