Jail Bait

by Marilyn Todd

  Nevertheless, it was quite astonishing the number of times he’d ‘accidentally’ brushed against her breasts, how often his hand had come to rest against her thigh, the regularity with which she’d felt his breath on the back of her neck. Take him to task, of course, and Nestor was quick to blame circumstances. The jolt of the wheels. A judicious pothole. But Claudia had given him clear warning yesterday. Keep your distance, or there’ll be a wolf out there licking its chops.

  ‘You’ve never been to Vesontio, have you?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘You’ll love it. Prettiest city in the whole of Gaul in my humble estimation. And commanding, as it does, a broad loop of the river and with a mountain rising behind, it’s not only beautiful, it’s a natural citadel and quite impregnable. And you know how impregnable translates to an architect?’ He chuckled knowlingly. ‘Prosperous. That’s why I love Vesontio so much.’ Funny how his hand needed to clasp her wrist every time he made a point.

  ‘That city’s crying out for a delegation like ours,’ Nestor continued. ‘Oh yes.’ As a self-made man, he’d never quite lost his barrow-boy accent. ‘This’ll make us all rich, mark my words.’ He squinted out through the gap in the canvas, using the bump of the rig to annex Claudia’s elbow.

  ‘Nestor, which part of the word “no” are you having trouble with?’ she asked, but so engrossed was Claudia in recalling the real objective behind making this journey that there was no sting in her rebuke.

  Sure, the delegation would cover her expenses, raise her commercial wine-growing profile and provide her with numerous contacts for trade—unfortunately those were long-range proposals. When you’ve been blackballed and cash flow is tight, to hell with pretty views and a travelogue! The immediate objective is cash. Cold, gold, glittery coins which Claudia could trickle through her fingers and replenish gasping coffers with. Her eyes darted to a satchel swinging from a hook above Drusilla’s cage. She pictured the soft yellow deerskin pouch tucked inside. The one sealed with a golden blob of wax imprinted with the sign of the black salamander.

  ‘Nestor!’ Somehow he’d managed to combine the task of unstoppering the wineskin with a fingertip alighting on Claudia’s nipple. ‘I told you yesterday, no more funny business, but you didn’t take a blind bit of notice.’ She had to raise her voice to drown the rumbling sound from outside. ‘The fact that you have no respect for me, well, that hurts. But you know what hurts most?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This.’ Claudia squeezed his testicles as hard as she could. ‘Touch me again, you odious wart, and I’ll geld you.’

  ‘Landslide!’ The powerful voice of a legionary boomed the length of the line. ‘Move! Fast as you can—run for it. NOW!’

  Claudia’s stomach flipped somersaults. After all this, the danger didn’t come from hostile Helvetii.

  The danger came from a rockfall.

  II

  Imagine thunder. Imagine a stampede of wild Camargue stallions. Imagine earthquakes and a volcanic eruption. Now put them together. The very ground shook beneath the wheels as the driver cracked his whip. The mares bolted forward and, as her nails dug deep into the grain of her maplewood seat, Claudia thanked Jupiter for the skill of her driver.

  With the stone trackway potholed and scarred and treacherously steep, coated with an ooze of wet mud that had turned it into an oilslick, only the driver’s expertise kept this light trap on its course. Twice the wheels skidded. Drusilla’s cage slid to the left, it slid to the right. The axle caught on a rut. Rocks crashed behind them, clattering, splintering, bouncing down the ravine. Horses screamed on the perilous bend and she clung to the rig as the wheels bounced high off the ground and crashed down again. We’ll turn over, she thought, a wheel will spin off. How far now down the gorge? A hundred feet to the bottom?

  Boulders the size of a stable block thundered past, ripping up sixty-foot pines, oak trees and beech. Fragments broke off, thumping, thudding, wrecking their way to the riverbed.

  ‘Gee up! Gee up there!’

  The mares needed no encouragement. Their eyes wild with terror, foam flecking their cheeks, they galloped ever closer to the wagon in front. Claudia’s clenched knuckles were white, she daren’t breathe. One slip from a rig up ahead, the whole column would go down like gates in a gale. Plummeting into the void.

  Sweet Juno, could they truly outrun it?

  Nestor had gone. At the first yell of the soldier, he was off, faster than a rock from an Iberian sling, his eyes still watering, his face as red as a turkey cock’s wattle. Idly she wondered whether things like this had happened to him before on his travels, whether rockfalls were a regular occurrence?

  ‘Madam.’ The canvas was jerked open, rain began driving into the cart. ‘You have to get out.’

  ‘About bloody time, I must say.’ Claudia stared at the bleached face of her bodyguard, hurling himself into the jostling rig. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Backtracking up the road like you told me,’ Junius puffed, grabbing the handle of Claudia’s trunk. ‘Come on. Quick!’

  ‘Brilliant. When that creep Nestor started pawing me, where were you? Sightseeing!’ At her feet, Drusilla howled like a banshee. ‘What’s the point of having a bodyguard, if he’s not around to protect your body?’

  ‘Sightseeing?’ he yelped, his left hand closing over the strap round the cat’s cage. ‘You gave me specific orders to—oh, madam, just jump, will you?’

  Claudia stared at the young Gaul. ‘Has your mind been possessed by a lunatic’s?’ With mares at full pelt, wagons racing behind and boulders bouncing down the hillside like inflated pigs’ bladders, Junius tells her to jump? ‘I’ll be pulped like an olive for oil!’

  ‘Madam,’ he warned, his face pinched with worry. ‘This whole mountain is going.’

  Shit. Slinging her precious satchel over her shoulder, Claudia scrabbled onto the buckboard. Rain and dust slammed into her face.

  ‘You what?’ the driver said. ‘Bleedin’ ’ell, are you sure?’ But Junius’s face answered for him. ‘Then forget jumping,’ he said, clambering onto the buckboard, ‘let’s stop this column. Pull up,’ he yelled, standing upright as he hauled on the reins. ‘Stop your carts.’ The authority in his voice caught their attention. ‘Stop your carts!’

  Junius wasn’t the only one who’d seen what was about to take place. A horseman surged his way up the path, past quivering mules and women wailing in fright, ignoring the confused shouts of the drivers. ‘Get out,’ he yelled. ‘Everyone out.’ There was more than a tinge of panic to his voice. ‘Huddle as close as you can to the rock.’

  From deep inside the mountain came a low menacing growl. Claudia glanced up. Typical of the countryside, massive overhangs of granite jutted out, the softer limestone below having eroded away. The fissures above wobbled precariously, and it was this Junius and the others had spotted.

  Suddenly, June or not, she was shivering.

  ‘Croesus,’ somebody cried. ‘The mountain’s coming straight at us!’

  I, Claudia

  Claudia Seferius has successfully inveigled her way into marriage with a wealthy Roman wine merchant. But when her secret gambling debts spiral, she hits on another resourceful way to make money—offering her ‘personal services’ to high—ranking citizens.

  Unfortunately her clients are now turning up dead—the victims of a sadistic serial killer…

  When Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, the handsome investigating officer, starts digging deep for clues, Claudia realizes she must track down the murderer herself—before her husband discovers what she’s been up to

  And before another man meets his grisly end…

  Virgin Territory

  It just wasn’t fair. When you marry a man for his money, you expect him to leave you a shining pile of gold pieces. Not a crummy old wine business. How was the new young widow Claudia going to pay off her gambling debts now?

  So when Eugenius Collatinus asks Claudia to chaperone his granddaughter to Sicily she jumps at the chance to esc
ape Rome. It should be easy—Sabina Collatinus, she is told, has recently completed thirty years’ service as a Vestal Virgin.

  Or has she…?

  Claudia’s suspects she is escorting an imposter. And then a woman’s brutalized body is discovered

  Man Eater

  On the eve of the Roman Festivities, the last thing you’d expect Claudia Seferius to be doing is heading in the other direction. However, even beautiful young widows have to put business before pleasure when their vineyards are threatened.

  Unfortunately, being run off the road to Etruria by a band of hooligans was not part of Claudia’s gameplan. Nor was seeking shelter in the strange home of Sergius Pictor and family—surrounded by the menagerie of wild animals he is training for the Games.

  But Claudia is about to become the victim of an even crueller game. For that night a stranger appears at her bedroom door—a knife sticking out of his belly.

  And before the first ray of morning sunshine, Claudia is being framed for murder…

  Wolf Whistle

  Had it not been for the pack of dogs nipping at her heels, Claudia Seferius would never have ventured into the mean backstreets of Rome. And thus would never have found the abandoned little boy called Jovi…

  With the Empire in crisis, it certainly wasn’t a safe time for either a rich young widow or a weeping child to be out after dark, for five slave girls have been brutally murdered by a killer who strikes only on Market Day.

  The victims are linked by the dragon tattoo they each wear on their arms—and which marks them out as the ‘Children of Arbil. But Arbil is no loving father—as Claudia is about to find out…