Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (161 page)

While we watched, a cymbal was beaten and the soldiers began to congregate for their midday meal. Slaves hurried to and fro among the boiling pots. ‘Do you recognize the tunics? Those kitchen slaves are from Gelina’s house,’ Olympias said. ‘Scurrying to feed the same men who in two days’ time will be cutting their throats.’

Eco touched my arm and pointed to the far side of the plain, where bare earth gave way to woods. A great swathe of felled trees had been cleared from the forest, and a team of soldiers was building a temporary arena from the raw wood. A deep bowl had been dug in the earth and stamped flat, and around it the soldiers were constructing a high wall surrounded by tiers of seats. I squinted and was barely able to make out the groups of helmeted men within the ring who practised mock combat with swords, tridents, and nets. ‘For the funeral games,’ I muttered. ‘The gladiators must have already arrived. That’s where they’ll fight on the day after tomorrow in honour of Lucius Licinius. That must also be where . . .’

‘Yes,’ said Olympias. ‘Where the slaves will be put to death.’ Her face became hard. ‘Crassus’s men shouldn’t have used those trees. They belong to the forest of Lake Avernus, farther north. No man owns them. The Avernine wood is a holy wood. To have cut down even a few of them for any purpose is a great impiety. To have cut down so many to satisfy his own ambitious schemes is a terrible act of hubris for Marcus Crassus. No good will come of it. You’ll see. If you don’t believe me, ask the Sibyl when you see her.’

We continued in silence along the ridge, then entered the forest again and began a gradual descent. The woods became thicker. The trees themselves changed character. Their leaves were no longer green, but almost black; great shaggy trees loomed all about, fingering the air with convoluted branches. The understorey grew dense with thorny bushes and hanging tufts of mossy lichen. Mushrooms sprouted underfoot. The goat path disappeared, and it seemed to me that Olympias was finding her way by instinct through the woods. A heavy silence enfolded us, broken only by the footfall of our horses and the faraway cry of a strange bird.

‘You travel this route alone?’ I said. ‘Such a lonely place, I should think you would feel unsafe.’

‘What could harm me in these woods? Bandits, brigands, runaway slaves?’ Olympias looked straight ahead, so that I could not see her face. ‘These woods are consecrated to the goddess Diana; these woods have been Diana’s for a thousand years, before even the Greeks came. Diana carries a great bow with which to guard her domain. When she takes aim, no beating heart can escape her arrow. I feel no more fear here than if I were a doe or a hawk. Only the man who enters these woods with evil intent faces any danger. Outlaws know this in their hearts and do not enter. Do you feel fear, Gordianus?’

A cloud obscured the sun. The patches of sunlight faded, and a grey chill spread through the forest. A strange illusion gripped me: night reigned within the woods, the hidden sun was replaced by the moon, and darkness seeped out of the hollow bowls of dying trees and from the deep shadows under fallen branches. All was silent except for the footfall of the horses; even that seemed muffled, as if the moist earth swallowed the sound of each step. An odd drowsiness descended on me, not as if I fell asleep but as if I slowly wakened into a realm where all my senses were slightly askew.

‘Do you feel fear, Gordianus?’

I stared at the back of her head, at the soft golden mane of her hair. I imagined the strangest thing – that if she were to turn suddenly I would see not her own beautiful face, but a visage too terrible to look at, a harsh, grinning mask with cruel eyes, the face of an angry goddess. ‘No, I feel no fear,’ I whispered hoarsely.

‘Good. Then you have a right to be here, and you will be safe.’ She turned and it was only the harmless, smiling face of Olympias that looked back at me. I sighed with relief.

The woods grew darker. A heavy, clinging mist spread through the forest. The smell of sea spray mingled with the dank odours of rotting leaves and mouldering bark. Then another smell assaulted us, the stench of boiling sulphur.

Olympias pointed to a clearing on our right. We rode onto a Up of bare rock. Above us loomed the tattered edge of a fog bank rolling in from the sea. Below us opened a great gulf of space. A vast bowl of vapour swirled below, ringed by dark, brooding trees. Through the vapours I could barely discern the surface of a great roiling cesspit that bubbled and seethed and spat.

‘The Jaws of Hades,’ I whispered.

Olympias nodded. ‘Some say that it was here that Pluto pulled Proserpina into the Underworld. They say that beneath this pool of sputtering sulphurous mud, deep in the restless bowels of the earth, there run a host of subterranean rivers that separate the realm of the living from the realm of the dead. There is Acheron, the river of woe, and Cocytus, the river of lamentation. There is Phlegethon, the river of fire, and Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. Together they converge into the great river Styx, across which the ferryman Charon carries the spirits of the dead to the bleak wastelands of Tartarus. They say that Pluto’s watchdog Cerberus escapes his bonds every so often and flees to the upper world. I spoke once to a farmer in Cumae who had heard the monster in the Avernine woods, all three heads howling together under the light of the full moon. On the other nights the dreaded lemures escape from Lake Avernus, malicious spirits of the dead who haunt the woods and inhabit the bodies of wolves. Still, Pluto always draws them back by morning. No one escapes his realm for long.’ She turned her face from the ghastly vista below to glance at Eco, who stared back at her, wide-eyed.

‘Strange, isn’t it,’ she said, ‘to think that all this exists so near to the civility and comfort of Baiae and its villas? At Gelina’s house the world seems to be a place made of sunlight dancing on water, and fresh salty air; it’s easy to forget the gods who live under dank stones and the lemures that dwell beneath the sulphurous pits. Lake Avernus was here before the Romans, before the Greeks. These woods were here, and so were all the steaming fumaroles and the boiling pits filled with stench that circle the Cup. This is the place where the Underworld comes closest to the world of the living. All the beautiful houses and bright lights that ring the Cup are like a mask, a charade, as insubstantial as the skin of a bubble; beneath them the sulphur rumbles and boils, as it has forever. Long after the pretty houses rot and the lights grow dim, the belching Jaws of Hades will still be gaping open to receive the shades of the dead.’

I looked at her in wonder, bewildered that such words could come from the lips of a creature so young and full of life. She met my eyes for an instant and smiled her cryptic smile, then spun her horse around. ‘It’s not good to look too long at the face of Avernus, or to breath the fumes.’

Our course began gradually to descend. At length we left the woods for a grassy landscape of low hills pierced by jagged white rocks. The hills became more and more windswept and barren as we neared the sea; the fog lifted and hung above our heads in tatters. The rocks grew as big as houses and lay scattered about us like the broken and weathered bones of giants. They took on fantastic shapes, bristling with sharp edges and shot through with swirling tunnels and wormholes.

We passed through the maze of rocks for a time, until we came to a hidden hollow set into a steep hillside, like the crook of an elbow. The narrow defile was strewn with tumbled rocks and trees weirdly sculpted by the wind.

‘This is where I leave you,’ said Olympias. ‘Find a place to tie your horse, and wait. The priestess will come for you.’

‘But where is the temple?’

‘The priestess will take you to the temple.’

‘But I thought there was a great temple to mark the site of the Sibyl’s shrine.’

Olympias nodded. ‘You mean the temple that Daedalus built when he came to earth on this spot after his long flight. Daedalus built it in honour of Apollo, and decorated it with panels all in hammered gold and covered it with a golden roof. So they say in the village of Cumae. But the golden temple is only a legend, or else the earth swallowed it up long ago. That happens here sometimes – the earth gapes open and devours whole houses. Nowadays the temple is in a hidden, rocky place near the mouth of the Sibyl’s cave. Don’t worry, the priestess will come. You brought a token gift of gold or silver?’

‘I brought the few coins I had with me in my room.’

‘It will be enough. Now I leave you.’ She tugged impatiently at the reins of her horse.

‘But wait! How shall we find you again?’

‘Why must you find me at all?’ There was an unpleasant edge in her voice. ‘I brought you here, as you asked. Can’t you find your own way back?’

I looked at the maze of rocks. The descending fog swirled overhead and a low wind moaned amid the stones. I shrugged uncertainly.

‘Very well,’ she said, ‘when the Sibyl is done with you, ride on a short distance towards the sea. Over the crest of a grassy hill you’ll come upon the village of Cumae. Iaia’s house is at the far end of the village. One of the slaves will let you in, if’ – she paused uncertainly – ‘if I’m not there. Wait for me.’

‘And where else would you be?’

She rode away without answering, and quickly vanished amid the boulders.

‘What vital business draws her to Cumae every day?’ I said to myself. ‘And why is she so eager to be rid of us? Well, Eco, what do you think of this place?’

Eco clutched himself and shivered, not from the cold.

‘I agree. There is something here that sets my teeth on edge.’ I looked at the maze of rocks all around us. The wind moaned and whistled through the wormholes. ‘You can’t see farther than a few feet in any direction, thanks to all these jagged boulders. A whole army could be hidden out of sight, an assassin behind every rock.’

We dismounted and led the horses deeper into the crook of the hill. A bald band had been worn into a twisted branch, showing where many others before us had tethered their horses. I secured the beasts, then felt Eco tugging urgently at my sleeve.

‘Yes, what do you—’

I stopped short. From nowhere, it seemed, a figure passed between two nearby stones, following the same path that Olympias had taken. The descending fog swallowed all noise of his horse’s footfalls, so that the figure passed by as silently as a phantom. He was visible for only an instant, draped in a dark hooded cloak. ‘What do you make of that?’ I whispered.

Eco leaped to the tallest of the nearby rocks and scrambled atop it, finding holds for his fingers amid the wormholes. He peered into the middle distance. For an instant his face lit up and then darkened again. He waved to me but kept his eyes on the maze of rocks. By way of signal, he pinched his chin and drew his fingers away to a point.

‘A long beard?’ I said. Eco nodded. ‘Do you mean the rider is Dionysius, the philosopher?’ He nodded again. ‘How peculiar. Can you still see him?’ Eco frowned and shook his head. Then he brightened again. He pointed his finger as the arrow flies, in an arc that ascended and then fell, indicating something farther afield. He made his sign for Olympias’s tresses. ‘You can see the girl?’ He nodded yes, then no as she passed from sight. ‘And does it seem that the philosopher follows her?’ Eco watched for a moment longer, then looked down at me with an expression of grave concern and slowly nodded.

‘How odd. How very odd. If you can see no more, come down.’ Eco watched for a moment longer, then sat on the rock and pushed himself off, landing with a grunt. He hurried to the horses and indicated the knotted tethers.

‘Ride after them? Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no reason to assume that Dionysius means her any harm. Perhaps he isn’t following her at all.’ Eco put his hands on his hips and looked at me the way that Bethesda so often does, as if I were a foolish child. ‘Very well, I’ll admit it’s odd that he should pass by on the same obscure path only moments behind us, unless he has some secret reason. Perhaps it was us he was following, and not Olympias, in which case we’ve given him the slip.’

Eco was not satisfied. He crossed his arms and fretted. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘We are not going after them. And no, you are not going off on your own. By now Olympias is probably already in Cumae. Besides, I doubt that a young woman as strong and capable as Olympias is in need of protection from an old greybeard like Dionysius.’

Eco wrinkled his brow and kicked at a stone. With his arms still crossed he began to walk toward the tall rock, as if he meant to climb it again. An instant later he froze and spun around, as did I.

The voice was strange and unnerving – gruff, wheezing, barely recognizable as that of a woman. Its owner wore a blood-red hooded cloak and stood with her hands joined within the voluminous sleeves so that no part of her body was visible. From the deep shadow that hid her face the voice issued like the moaning of a phantom from the Jaws of Hades.

‘Come back, young man! The girl is safe. You, on the other hand, are an intruder here, and in constant danger until the god sees your naked face and judges whether to blast you with lightning or open your ears to the voice of the Sibyl. Both of you, gather your courage and follow me. Now!’

XII