The Ides of March by Valerio Massimo Manfredi & Christine Feddersen-Manfredi

Author:Valerio Massimo Manfredi & Christine Feddersen-Manfredi
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Suspense, FIC014000
ISBN: 9781933372990
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2009-01-01T18:30:00+00:00

In via Flaminia Minore, Caupona ad sandalum Herculis, a.d. IV Id. Mart., ad initium tertiae vigiliae

The Via Flaminia Minor, the Hercules’s Sandal tavern, 12 March, start of the third guard shift, after midnight

THE HORSEMAN rode up at a brisk pace from the snowy road. He was numb with the cold. There was a vast clearing at the side of the road where a stone house stood, covered with slate roof tiles. A squared-off stone wall enclosed the courtyard and a wooden shed with a lean-to on the right offered shelter for horses and pack animals, on a nice bed of straw. A sign hung over the main entrance with a drawing of the sandal that gave the inn its name. The place seemed deserted. The man dismounted and passed under the torch that lit the entrance, revealing the gaunt face and prickly beard of Publius Sextius, ‘the Cane’. He strained his ears and heard the faint sound of voices and other noises coming from the courtyard.

He tied his horse to an iron ring hanging from the wall and knocked three times on the door with the hilt of his sword. There was no answer, but the door swung open and inside he could see a knot of people gathered around something near the stable. As he got closer he noticed a trickle of clotted blood at their feet, staining the snow that covered the ground.

Publius Sextius pushed his way into their midst and found the object of their attention: the body of a man, lying with his face in the dung, with a large wound at the nape of his neck from which dark, steaming blood was still flowing. He was wearing a grey wool cloak, torn in several places and stained with dried blood as well. Cuts on his arms and hands showed how hard he’d fought off his assailants.

Filled with foreboding, Sextius got down to his knees in front of the stiff body. He signalled for one of the bystanders to shine his lantern closer and turned the man over.

It was the workman he’d met at the changing station. How could he have made it so far, so soon? Certainly by way of short cuts that he’d kept secret, but that had ensured he’d arrive just in time for an appointment with death.

His hands were as big as shovels, his palms covered with calluses. The eyebrows meeting at the centre of his forehead, the bristly beard and the wide wrestler’s shoulders left no doubt as to his identity.

Now he was only a poor lifeless thing.

Publius Sextius felt a wave of fury swelling the veins in his neck and accelerating the beating of his heart. He turned to the bystanders and got to his feet, a man of imposing bulk, gripping his shiny, knotty cane in his hand.

‘Who did it?’ he growled.

A timid, stout man with watery eyes stepped forward – surely the innkeeper.

‘Two blokes showed up three hours ago, from the south. We had already tended to their horses and they were about to leave when this man arrived.

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