He pulled the cloak tight, as if warding off any evil influence, then hurried back down the stairs and locked himself in his room.
Outside, on the terrace, the servant could not take his eyes off the strange phenomenon, and it surprised him when the light became much brighter for a few instants and then faded until it was swallowed up by the darkness.
The servant turned towards the sentry. ‘It’s gone,’ he said.
‘Right,’ replied the sentry.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing. It means nothing. The commander said it was a comet. Didn’t you hear him?’
‘What’s a comet?’
‘How am I supposed to know? Go and ask him. And while you’re downstairs get me some hot wine. I’m freezing out here.’
The servant ducked down through the hatch, leaving the sentry alone to keep watch over the night.
The secret river, 11 March, third guard shift, one a.m.
Mustela awoke feeling groggy and numb. He had no idea how long he’d been lying there, curled up in the damp grass. He was completely soaked through. There was no part of his body that didn t hurt and his chest shook with a dry, hacking cough. It was dark and all he could see was the water of the torrent flowing at a short distance. Where was the boat the old man had promised him? He looked around and immediately noticed a clump of trees a little further along the bank. He staggered in that direction. Could those be willows?
A break in the clouds revealed a sliver of moon and for a few seconds Mustela could see that they were indeed, and, sure enough, there was a boat tied to a stake in the river. The dark outline stood out clearly against the silvery moonlit water.
He was close now to the end of his mission. The worst was over, as long as he didn’t pass out first. He touched the bandage on his side and his hand came back sticky. So he hadn’t managed to stop the bleeding. He fastened the bandage tighter, then walked over to the boat and got in. He pushed off from the bank using one of the oars, then rowed his way into the middle of the current.
All he had to do was let the water carry him, so that’s what he did, and little by little, as the river made its way to the plain, the temperature became milder. A light, warm breeze from the south dried him off. The sky behind him was dark and streaked with lightning bolts, but it was slowly growing lighter in front of him. Every now and then, Mustela sunk down to the bottom of the boat and drifted into a light sleep, just for long enough to clear his head.
At the slightest bump his eyes would jerk open and he would take to watching the scenery, the villages and isolated farms gliding past, dark objects standing out against the pale light of dawn. He could hear sounds, but they were largely unintelligible. Once there was someone calling, another time he thought he heard a wail of despair, but for the most part it was just the mournful hiccuping of the screech owls and the insistent, syncopated hooting of other night birds.
It was full daylight and the countryside had begun to come to life when he finally saw it: the Arno!
The torrent he was travelling on flowed into the great Etruscan river that wound lazily down the hillside in great loops, heading towards the plain. The current was becoming much slower, but Mustela was sure that he had been carried many miles downstream.
Although it was hidden by the clouds, he calculated that the sun was high by the time he reached the landing pier at a little river harbour where goods from the mountains were stocked before being sent on to Arezzo, still a considerable distance away. With what little strength he had left, Mustela used the oars to bring him towards the pier and managed to draw up alongside it. The owner of one of the storehouses rented him a mule and gave him a piece of clean fabric so he could change the bandage on his wound, then Mustela continued his journey to the house of the cypresses, hidden inland.
Of all the messengers who had left the Mutatio ad Medias, he had to be the one who had arrived furthest south. Who else could have got as far as he had by travelling downstream on a rushing underground torrent?
Every jolt, at just about every step the mule took on the cobblestoned street, produced a stabbing pain in his side. His muscles, stiff from exertion, numb with cold and cramping with hunger, had long ceased to respond, and tough old Mustela — who’d been through thick and thin in his long life as an informer — could think of nothing other than crawling into a clean bed, in a warm, sheltered place.
The villa appeared on his left after a crossroads and a shrine dedicated to Trivia Hecate, which he took in with a fleeting glance. He turned away from the main road here and set off down the path which led up the hill to the spot where the villa stood, surrounded by black cypress trees.
He was greeted by the furious barking of dogs and by the sound of footsteps on the gravel courtyard. He tried to dismount from his mule so he could announce himself and ask to be received, but as soon as his feet touched the ground he felt his head begin to spin. He realized that he was deathly tired and at the same instant lost consciousness, collapsing like a rag. The last thing he heard was excited shouting and a voice saying, ‘Call the boss, fast. This bloke’s dying!’
Everything was muddled. He thought he felt the snout of a dog or maybe two poking at him, felt their breath. One was growling, while the other licked at his side where the blood was.
More agitated footsteps. A booming voice: ‘Throw him into the cesspool. Who knows who the hell he is!’
He was being lifted by his arms and feet, and suddenly he knew that he had to find enough energy to speak up, at any cost.
‘Tell the master that Mustela has to talk to him, now,’ he managed, turning to the man who was holding his arm.
‘What did he say?’ asked the overseer, who was walking alongside them with the dogs.
‘He says he has to talk to the master and that his name is Mustela.’
‘Move it, you son of a bitch,’ Mustela snarled, ‘if you don’t want to end up in the grinder. Your master will skin you alive if he finds out you didn’t give him my message.’
The overseer stopped the little convoy and took a good look at the man they were about to toss in with the excrement. He saw the wound, noticed the hilt of an expensive dagger sticking out from under the ragged tunic and had a moment of doubt.
‘Stop,’ he said.
10
Rome, the Tiber Island, 11 March, eight a.m.
Antistius had arrived early, by boat, from Ostia, and was already at the Temple of Aesculapius preparing for the day’s work. He belonged to the Hippocratic school and set great store by symptomatology. He kept a register for each and every patient, with a detailed description of his illness, the diet he’d recommended, the remedies applied and the results obtained. He also believed strongly in cleanliness, beating his servants with a rod if he found dust anywhere, or any other sort of filth in the more remote and less visible corners of his office.
This morning he was even more scrupulous than usual, since he was expecting a client for whom he had the highest regard: Artemidorus. He wanted to check on the state of the Greek teacher’s vitiligo.
One of Antistius’s secrets, and one of the reasons for his success, was his reliance on empirical medicine. But this was something he could ill afford to confess and would never do so, not even under torture.
In the course of his long practice as a physician, he had become convinced that women were the true repositories of medical wisdom, their knowledge being far superior to that of men. He based this conviction on a simple observation: women had cared for their own children since the beginning of time, and since their children’s
