The Sacrifice Stone (27 page)

I noticed almost immediately that he wasn’t alone — another shadow was following him, moving to each patch of shadow as he vacated it and moved on. Behind them came another man, but, progressing less carefully, it was easy to make him out.

Mind you, he
was
leading a bull.

They came closer, and I was able to identify them: Varus in the lead, followed by Flavius. Gaius had drawn the short straw and was walking beside the bull.

He was less fit than the brothers — I could hear him panting. He didn’t have the Soldier’s kindly touch with animals; some emotion in him — anxiety? fear? — had communicated itself to the bull, who was rolling his eyes and sweating. Someone — probably the Soldier — had recently put a ring in his nose, and the poor creature was torn between pulling away, which hurt, or walking beside Gaius, which made him afraid.

What had become of the Soldier? I tried to dismiss the picture of him lying injured — or worse — somewhere, but it was difficult. He probably went back to his villa, I told myself, penned his bull for the night and went to bed. He’ll be horrified in the morning when he finds the animal gone.

I prayed for that to be the truth. I knew in my bones that, if he’d stood in the way of the brothers and refused to let them take the bull, he’d have been in for a bad time.

Why had they wanted the bull?

Before I could start trying to puzzle out what on earth they were up to, I suddenly thought agonizingly of Theo. Wherever it was they’d stowed him, he must be still there — I was glad, for an instant, that he wasn’t having to witness the bull’s suffering.

Only for you, I said silently to my god, can I endorse what we would have done to that creature tonight.

I shall have to get that bull back, I thought dejectedly. I’ll get going as soon as they’ve gone, try to find the others — perhaps it won’t be too late for the sacrifice, assuming we can overcome those three and —

I didn’t get any further with my over-optimistic planning. At that moment I caught sight of another figure following the others. This one was smaller, a slim, slight shadow that at times I lost completely.

But I knew who it was. A sudden fury took hold of me — how
can
he be here, putting himself right back into peril when surely he must just have escaped? — and for a moment I didn’t know what I should do.

Go on, said that familiar voice. Go after them.

Taking care to make no sound, I climbed stiffly down from my hiding place and, once more, set off up the track.

*

I stood on the edge of the clearing, concealed in the undergrowth. The moon had shifted in its course since I’d last been up there: now it shone right into the glade, making it as bright as day. Gaius was standing in front of the temple, the bull giving regular bellows of fear. As I watched, Varus and Flavius emerged from the temple, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the bright light.

Varus had in his hands the Pater’s sacrificial knife.

I couldn’t believe it. They were going ahead with the sacrifice, just the two of them and Gaius, and they had the nerve to steal the sacred knife, which only the Pater was allowed to touch!

Why?

In the name of the god,
why
?

I had my answer, even as the silent protests rang out in my head. As if he could no longer bear the sounds of the bull’s terror, Theo leapt down into the glade.

‘Let go of him!’ he shouted, pummelling his fists against Gaius’s sturdy back. ‘You’re hurting him!’

Gaius pushed him easily away. I heard him laugh. ‘He’s going to be hurt a lot more before the night’s much older,’ he said. ‘And he’s not the only —’

‘Gaius,’ Varus said warningly. Gaius shut his mouth.

It seemed that Theo had been so intent on the bull that he hadn’t noticed the brothers, standing silently side by side, until Varus spoke.

‘I’m not going back with you,’ he burst out, glaring up at Flavius, ‘you lied to me, you said you were bringing me to meet Sergius, and you didn’t!’

It was all I could do not to rush out to him there and then. But I made myself wait: there was still so much I didn’t know.

‘You will do as you’re told,’ Flavius said coldly.

‘I won’t!’ Swift as a lizard, Theo turned, darting off in the direction of the track. But Flavius caught the hem of his tunic and hauled him back.

‘You will not escape us again,’ Varus said. He glanced at Gaius, contempt in his face. ‘You will be entrusted to a better guard, this time.’

‘It wasn’t my fault the little beggar escaped!’ Gaius protested. ‘He kicked me, I’ll show you the bruise, then when I was down he —’

Flavius waved his free hand. ‘We do not wish to hear your excuses,’ he said crushingly. ‘Not that your carelessness disturbed us unduly,’ — he gave Theo a shake — ‘since we knew full well this young man would not go far.’

‘What do you mean?’ Theo shouted. The bull gave a frightened snort, and Theo, edging forward, put a comforting hand on its neck as if in apology.

‘You would not be able to leave your friend here,’ — Varus nodded towards the bull — ‘knowing he was in trouble.’ He raised the great knife, testing the keenness of the blade with his thumb. His gesture could have only one interpretation.

‘
No
!’ Theo leapt forward, but Flavius caught him, this time wrapping both arms round the wiry body.

‘Yes,’ Varus said quietly. ‘We needed you to be here. When this fool admitted he had let you escape, we knew you would not be able to stop yourself following us back to the temple.’

Cat and mouse games again, just as his brother had played with me. Pretending to be solicitous and friendly, just to make the inevitable blow hit the harder.

Were they so perverted that they wanted the poor boy actually to
watch
the bull die?

They were moving off, Flavius carrying the wriggling Theo, Varus bearing the knife, Gaius dragging the sweating, moaning bull.

As soon as they had all disappeared along the rock tunnel that led to the sacrifice stone, I followed.

But they acted fast, too fast for me — I was still negotiating the passage when the awful sounds began. The bull sent up a bellow of protest that rang against the rocks — I guessed they were tethering it, tying it to the slab of stone — and the bellow grew to a squeal, a single piercing note of pure hysteria.

It stopped.

Was it done, then? Had Varus plunged in the knife and found its heart?

But then the scream began again. Only now it was human.

And I knew what they were doing. Pretending right up to the last moment that they were going to sacrifice the bull, all along they’d planned the substitution. Hadn’t they told me that justice would be done on me by my losing someone I loved? That his method of death would be ‘appropriate’, even more so than the amphitheatre?

Yes. I’d brought about their father’s death by execution. Three men had taken him out in the half-light, and I’d watched as they had executed him. Now three men had plotted another killing, only instead of an execution it was to be a sacrifice.

I couldn’t stand by and watch this time.

My dagger in my hand, I burst out of the rock tunnel. It was as if one glance took in a tableau, frozen round the sacrifice stone: the bull-calf was cowering against the cliff, shaking with fear; Flavius held Theo’s head, tipped back to expose his throat; Varus had the knife in his right hand.

Gaius, abruptly leaping out of immobility, rushed towards me. He raised his fist and caught me on the point of the jaw, exactly where I’d hit him.

All my teeth seemed to jar against each other, and at first I didn’t realize that he wasn’t capitalizing on the moment by hitting me again. Then, as he grasped my arms and his weight began to topple me over backwards, I tried to raise my hands to push him off.

My right hand, holding my dagger, wouldn’t respond.

Looking down, I saw that it was embedded deep in Gaius’s chest. I hadn’t been aware of lunging at him: he must have impaled himself as he rushed at me.

He was falling, and, clinging on to me, taking me with him.

As the back of my head crashed against the rock, I heard Theo scream again.

26

The violent wind dropped as abruptly as it had sprung up. In the sudden quiet, Beth seemed to hear those words echo off the rocks, again and again, before they, too, faded and died.

It’s
not
true
.

She said under her breath, ‘I know.’

She had the brief sensation that someone was gently stroking her hair. And a calm voice — quite different from the one which had shouted out that desperate cry — said inside her head,
Help
him
.
Do
not
fail
him
now
.

Sitting up, she brushed the leaves and twigs from her clothes, flicking her hands against her jeans to remove some of the dust. It had got into her eyes and her mouth: her eyes were smarting, and she could feel grit between her teeth.

In the stillness, she realized that she could hear the faint sound of running water.

She smiled. Hadn’t someone — Joe — said, aeons ago, that Mithraea were always sited near running water? Well, this was a Mithraeum. Where once water had found a way, the chances were it still might be flowing.

Even after nearly two thousand years.

She got up, tiptoed past Adam — still sitting with his head in his hands — and followed the sound. Beyond the outcrop of rock that concealed the temple, through thorn-covered bushes that scratched at her jeans, down a steep bank. And there, rushing fast out of the hillside and off down through a deep gully, was a narrow stream of clear water.

She knelt down as close to it as she could get, dipping her hands into the water — which was surprisingly cold — then splashing handfuls over her face, washing the dust and the grit from her eyes and mouth. Standing up, she felt suddenly invigorated, as if the water had bestowed a greater blessing than merely making her clean.

Thoughtfully, she went back to Adam to tell him.

*

Later, when he too had washed in the stream, they sat side by side in the glade; there was so much she wanted to say — she guessed it was the same for him — but couldn’t think where to begin.

After a while he took her hand. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘we just cleaned up in what used to be a sacred spring.’

‘It still is,’ she said without thinking. Then: ‘Oh! I mean ...’ She trailed off. She didn’t know what she’d meant.

He smiled. ‘If so, I can’t think that the god would mind, since the reason we needed to wash seems to be very much to do with him. Or one of his worshippers, anyway.’

‘He didn’t do it,’ she said urgently. ‘Your Roman. He’s innocent, it’s impossible to think he could have —’

‘You’re preaching to the converted,’ Adam said calmly. ‘I know what you were trying to say, before that wind came. You were about to explain how he’s brought me — us — here because he wants someone to know he’s not guilty, he didn’t do what they say he did.’

‘He didn’t sacrifice the child,’ she said.

‘No. And being wrongly accused still matters enough to him — wherever and whatever he is — that he had to go to these lengths to prove his innocence.’

She sat thinking for some time, then said, ‘Why now? Why, after lying quiet for the best part of two thousand years, is he suddenly so concerned that the truth is known? And is it going to be enough that
we
know?’

‘Why shouldn’t it be?’

She realized he hadn’t understood what she was trying to say. ‘Look, the Christian church has kept alive an enduring legend concerning what happened up here. They’ve made a saint of the child who died! Little Saint Theodore has a statue in a church down in Arles — in any number of churches, for all I know — which people still pray to when they get a sore throat, and probably when they’re suffering from a hundred other ailments and problems, too. And the legend’s sufficiently well known for my brother to have come across it in the library of a provincial university in England; it seems to feature in the standard book of martyrs and it says, quite unequivocally, that a Roman officer brutally slaughtered a Christian child because he wouldn’t worship the gods of Rome.’

‘Yes, I’m aware of all that. Only —’

But she didn’t hear him. Taught to think logically, to move step by step through the stages of an argument, suddenly she knew the answer to her own question. ‘When did you first see him? The Roman, I mean. How long ago was it when he appeared at your spiritualist gathering?’

‘A few months back.’

‘Be more exact!’ She hadn’t meant to sound so dictatorial, and smiled briefly in apology.

‘Let me see ... Once he’d come through, the pace hotted up very fast. We’re only talking of a matter of weeks ...’ He was frowning, and fleetingly she was sorry to make him work so hard after all he’d just been through. Only, she thought, curbing her impatience, it’s so
important
.

‘It was July,’ he said decisively. ‘The middle of July.’ He turned to her, a triumphant look on his face. ‘I remember because Wimbledon had just finished.’

The juxtaposition of a Roman apparition and Wimbledon fortnight was so absurd she almost laughed. But the matter in hand was too pressing for distractions. ‘The middle of July,’ she repeated.

‘Is that significant?’

‘Oh, yes. Because it was in the middle of July that the girl had her original vision.’

The slowness of his mental processes was, she thought charitably, only because they’d just had such an extraordinary experience. Then his face cleared. ‘The little girl who saw the statue cry tears!’

‘St Theodore’s statue. Yes.’

‘What happened to her —’

‘What she
says
happened to her,’ Beth interrupted.

‘— has focused attention on an ancient legend that everyone had forgotten about.’ He stared into her eyes. ‘No wonder our Roman’s upset. The whole sordid tale has been put back under the spotlight.’

‘The wrong tale. They’ve got all the facts upside down.’ She took hold of his hands. ‘We
know
, now.’

He stretched out on the grass, smiling. ‘Yes. The truth is out — the Roman’s been vindicated.’

He looked so satisfied that she was stung to protest. ‘It’s not enough!’ she cried impatiently. ‘It can’t possibly be — don’t you see? You and I have a gut feeling that your Roman is a decent guy who has been blackened down through the centimes — we’ve been
told
he’s innocent, very forcefully, and we’re convinced. But —’

‘But we have to convince others,’ he finished for her. ‘Yes. I see what you mean.’ He looked dejected suddenly. ‘And just how are we going to do that?’

‘We’ll tell people! Describe what happened here, explain about the great wind and the voice, and ...’ Even as she spoke, she realized what she was saying. God, she thought, no wonder he’s dejected.

‘And get patted on the head and told we’ve had too much wine and sunshine? Think again, Beth!’

‘If s not enough, is it?’ she said after a while. ‘We have to find proof.’

He didn’t bother to put his opinion of
that
idea into words, merely going ‘Ha!’

She heard again that quiet voice.
Do
not
fail
him
now
.

She got up, staring down at him. ‘We must go back to Arles,’ she said firmly. ‘If there is any proof, that’s where it’ll be. He’s Saint Theodore of Arles, isn’t he? If he was canonized by that name, there must be records.’

‘It was two thousand years ago!’

‘We’ve got to try!’ she shouted. Then, more calmly: ‘Let’s treat this as a scientific experiment. We have a hypothesis — that the story’s wrong and the Roman’s innocent — and now we have to find supporting evidence. We’ll start with the church records.’

Reluctantly he stood up, looking at her resignedly. As they set off back down to the car, he said, ‘Can we have a beer before we start?’

*

On the way back she said, after quite a long time spent wrestling with her conscience, ‘I’ve had an idea.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘It’s a very mean idea, and I’m ashamed of myself.’

Looking over at him, she saw him smile. ‘I can’t wait to hear it.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Why don’t we go home to La Maison Jaune and both get on with what I’m meant to be doing down here anyway?’

‘Helping Joe?’

‘Exactly. Joe has made masses of notes on his St Theodore, he’ll have all the references and he’s photocopied heaps of relevant extracts from musty old tomes that aren’t allowed out of the library.’

‘But surely he’s looking for material to prove the story’s true, not question its very foundation?’

‘It doesn’t matter! If he’s got hold of the earliest sources, we can use them just as well to disprove as he can to prove!’

He laughed briefly. ‘No wonder you were ashamed of yourself! How sly can you get?’

‘Truth must out,’ she said sanctimoniously. Then added: ‘It’ll serve him right for being so smug!’

La Maison Jaune was quiet when they got back in the middle of the afternoon, and there was a lingering aroma of garlic and onions — belatedly she realized they hadn’t had any lunch. They found Joe in his study, writing up notes. Several books were stacked on the desk, most of them marked with pieces of paper.

She went to stand beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder: if we’re going to get him to co-operate, she thought, better to be friendly.

‘Hi,’ he said, eyes on the screen of his laptop.

‘Hello. Adam’s come back with me.’

Joe looked up briefly. ‘So I see.’

‘How was the pasta lunch?’

He shrugged. ‘Okay.’

She got the impression the occasion hadn’t been a roaring success. ‘The others have gone?’

He was typing again, hammering the keys rather hard. ‘They’ve gone off to the beach. At some place on the Camargue.’

‘You didn’t want to go too?’

‘
I’ve
got to work.’ He managed to make it sound as if he was the only person who ever did any. Among that particular group, she thought, he probably is.

‘We’ve come to help,’ she said, and was surprised when he looked up and gave her a genuinely grateful smile.

‘Have you? It’s more than bloody Gemma was prepared to do.’

‘We’ll be better assistants than Gemma,’ she said. ‘Where shall we start?’ Before he could answer, she went on, ‘This morning I was going over your Lucius Sextus notes about what happened after Theodore’s death. Adam and I’ll get on with that.’

‘Okay.’ Joe had gone back to his books, picking out one from halfway down a huge pile. ‘I found another reference,’ — she felt her heart leap — ‘it’s in that book on the floor. The place is marked.’

‘Right.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘I’ll make some notes while Adam reads the Lucius Sextus. Can I have your notebook?’

For a moment he didn’t answer. Remembering his earlier hostility, the protective way he’d virtually ordered her off his papers, she thought he was going to refuse. But then, surprisingly, he smiled. ‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘To anything — it doesn’t matter any more.’

The smile had become a smirk, with more than an element of triumph in it. Apprehensive suddenly, although she didn’t know why, she said, ‘What doesn’t matter?’

Joe was clearly enjoying himself. ‘I’ve guessed what you’re up to,’ he said, glaring at Adam. ‘All your talk of gipsies is just a blind. You’re down here because of St Theodore.’

He knows, Beth thought. She fought the despair: let’s at least wait to see
what
he knows!

‘What makes you think that?’ Adam said calmly.

‘It’s exactly what I’d expect.’ Joe managed to put a sneer in his voice. ‘You’ve been commissioned by some oversophisticated, Doubting-Thomas film company to come down here and disprove what’s happening at Our Lady of the Marshlands. That’s what you’ve been doing these past few days, and my turncoat sister has been helping you.’

The relief was enormous. He’s on the right track, Beth thought, but he’s missed the vital ingredient. She didn’t let the relief show; instead she said mildly, ‘I’m hardly a turncoat. I never said I believed the story of your little saint, if you recall, and I certainly don’t go along with this child’s visions. I —’

Joe was nodding, infuriatingly. ‘You don’t? And that applies to you, too?’ He shot a look at Adam.

‘It does.’

‘Wonderful! Well, I’d like to invite the pair of you to stand beside me in the Church of Our Lady of the Marshlands, the day after tomorrow.’

‘Why?’ Beth asked. She had an idea what the answer would be.

Joe was beating an intricate tattoo on the desk with his pencil. ‘I could say, “Wait and see” ’ — he glanced up, grinning, and Beth could have hit him — ‘but I think I’ll tell you. Remember those phone calls, Beth?’

‘Of course,’ she snapped.

‘They were from my Arles contact.’ He was smiling smugly. ‘My man on the spot. You may have heard of the Reverend Derek?’