‘You already know.’
Scaurus nodded sanguinely.
‘You’re right, I do. It’s amazing just how much more cooperative a ship’s master can be when the questions are being asked by a bad-tempered centurion like Julius here. So you don’t have to worry about missing your boat, since your boat isn’t really your boat any more. And yes, to answer that question lurking in the back of your mind, we do have your chest, and yes, I did find the password for your banker’s drafts. Your contribution to my cohorts’ burial funds will be much appreciated.’
He stood back and waited for the informant to speak, but Excingus simply stared back at him with hate-filled eyes.
‘And now, I suppose, you’re wondering whether this can get very much worse. Sadly, I’m afraid the answer to that unspoken question is most definitely yes.’
Senator Sigilis walked out into his garden at the hour which Scaurus had nominated with such firmness, looking about him in the starlit darkness with no more idea what he was supposed to do next than he’d had when the tribune had proposed his flight from Rome. Earlier in the day, he had dismissed the last of his staff, giving each of his slaves a statement of manumission, which had been witnessed by a judge so prominent that no one would think to challenge their freedom in his absence. Thanking his butler for the man’s devoted service, and pressing a more than generous purse upon him as a reward for his loyalty, the senator had sent him on his way with the instruction to lose himself in a part of the city where he was unlikely to be unearthed by any search for those members of the household who had been close to their master.
‘There will be men coming for me soon, perhaps tonight, and if by chance they fail to find me here, they will naturally turn to those of my staff who might have some knowledge of my whereabouts. And I fear that no amount of denial would blunt their willingness to dig so hard for the truth that your exit from this life would be a matter of some considerable discomfort.’
The bemused servant had surprised him by embracing him before turning away.
‘Farewell, Senator, may Mercury speed your flight. And I must now pass you a message that Tribune Scaurus left with me for this moment. The tribune wants you to wait in your garden once the moon has risen, and listen for a man calling your name.’
Sitting in his accustomed place within the ring of trees that sheltered the garden dining area, he waited with the patience of his years, musing on the events that had brought him to the point of imminent disgrace and execution, wondering whether his wry acceptance of looming death would survive the moment of his apprehension by the emperor’s murderers.
‘Senator! Senator Sigilis!’
The call was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, and for a moment Sigilis wondered if his overwrought imagination had conjured the sound from nothing, until it was repeated. Standing, he walked slowly towards the place from which he believed the sound had come. And then, with an abruptness which made him take a step backwards, a figure detached itself from the gloom, seeming to rise out of the earth itself. Grasping at the amulet given to him by his wife decades before for strength, he found his voice, a reedy whisper of challenge that sounded like another man’s.
‘What are you!’
The response, disquietingly, was a laugh, the earthy chuckle of a man who had seen too much of life to take very much seriously.
‘What am I? I’m tired, Senator, and keen to be away from here. Here, put this on.’ Sigilis reached out automatically to take the garment that was thrust at him, pursing his lips at the coarse material, and the anonymous man from the shadows spoke again with the same amused air. ‘Yes, sir, it’s rough, and if there were light you’d see that it’s dirty too. And it smells of sweat. Strip off that fine tunic and leave it here for the men hunting you to find, eh?’
Sigilis stripped, pulling on the rough garment as bidden.
‘So what now, stranger, now I look and smell like a working man?’
‘Now? Follow me, sir. And I ain’t no stranger. My name’s Avidus. I was here the other day, measuring up this lovely garden.’
The mysterious figure turned away, taking a few steps before seeming to literally vanish into the earth, and while Sigilis dithered, fighting to master his fear of the unknown, he called out to him again, his voice muffled.
‘Come on then, sir! Just a few steps more! Here, you, pass me that lamp!’
The senator paced forward slowly, his eyes widening as the light revealed the nature of his apparent salvation.
‘Ahhhh. I see.’
Almost an hour after his father had jumped over the garden wall into the centurion’s garden, an increasingly impatient Gaius heard voices from the other side of the street. The garden gate opened, allowing a single figure to exit onto the darkened street with the quick, uncontrolled steps of a man who had been pushed. He stopped, looking about himself with swift, jerky movements, cradling something in his hands as if he were reluctant to put it down.
‘Oi, Excingus!’
The furtive figure started with the child’s whispered challenge, backing away with what sounded disturbingly like a muffled whimper. Gaius rose from his hiding place, crossing the road on quick feet as the informant backed away in apparent terror, still holding whatever it was that he was so unwilling to relinquish.
‘What’s that you’ve got th-’
The child’s question died in his throat as he stared down at the round object in his employer’s hands, shaking his head in shocked disbelief and reaching out to pull the knife from the informant’s belt. Excingus, his mouth bound with a tightly tied gag, shook his head frantically as the boy lifted the blade over his head with a shout of rage.
‘You cunt!’
He slashed at the reeling informant, whipping the blade back up over his head ready to strike again in a scatter of blood. Excingus staggered, his bellow of pain muffled by the gag, dodging the blow with a frantic sidestep before taking to his heels with the desperate speed of a man who knew that he was facing his death. Gaius ran after him, the knife held ready to strike again, his child’s voice raised in a piping shriek of rage.
‘Come back, you bastard! Come back and face me!’
Marcus opened the door the next morning in response to a firm knock, finding a quartet of men in praetorian uniform waiting in the small garden, the foremost of them wearing the plumed helmet of a centurion.
‘Marcus Tribulus Corvus?’
He nodded, looking at their faces one at a time until he found the man who had put his spear through Horatius’s neck the previous evening.
‘You’re to come with us.’ The speaker looked at him levelly for a moment. ‘By the order of the emperor.’
Scaurus stepped up alongside his centurion.
‘I presume this invitation also requires my presence?’ His only answer was an imperturbable nod. ‘Very well, in which case I suggest we go?’
The two men walked down the hill towards the Great Circus and the Palatine’s sprawling palaces in silence, their escort ignoring the inquisitive glances of the pedestrians who cleared from their path willingly enough when they laid eyes on the soldiers’ grim faces and glinting spear heads.
‘All in all, Centurion, and whatever it is we’re walking into, I’d have to say we did the right thing. You spent an untroubled night, I presume?’
Marcus smiled wearily.
‘Untroubled by my family’s ghosts? Yes, Tribune. The doctor tells me that my acts of revenge have in some way assuaged my guilt at being my family’s only survivor …’ He sighed. ‘All I know is that where I expected exultation and the joy of bloody revenge, I found only emptiness and self-loathing.’