Rosemary Rowe - The Chariots of Calyx

This was disconcerting, but, I reminded myself, the internal affairs of the factio were not my immediate concern. My task was to confront Fortunatus, not to chase after errant slaves. I nodded a curt farewell to the guard and went out of the gate with the intention of going straight to the tavern I had been told about. I would send Junio, who was doubtless waiting in the street, back with a further message to my bargemaster to explain where I had gone. Knowing Junio, in fact, I was rather surprised that he hadn’t managed to talk his way into the factio headquarters, as I had done: but perhaps the guard had tried to reassert a little of his authority by deliberately keeping my servant outside the gate.

‘Junio,’ I began, but there was no sign of him.

I looked in all directions, but the alleyway was empty.

For the first time I felt a stirring of alarm. I had told Junio to come here, and it was not like him to delay in carrying out my orders. I hurried back to the guard, but if he had been unhelpful earlier he was doubly so now. To listen to his account, one would suppose that he had never seen a strange slave in the alleyway in his entire life. His manner had changed too. He delivered his information in a toneless voice, and with a marked reluctance to meet my eyes. In fact, he gave me the impression of being increasingly worried about something and I soon realised that no amount of questioning, governor’s warrant or no governor’s warrant, was going to make him change his story.

I was seriously anxious now. Had something happened to Junio? There was something mysterious about this factio , and I was disturbed by the way my attendants kept disappearing. First Superbus, and now this. There was only one thing to be done. I abandoned all thought of finding Fortunatus and set off towards the warehouse and the barge as fast as my aged legs would carry me.

I was halfway down the alley when I heard a hissing whisper. ‘Citizen?’

I looked around, but for a moment could see nothing, only the blank walls and the empty alley. Even the gatekeeper from the factio had gone back to his guardroom under the arch, and was nowhere to be seen. I felt a little prickle at the nape of my neck. At the far end of the narrow street, where it met the major thoroughfare, the life of the town went on. Pedestrians with bundles, men on donkeys, traders with handcarts jostled by, but few of them spared a glance for the little alley, and certainly none of them had spoken. In any case that voice had surely been behind me?

‘Over here, citizen!’ I realised uneasily that the sound was coming from a tiny alleyway, scarcely wider than a man, that ran down beside the carpet-maker’s shop — one of those narrow passages that are used in most big cities for the disposal of waste: stinking refuse which is piled there until the rains and rats take it away, or the farmers come with night carts and carry it off — for a small fee — to fertilise the fields. The entrance to this one was so heaped up with rubbish — an accumulation of building rubble as well as damp scraps of wool, food, and human excrement — that I had scarcely noticed it was there.

‘Citizen!’ I saw him at last, lurking behind a pile of broken stones, and let out an audible sigh of relief. It was not Glaucus, or an enraged Eppaticus, merely an aged slave, dressed in the distinctive blue of Fortunatus’ factio , who was gesturing urgently to me as though speed and secrecy were a matter of life and death.

I moved over to him, frowning. ‘What. .?’

He was old and frail, much older than I was by the look of him, and a few white wisps of hair hung round his ashen face. He was so thin and pale that he might have been a fugitive, apart from the smartness of his tunic. There was something almost pathetic about him. Perhaps that is why I felt suddenly more confident, and went towards him, instinctively lowering my voice to match his own.

‘What do you want?’

‘You are looking for someone, citizen?’

I nodded. It was not a difficult deduction, perhaps, but I did not think to question it. ‘Have you seen Junio? My servant?’ I said anxiously.

He reached out then and seized my arm. ‘This way, citizen. At once. There is no time to be lost.’ He let go of my wrist, and turned away down the narrow passage, threading his way through the filthy rubbish heaps. I hesitated a moment, but he stopped and beckoned me again, more pressingly than ever.

I clambered over the slag pile at the entrance to the lane and followed him. I could hear my heart thumping with anxiety. What had they done to Junio? Where had they taken him? And who were ‘they’?

The old man turned a corner and stopped beside a narrow door. It was neglected and unpainted but stout enough, and the building it led to seemed in reasonable repair. He slid back the bolt, taking care to make no noise, eased the door quietly open and stood aside. His voice was no more than a conspiratorial murmur. ‘In there, citizen, quickly. Before it is too late.’

He sounded urgent and almost without thinking I plunged past him into the passageway. A flight of stone steps opened at my feet, and in the semi-darkness I almost tumbled down them, but I recovered myself in time.

My guide, still standing at the doorway, waved me on. ‘Do not make a noise, citizen!’ he hissed. ‘Down there! Make haste! Be quiet — and be quick.’

I was beginning to share his agitation, and I obeyed as quickly as I could. The only light was from the open door, and the steps were steep, but I groped my way downwards into the dark below. The wall beside me was cold and damp — there seemed to be rotting vegetation under my fingertips — but the thought of what they might be doing to Junio spurred me on. I looked up. The old slave was still at the door, watching my progress anxiously. ‘Tell me when you are safely down.’

I almost stumbled a dozen times, but I reached the bottom at last. I felt cautiously forward with my foot — then, with increasing confidence, my hands. I seemed to be in some sort of unlit passageway, the floor uneven and littered with stones as if the building was abandoned. Not that I expected furniture.

‘I’m here!’ I called up softly to my erstwhile guide.

For a moment I thought he had not heard me. Then with a faint click the outer door closed to, and I found myself in blackness so total that I could not make out my hand before my eyes. The old slave had set himself a problem, if he hoped to come down those steps in the dark, I thought. I waited, expecting to see a flintstone strike and the sudden glow of tinder in the dark. Nothing happened.

I waited. I could hear my own breath now, and smell the dank smell of vegetation and decay. Still there was no sound from above me. The thumping of my heart seemed fit to burst my ribs. Then, faintly but distinctly, I heard a noise — the unmistakable scrape and clunk of the bolt being pushed across.

Even then I could hardly bring myself to believe what I had done. I had walked — without coercion, of my own accord — headfirst into a trap. Of course, when I came to consider it, I should have known better. Following an unknown slave down an unused alley in an unfamiliar city — the merest child would have known better. The man had not offered me a single piece of information or identification — he had simply preyed upon my fears and I had followed him. It was as simple as that.

And now I was a prisoner. In what seemed to be a disused building, too. The outer door was bolted behind me, and even if I could grope my way up the steps again there was no way of getting out. It was shaming as well as frightening. I felt my way back to the bottom step and sat down heavily.

I tried to think. Rather too late, as I was well aware, but better now than never. Even so, I could come to no conclusion. I had been deliberately led away and locked into a cellar by a man I had never seen before. It seemed to make no sense at all. Perhaps I had merely fallen prey to one of the gangs of thieves who doubtless operate in London, as they do in every big town. Considering how easy it had been, I was lucky not to have been set upon and robbed earlier.