‘We take as many of these mongrels with us as we can.’
Sulpicia Lepidina laughed, throwing her head back so that her hair shook. Men stopped their work and looked up in surprise. Then they all grinned, even the hulking and silent Falx.
‘Spoken like a true Roman,’ the lady said. ‘Thank you for your honesty. There may be one cause for encouragement, though. Throughout this ordeal they have treated young Genialis with something akin to reverence. I do not believe that they would willingly harm him.’ Ferox hoped that she was right. ‘Now, I shall see if there is anything I can do to help inside.’
‘My lady, I should be most grateful if you would take charge of our provisions.’
‘Hmm,’ she sniffed. ‘Even in battle a man expects a woman to run the household.’ She laughed again. ‘Of course, centurion, it will be my pleasure.’
After she had gone, Ovidius shook his head. ‘There are some rare people who make you feel as if you are so crude and vacuous, and yet make you love and admire them all the more at the same time.’
Ferox nodded. ‘I had better get back to work. Before long I’ll get half of them to eat and rest. We had better keep the rest awake for a while. Don’t want them to surprise us by turning up early.’
Longinus insisted on being one of the men who kept the first watch, and Ferox was glad because he knew that he could trust the former rebel. He had a couple of Batavians, along with Probus and Falx. Ferox wondered whether the merchant might try to take his son and slip away into the night, but decided that they had nowhere to go.
‘If you will take my advice, sir, you go and get some food and sleep,’ Longinus spoke in that tone ordinary soldiers reserved for giving orders to their superiors.
Ferox smiled. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘But first I want to look in all the odd corners of this place.’ He went inside, wondering why the tunnel now seemed a lot shorter than when they had charged into it. On the ground floor, Brigita was practising cuts and thrusts with a sword taken from one of the dead guards. Ferox realised that he had not given any orders about their corpses, but could see no sign of them, so hoped they had been taken out and dumped on the shore.
‘You use that blade well, noble lady,’ he said. ‘I am glad that you are safe.’
‘It could do with being heavier at the point.’ Her voice was matter-of-fact. ‘And the grip is clumsy, but otherwise it will serve.’ She sliced down as if slashing at an opponent’s chest and stomach. ‘I hear my husband is not high king.’
‘No, he is not.’
‘He would not have been a great king,’ she said in the same flat tone. ‘But I would have been a great queen.’
‘You are still young.’
Brigita spun around, jabbing with the blade and stopping it an inch from Ferox’s face. He did not react, and stared at her with mild interest.
‘I will fight with you when they come,’ she told him, and it was a moment before he realised that the words were in Latin. All the time she had understood what they were saying and hidden her knowledge, for her speech was clear and choice of words fairly good, apart from the small ambiguity, for it could be taken to mean that she would fight against him.
‘As you wish.’ Ferox did not relish the prospect of trying to stop her. ‘But I am leader here, and I must command.’
She withdrew the sword. ‘So be it.’
Ferox went past her to an alcove at the far end. It was covered by a blanket, so he pulled it aside and found what he was expecting. Stone stairs curved upwards inside a hollow in the great outer wall. It was dark, but not so dark that he could not see his way and the soft light was that of the night sky. He caught a hint of salt in the air, and realised that somewhere up ahead was an opening to the air. He followed the stairs, his feet echoing softly, the passageway curling around with the shape of the tower as it climbed. He came to where he thought he must be level with the first floor, wondering whether there was an entrance, but found only solid wall. It amazed him that anyone could make so huge a building without mortar, let alone the concrete that allowed the Romans to build so many miracles. For a few paces, the stairs became a level corridor, and he wondered whether the workmen had needed this while they were raising the tower. Once before, he had climbed a similar stair in another tower far away, and that had become smaller and smaller as it climbed higher, until a man could only go along it if he crawled. He pressed on, and there were more steps, but like that other tunnel the roof was getting lower. Ducking his head, Ferox climbed around another great curve. Up ahead the stair turned sharply and then stopped. A couple of paces ahead there was a solid wall apart from a narrow tube down which came faint starlight. He could go no further.
A footstep sounded faintly behind him. The sound was soft, on the edge of hearing, and if he had not stopped he probably would have missed it. Ferox turned, as slowly and gently as he could. There should not be any danger, for he could not believe that any of the defenders had survived, and he had certainly not passed anywhere where a man could hide. The steps came closer. They were slow, tentative, like someone who was nervous or trying to be silent. He waited, hand on the pugio in its scabbard, for in this confined space it would be hard to use a sword.
Whoever it was halted, breathing softly, waiting before taking another step. A dark shape came around the corner and he let go of the dagger’s hilt and grabbed it with both hands, pulling it to him. The person was short, soft hair against his chin.
Sulpicia Lepidina gasped and looked up. ‘Barbarian,’ she whispered, and then touched her finger to his lips. Her other arm curved around his waist. Ferox held her tightly, even though this meant pressing her against his mail cuirass. He leaned down and they kissed, her lips soft and yielding. ‘We are at the end of the world,’ she whispered. ‘Who can judge us here?’
Ferox kissed her again, and they spoke no more.
XX
A HORSEMAN CAME just after dawn and stared at the tower for some time, before riding away. The corpses of the defenders were laid out in a line beyond the causeway, and when he had found out they were there Ferox had wondered about telling his men to hide them. There was not really any point, since the barricades were there for all to see.
It did not matter, and when morning came he had other things to worry about. Encouraged by Sulpicia Lepidina, the slave girl Aphrodite had eaten some stew and then gone up onto the raised floor to sleep. When the lady had gone to rouse her this morning, she found her dead, stabbed through the heart, dried blood all over her bedding.
‘Who would do such a thing?’ Sulpicia Lepidina asked him when he arrived, summoned by the commotion. She looked pale, although not as white as the bloodless girl. There was a cruel echo of the other time they had made love, for the day after that they had found another murdered slave. Ferox thought of Ovidius’ comments about gods with a black sense of humour.
Nobody had been seen climbing the ladder to the raised platform, but then most of the night people had been asleep or outside on guard.
‘Was she violated?’ Ovidius asked. Ferox could see no sign of it, although the poor girl had been forced so many times by her captors that it was hard to tell, and at least it offered a motive. He did not really know any of the Batavians apart from Longinus, but the latter had vouched for them all when they were chosen and that was good enough for him. He could not believe it of Vindex and his men, or of the northerners, for all their grimness. Ovidius seemed unlikely, Bran too young, and he could not think of any reason for either of the women to kill the slave.
That left Probus and Falx, and it was easy enough to believe the gladiator capable of any cruelty, but hard to believe that he had sneaked up without being noticed. People tended to be very aware of the huge man wherever he was. Probus also seemed unlikely, for what would he gain? The man was rich enough to take pleasure with as many slaves as he wanted. The same was true of his son, but Ferox remembered Genialis trying to rape the girl all those months ago. He thought of the delight the youth had shown when he stabbed the Red Cat’s son to death. There was also the archer who had ambushed him. From what Duco said such a skilled horse archer was unlikely to have been one of the pirates. On the other hand, there were surely plenty of former cavalrymen among the employees of the merchant and his son. The boy might easily have promised one of them a rich reward to revenge himself on the centurion for not giving in to his every whim.