voice. 'Shut the door, and leave your sandals there. I do not want mud all through my home.'
Demetrius removed his sodden footwear and followed the old man down the shabby corridor. It smelled of damp and other, harder-to-identify things. There was no light except from the cheap clay lamp the old man carried. They turned into a small room. Apart from a pile of things hidden by a cloth in one corner, it was completely bare. There was a small trench cut in the packed earth of the floor, bird droppings around it.
'Ave, Dio, son of Pasicrates.' As the old man spoke, he turned his back and lit a second lamp, which he placed on a ledge. 'What do you want this time?' He looked back, the flickering light making hollows of his sunken cheeks. He smiled a knowing smile. 'Chickens. You will want the chickens again. Each of those devoted to the dark things has his own preferred method. The chickens are infallible.'
The old man did not wait for an answer but rummaged under the cloth and produced a large wooden board. He placed it in the centre of the floor. Squares were marked on the board, in each a letter of the Latin alphabet. The old man went back to the corner and returned with a cloth bag. From it he took a handful of wheat. He placed one grain on each square and carefully tipped the remainder back into the bag. He went out, shutting the door behind him.
Left on his own in the dim light, Demetrius wondered what in his soul demanded such dangerous, guilty pleasures. He was frightened, very frightened. He had consulted the Etruscan magician before, but he had no proof the old man was trustworthy. He always gave the false name but, if he were denounced, almost certainly the frumentarii would discover his real identity. His heart was beating fast. He could ask a different, a safer question. Or, there was nothing stopping him from just leaving.
The old man returned, in one hand carrying two black cockerels by their feet. 'What question would you have the shades of the underworld reveal?'
Demetrius fumbled the usual fee from the wallet at his belt. The coins in his hand were slick with sweat. Almost against his will, he found himself asking the question.
A strange look passed over the face of the aged Etruscan. Fear, excitement, greed – Demetrius could not tell.
'It is a terrible thing you ask. You place us both in great danger – not just from the powers in this world. It will be three times the normal fee.' The old man held out his free hand, waiting until Demetrius had crossed his palm with the correct amount of silver. 'I will bar the front door.'
Alone again, Demetrius looked round the dark, dingy room. There were no windows, just the one door. No other means of escape. He looked at his bare feet, standing on an earth floor spotted with chicken shit. He thought he must be mad, or possessed by some evil daemon. But something inside him sang with the deep thrill of it all.
The old man came back. He trussed up one of the cockerels in a corner of the room. He held the other in his right hand. Signalling Demetrius to remain silent, he stood gazing down into the trench. His lips moved. At first it was inaudible, but then he began to mutter and finally chant in some rusty archaic language.
Demetrius could hardly breathe. It was 8 November, a day when the mundus, the gate to the underworld, stood open. The spirits of the dead hovered thick all around him, desperate, thirsty for blood.
A knife appeared in the magician's left hand. With a deft sweep, he cut the throat of the cockerel. Its blood spurted down into the trench. The old man's eyes became glazed. He chanted louder, in the tongue of his distant ancestors. The cockerel's body twitched. Blood dripped from the knife. The spirits feasted.
Abruptly, the old man dropped the carcass of the cockerel. The knife vanished. He turned and untied the other bird and held it near the board. As he let it free, he asked, in Latin now, the treasonous question:
'Spirits of the underworld – what is the fate of Valerian, emperor of the Romans?'
As the words faded, there was a terrible stillness. The black cockerel tipped its head on one side and regarded Demetrius with a glittering eye. It stretched its clipped wings. It made a low, crooning sound and gave its attention to the board. With a delicate, high action it stepped on to it. Its head darted from side to side, choosing which grain, the spirits guiding the selection.
The cockerel's head snapped down, then up. The square with the letter P was empty. The bird ate, regarding first one then the other of the men with suspicion. It struck again, three times in rapid succession – E, R, F. Again it paused, ruffling its feathers. It took another grain – I.
The bird was motionless. Its feathers gleamed black in the lamplight. There was perfect silence in the room. Suddenly, the cockerel flew up, scattering grains across the board, and the two men jumped as there was a loud knocking on the door of the house.
With a speed which belied his age, the Etruscan swept the board and the body of the sacrificed bird under the cloth. He grabbed the live bird with one hand and Demetrius' arm with the other. He hauled the Greek youth out of the room.
The knocking had stopped. They stood for a moment in the corridor. Someone pounded again on the front door. The old man dragged Demetrius down the passageway, the thunderous sound pursuing them.
For a moment, Demetrius thought the passage was a dead end. Someone shouted outside the house. The hammering on the door increased. The magician manhandled Demetrius through a low doorway and across a pitch-black room. The young Greek barked his shin on something hard then piled into the back of the other, who had stopped abruptly.
As the Etruscan fumbled with something in the darkness, several voices could be heard, raucous voices demanding admittance: 'Open up, you old bastard, or it will be the worse for you.'
Without warning, the grey light of an overcast day flooded in as the little side door opened. Demetrius felt a strong push in the small of his back, and he was outside, his feet sliding in the mud. The door was slammed behind him. The rain was still sheeting down.
Not pausing to think, Demetrius started to run down the side alley, away from the noise. He ran without direction, through wider and narrower alleys, splashing through the puddles and the refuse, turning right and left at random.
He ran until he thought his chest would explode then stopped, bent over, shaking. He looked about him. He had no idea where he was. The rain beat down harder. He heard a noise: men shouting. He could not tell which of the innumerable alleys it came from. Hopelessly, he turned, scouting in each direction. The noise was getting louder now. A stray dog came round a corner. It snarled at him. He ran away from it. Again, he plunged down alley after alley. The stray dropped back, gave up. Demetrius ran on.
At last, unable to go any further, he skidded around a corner and came to a stop. Doubled up, painfully he sucked air into his lungs. The rain beat on his back. When he had regained some control over his breathing, he listened. There was nothing but the sound of the rain. Nothing to indicate pursuit.
There was a small balcony projecting from the wall on the other side of the alley. He went and huddled under it. Outside his makeshift shelter, the rain fell like a curtain.
He was lost. He was frightened. From his bare feet to his thighs, he was covered in mud and worse. He wanted to cry. Never again. He had lost his sandals. He had lost a serious sum of money. He thought of Calgacus, of the proverbial parsimony of the Caledonian. He started to laugh, a high, slightly unhinged giggle. He wanted to be back safe in his familia, back in the solid, reassuring presence of the three barbarians who now were the nearest he had to a real family: Ballista, Maximus and Calgacus, each in their different ways so capable, so good in a crisis.
Never again. The awful physical risk just run, the looming danger of denunciation – and for what? What had he learned? Five letters: P-E-R-F-I. What did they mean? It did not help that Latin was not his first language. Perfi-… perficio? To bring to an end, to finish? A possibly even darker word struck him: perfixus, pierced through.
The rain showed no sign of easing. The fear of being pursued was rising up again in Demetrius. He had to find his way home. Stepping out into the downpour, he set off down the alley, the mud and semi-liquid rubbish oozing through his toes. Then he stopped, stock-still in the rain. As he stood there, the water running into his eyes, he knew. It came to him as a divine revelation: perfidia – treachery.
XX
