His teeth were chattering and his limbs were completely numb. His feet hung like dead weights and jolts of pain shot up from his side and one of his shoulders. He backed into a craggy area that turned out to be a small, dry cave. It was warmer there and big enough for him to crouch in. He even managed to stop the bleeding by tying a strip of fabric ripped from his clothing around the wound as a bandage. He let himself fall back and drowsed, more out of exhaustion than any desire to sleep. When he came to, he couldn’t have said how long he’d been there, but he knew that he had to continue his journey through the bowels of the mountain. He invoked the gods of Hades, promising to make a generous sacrifice if he managed to get out of their underground realm alive. Then he dragged himself back towards the water, lowered himself into the freezing river and let the current carry him away.
For a long time he was tossed around, battered, knocked under and thrown back up, as if he were in the throat of a monster, a sensation that felt more real to his terrified mind than being in the river.
Then, little by little, the speed of the current began to lessen and the channel became wider and less precipitous. Even the crashing noise of the waves died away. Perhaps the worst was past, but he couldn’t be sure. He had no way of knowing what new dangers the river might have in store for him.
But he was so exhausted from the cold, his endless struggle and his constant gagging as he coughed up the water he had swallowed that he merely let himself go, abandoning himself like a man would to death. A long time passed, how long he couldn’t tell.
The darkness had been so enveloping and so dense until then that he couldn’t believe it when the faintest glimmer of light came into view in the distance. Could he have reached the end? Would he see the world of the living again? Hope instilled a surge of energy and he dived into the middle of the river and began swimming. The vault of the tunnel within which the water flowed seemed to lighten imperceptibly, so that he was no longer in pitch blackness. This was the promise of light more than light itself, but with the passage of time it grew stronger until he became aware of the pale glow of the moon brightening the night sky.
Utterly exhausted by the enormous strain on his body and frozen half to death, Mustela fell to the ground, finally outside, finally under the vault of the sky, on a low, sandy bank. He laboriously dragged himself towards dry land and collapsed, without a single drop of strength left in his body.
In Monte Appennino, ad fontes Arni, a.d. VI Id. Mart., ad finem secundae vigiliae
The Apennine Mountains, at the source of the Arno, 10 March, end of the second guard shift, midnight
They continued on the ever narrowing road, one closely following the other, black figures in the reddish glow of the torch, moving over the snowy stretches. Publius Sextius forced himself to count the milestones, when they weren’t completely covered, and to keep a lookout for signs of animals that might attack them.
Oppressed by his solitude and worries, he turned to his companion.
‘Don’t you ever talk?’ he asked.
‘Only when I have something to say,’ replied Sura without turning, adding nothing further.
Publius Sextius went back to his thoughts, brooding over the revelation that had upset him most: that Mark Antony had been asked to participate in a plot against Caesar and, even though he hadn’t accepted, hadn’t told Caesar either. That could only mean one thing: he was on no one’s side but his own. Quite a dangerous quality in a man. Antony must have reasoned that, if the plot was successful, the conspirators would be grateful to him for his silence, and if it failed, he would have lost nothing. But how, then, to explain that gesture of his at the Lupercalia festival? If he was really so smart and so cynical, how could he have committed such a huge error? He had chosen to stand out by making such a blatant move at such a sensitive moment. Perhaps he’d always deliberately acted the part of the simple soldier, who knows nothing of politics, in order to hide his bigger ambitions. But even if that were so, what sense did it make to attempt to crown Caesar king in public? Evidently Antony had known, or had thought he knew, how the crowd would react, so why didn’t he worry about Caesar’s reaction? Even if he thought he could continue to hide behind his pretended ingenuousness, Antony couldn’t ignore the fact that — if a conspiracy was being planned — his gesture would contribute to making Caesar more vulnerable and more alone.
So why had Antony chosen to do such a thing? What could the reason possibly be?
Publius Sextius continued turning it over in his mind, again and again, but it was like beating his head against a wall. Finally, he gave up and instead watched the snow descending silently in huge flakes in the light of Sura’s torchlight as they proceeded slowly, ever more slowly, while he would have preferred to race like the wind, to devour the road, to reach his destination before it was too late. Maybe it was already too late. Perhaps all his efforts would prove to be in vain.
There had to be a reason. Fleetingly, when the vice loosened and the cold air let him breathe, he felt he was close to finding a solution. The answer must lie with several key people, not many, perhaps three or four. With the balance of power or interests among them. He forced himself to consider every possibility, the likely motives of each individual and how they might overlap or conflict. He would have liked to jump to the ground and use the tip of his knife to sketch out the complicated connections on the immaculate snow, in the way that he would use the hard ground of an army camp to plan the action for his unit during a battle. But then he would lose track and his thoughts would dissolve into thousands of small, confused fragments, at which point he would realize he was no closer to a solution than he had been at the start and his gaze would drift again to the spinning white flakes.
Now and then he even suspected that the map Nebula had given him in Modena, before disappearing into the morning fog, was leading him straight into a trap. But even if that were so, he convinced himself, he had no choice and had to run this risk. The alternative was arriving too late to pass on his message.
Sura now broke one of his interminable silences to announce that they were close to the source of the Arno river and were on an ancient Etruscan road. He said nothing more.
Publius Sextius rode on, torturing himself with his thoughts all night long.
In Monte Appennino, a.d. V Id. Mart., tertia vigilia
The Apennine Mountains, 11 March, third guard shift, after midnight
Only Rufus was suffering as much pain as he struggled to reach the Via Flaminia Minor in as little time as possible, which meant cutting straight across the mountainside. At first he followed the barely visible path that wound down the slope forming the western embankment of the Reno valley to get to the river. He managed this with considerable difficulty, often having to dismount and lead his horse by the reins, until he arrived at the riverbank. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. The falling snow was now mixed with a fine, relentless drizzle that trickled down his cloak and dripped on to the ground from the hem.
He found the ford by following the sound of the water rushing between the rocks and urged his horse into the river. The water deepened at the centre, rising to the horse’s chest, but they were soon treading on a bed of fine gravel and sand, having reached the opposite bank.
The path on that side ascended steeply, but when Rufus met up with the snow again the low glimmer of the white blanket helped him to get his bearings, enabling him to set forth on the path he had used so many times before. He soon reached the hut of a shepherd he knew well and he stopped there to drink a cup of warm milk and eat a chunk of bread and cheese. The cabin was lit inside by the flames in the hearth. Its walls, plastered with dried mud, were completely blackened by the smoke. The whole place stank of sheep, from his host to the hulking Molossian hound lying on the ash that circled the hearth, a hairy beast that everyone called by a different name. Rufus scratched him behind his flea-ridden ears by way of greeting.