CHAPTER FIVE

Lucius waited till he was sure they had all gone before making his way to the room of the wet nurse, she asleep by the brazier, her own child cradled in her arms. He ignored her, passing on to look into the cot, which contained the new-born child he had publicly acknowledged as his son. The infant lay at peace, the long black lashes on his eyes seeming to cover a goodly portion of his face. The jet-black hair of his birth would go, but it would come back thick and as strong as the physical presence masked by the soft rounded features of a baby.

Lucius stroked the tiny hand. ‘I pray to the gods that you will grow to manhood, and stand as potent as I do as a representative of a noble house. You will be the son I have always longed for. Tomorrow we will commence the ceremonies. Within a week the whole Roman world will know of your arrival.’

With that he turned on his heel and left. On his way back to his study he passed the room in which his wife lay, silent and pale upon a bier, her white bloodless hands folded across her breasts. Lucius Falerius did not spare her cadaver a second’s glance.

The streets of Rome were never deserted, but for such a teeming, crowded city they were, on this night, ominously quiet. It was cold and perhaps the taverns were full, and what trouble the wine would bring was brewing within them. Those out, seeing Gafon and his band approach, thought it prudent to choose another route to whichever destination they were heading. There was a certain amount of shuffling of the pack as Gafon tried to ensure that Ragas, like the others in a heavy cloak, led them, while the slave was equally determined to bring up the rear, for the gang leader was gnawing on a tricky problem, whether to kill Ragas before his main task was completed, or after? The mistake Gafon made was to look so hard at Ragas while he tried to decide. For a man that loved to fight, had been a potent warrior and was at his happiest in the boxing square it sent a danger signal that other men might not have sensed. Ragas, noticing the indifference of the other members of the party, wondered if he was not indulging in a fantasy without foundation, but once alerted to a potential threat he could not relax.

Neither man had much time to think; since the Cave of Lupercal, where the rites to mark the cult were nearing completion, was no great distance from the Temple of Ceres. Home of the plebeian Aediles, this was the known destination of Tiberius Livonius and his supporters once the ceremonies were over. At least Gafon could be happy, as they skirted the Forum Boracum, they were heading in the right direction, towards the wharves and warehouses of the Port of Rome, a teeming warreh of alleys, empty at night, where the dead body of a slave could be carried without causing fuss. He had finally decided what to do; assassinate Tiberius first, then see to his secondary task. Ragas would be decapitated after being killed, his head and body thrown separately into the Tiber. The waters of the river would carry both parts, at differing speeds, all the way downriver, and washed ashore in different places, they would never be connected.

Gafon heard them coming, four noisy individuals who thought themselves immune to the hazards faced by ordinary mortals. Like the men who had stopped on their way to the Cave of Lupercal to attend the recent Falerii birth they were dressed in goatskins. Now the dried sacrificial blood that gave potency to the adherents to the cult streaked their bodies, illuminated by the flaring torches they carried. Gafon had placed three men who would let them pass, and put himself at the head of the other three to intercept his prey. The lights they carried, plus their own noisy conversation, made things ridiculously easy and they did not hear the men who slipped out behind to follow in their wake, and showed little shock when further progress was barred by Gafon. Even when the hidden weapons were brought to their attention, no hint of fear could be detected in their behaviour.

‘Do you not know who I am?’ demanded the tallest of the group, lifting the goat’s mask from his head. Even sweat-streaked and blood-stained there was no mistaking the well-known profile of Tiberius Livonius, the plebeian tribune.

‘We know,’ Gafon replied.

Tiberius Livonius pointed towards the sword in Gafon’s hand. ‘Then you will know to even raise that in my presence is to invite eternal damnation.’

‘Damnation is something we have already, Tribune. Happen you’ll find when you cross the Styx that what awaits you is the kind of life we folk live as normal.’

So sure was Tiberius of his status that he did not even attempt to raise his hands to defend himself and the shock on his face was as much from the dent to his certainties as it was to the blade of Gafon’s sword slicing into his bare gut. The eyes opened wide as the body arched towards the gang leader as, with the same skill as he taught his gladiators, the weapon was rammed sideways and up, to tear through the vital organs and ensure instant death. Gafon felt the tribune’s blood flowing hot over the sword handle and his hand, watched as the croak of protest turned to a gurgle of bright red as the froth of yet more began to spill out of his mouth. Around him the light faded as those bearing the torches fell noisily to his men, screaming as they were repeatedly stabbed and clubbed by idiots who had no idea how to execute a clean kill.

In the silence that followed, Gafon took up a torch and turned to the alleyway in which Ragas was standing, hood up and cloak held tightly to his body. ‘Come, friend, and see that they are all dead. Then you can return to your master and give him the news.’

Ragas declined to move. ‘I can see well enough from here.’

‘Then you have the eyes of a god. For me, I would rather come closer so that I could be certain.’

Good with a sword, Gafon was less accomplished at the telling of falsehoods, so his words struck a false note that was highlighted by the torchlight and the bodies around his feet. Ragas, looking into Gafon’s eyes, saw no humour, no reassurance in those eyes, all he saw was the possibility of his own death. Having committed such a crime, the whole gang should have dispersed instantly. Yet there was still a lingering doubt, for his death would have had to be ordered and he could just not bring himself to believe that even Lucius Falerius would stoop so low.

‘Go on your way,’ he said to Gafon, ‘and I will return with the news of your success.’

‘Look at them,’ Gafon demanded, jabbing toward the bodies with his sword. Ragas threw off his cloak and ran then, and the voice behind him cried out the words he had dreaded to hear, words that told him that his fears were real. ‘Get him. Ten gold denarii to the man who brings me his head.’

The pitch-black alleys of the port were both a help and a hindrance. He was aided by the sheer number, but handicapped by the lack of certainty as to his direction, as well as the numerous objects that lay hidden in his path, objects which saw him more than once crashing painfully onto the hard packed earth. That he had to do silently, so that his ears could alert him to the proximity of the noisy pursuit. There were stars above his head, but not enough to steer a course by, and they were often cut off from view by the overhang of the higher warehouses. Common sense told him to stop on occasions and listen to see if the pursuit had passed him by. Renewed fear made him move, there being no security in noises, the distance of which he could not discern. Several times he nearly ran into one of Gafon’s thugs, alerted only by a flicker of torchlight that the route he had chosen was one to take him into danger, not out of it.

His luck ran out after about ten minutes. He saw one torch in front of him, only to find as he turned that another was casting a glow at an intersection to his rear. Ragas felt his heart contract as that glow turned to flame, and he saw behind him a scarred, grinning brawler carrying a spiked club. He was grinning because behind his quarry he could see quite plainly his leader, Gafon, sword in hand and so could Ragas when he turned to look. A boxer has fast reflexes; he has to, when in a bout only a split second separates him from delivering a blow or receiving one. Ragas did not hesitate; he ran at the thug holding the club, knowing that he stood a better chance against that than he did against the sharp blade and lethal point of a gladiator’s sword. The thug readied himself, club half-raised to smash in the approaching skull, as, behind him, Ragas could hear Gafon moving in to complete the kill.

The way he launched himself, feet first at the ankles of the brawler, one foot striking home, threw the man off balance. The spiked club was already swinging, but the increased distance to a body now on the ground, added to his own loss of stability, took most of the strength out of the blow. It still broke an upraised left forearm, the crack of the bone going echoing off the alley walls. Ragas had spun upwards, fear making him unaware of the pain; he knew his left arm was useless, but that was not needed by a right-handed fighter. The bare-knuckled punch took the clubman right on the edge of his jawbone and the crack of that going was audible, accompanied as it was by a scream of pain that died in the brute’s throat as he was knocked unconscious. Ragas was out from under the collapsing body and running, cradling his broken arm, before the body hit the ground. He heard Gafon curse as he leapt over the inert gang member, as well as the ring of his sword blade as it connected with something solid. It was not any sense of direction that made Ragas turn left, just the need of self-preservation, but his hopes lifted as he saw the silver blue streak of the river ahead of him.

The Tiber was not safety; it was fast flowing and treacherous, at its worst as it ran under the inner city bridges, doubly so to a man with only one good arm, but it was better than the certainty that lay behind him, a sword from which he could in no way protect himself. As he emerged on to the open wharf Ragas dug his feet into the wooden boards to add an extra ounce of purchase to his run. At the edge he threw himself with all the force he could muster, his dive taking him clear of the tied up boats. In the interval between leaving terra firma and the icy water closing over his head, Ragas heard Gafon yell in frustration.

His putative assassin was only ten feet behind the splash, but for all that mattered it could have been ten leagues. Gafon could not swim, and even if he had been able to nothing would have got him into the Tiber at a point where it was narrow and deep. Instead he stopped, searching the silver sheen of moon-reflecting water to see if he could spot a floating head. One by one he was joined by the rest of his gang, who were sent downriver to look out for Ragas.

‘He’ll be dead for certain,’ Gafon said, when they re-gathered. ‘I’m sure I heard his arm go when it took that club. There’s no way that he could survive in that river with two good arms, let alone one.’

In some ways Gafon was trying to reassure himself, yet as they made their way back to where the fallen clubman still lay, he reasoned that it made little difference. The odds of the slave surviving went from nil to near impossible, and if he did, would he want anyone to know; the only person interested was the one who had ordered him killed.

‘Look at him,’ Gafon said, as he stood over the crumpled heap of his gang member. ‘Supposed to be a street fighter and yet he gets knocked out by one blow.’

The torchlight picked up the pale cream of the scroll that lay against the recumbent body. Gafon picked it up, handed his torch to another and opened it. He could not read it, but the words of Lucius Falerius filled his thoughts.

‘That scroll must disappear too.’

‘So it shall,’ Gafon reasoned, sensing that in his hand he held a guarantee of his own security. ‘Into my strongbox.’

‘Right, lads,’ he called. ‘Get back to your houses. I’ll go and tell our stuck up employer that his wishes have been carried out.’

The shock of the freezing water, coming straight off the snow covered mountains of the Apennines, sent a jolt through Ragas’s body, yet it was not just the cold he feared but the speed of a watercourse in spate. Tumbling downriver in the teeming cataract, he fought to get his head sufficiently above water to keep air in his lungs, difficult with one arm useless, while with his good arm he sought to stay away from the riverbank. In that Ragas succeeded, but he had forgotten about the Tiber bridges and it was those that did for him. With arches constraining the waters, the speed of the flow increased and he was sent tumbling into a raging torrent that spun him head over heels so that he no longer knew which was up or down.

Still under water, his body going rigid with the cold, Ragas knew he was going to drown, for with only one arm he had not the means to save himself. His mind turned first to the gods he had worshipped all his life to plead for intercession, aware that they never had in all the years he had made obeisance to them and that they were not going to now. But then as his lungs filled with water he saw the image of that child in the basket as he had handed it to Lucius, the infant that ensured his bloodline was safe. So perhaps his gods had not deserted him after all. He could have, many times, died in battle, but they had kept him alive till he had fulfilled that one function. So, if the earth had no further use of him, he could depart it in peace.

The corpse that washed up downriver was beyond recognition, naked, battered as it was by rocks and scarred by sand so that it looked as if it had been flayed; there was no way to tell who the man was or from what part of society he had come. Bodies washed downriver towards the port of Ostia were nothing new; they could be paupers dead of starvation, victims of robbery and murder, slaves killed by their masters, even men in despair who took their own life.

Those who found it were decent folk, farmers and fisher folk, and pious enough to appease Mania, Goddess of the Dead, so they had the good grace to set up a pyre and give the body some sort of burial, watching as the soul of this unknown casualty was taken up to the heavens in the smoke of his burning corpse.

Gafon returned alone as promised to the Falerii household, to tell Lucius that his orders had been fulfilled, glad that the man who had employed him seemed satisfied enough to gift him another purse of gold for his efforts. But he was not allowed to depart without what the senator called advice, but which he knew to be a threat.

‘Be careful how you pay off those to whom you owe money, Gafon. Sudden evidence of wealth, or even claims of unexpected good fortune, makes men wonder, and that causes them to gossip.’

‘I shall take care, Lucius Falerius, and if I can ever be again of service ... ’

‘I cannot see that we shall ever need to meet again.’

Gafon felt the scroll inside his tunic, pressed against his belly. They would meet again, all right, when things died down. Lucius Falerius would pay handsomely for that, just to ensure that no one connected the disappearance of his warrior body slave with the murders he and his band had just committed. He exited to streets that were now full of wild people and flaming torches, as those who had supported the plebeian tribune, and saw in him hope for the future, reacted noisily to the news of his death.