believe you are truly guilty. The Empire demands justice and so does God.' Helena raised a hand and snapped her fingers. 'Take them away.'
The trumpets brayed, sending the birds whirling up to the sky to cry raucously at being disturbed. The Polluted Fields had been prepared for the entombment of two leading ladies of Rome. Urbana and Cassia had been paraded in a cart throughout the city, squatting in dirty, ash-strewn clothes, their heads shorn, their faces branded, exposed to the fury of the mob. They left the city by the Coelian Gate. By then the mob had grown tired of the catcalling, throwing stones and refuse. Behind the cart marched a squad of the imperial guard, and alongside it a troop of auxiliary cavalry. Both women were broken, and by the time they reached the Polluted Fields they crouched heads down, not even touching each other.
Helena had ordered Claudia and Murranus to witness the women's end. The summons had been delivered by Burrus, who was now helping the prisoners, wrists and ankles chained, out of the cart, dragging them along the pebbled path towards the grey stone steps which led down to the execution chamber built beneath the earth. Claudia, at the Empress' command, had already visited it to ensure all was prepared. She had never experienced such an eerie, sombre, godforsaken place. Grey walls, grey paving stones, grey roof, no aperture, no window, nothing but a bench and a table and, on that, a pewter tray with two earthenware cups of water and chunks of dry rye bread, the last they would ever be given. The door was of heavy oak reinforced with steel bands and metal studs. Once it was closed, there would be no light, no air, nothing but a yawning darkness. Claudia had felt a pang of sorrow for both women, but Murranus reminded her of Alexander coughing out his blood, Aurelian dying heartbroken, as well as the terror and squalor experienced by the children who'd been kidnapped.
The executioner, a jolly-faced man without his hideous dog mask, had followed them around asking if all was in order. Claudia had replied that it was. Now she and Murranus stood at the top of those sombre steps watching the two women being hustled towards their deaths. She hardly recognised them. They now clung to each other, sobbing quietly, faces streaked, clothing nothing more than stained rags. At the top of the steps the chains were loosened, their ropes cut and both women were thrust down into the darkness. Neither one looked at Claudia, who had brought them to this place of justice. Claudia closed her eyes as she heard a shriek, then the executioner pushed them into the chamber, slamming the door behind them, padlocking the chain, nailing up the notice of death.
Claudia opened her eyes and stared across the execution ground. Nearby rose five crosses, gibbets for the corpses of the Egyptians Murranus had killed. She averted her gaze; the bodies were drained of blood, smeared with dung and dirt after being dragged through the city. She truly hated this horrid place with its sparse grass, grey stone chambers jutting above the earth and wooden gibbets stark against the sky. She pinched Murranus on the wrist.
'Follow me.'
They left the execution ground and walked across the heathland to where they had once sat sharing bread and wine. Claudia stretched, sat down under the shade of a holm oak and stared back at the guards. Most of them were being dismissed, except for the four who would spend the first quarter of the day on guard. Claudia picked at a tuft of grass, smelled its freshness and rubbed it between her hands.
'Ye gods,' she muttered, 'Helena has had her vengeance.'
'Justice!' Murranus replied, sitting down beside her. 'Justice, Claudia, think of the dead.' i am,' she retorted, staring down at the gibbets stark against the sky. 'But I have one question for you, Murranus.' She turned to face him squarely. 'Why were you so certain, I mean about winning?'
'Because I'm the best.'
'Arrogance!' she snapped and jabbed a finger in his face. 'Tell me the truth.'
'They were guilty,' Murranus declared. 'You know that. The house owned by the Egyptians provided the evidence; more was found in the catacombs.'
'Tell me,' Claudia shouted. 'Tell me now or I'll get up and walk away. I watched you in the arena, Murranus, I cried for you. I deserve to know.'
Murranus blew out his cheeks. 'Helena,' he spoke softly, 'she told me to challenge them and then we plotted.'
'What?'
'She encouraged Sesothenes and his followers to accept my challenge by telling them I was injured, that the blow to my head had been very serious. She did this through others, time and again the same message, how I was slow, disconcerted. I joined in the pretence, deliberately acting so at the gladiatorial school. She helped matters along by secretly placing considerable silver on the wager that the Egyptians would win.' 'Bitch!' Claudia retorted.
'She did more than that. She sent her spies back into the training ground. I was informed of all the preparations by Sesothenes and his gang. Who was the most dangerous, who was slow, what tactics they were deploying. Helena even offered to drug them, but that would have been too obvious.' He smiled at Claudia, who was glaring furiously at him. 'In the end they were killed. They were not gladiators.'
'No,' Claudia declared softly. 'They certainly were not, and neither are you, Murranus.' She seized his face between her hands. 'That was your last fight!'
Author's Note
Many of the strands of this historical novel are based on fact. The historian Eusebius of Caesarea gives a graphic description of the conversion of Constantine before the battle of the Milvian Bridge. The same historian also details the deep psychological hold Helena exerted over Constantine, who conferred on her the title of 'The Most Noble Lady'. The Empress' search throughout the Roman Empire for relics of the Saviour is also well documented, particularly her desire to find the True Cross.
The persecutions of Diocletian and Maxentius were a brutal purge of the Christian faith. During this pogrom it was common practice for women accused of being members of the new faith to be carried off, threatened, sexually harassed and eventually executed. One of the best-known examples of this was Catherine of Alexandria, who was martyred in Rome shortly before the date in which this novel is set.
The remains of Christian martyrs were collected secretly and given sacred burial. The most famous example was that of St Peter, whose remains were always thought to lie beneath St Peter's Church in Rome, though this was not scientifically established until late in the 1960s. Once the persecutions were over, the Christian Church emerged from the catacombs and, through men like Sylvester, began to exert its political muscle, quickly winning favour with the Empress and her son. They also gained possession of notable temples in Rome such as the Pantheon. The Christian era had begun, the Church, within a lifetime, moving from a persecuted sect to becoming the state religion.
The preservation of a saint's body was regarded as a sign of God's favour. It is one of those phenomena science cannot explain. One of the most recent instances is the corpse of the visionary St Bernadette Soubirous, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared at Lourdes. Of course, arsenic also has the power to slow down, or even halt, the process of decomposition. Until the advent of scientific pathology, it was very difficult to detect except by the exhumation of the corpse. There are many types of arsenic and their effects vary, but it is quite probable that a character like Theodore was killed by such a potion. It is also worth pointing out that when the Gare du Nord in Paris was built in the nineteenth century and cemeteries were dug up and corpses removed, it became common knowledge just how many corpses had not decomposed; perhaps they, too, were the victims of murder. Certainly the historians Plutarch and Quintus Curtius comment on Alexander's corpse being marvellously preserved, even though he died at the height of summer in Babylon.
One of the most thorough guides to arsenic and its effects is the ponderous but very detailed study by A. W. Blythe, Poisons: their effects and detection (London, 1920). Blythe's description of the potency of arsenic in corpses after death is worth quotation.
A remarkable preservation of the body is commonly observed, when it does occur it may have great significance particularly when the body is placed in conditions in which it might be expected to decompose rapidly. In the celebrated continental case of the apothecary Speichert [1876] the body of Speichert's wife was exhumed
