by Marilyn Todd
Another writhing creature. Another tongue flicking in and out. Only this one was blue, and the colour matched Annia’s eyes to a tee. But this was no snake. This was a mythical dragon staring back.
‘Now do you believe me,’ Annia was saying, rolling down her immaculate white sleeve. ‘Now can you see I’m telling the truth?’
Claudia shivered and wondered why, when there was so much sunshine about, she should be cold. It was only a tattoo, for gods’ sake.
Only a miserable tattoo.
XXII
On the question of necklaces, Claudia much preferred pearl ropes to millstones, and since Annia very definitely fell into the latter category, Claudia saw no reason why said stone should not hang round the neck where it belonged. The girl was a slave, let her master protect her.
‘Mistress, actually,’ she’d trilled. ‘For the past two years I’ve been dressing the hair of the temple warden’s wife, she pays very good bonuses, you know. That’s the Temple of Apollo. Magnificent building, have you been inside? Probably not, they don’t allow commoners past the portico, but it’s solid Numidian marble, and you’ll have seen, the yellow marble colonnades and all those wonderful sculptures on the outside. Greek, mostly, and though they haven’t finished painting all the friezes, they are so atmospheric.’
And so it went on. Prattle, prattle, prattle. But beneath it all, Annia was resolute. Wild horses would not drag her back. Point out that fifty, sixty people are employed in the temple, she’d be far safer there, but would she listen? Would she hell.
‘The Temple of Apollo is right next door to the Wolf Cave, Claudia, I don’t want anything to do with it. I’m sticking to Marcus, he’s my cousin and he has an obligation.’ Without drawing breath, she’d moved on. ‘It’s a downright disgrace what they did to me, handing me over to be raised as a slave, my life could have been so different, it could have changed everything. Everything. But I’m only eighteen, too late to start over. Once I receive my Cap of Freedom, I shall take my true place in society and wear diadems and fine slippers and ride in a litter, but of course that’s not until October, so in the meantime, I shall move in with Marcus.’
‘But—’
‘I shall be no inconvenience, you won’t know I’m around. But really, Claudia, you ought to let me do something with your hair, you need more than just a few pins and combs to keep it in place. What I suggest…’
Belatedly Claudia realized she’d capitulated, simply because Annia ground her down. That the story was true, she had little doubt. Had Orbilio not confessed his desperation to save ‘ann-other’ slave girl? To save Annia? But the girl’s sickly wholesomeness, her innate snobbery and her morbid curiosity about the Market Day Murderer wore Claudia’s nerves threadbare. You drop something, guess who pounces to pick it up? You sneeze, guess who’s there with a hanky? No, no, you should never match silver with gold, it looks crass, tell me again how those poor creatures died, oh, this plate’s worth a fortune, just look at the moulding! In truth, Claudia suspected the temple warden’s wife wouldn’t have Annia back for all the gold in Dacia.
Meanwhile, the Megalesian Games were ticking by, a festival of gladiators, theatre and athletic events, alongside feasts, conjurors and puppet shows and she was buggered if she’d give that a miss. Stuffing her cushion into the small of her back, Claudia noticed that the Circus Maximus was filling up rapidly. The place hadn’t seen a chariot raced round its circuit since Agrippa succumbed, so the excitement and tension was growing minute by minute. She was glad, now, she’d dumped the aunts down the easternmost end and left Annia in Junius’ care.
Down at track level, a flurry of activity broke out in the royal box. Five out of six Vestal Virgins surrounded Augustus and his only daughter, heavy with Agrippa’s unborn child, but the buzz centred on the arrival of two sombre, white-robed priests. A collective groan rippled round the Circus. The augurs had studied the cloud patterns and declared the omens for the first race unfavourable.
Irritable drivers untied themselves from their chariots, the man from the Blue faction shoving the man from the Red in the back. He retaliated with a high-flying kick, and when the man from the White faction moved in to break up the fight, blood spurted from his nose at Blue’s wild punch and he in turn laid into the man from the Green, who had merely been patting his stallion. The crowd loved it, cheering, whooping, baying, booing, because if the priests intended to spend the next half hour playing with their silver censers and pouring new libations to the gods, they needed some form of entertainment. Bookmakers started taking bets on the charioteers instead of the chariots.
Claudia couldn’t concentrate on the fisticuffs. How could she? She crossed, then uncrossed, then re-crossed her legs. How could anyone concentrate, knowing a crazed killer might call at their house any day?
Down on the racetrack, the priests had finished wafting incense and chanting entreaties to the gods in order to make the omens for the first race favourable. The bookmakers stiffened. The crowd craned forward. The race marshals shuffled. In the ensuing silence, the augur stepped forward, his head covered, and held wide his arms. For three minutes he spoke on the pattern of cloud cover, the shadows cast on the great obelisk of Rameses which sat on the central spine of the Circus. Yes, yes, but is the race on? Then he turned to face West and solemnly intoned the significance of each of the twelve starting gates representing a sign of the zodiac. We know that already. Will the race go ahead? In his opinion, the augur droned, the Circus Maximus is representative of the entire universe, being symbolic of—
‘Boooo!’
His words were drowned by the crowd, who wanted an answer. Were they wasting their time here or not?
‘Leonides said I’d find you beside the statue of Victory.’ A young patrician plumped down on the seat next to Claudia, even though it was taken. The affronted occupant moved huffily up. ‘Who’s your money on for the first race?’
‘The augur,’ Claudia replied. ‘If he hangs in there long enough, there won’t be time for one horse race, let alone twelve and he seems very taken with that number, does our augur.’
‘Lip-reading,’ Orbilio said, squinting, ‘he appears to be down to the number seven and its connection between the drivers’ seven laps of the circuit, the seven planets and the seven days of the week. How’s Jovi?’
‘Confused. In his mind, his mother doesn’t love him, whereas complete strangers do.’
‘And the monkey?’
‘Boooooo!’
‘Still decimating my house.’
‘Actually, I was referring to Porsenna.’
Claudia turned so fast in her seat, her cushion spun off. ‘Porsenna makes an excellent companion,’ she said stiffly. ‘Attentive. Generous. Informed.’ You won’t believe what I’ve learned about dormice this week. ‘What can you possibly hold against him?’
‘Other than the fact he’s a complete and utter jerk?’
A hush settled over the Circus. Apparently the race could go ahead, providing the chariots moved to different stalls, the augur said. The crowd harrumphed, and supposed that would do.
Claudia picked up her cushion and punched it back into shape. ‘Porsenna’s a damn sight more fun than that horse-faced trollop you unwrapped from the tomb to take to the Bull Dance. Down the baths they call her the Hostess-With-The-Mostest-And-Most-Of-It-Contagious.’
‘Camilla?’
‘That’s her. Camilla the Bedfiller, that’s how she’s known in the Forum. Knows every stuccoed ceiling in the city.’
His eyebrows quivered a bit, but they never actually lifted off their launchpads. ‘You must be confusing my sister with somebody else.’
Did he say sis— His sister? Why is it, that at the time you most need a change of subject matter, not a word can squeeze past your tonsils? The awkwardness hangs there, like a badly roped suspension bridge, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it, because your brain’s been turned into frogspawn. Claudia bit deep into her bottom lip, and failed to observe the back of Orb
ilio’s hand covering his mouth or that his shoulders appeared to be shaking.
Down in the sand, four bruised and battered charioteers piloted their horses into their newly allotted stalls. The inside mares on Red’s chariot snorted and tossed their heads impatiently, and one of Green’s stallions started to kick. The dust made the race marshals cough. A rope was stretched across the front of the starting boxes and the trumpeter lifted his instrument in readiness.
‘Since we seem to keep missing each other,’ Orbilio said, as the magistrate dropped his handkerchief to signal the start of the race, ‘after my dashing off to examine Zygia’s body, I thought I’d treat you to an update.’
The horses burst free of their boxes. The Red faction, out of the Capricorn stall, lost his advantage in the confusion caused by the trumpeter’s delay. And Claudia’s feather fan seemed hopelessly inefficient.
‘There were rope burns round her neck, proving she’d been lassooed like the others. That’s how he does it, you see. Noose around the neck, knocks them out cold while they’re struggling, then he ties, strips and…well, anyway, that’s what happened to Zygia. Dragged backwards, there were scuff marks on the floor of the Lupercal.’
As all four chariots approached the first bend neck and neck, the thundering of hoofs multiplied a millionfold by the stamping of feet on the boards and the seats. Green faction came out ahead, but Blue was hot on his wheels.
‘But the hair?’ Claudia’s larynx croaked. ‘If it’s so crucial to the ritual, why wasn’t Zygia’s hair cut off and laid in her lap?’
‘That’s what I’d missed,’ he said. ‘When I originally questioned Severina, I was concerned more with Zygia’s movements that day and details of her background. Only later did it sink in that there was nothing for the killer to chop off.’ He shrugged. ‘Zygia kept her curly hair cropped, like a man’s. No, it’s the method of killing that troubles me.’
Blue overtook on the inside down the straight, and having forced Green out to give way, made room for White to move up.
‘He may simply have bottled it? Perhaps he heard footsteps outside and panicked? Then, when they’d retreated, he realized he still had time to make his pretty patterns.’ An opportunity too good to miss.
‘Hmm.’ Orbilio’s gaze fixed on the obelisk. ‘Zygia left Severina in the morning, her body wasn’t found until the afternoon. What happened during those unaccounted hours? Suppose that, instead of going straight to Annia, Zygia calls on the murderer? According to Severina, Zygia had her suspicions.’
‘He lives in Rome, then?’
‘Or a short ride away,’ he said slowly. ‘Imagine: Zygia wants out, she says. Safe passage for Severina and herself, or she goes to the authorities. He agrees, or pretends to, but what he actually does is follow her and before she can warn Annia, because Zygia’s not the type to let an innocent girl be butchered’—Orbilio clicked his fingers—‘hey presto, he drags her into the Wolf Cave. No more blackmail, but sweeter still for him, she’s led him straight to another victim.’
‘Who, despite her sugary veneer and unquenchable confidence in you, my dear Marcus, is a very frightened young woman.’
‘So she should be,’ he said quietly. ‘Although once this business is over, I’ve no idea what the future entails for her.’
‘Marriage to you, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Orbilio laughed, and it was a rich baritone sound. ‘She’s a proper snob, isn’t she? That, more than the signet ring, convinces me she’s Daphne’s granddaughter.’ Sobering, he leaned towards Claudia. ‘But uppermost, she’s Penelope’s,’ he said softly.
For three and a half laps, Claudia listened spellbound as he talked about the girl with the laugh in her voice. The girl who took him scrumping, taught him how to play Twelve Lines, to leapfrog, to harden conkers with vinegar and hot coals. She heard about the husband who volunteered for the army and then died for it, and the desperation with which the young widow mourned. She heard how Daphne Lovernius wrenched baby Annia from her grieving mother’s arms. And finally how bubbly, blonde Penelope consigned her weighted body and weightier soul to Old Man Tiber himself.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Claudia knew there was no way now she could turn Annia out of her house. Not the girl who’d been conceived amid such turgid desperation and then simply thrown to the wolves. And who might yet be prey to another, far deadlier predator…
Happily, though, there’s no law which says you have to like the person whose life it is that you’re protecting.
‘Sometime,’ he said—it was down to a two-chariot race, with White and Green still at the turning post while the other factions galloped full-pelt down the straight—‘I’ll have to confront her with the realities of patrician life, that you can’t just join like a club—’
‘She’ll argue she was born into the aristocracy.’
Orbilio’s sigh could be heard over the roar of a hundred thousand voices cheering on their favourite colour. Come on, Red! Blue! Blue! ‘Her mother was patrician,’ he admitted. ‘But as she had no legal father and since Daphne failed to claim her back before the time limit expired, Annia, like it or not, remains the property of the temple warden. The most she can hope for is freedom.’ He paused. ‘Provided she lives long enough for me to buy it for her.’
Blue was leaning horizontally across his horses to cut down wind resistance. The tyres of Red’s chariot began smoking, and the faction mechanic would probably lose an earlobe for being so careless, although the way the crowd was baying when Red finally bowed out of the race, he’d probably consider himself lucky to escape with his life. To tumultuous applause, Blue took his victorious chariot on a lap of honour and as he trotted down the length of the long central spine, he stopped at the lap markers and solemnly saluted. Once, lap counts had been tallied by huge wooden eggs, but that great man Agrippa had gifted the Circus with life-size bronze dolphins which need not be removed, simply reversed, and, when not required as lap markers, water gushed from their mouths into brilliant blue basins. Since this was the first time since Agrippa had died that they’d been put to use, by the time Blue saluted the seventh and final dolphin, there was not a dry eye in the house. Even the Emperor was sobbing.
‘That’s where I hoped you might come in,’ Marcus said quietly.
Let me think. Claudia counted the points off on her fingers. There’s a maniac sending vicious death threats. A mother-in-law who is actively seeking ways to disinherit me and who has turned my home into a trout farm. A business which is failing. I’m broke. The ragamuffin I took pity on remains pathetically unclaimed, and the only ray of sunshine in his little unloved life is a monkey intent on demolishing my house. Claudia moved to count the fingers on her other hand. On top of that, we have the man who uncovered my past sleeping in my late husband’s bed, while his illegitimate cousin has not only talked me into harbouring a runaway slave, she’s wearing a death sentence which might well entice a sadistic murderer to visit my house. Have I missed anything? I don’t think so.
‘Why should you think I’d want to help?’
‘Because life at the moment is too dull?’
In spite of herself, Claudia chuckled. ‘Just what is it you want from me, Marcus Cornelius?’
Orbilio’s unseeing gaze looked down at the racetrack. Oh, Claudia, how can I answer you that? Dozens of labourers were now raking the sand, a man up a ladder reversed the gleaming dolphins and another stoked the sacred flame of Mars before adding sweet-smelling resins, which, as they burned, sent up clouds of pungent black smoke. What I want from you, Claudia, is for you to tell me Porsenna means nothing. That he’s no more than a diversion to keep Larentia happy. What I want is to hold you in my arms and as the moon rises high in the heavens, whisper our secrets, our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions. Oh, what I want, Claudia, are your kisses. For my fingers to tangle in your wild, dancing curls, to hear the rich cadences of your laugh in my bed. And, Mother of Tarquin, more than anything, I want the courage to tell you—
‘I—
’ He cleared his throat and turned to face her. His eyes were dark with emotion, she saw, his face strained, and she felt an invisible vice tighten inside her. He was so close she could smell the rosewater in which his clothes had been rinsed, his sandalwood unguent, the sweet warm scent of his breath on her cheek. ‘Claudia, this might not be the right place, but I have to tell you how I feel—Janus!’
Grabbing her roughly, he jerked her upright and pushed her towards the aisle. Around her, the crowds had risen to their feet.
‘Quick! To the exit!’
Claudia tried to shake off his arm, but he was shoving her with the full strength of his weight. ‘Will you stop this?’ she protested, knowing how a carved wooden soldier feels being shoved along the board. The noise inside the Circus was deafening.
‘For gods’ sake,’ he hissed. ‘Can’t you see what’s happening down there?’
‘Only if I had eyes in my hairclips,’ she snapped. It might not have occurred to him, but she was going in the wrong direction to look at the race track. ‘Orbilio, will you let go of me, people will think I’m under arrest!’
His sole response was to shove harder, and she tripped up the stairs. People were surging towards them, then her feet were more flying than walking. He did not relax either pace or grip until they were outside.
Claudia pulled away and rubbed at the bruise on her arm. ‘What was all that in aid of?’
Orbilio fell against the high stone wall and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. ‘That—’ As he waited to get his breath back, two bands of legionaries converged on the entrance, swords drawn. ‘—stupid, bloody augur! Didn’t you hear him? From the flight of a flock of pigeons passing overhead, he concluded all further races should be cancelled.’
‘What?’
After the death of their hero just a fortnight before, devastating the entire populace of Rome, these Games were just the tonic they needed. And since there were only ever seventeen days of the year on which races could be held, they’d really worked up a head of steam for today. For some silly bugger to cancel the Games on account of a few birds was utter madness.
