"She's away!"
She was-but not far enough. She made a beeline for what may have looked like a place to hide: the Agrippan Baths.
"Come on!" I set off after the cat, urging the vigiles to follow me. As I passed Pa, I shot him a disgusted look.
"You harboring a death wish, boy?" he greeted me. I was too good a Roman to tell my own father to jump into a quaking bog, without a plank or ropes. Well, there was no time to phrase it rudely enough. "I'll get Petronius," he called after me. "He likes cats!"
Petro wouldn't like this one. Anyway, it was marauding in the Seventh's jurisdiction: not his problem. I, though, had somehow involved myself. So who was stupid?
We tried telling the attendants to close the doors behind us. No use. Too many frightened people were rushing out through the monumental entrance. The attendants simply decided to run away with them. Everyone was shrieking in panic. When we ran inside, the leopardess had disappeared. The noise died down after the first exodus of naked men. We started to search the place.
I ran through the apodyterium, snatching at clothes on the pegs to check that the cat was not hidden under togas and cloaks. The Baths of Agrippa had been planned to impress; together with the Pantheon they formed the most dramatic building complex in the large output of Augustus' organizing son-in-law, his visible monument after he realized that despite decades of service he would never himself get to be Emperor. These baths had been free to the public since Agrippa died, a gracious gesture in his will. They were elegant, lofty, marble-clad, and supremely functional. Every time we pushed open the door to the next chamber we were slapped back by a wall of ever hotter, steamier air. Every step forward became more slippery and dangerous.
Out here in the Field of Mars was a long way to come for most folk, but even so the baths were generally well patronized. The leopardess had almost cleared them. The pick-pockets and snack salesmen had been first out. The fat women who took money for guarding clothes and supplying equipment had knocked us sideways as they ran for cover. A solitary slave now cowered in the unguent room, too frightened even to flee. For once the Spartan dry heat room and steamy tepidarium lay eerily empty. I kept going, accompanied by a few of the vigiles, our studded boots scraping and sliding on the tiled floors. When we staggered through the heavy self-closing door to the hot room, our clothes instantly stuck to us. Unprepared by normal warming-up procedures, we found the wet heat utterly draining. Our hair dripped. Our hearts pounded unnaturally. Through the stifling steam we could make out naked shapes, the shiny raspberry flesh of soporific bathers all apparently undismayed by the chaos outside-oblivious in fact. These men had not been recently inspected by a loose leopard.
"She can't have come this way!" The great door would have stopped her. It was cantilevered so it swung easily to the touch, but the cat would have seen it as a fixed obstacle.
We fell back with relief. Curious bathers tried to follow us. "Stay inside. Keep the door shut!" One of the vigiles had sense, but he was wasting his breath with advice. He was sweating so much he had lost all authority. People wanted to know what was happening. We had to find the cat. Then we could organize proper security around the area where she was.
These baths were unfamiliar to me. There seemed to be corridors everywhere. They had private pools, latrines, cubby holes, attendants' quarters… Athought struck. "Oh Jove! We have to make sure she doesn't get into the hypocaust."
A vigilis swore. Under the suspended floors of the baths lay the heating chambers, fueled by huge furnaces. He realized as I had done that crawling through stacked brick piers in the baking hot cavity in search of the leopard would be ghastly. The space was hardly big enough to squeeze through and the heat would be unbearable. It would be dangerous to breathe the fumes. An attendant wandered through a doorway holding an armful of towels, thin things that were hardly fit to blow your nose on. Piperita grabbed him, threw the towels away, and shoved him down one of the access points, with a large trooper standing guard.
"Search round all the columns. Shout if you see anything moving-" The man on guard grinned at me as Piperita gave his orders; even he looked a bit rueful. "Well, it's a start!"
"He'll collapse." I was curt. It was stupidity. A big cat looking for a refuge just might slink between the hot pillars below, but for a man it was no joke.
"I'll send someone else in to get him if he does." Without further comment I ran back towards the cold room. I met another attendant whom I sent running to warn the furnace master. "Where can I find the manager?"
"He's still at lunch probably." Typical.
Luckily the vigiles had hauled out an undermanager from some nook. He had been chewing a filled roll, but the cheese was rather ripe and he seemed glad to abandon it. We persuaded him to organize his staff in a methodical search. Every time we checked a room we left a man in it to warn us if the leopardess prowled in there later. Slaves started persuading the rest of the public to leave, grumbling but fairly orderly.
The heat and steam were exhausting us. Fully dressed, we were overheating, losing our will to continue. Wild rumors of sightings were being exchanged. As the building finally emptied, the echoes of running feet and the vigiles' shouts made the atmosphere even wilder. I dragged my arm across my forehead, desperate to clear the perspiration. An overweight vigilis was emerging from a hypocaust vent but had stuck. His joshing mates rubbed his red face with towels as he gasped and swore. "Someone said they saw her go down-I went to look around, but it's hopeless. The space is only about three feet high and there's a forest of columns. If you met her nose to nose you'd be dead." With a last effort he wrenched his body out through the manhole. "Phew! It's hot as stink and the air's foul!"
Temporarily done for, he fell full length against the corridor wall, recovering from the effects of humidity and hot gases.
"Best to seal up the underfloor area," I suggested. "If she is in there either she'll expire or she'll come out of her own accord later. When we're sure she's nowhere else we can deal with that."
We left him, and the rest of us dragged ourselves back to the search. Soon we reckoned we had checked everywhere. Maybe the leopardess was outside the baths altogether by now, causing a panic somewhere else while we wasted our time. The vigiles were ready to give up.
I was finished myself but I did a final check through the building. Everyone else had gone out. Finding myself alone I glanced through a wedged open door to the hot steam room. Much of the heat had escaped now. I walked to the great marble bowl of standing water and leaned over to splash my face. It was tepid, and had no effect. As I straightened up, I heard something that made all the hairs on my neck stand up.
The huge establishment was virtually silent. But I had caught the scratch of claws on marble-very close.
Eighteen
VERY GENTLY I made myself turn around. The leopardess was eyeing me. She had stationed herself on one of the wall seats, sitting up like a sweating bather-between me and the open door.
"Good girl-" She growled. It was terrifying. Fair enough. My luck with the feminine element had never been good.
I kept still. There was no way out. I had my knife but was otherwise unarmed. Even my cloak lay on the flat marble seat beyond the leopardess. The floor was slippery, worsened by a large slick of spilled bathing oil. Its perfume was vine blossom. The one I hate most, more fishy than festive. Needle-sharp shards of the broken alabastron that once contained it lay in wait amongst the oil too.