The slave bent down and turned a wheel set into the table’s side. The table creaked and moved, lengthening, splitting apart in the middle along a line cutting across Graecinus’s back. Graecinus moaned and shifted, tugging at the bands holding his wrists and ankles which were shackled to iron staples nailed to the wood.
The gap widened to a hand-span, the creaking stopped, and the slave straightened. Graecinus lay rigid, arms and legs fully extended. He said nothing, but his one good eye was staring at me, flecked with madness.
‘That’s lovely.’ Gaius moved to the side of the table with the wheel, and the slave stepped aside. ‘My turn.’ He giggled, and twisted the wheel sharply. The gap widened by the space of two fingers and Graecinus screamed. ‘It’s a pun, you see, Marcus. My turn. I always say it, so it hasn’t exactly much freshness to it any longer, but it is so apt. Don’t you think?’
‘Yes, Caesar,’ I said. I felt like retching again and fought the bile down. ‘Very amusing.’
‘But I’m forgetting my manners. You’d like a turn yourself, of course.’ He moved back. ‘Go ahead, enjoy yourself. Felix won’t mind, will you, Felix?’
Sweet Jupiter!
‘Ah … I’d rather not, Caesar, if you don’t mind,’ I said.
There was a sudden silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Felix shift, and he cleared his throat. Gaius was frowning.
‘Marcus, petal,’ he said slowly and carefully. ‘You’ve been told, we all have our turn, and this is yours. I absolutely insist. Now don’t be tiresome, there’s a love.’
I was beginning to sweat. Oh, sure, common sense told me that I was being a complete fool, that whatever I did or didn’t do, the poor bastard on the table was booked for the urn by the slowest and most painful route imaginable, and that one word from Gaius would mean I was the next one lying there. But I knew I couldn’t turn that wheel. No way. Never.
The silence lengthened. Gaius and Felix were both looking at me; the two slaves, too.
‘Uh … Caesar, that sort of thing’s better left to the experts, don’t you think?’ I said at last. ‘Me, the chances are that I’d just screw things up.’
Gaius was still frowning, and I could almost hear Felix and the brought-in help holding their collective breaths.
Hell. Yeah, well, it’d been sheer bloody stupidity and I’d only myself to blame; still, it was done now, and I’d had a good life on the whole. Not that that was much consolation, mind. I swallowed …
Then, suddenly, Gaius’s frown lifted. He laughed, came over and hugged me round the shoulders.
‘Screw things up!’ he said. ‘Marcus, that is utterly, totally brilliant! Oh, I really must remember that one. Don’t you agree, Felix?’
‘Yes, sir. Absolutely.’
‘You’re still a big girl’s blouse, though, petal; don’t think I don’t see that. And I have more than a sneaking suspicion that the pun was accidental. Not that it matters, of course.’ He grinned at me, but I said nothing: the guy might be a cold-blooded amoral sadistic killer and a cartload of tiles short of a watertight roof, but there was nothing wrong with his intelligence. ‘Oh, fuck it, I’m bored anyway, and I need a drink. Let’s call it a day, shall we? Felix, you carry on, please.’ Another giggle. ‘And try not to screw things up too much, won’t you, because we need Graecinus here alive for just a little longer. Oh, yes, find out about Marcus’s Surdinus by all means, if you’ve time, but I’m sure he has lots of other more important secrets to tell us.’ He turned back to me. ‘Now, Marcus, dear; come upstairs for a cup of wine and a chat. You can manage that? No pressing business elsewhere, hmm?’
‘Yes, Caesar. I mean no. Of course; I’d be delighted.’ Slight exaggeration, but not necessarily a complete lie; I was as grateful for the escape as I was worried about the chat, and more than relieved to be walking out with all of my bits still attached. Even so, I remembered what both Secundus and Felix had told me, or implied, anyway, about not relying on the emperor’s prior goodwill any longer.
‘Follow me, then.’ Gaius opened the door and we went out into the fresh air. Or at least that’s what the corridor smelled like now, after the stench in that hellish room. ‘We’ll take the short-cut.’ He turned right rather than left, the way I’d come, and almost immediately up a set of narrow stone steps. ‘Tiberius had this stair put in, and it is so convenient. He did enjoy a good torture session, the bloodthirsty old buffer. Personally, I’ve always wondered whether that wasn’t partly the reason why there were so many traitors around in those days — make your own amusements, as it were — although of course the staircase wasn’t used much after he went to Capri. There again, he did have other ways of amusing himself there, didn’t he?’ He flashed me a sunny smile over his shoulder. ‘But I’m prattling. Marcus, come on, you slowcoach, you’re puffing like an absolute grampus, whatever that might be! You really should do more to keep yourself fit.’
Well, at least the bugger was his usual chatty self so far. I kept my fingers crossed; this Gaius I could cope with. Or hoped I could, anyway. At present I wouldn’t have trusted him any more than I would a rabid dog that happened to be wagging its tail.
We came out, at last, through a door at the top which opened on to a room in the private imperial apartments. At least, from the décor, I assumed that’s where we were; after the vaults, not to mention the torture chamber itself, it was Olympus compared to Tartarus. There were a couple of slaves in matching natty green tunics putting the room to rights. They stopped when they saw Gaius, bowed nervously, and edged over to stand by the wall.
Gaius ignored them. He threw himself onto a couch and indicated the one opposite.
‘Make yourself comfortable, Marcus,’ he said. Then, to the slaves: ‘Wine. After that you can bugger off.’ One of the slaves went to a corner table, poured two cups of wine from a glass decanter and brought them over. I sat. ‘It is so nice to see you again after all these bum-faces I’m usually surrounded with. When Felix told me you were mixed up in this nonsense, it came as quite a tonic.’
‘Thank you, Caesar,’ I said. I sipped the wine. Caecuban. After the events of the past half hour I could’ve swallowed the whole bloody cupful, but I didn’t want Gaius to know that; it might’ve implied criticism, and I reckoned I’d sailed too close to the wind enough already today without risking it twice. ‘By the way, I should thank you for that flask you left me.’
‘Oh, tush! Tush!’ He waved it aside. ‘The least I could do. But you were becoming quite a nuisance, you know. At first I thought it might be better on the whole if I got rid of you al-together, sad though that would’ve been, but Felix talked me out of it and suggested the cellar instead. What would I do without Felix?’ He smiled. ‘No hard feelings, I hope?’
My stomach had gone cold. ‘No, Caesar, none at all,’ I said.
‘That’s good. Water under the bridge. Let’s forget about it, shall we?’ He took a swallow of his own wine. ‘So. Another case, wasn’t it? Felix told me the connection with Graecinus and his friends was purely coincidental.’
‘He … concluded that, yes. Graecinus happened to be a friend of the murdered man. Naevius Surdinus. And Surdinus’s wife said she’d had an affair with Cassius Longinus. Which turned out not to be true.’