Other voices were added to his; the rest were shifting closer on the benches, making room for one more.
And suddenly, because nothing mattered much anyway, it was too much trouble to go on refusing. He shrugged, and got up, and not quite sure how it happened, found himself sitting with Quintus and his friends, the cup brimming with unwatered Falernian in his hand. Flushed faces grinned at him round the winedabbled table. A complete stranger with hair bleached lint-white as some of the young braves among the tribesmen wore it – it was the fashion just then to be very British – leaned forward and clapped him on the shoulder, shouting, ‘Here he is then; let’s drink to him! Aiee, my lucky lad, that was a pretty fight!’
Cups were raised on all sides: ‘Red Phaedrus! Joy and long life to you!’
Phaedrus laughed, and drank the toast with them, gulping the cup dry. It would be good to get drunk. ‘A pretty fight. You saw it?’
‘Wouldn’t have missed it for all the gold in Eburacum’s mint!’
‘I thought the Gaul had you with that low stroke,’ another said.
‘I thought so, too.’ Phaedrus drained his cup and threw the lees over his shoulder, where they lay dark as the grains of old blood on the dirty floor. ‘What’s a friend after all? I’ll drink again if anyone asks me.’
Presently, he had no idea how many winecups later, he realized that the place was emptying, and the serving-girl and a couple of slaves were gathering up empty cups and mopping spilled wine, while at the far side of the room, benches were being stacked one a’top the other. ‘Shutting up, by the look of things.’ A plump, dark youth who had been quieter than the rest of them all evening looked about him somewhat owlishly. ‘S’tonishing how quick an evening runs its course in – good comp’ny.’
‘Ah now, who says it’s run its course? I’m shtill – still thirsty.’ Quintus flung himself back against the wall behind him, and beckoned imperiously to the girl. ‘Hai! Pretty! More wine.’
The girl looked up from her task. ‘We’re shutting up now.’
‘Not while I’m here, we’re not.’
She glanced towards the wine-shop owner, who came waddling across the room towards them, his paunch thrust out beneath a dirty tunic stained with old wine splashes. ‘We don’t keep open all night in the “Rose of Paestum”. This is a decent house, sirs, and we need our sleep same as other folks.’
Quintus lurched to his feet, flushing crimson, his hand fumbling for his knife, but Phaedrus, with a few grains of sense still in him, put a hand on his shoulder and slammed him down again. ‘Softly! The “Rose of Paestum” isn’t the only wine-shop in Corstopitum.’
And a big red-faced young man with a loose mouth grinned in agreement. ‘Tired of that girl on the wall, she’s coming off in flakes, anyhow. Le’s go ’nd find some real dancing-girls.’
Somehow matters were sorted out, and the remains of the score paid, with a good deal of bickering, and they were spilling out into the street, hotly arguing as to where they should go next. They had been no more than loudly cheerful and from time to time a little quarrelsome in the hot room, but the fresh air went to their heads and legs like another kind of wine. ‘I’m drunk,’ Phaedrus thought. ‘I haven’t been as drunk as this since Saturnalia!’
Well, he had meant to get as drunk as an Emperor tonight, and the feeling was good. He was not lonely or cold any more, and tomorrow could look after itself; he felt eighteen hands high and curiously remote from his own feet. He could fight a legion single-handed, and whistle the seven stars of Orion out of the sky. It was not such a grey world after all.
They had forgotten about the quest for dancing-girls, and for a while they wavered their way about the streets, singing, with their arms round each other’s necks. Respectable people scurried into doorways at their approach, which seemed to all of them a jest for the Gods, so that they howled with laughter and began to kick at doors in passing and yell insults at any protesting face that appeared at an upper window. They had no clear idea of where they were heading, but presently they found themselves in the centre of the town, with the square mass of the Forum buildings and the Basilica rising before them cliff-wise out of the late lantern-light into the darkness. Among the small lean-to shops, closely shuttered now, that lined the outer colonnade, the gleam of a lantern here and there told where a late wine-booth was still open, and the sight of the little groups gathered about them made Phaedrus and his boon companions thirsty again.
‘C’mon,’ Quintus said. ‘Let’s have another drink.’
‘Had enough.’ The dark, plump boy still had more sense left in him than any of the others. ‘Maybe we’d best be jogging home.’
‘Roma Dea! The night’s still in swaddling-bands, there’s two full watches of it left yet.’ And another of the band lifted up his voice in mournful song:
‘Oh do not drink so deep, my son,
My dear and only child!
And do not lie down in the street
And look so strange and wild.’
The others joined in the chorus:
‘Yellow wine of Chios
And dark wine of Gaul,
But the blood-red Falernian,
The ruby-red Falernian,
The fire-red Falernian,
Is the Emperor of them all.’
Then in a blurred gabble, ‘I’ve-a-fine-and-noble-reason-for-lying-here-a-season-but-what-it-is-I-cannot-quite-recall.’
And baying each other on to further efforts, they headed for the nearest of the still open wine-booths, close beside the main gate, with its triumphal inscription and attendant stone lions.
The booth, which was no more than a trestle table under the roof of the colonnade, with a couple of coarse wine and water jars behind it, a few horn cups and a red pottery lamp in the midst of all, was kept by an ex-Legionary who had had trouble with drunks before. He eyed them with grim disfavour as they drew near, and began ostentatiously to stack the horn mugs together.
‘And what might you be wanting?’
Quintus propped himself against the trestle table. ‘What’s one generally come to a wine-booth for, eh? – Tell me that. Wha’s one gener-rally—’
‘Well, you’ve come too late,’ said the booth’s owner. ‘Can’t you see I’m shutting for the night?’
Quintus shook his head, while the rest crowded closer, and said with elaborate care, ‘That was what they said at the “Rose of Paestum”. The very words they – and it wasn’t true! They jus’ di’n’ – didn’t like our faces. You don’ like our faces either, do you?’
‘I’ve seen ones I’ve liked better.’
‘Our money’s good ’nough, though.’ Quintus flung down a scatter of coins and thrust a suddenly darkening face into that of the ex-Legionary. ‘An’ tha’s all that matters t’you, isn’t it? Now we’ll have some wine. Me an’ my frien’s, we’ll all have some wine.’
‘Not here, you won’t.’ The man pushed the money back at him. ‘Now pick up this lot, and get off to bed, the pack of you.’
The rest of the party had begun crowding closer, and there was an ugly murmur. Phaedrus, with his beautiful prancing mood suddenly checked, aware once more, through the bright haze of the Falernian, of the grey, flat future that he had thought successfully drowned, had a strong desire to fight somebody. It did not much matter whom. He elbowed his way to the forefront of the group beside Quintus. ‘And supposing there’s no wish in us for bed? Suppose we feel like a cup of wine all round, and nothing else in the world?’
The mood of the whole band was turning ugly; he felt the ugliness growing and gathering strength behind him, and saw the recognition of it in the ex-Legionary’s suddenly alerted gaze. Legionary of the Eagles that he, Phaedrus, was not good enough to join! For the moment it seemed to him that he had actually gone up to the Depot, and been turned away.
‘Then you’ll have to try another booth, gladiator. I’m shutting up for the night!’ The man raised his voice abruptly to a parade-ground bellow, as he clattered horn cups into a b
asket that a boy behind him had dragged out from under the trestles. Out of the tail of his eye, Phaedrus was aware of several other men moving up; the wine-booth owners were mostly old Legionaries, and held together when there was trouble.
‘Right! Then we’ll help you!’ Quintus shouted, and kicked over the biggest wine-jar; and in the same instant, even as the booth keeper lunged into battle like a bull with a gad-fly on his tail, Phaedrus seized one end of the trestle board and heaved it up, sending everything on it to the pavement with a deeply satisfying crash. On the instant a free fight was milling round the wreckage, and the raw-red Sabine wine running like blood between the cobbles. The lamp had gone over with the rest, and little rivulets of burning oil mingled with the wine. Then someone shouted, ‘Look out! It’s the Watch!’ And the thing that had begun as little more than a savage jest tipped over into nightmare.
Somebody – in the confusion Phaedrus did not know who it was – drew a knife. He caught the flash of it in the flickering light of the burning oil about their feet; somebody shouted, ‘Don’t be a fool! For the Gods’ sake—’ and a Legionary of the Watch went down with a sharp bitten-off cry.
One of the little runnels of fire had caught the dry timber of a shop-front near by; a wavering tongue of flame licked up as though tasting it and then the fire was roaring up the shutter, and in the red flare of it, Phaedrus saw the crested helmet and mailed shoulders of the officer of the Watch-patrol lowered to charge, and more men thrusting grimly behind him. The little band of revellers was scattering, melting away at panic speed. Phaedrus sprang back into the shadows and turned to run. But some time in the fighting he had caught a kick on the half-healed wound, and now suddenly his knee gave under him.
He heard a shout and the pounding of feet and even as he struggled up from his headlong fall, two of the Watch had flung themselves upon him. ‘Here’s one of them, anyhow!’ a voice shouted, and merciless hands dragged him to his feet and back into the light of the blazing shop-front, where others of the patrol were already getting to work with water from the Forum fountain. He caught a brief glimpse of the officer’s crest, tall and arched like a stallion’s against the sinking fire; and a coldly disgusted voice from under it said, ‘One of them! And they have half-gralloched Gerontius.’
All sounds of the chase were pounding away into the distance. Phaedrus twisted in his captors’ hands and began to fight. Four years of the Gladiators’ School where private quarrels were settled without weapons and far from the eye of authority, had taught him other ways of battle than those of the sword and he used them all, every clean and dirty trick of them. But the part-reopened wound hampered him, and when he tried to knee one of his captors in the groin it again played him false.
‘Ah! You would, would you, you stinking pole-cat!’ someone snarled, and he was wrenched sideways, and something that felt like a thunderbolt took him under the left ear. Jagged flame shot from the point of impact through the top of his head, and he plunged down into a buzzing blackness between spinning sun-wheels of coloured light.
3
MIDIR OF THE DALRIADS
PHAEDRUS SAT ON a pile of filthy bedstraw in the corner of the cell, scratching at the blood-stained rag that was tied round his knee, and watching the last daylight fade out beyond the high, narrow window-hole.
It had been noon when they hauled him out of the main prison hall and flung him in here. At the time he had been too sick to care, almost too sick to notice. There was something odd about that sickness; it had leaped upon him as soon as the morning bannock and water was down his throat, so suddenly and horribly that he had wondered if he were poisoned – until he stopped being able to wonder at all. His head still ached, but dully, a leaden soreness instead of the black pounding of a few hours ago; and his belly crawled clammily within him; but he no longer sweated and shivered. And he had begun to wonder with a growing urgency why he had been shifted into this small cell shut away from the rest of the prisoners. Because of that sudden sickness? Had they feared that it might be something that would breed and spread and break loose of the prison into Corstopitum. Or had the wounded Legionary died? He had not been dead when Phaedrus was thrust into the city gaol six days ago, that much they had told him, but he could have died since. Was this solitary cell perhaps the place where prisoners on a death charge were held for trial? It was one thing to make a good end with one’s sword in hand and the packed theatre benches baying, quite another to die like this . . . Not a pleasant thought, and it brought with it an unpleasant sense of the damp stone walls closing in.
He pushed the walls back with care, and steadied his breath. The fact that he had not struck the blow would stand him in no kind of stead; he realized that. In the eyes of Roman justice, they had all struck, had all, equally, drawn the knife. And the others had all got clear. Well, he would do for a scapegoat – ex-gladiator, paid off with the wooden foil, gets drunk to celebrate and knifes one of the Watch in a street brawl; it made a nice neat story for the records, all the ends properly tied in; no need to look any further.
There was a heavy step outside, and the gaoler appeared beyond the iron grid of the cage-like door, stooped to thrust the evening food bowl under the lowest bar, and tramped on without a word; a few moments later Phaedrus heard the sudden uproar from the main hall that always greeted the food. He looked at the bowl which the man had left on the floor, but the look of the black rye-bread and watery bean-stew made his stomach heave, and he left it where it was and went on sitting. It was dusk in the cell now, though there was still light in the sky outside the small, high window; and beyond the cage-work door there began to be a faint tawny glow, an echo of the torch that burned all night at the head of the steps.
Presently the gaoler returned, but instead of merely reaching in for the bowl and passing on, halted and produced from his belt something that jangled. His hands were out of sight beyond the edge of the door, but Phaedrus heard the metallic kiss and click of the lock; the long bar which held the door was freed and dragged back, and the door itself swung open.
‘Out with you,’ the man said, standing back.
Phaedrus’s muscles had already tensed to the chance of freedom, with the quick reaction of the arena-trained, but he made no movement. No point in trying to rush the door when it was already open – and the Gods knew what lay beyond . . .
‘Out, I said! Come on now, outside.’
Phaedrus stood up in no hurry. ‘Am I to go before the Magistrate? Well, it’s about time – six cursed days he’s kept me waiting.’
‘At this hour of night? Besides, he’s not back yet. Do you think he’s going to shorten his hunting trip for the likes of you?’
‘Hardly,’ Phaedrus said, and then, ‘Is the man dead?’
‘Him as you knifed? Not that I’ve heard of.’
That was something, anyway, but still Phaedrus stood wary, back against the wall, misliking the man’s furtive manner. ‘Then where are you taking me? Why am I to leave my cell at this hour?’
The gaoler shrugged broad shoulders. ‘How should I know? My orders don’t go beyond the guardroom steps. Are you coming or do I have to call my mate?’
‘I am coming,’ Phaedrus said, and pushed off from the wall. As he ducked through the cell doorway, the man side-stepped, quick as a cat for all his size, and he felt the prick of a knife-point under his ribs. ‘Quietly now.’
Phaedrus checked an instant at the touch of the cold iron. He had half hoped for the moment that someone was working his rescue; but the knife would seem to put an end to that idea. It had been a stupid one, anyway; the School stood by its own, bound by odd pack loyalties however much it fought among itself, but once you were out, living or dead, you were out, and the pack hunted without you.
‘Down here – out of the light.’
Well, whatever was happening, whatever all this meant, he hadn’t much to lose. Phaedrus was used to taking chances. Now, quite deliberately, he let go, and abandoned himself to events like a swimmer pushing off into the c
urrent; and as the prick of the knife came again, warningly, under the ribs, he gave a low breath of a laugh and moved off down the stone-flagged corridor away from the torchlight. The main hall was behind them, with its wild-beast stink; once more they crossed a patch of torchlight, shining across a narrow courtyard from the open guardroom door, then they turned another corner, mounted some steps, and cool air stirred in their faces, clearing Phaedrus’s head somewhat from the fumes of the strange sickness.
Another figure, tall, but shapeless in the dusk, moved from beside an open postern doorway; there was a quick, muttered exchange between him and the gaoler: ‘All well?’ and ‘All well.’ And then to Phaedrus, ‘Put on this cloak – so, the hood forward over your face. It is a fine night for a walk, my friend.’
Then he was out in a back alleyway, walking as though all this was a perfectly usual thing to happen, beside the muffled figure of his new guide.
‘Walk as though we were bound for the nearest wine-shop – nowhere more important,’ said a dry voice under the other’s hood; a voice that seemed faintly familiar, speaking in the British tongue.
Phaedrus glanced aside at him. ‘And since that seems unlikely, where are we bound for, on this fine night’s walk?’
‘Not into any trap, if that is what you are thinking.’
‘I can be sure of that?’ Phaedrus said on a faint note of mockery.
‘Na, you cannot be sure until the thing is proved. You have only my word for it, but there are places where the word of Sinnoch the Merchant is counted binding.’
Phaedrus wondered whether this was one of them, then shrugged beneath the greasy-smelling folds of the cloak, and, his weakness beginning to wear off, fell more easily into step beside the other man.
Among the drifting evening crowds, they went by narrow ways and back streets, emerged at last into the Street of the Trumpeter, and turned down it. It was almost dark now, with a faint mist creeping in from the moors to make a yellow smear about the lanterns that hung here and there at street corners or over shop doorways. A stain of light fell across the roadway from an open door, and with it the blur of voices and the throaty blackbird notes of a pipe, and Phaedrus realized, with a nightmare sense of having travelled in a circle, that the doorway and the voices and the lamplight were those of the ‘Rose of Paestum’.