'Your Excellency Augusta.' Urbana leaned forward. 'We have presented our petition. Senator Carinus is prostrate with grief; the Magdalena are at his villa even now comforting him.'
'I know, I know,' Helena murmured, trying to hide her exasperation. Urbana had already said that! She was relieved when Cassia began to make strange signs with her fingers, the eunuch sitting beside her watching intently. Helena, who communicated with her own secretary in a similar way, couldn't understand the signs, and by his growing restlessness, neither could Anastasius. Cassia's interpreter also intrigued Helena. He was of medium height, olive-skinned, a Parthian who'd served Cassia when she was a leading courtesan in the city long before her conversion to Christianity and the Magdalena. He was good-looking, just past his thirtieth year, his dark eyes bright and intelligent, a snub nose above a smiling mouth, his black hair cropped close; a silver earring in his right lobe, a bracelet on his wrist, and beneath the dark green tunic, a gold chain around his left ankle. He sat watching Cassia, then turned and gently shrugged one shoulder.
'My mistress,' his voice was cultured and soft, the intonation correct, 'wonders why the Augusta, who has so many spies and agents, has not discovered anything about the gangs perpetrating these outrages?'
'Leartus,' Helena smiled at the eunuch, 'who said they were gangs?'
She heard a sound and looked up. The door at the far end of the chamber opened and Chrysis, the fat imperial chamberlain, waddled in. Helena suppressed a sign of relief.
'Ladies,' she turned to the eunuch, 'Leartus.' She spread her hands. 'I do understand your deep concerns. However, I must ask you to withdraw for a while, perhaps have a word with the actor Theodore. I do thank you all.' She played with the ring on her finger, fighting to control her anger. To be lectured here in her own palace about the security of the state, in the presence of a Parthian eunuch! Yet her son had been most insistent.
'Aurelian Saturninus was a great general, a friend of my father.' Constantine had glared at her. 'Mother, you've known him for years and so have I. Don't upset either him or his pious prig of a wife. I want you to smile and keep your voice low.'
Well, she had, but the effort had been great.
Helena wiped the sweat from the palm of her hands on her gown. A servant led her guests out through one door whilst Chrysis, beaming from one protuberant ear to the other, ushered Claudia and Murranus into the chamber. The Empress took a deep breath and relaxed, snapping her fingers at Anastasius to serve light white wine and spiced biscuits. Claudia and Murranus made to genuflect, but Helena quickly gestured at the vacated stools. She grabbed a goblet of wine, sipped quickly and bit into one of the biscuits, examining her visitors out of the corner of her eye.
Murranus, as ever, was a handsome man, lithe and tall, all muscle, no fat, his red hair shorn. His face was smooth, surprisingly unmarked and intelligent, betraying none of the stupid aggression of so many gladiators, or worse, the dandified, slightly effete ways of the great champions. Beside him Claudia looked so small, and for a moment Helena thought of them making love. She swallowed quickly. Presbyter Sylvester had warned her against such sexual curiosity and advised her to rein it in. Helena smiled at Murranus, who had now been brought into what she called the Mundus Secretorum, the World of Secrets. Claudia, his beloved, was one of her agents. He'd been told that and warned that to betray her would mean death. The gladiator had accepted the warning, just a shift in his eyes betraying his annoyance at being threatened.
Claudia sat beside Murranus, nibbling at a biscuit and sipping ever so carefully from her goblet. Helena let her shoulders sag. Claudia the little mouse, she reflected, a mere slip of a girl looking much younger than her years with her mop of black hair and ivory-pale skin. Those eyes, large and expressive, were ever watchful, and behind them was a mind that could twist and turn with the best of them.
'Augusta, Excellency.' Claudia swallowed, hiding her mouth. 'It is good to look upon your face, as it is on yours, Anastasius.'
The secretary stared coolly back, only the brief smile in his eyes betraying his own welcome for this mysterious young woman.
'And of course…' Claudia's voice changed, becoming vibrant and voluptuous. She heaved a dramatic sigh and stared in mock adoration at Burrus, captain of the Empress' bodyguard. 'Oh Burrus, I dream of you so often.'
Burrus grinned and bowed.
'And I dream of you too,' he replied, winking quickly at Murranus to show he meant no offence. In truth Burrus was very much in awe of this warrior and certainly smitten by what he called his 'delightful shield maiden'.
'So we are all pleased to see each other.' Helena clapped her hands. 'Chrysis,' she barked at the chamberlain, standing just within the doorway, 'you can go now, and I mean go! Don't stand on the other side and eavesdrop, and there's no need to go looking: you'll find no slit or eyehole in this room.'
Chrysis, still grinning, bowed and withdrew. Helena waited until the door closed, then lifted her head as if listening to the music of the songbirds from the garden. She glanced swiftly at Murranus, now scowling into his cup, then back at Claudia, whose gaze never wavered as she still nibbled that biscuit.
'Now, little mouse,' Helena began, 'listen and listen well.' All propriety forgotten, the Empress got to her feet and moved her stool so close her knees almost touched Claudia's. 'Four weeks ago, the daughter of a wealthy senator was kidnapped as she travelled down the Via Salvana to visit friends in the country. A ransom of twenty-five thousand gold coins was demanded.' Helena held her hand up at Murranus' low whistle of surprise. 'The girl's parents were sent a note which could have been written by any common city scribe, whilst it was delivered by a boy who could provide little description of who had given it to him. The note mentioned where and when the girl would be released, at the great cemetery which borders the Appian Way, close to the mausoleum of some long-dead merchant. Now you know that cemetery, a forest of grass, decayed tombs and undergrowth. A myriad of paths and hiding places wind their way through it.'
'Whilst beneath lie the catacombs,' Claudia added.
'Precisely,' Helena agreed. 'The girl's parents were warned that any attempt to trap their daughter's abductors would mean she'd suffer a slow, lingering death and they would never see her again. On the appointed day, at the appointed hour, the steward of that girl's family left two panniers full of gold coins at the place stipulated. The parents had been advised that once these had been scrutinised, they could return to the cemetery around the ninth hour and find their daughter. They did so with a comitatus of freedmen. The girl was found. She had been released long before the ninth hour. Her hands were still bound; she'd been simply gagged, blindfolded and left to wander!' Helena took a deep breath. 'The parents found her just in time. Some of the Inferni, the rabble who prowl such places…' She paused as Claudia flinched. 'You know about these?'
Claudia would not tell the Augusta how, in the catacombs beneath that cemetery, she'd often met Presbyter Sylvester the powerful lieutenant of the Bishop of Rome, as the Christians called their leader. She had always been on her guard when she went there, — the Inferni were truly creatures of the dark. For an innocent girl to be found by them…
'What happened?' she asked.
'The Inferni had released her gag and were about to rape her,' Helena replied. 'Only the girl's screams alerted her parents. The Inferni fled, and she was found safe and sound. In subsequent weeks three more abductions took place, the same pattern being followed. None of the victims could tell the Vigiles anything.' Helena spat the words out, showing her usual contempt for the corrupt city police. 'They could say little more than that they'd been abducted, blindfolded, chained, kept in a cold place, fed, allowed to use a latrine, and threatened now and again by a voice.
They could tell us nothing about that voice, be it Roman or from the provinces, male or female.' Helena paused. 'Then last night, Antonia, the beloved only daughter of Senator Carinus, was kidnapped. The ransom note demanding the same sum arrived this morning. She is to be released in two days' time.'
Helena opened the small casket on the floor beside her and handed Claudia a piece of dingy and grease- marked parchment. The stark message was bluntly inscribed: 'Antonia, 25,000 gold coins on the day after tomorrow near the tomb of the tribune Marcus Sonertus in the cemetery of the Appian Way. She will be released at the ninth hour; failure or trickery will kill her.'
Claudia studied the crude letter and recalled that sprawling, lonely cemetery. She only went there because she had to. Not only did the Inferni roam there, it was also the haunt of warlocks, wizards, sorcerers and outlaws, dark souls who seethed in the shadows of Roman society. The cemetery lay beyond the city gates with many approaches, a dizzying warren of snaking tracks and twisting paths, and beneath it more passageways, tunnels and caverns.
