Volisios raised barely visible eyebrows at Thalius. ‘Everybody is a theologian now, isn’t that true?’

‘No doubt,’ Thalius said, ‘those in your charge will be glad to hear the news.’

‘Perhaps I won’t tell them until I have to,’ Volisios said, and he winked. ‘Keep the bastards guessing - eh?’

Thalius looked again at the ugly crosses, and thought how strange it was that his own quest to do service to the man who had once died on such a cross had, in such a complicated fashion, brought him to this dismal place.

Volisios glanced up at the sky, where heavy clouds were clustering. ‘Now, gentlemen, I think we’d better go underground. Believe me you don’t want to be down there when it rains ... Come, come this way. Watch your step, mind.’

He led them across broken ground to the mouth of a tunnel which gaped, black.

II

II

Thalius descended into the dark, climbing down ladders and staircases roughly cut into bare rock. He was over fifty years old and he felt stiff, awkward; he was unused to physical exertion. Again he was grateful for the presence of Tarcho, who went on below him.

‘You’d think they would have some better way of getting important people down here,’ Tarcho said. ‘A nice wide staircase perhaps. Or a bucket on a rope!’

Volisios called up, ‘It’s rare anybody comes down if they don’t have to.’

Tarcho said, ‘If I was younger I’d sling you over my shoulder, Thalius.’

‘I’ll manage, Tarcho. Just be there to catch me if I fall.’

‘I’ll throw down the overseer so you’ll have a soft landing!’

At last they reached the base of the chain of staircases. As Thalius and Tarcho caught their breaths, Volisios summoned a worker and whispered to him. The man ran off into the dark.

Thalius found himself standing on the rough-cut floor of a cave dug into the ground by the hands of men. There was a sound of running water, a stink of damp, and an unrelenting grind of wood on metal. The only light came from smoky oil lamps fixed to the walls. The place was hot, the smell of smoke strong; he had heard that the miners set fires to break up the rocks.

More shabby workers toiled here. Some of them hauled wooden carts laden with rock fragments; others watched the rest, holding whips and clubs, but the foremen were as grimy as those they controlled. Thalius saw passageways cut into the rock, leading off into a greater darkness. The passages were narrow, some not even tall enough for a man to stand upright, yet workers laboured there too.

That grinding, mechanical noise sharpened. Thalius peered up. In the shadows above his head vast wheels turned.