The vestal priestess, struck silent and immobile by sheer shock, was quite possibly the ugliest old bat Fronto had ever laid his eyes on. In the slow motion experienced by wrong doers as they are found the world over, he watched in horror as the harpy in white before him dropped the carefully folded linen she had been carrying and her hand came slowly up to point an accusing finger at him. Her mouth formed into an ‘O’.
Fronto smiled weakly.
“’Scuse me.”
And then he was running. The panic was truly setting in now. His heart pounded like the feet of a legion on the march, only faster. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears, for which he was extremely grateful as it almost drowned out the shrieks and bellows from the priestess behind him. Had the circumstances been different, he would have been convinced that, with a voice like that, there was some bovine in the woman’s ancestry.
The problem was that the panic had carried him automatically. It had given him a head start, but pointed him in the wrong direction. Now he was out of the harpy’s reach but leaving the shrine behind and heading toward the bath house.
Shit. Quite literally. There was only one solution now.
He risked a glance over his shoulder and wished fervently that he hadn’t. What had, a moment ago, looked like an ugly old priestess screaming in terror now bore more resemblance to Cerberus or some fiendish and malignant lemur of the underworld, howling its hatred and evil as it bore down on him with what he considered an unprecedented turn of speed. What was this woman? If all the vestals were like this, he’d hate to meet one in a dark alley and he’d certainly not be coming back in thirty years to look for Vibia.
Muscles pumping, heart pounding and sweat pouring from his hairline, Fronto examined the building ahead. No door visible, so it must be around the other side. Good. He could hear another voice somewhere behind him now. The only thing her could truly hope for was that, if he made it out of this, the chances of the priestesses recognising him once he’d cleaned up from this horrendous state was extremely unlikely.
His heart in his mouth, Fronto hurtled round the corner. There was the door. Hoping he was as clever as he thought, he wrenched the door open with a clatter and then ran on along the outside toward the next corner. As he ran, he kept an eye on the ground. He had only one hope here: a drain cover down to the sewers. It was possible there was one, though far from guaranteed, given the security and sanctity of the precinct. Even if there was, it could be buried beneath the grass. Dodging round the far corner, he came to a halt and looked around desperately.
Fortuna was Fronto’s patron Goddess.
There, like a beautiful square, white, marble dream, was the cover of the drain. Just wide enough to admit him and kept free of grass, gravel and weeds by the helpful priestesses, who presumably gardened a great deal to keep their mind off the pastimes they were forbidden. It may be a gateway to half the poo of central Rome but, right now, Fronto could kiss every brick down that tunnel.
Dropping to his knees, he yanked at the marble block and succeeded in levering it upright, balanced on its thick edge. With a quick, desperate look around, he leaned forward to look down the hole.
The blast of acrid air that rose from the passage brought tears instantly to his eyes and threatened to burn off his nose hair. Blinking, he leaned back. He was just considering looking for an alternate route when he overheard the edge of a shouted warning inside the baths. Now there were two voices. Crap. He was getting outnumbered.
Taking as deep a breath as he dared attempt, Fronto narrowed his eyes to slits and pulled himself forward across the hole. Holding himself up with his arms, he dropped his feet into the dank darkness and scrabbled around until he found purchase on either side with his feet. Achieving a foothold among the slippery bricks, he concertinaed his body down into the hole so that he could pull the cover over the top.
Trying very hard not to breathe at all, he began to carefully descend the eight feet down to the tunnel below. He had almost worked his way down to the point at which the brickwork opened out into a wide tunnel when the worst thing imaginable happened and his boot slipped on the fungus that grew on the bricks. He was pretty sure he shrieked, regardless of the possibility of being heard from above. What he was sure about was that he had the presence of mind to close his mouth and grip his nose tightly before he plunged with a wet slap into the two feet of oozing nastiness beneath him.
In the brief moment before he recovered his wits, Fronto found himself seriously wondering whether it might have been preferable to be caught and executed than to have escaped by this route.
He stood, gripped his sides and leaned over to be copiously sick into the ooze and almost laughed when he considered the possibility that such an act may just make the place marginally nicer. Reaching up to wipe his mouth, he remembered just in time and lowered hi browny-green stinking arm back to his side.
Gritting his teeth, he climbed out of the torrent onto one of the walkways and began to plod along the tunnel. He would have to get his bearings. He needed to make it back to the Aventine, but was now so thoroughly turned around that he could be anywhere.
Sighing as deeply as he dared, he peered down at the direction of what could laughingly be called ‘the flow’. It would be a bit of a walk, but following it to its inevitable conclusion where the Cloaca Maxima emptied into the Tiber, he would at least exit somewhere away from the crowded central markets.
Miserably, he plodded and slapped along through the tunnels, slowly becoming acclimatized to the oppressive darkness, broken only by the occasional light from a drain cover above, and to the unbelievable smell. How you couldn’t smell this in the street above was beyond him. He was pretty sure he’d be able to smell this for the rest of his life, no matter where he was.
Several twists and turns later, he saw a bright glow ahead and picked up his pace as much as he dared, worrying over the possibility of slipping back into the murk. Gradually the arc of light came closer until finally, he found himself striding out into the brilliant dazzling sunlight. Edging toward the end of the tunnel, he peered left and right along the river bank. The Tiber flowed past deep and green. Well… green until it converged with the brown sludge beneath him. Taking a lungful of air he exploded in a coughing fit.
There was no one close by. A fisherman sat on the bank some hundred yards away upstream, but he could keep himself hidden by shrubs.
Tentatively, he slipped down the bank by the side of the channel that emptied Rome’s sewage into the river. Taking a deep breath, fully clothed, he continued sliding down until he plunged with relief into the cold water. Deep beneath, among the weeds, he thrashed around, trying to get as much as possible of both clothes and skin in cleansing contact with the water. He stayed down as long as he could hold his breath and finally launched himself upwards and out into the air with a loud splash.
Looking round, he saw the fisherman watching him. He considered a cheeky wave, but this was not the time for frivolities. Looking down, the remnants of the sludge that had covered him sat like a slick on the surface of the water, gradually carried away from him by the flow.
He took a deep breath.
No.
He may be ostensibly clean, but he still smelled like a public latrine during the Saturnalia. Wincing, he swam to the bank a few yards away and splashed water into his armpits. Sighing, he climbed the bank up to the pavement. Peeking over the edge, he saw the forum boarium stretching away before him. There were a few people setting up stalls, but no one close enough to the river to panic him.