Vettius, his eyes wide at this sudden change in attitude, nodded uncertainly. ‘We’re short-staffed, what with our unwelcome visitor.’
‘Then assign me and I’ll get to work.’
The major domo sat for another moment, eyes staring, and suddenly burst into activity, rummaging around his desktop until he found the wax tablet he was looking for and, opening it, ran his finger down the list.
‘Do you know where the libraries are?’
Rufinus frowned for a moment, running through the villa’s plan in his memory. ‘On the northern edge of the palace?’
‘Yes. I’ve had to pull a man off duty there. Patrol the libraries, terrace and the courtyard that lies between them and the palace. I’ll try and find you relief at sundown. I’ll speak to Phaestor when he visits and see who he has.’
Rufinus nodded. It seemed odd to be taking assignments from the small servant rather than the guard captain, but the authority within the villa was rigidly defined. All security, hiring, training and equipping might lie in Phaestor’s hands, but his authority stopped at the threshold of Lucilla’s residence, where Vettius was the master.
‘Still here, Marcius?’ the major domo said. Rufinus nodded and turned. The guard on duty at the door to the palace nodded recognition and swung the door open. A moment along the corridor beyond, out into a colonnaded walkway along the side of the library courtyard, and he headed toward the mis-matched twin buildings that stood at the northern corners above the terrace.
One library for Latin works and one for Greek, the former visited rarely, the latter never; a carryover from the days when the learned Greek-loving Hadrianus had lived here. Rufinus studied the layout of the buildings for a moment. He’d been hoping for assignment either to the central section of the palace, or to the water villa where Saoterus luxuriated in prison, but the chances of such a random assignment had been small. At least here he was on the periphery of the important structures. More chance of learning something useful there than trawling through the undergrowth on the edge of the estate and hiding from the rain in the arcades of the abandoned theatre.
He would be tantalisingly close to the water villa, too. The high, curved exterior wall of the strange impressive structure was visible from the windows of the Greek library, and the main vestibule to the circular enclosure led off the library terrace.
The next six hours melted into a routine of pacing. While patrolling the edge of the estate had been cold and dull, there was such a vast swathe of land around the villa that it was possible to vary the routes enough that one could take a different way every day for a week without ever covering quite the same ground.
The libraries, their terrace and courtyard, were a different matter. After the first hour, he had explored every nook, walked every corridor and room, and peered from every window. The knowledge that there would be another five hours of the same before the sun sank was a mind-numbing prospect. Even the possibility of meeting another person would have lent some small variation to the routine, but the simple truth was that the only human he was likely to bump into out here was an interloper. No one visited the libraries, for all the knowledge they held, and no one would take a stroll on the terrace with the chill wind blowing the fresh threat of frost from the mountainous north.
So he began to devise games to keep himself occupied.
To the Latin library, where he would scan the shelves until he found a work by an author that began with ‘A’. Aemilius Asper the first time. Apuleius took almost quarter of an hour to locate. Aurelius’ writings hadn’t been added yet. Unable to recall another ‘A’ at short notice, he’d taken to counting the number of steps between the two libraries (fifty one paces) and the length of the terrace from the servant’s corridor to the water villa enclosure (seventy six paces), the entire distance of the colonnade around the courtyard (two hundred and thirty paces, tested three times for an average), and even the number of scroll compartments in the Latin library. That last had seen the end of the counting games when he’d become unutterably bored somewhere around the three-hundred-and-fifty mark.
Further games involved tossing pebbles into the huge fountain that ran most of the length of the terrace, or trying to skim them along the surface of the water.
Slowly, the sun had disappeared behind the vestibule of the water villa, casting the courtyard and terrace into deep shadow and plunging their temperature to bone-chilling depths. Consequently his wanderings became more focussed on the interior, spending more time in the Greek library than the Latin, partially due to its extra floor, giving it more complexity and interest, but mostly due to the fact that, through some curiosity of design, it had been given heating on the uppermost level that was still kept warm. Rufinus held a private theory that the building was heated on the order of Phaestor so that the guards had somewhere to shelter from the cold.
It became increasingly apparent as the sun’s rays faded, plunging the place into gloom, that he was not likely to be replaced. Resigned to a long shift, he hurried around the Greek library in deep shadow, striking flint and steel, lighting the oil lamps spaced periodically around the building and cursing the last guard for not replacing them as more than half of the lamps stuttered and failed for lack of fuel.
Searching for the oil that surely must be stored somewhere, Rufinus hurried around the half-lit, flickering gold-black interior of the library, opening and closing the numerous half- or full-sized doors that marked cupboards, most of which were empty. Up the stairs he climbed, to the second level, where the cupboard doors were fewer and further between, receiving the fright of his life as he opened one particular door to display an artistic composition in marble that would make a whore blush.
Up again, to the top floor where he intended to spend most of the remaining shift, staying warm and making occasional forays out into the night. At the top of the staircase which ran up the outer edge of the building, he spotted another full-sized miscellaneous door ahead of him. Nodding at this obvious location for a store of oil – one would hardly store such a flammable material within the walls of a library – he reached out and swung the door open, stepping back in surprise.
A flight of stairs descended into the darkness, a faint glow at the far end, two storeys down. His brow furrowed at this discovery which had escaped his earlier searches due to its mundane, cupboard-like appearance, and he padded slowly and quietly down the stairs, keeping to a side wall.
His frown melted away with wide eyes as he reached the bottom of the stairs, turned a corner and discovered the source of the light. He was in the colonnaded walkway surrounding the water villa!
Frowning again, he looked back up the stairs. He’d seen this doorway on his first visit to the amazing structure, no doubt, but the stairs were offset round a bend, and it would not be obvious that the entrance led up to the library.
It made sense. Hadrianus was a lover of Greek things. He’d paid special attention to the size and comforts of the Greek library, and had apparently set aside the water villa for his more personal amusements. To find that the two were so simply linked should hardly be a surprise.
His gaze danced around the circle of the huge enclosure. No guards were visible. Listening carefully, he could hear footsteps pacing somewhere at the far side. Someone was on night duty.
His eyes focused with a start of surprise on the figure standing directly in front of him. From within the comfort of the well-lit villa on the island, Saoterus had stepped out of the strange and convex columned portico and was standing on the odd little half-moon garden and watching him with his head tilted to one side. Rufinus stepped back in surprise.