Death of an Empire (43 page)

One of the fourteen present was dragged to the stone by two large figures and stripped by indifferent, muscular hands. A naked girl was revealed in the yellow-green light, her hands bound together in front of her as she tried to conceal the triangular red fur that protected her genitals.

She was young and fair, no more than twelve, to judge by the mere buds of breasts that broke the clean lines of her boyish chest. Her hair was carrot red and tangled because her curls hadn’t been
brushed for some time, to judge by the cobwebs and dust trapped among her disordered locks. She had been stolen seven days earlier and had been locked in an underground room until the search for her body had been abandoned by her kin. Her captivity had been hard, as was evident by her gaunt, hollowed cheeks and the pinched look of hunger around her mouth.

Why waste precious food on a gift to the Goddess? Water kept her body alive, but the darkness, the persistent cold and the terror had crushed her spirit.

Twelve figures encircled the rock on which she was laid. She tried to rise, but one of her captors put a finger against the mouth of his mask in the age-old sign for silence. Then the same hand slapped her hard across her naked cheek, splitting her tender lips. The child curled on the unforgiving rock as she tried to make her gangling body as small as possible. Although blood filled her mouth, she was too terrified to make a single sound in protest.

Twelve of her captors began to chant softly, although the words were lost in the distant boom of the sea that reverberated through the tomb-like walls of the cavern. Presently, as the sound rose, the child heard the name of the Mother and she began to pray herself, muttering a childish invocation to Don, the protector of all children. A tall figure left the other twelve celebrants to approach the child and pushed a scrap of rag into her mouth to quieten her small defiance.

The chant grew louder in intensity, rising as the celebrants gradually surrendered to the mounting exultation of the ceremony. The growing gloom seemed more absolute, as if a dark force heaved the ancient body of the Goddess out from the substance of the cliff to bathe her feet in the salty waters as she drank the blood of an innocent. Perhaps her devotees would see her sacred flesh when she had accepted their gift? Perhaps she would deign to give
them what they most earnestly desired in recompense for their faithful service, even though the practice of feeding the Goddess was forbidden. So here they had come, to her sacred place, where they could abase themselves before her naked breasts.

The chief worshipper approached the girl, who cowered away from him. He nodded and four more of the twelve worshippers left the circle and gripped her ankles and wrists, pinning her so she was exposed and helpless. Then the cowled figure brought his hand out of his robe and exposed a flint knife that had been knapped thousands of years earlier by a master craftsman. So fine was the construction of the weapon that the light seemed to pass through the stone blade.

With a flick of his other hand, the priest stripped off his robe and stood naked in the dim light. His body was spare, gaunt and hairy, while his sex was tumescent with the dizzying potency of the narcotic oil, the naked child and the web of power that they wove. The tall figure joined him and, once naked, revealed a woman’s body. Her flesh was white-skinned, lush and seductive in the flowering of youth, and she bore a rudimentary cup carved from horn.

The chanting built in volume, louder and louder, until the walls were full of the sound. As the intensity of the ceremony swelled to fever pitch, the priest’s arm rose until the invocation was cut off as if the Goddess had sliced out their tongues.

The stone blade descended and split the flesh that formed the child’s breast. Because the flint blade was cumbersome and blunt-edged, the priest was forced to saw through the girl’s flesh as she writhed under him, and he used all his body weight to drive the crude weapon through bone and muscle until it lacerated her racing heart. Even then her death was long, terrifying and bloody, but the ancient rite was merciless.

Once the blade was removed from the gross wound, the naked
woman collected the dying pump of blood in her horn cup, and when it was full she raised it high and carried it to the furthest and darkest part of the cavern. There, in a natural niche, the second man-made artefact waited. A small female figure was crouched, grossly portrayed with swollen breasts, vastly pregnant belly and vestigial arms and legs, but the small sculpture had a malignancy far more powerful that its crude workmanship would suggest. After abasing herself before it, the woman poured the fresh blood over the figure so that the malevolent pottery object was soon stained glossy red. Excess blood ran from the niche to colour the rock walls where sanguine and brown marks showed that old gore had soaked into the porous stone. Then, with her fellow worshippers stripped naked around her, the woman returned to the corpse to smear her own body with arcane patterns using the blood that still oozed from the grisly wound.

Behind her avian mask, Morgan’s dark eyes glowed with satisfaction.

To Myrddion Emrys of Segontium, Healer and Physician.

Hail, friend. The last six months since we returned from Mantua have been busy with much change, now that I am living in Ravenna where Emperor Valentinian has arrived for the summer months.

Ravenna lacks the beauty and age of Rome, while the land around the city was once a swamp. I fear that mosquitoes and insects must have been a severe trial for the population in past centuries, before the marshes were drained.

I trust that this missive finds you well and healthy. For reasons that will become obvious, please destroy this letter when you have read it. Normally, I would not waste so much writing material when a courier could learn my message quickly and deliver it personally.

I attended the bridal festivities of Flavius’s youngest daughter, Flavia, when she was wed to Thraustila, a Hun nobleman. During the feasts, I saw your Gwylym and I agree that he has a sullen, dangerous look about him.

While I was present, I heard a whisper from various knowledgeable sources pertaining to our discussions at Mantua. Aetius has brokered a marriage between his son Gaudientius and Emperor Valentinian’s daughter, Placidia. By the time you hear this news, the marriage will be in effect. Aetius has now placed himself, through this marriage, within reach of the throne.

As well, be informed that a rumour is spreading that Flavius Aetius stopped Attila, with very few troops, from advancing into southern Italia. After all our efforts, Aetius now stands so close to the throne that he is, effectively, the ruler of the Western Empire in all but name.

Valentinian fears him and believes that Aetius plots against him. Worse still, the people are coming to believe that Pope Leo would have achieved nothing had Aetius not stopped Attila at the Padus river. He is the latest hero, if you can believe it. You should be aware, my friend, that Aetius aims high through the use of his family tree. Flavia’s marriage cements the pro-Roman Hun camp, while the marriage of Gaudientius presents a claim to the emperor’s crown through his blood ties with Aetius. All that stands in the general’s way is Valentinian, who is very much alive. I fear for the future, my friend, so be safe and watch your back. I am recalled to Constantinople, and will be unable to protect you if Aetius bothers to move against you. Avoid Ravenna, if you can.

You’ll be happy to learn that despite some stiffness and a really nasty scar at the elbow, my arm has almost healed. You cannot know how grateful I am to possess two arms that answer my bidding when I could so easily have had only one.

Be well, my friend, and call for me should you continue your journey to Constantinople.

In your absence, I will see if I can discover any man of the Flavius gens who is of an age to be your father. Perhaps Fortuna will aid you in your search.

Written in haste,

Claudius Cleoxenes, known as the Greek, and always your friend.

Autumn had come again to the City of the Seven Hills and Myrddion missed the softness of Britain, the brilliance of the wooded hills in their scarlet cloaks edged in gold and dim green and intermixed with swaths of yellow gorse. Soft skies streaked in pale grey and whitewashed blue were more beautiful in his memories than the hotter, denser skies of Rome.

In fact, he longed to be anywhere but where he was. He had come to loathe Rome and her class system, from her hard, geometric corners to the long, sweeping skirts of the outlying subura, soaked with grime and ordure almost to the knees of the city. He despised the toll that Rome demanded of his inner peace, and he had a strange, unnerving feeling that the city was contaminating his soul. Britain seemed a lifetime away and slipping further beyond his reach with every passing day.

Still, the subura had much to occupy him. The issues of life and death in the alleyways were as cruel and as immediate as ever. Each day merged seamlessly into the next, so that the young man was sure he sleepwalked through each day and each relationship, squandering himself in a pointless, squalid battle against the
invincible armies of pestilence, violence and infanticide.

He had grown fond of his landlady, Mistress Pulchria, and had learned a little of her past, discovering in her insouciance and cheerful cynicism an optimism that no woman in her position should possess. Sold into prostitution when she was in her first, childish bloom at nine, she had wept when a rich old senator had deflowered her for an enormous price, but after those first bitter tears she had set about learning the fallibility of men, how to pander to their small vanities and feign the necessary passion in sex that soon made her a very desirable commodity in one of Rome’s best brothels. Myrddion couldn’t begin to imagine the depth of determination that the child Pulchria had possessed as she carved a reputation for sly, hot sex and a certain illusory fragility that appealed to wealthy men of all ages.

‘You know what men are, master healer – well, you’re one yourself. I flattered them by sitting on their laps and pretending to be a little girl. Then I told them how generous they were, so they queued to shower me with gold coins.’ She giggled like a girl, and Myrddion could imagine the child she had once been, still trapped in her fleshy, tiny frame.

‘I paid my purchase price, with interest, in fourteen years of hard labour on my back, master. But there are too many girls who can’t give up the life. They get worn out and old, still hawking what’s between their legs even after they’ve lost their teeth. Not me, dearie! Pulchria learned a thing or two from those fine gentlemen . . . and their ladies too. Now, don’t colour up on me, for the world’s not always black and white. I learned! So when I bought my freedom, I had enough left over for this insula – and here I am.’

Myrddion’s relationship with Healer Isaac had been a stimulating bonus throughout the spring. The wily Jew had persuaded Myrddion to collaborate with him on the mystery disease, but so
far none of their research had borne even the frailest hint of success. Myrddion enjoyed Isaac’s company, his wealth of knowledge and a pungent sense of humour that tickled Myrddion’s more serious nature. The Jew was a little casual about his craft at times, but the young Celt knew that Isaac possessed his own spirit of enquiry, so they managed to rub along together with little friction.

The last summer had been particularly vile. The heat had been a series of brazen hammer blows that had assailed the city with thirst, furnace-hot nights and days when the stones of the city burned under hand and foot. Heat had shimmered over the streets, blurring geometric outlines so that the air was a gauzy curtain, thin enough to breathe but hot enough to burn the lungs. The stench from the subura, the latrines and the Tiber was overpowering and Myrddion imagined it as a virulent and rotting green that polluted everything it touched.

Disease had also come to Rome during the hotter months, born in the piles of refuse that rotted in the channels used to carry away rainwater, on the empty land and in the raw sewage that less scrupulous landlords dumped in the streets and in the river. Flies bred the illness and carried it from person to person on the hot air and in the polluted water.

At first, patients came to Myrddion complaining of a high temperature and headaches, followed by diarrhoea that was green in colour and uncontrollable. Myrddion consulted his scrolls and found a description of the gastric plague by ancient Thucydides, who described an outbreak in Athens during the war with Sparta. That disaster resulted in the death of one third of the Athenian population.

Myrddion was terrified of this plague, so, alarmed by the statistics collated by Thucydides, he pored over every scroll he had. Better Attila should have burned the city than it should die in
its own vomit, fever and shit, so Myrddion sent word to Isaac, whose sector of the city was, as yet, unaffected by the disease. Myrddion knew that the Jew would come to his aid, for he was forever seeking out disease and trying to discover its root cause.

Isaac entered Myrddion’s surgery in his customary fashion – noisily. Looking up from the series of tinctures he was preparing for patients who were too ill to leave their beds, the younger man breathed a sigh of relief that he’d no longer be floundering through the darkness of ignorance on his own.

‘Here you are, Myrddion Emrys,’ the Jew boomed out, frightening two small children who were waiting for Cadoc to treat a split head and a slash on the forearm respectively. ‘A well-ordered room.’ The Jew nodded appreciatively, but the children wailed shrilly at the sight of a huge bear of a man looming over them, all flashing teeth and curly hair.