Lindsey Davis - Scandal Takes a Holiday

Even if not, there were good reasons to investigate what a young child was doing in my uncle's company.

I followed them hotfoot. I wondered if they were heading outside the Gate, so my day would be ending as it began, at a necropolis. Sitting in a tomb in the pitch dark had been bad enough. Now, had I but known it, I was heading somewhere worse.

When they turned off the Cardo it was just before the town Gate, but even though they were not going to the necropolis I had a gloomy premonition.

I knew this place. I had been here one quiet morning, during my extended search for temples. It was no use to me then, and I would rather not have had it become significant now. Fulvius and Zeno had entered the sanctuary of the Great Mother. Cybele. That was bad enough.

Even before I got there, I could hear that this was not a quiet occasion. The old city walls provided one boundary for a large triangular area; it was bigger than any other temple campus I had seen at Ostia, bigger than any religious sanctuary in Rome's crowded public areas, apart from the sacred heights of the Capitol and Arx. We entered this haunt from the Cardo, halfway along, through a row of little shops.

Directly opposite, stood the main Temple of Cybele. A corner to my left had a cluster of other buildings, one of which I knew was the shrine for Attis. Cybele kept her castrated consort at a distance, although a colonnaded portico beside the old city wall did provide a sheltered route for their eunuch priests to meet. A jumble of buildings on my right were, I thought, for adherents of the cult. Maybe the priests' living quarters if, as at Rome, this exotic cult's celebrants were kept away from daily life lest Eastern mysticism contaminate our sturdy Western values.

My task now was hopeless. The sanctuary was far too busy. People were everywhere; as a meeting place where kidnappers and victims could be unobserved, this site had been chosen cunningly.

I could not now see Fulvius and the boy. Nor could I spot Mutatus, nor anyone who might be meeting him.

I had had some ideas of whom to expect. The presence of my uncle, wherever he had disappeared to, had implied that I was dealing with the old gang still. Caninus must be correct. Uncle Fulvius was the Illyrian' and this would be, after all, yet another exchange manipulated by the same people as all the rest.

A cult initiation was apparently due tomorrow. Priests in their long effeminate robes were milling about, some escorting a large black bull to the pen where he would spend the night before sacrifice.

He was led in a short procession, with Eastern music and dancing, and he sensed that all this fuss foretold something dangerous. Maybe he could smell the blood of his predecessors.

At any rate, the colourful costumes and unusual surroundings were badly upsetting him. He started bellowing and tried to break free. He was a big lad. Luckily they had him secured with more than flower garlands; stout work with ropes contained him until he was half dragged, half shouldered into the pen. Lustral water was splashed about; he did not care for that too much either.

All this took place in the complex of small temples to my left. There was further activity in the long colonnade. I would never identify anyone I wanted here.

I pulled the toga I was wearing up and over my head like a man attending a sacrifice; it offered some anonymity. Nobody who knew me as an informer would be expecting to see me in formal dress – well, not unless he already knew I had been to a funeral today.

I set off straight across the open grass, heading for the main temple in the far corner of the site. It was late afternoon. The sun was above the temple, making it a dark outline only. Anyone there was lost from sight, invisible against the building.

However, if they looked this way they would see me, a well-lit togate figure, striding towards them in the open, quite alone. If I was approaching villains, they might not suspect I still had Petro's spare sword hidden in my clothing.

On the other hand, if they knew why I was tracking them, they might guess I would come armed. They would be armed themselves. Since they were in a religious complex, their weapons would be hidden too. Any number of them could be lurking here. They were likely to know me; I might not recognise them. I reached the Temple of Cybele. Discreetly, I searched it. The toga helped make me acceptable.

The Great Mother had a rectangular temple of modest proportions, within which she reclined in her turreted crown; she turned a calm gaze upon me as I invaded her silent sanctum. In the presence of powerful women, informers are respectful men; I apologised for disturbing her.

Empty-handed, I strode back outside. Impatiently I shook the toga from my head, to feel less muffled; I ran a hand through my curls, still caked with salt from my enforced dip yesterday.

From these grey temple steps, I now had the light in my favour. It should have been a magical time. Early evening, with the August sun still hot and some hours from setting, the sky deep blue above, the strength of the sunlight not yet lessening, though the day was now passing towards a late dusk. The stones of the temple beamed warmth.

Absorbing the atmosphere as my nightmare feeling grew, I was aware of the sea, close by behind me, and the town running away to the left. Many of the people who were in the sanctuary moments ago had already vanished. Those who remained walked about quietly. The music had stilled.

Within the campus all was now peaceful. Sounds from the town and the port and the nearby gate to the open country seemed to come from another world. I could smell wild oregano. Seagulls gently soared overhead. I stood still, watched and listened. My right hand found its way through the heavy folds of the toga to the sword hilt.

Then, as I continually scanned the enclosure, searching for someone I recognised, at last I thought I glimpsed Uncle Fulvius.

He was right at the opposite end of the campus, moving around the huddled sanctuary of Attis. I jumped down the steps of the Great Mother's temple, and on light feet began running through the long colonnade. Fulvius had been making his way around the shrine.

I thought he had gone into the building, but when I arrived, panting, I had no luck there.

I started to search the area. This corner of the sanctuary was full of nooks, well-heads, altars and mysterious entrances. Devotees did not need to have tile labels on the doorposts as if the buildings housed physicians or accountants. But I could not tell what anything really was. There was one dreadful possibility.

I knew I had to find it. The rites of Cybele are as dreadful as the rites of Mithras, and one is very similar. Somewhere nearby must be a tauroboleum pit. A man-high hole underground into which initiates must descend. There they would stand alone in darkness for a ghastly test of their devotion. It would be some kind of cellar, with a grid above the underground pit; upon that grid tomorrow, priests would slaughter the great bull who was still bellowing mournfully in his pen nearby. His spilled blood would rain down on to the novice, who stood alone in pitch darkness, being showered from head to foot with stinking gore. The rite of removing initiates from the pit in their foul robing of bull's blood was notoriously repulsive.

I found the tauroboleum. At the back of the Temple of Attis was a tower built into the corner of the city wall. Part now formed a narrow shrine. Pine trees cast a perfumed shadow. Inside, niches held statues of Cybele's consort, signified by his starry Phrygian cap and his pine cones. The nave was already lit with lamps, adorned with flowers and scented with incense.

As soon as I entered I knew this was the place to which the Illyrians had once brought the terrified Rhodope.