Deacon Lepidus peered down and his excitement returned.
“I see. Around the walls are ten towers. Each tower is numbered on the chart.”
It was true that each tower had a Roman numeral-I, II, III, IV, V-and among them was VIII, upon which Fidelma tapped lightly with her forefinger.
“And to the west, we have the church of Martin and buildings around it. What buildings would be at the northwest corner?”
“Northeast,” corrected the deacon hurriedly.
“Exactly so,” agreed Fidelma, unperturbed. “That’s what I meant.”
“Why,” cried the deacon, jabbing at the chart, “this building here is on the northeast corner of the church. It is marked as some sort of villa.”
“So it is. But is it still standing after all those centuries?”
“Perhaps a building is standing there,” Deacon Lepidus replied enthusiastically. “Maybe the original foundations are still intact.”
“And would that help us?” queried Fidelma. Her voice was gently probing, like a teacher trying to help a pupil with a lesson.
“Surely,” the deacon said confidently. “Cingetorix wrote that he would hide the eagle in the hypocaust. If so, if the building was destroyed, whatever was hidden in the foundations, where the hypocaust is, might have survived. You see, a hypocaust is. .”
“It is a system for heating rooms with warm air,” intervened Fidelma. “I am afraid that you Romans did not exactly invent the idea, although you claim as much. However, I have seen other ancient examples of the basic system. The floors are raised on pillars and the air underneath is heated by a furnace and piped through the flues.”
Deacon Lepidus’s face struggled to control a patriotic irritation at Fidelma’s words. He finally produced a strained smile.
“I will not argue with you on who or what invented the hypocaustrum, which is a Latin word.”
“Hypokauston is a Greek word,” pointed out Fidelma calmly. “Clearly, we all borrow from one another and perhaps that is as it should be? Let us return to the problem in hand. We will have to walk to this spot and see what remains of any building. Only once we have surveyed this area will we see what our next step can be.”
Fidelma had only been in the town a week but it was so small that she had already explored the location around the abbey. It was sad that during the two centuries since the Britons had been driven from the city by Hengist and his son Aesc, the Jutes and their Angle and Saxon comrades had let much of it fall into disuse and disrepair, preferring to build their own crude constructions of timber outside the old city walls. A few buildings had been erected in spaces where the older buildings had decayed. Only recently, since the coming of Augustine from Rome and his successors, had a new dynamism seized the city, and buildings were being renovated and repaired. Even so, it was a haphazard process.
Fidelma led the way with confidence to the crumbling towers that had once guarded the partially destroyed city walls.
“That is Tower Eight,” she said, pointing to what had once been a square tower now standing no more than a single story high.
“How do you know? Just from the map?” demanded the deacon.
She shook her head irritably.
“It bears the number on the lintel above the door.”
She pointed to where “VIII” could clearly be seen before turning to survey the piles of stone and brickwork that lay about. Her eyes widened suddenly.
“That wooden granary and its outbuilding appear to stand in the position that is indicated. See, there is the church dedicated to the Blessed Martin of Tours. Curious. They are the only buildings near here, as well.”
Deacon Lepidus followed her gaze and nodded.
“God is smiling on us.”
Fidelma was already making her way toward the buildings.
“There are two possibilities,” she mused. “The granary has been built over the villa so that the hypocaust is under there. Or, that smaller stone building next to the granary may have been part of original villa and we will find the hypocaust there.” She hesitated a moment. “Let us try the stone building first. It is clearly older than the granary.”
While they were standing there, a thickset man, dressed in Saxon workman’s clothing, stepped out of the shadow of the granary.
“Good day, reverend sir. Good day, lady. What do you seek here?”
He smiled too easily for Fidelma’s taste, giving her the impression of a fox assessing his prey. His Jutish accent was hard to understand although he was speaking in a low Latin. It was the deacon who explained their purpose, playing down the value of the eagle but offering a silver coin if the man could help them locate what they were looking for.
“This is my granary. I built it.” The man replied. “My name is Wulfred.”
“If you built it, did you observe whether it had holes in the ground or tunnels underneath it?” Fidelma inquired.
The man rubbed his jaw, thoughtfully.
“There were places we had to fill in with rubble to give us a foundation.”
Deacon Lepidus’s face fell.
“The hypocaust was filled in?”
Wulfred shrugged. “I can show you the type of holes we filled in, if you are interested. The little stone building has such holes under the floor. Come, I have a lantern. I’ll show you.”
They were following the man through the doorway when Fidelma suddenly caught sight of something scratched on one of the side pillars supporting the frame of the door. She called Deacon Lepidus’s attention to it, simply pointing. It was a scratch mark. It looked like an “IX.” There was something before it, which neither of them could make out.
“Nine?” whispered Lepidus, with sudden excitement. “The ninth legion?”
Fidelma made no reply.
It was cold and dirty inside. Dirt covered the floor. Wulfred held his polished horn lantern high. It revealed a room of about four meters square. It was totally empty. In one corner was a hole in the floor.
“Down there is where you can see the tunnels under the floor,” volunteered Wulfred.
Fidelma went across and knelt down. The smell of decay was quite prevalent. She asked for the lantern and peered down. A space of about seventy millimeters lay underneath the floor. Little brick piers supported the timbers at intervals of a meter from one another forming little squares.
“A hypocaust,” she said, raising herself and handing the lantern back. “But now what?”
Deacon Lepidus made no reply.
“Perhaps some sign was left. .?” he ventured.
Fidelma glanced on the floor. What she saw made her frown, and she began to scrape at the floor with the point of her shoe. The earth came away to reveal a tiny patch of mosaic. These were the type of floors that she had seen in Rome. She asked Wulfred if he had a broom of twigs. It took a half an hour to clear a section of the floor. The mosaic revealed a figure clad in a Roman senatorial toga; one hand was held up with a finger extended. Fidelma frowned. Something made her follow the pointing finger. She suddenly noticed a scratch mark on the wall. There was no doubt about it this time. The figure “IX” had been scratched into the stonework and a tiny arrow pointed downwards beneath it.
“We’ll break into the hypocaust here,” she announced. “With the permission of Wulfred, of course,” she added.
The Jute readily agreed when Deacon Lepidus held out another coin.
Lepidus himself took charge of making the hole. It was the work of another half an hour to create a space through which a small person could pass into the hypocaust below. Fidelma volunteered. Her face was screwed into an expression of distaste as she squeezed into the confined darkness, having to lie full length on her stomach. It was not merely damp but the walls below were bathed in water. It was musty and reminded Fidelma of a cemetery vault. She ran her hand in darkness over the wet brickwork.