Judging by the smells, they were getting close to the cattle market in an industrial sector where tenements clung to islands of land in a sea of twisting and claustrophobic alleyways.
At street level, the retaining walls of the tenements were built of stone and reasonably robust. Higher stories listed at precarious angles and looked a good bit flimsier and indeed they passed a block which had suffered a collapse. The dwellings doubled as shops by day, selling bare necessities and cheap, rough wine. The boys dragged themselves along the fetid street towards the ghostly white glow of the stone-flagged marketplace, keeping to the centre, avoiding the glowering shadows.
The open windows at street level leered at them like black sockets in a cadaver’s skull. Sextus squeaked in fright as he tripped over a pile of offal festering in front of a butcher shop and set a loathsome carpet of rats in motion. With the last of his fading strength, Quintus managed to jerk him upright before the little boy fell into the mess.
An empty cattle byre beckoned. An emaciated dog emerged from it, interested in seizing the rotting meat before the rats reclaimed their prize. The mongrel succeeded and scuttled off down an alleyway dragging a coil of intestines.
Inside the animal pen, Quintus looked around and declared, ‘We’ll sleep here.’ They busied themselves raking up stray hanks of unfouled straw and dry grass with their hands, laying out a bed of sorts against the plank walls at the far corner of the unroofed shed.
‘We won’t have far to travel tomorrow, will we, Quintus?’ asked the younger boy hopefully.
Quintus wasn’t at all sure but he said with feigned confidence, ‘If we start early, we’ll be at Uncle’s before noon.’
He untied the knotted corners of the travelling blanket he’d been carrying over his shoulder and removed the last of their meagre provisions. Handing Sextus half the bread and an apple, the two boys collapsed on the straw bed and ate.
Balbilus heard a dull pounding overhead, an iron rod smashing against stone, a signal that he was wanted.
The underground chamber was well lit by sooty lamps. It was a large space – fifty men could assemble there comfortably, a hundred in a pinch. Live men. There was space for thousands of dead ones if most were cremated and tucked inside urns in the tuff walls. It was newly finished. The columbarium was awaiting its first inhabitant.
Tiberius Claudius Balbilus put down his paintbrush. He disliked interruptions but he was used to them. Many sought him out.
He was in his thirties, a powerful-looking man with the olive skin of his half-Egyptian, half-Greek heritage, a large nose and a well-tended beard which was trimmed to a sharp point and made his face look like some sort of weapon or chisel tool. He had let his tunic go loose for comfort but before he climbed the stairs he cinched his belt and donned a cloak.
Balbilus entered the mausoleum by pushing open a concealed trapdoor. The walls were lined with the tombs and shrines of the wealthy. A fresh corpse, no more than a few weeks old, linen-wrapped and stuffed into a loculum, made the place reek of death. The mausoleum had been in his family for a few generations. It was a good, steady source of income, but because of his recent secret excavation it now had another purpose.
When his time came, he would rest there for eternity, not above ground with these so-called citizens but underground, among his own kind. His followers would rest there too. For the sake of space most would be cremated. But he and his sons and his son’s sons could be laid out – all their flesh, all their bones – in all their glory.
There was a solitary figure waiting for him, his face concealed by a hooded cloak. He bowed slightly to Balbilus and said, ‘The others are outside.’
Balbilus, together with this man, Vibius, emerged from a rear door into the cold December night. They were within a grove only a few paces off the Appian Way. The mausoleum was a rectangular building with a barrel-vaulted roof made of the finest bricks. Balbilus’s lavish villa lay on the other side of the grove.
The quarter-moon reappeared from behind a shroud of purple clouds. Five cloaked figures moved away from the darkness of the fruit trees. Balbilus lined them up like a military unit in front of the mausoleum wall.
‘I’ve studied the charts, and the stars favor action,’ Balbilus said, addressing the men. ‘Tonight we light a fire. Although it will be small at first it will spawn another one, and another and another until, one day, there will be a great conflagration that will consume the city. And when that happens we will gain wealth and power beyond our dreams. It is in the stars and I know it to be true. Tonight we will set the Romans against this new Christian cult. I can see in the stars that they will become powerful one day. Their message is seductive, like bread and circuses for the soul. The masses will, I fear, take to it like sheep. If we allow them to become too powerful they will be a formidable enemy. Vibius has my instructions. Tonight you will spill blood because …’ he took a breath for effect then spat out the rest ‘… this is what we do.’
And the men answered in unison, ‘And this is who we are.’
Balbilus left them and went back underground where his paintbrushes awaited him.
The six men moved out in silence. Making use of the concealment provided by the tombs and foliage bordering the Appian Way they headed north toward Rome.
After a while they came upon a dim radius of flickering light cast by pitch torches on either side of a broad postern gate. They flitted from shadow to shadow, getting closer.
The two Praetorians peered dispiritedly into the feeble pool of light and stamped their feet to keep warm.
Vibius made his move. He weaved onto the main road, garbling the words of a drinking song. The sentries became alert and stared as he emerged from the darkness, swaying gently. He stopped to take a swig from a bulging wine-bag.
Resuming his unsteady approach, he came to a stumbling halt, just beyond arm’s length from the stockier of the two sentinels.
‘Eh, lads, let me pass, will you?’ he slurred.
The soldier seemed to relax but he still kept his hand on the pommel of his short-sword.
‘It’s curfew hour, you drunken fool – all passage is forbidden.’
Vibius staggered a bit further forward, offering the wine sack. ‘Drink, my lords, as much as you want. I will pay you for entry. All’s I want is to get home.’
With his left hand he waved the bag in the guard’s face and when the soldier raised his arm to swat it away Vibius suddenly thrust his right hand upwards, gripping the long dagger he’d concealed beneath his robe. The blade pierced the underside of the guard’s chin and with a grisly crunch its point exited through the top of his head.
The second Praetorian didn’t have time to draw his weapon. Another cloaked man had crept through the shadows, clamped an arm around the guard’s chest and reached for his jaw with his free hand. With a violent motion the cloaked man jerked hard and there was a loud crack as the Praetorian’s vertebrae gave way.
Both corpses twitched on the cold ground, then went limp. The rest of the cloaked men converged on them and joined in a savage choreography.
When they were done with their sharp work, body parts floated in pools of blood like pieces of meat in a stew. Vibius reached inside his cloak and pulled out a silver medallion on a broken chain. It was the chi-rho monogram, the symbol of Christ. He dropped it into the blood and waved the men forward through the Porta Capena into the city of Rome.
The slums at the base of the Esquiline Hill were never quiet. Even late at night there was always enough shouting, drunken brawling and noise from crying babies to disturb the peace. Against this din, the clip-clop of donkey hooves and the clatter of cart wheels on cobblestones went unnoticed.