Artorex had gone into the crypt as little more than an untested boy. He came back into the daylight as an adult, and with a man’s shadows embedded in his colourless eyes.
The soldiers set to work in the courtyard outside the villa, collecting wood to cremate the small corpses of the sacrificed children. One less doughty youth was sent to collect grave urns while, inside the atrium, the magistrate eased himself on to a bench, stripped off his clothing down to his loincloth and left his stinking robes of office to lie where they fell in the colonnade. He dispatched one of the Severinii servants to collect a fresh robe.
Artorex washed in the fountain once again and almost immersed himself in the shallow pool, but the stench of the crypt would remain in the back of his throat for many days to come.
‘And now for the Severinii,’ the magistrate said under his breath, no less impressive for the lack of his judicial robes of office.
The councillors clustered like frightened hens as far from the magistrate as possible; only Luka, Llanwith, Myrddion and Targo kept themselves firmly at his back.
‘I will question the boy first. What is his name?’
‘Brego, sir,’ Targo replied. ‘He’s the son of Bregan, the blacksmith. I’m afraid he is very frightened, my lord, for he has lost all trust in powerful men.’
‘Bring him anyway, for I need his account of what has happened here.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Targo answered, and he moved purposefully towards the kitchens.
The boy returned, wrapped in a woman’s shawl, and clinging tightly to Targo’s hand as if the old veteran was the only safe constant in a terrifying universe.
‘Brego?’ the magistrate asked in the kindest of voices as he crouched in front of the boy.
The boy met his eyes unwillingly and forced himself to nod. Artorex knew that the child wanted desperately to suck his thumb.
‘Who brought you here, Brego?’
‘A man.’ The boy’s voice quavered, for he was on the brink of tears.
‘What did he look like?’
‘He was the thin one, Anti . . . Anti . . . something. And another man gave me some milk to drink - and I fell asleep.’
‘Who was the other man?’
The boy furrowed his brow. ‘He was a servant. The master wasn’t very nice to him, and kicked him when he spilled some of the milk.’
‘The steward,’ Llanwith pen Bryn recalled grimly. ‘I’m pleased now that I broke his neck - although, on reflection, perhaps he deserved a slower death if he was involved with these murderous creatures.’
‘What happened when you woke up, Brego?’ the magistrate asked gently. He smiled down at the young boy. ‘Don’t cry, my lad, for you will soon be safely back with your father once again.’
‘It was dark when I came here, and I was tied with ropes. I was thirsty and hungry, but nobody came for the longest time. And when they did come . . .’ The boy began to sob uncontrollably.
‘Sir,’ Targo protested. ‘This boy is exhausted. We may inflict lasting damage on him if he is questioned further.’
‘I agree. I’ve heard enough.’
The magistrate turned to a soldier, while Targo picked up the boy and carried him back to the kitchens.
‘Bring the servants to me, all of them!’ he ordered.
With much wailing and sobbing, five women were dragged to the outer door of the atrium. They were all old - none under forty - and their grey hair and haunted eyes were proof of the hard service they had performed at the Villa Severinii.
The magistrate addressed the servants sternly. ‘You are commanded to tell me what you know of the crypt. And do not think to tell me you know nothing, for no one could live in such a house and be ignorant of what has been happening here.’
One of the women, who seemed less terrified than the others, stepped forward from the huddled group and spoke for them all.
‘We are slaves, sir. The master loathed all women, except for his mother, and she wouldn’t permit young maidservants to enter the house. She was the only woman permitted to be young and beautiful.’ The old woman smiled and revealed two broken teeth. An ugly, puckered burn that covered her jaw also marred her features. But, for all her ugliness, her eyes were a clear, clean hazel. They’d seen too much, and no longer feared anything, not even death.
The magistrate waited impatiently, one foot tapping on the tessellated floor.
‘I’ve lived too long and heard too much in this place to care what happens to Master Severinus or to his mother. While the old master was still alive, the villa was a clean and contented house. But when he died ten years ago, it became a bad and frightening place.’
‘Get to the point, woman,’ the magistrate ordered, but not entirely unkindly.
‘We never knew precisely what the young master did when he was in the secret places. We didn’t want to know. And Longus, the steward, locked us in the kitchens whenever the master had his entertainments.’
‘What of the crypt, woman? Surely you knew of that place.’
‘Yes, sir, we knew of it. Workers came and dug it out, and then the master paid them to leave Aquae Sulis and move to other towns. I was the only servant who was permitted to clean the scriptorium, only me, although I was threatened on pain of death never to open the trap door that led down to the crypt.’
‘Did you ever open the trap door?’
The woman shook her head so fiercely that Artorex had a sudden hysterical thought that she would shake her old head clean off her scrawny neck.
‘But if I pressed my ear to the joint between the trap door and the floor, I sometimes thought I heard weeping coming from below the floor. The master caught me once and beat me half to death. I felt his cruelty and I was careful never to listen again.’
She pointed at her burned face.
‘When I was a younger woman, Severinus Major took me to his bed. Mistress Severina didn’t care overly for the touch of any man, so I became her husband’s amusement in her stead. But when he died, mother and son made sure that no one would ever want me again. All of the servants in this house have been brutalized. We know that we belong to Severinus and he can do whatever he wants with us. These poor old women can show you their tears. No, sirs, we heard nothing. And we saw nothing.’
‘You can speak now, woman,’ the magistrate said quietly. ‘Did you ever see children here?’
‘No, sir. I swear. You may do with us what you will, sir, but we didn’t dare to look once Longus had locked the kitchen doors behind us.’ She raised her grey head and looked squarely at the magistrate. ‘We’ve washed and fed the little fellow who was brought up to us tonight, and we know now what’s been done to him. We know he was raped. If we were to be blamed for what has happened to the children, then I’d rather die than live in this villa another day. We wear the collars of slaves, but we’re women, and some of us were mothers once.’
The magistrate rubbed the stubble on his chin and thought hard.
Finally, he came to a decision.
‘You shall go free, all of you. I don’t believe that you are guilty of any crime. Further, your collars shall be struck off, and you shall cease to be slaves from this day on.’
‘Then we shall die, for we’re too old to find new masters to care for us,’ the old woman replied with dignity. ‘It would be better that you should kill us now rather than force us to starve to death.’
‘You may take anything of value that you can carry from the villa, as long as you depart before sunset. The contents of the villa are forfeit and before this day is over I’ll order it to be burned to the ground and its foundations obliterated.’
The women bowed low, then scrambled away from him. The susurration of their bare feet on the tiles was the only sound in the atrium.
‘Bring the Severinii woman to me,’ the magistrate ordered.
The matron was dragged in. Her wig had fallen off in her struggles, and her bare, shaved head seemed pathetic in the morning light. The cosmetics on her face were almost blasphemous in their provocative ugliness.
One soldier took off her gag. She spat at him.
‘Control yourself, woman, or you will be gagged once again.’ The magistrate’s voice was like ice. He had shared a dining couch with this woman in other, better times, but he had never seen such depravity in any female eyes before, or such cruelty, as he now observed in this woman.
‘I have done nothing wrong. I am the widow of Lucius Severinus, a noble name even in Rome. How dare you let servants touch my person.’
‘How dare you sanction the rape and murder of children in your house!’ the magistrate thundered.
‘I did not touch them,’ she snarled at the magistrate. ‘It was all my son’s doing, under the influence of Antiochus, his perverted little catamite.’ She paused. ‘There are other fine gentlemen who have enjoyed the pleasures of the Villa Severinii,’ she stated, her eyes alive with cunning. ‘They are powerful men who will protect us.’
‘You will be gagged, woman, so that I need not listen to your lies,’ the magistrate ordered, for he was reluctant to deal with the wider ramifications that her loose tongue might unloose. ‘I’ve heard enough from you.’
Two soldiers quickly applied a gag round the woman’s mouth.
‘I will now see Antiochus,’ the magistrate continued. ‘Since he has been accused of being the ringleader and perpetrator of these crimes.’
Antiochus was a pitiful figure when he was dragged before the magistrate and the councillors. His ragged cloak was still wrapped about his narrow body to hide his nakedness, while the cosmetics that had been smeared round his eyes had begun to run from his constant weeping, and served to make him appear as a pathetic figure in the raw light of morning. The blackening bruises on his face were evidence of the rough handling inflicted by his captors.
The magistrate looked at him with disdain. ‘I’m told by the mistress of the house that you are the principal instigator of this vile cult.’
‘That’s not true, my lord! I’m merely the lover of Severinus - and nothing more,’ Antiochus pleaded. ‘We met soon after the death of his father and he invited me to enjoy the pleasures of the villa. I’ve never touched any children - I can’t stand the vile little creatures.’
‘But you did prompt the worship of Osiris in the crypt, didn’t you?’ The magistrate’s disgust was tangible. ‘Come, Antiochus, you come from Asia Minor, whereas Severinus has never left these shores. How else would he know of the Mysteries of Death?’
‘When it first started, it was only a game,’ Antiochus howled. ‘But I couldn’t stop the master from slaking his desires. When he began to take his pleasure with the boys, he no longer wanted me in his bed. I had no choice.’
‘But the mistress of the house swears that she had no part in the murders, and the blame should be placed firmly on your shoulders,’ the magistrate told him.
‘She’s a lying cow!’ Antiochus shouted hysterically, his voice rising to a womanish shriek. ‘She believes that the dying breaths of children will preserve her youth and her beauty. No, she never touched them, but she watched them die of starvation so that she could kiss away their last breaths. The woman is demented.’
Every man in the room was appalled. The mistress Severinii felt their sickened eyes upon her and her arrogance finally deserted her like ice before fire. She began to sob through the gag.
‘It was Severinus! It was all Severinus! He always wanted newer pleasures. I warned him that rumours of his entertainments would boil over, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He’s turned into a monster, and I can’t believe that I once loved him.’
Antiochus would have continued bleating, his eyes darting from stony face to stony face, had the magistrate not cut across his gabble.
‘But you stole the children for him. You brought them here. And you were the one who took them to the crypt and tied them down, ready for your master - unless I’m mistaken. You’re also a monster, Antiochus, and as a monster you shall be treated. Gag him!’
Finally, Severinus was dragged into the atrium. He was stark naked and streaked with blood from grazes and cuts all over his body. Yet, in a flash of arrogance, he shook his black curls back from his face and stood as easily and as proudly as if he were welcoming important and valued guests to sample his hospitality.
‘You shouldn’t bother to implicate others, Severinus, for I will simply gag you once again if you do, no matter how convincing you seem to be,’ the magistrate stated mercilessly. ‘However, in deference to your father, who was a man of honour and decency, I’m giving you this one last opportunity to explain yourself. Can you justify your actions?’
Severinus appeared to be a magnificent specimen of manhood, for all that his body was too short and hairy for true beauty. His pride was a tangible and living element that was an essential part of Severinus the man. Artorex could easily imagine that this was the way that Mark Antony had stood as he faced his Egyptian and Roman enemies in the last days of the old Republic - immediately before he fell on his sword.
But when Artorex looked into the eyes of Severinus, the spell of nobility was immediately broken, for something filthy oozed behind the black pupils of the man’s expression.
‘I don’t recognize the right of any of you to judge me for I am Roman!’
The magistrate smiled slightly and reflectively.
So smiled the old senators who sent Caligula and Nero to their ignominious deaths when their vices finally affronted the last vestiges of Roman pride.
‘Is this bravado to be your only defence? Truly, you’ve made my task easier through your refusal to speak,’ he stated. ‘When Rome first rose out of the mud, she came to greatness through her courage, her piety and her strength. By all such standards, you’re not Roman - and you never could be. You shall be punished like a common felon.’
The magistrate paused, knowing that he had the full attention of all persons present.
‘Hear my words. The Villa Severinii is forfeit and will be burned, except for those items of usefulness that the servants can carry away on their backs or in the villa’s wagon. All else will be consigned to the flames.’