Liam winced. Opened his eyes. ‘No way I’m getting stuck in here!’
‘We’ll have to find a way out,’ said Maddy. ‘Can you move, Liam?’
‘I’m sure as eggs not bleedin’ staying!’ He tried to sit up, groaning as he held his side. ‘Ahhh! Ow! Ouch!!! It bleedin’ well stings!’
‘Bob, you carry Liam. Me and Sal, we’ll help the old guy,’ she said, nodding at Rashim.
‘Which way are we going?’ asked Sal.
‘Let’s try and find Cato. Maybe he can help us.’
A moment later, they pushed the hanging drape aside and emerged from the concealed passage and stepped into the main hallway, Liam groaning, carried piggyback, his arms wrapped round Bob’s neck. Rashim shuffled between Maddy and Sal, giggling and warbling gibberish to himself.
‘That way,’ said Maddy, nodding to the left, towards the increasing sounds of battle.
They made their way down towards the entrance portico.
Closer, Maddy caught the flickering of glinting armour bathed in the blood-red light of sunset. ‘What’s going on up there?’
They arrived inside the high-ceilinged portico to find it swamped with wounded men bleeding out on the marble floor. Through the archway, down the steps, she could see the Palace Guard were drawn up in three lines along the bottom of the steps.
The courtyard was filling with other soldiers.
She caught a glimpse of Cato’s horse-hair crest among the men, organizing the defensive lines across the steps. She pushed her way through the mass of men and finally stood beside him.
‘What’s going on? Who are they?’
‘Caligula’s Praetorian cavalry. All the damned alae. Five hundred of them.’ He looked at her. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
She nodded. ‘Look, Cato… we need to talk.’
‘Well, as you can see, I’m a bit busy right now.’
‘There’s a way we can fix all this… make it not happen! Please… we need to talk. I’ll explain.’
Cato looked out at the equites. They were flooding into the gardens. They’d managed to push his men back from the gateway through sheer weight of numbers. This was their next best bottleneck to try and hold — the portico. But it was all but over for them now anyway. They were into the palace compound now. There were other entrances to the palace buildings. Soon enough they were going to be overwhelmed.
The portico was going to be a last stand for them. Plain and simple.
Cato grabbed Macro’s arm. ‘Macro!’
‘Yes?’
‘Give me a few moments. I need to talk to our friends. Quickly!’
Macro’s brow cocked. ‘Can they weave some kind of magic for us?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s what I’m hoping.’ He nodded at the remnants of Fronto’s century. The centurion had gone down five minutes earlier. The thrust of a cavalry spear to his throat. He’d gone down thrashing angrily with his sword, managing to at least catch and give a life-long scar to the man who’d killed him.
‘They’re all yours, Macro.’
He nodded. ‘Right you are.’ The men exchanged a salute then Macro turned and started bellowing a barrage of coarse language over the heads of the few dozen men drawn up on the steps.
Maddy led Cato back inside, into the portico where Liam, Sal, Bob and Rashim were standing. They stepped through a carpet of the writhing wounded to join them.
She pointed at Rashim. ‘OK… he knows a place where a time window will open.’
‘A time window?’ Cato’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s a device that lets you travel through — ?’
‘Through time, yes. Exactly. And this window opens in three days.’
He shook his head. ‘We’re not going to last three more hours… let alone — ’
‘It’s somewhere outside Rome.’
‘You wish to find a way out? Escape?’
Maddy nodded.
‘And what? We’re to stay here and die?’
She had no answer to that. She spread her hands. ‘Look, it’s very hard to explain… but if we can travel home, we can change history back to how it should be. So this never happens.’
Bob stepped forward. He’d been listening to their hasty exchange. ‘Information: Emperor Caligula’s reign lasts only four years. He is assassinated in AD 41 by officers of the Praetorian Guard, and his uncle, Tiberius Claudius Caesar, is made emperor in his place.’
Cato made a face. ‘Claudius? That stuttering cretin couldn’t lead a beggar to coins.’
‘He will be a very successful ruler. During his reign, Britain is successfully conquered and added as a province to the empire. So are Thrace, Lycia and Judaea. He is known for ruling fairly and — ’
‘Not now, Bob.’ She placed a hand over his mouth. ‘Point is the last seventeen years should have been very different. Everything that’s happened since the Visitors arrived… it’s all wrong. Them arriving here is what made it go wrong. It changed history from what it should have been.’
Cato studied them both silently for a moment. ‘You can make all of this happen?’
‘Yes!’ replied Maddy. ‘But only if we can get back home.’
Cato pinched his nose thoughtfully.
‘Can you get us out… somehow?’
‘I’m thinking.’
CHAPTER 73
AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome
Macro finished threading the loops of leather through the fastenings and tightened up the lorica segmentata round his thick torso. It was snug, but he nodded with satisfaction that his portly gut could still be contained by the one-size-fits-all segmented armour.
‘All right, lads!’ he barked as he put on a helmet. ‘Those girls across the garden are probably more frightened of you than you are of them!’
A grim cackle of laughter rippled among the men.
‘Without their horses, they’re just a rabble of rank amateurs. So let’s not worry about ’em too much, eh?’
The red stain of twilight bathed the gardens with their stone pathways and small bushes, young olive trees and the decorative scattering of bodies. The evening was strangely quiet and still. After the last fifteen minutes of fighting, the clash of arms and the roar of raised voices, the silence seemed almost complete.
But Macro heard a low murmur of voices, from men still outside the imperial compound. A low murmur rolling forwards and spreading across the men inside like a wave riding up a shingle beach.
What’s going on out there?
Then he saw movement, over between the stone columns of the gateway, several men on horseback picking their way through the men filing in. All of them roaring support as they suddenly recognized the men on horseback.
Macro cursed as he realized who they were.
Caligula and the Praetorians’ prefect, Quintus.
‘Cato!’ He turned round and looked up the steps. ‘What are you up to?’ he muttered under his breath.
The equites on the far side of the gardens roared with glee at the sight of their emperor and praefectus. Macro watched as they dismounted and disappeared among the mass of men, only to appear a few moments later as the front rank of soldiers parted respectfully to let them through.
Caligula walked slowly towards them, flanked by two of his Stone Men. Quintus had dropped back a dutiful three steps behind.
A dozen yards away he stopped, raised his hands to quieten the equites behind him. An obedient hush swiftly
