Rufinus bade Claudia goodnight, Chrysis waggled his fingers obscenely at her and they both went back along the corridor.
Claudia decided to wander the palace. She felt physically tired, but her mind teemed like a beehive. She found herself near the peristyle garden and asked the guard where the cellar was. He gave her directions. Claudia first went to the kitchens, where she borrowed a lantern horn from a sleepy-eyed cook, who lit the oil lamp inside, secured the small door and handed it to her.
‘Don’t walk too fast,’ he warned. ‘Let the wick burn fiercely for a while.’
Claudia sat outside on a bench and watched the flame in the lantern horn strengthen before picking it up and finding her way to the cellar. The door was now unguarded, off the latch. She went carefully down the steps. The door at the bottom was flung open and Claudia went inside. She walked slowly, tapping the ground with her sandalled foot. The floor was of hard baked brick; the lime-washed walls had some cracks and crevices, the occasional gap, but there was no opening or any sign of another entrance. The ceiling too looked firm and secure, ribbed by heavy beams, the plaster in between hard and even.
Satisfied, Claudia approached the great circle of sand and sat down on one of the stools, staring up at the chain. She noticed how the links were well moulded and the hook at the end long and sharply curved. She closed her eyes. How could the robbery have happened? Gaius had been sleeping in the garden. The door to the chamber was held secure by two different locks and guarded by the Empress’s own mercenaries. Timothaeus and Burrus had unlocked it. The steward had explained to her how he checked the cellar three times a day to make sure that all was well, although, he confessed, he also wished to venerate such a holy relic. Claudia opened her eyes and glanced over her shoulder at the door.
‘So you came in here, Timothaeus,’ she murmured, ‘reached the edge of the circle, stared at the chain, and noticed the sword was gone?’
Claudia could understand Timothaeus’s shock; no wonder he’d fainted! The disappearance of the sword, not to mention the Empress’s wrath, would unnerve the strongest man. She stared down at the sand sprinkled with gold dust; now it had been disturbed by those who had come to search the cellar afterwards.
‘Claudia! Claudia!’
She turned round and gaped in horror. A figure shrouded in a cloak stood in the doorway. Claudia, hand trembling, lifted up the lantern. ‘Who is it?’ she called. The figure remained still.
Claudia rose, carrying the lantern before her. She was halfway across the chamber when she realised that whoever it was had not only hidden their body under a heavy cloak but also their face under a hideous mask of a satyr. Claudia’s mouth turned dry. She almost dropped the lantern as the figure moved quickly, coming into the chamber, slamming the door shut. Claudia moved back.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded. She tried to recall the voice, but it could have been anyone’s. In the light of the lantern the satyr mask looked malevolent. She noticed the long stabbing dagger this grotesque now carried. She kept moving back, desperately trying to recall if she had seen anything in the cellar she could use to protect herself. Her leg hit one of the stools, and she picked this up and moved back into the circle of sand. She’d made a mistake! The sand was very soft and deep and her feet immediately sank, the sand coming up to her ankles, impeding her retreat. The figure walked slowly forward, carefully, measuring each step. Claudia lunged forward, trying to extricate herself from the sand. She flung the stool at her attacker. It narrowly missed. She picked up another stool. Retreating round the circle of sand, she began to scream and yell, throwing one stool after another, trying to discourage this nightmare figure, so silent, so menacing.
At last, desperate, Claudia threw the lantern. It crashed at the feet of her assailant, and the flame burst out and, by mere chance, caught the edge of the grotesque’s cloak. Claudia, almost hysterical with fear, gabbled a prayer as the flame caught the dry cloth, and her opponent quickly retreated, taking off the cloak. The cellar door was flung open and the assailant fled. Claudia immediately ran after, through the half-open door, but there was no sign, nothing but a dirty cloak lying on the steps. She picked this up. The cloak was threadbare, soiled and smelt rank. The flames had died, leaving a charred, frayed edge lit by the occasional spark. Claudia stamped on these and returned to the cellar, picking her way carefully through the fallen stools. The lantern was smashed, the flame extinguished. Claudia cursed her own foolishness. She shouldn’t have come here in the first place; perhaps it had been even more stupid to return. She ran to the door, slamming it behind her, and raced up the steps.
The small passageway beyond was empty, with no trace of her attacker. Claudia went into the peristyle garden and, for a while, sat on a bench, gulping in the fresh night air. She stared at the guard standing some distance away in the shadows, wondering if he had seen anything. She shrugged to herself. If he had, he would have come over.
Claudia washed her hands in the pool and made her way back to her chamber. Inside she found everything neat and tidy; a slave had lit the lamp on the table opposite her bed. She was too tired to wash and change, and she was about to blow out the lamp when she noticed the small purple chalice crudely painted on the wall above the lantern. She drew back. She didn’t extinguish the lamp, but climbed into bed staring at the drawing. She let her mind drift on all that had happened today, faces, scenes and words, and all the time she glared at that crude drawing as if confronting an enemy, refusing to give way. She was still staring when her eyes grew heavy and she fell into a deep sleep.
Claudia woke early the next morning, roused by the sunlight and noise from the villa pouring through the unshuttered window above her narrow bed. She punched the flock-filled mattress and lay back, one hand beneath her cheek, recalling the terrors of the previous night and contemplating that hideous little picture above the oil lamp shelf. Eventually she got out of bed and examined it more carefully, tracing the outline with her fingernail. The paint was hard, a purple dye used by women to henna their nails, but when she pressed it, a crack appeared. Claudia was tempted to scrape it off but changed her mind. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘you can stay there, a reminder to me, a goad to spur me on. I shall find who you are and deal with you.’
She sat on the edge of the bed, reflecting how the mysterious painter, whoever he was, had intended to taunt and frighten her. She remembered that gruesome figure in the cellar, masked, armed and advancing so slowly towards her. ‘That’s it,’ she whispered, ‘you weren’t trying to kill me, but terrify me!’ She glared at the painting of the purple chalice. ‘And you are trying to do the same now.’ The confrontation in the cellar had been frightening but perhaps not deadly. She had watched gladiators train and fight; true killers came as swiftly as panthers or they struck from afar with arrow, slingshot, javelin or throwing knife. Last night’s spectacle was intended to terrify Helena’s little mouse, to drive her off, make her scurry for safety.
Claudia stood up. Well, they would see. Nevertheless, although she summoned up her courage, she felt her stomach grumble with fear. ‘This time was to frighten me,’ she murmured, ‘but next time. .?’
She grabbed her napkin and small leather toilet bag from the panniers slung on the peg on the door, then left her quarters and walked quickly to the luxuriantly furnished latrines, built near the kitchens so as to use the water flushed from there to keep them clean. She sat on a marble bench and stared at the mosaic on the floor, a beautiful scene depicting silver dolphins leaping about a golden sea. Timothaeus came in. He was much the worse for drink and squatted opposite looking dolefully into the middle distance.
‘It’s my stomach, you see,’ he moaned. ‘I drink too much wine and eat the rich food of the court.’