'Things is different this side, yer'll see. There's no envy nor greed nor jealousy down here. We're one big happy family us, so don't yer go worrying yer pretty head about that. Enjoy yerself, gel. You deserve it.'
Other things followed. Rex talked to the wife he'd lost twenty years before, almost reducing the old soldier to tears. Lars had a quick word in Etruscan with a school friend who'd died in childhood. While Eunice steadfastly declined to speak to her cousin, claiming that the odious woman had refused to bother when she was alive, she could jolly well go hang herself now she was dead. Then Thalia piped up, wondering if she might make contact with her late husband as there was something important she wanted to tell him, but unfortunately the husband was unable to come through. The gateway, it seemed, was starting to close.
And once it did, it closed with a crash.
When the brazier in the east corner toppled out of its holder, everyone jumped and even the harpist missed his string. But before anyone had mustered enough breath to speak, a vase of cornflowers by the door smashed on to the floor. Someone gasped. Claudia thought it might have been her.
'Sweet Janus,' Eunice breathed, as sulphur engulfed the room.
'What's happening?' Thalia shrieked. 'What's going on?'
'Th-this… this has never…' Larentia's voice was unrecognizable under the fear.
Suddenly the jug of wine on one of the tables raised itself high in the air and hurled itself across the room, yet even before it hit the wall a stool overturned and figurines of ivory, onyx and silver began flying off their display.
Then it was gone.
The smoke, the cold, the smell of sulphur, suddenly they were gone, and the room lapsed back into a silence broken only by the drip-drip-drip of wine down the wall and the soft strings of the harp, though even their hypnotic cadence had been broken.
'Lights!' Rex was the first to speak. 'Someone light the bloody lamps, for gods' sake!'
Terrence, being closest to the door, fumbled his way across the room, cursing as his shin cracked against an overturned chair. Instantly, light from the atrium flooded the dining hall and slaves rushed forward to light the wicks, their open jaws betraying the destruction that confronted them. Glass, water, flowers, furniture, the desecration was everywhere. Stillrocking ornaments littered the mosaic. Wine drizzled like blood down the exquisite frescoes. Lumps of incense resin glued themselves to the woodwork.
Thalia's scream was like nails down a blackboard. 'Candace!'
Overtaken by events, the sorceress had been completely forgotten.
'Oh my god, Terrence! Look at the blood! Terrence, she's dead!'
'No, she's not.' Orbilio placed his finger on the pulse in
Candace's neck, and Claudia saw that it was only the blood she'd let splash on the floor that had seeped into her robes where she had fallen. Beneath the heavy embroidery and gold thread, the sorceress's breast rose and fell.
'Candace, speak to us.' Larentia leaned over and gently slapped the girl's cheeks. 'Candace!'
'Would ye look at that, now,' Lars exclaimed softly.
'Jupiter's bollocks!' Rex leaned over for a closer inspection. 'In all my years on the battlefield, I've never seen anything like it. It's healed. The wound on her forearm has healed.'
'Someone open the doors to the terrace,' Orbilio ordered, scooping her up in his arms. 'Quickly, please.'
Claudia was the closest and outside in the fresh air Candace's eyelashes began to flutter and her unfocused eyes rolled as he set her down in a chair. Whatever words she muttered, the language was not Latin.
'Drink this.' Orbilio coaxed a few drops of water past her trembling lips.
'Did… did they come?' she asked thickly. 'The spirits. Did they come through?'
'They came through all right,' he assured her. 'Can you stand?'
'I… think so.'
She was wrong. The same legs that came right up to her armpits wobbled precariously when left to their own devices, and two muscular slaves were entrusted to escort the sorceress back to her room. In the dining hall, Larentia seemed mesmerized by the stains on the wall, Thalia was sobbing silently from the shock, and though Eunice comforted her by rubbing her shoulders, you could see from her white face that she was shaken herself, while the men stood with their feet planted squarely apart staring down at the floor, the walls, their own feet — anywhere, in fact, but at each other.
Out on the terrace, Orbilio took ten paces away from the house, clasped his hands behind his back and stared up at the star-studded sky.
'I have to hand it to you, Claudia Seferius. You lie, cheat and steal, you fiddle your taxes, you make fraudulent deals, you forge signatures, documents and seals — plus you gamble, which is also against the law. But
He began to rock on his heels. Maybe he'd been shaken by tonight's events more than he let on, because in the light of the three-quarter moon it seemed as though his shoulders were shaking.
'But no one can ever accuse you of not throwing a bloody good party.'
Eight
Around the twisting streets of Mercurium, only the herald and the town cats were abroad. The herald enjoyed walking this tiny hilltop town at night. No beggars on the corners, no dogs or kids zigzagging in and out of his feet, no porters' poles to poke him in the eye. He could amble round the town at his own pace, even though by the time he'd called the hour at one end it was practically time to start calling the next at the other! This time of night, though, no one cared. Like country folk everywhere, they shuttered up their windows when darkness fell and rose again at dawn, and most of them, bless their hearts, slept like logs. You could hear half of 'em, especially that old pair on the corner of Pear Street and Hide Lane. Lord alive, there were some nights the herald could hardly hear his own bell for their snoring!
'Third hour of the night,' he intoned solemnly. 'Third hour of the night.'
On he strode, always taking the same route up the hill, checking on the goldsmith's and the shield-maker's, the vellum-dealer's and the spice-seller's, because even though they lived above their shops, they all slept soundly in their beds and so were happy to slip the herald a denarius each week to check the locks when he went past. Wine had made this town prosperous, he reflected happily. Wine and olive oil. Back in his great-great-grandfather's day, Mercurium was a walled hill fort like fifty others, a working town in days when meat was a luxury to be eaten once a week and most houses slept six to a room.
Not now! Mercurium had risen like its namesake, grown rich on the back of an increase in production from the olive groves and vines, their liquid output exported everywhere from Iberia to Damascus, Pannonia to Gaul. In reality, the herald had no idea where these places were. Further than from here to Rome, of course, but beyond that? It didn't matter. Wherever these exotic places were, they couldn't get enough of the liquid gold that was pressed out of these fruits and he was glad. It put fat goose on his table, brought fresh water to his street and educated his three kiddies as well.
'Fourth hour of the night.'
Aye, it was grand to walk streets that had been paved and guttered, and of course at night he could walk without impediment. Why, only yesterday the axle on the tavern-keeper's cart fell off, bumping amphorae of wine right down the hill, and he was bloody lucky only three of the buggers had broke. Not that you'd think it, listening to him! Lord alive, what language. Course, it stood to reason. Last week was it (or the week before), the poor sod got up in the morning same as usual and found his wine had turned to vinegar overnight. Now his axle broken, poor bloke. All the same, language like that, when there's lassies present!
On every block, he rang his bronze hand bell and called out the hour. 'Fourth hour of the night.' Every building he passed lay in darkness. Maybe he'd hit lucky and hear the squeak of a bat, or a moth would flutter close before his eyes, but usually it was just him and the odd tomcat, and that was the way that he liked it.