Marilyn Todd - Black Salamander

He paused, as a brawl broke out downstairs where the moneylenders set out their stalls, and the thin man sucked voraciously on another pastille. Liquorice was supposed to be helping his ulcer, or so the physician insisted. So far all it had done was give him chronic diarrhoea.

‘Surely,’ said Squint, gazing up at the clerestory window, ‘the point here is to celebrate that our plan is on target. Note I say, our plan,’ he added. ‘I assume you’re still with us on this?’

The invalid nodded solemnly as the trio continued their tour of the gallery. Below, where the central hall of the basilica was divided into three naves separated by pillars of black, red and white marble, throngs of noisy shoppers milled around, shoving their way between the clamouring crowds intent on visiting the law courts, shops and offices which opened straight into the street. Slaves in gaudy tunics, merchants in white woollen togas, red-booted senators and magistrates with purple stripes on their robes, hardly an inch passed between them, they looked for all the world like multi-coloured crystals moving round inside a kaleidoscope.

‘Of course I’m behind it,’ the thin man reiterated, clasping his hands. ‘With Augustus out of the way, the three of us can make a huge difference to the Empire. No more namby-pambying with the Germans, cut right through, I say, and sod leaving them to administer their own bloody territories. That’s where he,’ he shot a glance over his shoulder to his marble Imperial Majesty, ‘has failed us. Allowing the likes of the Gauls and the Egyptians to police themselves.’

‘I quite agree.’ A pudgy thumb made a positive gesture. ‘Autonomy is not the answer. Never mind taxing the buggers, it’s our bloody land, chum. We fought for it, we conquered it, the provinces are ours by right.’

‘Absolutely,’ Squint said. ‘And with the technology we have at our fingertips today, we can work those lands far better than a few backward yokels and with the Gauls, the Africans, the Balkan tribes, the whole bloody lot under our Republican yoke, we’ll have an endless source of cheap labour and by the gods how rich we’ll be. Both personally, and as a nation, and this,’ his arm swept round the basilica, ‘will look like a flea-ridden farmstead in comparison. Gold pillars, gold ceilings, I tell you, gentlemen, when we’ve finished, Rome won’t be a city of bricks and stone, not even a city of marble. Every temple, every public building, every rooftop will be gold, between us we shall create the eighth wonder of the world where even the great pyramids will be dwarfed in comparison.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Fatso said.

‘But I still ask the question,’ Squint continued, ‘are the rebel tribes to be trusted?’

The fat man wiped his bald and sweating pate with the hem of his toga and steered his colleagues to a quiet corner, ostensibly to admire the frieze. ‘I can understand why you’re both jittery,’ he said. ‘It’s been three weeks since our last conference, and we promised to meet only occasionally and in public so as not to draw attention to ourselves.’

Three heads leaned at a forty-five degree angle, as though venerating the artist’s interpretation of the rape of the Sabine women.

‘Now, since I am co-ordinating the plan and have access to the most information, let me reassure you as to the security both from within Rome and as regarding the tribes. As you know, we have set the assassination date for the Ides of July-’

‘Our neatest touch yet.’ The invalid laughed. ‘The old Republic was swept away when the Divine Julius was murdered on the Ides of March. Now history will recall the occasion when it was restored. On the Ides of the month named after Caesar.’

‘Quite.’ With self-satisfied smiles, three heads turned to lean forty-five degrees the other way, as though to admire the frieze from the opposite angle.

‘Obviously it’s not just Augustus who’ll have to go. You both have a full list of the generals, senators, magistrates and servants who’ll have to be despatched that same night, and that should not prove too much of a problem. We have sufficient loyal allies here in Rome and, as agreed, poison will be our chosen method. A silent killer, requiring the minimum number of assassins-any problems so far?’

‘Only that my brother-in-law is on the list,’ said Squint.

‘Does that present an obstacle?’ the fat man asked.

‘None whatsoever.’

‘Good. Now once the Ides of July hits home, chaos will break out, and this is where our last few months of sucking up to the likes of the Treveri come into their own. We can’t hope to restore the Republic without external assistance. Already since we’ve sown our little seeds of unrest, two legions have been despatched to the trouble spots and as of today, sporadic fighting will break out in another four places, five tomorrow, and rather than leave the German border unprotected, Augustus is bound to remove troops from Italy and Gaul.’

‘With such a sodding great hole in our defences, the tribes we’ve bribed will sweep through the Alps and lay siege to Rome in a week,’ said the thin man.

‘And therein lies my concern,’ Squint said. ‘You may recall, we haven’t actually bribed them. All they know is that the State Treasury has been secretly raided for payment, but the treasure, for security’s sake, is stored at some hitherto undisclosed destination.’

The fat man turned away from the fate of the wretched Sabines to lean his arms on the rail as though observing the colourful surge in the nave.

‘But the map’s on its way, is it not?’ Ripples of fat trembled as his great frame began to heave with mirth. ‘The Helvetii know it, the Treveri know it, every bloody rebel chieftain knows we’ve sent the effing thing, and that when it finally arrives in Vesontio, the individual pieces will be handed over to some appointed agent who’ll stitch it together and pass it on, and between them, the tribes can fight over who gets what.’

By now all three senators were mopping tears of laughter from their eyes as the beauty of their double-cross came into focus.

‘Now I ask you.’ The fat man guffawed. ‘What can possibly go wrong?’

By mid-afternoon on their third day in the canyon, Claudia had begun to suspect that the purpose behind the rock fall was not an ambush in order to rob, rape and massacre, rather a ploy to delay the party’s arrival in Vesontio. What other explanation could there be? That they’d be rescued by the army could not be doubted, it was merely a question of time. Since the landslide was a masterstroke of civil engineering, destroying both entrances to the ravine while snowmelts rendered this gorge unnavigable, any efforts to break through would be hampered from all angles, buying time, time, time and more time.

Why?

Perched on a rock, dangling her feet in one of the quieter pools as she dried her hair with a towel, Claudia studied the stranded assemblage. Much to Maria’s social chagrin, more and more clothing had appeared on the shrubbery, vivid scarlets and blues, yellows and white-gaudy blossoms along the green riverbank. Acceptance had now set in, the group was relaxed, almost happy, and even old Hanno was enough of a trooper to know that the best way to mourn his grandson was to be cheerful. So he was back to being the joker again, his prune of a face gurning, his wiry frame mimicking everyone from Clemens to Volso, even Drusilla could not escape his hilarious caricatures. Look at the way he cocked his nose upwards in disdain-the cat might have been looking at a mirror image of herself.

Maybe, thought Claudia, maybe I’m wrong about the saboteur being one of us. Take a look at the carnival atmosphere. Theo, out of armour and looking at least twelve years of age, clowning around with the muleteer, a clumsy stooge to the comedian. Iliona, belting out a tub-thumper of a song about the skill of Cretan archers as the younger wives clapped and danced, their long hair unbound and informal, their skirts whirling and swirling and revealing their knees. A couple of the older matrons smiled benignly as they scrubbed their linens on the rocks and wrung them dry and even the two injured drivers, suffering from the effects of dwindling henbane supplies, made an effort to tap with the lively rhythm. Other men fished or arm-wrestled, played dice or dozed, while Clemens and Volso argued their respective theological professions.