The Sacrifice Stone (29 page)

He stood up. ‘I’m not surprised, it’s been a long day. Bathroom’s the door at the end of the hall — there’s plenty of hot water, take as much as you want — and the spare room’s next to it. Come on.’

Still holding her hand, he showed her. The white-painted spare room had twin beds with cream covers. Other than a vibrant painting of a Camargue scene on one wall, it was bare of decoration.

‘I don’t use it much,’ he said; she thought he sounded slightly apologetic.

‘It’s fine. I’m so grateful for a bed I wouldn’t mind a nun’s cell.’

‘You’ve very nearly got one.’

She put her arm round him. ‘Nuns don’t get lovely paintings of the Camargue, it might put unseemly ideas of wide-open spaces into their heads.’

‘I’m glad you like it. I’ll fetch you a towel and see if I can find you a bathrobe.’

He turned on the taps for her, then left her to it. She lay soaking in the hot water for some time, then, in danger of drifting off to sleep, she made herself get out.

In bed, warm in the bathrobe (which smelt faintly of lavender), she heard him splashing in the bath. She wondered if he’d look in on his way to his own room: he didn’t say goodnight earlier, she thought, so he probably will. At which point he will without doubt get more than he’s bargained for.

She was reviewing the facts she’d gleaned from
The
Canonization
of
the
Early
Christian
Saints
when she heard him come out of the bathroom. Then there was a gentle tap on her door.

‘Come in.’

‘I didn’t knock loudly,’ he said, coming over to sit on the edge of her bed, ‘in case you were asleep.’

‘I almost went to sleep in the bath.’ Although I don’t know how, she thought, in view of all that’s on my mind.

He reached out to touch her hair. ‘Your hair’s wet.’

‘It’ll soon dry.’

The sudden intimacy of having him sitting on her bed, both of them fresh from the bath and naked but for towelling robes, was disconcerting. But not disconcerting enough that she wanted him to leave.

‘Do you think they’ve noticed yet that we’ve gone?’ she asked.

‘Joe and the others? I shouldn’t imagine so. They’ll either be still shouting at each other or else have fallen into a drunken stupor on Joe’s study floor.’

‘Joe’s study being where the booze is kept?’

‘Exactly.’

She was glad all over again not to be there, having to put up with them. ‘Thank you for letting me stay.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Out of nowhere came the sudden desire to speak up for Joe. ‘He’s not always like this — he seems to have been taken over by this vision business. He’s usually hard-working and responsible, and when he goes home he’ll hand in the most thorough and convincing thesis you ever came across, including a first-hand account of Chantal Bordanado’s third vision.’

‘So I gathered — you implied the night we met Gemma that he was acting somewhat out of character.’

‘I liked Gemma.’ It seemed rather soon to be speaking of her in the past tense, but she didn’t correct herself.

‘She’d have been good for Joe, don’t you think?’

‘I do.’ She remembered her earlier thought. ‘She’d have been
very
good for my father.’

After a moment he said, ‘Can I ask you something?’

Slightly apprehensive, she said, ‘Of course.’

‘That night we were just talking about, when Gemma burst in, you’d started to tell me about your work. We’d got as far as you getting your degree, then we were interrupted. There doesn’t seem to have been a chance to ask you till now, but what were you about to say?’

‘You
are
nice,’ she said impulsively. ‘People are never interested, and it’s so important to me.’

‘I know,’ he said softly.

‘I’m going to be Dr Amery’s deputy — she’s my boss, remember?’ He nodded. ‘She’ll train me as intensively as she can, and, if I’m good enough, next year we’ll think about a further qualification.’

‘You’ll be good enough. I’ve never seen such determination.’

‘It’s a far cry from journalism and film-making.’ She didn’t at first see why the thought should be so depressing.

‘We’ve already admitted we have nothing in common professionally,’ he said gently. ‘Although, come to think about it, both our spheres require an enquiring mind.’ Then abruptly, ‘Where do you live?’

‘North London. Finchley.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Quite a long way from Northumberland.’

He touched her hand. ‘Yes, but as I think I told you, I’m away as much as I’m there. And much of my time away I spend in London.’

She said lightly, ‘Have you got a flat there too?’

‘No, just a bedsit.’

Good grief, she thought, is that all?

He said after quite a long silence, ‘I know you’re tired and longing to get to sleep, but there’s something else we need to talk about.’

‘The Roman. Yes, I know. I’ve been waiting all evening to talk about him.’

‘You said just now that Joe will complete an outstanding thesis which, together with all this publicity for the visions, will reinforce the old legend of St Theodore in flashing lights.’

‘He’s not writing it specifically for that reason — it’s not only about Theodore.’

‘Yes, but the rest doesn’t concern us. What we have to do is present the counter-argument. We’ve made a start, and —’

‘More than a start.’ I wish I’d brought Joe’s book with me, she thought: I’m not sure I can remember enough of the details. ‘Adam, I think I know where we might find the proof we need.’

He looked amazed; as well he might, she thought — apart from anything else, he’s probably wondering why I didn’t mention it earlier.

But there have been one or two other important things to consider.

He was gazing at her, his expression tender. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ she asked.

‘I imagine so. Two-thousand-year-old grievances have lost their total hold on me, this evening. But will you tell me now?’

Concentrating — with an effort — she did. Once started, some of the thrill of the initial discovery returned; judging from his face, he seemed to pick it up.

‘What do you think?’ she prompted when, having finished explaining, he didn’t speak. ‘It’s probably not in the least relevant, and I’ve put two and two together and made ninety-eight, and —’

‘And you’re not being in the least scientific or empirical? No, you’re not. But on the other hand, you seem to have had a hunch — what’s more, a very strong one.’

‘Hunches aren’t scientific.’

‘No. But under some circumstances they ought to be trusted, at least as much as laboratory-verified test results.’

‘Under what sort of circumstances?’

‘Well, for a start the sort when you’ve got an impatient Roman employing you as his agent in the tangible world.’

She digested that. ‘You mean
he
was prompting me? Making me have the hunch?’

And he said calmly, ‘Why not?’

*

After a while she said, ‘So what are we going to do?’ In under two days, she might have added, only it was too depressing.

‘Where did you say this place was?’

She told him.

‘Too far to drive there and back in two days,’ he muttered, ‘if we were to have any time at all for research.’

She wanted to be sure what he was thinking. ‘You’re suggesting we
go
there?’

He looked surprised at the question. ‘Yes.’

‘You
do
believe in my hunch, don’t you?’ she said softly.

He looked at her affectionately. ‘I do, but I have to say I’ve travelled further on slimmer evidence.’

She was still trying to absorb the fact that she and Adam were going to set off for Italy some time in the immediate future. ‘We’ll have to fly,’ she said, hoping she sounded blasé, as if she was used to setting out across Europe at the drop of a hat.

‘No problem. We’ll get down to Marseilles early tomorrow and be in Rome by lunchtime. We’ll hire a car — I’ve got a contact in the hire-car place at the airport. A few hours’ drive and we’ll be there.’

She looked at him, her mind full of conflicting emotions. I’m thrilled at what we’re going to do, I’m overjoyed that you believe in me, I’m so glad we’ve found something positive we can do.

But, over and above all that, I wish you would take me in your arms and kiss me again.

It wasn’t the moment, and she knew it. No doubt he did, too. Before either of them could let desire override common sense, she said, ‘I suppose we should get some sleep, in view of our early start tomorrow.’

Instantly he stood up. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’ll call you around six. All right?’

‘All right.’

She turned her attention to locating the switch on the bedside light so that she would not have to watch him walk away.

28

I was hallucinating.

I thought I saw Zillah, rising up, arms held aloft, lamenting her agony as wildly as Ceres mourning for the lost Proserpine. I felt a powerful guilt; my failure had wrought in my mind this picture of the mother of the poor child I had been unable to save.

As if my will became her deed, I saw her sweep her son up in her arms, crush him to her breast. Saw her strong right arm lift high above her head, saw a flash of moonlight strike on something she held in her hand. Heard, yet again, that dreadful scream.

The vision faded.

I regained consciousness, instantly aware of such pain that I almost closed my eyes again and gave up.

There was a heavy weight on my chest, making it hard to breathe. The clammy, rapidly cooling body of Gaius lay across me.

I pushed him off. His blood had soaked my tunic; the force of his fall had driven my dagger further into him, and it took almost more effort than I could summon up to wrench it out. As the long blade finally came free, a gout of dark, half-congealed blood came with it.

I lay back against the rock, waiting until the nausea subsided and the strange floating feeling in my head went away.

Then, steeling myself, I looked up at the sacrifice stone.

The moon had set, but the sky was starting to pale with the early dawn. A thin mist swirled just above the ground, breathed out from the awakening earth.

The stone was shadow-black. On it lay a body, and from the body a denser shade spread out.

On hands and knees I crawled forward. He lay on his back, arms flung out, wrists bound to the corners of the great slab. His head was tilted back, exposing the throat.

I couldn’t make myself go right up to him. From a distance I stared at him. His face made a pattern of black and white, of dark and light. Where the waxing dawn caught forehead, cheeks, chin, the young skin shone bright, unblemished. But the eyes were dark hollows, and under his chin gaped a sickle-moon of black.

I failed you, I said to him. Gods, but I’m sorry.

I bent my head, sending after his flown soul the prayers that would protect him, speed him on his way. Then, on my knees, I went closer, close enough to reach up and grope till I touched one of the upturned hands, still half-curled into a desperate fist.

He was cold.

I took his hand in mine, just as I’d done in life when I’d hauled him up some steep bank, or shown him how to hold a sword.

His hand was too big. This wasn’t Theo’s hand, it was the hand of a grown man.

I grabbed hold of the stone slab, pulling myself up so that I stood over him.

It wasn’t Theo. It was Varus.

*

I know full well I should have got away from that place the moment I realized, but I didn’t. I wasn’t in any state to get away — the nausea had increased, and the pain in my head was making me have moments when I felt myself going under again. I crawled as far as I could away from the bodies and the stench of the blood, then lay down and closed my eyes. I had some idea that a brief rest, a sleep even, would make me feel better. Yes, I know I was acting stupidly, but no one’s at their best when they’re suffering the after-effects of concussion.

It can’t have been long afterwards that I woke again. Or rather was woken; there was a crashing from the glade, then heavy footsteps along the rock passage. Two, three, four of them, the last two sounding as if they were wearing military footwear.

Dazed, half of me still in the troubled dream I’d just been wrenched from, I looked up. Flavius stood over me, and he’d brought with him men from the Procurator’s Office. Two of them were guards.

He said over his shoulder to the man standing behind him, whose face was expressionless as he stared at the two dead bodies and then down at me, ‘That’s him. That’s the murderer.’

The man said something to the guards, but I didn’t catch what it was.

‘He killed my friend Gaius,’ Flavius said. ‘That’s the one lying at the mouth of the passage, you just stepped over him.’

One of the guards bent down, putting his fingers to Gaius’s throat. ‘Dead,’ he said.

‘Gaius was trying to save the life of that poor young man on the slab — he’s a Christian, he was Gaius’s stepson. Oh, how are we to tell the boy’s mother?’ I swear Flavius’s voice cracked on the words — he should have been on the stage, that one.

The other guard was leaning over the body on the stone. ‘This one’s had it as well.’ Men of few words, those guards. And imperturbable, even in the face of violent death. They were probably ex-legionaries.

Flavius was staring at me, his face unreadable. ‘I don’t know who he is,’ he said to the man behind him. ‘But I can guess — he’s one of those Mithraists. They were holding one of their ceremonies tonight, and Gaius’s boy here probably tried to stop them — they slaughter bulls, you know, and the lad was fond of animals.’ Again that catch in his voice.

The man from the Procurator’s Office addressed him for the first time. ‘I’m aware of what goes on in the Mithraeum,’ he muttered.

‘Well, you’ll agree with me, then, that it’s perfectly clear what happened?’ The man didn’t respond to Flavius’s eager tone except with a non-committal grunt. Flavius plunged on. ‘The Mithraists were about to make their sacrifice, the boy rushes in to stop them, and they tell him he can either join in the sacrifice or else he’ll be put to death himself. Gaius, who must have followed him here because he feared this very outcome, rushes in to try to save the lad, and our Mithraist down there —’ he kicked me, quite hard — ‘kills him, then slits the poor young boy’s throat.’

‘You can’t possibly —’ I began. Somebody had to speak up in my defence, and it didn’t look as if anyone else was going to.

But the man from the Procurator’s Office was no longer standing still and silent while Flavius railed at him. Straightening, squaring his shoulders, he looked quite different. And, for all that he was now well past middle age and liked nothing better than to drone on for hours about the latest achievements of his grandchildren, fleetingly Maximus was as tall and proud as the young man he’d once been.

‘I greet you, Sergius Cornelius,’ he said gravely. I breathed a sigh of relief; from his silence I’d feared either that he didn’t recognize me — increasingly unlikely as the daylight grew stronger — or, to save himself the embarrassment of arresting a friend, that he knew full well who I was but wasn’t going to admit it.

As I stared at him I saw him smile faintly. Then he said to Flavius, ‘What would you have me do?’

‘Get your guards to haul him away!’ Flavius cried. ‘I’ve just told you, he’s a murderer! A double murderer, and there are his victims, scarcely cold!’

The frown on Maximus’s brow deepened; I could almost hear him thinking. Poor man, this wasn’t the sort of thing he was usually confronted with.

The silence extended. Suddenly the strangeness of it all struck me: there was Flavius, his elder brother lying dead not five yards behind him, but where was the grief? Gods, far from lamenting Varus’s death, he was standing there with all the aplomb in the world, claiming that Varus was Theo and trying to lay the blame for his death on me!

Why
?

Thinking made my head hurt even more. I gazed up at Maximus, waiting for him to speak.

‘I would like’, he pronounced slowly, ‘to hear Sergius Cornelius’s version of events.’ He looked at me, eyebrows raised questioningly.

I didn’t know what to say. Unless I thought it all through — which as I’ve just explained I was in no condition to do — there was a danger that telling the truth might make matters worse. If, for example, I blurted out that it wasn’t any stepson of Gaius’s on the slab but Flavius’s own brother, then I’d lose the undoubted benefit of having everyone think the dead youth was Theo.

If they all thought Theo was dead, no one would go looking for him any more.

‘Sergius?’ Maximus prompted.

I made up my mind. ‘I am wounded,’ I said weakly. ‘My head was banged against the wall — I can’t recall how, it was when Gaius launched himself on me.’ It wouldn’t do any harm to sow the idea of self-defence in Maximus’s mind. ‘As for the lad on the stone — I can tell you nothing about him, other than that I didn’t kill him.’

‘Liar!’ shouted Flavius. ‘It’s just what you Mithraists would do, you order people to make sacrifices to your god and when they won’t, you kill them!’

The calm voice of Maximus spoke. ‘I have heard tell of no cases where Mithraists have acted as you say. And —’

‘This
one has!’

Maximus turned to stare at him. It was Maximus’s finest moment — his expression seemed to imply that Flavius was something nasty he’d just stepped in. ‘Kindly do not interrupt. As I was saying, if indeed Sergius enforced the death penalty on one who refused to worship the state gods of Rome, then he was acting within his rights as an official of the administration.’ He paused.
‘If
he did what you accuse him of,’ — Maximus’s entire demeanour said he didn’t believe it for one moment — ‘then there is no case to answer.’

‘But he killed Gaius! I mean, he must have done, he ...’ Flavius trailed off. Unless he admitted to having witnessed it, he could hardly say with certainty that I’d done the killing.

The same thought must have run through Maximus’s mind. He said, ‘And just what were you doing up here?’

‘I didn’t get here till it was too late! I heard the screams, from below. I ... I ...’

I hadn’t seen Flavius cornered before. It was an enjoyable spectacle.

‘You happened to be passing?’ Maximus suggested.

‘Yes, that’s right. I —’ Flavius shut his mouth on whatever wild excuse he’d been about to give. It seemed wise, all things considered.

‘I do not propose to continue this investigation standing on a rock-face with two dead bodies littering the scene,’ Maximus said decisively. He turned to his guards. ‘One of you — yes, you — stay with the dead. I’ll send assistance — we’ll have to bring them down. You’ — he turned to the other guard who, as if impressed by this new authoritative Maximus, jumped to attention — ‘help Sergius Cornelius to his feet. We shall take both him and this young man’ — he glared at Flavius — ‘into my office in Arelate, where a proper investigation will be carried out.’

Flavius looked as if that was the last thing he wanted. ‘But I ...’ he began. Then stopped. ‘Very well,’ he said, his tone far too compliant for my liking.

The guard had helped me up. Apart from a pounding in my head like someone knocking in six-inch nails and the brief sensation that someone was repeatedly drawing a black veil across my eyes, I felt all right. Maximus took my arm, dismissing the guard, who bent to pick up my bloodstained dagger. ‘I’ll look after Sergius,’ he announced. ‘You take the youth.’

The man who was to stay on guard over the corpses was gazing down at Varus’s body. As we left, I saw him pull a fold of the black cloak over the face and the ghastly wound in the throat, and he made some sign with his right hand.

I had to brush against him to pass on the narrow path. The top button of his tunic was undone: against the hairy chest he wore on a thin chain the Chi-Rho symbol.

I hadn’t realized we were employing Christians in the guard force.

*

We took our time going down the hillside. I pretended I was having trouble walking — not that I had to pretend very hard — to give me the chance to look around.

Apart from my panic-stricken Brothers, none of whom had shown their faces since they’d all rushed off, there was someone else missing.

It wasn’t Theo lying dead on the sacrifice stone, thanks be to Mithras. But if he wasn’t up there, where was he?

There was no sign of anyone, man or boy, the length of that path.

There were horses tethered at the foot of the hill, mine and three others. Maximus and his guard helped me to mount, and the four of us set off down the road to Arelate.

I knew right from that moment up by the stone — when Flavius had agreed to go with Maximus — that he had no intention of allowing himself to be taken in to face an investigation. For his own good reasons he’d disassociated himself from his dead brother; there was no way in the world he was going to let anyone find out his — their — real identity.

And that made sense, when I thought about it. They’d both been masquerading as Roman citizens, had wormed their way into Roman institutions; Flavius was a welcome guest in the household of the Procurator himself. As soon as Flavius was called on to prove his identity, which would probably happen the moment we all arrived in Maximus’s office, he’d be in trouble.

The truth was that the two of them had come to Arelate for one reason only: to fulfil their mother’s curse on me. Too subtle to simply kill me, they’d decided to kill Theo.

The biggest question of all, however, I was still too sick to tackle: I couldn’t even begin to wonder who had rescued the boy.

Who had slit Varus’s throat.

I was riding along in a painful haze, which was probably why I didn’t notice at first that Flavius had come up to ride beside me.

Maximus was saying something to his guard; it would have been the perfect moment for me to come out with some witticism on the lines of, ‘Ha! Thought you’d dropped me in it up there, didn’t you?’, only I couldn’t summon the energy.