by Marilyn Todd
‘Won’t Cyrus be looking for this?’ Tarraco said, fondling the heavy iron key.
Claudia dismissed his worries with an airy wave of her hand. Before she frogmarched Pylades to the garrison, she had excused herself, ostensibly to replace the ribbons in her hair, but in practice to slip a wax tablet into the voluminous folds of her robe. Having engineered the overturning of the tribune’s desk, taking an impression of the jailhouse key was child’s play and all that was required from there was a visit to the locksmith in the town. There was nothing for Cyrus to look for, because nothing was missing.
‘Why do you do this for me?’ Tarraco asked, his head tilting on one side. Outside the sun was sinking fast, turning the sky an ominous storm-coloured yellow.
‘There’s sufficient money inside that hare to buy you basic provisions for five or six days,’ she said, taking care to watch a cloud of midges dancing in the courtyard, ‘providing you sleep rough, I’m afraid. Too many coins, you see, and the hare would be suspiciously weighty.’
‘Why, Claudia?’
‘The silver bell you can sell. It might, if you’re lucky, buy you a passage back to Iberia.’
‘Hey.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘I ask you a question.’
A fluttering of wings beat inside her chest. ‘Because I don’t believe you killed Lais.’
‘You are in minority,’ he rasped, and her nostrils tingled with pine and woodshavings even above the smell of his coarse woollen tunic. ‘The evidence is overwhelming, is it not?’
‘I don’t believe you killed Virginia either.’
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Damned pig-headed woman! She would take that boat out in the storm—she was like you.’ In the darkness of the cell, a flash of white showed clear. ‘Knows it all.’
‘Where—?’ She could barely speak for the lump in her throat. Tarraco was right. There would be no fair trial in Spesium. Cyrus would nail his hide to the wall. ‘Where will you go?’
As the setting sun snuffed out the last trace of twilight in the jail, Tarraco shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said simply.
Claudia swallowed hard. ‘I have to go,’ she said, and strangely her eyes appeared to be allergic to something in the cell, they’d begun to sting.
‘Claudia—’
‘Don’t say it, Tarraco,’ she whispered. Don’t say anything at all.
Outside, night had darkened the waters of Lake Plasimene and in the hills which cradled this idyllic paradise, foxes yawned and stretched and set off to hunt, leaving their newborn cubs curled up cosy in their dens. In ravines and woods and gullies, porcupine and badgers would be rooting in the undergrowth and in the reedbeds, melancholy frogs called and answered one another. Ribbit-ribbit. Bedeep. Ribbit-ribbit. Bedeep. The scents of flag irises and valerian, marsh mallows and wild allium mingled in the dense, trapped heat and a deer ventured down to drink.
Now what? Claudia asked herself. She had no stomach for food, but as she sat, chin in hands, on a fallen birch, she realized dinner would have long since been cleared away, the roast meats and fricassees served by liveried waiters while rose petals showered from the ceiling and flautists piped sing-a-long tunes. Even the kitchens would be quiet, the pots scrubbed out and turned upside down to drain, the oven fires raked.
Far in the distance, a jagged flash of white lightning flickered and then died.
Death.
Like Plasimene, death was all around her—Tuder, Lais, Virginia and Cal—and it was water, this water, which connected them. Tuder, out on his island. Virginia, found drowned in the lake. Lais, floating face down in the reeds. And, of course, Cal. Somersaulting, backflipping, cartwheeling Cal, found sprawled on the shingle beneath the sacred spring of Carya.
Gone.
Each and every one of them. And soon Tarraco, too, would be gone.
Why. he had asked. Why set me free when the evidence against me is overwhelming?
Well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? It was too overwhelming, too contrived. Like Cal, it didn’t feel right, and besides. That the Spaniard was capable of killing Claudia had no doubt. (Oh yes, this man could kill. Passion ran through every bone, every artery, every sinew.) But to take a life in anger is not the same as battering a woman over and over again, and most troubling of all was the way the corpse was discovered. Tarraco, had he killed his wife, would have either left the body where it lay and to hell with the consequences—or else he’d have weighted it down in the lake where it would have remained undiscovered for ever. It was almost as though Lais had been delivered to the foot race this afternoon.
An owl hooted in the sultry night. Claudia didn’t hear it.
I ought to go. I ought to warn Lavinia of my suspicions that she’s being poisoned, but even with that there was a problem. Who was the person who had fed Claudia the information about the rash of mysterious deaths in the first place? Who, with abominable cunning, made sure she linked up the string of innuendoes? That’s right, the old olive grower—and why should she do that? Why choose a fellow guest to load her suspicions on to, instead of Cyrus or Pylades? By her own admission, Lavinia lapped up every juicy story, embroidering them, as Ruth had pointed out, with details of her own. The old girl enjoyed gossip, she enjoyed mischief, she enjoyed being pampered—and from the way she acted after the death of her husband, it was also obvious Lavinia was a consummate actress. Add these together, and the foundations are laid for the fiction that her own life is in peril—could an old peasant woman ask for more? The wealth of attention, doctors and bureaucrats, the army—suddenly all solicitous. Fab and Sab running after her for once. Think of the commotion.
No, there was only one thing to do with the rest of the night, Claudia decided. Go get steaming drunk.
XXVIII
In his office on the Aventine, in the shadow of the Temple of Minerva, Sabbio Tullus’ nephew rinsed the vomit from his mouth.
It was the dust, it had to be. Desiccating marble dust from the warehouse next door. You could see it in the air, making the whole room white and hazy like cobwebs spun across the walls. Day after day, this distorted, fuzzy view was enough to make anyone throw up, never mind the torrid heat. There was nothing to worry about.
In the street below, the timekeeper called out the hour. Midnight. Mopping the perspiration from his face, the young man was surprised how damp his handkerchief was when he went to fold it up. Caused by the vomiting, that. Makes one sweat like a racehorse. That, and the diarrhoea, of course.
When he tried to stand up, his knees refused the rest of him permission and he sank back against the hard maplewood chair and rested his head on the desk. Not surprising, this bout of the squits. It was all that bloody fruit juice he’d been knocking back, because any kind of wine had made him hoarse. Come to that, so had the fruit juice, be it apple, peach or cherry, but what was the alternative? Milk, curdled before it left the cow? Water, warm and brackish? Or that foul beer the Egyptians drank, which made his stomach heave?
Lifting his head, he checked his appearance in the mirror. In the cobweb haze of this marble-dusty room, his skin appeared yellow, but he knew that couldn’t be the case. Picking up a gavel on his desk, he hammered on a metal plate. The dwarf came running.
‘You can take this bucket away,’ he instructed. ‘But bring a fresh one, in case.’ Several times before, he thought he’d finished being sick…
‘Very good, sir.’
The dwarf withdrew, leaving the nephew toying with the mirror. Praise be to Mars, he didn’t have the bloody plague, that’s all he was grateful for. No livid rash breaking out on his stomach. Nevertheless, he peered down his tunic, double-checking with the mirror. Told you. You’ve got the squits because of all that fruit. You’re throwing up because you’re weak from diarrhoea and from being stuck inside this hot, dry, dusty room. That, coupled with the strain of waiting.
He sighed. He was this close to changing the course of the Empire, this close, and when he got his papers back, then he’d see a difference in his health. A very r
apid upturn.
‘You must drink, master,’ the dwarf cajoled, setting down another bucket. ‘Drink to keep your strength up.’
The nephew felt a glass of pressed bilberries against his lips and he tried to swallow, to wash away the sour taste of bile, but half the liquid dribbled down his chin. That’s all he was bringing up, of course. Bile. Black and stinking, it made his head pound like bloody thunder and he could barely stand of late, but that would pass. Like those ridiculous hallucinations his manservant assured him were simply the product of a stomach empty for too long. Hell, he was even getting used to seeing multi-coloured haloes round the lights and double, sometimes treble, vision when people moved about, like the dwarf just now, helping him out of his stained shirt, and sometimes it seemed normal, viewing things as though he was peering down a rabbit hole. But the dwarf was right. He really ought to start keeping something down, because a couple of times of late he’d been haunted by strange, disturbing visions. The faces of demons springing out of the walls, with teeth like a rabid jackal’s, snarling, foaming…
Delusions come with fever. Fever comes with vomiting. Vomiting comes from diarrhoea—a side effect of fruit juice which is the only thing I can take because of nerves.
Which will settle when I get that fucking paper back!
He slumped forward and closed his eyes, imagining how his fortunes would change. He had just nine more days before the Senate reopened after its unofficial recess, before Augustus made his pronouncement about the future of the Empire. Nine days.
‘Janus!’
Slavering wolves began rising out of the desk, snapping at him with their sharp incisors, baying for his blood.
‘Go away,’ he screeched. ‘Get away from me!’
Diving off his chair, he flung himself under the desk, coiling into a ball, his eyes screwed shut, and after a while, a very long while, the howling died off and the desk was a desk once again.
‘Master, what’s wrong?’
‘What?’ For an instant he feared the delusions were back, but no. It was the face of his servant, made uglier with the pucker of concern. ‘Oh. I…dropped my pen—’ Sweat poured down his face, soaking his tunic as the dwarf helped him back to his chair. Fucking hallucinations. The quicker he got this sorted out, the better.
Nine days, didn’t he say? Retching another stream of black bile into the bucket, he considered the timescale was ample, providing he recovered what that Seferius bitch had stolen.
‘No delivery from the fat man?’ he rasped.
‘N-no,’ the dwarf replied, and the nephew wondered, was that also a figment of his imagination, that hesitation? He thought he heard, a few moments ago, an interchange between his servant and the man who smelled of cardamom. And through the fuzzy lamplight, he also thought he saw a piece of parchment, lying on a silver plate on the table in the hall. His mistake, surely. The dwarf was a model of efficiency and no doubt the fat assassin was already back in Atlantis, taking care of unfinished business. It was more than either of their lives were worth, to double-cross him.
‘Master. Please. You must replenish lost fluids.’
‘I can’t,’ he gasped, ‘keep anything down.’
‘Try, master. This is good chicken broth.’
‘It tastes bitter.’
The dwarf tutted and pressed the bowl to his lips. ‘Your tastebuds are out of sorts, sir. Come now,’ there was a distinct edge to his voice, ‘drink up.’
Swallowing the filthy brew, the nephew wondered what drove a woman, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, to steal his letter then just sit on it. What the hell game was this tart playing? Was she holding out for him to divorce his wife and marry her, to share in the power and the glory of the next phase of the Empire?
Think again, he told her a few minutes later as he spewed noisily into the leather bucket. If you could see me now, you’d see I’m wearing black, in mourning for my dearest Uncle Tullus. What path I take, after wreaking my cataclysmic change, is up to me, and so is who I walk with on that path, but one thing is quite certain.
There will be no witnesses left behind to testify to this fiasco. Ask Uncle Tullus, if you don’t believe me.
Behind him, the dwarf smiled.
XXIX
‘All rise for the Emperor!’
Claudia squinted open half an eye, grunted, then rolled over. The man was insane. It was still morning. Also…
‘What the hell are you doing in my bedroom?’
‘Opening the shutters.’ Orbilio seemed oblivious that the brightness might cause permanent damage to her retina. ‘It smells like a winery in here.’ She heard a brisk rubbing of hands… ‘Right, then. Five minutes, and I’ll meet you at the jetty.’
‘Bog off.’
…followed by an ominous chuckle. ‘How much did you knock back last night?’
Claudia burrowed deeper under the sheet. ‘One.’ Which happened to be followed by another after another after another…
‘So why am I counting two, correction three empty wine jugs?’
You’ve missed one, try under the bed. ‘I’m a vintner, remember? We take a sip of wine, swill it round our mouths, then,’ she pulled the pillow over her head, ‘we spit it out.’
‘And I’m Mars, god of war. Never mind, for a hangover on this scale, I’m prepared to extend the time limit to six minutes,’ he said. ‘The countdown starts now.’
‘You’re unnatural.’
‘You’re out of bed.’
And with that, Claudia found herself in an ignominious heap on the floor and by the time she’d disentangled herself from the sheet, it was against a closed door that the missing wine jug smashed into a hundred smithereens. Damn. Bleary eyes consulted the reflection in the mirror and instantly regretted it. Was that a dead vole protruding from her mouth? Or just her tongue?
‘I need to talk to someone,’ she yelled down to Orbilio, striding out along the path below her window.
‘Later,’ he called back, indicating the jetty. ‘This is urgent.’
What is? Claudia withdrew her head and stuck it in a washbasin full of cool, clear water, watching the bubbles bloop to the surface. What could be so important that Supersnoop had to prise her out of a perfectly good sleep…holy shit! Claudia surfaced and shook her head like a dog. Tarraco must have left the hare behind, its slashed underbelly pointing loud and clear that a key had been smuggled into jail…how else could he have escaped?
Cyrus would go absolutely rabid.
Like a cat with mustard on its tail, Claudia hauled on a fresh tunic and raced to the jetty. What was the penalty for jailbreak? She had a sneaking suspicion it made exile from robbing Sabbio Tullus’ strongroom look tame…
With her heart thumping like a kettledrum, Claudia shot a glance back down the path which ran around the promontory. No clunk of soldiers’ boots, no snickering horse bearing a tribune’s weight. Not yet. She practically jumped in the boat. Thank heavens for Marcus Cornelius, having a boat at the ready, how could she ever thank him for saving her bacon?
He had stripped off his tunic and began to take the boat across the lake, and it may only have taken half an hour, but for Claudia it seemed half a lifetime. Every slurp of the oars made her jump, every grunt of exertion from Marcus made her swivel over her shoulder to check Cyrus wasn’t rowing behind. Getting closer…
‘Do you have any paper on you?’
‘Oars are made of wood, as a rule,’ he said.
‘But I need to send a letter,’ she protested. To warn an old woman. Just in case.
‘You need to sober up.’ He grinned, and she didn’t see what was so funny. Croesus, what time was it she stumbled into bed? Dawn was breaking in the east, she remembered that, and the something hot and horrid which had twisted inside her as she recalled the fifty-foot colossus, Memnon, who sings to his mother, the dawn. For an instant, Claudia could almost hear the peacocks ‘rrrow, rrrow’, could almost smell his valerian and roses wafting on the sultry air. This morning Tarraco would not be around to
hear Memnon sing. No longer could he spin his magic on a dead man’s island, or suck up to wealthy women in Atlantis…
Unexpectedly her vision blurred, and a lump formed in her throat. Dammit, she should be glad she’d never feel the charge which shot through her veins when his hands latched over her wrists or watch his long mane shining in the sunlight. The same damned mane he used like a tool, one moment to veil his expression, another to tie back with a long, scarlet fillet—
‘It must be one lulu of a hangover,’ Orbilio remarked cheerfully, hauling on the oars. ‘You look as though you’re chewing a wasps’ nest.’
‘Then bee quiet and let me get on with it.’
They rounded a sharp jutting point and suddenly green eyes loomed up, not black, bringing back memories of a cave, a tunnel, a hundred whispered secrets…
Hurry, Marcus, hurry. Get me away from this place. So jumbled were her thoughts, her fears, her vivid recollections that Claudia was taken aback when Orbilio pulled up at a small rocky beach beside a stream which danced down a gully to disgorge into the lake. She looked upwards, where the hill rose sharply, pines and birch and juniper and hawthorn, dense and seemingly impenetrable. Claudia frowned. ‘Where’s the horse?’
‘Try to exercise a modicum of restraint.’ Orbilio laughed. ‘Your humble servant has not yet secured the painter and you’re asking—’
She was immediately contrite. Heavens above, he’d risked his reputation to do this thing for her, the least she could do was let him get his breath back. Helping him heave the boat ashore, she watched him lug a heavy basket out from under the seat. Drusilla! Good grief, in her panic she’d forgotten all about her cat or the packing. Idly wondering what tactics this intrepid investigator had used to lure Drusilla into a strange basket, Claudia scrutinized the sky. Clouds hung low, like a grey canvas awning, trapping heat which grew stickier by the minute. There was a rumble, grumble growl in the distance. The Titan rattling his chains.
