Fighting Fit (9 page)

I felt my blood run cold. Brice was right. Some of these Romans weren’t actually human.

“Your mistress doesn’t seem to be enjoying her flamingo tongues,” Titus was saying in his high voice. “Perhaps she’s too used to barbarian cuisine. Has your mistress turned into a barbarian, girl? What’s your opinion?”

The PODS guests waited with interest to hear what I’d say. They knew who I was and I knew who they were. But they couldn’t exactly blow their cover, and I certainly couldn’t blow mine, so we all kept up the pretence that everyone here was human.

“My mistress is simply not hungry,” I told him defiantly.

Titus and Quintus looked at each other. “Then maybe your mistress is thirsty!” Giggling like a spiteful little kid, Titus lifted his goblet and threw its contents all over her, absolutely soaking her dress.

For a moment Aurelia just stared blankly at the spreading crimson stain, and I knew she was remembering Star, bleeding from her wounds in the arena. With great dignity, she drew her silk shawl around her. “And you want me to marry this man?” she said to her brother in a trembling voice. Rising gracefully from her couch she left the room. As I rushed after her, shouts of laughter followed us.

I knew now why Orlando had planted me in this house. The PODS were out to destroy Aurelia. They didn’t just want to harm her physically. They wanted to kill her spirit.

But why would they bother, unless she threatened their own malevolent plans in some way? I fretted. And that was just ridiculous. Aurelia wasn’t a threat to anybody. She was just a sweet, harmless little rich girl.

Later, I shot out of an uneasy doze to hear my mistress moving around in the dark.

I opened my eyes as she crept softly out of the room. Probably just going to the latrine, I thought drowsily. Um, so why is she wearing her cloak? I asked myself.

And I was off my couch in a flash. I was Helix, an angelic trouble-shooter on a mission that was just about to go seriously pear-shaped.

You should have seen this coming, I scolded myself. That banquet had given Aurelia a nightmare preview of her future. Now she was probably rushing off to the arms of her secret lover.

I beamed urgent telepathic signals to Reuben as I threw on my clothes.

Meet me under the quince tree. NOW!

Outside, the night air smelled of roses. A perfect full moon sailed over the quince tree. Reuben came hopping out of the slave quarters, still trying to buckle his sandals. “I’d have been here quicker but I had to shut Minerva in her kennel,” he whispered. “What’s up?”

“Aurelia’s running away. I think she’s going to this guy. We’ve got to follow her.”

We slipped out of the slaves’ entrance and raced along the dark street. “This is terrible!” I panted out. “You heard what Dorcas said. Anyone who gets in Titus’s way ends up seriously dead. If he finds out about her boyfriend, Aurelia could be next.”

“We don’t know she’s got a boyfriend yet,” Reuben said breathlessly. “This might not be what you think.”

“Why else would a nice Roman girl be out in the streets at night? She’s hardly likely to be going clubbing!”

“There she is!” said Reuben suddenly.

Aurelia had stopped to peer at a piece of papyrus in the moonlight. We silently caught her up. “Right at the crossroads,” she murmured. “Take the third on the right by the olive mill. Go to the old aqueduct and wait.”

And she was off again.

When we reached the aqueduct, someone stepped out of the shadows. With a flicker of alarm, I saw other figures silently following behind him. I heard someone whisper, “Bless you little sister,” then they all set off together down the street.

“This isn’t about some boyfriend is it?” I whispered to Reubs.

“Doesn’t look like it,” he agreed.

Other anonymous humans joined them as they hurried along. It went on like this, a growing crowd of men and women, all stealthily and silently heading for the same unknown destination.

Now and then one would stop and listen intently, to see if they were being followed, then they’d hurry on.

Finally we reached open ground. There had been houses here once, but they had crumbled into rubble years ago. We trailed Aurelia and her companions through the moonlit ruins until we came to an overgrown fig tree. The gnarled branches partly concealed a low archway, which had once been part of a temple. Everyone silently filed inside.

When we were quite sure the coast was clear, we followed.

On the other side of the arch, a flight of steep stone steps disappeared down into the dark. On every sixth or seventh step, someone had placed a lighted clay lamp.

Helix might be up for it, but Mel Beeby wasn’t too keen to go exploring some crumbly old crypt in the dark, so I quickly helped myself to a lamp.

It’s lucky I did. At the bottom we found ourselves in a low stone tunnel with dozens of other tunnels going off. It was a total labyrinth.

“Now what do we do?” My voice echoed spookily around the tunnel.

Reuben pointed at the wall. “We could try following the fish.”

By the flickering flame of my lamp, I saw a crudely painted fish daubed on the tunnel wall.

“That’s like the one I saw on Aurelia’s letter,” I said in amazement.

As we crept along the corridor we soon noticed that the fish symbol reappeared wherever the tunnel branched off.

“What’s that sound!” my buddy asked.

I strained my ears. “No idea.” It sounded like the blurred murmuring of bees.

The tunnel went on and on. Sometimes the bee-like murmuring seemed quite close then it would fade again. Each time it grew louder, the back of my neck went strangely tingly.

All at once I smelled incense. Not the stuff Romans used in temples. This was musky and sweet like burning pine cones. T

Did it sound like bees or was it more like the ebb and flow of waves? Whatever, it was giving me serious goose bumps. Suddenly I realised the murmuring had words. It wasn’t Latin. It was unlike any language I’d ever heard.

Next minute the tunnel opened out into an underground chamber. I glimpsed more wall paintings, strange and richly coloured. Then I saw the rapt lamp-lit faces of hundreds of humans.

My heart jumped into my mouth. I’d seen people in this state on TV: eyes closed, hands raised, chanting, swaying. And if it wasn’t drugs, a fake guru was always involved. I scanned the ecstatic faces, anxiously, until I found Aurelia. To my dismay she was swaying and chanting along with everyone else.

“This is SO much worse than I thought!” I gasped.

I grabbed Reuben’s hand and dragged him out.

“What are you so upset about?” he asked in a grumpy voice. “The chanting was cool. The total opposite of that arena.”

“Look, I’m not being horrible, Reuben, but you haven’t been to Earth that often, so you’ve probably never heard of religious cults? Well, what we just saw in there, that’s a cult. I don’t know how Aurelia got sucked into it. Maybe they had a secret chapter in Ancient Britain or something. But trust me, she’s in danger. We’re in way over our heads now. We’ve got to tell Orlando.”

“You’re the expert,” he sighed.

“Plus this incense is making my nose run,” I said. “Let’s wait outside.”

Next day, using the excuse of taking Aurelia’s wine-stained stola to the fullers, (a kind of Roman dry cleaners) Reuben and I hired a litter to take us to the ludus.

The gladiator school was basically like a Roman boot camp, with high walls set with metal spikes and broken pottery, and prowling heavies everywhere. Few people actually wanted to be gladiators, so to stop his protegees escaping, Festus Brutus had them watched twenty-four seven.

We found Orlando and the lanista behind the barracks, drilling a sullen group of human recruits in a make-shift arena.

Everyone but Orlando and Festus had thick protective padding tied around their arms and legs. The recruits were supposed to charge at straw men, with wooden swords, and pretend to disembowel them. Under Festus’s scowling gaze, Orlando made them charge again and again, until he was satisfied with their technique.

“Orlando is something else,” grinned Reuben. “He’s been here two weeks and he’s already like Festus Brutus’s right-hand man.”

“I don’t know how he does it,” I agreed.

We waited till the end of the session then we told Orlando we needed a private word.

He didn’t seem very pleased to see us. “You’d better have a really good reason for coming here like this. It’s taken days to get Festus Brutus to trust me. If he sees you guys, he’ll go up the wall.”

“We
have
got a good reason,” I said urgently. “Aurelia’s joined a dangerous cult.”

Orlando didn’t react at all how I’d expected. In fact he laughed with pure relief. “You followed her to the catacombs, right?”

I stared at him in consternation. “You
know
about that place?”

“Of course!” he said. “It’s the only place Christians can meet in safety. Practising the Christian faith is illegal in Nero’s time.”

My mouth dropped open. “Those people were Christians?”

“They can only meet in secret. That’s why they use secret symbols, like the fish, so only insiders understand what’s being passed on.”

My cheeks burned with embarrassment. You are SO ignorant, Mel Beeby! I scolded myself. Kindergarten angels know more than you.

Reuben looked worried. “What would happen if they were found out?”

Orlando quickly glanced away. “They’d be put to death.”

“Are you serious?” I gasped. “That girl is in enough trouble as it is! We just found out her brother is marrying her off to this evil secret police chief.”

Orlando nodded. “The Knife.”

He already knew, I realised. That’s why he’d wanted me to take care of her.

I suddenly remembered something. “Um, how’s Star?”

Orlando’s expression softened. “She’s making a good recovery. Festus Brutus took her into his own home, so she can be cared for properly.”

Well, he wouldn’t want to lose his investment, I thought darkly.

All the way home, I thought about how I’d underestimated Aurelia. “A sweet harmless rich girl”, I’d called her. My prejudice had blinded me to obvious clues; her hatred of all forms of cruelty, her kindness to people worse off than herself, her talk of souls.

I waited until bedtime, when Aurelia and I were alone together in her room, and then I told her that Reubs and me knew her secret and would do everything in our power to protect her.

My mistress jumped up in terror, knocking over the jar of almond oil, and spilling the sweet-scented oil everywhere. “You’ve been spying on me! I trusted you and you betrayed me.”

“You still
can
trust me, I swear! Reuben and I only followed you because we were so worried about you.” I explained how we’d decided she had a secret sweetheart.

Aurelia must have sensed that my words were totally from the heart, because she looked deep into my eyes and it was a total replay of our first meeting at the slave market. It was like she actually
knew
who I was, but at the same time she didn’t.

She sat down without a word, and I continued brushing her hair. “Your mum was a Christian too, wasn’t she?” I said softly.

“She gave me this.” Aurelia took off
her
bulla. “Look at the back.” On the reverse of her charm was a tiny mother of pearl cross.

My eyes filled with tears. Aurelia had picked a really lonely way to be true to herself, I thought. Then I thought, but she’s not alone any more.

I caught Aurelia watching me in the polished bronze mirror. “I never knew there were friends like you,” she said softly. “One day I’ll give you your freedom.”

My freedom wasn’t in her hands, but Aurelia wasn’t to know that.

We talked into the night, and as I blew out the lamp, I think we both felt happier than we’d been for days.

We didn’t know that every word of our conversation had been overheard by Aurelia’s brother, adviser to the Emperor Nero and faithful servant to the Powers of Darkness.

Chapter Eight

I
woke to find lamplight flickering confusingly in my eyes.

Dorcas was shaking me. “Get dressed!” she said in a fierce whisper. “Leave this house and take Aurelia Flavia with you.”

Aurelia rubbed her eyes drowsily. “Is there a fire?”

“You’ve been betrayed, little mistress,” Dorcas told her. “Your brother has found out you follow the teacher from Nazareth.”

We jumped up and began to fling on our clothes.

“Why are you helping me, Dorcas?” Aurelia said from inside her tunic. “You still follow the old gods.”

“I follow my heart,” said Dorcas in a low voice. “Some people say a teacher who says such things must be insane. But I say his is a better madness than Nero’s.”

Aurelia was still frantically getting dressed when we heard the sound of tramping feet. The Praetorian Guard, Nero’s police, had come to arrest us.

Reuben came running as soon as he heard the commotion, so they arrested him too.

Aurelia’s father watched it all from the door of his study. “I showed her nothing but kindness and this is how she repaid me,” he said in disgust.