Queen of the Night

could take it off, but he knew the rules. 'The girl has been taken,' he continued. 'She is safe. We await the ransom.'
    'Good.' The voice echoed. 'But I asked you, was anybody hurt?'
    'She was with a man,' the leader replied. 'We heard them talking. He tried to resist but we pushed him to the ground.' 'You did not kill him?'
    'No,' the leader replied. 'That was your order, no one was to be hurt.'
    'Who was it?' the voice asked.
    'An actor,' the leader replied. 'He tried to play the hero.' 'Leave the actor to me,' the voice whispered. 'I shall take care of him.'

    On the same night as the attack at the Villa Carina, Lucius Pomosius, former veteran of the ala, the wing of cavalry attached to the Second Legion Augusta, left the latrines in the Street of Abundance, which ran off the main thoroughfare stretching down to the Colosseum. He stared drunkenly at the graffiti of crude election slogans painted on the wall of the alleyway, eerily illuminated by spluttering torches. Above these was a picture of Mercury in winged greaves, his helmet similarly winged, in one hand a spear shaped like a penis, in the other a bag of gold. The little god's cloak billowed out whilst his finger pointed to a place further down the street. Lucius tapped the painting, smiled and, one hand trailing the walls, made his way down towards the House of the Golden Cupids with its garish sign of two erect phalluses either side of the doorway.
    Lucius paused. He really had drunk too much! He leaned against the wall and glanced back down the alleyway. He was certain he had been followed, and despite the wine had a pricking suspicion that he'd been watched ever since he'd left the upper room of the Lucia Gloriosa tavern where he and the other three surviving members of Vigiles Muri, the Guardians of the Wall, met every month. Tonight they'd gathered specially to discuss the brutal death of old Petilius, found on his bed with his throat slit, his belly cut and his penis slashed off and pushed into his hand. 'Awash in his own blood' was how Decurion Stathylus had described it: 'Floating on a sea of billowing scarlet.' Stathylus always liked to embroider his tales, but then he was a warrior-poet, a bard who liked to sing about his beautiful former mistress and remind them all of their days in Britain. How they'd manned the Wall and stared out over that sea of desolate grassland which stretched and billowed under lowering grey skies. Ah yes, those were the days!
    Lucius stared at the graffiti chalked on the far wall: 'He who doesn't invite me to dinner is a barbarian.' He wished he hadn't been invited tonight. He had not wanted to discuss Petilius' gory death. It evoked memories of that night along the Wall when the Picts had been trapped and massacred. The night of their bona fortuna, as Stathylus liked to describe it. There had been a dozen of them then, but war, as well as the passage of the years, had depleted their number. Death was to be expected, but not Petilius', not dying like that! Who'd want to butcher a lecherous but harmless old man? Petilius was ugly and mean, and even the common whores haggled hard when they saw that miserable face, yet he'd been killed and castrated in a manner reminiscent of the Picts. Could there be some dark thread winding its way back into the murky past? Lucius secretly conceded there might be, but he didn't want to reflect on it. He didn't want to remember. He didn't want to invoke the ghosts!
    He wiped the sweat from his face and stared up at the narrow strip of sky between the overhanging buildings. He wished he was back on the Wall, away from the Vigiles, his comrades, away from the stink and the memories. He looked down the street at the pool of light before the House of the Golden Cupids. Should he take a cubicle downstairs where he could listen to the moans of the girls busy with their customers, or a private room upstairs?
    'Sir?'
    He turned quickly. The shadowy woman, hair veiled, wrists clinking with bracelets, moved closer. 'Sir, is it custom you want?'
    Lucius shook his head, trying to clear the wine fumes. The woman's perfume was fragrantly sweet. She was dressed in gold-edged linen robes. He glimpsed sparkling eyes ringed with kohl, smiling lips parted in a sweet smile. A soft hand caressed his cheek. He grabbed her, and she seemed to melt into him. Lucius started in agony, his hands falling away.
    He stared in shock at the woman, who'd stepped back, leaving the dagger deep in his belly. He staggered