The air was noticeably stale, for one thing. Certainly none of the tempting aromas from the bakery-the pastries, the buns and the sweetmeats-found their way underground, there was not even a hint of stale wine from the taverns. Just the acid stench of pitch, spluttering and hissing as it burned from the torches, sending out clouds of dark, swirling mist and-he sniffed-something else. Something indefinable in the air. He sniffed again, but still couldn’t identify it. Unless, maybe, it was the smell of utter despair…
He paused and glanced back. Four, five, yes, six galleries behind him. That’s right. Two to go. He counted again to make sure-it was a veritable honeycomb down here.
Lights in sconces flickered and sizzled in the narrow stone corridor, casting sinister shadows over the arches and confusing spatial perception. In the distance he heard the well-drilled clomp of military boots. Long before they reached him, they had turned off into another part of the maze to become nothing more than an echo. Orbilio swerved off to his right, passed two enclosed chambers, then took the first gallery left. A man was waiting.
‘You found it all right, then?’ He grinned, looping his thumbs into the waistband below the great overhang of his belly. A monster of a buckle glinted in the flickering light.
Orbilio grunted. Finding the wretched place was one thing, getting out again might be another. These cramped corridors, from which other galleries led off, and then others, each with their own series of subterranean chambers, resembled more the minotaur’s labyrinth than Rome.
‘Augustus is converting this site into a holding place for wild animals, in order to put on beast shows up in the Forum,’ said Big Buckle. ‘Windlasses are being installed, winches, the lot.’ In the smoky gloom, Orbilio saw him wink. ‘But the Security Police will still keep a section, don’t worry.’
Orbilio didn’t. ‘What have you got that’s so urgent?’ he asked, hitching his torch into the bracket which hung on the wall in the hope it would hide the low expectations etched on his face.
‘Would you believe’-Big Buckle lowered his voice to an excited whisper-‘a plot to bring down the Empire?’
Orbilio swallowed his disappointment. It was as he had feared. Every third informant these days seemed to have wind of a plot to assassinate Augustus, the majority using the shield of these troubled times to settle a few unresolved grudges and scores of their own. He sighed. In virtually every street, it seemed, there was nothing quite like a spot of vilification to make a chap feel better, whether it was retaliation against an overlooked promotion, a whispered slur about an uppity neighbour or a slave’s hit-back against his master’s brutality.
‘The last time you dragged me down here,’ Marcus pointed out, ‘it turned out to be nothing more than a man slandering the fellow his wife had run off with.’
Big Buckle spread his wide, ugly hands. ‘What can I do?’ He shrugged. ‘We have to follow up every suggestion of treason. Can I help it, if that’s the fashion?’
Dislike him he might, but Marcus felt obliged to acknowledge the point. Few things were as satisfying, it would appear, as tarnishing one’s enemies with a thin coat of treachery, and the political field lay wide open to embrace any number of wild allegations.
Barely ten weeks ago, the Emperor’s right-hand man, Agrippa, had died suddenly-suspiciously even-leaving Rome bereft of her regent. Considering the sole remaining heir-Agrippa’s son, who was also the Emperor’s grandson – happened to be just eight years of age, you can begin to imagine the problem! Banners. Who’d fill the vacuum left by Agrippa? In the end, Augustus had appointed his stepson Tiberius as regent, but the nomination hadn’t pleased everyone. The Senate alone was in uproar. Tiberius is no blood relation, they cried. Neither to Augustus, nor to Augustus’s grandson. It’s a scandal.
Some even called ‘Bring back the Republic!’
It was like setting a torch to dry kindling.
Worse, it was on account of this damned political unrest that Marcus Cornelius had been unable to leave Rome to accompany the trade delegation to Gaul.
Deep in this hollow, subterranean maze, a hammer echoed in the distance and closer to hand unseen footsteps rang with ghostly reverberation across the stone flags, clip-clopping into the smoky, Stygian gloom.
‘This one has an altogether different slant,’ said Big Buckle, briskly rubbing his hands. ‘If you read the confession, you’ll see this is right up your street.’ Clearly the word ‘sir’ was not in his vocabulary. ‘North Gallic tribes getting restless-that’s what you’re working on, isn’t it?’
Hmm. By the flickering lamplight of the dingy office chamber, Orbilio’s eyes skimmed the text, confirming nothing he didn’t know already. Dissent among the Treveri in Trier. Helvetii chieftains meeting up frequently, and in secret. Both tribes holding clandestine summits. Could any significance be attached to these rumblings? His boss didn’t think so, and Orbilio’s mind drifted back to their recent conversation.
‘This has only come about since Augustus moved troops up and over the Rhine,’ his boss had said, dismissing the notion with a wave of his small, pudgy hand. ‘And anyway, the Treveri getting it together with the Helvetii? Jupiter would swear an oath of chastity before that day dawns.’
‘I can’t agree, sir,’ Orbilio had countered. ‘Both tribes are persistent troublemakers with a reputation for war, and that argument about them being bitter enemies doesn’t stand up. History shows they change allegiances the way you and I change our tunics, I’m sure the tribes are taking advantage of our Germanic campaign. ’ There was definitely something afoot in that part of Gaul. With troops committed to the push into Germany, it had been necessary to despatch one legion from Aquitania and another from the south coast to shore up the line, but Orbilio felt it went deeper than merely a few diehards shaking their fists in the air. Suppose it was Rome they had in their sights? Maybe the Emperor himself…?
‘Bollocks!’ His boss had sneered when Marcus voiced his anxiety aloud. ‘For any serious assault, you’d need the Germans banding together with the Helvetii, and even then they’d need the help of the Sequani who stand in between them, and the Sequani are our staunchest allies in the whole of Western Gaul. Or are you the only man on the earth not to have heard about that delegation to Vesontio to celebrate fifty years of harmony between our two nations?’
‘Of course, sir-’
‘Fifty years, Orbilio. Fifty years, in which they’ve grown fat on the land, working their vast tracts of forest in peace, churning out fruit presses and canoes instead of spears and javelins, and look at the quality of the stock they breed nowadays. Men will part with a small fortune to get their hands on a good Gaulish mule-’
‘Yes, sir, I’m aware of that-’
‘Are you?’ his boss snapped. ‘Their king, Oxi- Axi- oh shit, I can never get my tongue round those bloody Sequani names, but the point is, their king’s been afforded the title ‘Brother of the People’ by the Senate. The Senate, Orbilio. This is not a title either party takes lightly, and the Sequani are grateful-bloody grateful, I might add-that their cemeteries are filling up with the sick and the old, not young men butchered in inter-tribal skirmishes.’
‘I’m not suggesting King Axo- Ixo-’ (Orbilio couldn’t pronounce the names either) ‘is mounting an insurrection, but you know yourself, sir, what these petty chieftains are like. Ruthless and ambitious, keen to prove themselves. Suppose-’
‘Suppose, my arse, Orbilio! The whole idea of the tribes banding together and marching on Rome is preposterous, they’d be torn to pieces by our legions before they’d crossed into Italy, and in any case the Sequani are our buffer against such a contingency. One whiff of an uprising and King Ixi- Izi- Sodhisbloodyname will be selling them out as fast as he can. Trust me, the Emperor’s as safe as a Vestal Virgin’s virtue. Now get out of here and stop wasting my time.’
With that, Orbilio had been bawled out of the room, his misgivings stronger than ever. Looking at it objectively, he could see why his boss, even as head of the Security Police, had imagined him right off his rocker. A few power-hungry princes from a few branches of a few northern tribes marching on Rome? Put like that, it did sound preposterous. However, whenever he’d received wind of these secret alliances, will-o’-the-wisps as they were, the core of each rumour was identical-that any time soon, Augustus would be just a name in the history books.