The Sacrifice Stone (18 page)

Those words echoed in my head as I rode back. There is trouble for you. As if I didn’t already know! But to have that well-meaning warning —
was
it well-meaning? I didn’t even know that! — from one of my own people made it doubly forceful. Doubly frightening.

I tried to put together all I knew about the two Ravens. One was a relative newcomer, a young man who had come from northern Gaul and whom I couldn’t remember having seen without his mask and cloak. The other — I thought he was called Flavius — I understood worked in the Procurator’s Office in Arelate, although we were no more than nodding acquaintances. It’s like that among the followers of Mithras — we are Brothers when we worship but, although we must never harm one another in our life outside the temple, we are not necessarily close friends.

Trouble. Hunching my shoulders as the temperature dropped with the approach of evening, I tried to dispel my growing apprehension.

*

Cassius greeted me with the news that Theo had fallen in love with his colt. The animal had taken to him almost straight away, eaten all that Theo had offered and then been a thorough nuisance for the rest of the day because he was suddenly so full of energy.

‘Is Theo ready?’ I asked. ‘We should be setting out, we’ve got quite a way to go.’

Cassius hesitated. ‘I’ll fetch him if you wish, but Julia was about to dish up supper. Besides, the lad’s worn out — I doubt if he’ll manage to keep his eyes open long enough to eat.’ You don’t know him, I thought. ‘He’s welcome to stay the night. That way he can get back to my colt first thing tomorrow. We might try him out on the lunge rein.’

I said, ‘What are you saying?’

Cassius smiled. ‘I like the boy. Whatever you decide about his future, why not let him stay here for a few days? He’s enjoyed himself today, and he looks happy. Besides, he’s a good worker.’

Why not indeed. ‘If you’re sure,’ I said. ‘I warn you, he’ll eat you out of house and home.’

‘Not my Julia he won’t, she’s used to lads. Will you come and join us, Sergius?’

‘No, thank you. I’ll come and see Theo, then I’ll be on my way.’

*

I missed him, riding the last leg home. But he’d been so eager to stay that I hadn’t the heart to take him back with me. I’ll have to get used to missing him, I told myself, so I might as well start now.

The house was in darkness when I got in. When I’d seen to my horse I went outside again and quietly walked round the walls, but could see no sign of any lurking watcher. Callistus had left a pan of stew on the hearth, and Didius must have been in because the bathhouse furnace was lit. If he’d waited around to give me the usual massage and scrape, he wasn’t waiting any longer. Still, I could bathe on my own; I was glad he’d heated the water.

I ate my supper and headed for the bathhouse. I progressed quite rapidly through the
tepidaria
, eager to get into the
caldarium
for the pleasure of lying back in the scalding water; it was every bit as good as I’d anticipated. I was sitting up, rubbing oil into my chest and arms, when I heard the bathhouse door open and close again.

It wasn’t the best situation in which to face an intruder, stark naked and with my clothes three rooms away. Making my voice sound deep and threatening, I shouted, ‘Who’s there?’

She peered round the wall that separated me from the last of the
tepidaria
. ‘It’s me.’

‘Zillah, you’re lucky I didn’t attack first and ask questions later!’

‘You’ve nothing to attack with,’ she pointed out, ‘except a linen towel and a bottle of oil. Shall I do your back?’

‘You keep your distance!’ I shrank back into the corner of the bath, pulling up my knees. I wondered how clear the water was. ‘And just how did you get in?’

‘Through the gates,’ she said innocently. ‘Shouldn’t I have done?’

I could have sworn I’d shot the bolt across. ‘No, it’s all right. I’m glad to see you,’ I added.

She smiled. ‘And I you.’

‘Theo isn’t here, he’s staying on a farm with a good friend of mine and his family. He — Theo — has fallen for a young colt.’

‘He’s good with horses,’ she said absently. Then: ‘I know.’

This was getting worse. First she walked in through the gates I’d omitted to bolt, now she knew all about my day’s doings.
‘
How
do you know?’

‘I asked your manservant. Callistus, isn’t it?’ I nodded dumbly. ‘Don’t worry, he guessed who I was. He’s very fond of you, isn’t he? Very loyal.’ She was unwinding the veil from her head and throat, fanning herself in the steam.

‘Not loyal enough to keep my secrets,’ I said. I’d have to have words with Callistus.

‘He knew it didn’t have to be secret from me,’ she said sensibly. ‘Phew, it’s hot in here!’

‘It’s meant to be, it’s a hot room.’ I was feeling terribly aware of my nakedness. ‘You wouldn’t like to turn away while I get out and find my towel, would you?’

‘I was just about to anoint your back.’ She was rolling up her sleeves as she spoke. ‘I’m good at massage — I used to do my husband, when he came in at daybreak all stiff and cold from a night’s fishing.’

I felt her strong hands on my shoulders. She was right — she was indeed good.

I frothed up the water, grateful for the clouds of steam which seemed to be obscuring those areas of me under the surface. ‘Mmm, this is nice.’

She burst out laughing. ‘It can’t be! You’re about as relaxed as that stone pillar over there. Go on, let yourself go!’

I reached up and took hold of her hands. Lightly — I thought briefly of Gaius, who might well take such a grip on her with a lot more force. After a moment’s resistance, she didn’t try to pull away. ‘I can’t let myself go when I’m naked in my bath with a fully clad woman hovering round me.’

‘I’m not looking,’ she said, the laughter still in her voice. ‘Anyway, I’m sure you haven’t got anything out of the ordinary — when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.’

I twisted round so that I was kneeling up in the bath, face to face with her. Somehow I didn’t feel awkward any more. ‘You haven’t seen
mine
,’ I said. Then, my hands on her face so that I could gently pull her towards me, I kissed her.

She kissed me back, there was no doubt about that. Her mouth opened under mine, and she didn’t seem to mind that my arms round her were soaking her robe. The kiss grew more intense, and, losing myself in her, I pulled her into the bath.

She broke away from the kiss. Her arms still round my neck, she was half-floating, half-sitting on my lap. I wished she’d sit down more firmly. ‘I’m all wet,’ she said. ‘Look at my clothes!’

‘Oh dear. Perhaps you’d better take them off.’

‘Perhaps I had.’ She stood up in the water, and I watched as she peeled off the dripping gown and underclothes. Her body was rounded and firm, the belly with a slight swell, the breasts heavy. She turned to look down at me, a smile on her face.

‘I hope you like what you see.’ There wasn’t a touch of flirtatiousness in her tone.

‘I do.’ I reached up for her, and she sank back into the water.

‘I’ve never frolicked in a Roman bath before,’ she said. ‘Especially not with a Roman in it.’

‘Would you rather I got out?’ Gallantry seemed to demand that I ask.

‘No, I’d rather you stayed.’ I loved her forthrightness. ‘It’s big enough and deep enough to swim in, isn’t it? I know how to swim.’ She demonstrated the fact, blissfully unaware that the action of her strong legs was lifting her buttocks to the surface.

It seemed unfair to go on enjoying the unexpected sight, so I swam after her. ‘So do I. I learned when a tough little sergeant with arms like hawsers threw me in a river.’

‘Why did he do that? Weren’t you angry?’

‘Hopping mad, but there isn’t much a new recruit can do by way of protest.’

‘You were in the Legions?’ She caught on quick, this one. I nodded. ‘I thought you were a financial secretary?’

‘I am now. They don’t let you be a legionary for ever.’

She was running her hands up and down my arms. ‘You look more like a soldier than a secretary.’

‘I keep myself fit,’ I gasped; her hands were now on my chest.

Her eyes held mine. ‘I had to come,’ she said frankly. ‘There’s something I have to tell you, but it’s only part of why I’m here.’

Whatever it was, it could wait. ‘I know.’ It might have been presumptuous, but if she was determined to be honest, I had to be too. ‘I’ve been hoping you’d come back ever since you left.’

She looked so happy. ‘Have you?’

‘Yes.’ I kissed her again, very softly. ‘You’ll stay, won’t you?’

‘I will. Tonight, at least.’ She returned the kiss. Then, smiling, she added, ‘I can’t very well do anything else, since you’ve soaked my clothes.’

‘Will you sleep with me?’ I thought we should get it straight, so as to avoid any misunderstandings.

She put her arms round my neck and snuggled against my wet chest. Her actions were making her answer fairly predictable, but she gave it anyway. Lips nuzzling against my neck, she said, ‘Of course.’

18

Beth lay awake for some time after Adam had gone home. The discovery that they had both experienced the same Roman — ‘seen’ was a word she wasn’t prepared to use, not yet, at any rate — had shaken them both. For it to happen to one person could be explained by any number of rationalizations. When it happened to two it was less easy to dismiss.

But as the initial reaction faded, they’d both started to feel elated. ‘It’s something special,’ Adam said, rather inadequately, she thought. ‘We have to follow it up, don’t we?’

She agreed, unreservedly. They considered various suggestions as to what was the next step — Adam wondered if some authority in the town museum might be able to turn up detailed information on the period, which seemed as good a starting point as any until they realized that they didn’t know what period it was. ‘Roman Arles covered several hundred years,’ Adam said dejectedly. ‘And, even given that our Roman was up on Hadrian’s Wall, that could have been at any time within a span of more than two centuries.’

‘Is there anywhere on the Camargue where we could find out more about that place with the derelict buildings?’ Returning there was the last thing she wanted, but if it helped, she was willing.

Fortunately he said, ‘No. There’s a museum on Camargue life and natural history, but it only makes glancing references to Roman times. And it’s nowhere near where we went today.’

They sat in thoughtful silence. She began to feel uneasy: I know what we have to do, she thought, but he’s not going to like it.

Eventually he said, ‘I’m stumped. What about you? Any bright ideas?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh! Why didn’t you say?’

‘Because I’ll be treading on delicate ground.’

He looked amused. ‘Do you normally let that stop you?’

No, she wanted to say, but this is different. ‘Adam, when you were explaining that the Roman is much more vivid down here, you said he kept showing you that place on the Camargue and another place.’ He started to protest, but she ploughed on. ‘Yes, I know very well you can’t talk about it, you said so. But don’t you think you’ll have to? Isn’t that the only way we can hope to make any progress?’

He didn’t answer for a long time. He sat, eyes half-closed, staring out in front of him. Finally, the reluctance obvious in his voice, he said, ‘Okay.’

What did that mean? ‘Can we find it, do you think?’

He turned to her. ‘Beth, I don’t know where it is. I don’t even know
what
it is. It’s just like the derelict buildings — I have a picture in my head, but without some clue to tell me where the place is, I’m completely at a loss.’

‘Can you describe it?’

He sighed. ‘I see a big rectangle of stone. It’s got rocks around it, and some sandy soil. There’s a dark place near it, lit by candle flames. There are figures which seem to dance.’

‘I see what you mean.’ It was incredibly disappointing. ‘Can’t you think of anything else?’

He hesitated, then said almost brutally, ‘The stone’s covered with blood.’

‘Oh!’

He flashed her a smile. ‘Sorry. I did warn you.’

Something was stirring at the back of her mind. Focusing on it, slowly it became clear. ‘When I was telling you earlier about Joe and his discoveries about the Mithraists, you leapt to their defence. And a few days ago, when Joe mentioned them to me, I remember getting a fleeting image of the Roman. You don’t think it’s possible he — the Roman — is trying to give us a lead?’

‘By indicating there’s a link with Mithras, you mean?’

‘Yes. And he’s showing you that rock covered with blood because it was the Mithraists’ sacrifice stone.’

‘It’s possible, I suppose, yes. But, as I told you, they didn’t make sacrifices. Only on very special occasions.’

‘Couldn’t the scene you’ve been given be a special occasion?’

‘No, because —’ He stopped. After a pause he said, ‘It could.’

‘Well, why don’t we look at some temples of Mithras?’

‘Mithraea,’ he said automatically.

‘Mithraea, then. Joe said there’s one in some place by the sea — Saint Marie, was it?’ She got up and fetched the map from Joe’s desk. ‘Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. There it is.’ She pointed. ‘He said there’s another one somewhere, but he didn’t say where it was. But we could make a start down at Saintes-Maries.’

She wondered why he seemed so very reluctant. ‘Adam?’

‘All right.’ He got to his feet. ‘We’ll go tomorrow.’

Then, after a brief goodnight, he went home.

*

Joe wasn’t back by the time Adam collected her, even though they didn’t leave till mid-afternoon; she’d suggested they might have a lie-in, having been up so late the previous night. She was relieved not to have to confront Joe. She had considered leaving him a note to say where she was and when she expected to be back, then decided not to. If he didn’t bother with such courtesies, she wasn’t going to either.

They covered the journey down to the coast swiftly. On the outskirts of Arles they had passed a sign to the village in whose church the girl had experienced her vision of St Theodore: ‘Visit Our Lady of the Marshlands!’ Beth translated to herself, ‘See the tears of Little Saint Theodore!’ She watched a convoy of three tourist buses take the turning to the village: Theomania, she reflected, looked as if it was becoming big business.

There was little traffic on their road, and Adam seemed to be driving faster as a result of not talking; perhaps, she thought, the extra concentration makes a difference.

Judging by its outskirts, Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer promised to be a thoroughly modern tourist resort. With growing disappointment, she gazed out on new and raw-looking holiday houses and apartments, between them countless small businesses offering rides across the Camargue; one advertised ‘Photographic Safaris’. Bored-looking horses stood tacked up and chewing their bits: trade seemed slack, but then it was the end of the season.

Adam parked the car on the edge of a central square, and they crossed the road to a precinct of shops and cafés. Without exception, the shops offered nothing but souvenirs and postcards.

Then, emerging from an alley between the shops, suddenly they were in an open space, smoothly paved and containing a couple of decorative flowerbeds. And, rising stark above them, a heavily fortified church.

‘The church of Les Saintes-Maries,’ Adam said. ‘Shall we go in?’

It had been expecting far too much to find a perfectly preserved Mithraeum in the middle of aggressive twentieth-century commercialism. And anyway, hadn’t Joe said the church had been built over the site of the temple? It looks, she thought, as if we’ve had a wasted journey. ‘We may as well.’

But the church’s interior was very far from being a disappointment. There was nobody about: they walked slowly up the aisle with the fine Romanesque walls soaring either side, the stone lit to bright gold by the floodlights concealed behind the pillars; the fortified church had no windows.

At the far end of the aisle, two sets of steps led up to the altar. Between them, there was a narrow stairway leading down to the crypt: walled in rough stone, as if hewn out of the rock, it was lit with hundreds of small candles whose light flickered in the slight draught. The statue of a woman, black-skinned and robed in muslin and lace, seemed to be moving in the dancing light.

Adam was already going down the steps. Hesitating only for an instant, she followed.

‘Who is she?’ she whispered, going to stand beside Adam in front of the calm-faced figure.

‘I don’t know. When we leave, we’ll see if we can find a guide book in one of those hundreds of shops.’

‘I should have brought Joe’s book,’ she murmured.

Adam had wandered on and was now staring at a slab of stone set into the rocky wall. ‘Come and look at this,’ he said softly.

‘What is it?’

He ran his finger over some very faint lettering. ‘It’s an altar. I can’t read the dedication — too many of the letters have been worn away.’

‘An altar?’

‘Yes. Not an altar like that one above our heads — this is Roman. Followers of the various gods would put up an altar dedicated to their favourite deity when something good happened, and sometimes on the well-preserved ones you can read the full inscription, so you know the name of the deity, the name and status of the man who put up the altar, and often the year as well.’

‘Like the plaques in churches that say “
Merci
” when a saint has healed a child or something?’

‘Just like that. The Sixth Legion put up altars on the bridge they built at Newcastle to thank the gods for their uneventful sea voyage from Germany.’

‘So this could once have been a Roman temple? The very Mithraeum we’ve come to find?’ It was such an amazing thought that she wondered why he didn’t seem more excited.

He shrugged. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, although the layout would have been different. But it’s far more likely that the men who constructed the crypt needed a slab of stone to shore up a weak spot, and used what was handy, stone being in short supply down here.’

‘But this stone was originally in a temple?’

‘Probably.’

She reached forward to touch it. She half-expected the Roman to materialize in front of her, but nothing happened.

Adam put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You never see anything when you’re trying to,’ he said gently. ‘It’s the sod’s law of the spirit world.’

She smiled. ‘I’ll stop trying, then. Shall we go and find a guide book?’

‘If you’ve seen enough.’

On the way out she lit a candle and added it to the hundreds already burning. Watching the smoke from the ignited wick twist slowly upwards, she thought of the Roman.

*

They found a nicely illustrated guide to the town, and sat down on a bench to read it.

‘The legend of the Saintes-Maries says they arrived from the Holy Land in AD 40, in an open boat with no sails, oars or rudder,’ Adam said. ‘The two saints were Mary the sister of the Virgin, and Mary the mother of James and John. Mary Magdalene came with them, with Martha, Lazarus, Maximus and Sidonius, whoever the last two were. Their servant Sarah leapt in at the last moment and came too.’

‘Quite a load, for a small boat.’

‘It doesn’t say it was small, just that it was open.’

‘Why did they come here?’ She peered over his shoulder.

‘Presumably they fled the Holy Land to avoid persecution. There are lots of legends about figures from the Gospels arriving in Europe — think of Joseph of Arimathea planting his staff at Glastonbury.’

‘Some people say Jesus himself survived the Crucifixion and escaped to France.’

‘They do indeed.’

‘Were they evangelists? You’d think they might be tempted to keep quiet about their faith, in case they got persecuted here too.’

He looked down at the book. ‘It says the rest of this particular party went off to start spreading the word — Martha went to Tarascon, and Lazarus to Marseilles — but the two Saint Marys were too old and they stayed here, where Sarah took care of them.’

‘It’s a lovely story,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if it were true?’

‘What makes you think it isn’t?’

‘It’s not all that likely, is it?’

‘No, but it’s possible.’

‘I liked that black-faced Sarah.’ She thought it would be diplomatic to change the subject, since it was clear they weren’t going to agree: she couldn’t for a moment see how eight people could miraculously drift from Palestine to Provence in an inadequately equipped boat, especially in view of the fact that most of them were elderly and quite a few in delicate health. Why, Lazarus had been given up for dead at one time, and Martha had exhausted herself on housework, poor thing. Yet there was Adam calmly accepting it as possible.

‘She’s become wrapped up in gipsy folklore,’ he said. ‘Although she came from the Holy Land, she’s venerated as a gipsy herself — she’s their patron saint.’

She was tempted to ask if he was going to include Sarah in his film, but decided not to as it might be construed as provocative. ‘It’s all very interesting, but it’s not what we came here for. Have you seen anything that looks like the vision?’ Silly question, she thought, it’s quite obvious he hasn’t, first because he’d have told me, second because there’s been nothing like what he described.

He smiled. ‘No. Afraid not.’

‘Well, we’ll have to look somewhere else.’ She was determined not to be daunted. ‘We’ll go back and look through Joe’s books and find references to Mithraeums, and —’

‘Mithraea.’

‘To Mithraea, then, and visit all of them. We’ll make a list.’

He didn’t respond.

‘Won’t we?’

‘If you say so. But not today.’

‘Oh. All right, then.’

She thought, I’ll do it myself, if you’re not keen. I don’t have to wait till
you
feel like it!

After a while he reached out for her hand. ‘Sorry.’

‘For what?’ She didn’t take her hand away, but stopped short of reciprocating his squeeze.