XVII

'Where will we find the boy Meto?' I wondered aloud. The atrium, which that morning had been thronged with funeral guests and their attendant slaves, was deserted. Our footsteps echoed hollowly in the empty space. The incense and the flowers were gone, but their odour, like that of the decaying corpse of Lucius Licinius, lingered behind.

I followed my nose to the kitchens. Long before I found them I heard the din of activity. There was much preparation still to be done for the funeral feast.

We stepped through a great wooden door and found ourselves swallowed up by noise and heat. Their tunics spotted with stains and soot, the kitchen slaves scurried about. Hoarse voices cried back and forth, heavy knives chopped against blocks of wood, kettles boiled and hissed. Eco covered his ears to protest the din, then pointed at a figure across the room.

Little Meto, standing on a stool, was reaching into a deep clay pot atop a table. He looked around to see that no one was watching, then pulled out a handful of something and stuck it into his mouth. I walked across the room, dodging to avoid the hurrying slaves, and grabbed the neck of his tunic.

He gave a squawk and looked over his shoulder at me. His mouth, covered with a paste of honey, millet, and crushed nuts, opened in a cry of distress, then turned abruptly into a grin when he saw my face – and as abruptly twisted into a howl of pain when a wooden spoon came down on his head with a crack.

'Out of the kitchen! Out! Out!' screamed an old slave whose superior dress and manner marked him as the chief cook. He seemed ready to strike me as well, then saw the iron ring I wore. 'Forgive me, Citizen, but between Meto pilfering sweets, and the slaves of all these guests sneaking in to steal food, we can hardly do our work. Could you please find an errand for the little pest?'

'Precisely what I came for,' I said. I gave Meto a sharp slap on the rump as he hopped off the stool and scurried across the crowded room, licking the honey from his fingers and tripping cooks and helpers in his wake. Eco caught him at the door and held him for me.

'Meto!' I cried, catching up and closing the door behind us. 'Just the man I was looking for. Are you a swimmer, Meto?'

He looked up at me gravely, licking the sweet mash from the corners of his mouth. He slowly shook his head.

'No?'

'No, sir.'

'You don't swim at all?' 'Not a stroke,' he assured me.

I shook my head, vexed. 'You disappoint me, Meto, though it's no fault of your own. I had convinced myself that you must be the offspring of a faun and a river nymph.'

He was perplexed for a moment, then laughed out loud at my foolishness. 'But I know who swims better than anybody!' he offered.

'Yes? Who would that be?'

'Come with me, I'll show you. He's with the others in the stables!' He began to run down the hall, until Eco caught up with him and grabbed the neck of his tunic like a leash. We followed his lead to the centre of the house, through the atrium and out into the courtyard. He broke from Eco's grasp and hurried towards the stables. We came to the open doors, where the cooler air from within carried the mingled scents of hay and dung. Meto hurried on.

'Wait! You said you were leading us to the stables!' I protested.

'Not those stables!' he called over his shoulder. He pointed ahead and ran around the corner of the building. I thought he must be playing a game with us, until I turned the corner and saw the long, low wooden annexe attached to the stone stables.

'Is there no end to this villa?' I muttered to Eco. Then I saw the soldiers who guarded the doorway to the annexe.

The six of them sat cross-legged in a small clearing beneath the evergreens. They failed to see us, until a shrill whisde pierced the air. I looked up and saw a seventh guard atop the red tile roof of the annexe, his spear in the crook of his arm and his fingers in his mouth.

The six were on their feet immediately, their swords drawn and their dice abandoned in the dust. Their chief officer – or at least the one with the most insignia – stepped towards me, brandishing his sword and scowling through his grey-streaked beard. 'Who are you and what do you want?' he asked gruffly. He ignored Meto, who stepped past him and hurried to the annexe door. I gathered that Meto was already known to the guards; one of them even reached down and ruffled his hair affectionately.

I held my hands at my sides, a bit away from my body, in clear sight. Eco glanced at me nervously and did the same. 'My name is Gordianus. I'm a guest of Gelina and of your general, Marcus Crassus. This is my son, Eco.'

The soldier narrowed his eyes suspiciously, then put his sword away. 'It's all right, men,' he called over his shoulder. 'He's the one Marcus Mummius told us about. Calls himself the Finder. And what do you expect to find here?' He no longer seemed like a fierce warrior ready to kill, but instead appeared quite affable and polite. More than anything else, he looked like an extremely bored man glad for any interruption to break the monotony.

'The slave boy led us here,' I explained. 'I had forgotten that the stables had an annexe.'

'Yes, the stables hide it from the courtyard; you can't see it at all from the house, I'm told, not even from the upper storey. Which makes it the perfect place to hide them all, nicely out of sight.'

'Hide whom?' I said, forgetting what Gelina had told me regarding the whereabouts of most of the slaves.

'See for yourself. It looks like little Meto is quite eager for you to follow him. It's all right, Fronto,' he called to the guard who had ruffled Meto's hair. 'You can open the door.'

The guard produced a large brass key and fitted it into a lock which hung on a chain. The lock opened and the door swung outward. The guards stood at a distance, their hands on their hilts and their eyes alert. Meto ran inside, waving for us to follow.

The smell that came from within was quite different from that which came from the stables. There was the sweet smell of straw, to be sure, but the odour of urine and waste came not from animals but from men. The stench of human sweat was heavy in the air as well, along with the smell of women in period and the mingled odours of rotting food and vomit. It reminded me of the smell below the deck of the Fury – not as acrid with the stench of men on the verge of collapse, but not relieved by fresh salt breezes, either; it had the foul, closed, musty stench of the slaughterhouse rather than the slave galley.

Eco balked at stepping within, but I took his arm. The door closed behind us. 'Bang on the door and call out when you're ready to leave,' yelled the guard through the wood. The chain rattled and the lock snapped shut.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness. There were only a few barred windows near the roof, admitting beams of sunlight thick with dust. 'What is this place?' I whispered.

I didn't expect an answer, but the boy Meto was nearby. 'The master used it to store all sorts of things,' he said, pitching his voice low to match mine. 'Old bits and saddles and blankets, and broken chariot wheels and ox carts. Sometimes, even swords and spears, and shields and helmets. But it was almost empty when Master Lucius died. When Master Crassus came the next day, this is where he put the slaves, all but a few of us.'

The place had fallen silent when we entered, but now voices began to murmur in the darkness. 'Meto!' I heard an old woman call out. 'Meto, come here and give us a hug!'

The boy disappeared into the shadows. As the room lightened, I saw the woman who embraced him. She sat on the straw-littered floor, her white hair knotted in a bun, her long, pale hands trembling in the dim light as she fondled the boy's hair.