A Dying Light In Corduba Part 32

Amazing. Even their d.a.m.ned house lied.

We told the escort to wait quietly but to rush in like ravening wolves if we signalled them. In the event even bringing them proved unnecessary. Quadratus was not there. He had listened when I advised him to take up his job as quaestor. The same day he came home from staying with us he had packed some note-tablets, taken a litter and a pack-mule, a personal bodyslave, clean tunics and a mapskin of the area, then he had told his servants he was going on a surprise tour of the Corduba mines. The procurator whose job was to look after them, and who was probably perfectly competent since he had been appointed by Vespasian, would not be too happy at an unannounced official visit. Nor was I, come to that.

Our trip to the estate was not entirely fruitless. I sensed that the staff there had almost been expecting me. They were surly and clearly nervous, and eventually one of them told me they had just been about to send over to fetch me from the Camillus farm when I turned up anyway. Somebody had left a message on the Quinctius premises, a message personally addressed to me. I could tell from the slaves' expressions I was not going to like it, even before they led me and Marius to the stable where this mysterious missive had been scrawled on a hitching post.

All it said was For Falco, followed by a neat pictogram of a human eye.

Lying on the straw below the drawing was the dancing girl called Selia. She was dressed in outdoor clothes, including a wide-brimmed travelling hat tied on over her own loosely knotted brown hair. She was dead. Her skin felt cold, though her limbs were still limp. She had been killed quickly and neatly by pressure to the neck. It was clearly carried out from behind before she realised what was happening. She had been lying here for a few hours. UnlessQuadratus had sneaked back un.o.bserved, the killing certainly happened after he had left for the mines. I could not believe he did it. The method was too professional.

If somebody was killing agents who had worked for Laeta, that could well mean they would now try to kill me.

LXI LXI.

Even before I explained what had just happened at the Quinctius estate, Helena Justina had lost the idyllic tenderness she displayed towards me earlier. She was cool. I did not blame her but I could have coped better with solicitude. We were in the garden again. I had hardly even started to discuss what I planned to do next, but we were close to quarrelling.

'Not the mines, Falco!'

'Just think of it as a tour of the local industry.'

'That's what you were going to say, I suppose - had Marius Optatus not told me the whole truth before you could stop him!'

'I don't lie to you.'

'You hold things back - if you believe you can get away with it!'

'I'm a man, Helena. I have to try. I tell myself I'm protecting you.'

'You're annoying me,' she snarled.

I said nothing. Pleasing honesty had failed: time to keep quiet.

'Marcus, I'm in an impossible position now! I don't want you to go - but I don't want you to stay with me unwillingly, just because of my condition; I won't be made an excuse. You'd never forgive me afterwards - maybe I wouldn't forgive myself! Besides, I know just how badly you feel about the mines. You suffered all the torments of Hades once in a silver mine; it's too much for you to volunteer this time.'

'I won't be digging for ore again. All I need to do is to apprehend Quadratus and haul him back to face a trial. But you're right. I'm not irreplaceable. Someone else can go.' Helena frowned. 'You think anyone else will bungle it.'

'I don't care.'

'Of course you care. And I care too!'

Helena's pa.s.sionate belief in justice was one of the reasons I first fell for her. Single-minded girls are always dangerous. A man can float along for years being cynical and flippant, then some fierce tyrant (who happens to have the advantages of a sweet mind, a delicious expression and a body that is crying out to be entwined with his) sneaks under his defences; next thing he finds himself taking a stand on some issue he would once have crept away from, simply to impress the girl.

'I am about to be a father. That is my sole priority.' 'Oh Didius Falco, you have so many priorities you needan abacus to count them. You always did. You always will.' 'Wrong. You're going home, Helena - and I'm stayingwith you.'

'Wrong yourself. You have to finish your work.' She had made up her mind now. 'I hate it, but that's the only way. You know I can't bear to see you n.o.bly pretending not to fidget, while all the time you're in agony because the b.a.s.t.a.r.d has got away.'

'I will not break my promise to you.'

'I release you from it - temporarily. Marcus, I don't complain. You never pretended to be other than you are, and I never dreamed of reforming you. I love your persistence, though you know how hard it is for me just now ... Go and find him, and arrest him. Then dear G.o.ds, Marcus -' There were tears she could not resist. 'Please promise that as fast as you can you will come back to me.'

Tomorrow was the Nones of May. I could still remember clearly that hot night last August in Palmyra which was probably when our baby was conceived. May was only six days old. The child might not be born until the end of the month. I told myself there was still just time to do it all. I told Helena, and hugged her. While she tried not to cry so much that I wouldn't endure it, I in turn kept her close against me so she would not see the gaunt expression on my own face.

I was starting to hate this garden. Helena must have stayed here when we went over to the Quinctius place, as if she was worried that just moving indoors might start the pains again and cause the birth to begin. Her anxiety only increased mine.

While I had been absent Aelia Annaea had kindly kept Helena company. She was still here. When Marius Optatus foolishly created a crisis by confessing that he thought I was now intending to ride after Quadratus, Aelia had quickly drawn him off the scene for a walk in the orchard while Helena tore me to shreds. Aelia seemed to be waiting around to give us the support of a friend when we reached our decision.

Now she walked back to us, leaving Marius. He mooned in the background, as if he had been given definite orders to wait. Aelia Annaea was quiet, but brisk. Owning a gold mine gives a woman distinct confidence. I liked her, perhaps almost as much as Helena did.

She drew up a folding chair, left from our polite afternoon with Claudia. Smiling, she surveyed our present mood. 'So everything is settled.'

I scowled unhappily. 'Are you asking us, or telling us?' Helena dried her eyes. 'Careful, Aelia. Marcus hates bossy women.'

'That must be why he lives with one!' Rich widows can be very provocative. I had suffered clients like this - before I learned to turn them down. She grinned at me. 'Well, I have come to offer suggestions, that is all.'

Helena and I both gazed at Aelia; we must have looked pretty wan-faced.

'Marcus Didius has to find Tiberius.' Even now from habit Aelia retained the informal use of his name. 'Helena, if you intend returning to Rome, I think you should start out gently straight away. I have been discussing this with Marius, and I'm going to talk to Claudia. Claudia is very unhappy at home. I think she would like to accept your kind invitation to visit Rome.'

'I haven't actually asked her -'

'No, but I will! It will be hard to leave her grandparents so soon after her brother's death, but if she waits she'll never go. The excuse will be that she is accompanying you, Helena; you will obviously need help on the journey. So!' Aelia Annaea was direct and well organised. 'While Falco goes after the fugitive, you can travel very slowly by road. I'm going to come with you myself as far as the Tarraconensis coast. Claudia will be with us too, We shall take my carriage, which is s.p.a.cious and comfortable, and I will return in it afterwards. This fellow -' She indicated me - 'can ride after us as soon as he is ready, then take you home by sea.'

Helena looked troubled. 'Marcus may have to attend a court case.'

'No,' I said. 'If there's a court case it will be in Rome.'

There were special arrangements for senators-elect. Quadratus would have to be taken back home. There were probably even more interesting arrangements when two different branches of government service had concerned themselves with the crimes. Those arrangements probably featured provisions for silencing me.

'So!' Aelia Annaea exclaimed again brightly. 'What do you think?'

I took and kissed her hand. 'We think you're wonderful.' 'Thank you,' said Helena, clearly very relieved. 'Aelia, would you enjoy a visit to Rome yourself?'

Aelia Annaea looked a little mysterious. 'No, I don't think so at the moment, Helena. I may be busy doing something here in Corduba.' She proudly accepted credit for her solution to our own problem, then stood up again presumably ready to take her leave of us. Since she had originally come with Claudia I asked, is Marius Optatus intending to arrange some transport for you?'

'I expect so.'

'Would you like me to speak to him?'

No, don't worry. Marius and I are on good terms.' She smiled. Even without the jewels which normallyweighed her down, she was a fine young woman, the more so when she felt cheerful and pleased with herself. Her veil fell back; her hair was loose for the funeral and the softened effect made her look even more appealing. She turned away and walked back to Marius, a slim figure with a firm step.

I was intending to find Marmarides, to tell him that our ways must finally part, thank him, and settle up for the carriage. First, I finally persuaded Helena to go indoors. She rose, a little stiff from sitting so long, her shape thoroughly awkward nowadays. I walked with her, taking her slowly to her room. Then, while she was washing her face in a basin, I went to the shutter and quietly opened it. I whistled under my breath; Helena came to look out with me.

Marius Optatus and Aelia Annaea were standing together under an almond tree. They were fairly close, talking quietly. Aelia was probably explaining her scheme for taking Helena to the coast. She had removed her veil and was twirling it casually from one wrist. Marius held on to a bough above his head; he looked even more relaxed. From his att.i.tude, I suspected Marius was harbouring masculine plans.

He spoke. Aelia responded, perhaps rather pertly, for she tilted up her chin. Then Marius slipped his free arm right around her waist and drew her to him while they kissed. It seemed a popular move with Aelia. And when Marius slowly let go of the almond bough to embrace her even more closely, it seemed that his love for the lady's gold mine might actually be slightly less important than the love he felt for her.

LXII LXII.

I told myself it was not going to be like the last time. Mines are simply places where ores are produced. In that respect they are no different from gla.s.s factories or pig farms. Or even olive groves. There was no reason for me to start sweating with terror simply because I had to visit one or two mines. Time was short. I would not be staying. A couple of questions to ascertain the location of Quadratus - whether he was there, or had already called there, or whether the local foreman had heard he was on his way. Then all I had to do was say a nice h.e.l.lo to him, present him with the evidence, extract his confession, and lead him off. Simple, really. I should be feeling confident.

I could not help remembering what happened to me that other time. Something I hate to talk about. A nightmare to endure, then a cause of other nightmares for decades afterwards.

It had been my first mission for the Emperor. Britain. A province I had served in earlier. I thought I knew everything. I thought I would have everything under control. I was proud, cynical, efficient as an eagle stripping carrion. The first thing that happened was that I met a wild, contemptuous, patrician young divorcee called Helena and long before I noticed it, she had knocked every certainty of the previous thirty years from under me. Then I was sent undercover to the mines. For reasons that had made sense to everybody else, I was sent in disguised as a slave.

In the end it was Helena Justina who rescued me. She would not be doing that again. The last time her crazy driving of a pony cart had almost scared me more than all my sufferings in the silver mine as she raced me to a hospital before I died of exposure and cruelty; now she washerself being carried at a delicate pace along the Via Augusta to Valentia and then north towards a port called Emporiae. From there I would be taking her by sea around the southern coast of Gaul - a route that was famous for storms and shipwrecks, yet the quickest way back home.

Three years. Nearly three years I had known her now. I had changed and so had she. I liked to think I had mellowed her. But she had mellowed herself to begin with, when she let herself feel concern for a man she had at first heartily despised. Then I had found myself falling too. I recognised my fate; I plunged straight in. Now here I was, riding up into the hills of another mineral-rich province, older, mature, responsible, a seasoned state official: still stupid enough to take on any task, still put upon, still losing more than I ever gained.

It would not be like the last time. I was more fit and less fanatical. I distrusted too many people, including those who had sent me here. I had a woman and a baby to care about. I could not take risks.

I had visited the proconsul to tell him my intentions. He listened, then shrugged, then told me I seemed to know what ought to be done so he would not interfere. Same old routine. If it worked out well, he would want all the credit; if I got into difficulties, I was on my own.

The proconsul's staff, who did seem to have decent orders about helping me in my mission, had supplied me with a set of mules. Even better, I had been given a map, and what must be the briefing on mineral deposits that they prepared for the proconsul when he took up his post. From it I learned in detail what I had previously tried to avoid knowing.

Whereas the silver mines of Britain had proved to be disappointing, the landma.s.s of Hispania was blessed with enormous riches. There was gold, gold in fabulous quant.i.ties. It had been estimated that the great state-owned mines of the northwest produced as much as twenty thousand pounds of gold every month; they were protected by thesole legion in the province, the Seventh Gemina. Besides gold there was silver, lead, copper, iron and tin. In Baetica there were old silver mines at Carthago Nova, silver and copper mines near Hispalis, gold mines at Corduba, cinnabar at Sisapo, silver at Castulo; in the ore-laden Mariana mountains - to which I had been told Quinctius Quadratus was heading - there were hundreds of shafts producing the finest copper in the Empire and an extravagance of silver too.

A few older mines remained in private hands, but the Emperor was easing out individual ownership. Most of these establishments were now under government control. A procurator administered the sites; contractors or local mining societies could take a lease on identified shafts on payment of a hefty sum and a proportion of the minerals they produced. Presumably the keen new quaestor imagined he had tripped off on his scenic tour in order to audit the procurator. Unlike his cowardly action in abandoning Rufius Constans under the weight of a grinding-stone, questioning the rule of a high-powered imperial career officer was decidedly brave. I myself was not even looking forward to telling the procurator - if I met him first - that Quadratus had devised such a plan. He might be a senator- elect, and the proconsul's deputy, but compared with the man he was venturing to spy on he was a mere temporary figurehead. Any ferret-faced freedman with equestrian status in a salaried post would wrap the quaestor round a scroll baton and send him home at the bottom of the next dispatch-rider's pouch.

I had to find Quadratus before this was done. I wanted him in one piece, pristine and unrolled.

I had crossed the river at Corduba. My journey would take me into the long line of gentle hills that had been a constant backdrop to our stay. In a gentle arc from west to east they closed off the Baetis valley on its north side, stretching from Hispalis to Castulo, and were pockmarked with mineral works almost all the way. Tumbling rivers withwriggling lakes ran through the hills. Transhumance paths, the ancient drove-roads for moving cattle every season, crisscrossed the terrain. I moved up into cooler air, amongst oak and chestnut trees.

I travelled light, camping out if it was more convenient, or begging a night in a contractor's but where I could. There were two roads going east from Corduba. I was all too conscious that while I took the upper route through these pleasant hills, Helena Justina was travelling the lower, along the river parallel with me. While I was constantly nipping up byways to ask after Quadratus at isolated workings, she made a steadier progress not too far away. I could almost have signalled the carriage.

Instead here I was, miserable as death, barely in contact with humanity. I hated it when the stubbly speculators only produced morose grunts for me; I hated it more when they were hungry for gossip and wanted to delay me for interminable chats. I ate cheese and hard biscuit; I drank mountain stream water. I washed if I felt like it, or not if I felt perverse. I shaved myself, never a success. It was worse than the army. I was surly, solitary, famished and chaste.

In the end I realised Quadratus was not bothering with the smaller individual mines. Only the big show would do for the famous Tiberius; he must have gone straight to the huge silver mine with its complex of hundreds of shafts let to numerous contractors, which lay at the far eastern end of the mountain range. He probably travelled by way of the river road, and stayed in decent mansios. Still, he would not be as desperate as I was, and he lacked the verve and efficiency to cover as much ground. I might yet head him off.

It was a cheering hope. It kept me going for half a day. Then I knew I had to face the kind of scene I had sworn to avoid for ever, and I felt myself break into a sweat.

It was the smell that turned my stomach first. Even before the appalling sights, that sour odour of slaves in their filth made me want to retch. Hundreds worked here. Convictedcriminals who would slog it out until they died; it was a short life.

I could hardly bear to enter the place, remembering how I too once laboured to hew out lead-bearing rocks with inadequate tools on a pitiful diet amidst the most sordid cruelty. Chained; flogged; cursed; tortured. The hopelessness of knowing there was no relief from the work and no chance of escape. The lice. The scabs. The bruising and the beatings. That overseer, the worst man I had ever met, whose mildest thrill was b.u.g.g.e.ry, and his biggest triumph watching a slave die in front of him.

I was a free man now. I had been free then - only enslaved from choice and for an honourable motive, though there are no grades of degradation on a chain-gang in a silver mine. Now I stepped down from a st.u.r.dy horse, a self-a.s.sured man with position in the world. I had rank. I had a formal commission with an imperial pa.s.s to prove it. I had a wonderful woman who loved me and I was fathering a little citizen. I was somebody. The mine perimeter was guarded, but when I announced myself I was called 'legate' and provided with a polite guide. Yet when that smell hit my gut I was nearly thrown back to three years ago. If I relaxed, I would be a trembling wreck.

I was led through a busy township in the shadow of mountains of slag. As we pa.s.sed the cupellation furnaces, the smog and the ceaseless dints of the hammers left me almost demented. I seemed to feel the ground trembling under my boots. I was told how here the shafts reached over six hundred feet deep. The tunnels chased seams of silver underground for between three and four thousand feet. Deep down below me the slaves worked, for it was daylight. There are rules. No mine may work at night. You have to be civilised.

Below ground there would be huge polished mirrors to reflect the bright sunlight from above; beyond the reach of the sun the slaves carried clay lamps with vertical handles. Their shift lasted until the lamps ran out; never soon enough. The lamps used up the air and filled the tunnelswith smoke. Amongst this smoke the slaves toiled to free the lumps of ore, then carried the backbreaking weight of esparto bucketfuls on their shoulders in a human chain. Up and down from the galleries, using short ladders. Pushing and shoving in lines like ants. Coughing and perspiring in the dark. Relieving themselves when they had to, right there in the galleries. Near-naked men who might never see daylight for weeks on end. Some endlessly trudged treadmills on the huge waterwheels that drained the deepest shafts. Some struggled to prop up the galleries. All of them coming a little closer every day to an inevitable death.

'Stunning, isn't it?' enquired my guide. Oh yes. I was stunned.

We came to the procurator's office. It was manned by a whole battery of supervisory staff. Men with flesh on their bodies and clothes on their backs. Dean-skinned, well- shaven men who sat at tables telling jokes. They picked up their salaries and enjoyed their lives. Visiting overseers cursed and complained as they took their breaks above ground, while they boasted about pacifying new convicts and keeping the old hands at their hard work. The supervising engineers, silent men scribbling inventive diagrams, worked out new and astonishing achievements to be turned into reality underground. The geometrists, who were responsible for finding and evaluating the seams of silver, completed dockets in between putting their feet up and telling the most obscene stories.

It was a room where people constantly came and went; n.o.body took any notice of a newcomer. Arcane discussions were going on, occasionally heated though more often businesslike. Huge movements of ore and endless shipments of ingots were being organised through this office. A small army of contractors was being regulated here, in order to provide a vital contribution to the Treasury. The atmosphere was one of rough and ready industry. If there was corruption it could be scandalous and on a ma.s.sive scale, as I had proved in another province. But we had had a new emperor for two years since then, and somehow Idoubted that more than harmless fiddling went on here. The profits were enough to cushion greed. The importance of the site ensured that only the best staff appointments were approved. There was an unmistakable aura of watchfulness from Rome.

It did not include supervision by the quaestor, apparently.

'Oh yes, Quadratus was here. We gave him the grand sightseeing tour.'

'What? "This is an ingot; here's an Archimedes screw" - then sending him down the deepest shaft on a wobbly ladder and suddenly blowing out the lamps to make him s.h.i.t himself?'

'You know the score!' the procurator beamed admiringly. 'Then we bluffed him with a few graphs and figures, and booted him out to Castulo.'

'When was this?'

'Yesterday.'

'I should catch up with him, then.'

'Want a look around our system first?'

'Love to - but I need to get on.' I managed to make my refusal sound polite. Seen one, you've seen them all.

Castulo would be a day's ride away. Quadratus himself had told me his father had interests there, in the tight little mining society which had tied up all the mineral rights for a radius of twenty miles or more. The mining sites were smaller than here, but the area was important. Some of the wealthiest men in Hispania were making their fortunes at Castulo.

I nearly escaped without incident. I had left the office and was looking for my guide. Apparently he worked on the principle that if he got you in, you could find your own way out while he sloped off for a gossip with a friend.

Then a man came towards me. I recognised him immediately, though he did not know me. A big, shapeless bully, just as sly as he was merciless. He seemed heavier than ever, and shambled with even more threat in his uglygait. His name was Cornix. He was the slave overseer who had once made a habit of singling me out for torture. In the end he had nearly killed me. Of all the pig-ignorant debauched thugs in the Empire he was the last man I would ever wish to see.

I could have walked right by him; he would never have realised that we had met before. I could not help my start of recognition. Then it was too late.

'Well! Well! If it isn't Chirpy!' The nickname froze my blood. And Cornix was not intending me any favours when he leered, 'I've not forgotten I owe you one!'

LXIII LXIII.

He had two beats of time to reduce me to a jelly, but he missed his chance. After that it was my turn.

I had made a bad mistake with Cornix once: I had escaped his clutches and publicly humiliated him. The mere fact that I was alive today was because in my time as a slave I had continually outwitted him. Since I had been shackled, starved, despairing, and close to dying at the time, it was all the more commendable.

'I'm going to smash in your head,' he told me, in the same old sickening croak. 'And after that, we'll really have some fun!'