Marilyn Todd - Black Salamander

He groaned, and when his bedmate tutted sympathetically, Marcus did not bother to correct her. He gulped down a goblet of chilled Thracian wine, shuddering at the shards of ice washed down with it, which slammed into his stomach like a punch. How come thoughts of Claudia half the world away could light his loins, while this girl who so closely resembled her could not? Why could he not imagine these were Claudia’s shoulders he nuzzled? Her breasts he cupped ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir.’ Orbilio’s steward tapped at the door. ‘There’s a messenger outside, says it’s urgent-’

‘No problem.’ Marcus was out of bed and reaching for his loincloth long before the steward’s knuckles had fallen away. ‘Tell him I’m coming.’

‘That’s a joke,’ snapped the girl on the bed, but Orbilio, pulling on his long, patrician tunic, didn’t hear and by the time he’d laced up his high boots, he’d forgotten all about her, including her name.

In the city centre, public notices were being hammered up, speeches delivered from tribunals, from platforms, from the steps of the Rostra. Marcus was forced to weave his way through the hoarse-throated beggars and skirt porters wiping sweat from their brow as they pushed heavy, wheeled barrows. Around Vulcan’s sacred lotus tree, chickens clucked inside barred wooden crates, baby goats bleated and urchins snatched a spilled melon here, a dropped sea perch there. This being market day, none of the charioteers whose wheels clattered so noisily over the travertine slabs gave a thought as to what might lie beneath them, and the astrologers looked to the stars to draw up their charts, not the bowels of the earth. Yet it was here, right under the Forum, that Marcus Cornelius made his descent.

‘Talk about a different world,’ he muttered, raising his torch above his head for a better view of this subterranean warren.

The air was noticeably stale, for one thing. Certainly none of the tempting aromas from the bakery-the pastries, the buns and the sweetmeats-found their way underground, there was not even a hint of stale wine from the taverns. Just the acid stench of pitch, spluttering and hissing as it burned from the torches, sending out clouds of dark, swirling mist and-he sniffed-something else. Something indefinable in the air. He sniffed again, but still couldn’t identify it. Unless, maybe, it was the smell of utter despair…

He paused and glanced back. Four, five, yes, six galleries behind him. That’s right. Two to go. He counted again to make sure-it was a veritable honeycomb down here.

Lights in sconces flickered and sizzled in the narrow stone corridor, casting sinister shadows over the arches and confusing spatial perception. In the distance he heard the well-drilled clomp of military boots. Long before they reached him, they had turned off into another part of the maze to become nothing more than an echo. Orbilio swerved off to his right, passed two enclosed chambers, then took the first gallery left. A man was waiting.

‘You found it all right, then?’ He grinned, looping his thumbs into the waistband below the great overhang of his belly. A monster of a buckle glinted in the flickering light.

Orbilio grunted. Finding the wretched place was one thing, getting out again might be another. These cramped corridors, from which other galleries led off, and then others, each with their own series of subterranean chambers, resembled more the minotaur’s labyrinth than Rome.

‘Augustus is converting this site into a holding place for wild animals, in order to put on beast shows up in the Forum,’ said Big Buckle. ‘Windlasses are being installed, winches, the lot.’ In the smoky gloom, Orbilio saw him wink. ‘But the Security Police will still keep a section, don’t worry.’

Orbilio didn’t. ‘What have you got that’s so urgent?’ he asked, hitching his torch into the bracket which hung on the wall in the hope it would hide the low expectations etched on his face.

‘Would you believe’-Big Buckle lowered his voice to an excited whisper-‘a plot to bring down the Empire?’

Orbilio swallowed his disappointment. It was as he had feared. Every third informant these days seemed to have wind of a plot to assassinate Augustus, the majority using the shield of these troubled times to settle a few unresolved grudges and scores of their own. He sighed. In virtually every street, it seemed, there was nothing quite like a spot of vilification to make a chap feel better, whether it was retaliation against an overlooked promotion, a whispered slur about an uppity neighbour or a slave’s hit-back against his master’s brutality.

‘The last time you dragged me down here,’ Marcus pointed out, ‘it turned out to be nothing more than a man slandering the fellow his wife had run off with.’

Big Buckle spread his wide, ugly hands. ‘What can I do?’ He shrugged. ‘We have to follow up every suggestion of treason. Can I help it, if that’s the fashion?’

Dislike him he might, but Marcus felt obliged to acknowledge the point. Few things were as satisfying, it would appear, as tarnishing one’s enemies with a thin coat of treachery, and the political field lay wide open to embrace any number of wild allegations.

Barely ten weeks ago, the Emperor’s right-hand man, Agrippa, had died suddenly-suspiciously even-leaving Rome bereft of her regent. Considering the sole remaining heir-Agrippa’s son, who was also the Emperor’s grandson – happened to be just eight years of age, you can begin to imagine the problem! Banners. Who’d fill the vacuum left by Agrippa? In the end, Augustus had appointed his stepson Tiberius as regent, but the nomination hadn’t pleased everyone. The Senate alone was in uproar. Tiberius is no blood relation, they cried. Neither to Augustus, nor to Augustus’s grandson. It’s a scandal.

Some even called ‘Bring back the Republic!’

It was like setting a torch to dry kindling.

Worse, it was on account of this damned political unrest that Marcus Cornelius had been unable to leave Rome to accompany the trade delegation to Gaul.

Deep in this hollow, subterranean maze, a hammer echoed in the distance and closer to hand unseen footsteps rang with ghostly reverberation across the stone flags, clip-clopping into the smoky, Stygian gloom.

‘This one has an altogether different slant,’ said Big Buckle, briskly rubbing his hands. ‘If you read the confession, you’ll see this is right up your street.’ Clearly the word ‘sir’ was not in his vocabulary. ‘North Gallic tribes getting restless-that’s what you’re working on, isn’t it?’

Hmm. By the flickering lamplight of the dingy office chamber, Orbilio’s eyes skimmed the text, confirming nothing he didn’t know already. Dissent among the Treveri in Trier. Helvetii chieftains meeting up frequently, and in secret. Both tribes holding clandestine summits. Could any significance be attached to these rumblings? His boss didn’t think so, and Orbilio’s mind drifted back to their recent conversation.

‘This has only come about since Augustus moved troops up and over the Rhine,’ his boss had said, dismissing the notion with a wave of his small, pudgy hand. ‘And anyway, the Treveri getting it together with the Helvetii? Jupiter would swear an oath of chastity before that day dawns.’

‘I can’t agree, sir,’ Orbilio had countered. ‘Both tribes are persistent troublemakers with a reputation for war, and that argument about them being bitter enemies doesn’t stand up. History shows they change allegiances the way you and I change our tunics, I’m sure the tribes are taking advantage of our Germanic campaign. ’ There was definitely something afoot in that part of Gaul. With troops committed to the push into Germany, it had been necessary to despatch one legion from Aquitania and another from the south coast to shore up the line, but Orbilio felt it went deeper than merely a few diehards shaking their fists in the air. Suppose it was Rome they had in their sights? Maybe the Emperor himself…?