Gemellus clearly sympathised. 'Another of the reinforcements?' he asked.

'Actually, no,' Drusus replied. 'It was a young Briton. A girl who was found within the Greek quarter by Crispia.n.u.s Dolavia and his men, acting on information received. Efforts are being made to find the youth a suitable family with whom she can live until a husband is found for her.'

It was such a casual conversation that Ian, lost in his own thoughts, almost missed it. On another day, perhaps, he would have done.

Luckily, the important words carried themselves to him.

'British, did you say?' he asked. 'A young girl?'

'Yes,' said Drusus. 'Perhaps you you could marry her?' could marry her?'

Ian Chesterton began to rock with unexpected laughter, quite oblivious to the funeral proceedings still going on around him. Fabulous, he was absolutely certain, would not have minded in the slightest.

Vicki was walking in the dark again.

Literally as well as metaphorically.

lt was becoming a familiar part of each day.

There was a narrow annex corridor that ran from her room in the guest quarters of the legion's barracks through the Roman complex to a door at the base of the mezzanine behind the servants' rooms in the Villa Praefectus Villa Praefectus.

Bored by a day spent watching the ma.s.sed ranks of legionnaires outside practising stabbing straw opponents with their swords (it had been fun for ten minutes, but there was a limit to even Vicki's tolerance for sweaty bodies and taut, rippling muscles), Vicki had gone off exploring. She immediately found herself in the villa and was quickly spotted and chased by one of Drusus's minions, before being cornered and dragged (complaining) into the kitchens for questioning by the master of the household.

She was getting used to interrogation, almost looking forward to each day's new adventure in the field.

Once Drusus had discovered her position of being under army protection and her status as a citizen and not a slave, he seemed to lose all interest in Vicki herself, simply telling her not to get in the way if she intended to hang around with the slaves.

Vicki liked that idea. The slaves she met were friendly and, when they weren't rushing around carrying out mind-numbingly mundane tasks, they treated her like an equal; they were just about the first people in Byzantium to do that.

Of course, being the equal of a slave didn't actually mean much, particularly to the Romans themselves, but Vicki, if nothing else, appreciated the distinction between the Villa Villa Praefectus Praefectus and life in the barracks. and life in the barracks.

She spent a day sitting in the kitchens, nibbling at the numerous leftovers that the Greek cook, Denisius, kept insisting that she help him finish off. He was a huge and jolly man with a ruddy complexion beneath his thick greying beard, and a bellowing laugh that was heard more and more as the day progressed and the level in the bottle of wine beside his stove sank lower and lower.

ln the kitchens, too, she met Dorcas, the beautiful young housemaid, who combed Vicki's tangled and dirty hair between scampering off to run errands, and talked to Vicki about the year she spent with the master and the mistress in Gaul before coming to Byzantium. There was Tobias, too, the huge and bronzed North African Adonis, his bald head and smooth, ebony skin reminding Vicki of a man on the ship to Dido. Tobias didn't say much and smiled even less frequently, but Dorcas adored him and the feeling seemed to be mutual.

There were others, too, that she encountered. Friendly and cheerful house boys and valets. c.o.c.ksure and stunningly beautiful handmaidens. Food servants and domestics. And there was Praelius, the studious Thracian scribe who taught the cla.s.sics to Jocelyn's two daughters by her previous marriage.

This morning, however, the kitchens were all but deserted, except for one glum-looking woman whom Vicki had not met the previous day.

'h.e.l.lo, said Vicki brightly. 'I should introduce myself...'

'I know who you are,' said the woman. 'The talk of the halls has been of little else since your arrival.'

Nice to develop a reputation without trying, Vicki reflected.

'My name is Felicia, she said. 'Handmaiden to the praefectus praefectus's wives. Or at least, I was.'

'Why?' asked Vicki, noting the past tense. 'What happened?'

'I did a favour for a general. Take the advice of one who has bitter experience in life and remember never to do favours for anyone, young Briton,' Felicia said woefully and then explained the awful events to which she had been party.

'I'm sure Jocelyn will forget it all eventually,' Vicki argued.

'I do not worry about my lady's displeasure, Felicia said.

'The praefectus praefectus's wife is foolish and empty-headed. She is not the problem.'

'Then who?'

Felicia began to cry 'You are not wise in the ways of Byzantium, Vicki,' she said. 'General Gaius Calaphilus used me to further his own position. Like a simpleton, and for the wicked love of money, I allowed myself to be so used.'

'So, what's the problem?' asked Vicki.

'Simply that I am likely to become the next victim of the general's purges.'

Vicki didn't quite follow the logic of this, but she was in no position to argue with Felicia.

'Already, rumours are rife about a terror like the wrath of the G.o.ds to be unfolded upon the enemies of the state this night. And I shall be amongst the victims of them... Woe, woe and thrice woe,' she wailed, helplessly. 'Who shall save the little people and give them their deliverance from the vengeance of powerful and ambitious men?'

For once in her life, Vicki was completely stumped for an answer.

Fortunately, however, as the two young women looked at each other in anguish, a pa.s.sionate voice reached out to them across the kitchens.

'Deliverance is a state of mind,' said Dorcas, stepping from the shadows, having clearly overheard much of the girls'

conversation. 'Yet it is also an attainable goal.'

As if Vicki hadn't had enough surprises in the last few days, this was an unexpected turn of events. 'How so?'

'Through escape,' Dorcas replied. 'I have a cunning plan to leave this benighted place. I have a route. I have friends who will help and I have a destination whereupon to travel.

What I need are two willing accomplices. Are you with me?'

Neither Vicki nor Felicia needed to be asked twice.

Chapter Thirty-One.

The Culture Bunker, Part Eight Just Another Greek Tragedy

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. and preach the gospel to every creature.

Mark 16:15

Dorcas's plan had a relatively straightforward first phase.

Flee the compound.

'That's it?' asked Vicki, surprised. She had expected something more complicated with maps and diversionary tactics and suchlike.

'We only have to get past the gatehouse,' Felicia told her.

'I have done it many times before.'

'Greater dangers will present themselves once we are outside,' Dorcas continued as the three girls reached the wall of the barracks, just across the parade ground from the exit.

'Now what?' whispered Vicki.

'We wait until the coast is clear,' said Felicia just as a huge battery of soldiers arrived, cutting off the only escape route available to them.

'Today has been, as t'were, a momentous climax to events of recent times,' general Gaius Calaphilus noted to the ma.s.sed ranks of his legion.

'We undertake this night, to put down the obscenity which blights our fair Byzantium. To erase, for all eternity, the putrid stench of rebellion within our own ranks. And make it known throughout the empire, from the isles of Britannia to the citadel of Rome itself, that this thing shall not stand.

There was a huge cheer from the a.s.sembled men, many of whom banged their shields loudly with their swords. Others raised their weapons in the air and shook them at the night sky.

'But first,' Calaphilus announced to his troops, 'it is beholden on me to reward those whose bravery and loyalty in the face of threats and menaces has deserved recognition.

Step forward loyal centurion Crispia.n.u.s Dolavia, whom we do now, and with great emotion, promote to the n.o.ble rank of tribune in the service of his most divine and awesome majesty, the Emperor Lucius Nero.'

Calaphilus pinned the tribune's regalia to the lapel of Crispia.n.u.s's tunic and kissed his brother-in-arms on both cheeks. 'May you always have good fortune and triumph in battle, and do unto your enemies great murder.'

There were other pieces of backslapping promotion to be handed out, too. Captain Drusus Felinistius replaced Crispia.n.u.s Dolavia as centurion, whilst Marinus Topignius, to the men of the legion's hastily expressed approval, was honoured with a captaincy. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the general had promoted wisely and with an eye on gaining the total support of his men. They would probably have followed him to the brink of death anyway, but with one of their own like Marinus now within the officer rank, it was a foregone conclusion.

This was, in fact, exactly what Calaphilus had in mind.

Earlier, he had told Ian Chesterton that he intended surrounding himself with loyal, if unspectacular, men.

'Promoted men are grateful men,' he had noted.

'Our task, this night,' Calaphilus told the men when the changes in rank were completed, 'is to ruthlessly put down the rebellion that is upon us. No quarter should be asked, or given. Your orders are to find Fabius Actium, Marcus Lanilla, Honorius Annora and those others who attempt to usurp the power of Rome, and to end their treasons. Let us march upon the hour, and woe betide the villains who stand in our way.'

'What's going on?' asked Vicki, straining to hear.

'I think they are hunting traitors,' Dorcas whispered. 'We had best wait until they have gone before we attempt to leave.'

So, they shrank back into the shadows, and waited.

A night of terror was erupting around Byzantium as the advanced ranks of the Roman soldiers and their praetorian colleagues took a merciless revenge on treasonous colleagues.

In the forum, a group of soldiers loyal to the dishonoured tribunes had seen their retreat from the city blocked in a swift movement by an ambitious young captain with an eye on a centurion's post. Calaphilus had been sent for and arrived on horseback, with Dolavia at his side, to find twenty or so men cowering in the centre of the market square, surrounded by those troops loyal to the general and the praefectus praefectus.

'You men,' said Calaphilus, angrily. 'Your lives are forfeit.

Die with honour, at the point of a sword, or shamed by the torments of crucifixion.'

There were a series of pathetic cries for mercy from the gathered men. Calaphilus turned to the captain and gave his order.

'Have your men make plain the displeasure of the empire,'

he said. 'Get thee in amongst them like crazed dogs and leave not one man standing to spread his odious poison in my sight.'

Then he turned his horse away and headed towards more important matters as the first blow was struck against the traitors.