Sibyl gulped. Nearly the twelfth hour of daylight? The time was well past dinner, then, somewhere between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. Sibyl's lips trembled so badly she bit down on them. Blood oozed from cuts Tony had left behind. Nearly 7:00 p.m.... That left maybe four hours before Herculaneum died.
The slave woman who had unlocked Sibyl's door peered uneasily toward the sky. The evening wind was brisk. It ruffled Sibyl's hair even under the shelter of the portico, but it wasn't strong enough to carry away the entire ashfall. Like hot snow, volcanic debris whipped around in eddies and evil little dust devils, then settled silently onto the garden and the baked clay roof tiles. The air smelled like one of Dante's Circles.
When a stray gust blew ash into their faces, Sibyl coughed and wiped streaming tears.
"It has been dark like this for hours," the slave woman whispered fearfully. She glanced toward Sibyl. "You were at the villa rustica when the mountain blew up?"
"Yes." The answer came out a little thickly.
"Then you and Master are very lucky. The wagon he ordered to follow his carriage has not arrived."
That probably had more to do with the slaves bolting rather than the volcano. Talk about a golden chance to run for it... .
"I am to help you bathe, Aelia," the slave said, forcibly tearing her gaze away from the black skies. Her voice trembled nearly as violently as the floor. "The Master wishes to see you again tonight."
Sibyl stumbled and braced herself against the wall. No... She couldn't endure another rape. She just couldn't. And if she complied with Bericus' orders tonight, she was lost.
"Please, tell me," she whispered, "has a soldier come to this house, looking for me?"
"A soldier? No, girl. Why would a soldier be looking for you?"
Rather than answer, Sibyl asked another question. "Has... has Master found his other new slave? Has Rufus the Gladiator been brought to this house today?"
The woman stared at her as though she'd taken complete leave of her senses. "No. There's been no one brought in today except you."
Thank God... .
Sibyl drew a quick breath for courage, then slugged the woman as hard as she could. The woman staggered back with a dazed cry of pain. Sibyl shoved her into the dark little room and dropped the bar in place. For long moments, Sibyl leaned against the closed door, shocked—horrified—at what she'd just done. Her hand ached, the knuckles abraded and swollen. I'm sorry, really, I'm sorry, but there was nothing else I could have done. The poor slave woman would die anyway, in just a few hours.
Sibyl shoved off and ran down the portico, heading for the "front" of the house where she knew of a way out through the kitchens. I know this house, its layout. I can get out of here....
Voices sent her trembling into the shadows.
Bericus...
He was arguing violently with a shrill-voiced woman.
"I tell you, Lucretia, I will hear no more of this nonsense! Either shut up and go to bed, or by Attis, I will cut that tongue out of your head!"
"Try it and my brother will make an Attis of you! Mother Cybele curse the day I agreed to marry you!"
They were between her and the kitchens. Bericus' wife was tiny, barely five feet tall, thin and frazzled as a dinette waitress. Her hair stuck out in all directions from a disastrous coif. She was not a pretty woman, although, once, she might have been.
"Get to your room!" Bericus roared.
Instead, his wife seized a heavy goblet made of lead and flung it violently. Publius Bericus ducked, almost too late. It clanged against the wall like a battered Christmas bell and crashed to the floor.
The Roman lady's face flushed deep red. The heavy platter that followed the goblet narrowly missed Bericus' head—
His temper snapped. With a soundless snarl, he crossed the room in one leap. Bericus seized the woman by the wrists and shook her once, hard enough to jar her teeth together with an audible crack. Lucretia screeched and reached into her coif. Then jabbed Bericus with a long, sharp pin. "Murdering parricide! Boy lover! Maid chaser!"
Sibyl watched, helpless in the shadows, while Publius Bericus beat his wife to the floor. He panted for breath when she hung limp in his grasp, then tossed her aside and bellowed for slaves.
"Take that bitch to her rooms! Lock her in!"
He stalked away. Trembling slaves bent to Lucretia, who hadn't moved.
"She's dead!" a terrified woman sobbed. "She's dead..."
The slaves ran, scattering into the house.
Alone with a dead woman, Sibyl skittered across the open room and plunged down a corridor. She found the kitchen, right where she knew it would be. "Mistress is dead!" Sibyl cried.
Slaves at the hearth stared, then broke and ran past her to verify what she'd said. Sibyl found water in a basin and gulped a dipperful, then snatched up a loaf of bread, some cheeses, a bit of fruit, and dropped them into fold of her torn Egyptian gown. She spotted a long knife—nearly as long as a gladius, with a wide, heavy blade—which had been left on a table from the butchering of a carcass.
She grabbed it and ran. Sibyl tucked the knife into a fold of her long dress and held the cloth closed around it. She would have given almost anything to rinse her stinging, bruised body with some of that clean water from the kitchen. But she couldn't reach the whip marks in her back, and anyway, there was no time. Bericus or Tony Bartlett might discover her at any second.
She dodged past the house wall into a dark, narrow street.
Where should I search?
When last seen, Charlie had been headed toward the waterfront. Trying to secure a boat? Fortunately, the House of the Stags was very close to the waterfront. Sibyl crept through the darkness toward the Y-shaped staircase that gave the nearest access to the beach. As she approached the dark opening that marked the entrance to the southeastern stair, a drunken man of nearly fifty lurched abruptly toward her. He seized Sibyl's arm.
"C'mere," he growled, trying to drag her into the dark, filthy space behind him. Sibyl snarled and whipped her knife into the open, dropping her food and not caring. She shoved hard against the shorter man and knocked him off balance. He let go and fell against one wall, then swung awkwardly with his free fist. Sibyl ducked and whipped the long blade against his throat.
"Go hunt other game!"
"Please," he gasped, "don't kill me, girl... ."
Spittle sprayed from wet lips. Sibyl brought her knee up sharply between the man's legs. He went down with a strangled scream. She hit him over the back of the neck with her balled fist, then ran for the stairs while her attacker lay retching on the street. Her legs shook so badly she could hardly keep her feet. She slid to a sitting position on cold stone and swore viciously in English. Then dragged the back of one wrist across her eyes. Dammit, she couldn't afford to go soft now. It was her life on the line. Civilized niceties were out the window.
So she regained her feet and plunged down the black maw of the stairs, which tunneled down through the first terrace and out into the open, where it turned to descend the face of the wall, meeting its northwestern counterpart at the bottom of the "Y." Wind caught her hair and gown, whipping them back from her face and body. Sibyl kept one hand on the cold stone of the terrace wall until she gained the wider steps at the bottom, which ran straight down to the beach.
She knew where she had to go. Sibyl figured it was the same place Charlie would try to go. She'd told him about unearthing the manuscripts on the beachfront. It was the one place they both knew about. He would go there to try to find her—or to find Tony Bartlett.
Tony...
If he knew of her escape, that was the most dangerous place she could go. Maybe he'd already left Bericus' house? While she'd been locked into that dark little room off the kitchen? Tony was certainly their only prayer of getting home again. Charlie would know that as well as she did. And Charlie was the kind of man to wait for him, ambush him, get hold of whatever it was he used to get back.