and whispered in his ear.
'Caligula's torture cells. I was chained there for two nights and witnessed his executioners at work. I thought the shaft was a well — now I know otherwise. Quickly, we are vulnerable here. We must move on.'
Cupido led as they worked their way silently towards the outlet channel.
Rufus turned to take a last look behind him. The surface of the pool was almost pretty, dancing in the soft glow from above. It happened so suddenly his mind didn't have time to register the details: a thundering explosion a few feet from his side that blinded him and showered him in a column of stinking, brown water. He froze, terrified that he was about to face the monster Decimus had spoken of, the one which had driven Varrus beyond the edge of sanity.
Trembling, he waited for it to rise from the waters to claim him, but, instead of some scaly dragon, a flash of white like the belly of a dead fish became visible just below the surface. As he watched, the white grew clearer and formed human shape. At first it floated face down, with its arms hanging beneath it; then, very gently, it turned over, as if to take a last look at the life it had left behind. Only it couldn't see, because it had no eyes.
Rufus swallowed hard, his throat filled with bile.
The toothless mouth was open wide in a rictus of sheer horror. As well as the eyes, the man's nose and ears had been removed. For it was a man, or had been before they had torn his sexual organs from his body with the red-hot pincers.
As he watched, the broken body continued its gentle roll and, with hardly a ripple, disappeared below the surface.
'Come.' Cupido shook him by the shoulder. 'Now I am certain we have no time to lose.'
Rufus shook his head to clear it.
'Hurry,' Cupido repeated. 'Did you not recognize him? Before the Emperor's executioners improved his looks he was Marcus Agrippa, a decurion of the Guard and one of Chaerea's closest allies. The net is closing. If Chaerea does not act soon he too will feel the hot kiss of the torturer's blade.'
Rufus relit the torch when they were clear of the chamber and to their relief they found the going easier as the tunnel and walkway widened to cope with the greater flow of water. And, Rufus noted, it was a much greater flow. Where before the waters had been slowmoving and their surface placid, they now rushed past and the surface was whipped to a filthy brown froth. A little further on, he noticed with alarm that the waters were lapping at the very edge of the culvert, and soon his feet were splashing in inches of sewage.
He stopped and turned to Cupido. 'Something is wrong here.'
The gladiator's eyes flashed in the torchlight. 'We have no choice. We have to go on. This is the only way we can reach Aemilia.'
Reluctantly, Rufus forced his way forward even though the flood rose first to his knees, then his thighs and finally to his waist.
He stopped again, and Cupido pushed him in the back. But this time Rufus did not move. He held the torch out in front of him.
'It's impossible. We have to go back. Look!'
Cupido followed his gaze and his heart quailed.
A dozen paces in front of them the torchlight was reflected by the surface of a new pool. This was one of the places where the roof shelved sharply away. At the far end of the pool only inches separated the glittering surface from the roof. The tunnel was impassable.
Rufus shook his head in despair. They had failed.
'Come, we will find another way,' he said, although he knew there was none. He put a hand on Cupido's shoulder, but the gladiator shrugged it off.
'No. This is the only way. Something has blocked the flow. If I can find what it is, I may be able to unblock it. Take this.' He shrugged off his cloak and unbuckled the long sword, then untied his tunic and removed it. 'Keep them dry. I will need them when we continue.'
Naked, he walked forward until the waters reached his shoulders, then began to swim through the noxious brown flood.
As he approached the far wall, he felt his hair touch the roof. For the first time he noticed more rats, swimming back and forth between a heap of white rubble jutting above the surface and the nearest dry land. Whatever the white thing was, it must be part of the blockage.
He was at the very edge of the torch's range and the sight that met him was so outrageous that at first his mind would not believe what he was seeing. But it was real. The white globe that first drew his attention was revealed as a grinning skull. Around it were other remains he recognized as vaguely human, and working steadily to strip them bare of flesh were the rats who had shared his swim.
This was Varrus's river of the dead. Caligula's army of victims. They had dammed the Cloaca Palatina solid.
Treading water, he turned to where Rufus stood up to his waist with the bundle of clothes and weapons over his shoulder.
'It is the way of these things that there is a keystone,' he shouted. 'If I can find it, the whole thing should collapse.'
Rufus heard his friend's words, but only had a vague understanding of their meaning. He looked on aghast as Cupido took a deep breath and dived.
Cupido knew it would be impossible to see and he feared the effect of the filth on his eyes, so he kept them closed and felt his way cautiously towards the dam until he touched cold flesh. He was thankful the bodies beneath the water were at least whole, and fortunately had not been there for long or they would have come apart in his hands. There also did not seem to be as many as he had feared. The layer at the top was wider than that at the bottom, probably due to the buoyancy of the bodies and the action of the water.
He tugged at a cold arm, struggling to contain his disgust at the feel of the wrinkled, water-worn dead flesh, but whatever it was attached to was stuck fast. He felt his chest tighten as his air began to run out and he kicked himself to the surface, where he gasped in two or three breaths before diving straight under again.
This time he had some idea where he was going and soon he had a good grip on a clammy leg. At first it seemed as firmly wedged as the first body, but as he worked at it he felt it move, and as it did so he felt the others move around it. He hauled at it for another twenty seconds, levering the leg back and forward and feeling the movement become easier. His air was almost up. Noting his position as well as he could with his eyes shut, he resurfaced, gasped in the air he needed, and immediately dived back.
Now, where was the leg? His fingers touched a face. It was a woman's face and he recoiled in disgust. He thought of Quintillia and her ravaged beauty. Why was it so much worse when it was a woman? Not there. To the left. Yes. The leg. He took it and, bracing his feet against the other submerged bodies, hauled as hard as he could. At first, nothing happened, so he heaved again. With a bubbling sound of trapped air being loosed the leg and the body attached to it came free, and the dam of death collapsed in upon itself.
For the merest heartbeat Cupido experienced a surge of elation. Then he felt the power of the flood and realized that in freeing the dam he had doomed himself.
Fool! Why had he not foreseen this — prepared for it? The incredible force as tens of thousands of gallons of backed-up waters found release gripped him tight and sucked him in among the bodies. It was as if the dead were clinging to him, were determined to keep him with them until he was as dead as they. His chest tightened and the pressure to breathe became overwhelming. He was drowning. With the strength of despair, he pushed himself free and attempted to swim to the surface, but he was too weak. The current would not release him. He raised an arm and felt it break clear, but by then it was too late. He was propelled into a whirling vortex of flailing limbs and empty-eyed faces, just another powerless piece of flesh among the human flotsam.
XLII
Rufus was too far away to see what had caused the blockage, but he knew his friend would never give up. Not in this life. While Cupido was submerged, he held his breath as if it would somehow help the gladiator. When he had to gasp for the next breath before Cupido resurfaced, he feared he would never see the young German again,
