Paul Doherty - Queen of the Night

'And you, Leartus?' Claudia leaned forward to sniff a rose. 'How come you're here?'

'I was born in a small village,' Leartus squinted up at the sky, 'near the River Granicus. My father died young and my mother sold me into service. I became a eunuch as a boy and then, of course, there was war. A Roman raiding party came to the village. You know what happens: the women were abused, the men killed. The farmstead I was working on was burned to the ground. I was taken prisoner and brought to Rome. I must have been then no more than fifteen or sixteen.' He rolled back the sleeve of his tunic and showed Claudia the impression of a slave merchant. 'I was put on sale, but because I was a eunuch, very few people had time for me, particularly as I was ill-educated and hardly knew the Latin tongue. But then the Lady Cassia — she's much older than she looks — visited the marketplace. She was looking for someone like me and took me home. One of her patrons, a Pythagorean from Athens, a scholar, a very wealthy man, educated me and taught me the sign language, and ever since, I've been in her service. Where she goes I follow; what she does I watch. A few years ago she met the Lady Urbana; Cassia became a Christian and so did I.' 'And are you happy?

Leartus screwed up his face, and Claudia noticed how young and athletic he looked. He smelled faintly of some delicious perfume; his hair was slightly ringleted and carefully cut, his hands and nails scrubbed clean, his every move elegant and refined.

'Happiness,' he declared, 'is a state of mind, or so Plato would have us believe. Happiness is relative, I suppose. If I had not been made a eunuch, not been captured, not enslaved, perhaps life might have been different, could have been better. And you, Claudia?'

She was about to reply when a servant appeared in the garden calling Leartus' name.

'My mistress summons.' Leartus smiled. 'Claudia,' he gestured at the servant to keep quiet, 'would you like to stay here or go somewhere else? Is there anything more you wish to see?'

'I've seen so many things recently.' Claudia grinned up at him. i move from one extreme to another. Yesterday I was inspecting a corpse in a stinking alleyway; this morning I am sitting in a beautiful garden, the air rich with perfume, nothing to listen to except the birds and the dull hum of bees searching for pollen. Have you ever read Pliny's description of his villa?'

The eunuch nodded.

'Just to read it is soothing enough,' Claudia declared, 'but being in a garden like this is paradise. Ah well!' She sighed. 'The day goes on, and work has to be done. I would like to see the library, there are things I must do.'

Leartus quickly agreed. He told the slave to wait and took Claudia back into the villa, along its elegant, beautifully decorated galleries to a chamber called The Hermes. It had a shiny wooden floor and white-plastered walls, most of which were covered by carefully erected shelves of Lebanese cedar holding stacks of parchments, some recent, others yellow with age, all carefully listed and tagged. A long trestle table, polished and gleaming, ran down the middle of the room. At the far end, under an open window, sat a dusty-faced freedman whom Leartus introduced as the librarian. When the eunuch explained that Claudia was the General's personal guest, the librarian could not do enough to please. Leartus departed, and for a while Claudia moved amongst the different manuscripts taking down the works of Terence and Petronius. There were even some Christian writings, including a copy of a letter from their great teacher Paul, transcribed elegantly in both Latin and Greek.

'Is there anything else you need?' The librarian kept following her like a shadow.

'Yes, there is.' Claudia smiled. 'I'd like a fresh piece of papyrus, a pumice stone, a quill and some ink and I'll be very happy'

A short while later, in a writing carrel placed beneath a window, Claudia sat, face in her hands, and stared at the dust motes dancing in the light. What had she actually discovered so far? She took a sharpened quill, dipped it into the ink and carefully wrote her ciphered conclusions.

Primo. The hostages were wealthy young men and women snatched from their doting parents, gagged, bound and held for ransom. The amount demanded, 25,000 in gold coins, was heavy but not too onerous. None of the hostages could determine where they'd been kept, except their cell was fetid and rather cool. They were held there whilst the abductors sent their parents threatening messages to deliver the gold to that rambling cemetery along the Via Appia. The money was always delivered, the young man or woman always released. Claudia paused, then continued writing. The more she reflected on this, the more certain she became that the cemetery along the Via Appia was not only the place where the hostages were released, but that they were actually detained in some catacomb cavern beneath. The abductors were certainly a gang. Theodore had talked of a group of masked men invading that garden. Was their leader someone who knew all the movements of those they kidnapped? Such information could become common knowledge in great households such as those of Senator Carinus or General Aurelian; slaves, servants, freedmen, people hired for a special occasion, they could all be bought. And why were the youngsters abducted? Was it purely for profit, or was the leader of this gang trying to bring the rule of Constantine and his mother into disrepute? Claudia dipped her pen in the ink again.

Secundo. Theodore. She felt a pang of sadness, — she'd worked with men like Theodore. A good man at heart, absorbed in his own art, the love of drama, the play, the lines, the world of make-believe into which she had once retreated. Theodore had been with Antonia the night she'd been abducted. Claudia could understand a young woman being seduced by Theodore's learning, his affected ways, his flattery. Had the actor been part of the gang? Or were the abductors led to the Fountain of Artemis by someone else, a traitor inserted into Carinus' household? Theodore claimed he had tried to resist, that he'd plucked a mask from one of the gang and would recognise his face again. Yet he was not that brave. Surely, if the gang of abductors had realised that one of them had been unmasked, they would have dispatched Theodore, a mere actor, there and then? So why had Theodore developed that story? To pose as the hero, to win the favour of Senator Carinus, or something else? He had been taken to the palace, interviewed by the Empress and later became an enforced guest at the She Asses tavern. Why had he been killed? What did he see? What did he know? Claudia put her quill down and nipped her thigh.

'That's for not being sharp enough,' she muttered. 'You should have questioned him.'

'Pardon?' the old librarian called from his stool at the far end of the room.

'Nothing.' Claudia smiled. Tm talking to myself.'

'I know the feeling,' the librarian quipped.

Claudia went back to her reflections. Theodore had definitely been poisoned. He had not eaten or drunk anything since he'd left the palace. She had watched him visit the Temple of Hathor, his quick words with that sharp-featured priest Sesothenes. He had been murdered at her uncle's tavern, but how? Someone had certainly followed him to the She Asses and managed to sprinkle a deadly poison either in his food or his wine, yet the cup he'd been drinking from was untainted, she was sure of that.

Claudia reread what she'd written. One word caught her attention: 'masks'. She underlined it. What if, she argued with herself, Theodore had not dragged the mask from one of the attacker's faces but recognised the actual masks? She felt a faint thrill of excitement. 'Of course,' she whispered, and glanced up at the window. Actors' masks were fairly expensive, especially those which covered the entire face and head. Had Theodore recognised those masks as belonging to a specific troupe or being sold in a certain shop? Claudia sprang to her feet, walked to the library door and went out to stand under the shade. She recalled her own days as an actress: one thing they were most careful about was the masks, — they were the tools to convey the drama. Had the masks been bought, or had the person who organised these abductions hired a troupe of actors to perpetrate the crimes? Again Claudia reflected on her own troupe. Many of them had a great deal to hide and could be hired not just to stage a drama but to do anything else a wealthy patron might desire. In fact, that was why Claudia herself had returned to Rome: her manager had become bankrupt and the other actors were being hired for activities she could not stomach.