His wrists were secured behind his back in iron shackles. His arms and shoulders ached, but his hands had grown numb, and when he flexed his upper body arrows of pain shot through his chest. But it was the thirst that bothered him most. Thirst, the growing pressure in his bladder, and that constant maddening drip of water from somewhere beyond the cell door.
They had taken him in a cart from the aqueduct. The hood had been over his head by then, and he had seen nothing of the journey, but from the distance and the noises that had penetrated the sacking and the haze of his pain he guessed that they had brought him back to Arelate.
The thought returned to him, a stab in his mind. Constantine was dead. Maximian was emperor. He had failed in his vows, and now he was a prisoner condemned for treason.
He could almost laugh at that: if he had conspired against Maximian, it had only been at the prompting of the notary Nigrinus, whose men had been responsible for trapping and capturing him… An elaborate deception, he thought. Perhaps too elaborate; something was missing from the picture. His mind turned, but only in one direction was there hope. If Brinno had evaded capture, if he had escaped and if he managed to get back to Treveris… But again he remembered: Constantine was dead. If Brinno reported what had happened, he would only be condemning himself.
No hope at all then. Castus grinned mirthlessly to himself. The pain in his arms and the constant thirst kept him from sleeping. Instead his mind turned again: he thought of Sabina, and wondered what she would be doing. Would she easily accept Maximian as her new master? And what of Fausta, a widow now: what was her part in this…? Castus suddenly remembered the sorcerer in the tomb outside Treveris. The letters of the next emperor’s name revealed. M… A… X… Had it been a genuine divination, Maximian’s accession foretold by the spirits? Or had the man been paid to sow the seeds of future loyalty?
The ceaseless whirl of questions lulled Castus eventually into a dull sleep.
He was woken by a crash as the jailer flung the cell door open. Weak daylight seeped in from the chamber outside, and Castus closed his eyes at once as the pain of his shackled arms exploded through his torso. The jailer came and stood over him. He was a small man with a perverted leer, but his arms were long and corded with muscle, and he wore a heavy military belt covered in ornaments: brooches and rings, keys and clasps. Taken from previous prisoners, Castus guessed. Prisoners who had no use for such things now.
The jailer’s slave assistant, a youth with dirty blond hair and a bruised face, dragged Castus up into a kneeling position, and then the jailer amused himself by bringing a tin cup of water close to his mouth and then moving it away as he leaned forward to drink. Finally Castus managed to grip the rim of the cup between his teeth and suck the sour water down before the man could drag it from him. There was a crust of dry bread to follow; the jailer rammed it into Castus’s mouth and left him to chew.
The door slammed shut and Castus was alone in the dark again. He rolled onto his side, then spat out the bread. It was drying his mouth, and tasted of ash. Hours seemed to pass, and as his eyes adjusted to the faint trace of light from beneath the door he stared at the walls of the cell, the low vaulted ceiling, the worn stone-slab floor, and saw no possibility of escape. He had lapsed into another stunned and dreamless sleep when the first scream woke him.
At first he thought it was the jailer beating his slave again. But the scream was followed by a second, a long drawn-out shriek that echoed and then died into racked sobs of agony. Castus struggled to his feet and stood staring at the door. His scalp prickled and crawled, and sweat ran down his back beneath his dirty unbelted tunic. The noise came again. The wrenching howl of a man in pain and terror. Castus was breathing hard through his nose. He felt panic rising in his chest, the overwhelming desire to get out, to flee whatever was causing that terrible agony.
Moments passed in long-held breaths. The screaming had stopped, and after a while Castus felt the ache in his legs and sank down with one shoulder against the wall. He had barely closed his eyes when the door slammed open.
‘Big man,’ the jailer said. ‘On your feet.’
The blond slave entered the cell holding a trident; Castus wondered if it was the same weapon that the gladiator on the aqueduct had carried. The slave jabbed the points of the trident towards Castus’s chest, then the jailer seized his arms and dragged him upright and out through the door.
Outside the cell was a long chamber with heavy brick vaulting overhead. Water seeped through the bricks to drip and puddle on the stone floor, and a pair of torches in wall brackets threw ugly angled shadows. With the trident jabbing his back and the jailer tugging at his arm, Castus stumbled on through a series of low arches and interconnecting rooms. He saw iron-barred doors in the torchlight, dark openings in the bricks. Now that he was moving, he was more conscious than ever of his swollen bladder; the possibility that he might have to piss, and it would be taken as a sign of fear, was all the more humiliating.
A sharp turn to the right, then another to the left, and Castus was shoved forward into a much larger chamber, the far end lost in smoky gloom. Squat pillars ran down the centre, with arches above, and the low vaulted ceiling seemed to compress the shadows. The chamber stank of hot iron, burnt flesh and blood.
‘Ah, there you are,’ a voice said.
Castus recoiled, and felt the trident prick his back. Nigrinus paced towards him from between the pillars, smiling.
‘I hope they’ve been treating you appropriately down here,’ the notary said. ‘I did send food, but of course jailers have a habit of taking the best stuff for themselves…’
Castus glanced to his side, but the jailer had vanished. The trident was gone too. For a moment he thought he was alone with the notary, but then a movement at the far side of the room drew his eye and he saw the four men sitting together in the corner. They looked like labourers, gathered around a low table with their midday meal, but Castus could make out the burn scars on their arms, the dark stains on their sleeveless tunics. They were quaestionarii. Professional torturers.
There were others, too, in the chamber. Men moved from the darkness: a couple of guards in military cloaks, their faces without expression. Castus sensed a movement to his right and turned to see three more figures enter the room, bending their heads beneath the low brick arch. The newcomers also wore cloaks, but they secured them with brooches of gold and gemstones, and their tunics were richly patterned and embroidered. The first was Scorpianus, the Praetorian tribune. After him came an older man who wore an expression of mild surprise: Castus had seen him dining with Maximian, and knew he was one of the local provincial governors. The third figure was the eunuch, Gorgonius.
‘Domini,’ Nigrinus said. ‘Welcome to the Stygian depths! I was just about to show this prisoner some of the more intriguing items kept down here.’
Gorgonius smiled and made a gesture for the notary to continue. The older man beside him was lifting the hem of his cloak to cover his nose and mouth, but the tribune Scorpianus was gazing about himself with frank interest.
‘If you’ll step this way please,’ Nigrinus said. Castus remained standing, until the two cloaked guards moved up behind him and shoved at his shoulder. Then he paced heavily after the notary, the guards and the three distinguished visitors following behind.
‘You see here, on this rack,’ Nigrinus said, gesturing, ‘the simple implements called claws. As you’ll notice, they are razor sharp. These are used to rake down the flanks of the subject’s body, ripping the flesh and muscle away from the bones beneath… It’s said that they can rip a man’s soul from his body too… Beside them here are the hooks. This one – if you look closely – is shaped to cut in beneath the ribs. The subject can be lifted from his feet using these chains here, and made to hang suspended on the hooks for a considerable period… These need cleaning, as you can see…’