Frowning, Rufinus, sleep entirely forgotten, slipped silently from his bed, fist still wrapped around the hilt of his sword, and quickly undid his boot straps with his free hand, padding across the room to the doorway. Inching out, he realised the footsteps had ceased, and he moved to the balcony edge and peered down into the torchlit courtyard, trying not to exert too much pressure on the creaking wooden beams.
A figure stood in the opposite corner beneath the shelter of the upper walkway, reading something by the light of one of the torches. Rufinus squinted at the floor below and realised it was Fastus. The man spent a moment reading and re-reading a scrap of what looked even at this distance like parchment and then held the note in the flickering flame of the torch until it caught, waiting for the bloom of flame to blossom, and then dropped the burning item to the flags in the dry area beneath the high roof.
Rufinus ducked back from the balcony edge as the new recruit turned and looked up at the doorway before marching across the courtyard, and mounting the wooden stairs toward his room.
Holding his breath and treading as lightly as possible, Rufinus backed across the landing and into the room, crossing it and sliding beneath his blankets, shovelling the belt and scabbard further out of sight beneath the bunk and hiding the weapon in the bed once more. Quickly, he returned to his sleeping guise and tried to breathe deeply and evenly.
Moments later, Fastus entered the room, pausing for a moment and regarding the two occupied bunks carefully before padding over to his own, undressing and sinking into it. Rufinus allowed the narrow slit of his left eye to open a little further and watched his roommate with interest. Fastus was dry as a bone, yet his boots were muddy, clear indication that he had not been completing his assigned tour of the grounds in the rain, but had been somewhere outdoors yet sheltered. Rufinus’ mind raced. What was the man up to?
Silently, playing the sleeping man, Rufinus watched as the other new guard slid beneath his blanket, cast one last look across the room and rolled over to sleep. Rufinus lay there frustrated and impotent, listening as the rain increased once more.
Only when the blast from a horn announced the pre-dawn watch, an hour before sunrise, was Rufinus able to openly stir with the manufactured yawns and scratches of a man who hadn’t spent the last hour with clenched teeth, his mind racing through possibilities. Clambering out of bed, he quickly grasped his boots and belt from beneath and slid the blade into its scabbard, striding innocently from the room and pausing on the landing to stretch and fasten boots and belt.
As the first few guardsmen left their rooms to go about their daily duties, Rufinus descended the stairs to the courtyard and continued to stretch and scratch until the rest had exited and he was alone. With a quick check to make sure he was not being watched, he crossed to the corner where Fastus had stood and crouched to adjust his boot straps, peering at the floor.
The ash on the floor confirmed what he’d guessed. The note had been written on parchment, a commodity far too pricey to be found in the hands of a man so poor he had no worldly goods but the clothes on his back and had been forced to take service as a mercenary.
His heart lurched as he noticed the fragment. One single piece of the parchment remained uncharred, It had fallen into a damp footprint and the muddy liquid had preserved the corner. Pulse pounding, Rufinus picked up the scrap and, fearful of being noticed, stepped out into the doorway, taking advantage of both the building’s shelter and the outside light.
The contents of the note were almost impossible to make out due to the charring of the edge and the wet mud of the rest.
He squinted and frowned, turning the fragment round and round and over and over, holding it up to the light and down for the best illumination.
‘ANDE’
What could it mean? That was neither the beginning nor the end of the word, the rest being truly illegible. Rufinus ground his teeth and slid the item into his purse for later examination. It had continued to be an eventful day long after sundown, and now new strands of mystery were being woven into his time here.
One thing was certain: Fastus was not what he appeared.
XV – Accusations
AUTUMN had given way abruptly to winter.
Nine days previously the rains that had continued to batter the plains and hills of Latium had finally petered out with a last few abortive storms and a distant rumble like an unfinished argument. In their place had come bitterly cold winds blowing along the length of the Appenninus Mountains from the north and crisp clear skies that threatened worse inclement weather to come. The past two mornings had seen the water in the ornamental bird baths freeze and glittering icicles hanging in serrated rows from roofs.
Rufinus twitched with impatience. His remit at the villa had been simple: seek out information that could prevent an attempt on the emperor’s life. Every new sunrise hammered home the possibility that today could be the day of the plot’s culmination and that he might have been too late in uncovering anything.
Armed with his suspicions over Fastus, he had watched the man for the last days of autumn, noting things he considered odd or out of character. Finally, after a week, he had gathered his mental notes and visited Pompeianus to seek the counsel of the former general. Rufinus had expected the man to leap upon the revelations that the second new guard was something other than that which he seemed, and to direct him to a course of action with purpose and alacrity.
Instead, the Syrian nobleman had simply shaken his head. ‘You’ve hints and suspicions, my boy. They’re odd and somewhat indicative of clandestine behaviour, certainly, but hardly enough to condemn a man. Unless you can come up with some solid proof, you will need a lot more circumstantial evidence to convince anyone of wrongdoing. Or you’ll have to manipulate them into believing you…’ he’d added thoughtfully.
Rufinus, deflated, had been counselled to patience; to the gathering of more evidence to support his suspicions. Despite the fact that every passing day presented the possibility of being too late, Pompeianus was convinced that there was no immediate danger. The onset of winter would see the emperor out and about in the open considerably less and the chances of any attempt being made within the palace were negligible, in Pompeianus’ opinion.
The news soon after that the tribes of Northern Britannia were causing havoc and besieging the forts and walls of that far-flung province only added to the general’s surety that time was far from an issue. Given the emperor’s need to pay attention to military matters, he was rarely seen now without a small crowd of officers around him. Besides, no would-be usurper would move to inherit a newly rebellious province when half a year’s patience could see a settled empire again.
In Rufinus’ secret opinion, the addition of armed officers to the emperor’s regular group of hangers-on hardly decreased potential dangers, but there was little he could do about it. Certainly he could hardly send any information back to the Castra Praetoria with Constans the merchant until he had something a little more concrete than scattered suspicions which barely touched the theory of a plot. He could only imagine how much Paternus would be cursing the lack of contact, but it was hardly worth the risk with nothing to say.
And so the weeks had come and gone with rain and then freezing winds as Rufinus watched, with gritted teeth, a second and then third month of service pass at the villa.
And then, earlier in this bitterly cold week, the hollow-eyed Dis and his ever present dogs had set out from the villa on some task unknown to Rufinus, but which would apparently keep the man and his damn beasts away from the place for a week or more. With his right-hand man gone, captain Phaestor’s time and energy was stretched thin and he was too busy to keep his usual intimate eye on the villa’s running.