long, shapeless painter's gown for a short stola that allowed her to sit astride the horse. The garment left her legs completely naked from the knees down. Eco pretended to study the horse with admiration while darting glances at the perfect curvature of the girl's tawny calves pressed against the animal's flanks.
Olympias agreed to accompany us to Cumae, but only after some hesitation. When I told her that we were seeking the Sibyl, she looked alarmed at first, then sceptical. Her confusion surprised me. I had thought she must have some part in this shadowy plan to lure me to Cumae, yet she seemed to resent the imposition. She waited while Eco and I borrowed horses from the stable keeper, and then the three of us set out together.
'The boy Meto says you make this journey every day. Isn't it a long ride there and back?'
'I know a shortcut,' she said.
We passed between the bull-headed pylons and onto the public road, then turned right, as Mummius and I had done the day before when the slave showed us where the bloody tunic had been found. We quickly passed that place and proceeded north. The hills on our left were covered with orchards of olive trees, their branches heavy with an early crop; there were no slaves to be seen. After the orchards there came a vineyard, then scattered patches of cultivated farmland, then a patch of woodland. 'The land all around the Cup is remarkable for its fertility,' I said.
'And for stranger things,' Olympias remarked.
The road began to wind downwards. Through the trees I saw ahead what had to be Lake Lucrinus, a long lagoon separated from the bay by a narrow stretch of beach. 'That's where Sergius Orata made his fortune,' I said to Eco. 'Farming oysters and selling them to the rich. If only he were here with us, I'm sure he'd want to treat you to an extensive tour and lecture.' Eco rolled his eyes and made an exaggerated shudder.
The prospect widened and ahead I was able to see the course of the road as it followed the strand between the lake and the bay and then curved away toward the east, where it passed through a series of low hills before descending again into the town of Puteoli. I saw many docks there, but as Faustus Fabius had said, few big ships.
Olympias looked over her shoulder. 'If we were to take the road all the way, we'd pass Lake Lucrinus and go halfway to Puteoli before turning back toward Cumae. But that's for wagons and litters and others who need a paved road. This is the way I go.' She turned off the road onto a narrow path that cut through low bushes. We passed through a stand of trees onto a bald ridge, following a narrow track that looked like a goat path. There were rolling hills on our left, but on our right, towards Lake Lucrinus, the land fell steeply away. Far below us, on the broad, low plain surrounding the lake, the private army of Crassus was encamped.
Tents had been pitched all about the shore. Little plumes of smoke rose from cooking fires. Mounted horsemen cantered on the plain, throwing up clouds of dust. Soldiers drilled in marching formation, or practised swordplay in groups of two. The sound of swords banging shields echoed up from the valley, along with a deep bellowing voice that was too indistinct to understand but impossible not to recognize. Marcus Mummius was shouting instructions at a group of soldiers who stood in rigid formation. Nearby, before the largest of the tents, stood Faustus Fabius, recognizable from his mane of red hair; he was leaning over and speaking to Crassus, who sat in a backless folding chair. He was dressed in full military regalia, his silver accoutrements glinting in the sun, his great red cape as vivid as a drop of blood on the dusty landscape.
'They say he's getting ready to press for the command against Spartacus,' said Olympias, gazing down at the spectacle with a moody look on her face. 'The Senate has its own armies, of course, but the ranks have been devastated by the defeats of the spring and summer. So Crassus is raising his own army. Fabius tells me there are six hundred men at Lake Lucrinus. Crassus has already raised five times that many at a camp outside Rome, and can raise many more once the Senate approves. Crassus says no man can really call himself rich unless he can afford his own army.'
While we watched, a cymbal was beaten and the soldiers began to congregate for their midday meal. Slaves hurried to and fro among the boiling pots. 'Do you recognize the tunics? Those kitchen slaves are from Gelina's house,' Olympias said. 'Scurrying to feed the same men who in two days' time will be cutting their throats.'
Eco touched my arm and pointed to the far side of the plain, where bare earth gave way to woods. A great swathe of felled trees had been cleared from the forest, and a team of soldiers was building a temporary arena from the raw wood. A deep bowl had been dug in the earth and stamped flat, and around it the soldiers were constructing a high wall surrounded by tiers of seats. I squinted and was barely able to make out the groups of helmeted men within the ring who practised mock combat with swords, tridents, and nets. 'For the funeral games,' I muttered. 'The gladiators must have already arrived. That's where they'll fight on the day after tomorrow in honour of Lucius Licinius. That must also be where
'Yes,' said Olympias. 'Where the slaves will be put to death.' Her face became hard. 'Crassus's men shouldn't have used those trees. They belong to the forest of Lake Avernus, farther north. No man owns them. The Avernine wood is a holy wood. To have cut down even a few of them for any purpose is a great impiety. To have cut down so many to satisfy his own ambitious schemes is a terrible act of hubris for Marcus Crassus. No good will come of it. You'll see. If you don't believe me, ask the Sibyl when you see her.'
We continued in silence along the ridge, then entered the forest again and began a gradual descent. The woods became thicker. The trees themselves changed character. Their leaves were no longer green, but almost black; great shaggy trees loomed all about, fingering the air with convoluted branches. The understorey grew dense with thorny bushes and hanging tufts of mossy lichen. Mushrooms sprouted underfoot. The goat path disappeared, and it seemed to me that Olympias was finding her way by instinct through the woods. A heavy silence enfolded us, broken only by the footfall of our horses and the faraway cry of a strange bird.
'You travel this route alone?' I said. 'Such a lonely place, I should think you would feel unsafe.'
'What could harm me in these woods? Bandits, brigands, runaway slaves?' Olympias looked straight ahead, so that I could not see her face. 'These woods are consecrated to the goddess Diana; these woods have been Diana's for a thousand years, before even the Greeks came. Diana carries a great bow with which to guard her domain. When she takes aim, no beating heart can escape her arrow. I feel no more fear here than if I were a doe or a hawk. Only the man who enters these woods with evil intent faces any danger. Outlaws know this in their hearts and do not enter. Do you feel fear, Gordianus?'
A cloud obscured the sun. The patches of sunlight faded, and a grey chill spread through the forest. A strange illusion gripped me: night reigned within the woods, the hidden sun was replaced by the moon, and darkness seeped out of the hollow bowls of dying trees and from the deep shadows under fallen branches. All was silent except for the footfall of the horses; even that seemed muffled, as if the moist earth swallowed the sound of each step. An odd drowsiness descended on me, not as if I fell asleep but as if I slowly wakened into a realm where all my senses were slightly askew.
'Do you feel fear, Gordianus?'
I stared at the back of her head, at the soft golden mane of her hair. I imagined the strangest thing — that if she were to turn suddenly I would see not her own beautiful face, but a visage too terrible to look at, a harsh, grinning mask with cruel eyes, the face of an angry goddess. 'No, I feel no fear,' I whispered hoarsely.
'Good. Then you have a right to be here, and you will be safe.' She turned and it was only the harmless, smiling face of Olympias that looked back at me. I sighed with relief.
The woods grew darker. A heavy, clinging mist spread through the forest. The smell of sea spray mingled with the dank odours of rotting leaves and mouldering bark. Then another smell assaulted us, the stench of boiling sulphur.
Olympias pointed to a clearing on our right. We rode onto a lip of bare rock. Above us loomed the tattered edge of a fog bank rolling in from the sea. Below us opened a great gulf of space. A vast bowl of vapour swirled below, ringed by dark, brooding trees. Through the vapours I could barely discern the surface of a great roiling cesspit that bubbled and seethed and spat.
'The Jaws of Hades,' I whispered.
Olympias nodded. 'Some say that it was here that Pluto pulled Proserpina into the Underworld. They say that beneath this pool of sputtering sulphurous mud, deep in the restless bowels of the earth, there run a host of subterranean rivers that separate the realm of the living from the realm of the dead. There is Acheron, the river of woe, and Cocytus, the river of lamentation. There is Phlegethon, the river of fire, and Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. Together they converge into the great river Styx, across which the ferryman Charon carries the spirits of the dead to the bleak wastelands of Tartarus. They say that Pluto's watchdog Cerberus escapes his bonds every so often and flees to the upper world. I spoke once to a farmer in Cumae who had heard the monster in the
