S.J.A. Turney - The Great Game

He suddenly became aware that voices were echoing through the hollow box-flue tiles around him and cocked his head to one side.

Lucilla’s voice!

The realisation surprised him. Where was he?

A second voice cut in and Rufinus recognised the faintly effeminate, lisping tone of the chamberlain, Menander.

‘Perhaps you should select another brooch for the occasion?’

‘No, Menander, it has to be the Livia brooch. Symbols are important to the people. I will wear the Livia brooch and the coronet and sceptre that Verus accepted when he was raised to rule with my father. I will be the living embodiment of Roma. The brooch must be found. I will skin every living thing in the villa’s grounds if I have to.’

Rufinus, his breath held, listened with widening eyes. He was beneath the triclinium: the dining room where Lucilla’s secret gatherings were held! All this time at the villa trying to get closer and closer to the centre of power, and even the lowliest slave feeding the furnace or repairing the brick stacks had access to what he’d sought so desperately.

He almost laughed at the simplicity of it as he tied the bag of stolen jewellery to his belt. The conversation above seemed to have ended. He heard Menander making conciliatory and supportive noises that faded as the two of them moved away and out into a corridor.

Rufinus’ face split into a wide grin as he crossed the room and grasped Galla’s wrists. Unable to stop smiling, he began to drag her along the passage and back out into the damp winter air.

The world was about to become very unpleasant for the thief and her accomplice, but all thoughts of the grisly fate that awaited them could not shift the grin from his face.

Next time those secretive guests came for their private, conspiratorial meeting, Rufinus would learn everything he needed to know.

The great game played on, and he was finally gaining the upper hand.

RUFINUS looked down at the stacked logs, trying not to think about where he’d gathered them, collecting dead wood around the clearing where the decaying bodies of Galla and her accomplice hung rotting on their crosses. He swallowed noisily at the memory. The bone-chilling wind whistled along the tunnel behind him, battering his back and shoulders, making the flame of the small oil lamp gutter in its niche.

The flickering light had begun to play its part when Rufinus threw the first bucket of soil onto the inferno that heated the triclinium, and now he struggled to break the wax seal on the jar of petroleum oil pilfered from the stores. With a satisfying noise, the seal gave way and he tipped the contents over three of the logs. Job complete, he turned his attention to the recently extinguished furnace fire and blackened tunnel beyond.

It was all a matter of timing. He had experimented with the heating system for the floor of the Greek library over the past two weeks, though that room was considerably smaller. Tentative measurements made it roughly half the size of the dining room above the corridor down which he now peered. Dumping a bucket of water on the library furnace had been his first mistake. The gust of roiling black smoke had sent him choking back out of the furnace room, and he‘d watched with dismay as trails of black rose into the sky from the outlets on the roof. When he’d worked out that a bucket of the local sandy soil could extinguish the fire quickly without the billowing smoke, his experiments had begun in earnest.

Half a dozen times he extinguished the fire and paced the library floor in bare feet, testing the heat. Though the results varied a little depending on the room’s ambient temperature and prevailing weather conditions, it generally took almost half an hour for the floor to become noticeably cooler, rising if the room had been preheated for a length of time.

Half an hour was all he could rely on. Likely the occupants of the imperial triclinium would have footwear and therefore would be slow to note a difference in the heat but, again, he could hardly rely on that.

Given the relative difference in the area of the two rooms, he’d estimated that a quarter of an hour was the longest the fire could remain out beneath the triclinium before the occupants began to notice the falling temperature. Perhaps less than quarter of an hour, to err on the side of caution.

Then had begun the second phase of the experiment: how fast could the heat begin to flow once he was done. Wood took too long to fire, as he’d clearly expected, no matter how dry and seasoned it was. Adding a wadding of straw sped up the process, but it was only when he accidentally spilled oil from his lamp onto the pile that he realised petroleum was the solution to a speedy conflagration.

Finally he was satisfied. As long as the materials were ready in advance, he could extinguish the flames, wait two hundred heartbeats for the tunnels to clear of choking, toxic fumes, then hurry down the narrow passage to the chamber. He would then have to count five hundred beats, after which he’d have to rush back to the furnace and ignite the fresh pile of logs, shoving them into place with the long, iron tool. Seven hundred beats in total between extinguishing and the lighting the next pile, allowing a further two hundred beats for the heat to reach the hypocaust.

Less than quarter of an hour, with no room for mistakes.

When these gatherings took place, the visitors were invariably locked in the triclinium for the evening, receiving an evening meal and constant flow of wine and snacks, retiring to their own rooms late. Five hundred heartbeats listening out of an entire evening of potentially useful conversation! Of course, if the plot was not to take place for some time, there may be other opportunities to repeat, and even refine, this eavesdropping process.

But still: five hundred beats of a whole evening.

The second task was to work out the timing for the evening in general. Given an entire night of conspiring, when would be the best time to listen in? He’d thought long and hard, and begun to observe conversational habits in the villa for several days, from nobles to slaves, from angry rants to loving trysts. And over those days, a pattern had emerged that seemed to be a general trend in the conversational process; a pattern that might give him the edge he needed.

People would meet and exchange brief pleasantries to begin with. Sometimes the encounter would end with this meaningless chatter. But in proper conversations, this would be followed by a second exchange, a little more in-depth – perhaps enquiring after a third party or querying the subject’s plans.

Then: the meat of the conversation, following an interrogative style of question and answer. This was when real decisions were made, important information exchanged, and critical questions asked.

Finally, the whole thing would begin to devolve into repeat phrases and trivial comments and, eventually, one or more of the speakers would decide all that could be said had been said and the encounter ended.

His rhetoric tutor in Hispania would have applauded him for his attention to the conversational habits of others and he had to thank his reading of Greek philosophers for the belief that humans were creatures of habit and such patterns were universal and hard to break. Better still, those folk he overheard who had something private to say followed the very same pattern, but in a more defined manner, being sure they were alone and unheard before launching into the problems of their love-life or their empty purses.

He’d allow five hundred beats from the moment the conspirators entered for them to pass the initial pleasantries. Then it would be time for him to listen in.

It had taken a lot of subtlety to set everything up over the day the guests arrived, and he’d watched them all carefully in order to be ready when necessary. It had surprised and concerned him that young Quintianus was not among them. At this stage, everything could be significant, but he could not afford to change his plans and wait for the young man if he was to be a late arrival.