by Marilyn Todd
Pulling a leaf from a sweet bay, Claudia rubbed its scent into her fingers. How long, she wondered, need she keep clear of Rome? A week? Two? Before the furore over Tullus’ money died down? She’d need to return soon, to find out how her vineyards were faring in the drought. Heaven knows, the business her husband bequeathed was not doing well. A poor harvest would finish it off.
The raucous chatter from a magpie made her jump. Goddammit, that’s enough! First I suspect Cal of being a military spy, now I’m spooked by the woods. Time to head back to the lake. But Claudia hadn’t retraced more than a dozen paces when her ears picked up the sound of heavy breathing. The hairs on her scalp prickled. There was something moving behind her…
Oh, grow up. Since when have wild boar begun stalking their victims? The laugh of a woodpecker mirrored her sentiments, and Claudia was ashamed of her mindless stupidity.
Then she smelled it.
‘Holy shit!’
For a moment, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Wild boar be buggered. This was the biggest BEAR she’d ever clapped sight on!
Unable to comprehend the message which her eyes transmitted to her brain, Claudia merely goggled as it reared on to its hind legs, its paws splayed, mesmerizing her with claws which could surely disembowel with one swipe. In the sunlight that slanted through the trees, bright metal glinted off the ring through its nose and off the length of stout chain which swung from the ring.
From deep in its throat, the beast growled.
She retched from fear, then the instinct to run superseded. Sweet Juno. Mighty Queen of Olympus. Don’t you think now might be a good time to help? As she sped across the forest floor, the bear lumbering behind, Claudia wished she knew more about them. Should she, for instance, stop and face it down on the principle that, like a dog, Bruno would hesitate to attack a stationary figure? A quick glance over her shoulder suggested that might not be prudent…
With sweat blinding her eyes, Claudia skidded on the damp leaves. Nearly there, nearly there, I must be close to the shore! But the stumble had cost precious ground. She could hear every stertorous sound the brute made, smelled the stench of its fur, caught every harsh jangle of chain.
She ducked to the left, and gained five valuable strides. She swerved right, but the bear cut the corner. The precious seconds were lost.
Breathless from fear and weak from exhaustion, she tried to think up a plan. Shin up a tree? Don’t be daft, bears can climb. Heft a fallen branch and swing out? Even more stupid. She had neither the strength to offbalance the bear or the time to scurry around for a branch which had not rotted through. Water! Head for the water! Somewhere she had an idea bears could swim—
The ground levelled out. Shrubs and bushes passed by in a blur. Where was this bloody lake? Then a clearing appeared and Claudia felt the chill of the truth. She’d been running parallel to the shore, not towards it.
Her breath was ragged, her limbs disjointed. Yet still the bear shambled behind…
Near the edge of the clearing, Claudia’s legs finally began to turn traitor. The strength in them failed, her lungs were on fire and one bramble was all that it took.
One tiny bramble, arching over the grass.
Claudia screamed as her ankle became trapped in thorns which tripped her headlong on to her face. The bear reared. She saw its shadow on the grass, smelled its foetid breath on her back, and she curled herself into a ball.
Merciful Jupiter, let death be quick! Don’t let it rip me to shreds. Louder it howled. A roar mixed with panting, and Claudia prised open her eyelids. I must know. I must know how it’s going to kill me—
She blinked the tears and sweat from her eyes. This cannot be! She blinked again. The bear thrashed on the grass and the bellows, she realized, had not been of rage, but of pain.
Small wonder.
From its eye protruded a spear.
Time lost all meaning. As though tracing a sculpted frieze, she watched as if the events had been frozen for ever in marble.
A figure, sprinting across the clearing. A man. His hunting knife drawn.
The bear. Clawing the air, mad with pain and with rage. Blinded, tormented, yet not giving in.
In the speed of slow motion, she had time to take in the swarthiness of the man’s skin. His dark hair, falling long over his shoulders. She watched him circle the beast and, when the sun caught the serrated blade of his knife, it blinded her with its brilliance. The bear’s yowl chilled her blood, but still the hunter held back. Cascading from a central parting, his long hair concealed his expression, though tight sinews gave him away. Stealthily he circled the bear and the brute’s howlings grew pitiful. With a lunge, he brought the knife down. A rumble came from deep within as blood oozed from its muzzle and snout. The bear twitched once, it twitched twice, then with one final growl it expired.
With a satisfied grunt, the young hunter wiped his blade back and forth on the grass. She was shaking, she noticed, from her curls to her blue leather shoes—which, apart from a skimpy breast-band and thong, was all the clothing she wore.
Someone had ripped out her tongue, she was mute. Slipping off a bangle, the gold one set with pearls, Claudia’s trembling hand offered it to him in gratitude.
Dark eyes, the darkest she had ever seen, bored into hers. ‘Thank you,’ growled a voice with a thick, Spanish accent, ‘but I doubt it would suit me.’ There was a pause. ‘Look away,’ he said, and it was not so much a suggestion as a command.
Claudia looked away, and when he gave the all-clear, he was cleaning the point of his spear on wild elecampane. She closed her eyes until the waves of nausea had passed.
Suddenly he clamped a hand round Claudia’s wrist and in one liquid movement, she was swept upright and on to her feet. For what seemed an eternity, his hand remained clamped and black eyes burrowed into the depths of her mind, reading every last secret, unravelling her past and travelling the route of her fears. The smell of woodshavings and pine drifted between them, then he released her and the moment was gone.
The hunter moved back to the bear. Its fur was dull and unkempt, the weals from a score of savage whippings standing stark and livid, explaining why it ferociously sought revenge on all humankind.
But Claudia fixed on the man. The tunic he wore was no coarse workman’s cloth, it was the product of very fine tailoring, cut high above the knee and fastening on the left shoulder only, leaving the right unobstructed for hunting. Gold embroidery rippled round the hem, and it had not escaped her notice that his hands were not calloused and the nails had been manicured on a regular basis. He crouched down, one knee bent, the other touching the ground, and dribbled the chain through his hand. When the links jangled, a shiver ran through Claudia’s body. Then, before she realized what was happening, he had collected his spear, sheathed his knife and was loping back to the woodlands.
‘Wait,’ she called out. ‘I haven’t thanked you for saving my life.’
Under the umbrella of a gnarled oak tree, the hunter stopped and moved his head half a turn. ‘No,’ he said, and again his mane veiled his face. ‘But you will.’
And with that he was gone. Swallowed up by the forest as though he had never existed.
V
Atlantis was coming back to life as Claudia slung the painter over the mooring post. The fisherman who’d been mending his net was long gone and along the shoreline wildfowl wove in and out of the reed-beds. High above the thicket where Cal would be waiting with his basket of lobsters, merchants on fat profits and artisans on thin stipends hobnobbed in the shade of the cool colonnade. High female laughter rang down from the loggia and further along, the gilded pillars of the twin-storied sun porch shone like molten copper in the glare of Apollo’s bright rays. Incredibly, far from dulling her senses, that brush with death had only heightened her lust for life and excitement, and Claudia was whistling to herself as the rough grass swished at her ankles.
Would Cal, she wondered, be able to cast a beam of light on the identity of the myste
rious huntsman who’d saved her from ending up a bear’s dinner, in the same way he’d sniffed out the sliding panel, the tunnel and the secret of the Great Hall—no doubt a deep underground cellar packed with ice, whose melted output formed a cascade. Probably, but it was the thought of that ice being put in a bucket to chill the hyssop wine which was uppermost on her list of priorities at the moment. Dear Juno, she prayed, don’t let all the ice in the bucket have melted. Not all of it. Let there be some left to bury my face in.
‘Cal?’ He was not at the entrance. ‘Are you there?’
She lingered in the mouth of the underpass and frowned. He said he would wait. She’d told him not to, and that would be grist to Calvus’ mill. He’ll be here. He’s just off, fetching the ice. Voices and yawns filtered down from the colonnade above.
‘Cal?’ Louder she called up the tunnel, and when only a distorted echo answered back, Claudia felt a twinge of misgiving. In the same way she’d misheard ‘bear’ for ‘boar’, had she credited Cal with more depth than was actually present? Had he taken off after fresh quarry?
Admittedly their acquaintance was brief, but the relationship had been plunged into immediate intimacy. He would come! Perhaps he was having trouble finding the ice? Yet the longer she waited, the more Claudia realized that, far from bridging the gap between youth and maturity, Cal had merely been acting in type. Bored and seeking to pass the siesta hour, how better than by making love with a stranger? Claudia’s cheeks reddened as she recalled the mintiness of his breath on her face…
That, my girl, is what you call a narrow squeak. Which makes two this afternoon, if my arithmetic is correct.
In the puncuated gloom of the underpass, Claudia smiled grimly to herself. At least it proved one thing, Cal standing her up. It proved he wasn’t a military spy, or he’d be here, keeping an eye on his suspect.
Halfway up the tunnel, a scream cut short Claudia’s speculations. It came from directly above, piercing and shrill. Typical. Silly cow wakes up, totters out for a view of the lake, spots a dead dog floating past and it’s brought on an attack of the vapours. Claudia strode off up towards the cave. They’re all the same, these rich wives. Closeted in isolation, slaves doing this for them, slaves doing that, they’re never exposed to real life. Sure, they live in the country, but nature red in tooth and claw? Do me a favour. Yet still the silly bitch screamed.
By now, though, curiosity was guiding Claudia towards the next hole in the rock face. What, exactly, was so gruesome that others now joined in the cacophony? She poked her head over the rough sill. Talk about a fuss over nothing. She rolled her eyes in disgust. The only thing floating in Lake Plasimene was water! She was about to withdraw when she heard footsteps on the foreshore. Men. Running. Shouting. Ghoulishly curious, Claudia craned her neck further.
‘Oh, no. Sweet Jupiter, please. Say it’s not true.’
Tears filled her eyes as she stared at the shingle below. Say there’s been a mistake. That I’m wrong. Claudia shook her head again and again. But even by the time she’d shaken it dizzy, there was no mistaking the truth.
The body which sprawled, twisted and bloody, was all too familiar. The blue linen tunic. The corn-coloured hair.
She shivered and hugged her arms to her body, and then, in the pied seclusion of the very tunnel that he’d shown her, Claudia bade a silent farewell to Cal.
VI
Sabbio Tullus surveyed his nephew (the one who was related by marriage to a second cousin of the Emperor’s wife), through well disguised distaste. A fleshy man himself, he considered rotundity an encapsulation of all things good, all things healthy both in mind and spirit, yet here he was facing a young blade twenty years his junior with a face like a weasel and dead man’s eyes.
‘Are you certain of this?’ Tullus asked, and when a rivulet of sweat ran down his backbone he was not sure it was entirely due to humidity.
‘Positive,’ the nephew replied, in that singular grey monotone of his.
Tullus twisted in his chair, and trusted that the creaks were the basketweave, not his discomfort manifesting itself aloud. He reached for his goblet and gulped at the apple juice. Bloody quacks! Putting him on fruit juice and sherbets. What did they think he was, dying? They were only a few chest pains, for gods’ sake. Indigestion. Nothing to do with the theft from that bloody depository… When a second twinge clawed at his heart, it was the wine that he reached for. Bloody quacks. The liquor glowed inside him like a log fire on a February night and he leaned down to pat the wolfhound panting at his feet, its long, pink tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. And still that bloody nephew of his hadn’t moved so much as a muscle. Cold-blooded little toad, thanks to him, I’m right in the shit.
‘Are you feeling well, Uncle?’
The question was phrased out of courtesy, not concern, and Tullus snorted. How could his plump little pigeon of a sister have produced a desiccated bag of bones such as this? Their father had arranged the marriage, of course, Tullus never even met the husband, but from what his sister had told him, he believed he would have liked the fellow. The second time he snorted, it was from rage. How dare the bastard leave his sister in the lurch. Falling from his horse and breaking his bloody back, what a stupid way to go, and the widow eight months pregnant! Silently, yet with infinite variety, Sabbio Tullus cursed his father for contracting the marriage. His brother-in-law for dying so selfishly. His sister for birthing a reptile. His nephew for landing him in this bloody mess. But most of all, Sabbio Tullus cursed himself. For agreeing to look after that mucking casket in the first place.
He sighed and thought, I should be in Frascati, where the air is fresh and pure and uncontaminated by plague, giving my wife another child and checking my boundary stones haven’t been moved by that conniving neighbour of mine, not sitting in this sweatroom of an office, sorting out this little bastard’s mess. And Janus bloody Croesus, what a mucking mess it was.
‘You ought not have gone to the army,’ the boy said.
‘You ought to have told me what you kept in that box,’ Tullus fired back.
‘You would not have agreed to undertake its safekeeping.’
’Too bloody right.’
But lock it up he had, and now Tullus was as deep in the shit as his nephew. How many times had his poor sister miscarried? They’d lost count after five, and when she was delivered, at last, of a son the whole family rejoiced. Had they but known. Tullus rubbed the dull ache in his chest. When this was over… By all the gods in Olympus, when this was all over, he’d string that boy up by his tongue and whip him till his gizzard popped out. But until then, of course—
‘Has anyone discovered where the bitch is hiding?’ the nephew enquired.
Inexplicably Tullus wanted to laugh, and say his bet was on Naples, where she’d be spending his silver on dresses and jewels and placing outrageous bets on charioteers, because there was a whole lot of woman packed into Claudia Seferius, by heavens there was—then he remembered the contents of a certain little box and Tullus steeled his face. ‘Not yet.’
‘But you are taking steps to recover the…contents?’
Why is it, Tullus thought, that sounded just like a threat? ‘Of course I bloody am,’ he snarled. Did the boy take him for a fool? ‘I have agents on the job, up and down the country.’
Holy Mars, he wished the lad had never told him what was in that sodding box.
‘Good.’ The nephew stood up. ‘You will advise me, naturally, the minute you have news of her whereabouts?’
‘You can trust me to keep you advised,’ Tullus said, barely keeping the grimace from his face.
‘Oh, I trust you, Uncle.’ Thin lips formed a dead man’s smile. ‘I trust you implicitly.’
The door clicked silently behind him and inside Tullus’ chest, the eagle clawed in earnest.
VII
Claudia was running through the thicket of alders and Cal was crashing behind. ‘I remembered the cherries,’ he yelled, ‘honest I did.’ And she shouted back, ‘Go a
way, I don’t want the soup or the sex!’ And when she looked round, his hands had turned into live lobsters and he had a spear sticking out of his eye…
Drenched with perspiration, her teeth chattering like cups in an earthquake, Claudia jerked upright in bed. Disturbed by the jolt, Drusilla wriggled into the crook of her mistress’s arm, her tongue rasping Claudia’s skin as though she was scrubbing a kitten. Crooning to herself, as much as to the cat, Claudia stroked Drusilla’s flattened ears until both sets of eyelids grew heavy.
Dwarfed by the pillars which lined the Great Hall, Cal ran barefoot up the steps of the watercourse. He was laughing, because he’d discovered yet another secret, that he could fly, come and watch, better still, take his hand and fly with him. And Claudia was laughing, too, because the water was cool, icy cool, but then a bear reared out of the stream, snarling with a half-human face, and Cal said, ‘We can outrun the beast, we can fly,’ and suddenly they were up on the roof, but he wouldn’t let go of her wrist and then she was falling…falling…
This time when Claudia woke up, she knew with certainty that, unless she saw for herself the point from which Kamar said Cal had fallen, the dreams would torment her for ever. Sluicing water over her face, she calculated there was still an hour before dawn, yet despite the sultry heat of the night, she was shivering. By this time tomorrow, Cal’s ashes would be on their way home—
Crackling torches set in motion the ships which sailed the seascapes round the Great Hall and cast diamonds and pearls on the rippling watercourse. Pausing on the central footbridge, Claudia thought, this is madness. What the blazes do I expect to achieve? But just as there was no answer to her question, equally was there no turning back.
Her bare feet slapped the marble floor of the banqueting hall, but the pine doors to the sun porch slid open on silent greased runners. The veranda was not as she’d imagined it. Sure, she’d seen the gilding on the pillars from the lake this afternoon, and certainly the Parian marble on the walls had been used to spectacular and dazzling effect, but that was only part of its splendour. White roses blasted perfume into the torrid night air, climbing between box trees clipped to resemble camels, apes and giraffes. A bronze faun piped a tune in the corner and on the ceiling, six signs of the Zodiac had been picked out in gold.
