Slowly now, he nudged the horse forward through the last of the trees and across the open field at the back of the villa enclosure. There was an old rampart, a ditch and a wooden palisade that circled the compound, but the palisade was neg shy;lected and broken down in places and the ditch overgrown. Scanning the woods, the circuit of the rampart, the ruins, Castus let the horse carry him closer. When he reached the ditch he dismounted and tethered the horse to the broken palisade, then climbed across into the compound with his sword drawn.
Nobody in sight. The scene was almost peaceful, with the slow curls of grey smoke, the sunlight heavy on the grass and the gravel of the forecourt. But the air stank of burnt timber and plaster, and the memory of violence seemed to shimmer in the still air. Castus paced across the herb garden at the back of the house. Tensed, muscles tight, he climbed the steps to the porch. Broken tiles cracked under his boots. The air was charged with soot here, and he pulled up his neckscarf to cover his mouth.
In through the blackened doorway, he clambered over the wrack of charred timbers and tiles from the fallen roof. He could still feel the heat of the fire radiating from the walls. Clambering over collapsed beams, he reached the corridor at the front of the house. Misted fragments of broken glass ground and crunched beneath his feet, and looking down he could make out the pattern of the mosaic floor through the thick coating of burnt debris. He moved to the right, towards the wide doorway of the dining room where, just over a month before, he had eaten dinner with Marcellinus and Strabo.
Sunlight came from the shattered roof, lighting the haze of smoke and soot. Flies were already circling, and a stench caught in his throat and churned his stomach. Castus stood in the doorway, pressing the scarf over his mouth. For a moment he saw only the burnt wreckage. Then what had seemed a charred timber became the stump of a reaching arm. Teeth showed between shrunken black lips.
He stepped back into the corridor. Nothing could have survived here. Any that escaped would have been hunted down, like the dead slave out on the track. Backing away further, scuffing his feet through the debris, Castus emerged into the shadow of the front portico. Pulling the scarf down from his mouth, he took great heaving lungfuls of air. His head was spinning, and his stomach crawled. Marcellinus’s wife and daughter, with their whole household, were as dead as Marcellinus himself, and for all his vows Castus had not been able to protect any of them.
Then, as he stared into the bright daylight of the forecourt, he saw the pony. A native pony, tethered beside the stable block, head down and cropping grass. He stepped quickly behind one of the standing columns of the portico, but before he could look again he heard a sharp cry. He knew it at once: the cry of a man at the point of death.
Flinging himself away from the pillar he jumped down into the yard and sprinted across the gravel with his sword held low. The cry had come from behind the stable block. Breathing hard, Castus threw himself against the wall of the stable and turned, scanning the yard behind him. Empty. He doubled the corner and saw another building before him, a disused bath-house with the door hanging open. The cry had come from there. Warily, he advanced from the stable wall towards the open door, dropping into a fighting crouch as he paced forward. Flies whirled around his head, and he heard birdsong from the trees beyond the boundary fence.
Four paces from the door he paused, squinting into the darkness of the building. A body was lying face down just inside the threshold. A man, in native cloak and tunic, with a bloody wound in the centre of his back. Castus moved closer, breathing slowly, glancing to either side. He reached the doorway and studied the body – quite dead, not a twitch of movement. It looked as though a single blow had felled the man. Castus winged his shoulders, feeling the sweat of his palm as he gripped the sword, then he leaped forward, across the body and through the door.
Sudden movement from his right, and he ducked just in time. The heavy head of a mattock swung across his back and buried itself in the wall beside the door, spraying plaster. Twisting on his toes, Castus came back upright with his sword levelled, elbow drawn back to strike.
For a moment in the thick darkness he could see nothing, just the tool stuck in the wall with the haft jutting out into the sunlight. Then he heard a hiss of breath, and saw the movement of a body shrinking back from the doorway. He growled, edging forward, and at that moment a spear slashed in through the doorway and a man’s body blocked the light.
Castus moved without thinking. He dropped, turned and punched out with the blade in one swift movement. The sword caught the man as he came through the door, stabbing up under his ribs. Castus stepped in close, into the body-smell, the blood-smell, slamming into his attacker and grappling his neck as he drove the sword in up to the hilt. The body slumped against him, twisted and fell, and Castus dragged the blade out of the wound.
Blood was on his face, hot on his right hand and up his arm, and he felt the energy of battle pulsing through him as he turned again to confront the person sheltering inside the door. A lunge and a stab and it would be finished.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw her crouching in the deepest corner of the room. Castus eased down his blade. ‘Marcellina?’ he said.
The mattock fell from the wall and clattered on the tiled floor.
13
‘It’s me. Aurelius Castus. The centurion who went north with your father. Do you remember?’ It was hard to get the words out. His throat was still tense from the fight.
He laid his sword down, stretched out his hand to her. But his hand was covered in blood; his whole arm was spattered with it. Now he could feel the ringing in his ears, the aftershock of combat. His heart was still beating heavily, and his hand trembled.
‘Look at me,’ he said, trying to soften his voice. ‘Look at me – I’m Roman. I’m a friend… You understand?’
The girl stayed crouched in the corner, drawn tight, shud shy;dering. She wore a long tunic of fine light-blue wool, a coral necklace and pendant earrings, as if she had just walked out of the house, but her hair was hanging loose. How long had she been hiding like this? And what strength must it have taken her, Castus thought, to swing the heavy mattock hard enough to kill one man, then swing it again as he had stepped through the door himself?
‘I’ll get you water,’ he said. Picking up his sword he backed away from the girl, stepping over the bodies sprawled inside the doorway. The man he had just killed lay on his side, eyes open, with a lake of blood spreading around him. His hair was cropped short with a tuft at the back, and his sparse beard was trimmed around his mouth. Not a Pict, Castus reckoned; the man was from one of the southern tribes perhaps. Votadini or Selgovae. A scavenger dragging through the wreckage of war.
Castus looked up from the corpse, into the sunlight, and stopped still. Two ponies were tethered at the back of the stable.
Two at the back, one at the front. Three.
‘There’s another one,’ Castus said quietly. He listened into the silence, hearing the ticking of the roof beams overhead, the trickle of plaster from the wall where the mattock had struck. Then – just at the edge of hearing – the slight shuffle from outside, the rasping intake of breath.
The third man was pressed against the outside wall, edging towards the door.
‘Stay quiet,’ Castus whispered to the girl. ‘Don’t move.’ He could feel the pool of wet blood spreading around the soles of his boots. No sound from outside; the man was not moving. If he ran now, he could reach the ponies and ride for help before Castus could catch him.