Still that dreadful screaming went on. Regina ran from room to room, past knots of agitated servants and slaves. She remembered that her father had been in the living room with his tenant and his figures. Perhaps he was still there now. She ran that way as fast as she could. Carta pursued her, ineffectually.

So it was that while Aetius was the first to reach Julia, his daughter, Regina found Marcus, her father.

Marcus was still in the living room, on his couch, with his tablets and scrolls around him. But now his hands were clamped over his groin. Red liquid poured out of him and over the couch and tiled floor, unbelievable quantities of it. It was blood. It looked like spilled wine.

Regina stepped into the room, but she couldn’t reach her father, for that would have meant walking into the spreading lake of blood.

Marcus seemed to see her. “Oh, Regina, my little Regina, I’m so sorry . . . It was her, don’t you see?”

“Mother?”

“No, no. Her. She tempted me, and I was weak, and now I am like Atys.” He lifted his hands from his groin. His tunic was raised, exposing his bare legs, and a meaty, bloody mess above them that didn’t look real. He was smiling, but his face was very pale. “I did it myself.”

“You fool.” Aetius stood in the other doorway now, with his strong arm around Julia. Julia was hiding her face in her hands, her head bowed against her father’s shoulder. “What have you done?”

Marcus whispered, “I have atoned. And like Atys I will return . . .” His voice broke up as if there were liquid in his throat.

“Mother!” Regina ran forward. She was splashing in the blood, actually splashing in it, and now she could smell its iron stink, but she had to get to her mother. Still she kept on, running across the room, past the couch with the grisly, flopping thing that was her father.

But Julia twisted away and fled.

Aetius grabbed Regina and folded her in his arms, just as he had the night before, and no matter how she struggled and wept, he wouldn’t release her to follow her mother.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I stayed in Manchester another seventy-two hours.

I retrieved my father’s boxes of business material from the loft, and found a few more files downstairs. He’d actually carried on working after his nominal retirement, doing bits of bookkeeping for friends and close contacts. Much of this work concerned small projects in the building trade.