Llanwith pen Bryn slowly led the party through the imposing central garden.
No other servants seemed to be awake, for no one accosted the group as they slid into the villa’s gilded, red-painted rooms. Paintings of debauchery covered the walls, and bronze sculptures depicting obscene couplings were placed in niches along the walls of the colonnade. Priapic figures with grossly swollen organs stood leering in the shadows and even Myrddion, who had seen much human depravity during his life, was forced to turn away.
Artorex shuddered with disgust, while Luka silently disappeared into the right wing of the building.
Unlike the usual plan of a villa, the scriptorium of the Villa Severinii was sited at the very end of the left wing of the structure where the earth fell away, making a hidden crypt possible inside the slope of the hill. The scriptorium was almost bare, except for a wall of niches where the scrolls were presumably stored, a single desk, and a chair just off the mid-point of the room.
The only decoration in the room was a woven mat in the very centre of the mosaic floor, from which glared a large black eye. The air in the room was thick with a miasma of exotic oils and something else that roiled under the heavy, cloying scent.
With a soft exclamation of disgust, Llanwith pen Bryn removed the mat, exposing a trap door cut into the mosaic.
Luka slid into the room, his dagger in his hand.
‘The sleeping chambers are empty,’ he whispered. ‘I found no one but a few terrified old women in the servants’ quarters, so I locked them inside one of the storerooms. From the looks on their faces, they seem to know what their master is about - and they are relieved to be safely imprisoned.’
‘Then it’s time we joined the festivities,’ Llanwith mouthed grimly through his beard.
Luka and Myrddion raised the trap door as silently as the mechanism allowed. A black maw yawned below them. Llanwith disappeared first into the darkness, down a ladder of some kind, while Artorex followed closely behind.
The ladder terminated on a sod floor at the end of a simple, timber-lined corridor. The smell was so thick that Artorex had to stifle a telltale, reflex gag.
As the others joined them at the bottom of the ladder, Artorex became aware of a low chanting. The sound was tuneful and not unpleasant, but the melodic voice only served to intensify the horrors of this secret, sinister place.
From the shadows of the corridor, Llanwith and Artorex peered cautiously into a large stone-lined room that had been largely carved from the rock of the hillside. The floor was constructed of packed earth and was bare of any ornamentation, as were the walls. Two large braziers provided light, and one of them burned the nard that so thickened the still air.
For the first time, Artorex felt cold - chilled to the soul. The air in this underground cell was cool, but something else caused his flesh to shrink away from the walls, something primal turned the sweat on his body into a rankness that left him shivering.
A woman sat comfortably on a throne to their left. She held a wine cup in one beringed hand and would have seemed a normal Roman matron, except for a towering Egyptian facial mask and headdress that rose from her narrow shoulders some two feet above her head. Her silhouette made strange shadows across the floor to the edge of a small alabaster altar, which was at the very centre of the room.
Two men, naked except for ornate cloaks and grotesque head masks, capered before the altar of veined marble. One willowy form wore a headpiece shaped like the grinning head of a large black dog and the other, stockier man wore a grotesque mask that was black, shining and hideous, for all it was shaped like a massive human head. He had just drawn away from the body of a boy child who lay spread-eagled, face down, on the altar, his limbs held by chains secured to the four corners at the base of the altar by iron rings that had been set into the highly polished stone.
Except for the intermittent chanting of the woman and the panting of the black-headed suppliant, all that could be heard in the hideous room was the quiet sobbing of the child, his face pressed to the altar stone and his long pale hair hanging almost to the floor.
Llanwith drew his sword and the tableau froze as the steel hissed from its scabbard. Artorex and the others moved into the room in Llanwith’s wake, their swords at the ready in their hands.
‘What abominations do you enact here?’ Llanwith roared, and the dog-headed man cowered behind his companion. Both men now looked ridiculous in their flaccid nakedness.
Only the sobbing of the child robbed the scene of its elements of farce.
Myrddion moved forward and knocked the black headdress sideways with an expert blow of his sword.
‘This gentleman, I believe, must be Severinus, who is imitating Set, the Egyptian god of the underworld.’ Myrddion raised his sword to the handsome, dark face that was revealed to the assembled group.
Severinus was in his mid-thirties, and he was gifted with a natural beauty of face and form, which was now running to fat after many years of self-indulgence. A thick pelt of dark body hair that partly disguised a grotesque little paunch marred the man’s well-formed torso. His handsome face was completely plucked free of beard. Only his eyes belied the delicacy of his features, for they were flat and quite devoid of any emotion other than rage.
Myrddion turned slightly to face the other figure and used his sword point to dislodge the mask.
‘And his companion must be his catamite, Antiochus, in the guise of Anubis, another of the death deities. I think the dog motif is rather in keeping with this filth, don’t you, Llanwith?’
As he finished speaking, the woman launched herself out of her throne with a screech. Her outstretched talons would have done Myrddion serious damage had Luka not tripped her and stripped the heavy mask from her face.
‘And this . . . this . . . this lady is meant to be Isis, I suppose. All we need is Osiris to round out this very unpleasant little ritual.’
The woman, Severina, screamed insults through her thickly rouged lips and, under the lavish cosmetics that gave her face an illusion of youth, Artorex could see that she was old and raddled. The words she spouted out with such crude venom were so vile that Luka restrained her hands and gagged her with strips of her own gilded shawl.
‘Release the boy, Targo, and take him upstairs into the clean air. Then find a blanket to cover him and give him something to eat and drink from the kitchens,’ Artorex ordered.
‘And you may release one of the servants to bring the city watch to us,’ Myrddion added, without taking his eyes from the murderous face of Severinus. ‘Choose one who is likely to do your bidding - but I’m sure we can safely leave that matter in your hands.’
With a grim expression, Targo pulled the black cloak from the shoulders of Severinus, while Artorex unlocked the chains that bound the boy across the altar with a key hanging from Severina’s girdle. Targo wrapped the boy in the folds of the black cloak and, with the child pressed against his heart, hastened to obey Artorex’s orders.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Severinus snarled, raising his autocratic cleft chin. ‘How dare you enter my villa and threaten me and my kin with your weapons?’
‘We are citizens of good standing with an interest in the abominations that have been committed in this place,’ Myrddion replied without expression. ‘And we have more than enough power to enforce the laws of the land and terminate your vile rituals. For the moment, that explanation is more than sufficient for lice such as you to absorb.’
Severinus narrowed his pebble-black eyes and peered at Artorex through the hazy torch smoke. His sweet, well-shaped mouth smiled to reveal white, slightly uneven teeth.
‘I know you. You’re that bastard foster-brother of Caius. He’ll rue the day he sent curs down on me.’
Artorex stepped around the altar, nearly losing his balance on a surface that was slick with a scum he did not wish to identify. One fist swung out, seemingly of its own accord, and smashed the straight nose and cupid-bow mouth of Severinus.
‘I suggest you keep your filthy tongue between your teeth. There will be time enough to speak your fill when the soldiers of the watch arrive. What will they make of your little playroom, I wonder.’
Severinus stared malevolently at his captors with eyes that were both crafty and amused. He licked the blood from his mouth with a long pink tongue, and seemed to relish the taste of its freshness. Artorex was forced to look away, or his stomach would have betrayed his will.
‘The Council of Aquae Sulis will not raise a hand against me. I am not the only one who worships the Dark God, and my hospitality has extended to several prominent citizens in the past, including Caius, the so respectable son of the Poppinidii family.’
Artorex hit Severinus once again, with sufficient force to send the man reeling backwards into a long swathe of gilded cloth hanging against one of the walls. As Severinus clutched at its folds to regain his balance, the curtain tore and revealed a black opening in the wall.
Artorex spat with loathing.
‘You mention that name at your peril, Severinus, for this night the Lady Livinia of the Poppinidii has gone to the shades of Hades. And her son has testified to your involvement in the rape and murder of children.’
But Severinus was not easily cowed. If anything, he seemed exhilarated by a twisted sense of power.
‘None of you should dare to lay a hand on me, for you are nothing but Celtic dogs who amount to less than nothing. You are servants, fit only to wipe my boots, and I will have you crucified before I am finished.’
‘I, Llanwith pen Bryn, son of the King of the Ordovice, dare to accuse you of child murder,’ Llanwith intoned, his voice strong and cold in the fetid room.
‘And I, Luka, son of the King of the Brigante, also dare to accuse you of child murder,’ Luka repeated.
‘And I, Myrddion Merlinus, Steward of the High King, Uther Pendragon of the Atrebates, also dare to accuse you of child murder.’
Overawed by the lineage of his companions, Artorex stepped forward to face the snarling face of Severinus.
‘I, Artorex, foster-son of Ector and Steward of the Villa Poppinidii, do accuse you of the foul crime of child murder.’
But Severinus only laughed, a high-pitched whinny of confident glee that sickened the warriors and caused the fawning Antiochus to cover his ears in terror.
Llanwith bound the madman’s arms behind his back lest he harm himself, while Myrddion did the same to the cowering Antiochus. But still the laughter peeled on until Severinus’s voice began to grow harsh and croaking.
‘It is best that you go upstairs, boy, and wait for the guard,’ Llanwith ordered Artorex hoarsely. ‘You can do nothing more in this pest hole.’
‘But the ring that Caius lost is here. It must be found.’
‘Leave that trifle to us, Artorex. Go outside and breathe some clean air,’ Luka repeated.
Gratefully, Artorex retreated down the narrow corridor, up the ladder and out into the scriptorium. Pausing only to wash his face, hands and feet in the water of the atrium fountain, he made his way to the gates of the villa to await the arrival of the City Watch.
Dawn was brushing the sky with its fiery breath when a small detachment of armed men came marching up to the villa. Artorex raised his head from his hands, and ushered them through the entrance to the villa.
At first, the Captain of the Watch was disposed to treat Artorex like a thief, especially as the corpse of the Severinii steward was still lying where Llanwith had abandoned it at the threshold to the villa. But when Targo brought out a tired young boy, with deeply bruised eyes set back into his skull, and took the child haltingly through the tale of his capture, incarceration, starvation and rape, the captain was disposed to treat Artorex with more civility.
When the young man escorted the soldiers to the gaping hole in the floor of the scriptorium, several of the watch clutched amulets around their necks in superstitious fear.
‘It’s fetid down there. A number of other children have been held captive on the altar, as you will soon see for yourselves. Severinus is not a careful housekeeper. When I last saw him, he was threatening to name prominent citizens and soldiers as his partners in these heinous crimes. We were forced to restrain him.’
The captain paled. ‘Good work, young man.’
Artorex smiled thinly, because he knew that the captain had no intention of hearing the names of powerful citizens involved in criminal activity, even if he had to personally cut out the tongue of Severinus to ensure his silence.
Thus, Caius, too, would be safe from wild accusations.
Artorex sighed inwardly. So this is the way that justice really works. Those persons who have the money, the influence and the real power always avoid the consequences of their actions. The steward felt nauseated. May the gods help me, but I’m a coward, he thought to himself. I must save Caius because I owe a life to his mother. Caius will be exonerated, when he’s near as guilty as Severinus. He’ll never be punished and he’ll never suffer a single day for his brutality. How the gods must be laughing at us!
One by one, the soldiers entered the crypt, save for one lucky man who stayed with Targo and the boy in the kitchens. When they returned, the men were dragging their prisoners behind them, with scant care for scraped shins or skinned heads.
Even the old woman, the mother of Severinus, was bustled into the early daylight like a common whore.
Then Luka, Myrddion and Llanwith emerged from the darkened entrance into the daylight. Pale with nausea, Llanwith slammed the trap door back into place with an exclamation of disgust.
‘Enough! I will be months getting the stink of that hole out of my nostrils,’ he complained. ‘And we will be forced to stay here at this villa until the magistrate of Aquae Sulis acquaints himself with its horrors.’