Vulcan's City - Herculaneum
Chapter 1
If that bastard Hector has anything to do with this, I’ll kill him, Alexius thought as he flung his heavy legion cloak over his shoulders. He couldn’t believe that Cassius had climbed over the dividing wall between their houses, interrupting a long soak in his father’s bathing tube, to beg him to go find Messalina lost somewhere in the streets of Herculaneum this late at night.
“Dominus, I’ll go with you,” Cassius said as he followed him into the enclosed atrium.
Alexius turned to the man who had been with Messi’s family forever or as at least as long as he could remember. “No, Cassius, go home. Watch for Messalina. Send word if she returns,” he said as he jabbed his dagger into the leather sheath on his belt. He strode toward the front doors of his house as the old slave continued babbling something about Messalina’s father beating and selling any slave who let her escape. All the years of growing up around her father, it wasn’t like the man to do that. However, it wasn’t like Messalina to sneak out alone at night either.
He recalled that Messi had been upset at his welcome home party the day before, saying something about Rosa not answering her letters. Maybe she had received word that Rosa had returned home. Well, that was easy enough to find out, Alexius thought as he stepped into the dark street barely lit by the restless moonlight. After all, Rosa’s house was just across the street from his. All he had to do was wake up Balbus’s door slave and find out.
After bruising his fist on the hard oak door, Labeo’s ancient face appeared in the small door’s peek hole. “Is the Domina Messalina Claudia here? Nonia Rosa?”
“No dominus,” the door slave said sleepily, “No one has come to this door, certainly not at this hour. And the Domina Rosa has not returned!” The small flap slid abruptly shut, jolting Alexius back on one leg.
If Messi wasn’t there, then was she? A gust of brisk wind blew pieces of garbage and trash along the curb, drawing his gaze further down the dark street lit with a few guttering torches. All along the stone avenue were dark entrances to alleys, closed fronts of shops, and busy tavernas, and a million places for his betrothed to be dragged into before she got to her destination…wherever that may be. He passed a dark alley, looking for her discarded body and found relief when he found nothing but a gray cat eating a mouse. He found only debris rustling against a store step in another dark alley.
Images of Hector’s face played in Alexius’s mind, bringing an angry snarl to his lips. He had only learned from Marcus on their trip back from Rome that Hector had tried to break his betrothal with Messalina. The fool had actually written Messi’s father requesting her hand be given to him. Well, that would never happen, not with that piece of shit. Messalina was his to marry. And, there was no way he was going to lose her. Not now anyway.
The rustle of footsteps sounded behind him. He wheeled about, dagger drawn. “Fosco?”
His personal slave stepped out of the darkness. “You don’t think you’re doing this alone, dominus.”
He relaxed his grip on the weapon and slid it back in his belt. “I guess not,” Alexius said, relieved. Only the image of Messi had filled his mind. Since he’d been gone in Britannia, she had changed. She wasn’t Medusa any longer. He chuckled that he’d once thought that.
No girl in Rome was as pretty as she was now. No, Messalina couldn’t be described as pretty. Her features now were—he thought of a word to describe her as he glanced into another alley—elegant, mysterious, someone he could gaze at forever. In fact, now he wanted to and had during his party, but she had little time for him.
He still couldn’t believe that Messi would have anything to do with Hector—an actor, of all people. She had the sense to know that the life as his wife was lower than low. He hoped for her sake that she wasn’t that desperate to break their betrothal. Or, was she?
He followed Fosco as the man led the way toward the end of the city block. The white moon beamed out from behind the black clouds, spotlighting Hector’s doorway façade of half-columns topped with Corinthian crowns. “She’d better not be here.” Alexius muttered as he fingered the dagger’s hilt.
Fosco hammered on Hector’s ornate door, setting off the guard dogs inside. An eternity passed until the small window in the door opened. Sleep-filled eyes appeared.
“Yes, dominus?”
“I want to speak with Hector.”
“Neither is here, dominus. Father and son remain in Rome, not due to return for another week.”
Alexius studied what he could of the door slave, sleepy eyes and a broken nose. The man had to be lying. He stepped closer to the door. “Have you seen the Domina Messalina Claudia Drusa tonight?”
“At this hour?” The man sounded stunned, almost insulted. “Why would the young domina be here?”
“Is she?”
“No, dominus!”
“If you’re lying, I’ll have—“
“My word on Jupiter’s throne, I haven’t seen her!”
The small window clipped shut, once again, leaving Alexius staring at wood. A foreboding feeling shrouded him as he followed Fosco who had claimed a torch from an wall sconce. They stopped at the corner of the street leading up to Herculaneum’s main shopping district. It appeared abandoned except for a few small tavernas remaining open, filling the street with whiffs of over-cooked chowders as well as rank odors of ale and rotten wine. The day’s dirt, filthy bodies, and the stench of garbage drifting in the damp night air greeted them as they walked. Sounds of dice tumbling from cups mingled with cheers and laughter growing louder with each step.
An odorous shadow appeared from the shadow of an half empty rain barrel. He held up a dirty wooden cup with both hands. “Denarius, young dominus, so I can eat today.”
He motioned to Fosco for a coin from his pouch. The bowl lifted.” Have you seen the young Domina Claudia tonight?” he asked.
The man drew down into the hovering darkness. “No. No, dominus, I…no, I haven’t seen her,” he rasped, glancing nervously up the street. “I haven’t seen anyone.” The bowl lifted again. “Please, I haven’t eaten for days.”
“If you do see the Domina Claudia, find me and you’ll eat for a month, I assure you.”
The beggar nodded desperately. “Yes, if I see her. Yes.”
“Give it to him.” Alexius nodded to Fosco. The coin dropped into the cup with a dull thud.
The beggar clutched the bowl to his chest and withdrew into the darkness. “May the gods bless your election, young dominus.”
They approached a group of men lounging outside the taverna halfway up the block. “Yes. She’s up there. I just finished fucking ‘er. She’s with someone else now. You’ll have to wait your turn, line’s a long one.”
“ ’about an hour ago. Goin’ that way.”
Another drunk pointed back down a narrow alley, thick with smells of urine and garbage. “Or was it that way?”
Snarling, Alexius motioned to move on. He never expected to come back from Britannia to this nor had he expected he’d be working on his election to the Senate. He scowled into a narrow alley of angry dogs and an unconscious drunk. Balbus, his father, and Messi’s father had managed to obtain Vespasian’s approval for him to run for early election; something he didn’t want to pursue at the moment. If that wasn’t enough, they had arranged his appointment to Gaius Pomponius Beastius’s financial committee. “Gain Pomponius’s approval and your election is won,” he remembered Messalina’s father boasting.
Never once had anyone asked him what he wanted to do. Alexius snarled again. Besides, he didn’t want any part of running for office right now nor did he want to have anything to do with that fat bastard Pomponius. All he’d thought about on the galley home was wrestling and swimming all summer with his friends in the Palaestra, spending the next few years on the Committee of Twelve, and then running for a seat in the Senate. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen now.
Nor had the idea of Hector interloping on his betrothal with Messalina improved the prickly situation between him and her. Obviously, Messi hadn’t forgotten his drawing of her on the thermae wall that had ended up with her being nicknamed Medusa. That wasn’t one of the finer moments of growing up together, he thought as Fosco asked someone else about Messi.
“The young Domina Claudia, yes. Saw her earlier. Went home, she did. One of her slaves came for her.” The man was squatting in the torch glow with a small group of other drunks, all nodding or pointing in every direction. There was no doubt that they were all lying.
The vigils, Alexius wondered. The night patrols, where were they? He hadn’t seen one along the street much less a group of them. That was another frustrating situation his father had found for him.
The retired centurion Flaccus had been thrilled that he had volunteered to act as their tribune to help patrol the streets almost every night. Only, he hadn’t volunteered. His father had done that masterful work for him.
Fosco dropped more coins in a palm as Alexius scanned the men lingering in clusters along the street. Laugher, giggles, grunts, and groans plummeting down from the second stories sounded nothing like struggle or rape.
Where in Hades was she?
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