Beasts From the Dark by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788636995
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Exhaustion took Drust at the Baths of Agrippa and he fell asleep after a massage by a slave with expert fingers, kneading his back and his legs. He recalled, muzzily, questions about his wounds and whether he had served, but then it was all grey, heaving sea.

That was what loss was, Drust was realising. Adrift in a grey, heaving sea, watching the swell grow and grow until it crashed on you, took you down, spinning and spinning and gasping for breath until, at the point where you were sure you would die, you were launched back into sunlight and air. Then you floated, waiting for the next wave, almost knowing what would trigger it – a snatch of song, a scent, a comment.

By the time he woke and joined the others, the day was well advanced and the baths were growing busy – these were the oldest baths in Rome, always kept refurbished in gleaming white marble, and close to the Campius Martius. That hallowed field was now built over by temples including the Pantheon, which Agrippa had also commissioned, but there was always a lingering whiff of dank smoke which let people know that Pompeii and Herculaneum were not the only places at risk from the fires of the Underworld.

They were all shaved, shorn and blissed by hot water and the feeling of clean, watching the naked bodybuilders lift lead weights with loud grunts, or playing some game with a ball which involved a lot of arguing. A handful of young boys in loincloths watched while trying not to be seen doing it, but now and then they would put their heads together and giggle.

The only one not here was Manius, who had suffered to be shorn, shaved and briefly soaked, then gone sliding off to Caesar’s house.

‘Think he will find anything?’ Kisa asked.

‘Just what we know already. I don’t think Antyllus is there,’ Drust replied.

‘If not – what do we do?’ Ugo demanded, feeling his head cautiously; he did not like being so close-shorn, for hair was a mark of a warrior, a symbol of respect. He had been a Roman for long enough not to let it bother him unduly, but he was missing his lice.

No one spoke while they pondered on it, but in truth there was nothing much they could do save make it known they were searching for a Marcus Antonius Antyllus.

‘With luck he’ll get to hear of it and flee to Tarsus,’ Quintus observed. ‘Or the City of Sharp-Nosed Fishes, or even further east or south, where Rome’s fingers do not easily pry.’

‘What then for us?’ Kisa asked, and that hung in the air like a fart at a feast. What indeed, Drust thought. Would Julius Yahya be content to know his prey had slipped him? Let it go – let the Brothers go?

He did not like the nag about Antyllus in all of this. He had not looked much like a man determined to assume the Purple and overthrow the boy-emperor and his mother.

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