by Marilyn Todd
‘There you are.’ A stumpy individual with wonky gnashers ran to catch up. ‘Thought I’d lost you.’
She could smell the stale sweat from five paces. ‘Wrong lady, I’m afraid.’
‘A couple of streets back, when the military pushed past—’
‘Is this the right way to the Collina Gate?’ Dear Diana, did this man need a bath! No wonder the street was deserted. Hell, he’d probably clear Rome when he pulled off his boots.
‘—that’s when I lost sight of you.’
‘Look.’ It could happen to anyone, but she wished he’d take his hand off her arm. Heaven knows what sort of a stain it would leave. ‘For the last time—’
‘Now we can live out our dreams.’
‘— I don’t know who it is you’re chasing, but,’ Claudia held the torch up to light her face, ‘I am Claudia Seferius.’
There was a manic grin on his face, and his eyes glittered. ‘Yes. And now we’re free to live out our dreams.’ He was drunk, of course, but it made little difference.
‘Let go of me, you clod.’ She tried to shake his hand free, but the grip was a vice.
‘Where would you like?’ Fingers bit into her flesh and she yelped. ‘Here looks nice.’
Goddammit, he was dragging her towards one of the warehouse entrances. Merciful Mars, please let it be locked.
‘Help!’
The door gave under a push of the man’s filthy shoulder.
‘HELP!’
The only voice that came back was her echo.
Claudia thrust the burning bitumen towards her attacker, but as though it was a cake she was offering, he twisted the torch from her grasp and tossed it into the gutter, where the flames fizzled out in the rivulets of the drain. There was no point yelling. Save your strength for the fight. In the murky dawn light, Claudia could make out skid marks left by her heels. She saw sweat stains on his tunic, and clots of stale food.
‘Let go of me, you bastard!’ Her nails dug into the wood of the door jamb.
His breath reeked, and his lice-ridden hair stank of fish. Almost as though he was oblivious to her frantic struggle, her attacker continued to talk. ‘They tried,’ he said, his arm locking fast round her waist from behind. ‘But I knew they couldn’t succeed.’
A filthy black hand began to prise her fingers away, one by one. Squirming, kicking, writhing, Claudia was dragged along the pitch-painted wall. Whatever he was on—magic mushrooms, hemp seed, Sumerian poppy dope—she prayed the effects would quickly wear off. This man not only believed himself Adonis, he had the strength of a god, too.
‘Such soft skin,’ he said, sliding a calloused hand inside her tunic. ‘Such firm tits. Just like you told me.’
He pinched her nipple and when she screamed, she could feel his sharp intake of breath. ‘Look! Flour sacks,’ he breathed, wrestling his frenzied victim across the cleanly swept flags. ‘Over there, Claudia. Do you see? Soft, white sacks for our bedding.’
The hairs on her neck bristled. The way he said ‘Claudia’… As though he knew her…
‘I don’t know how they thought they could keep us apart,’ he was saying, and she doubted whether he’d noticed her heel hammering against his shinbone. ‘True love will always conquer.’
‘Get your filthy hands off me,’ she spat, gouging her fingernails deep in his flesh.
True love will always conquer. Where had she heard that before?
‘You’re on fire for it.’ He thrust his tongue inside her ear.
She sank her teeth deep in his forearm. Tasted blood.
‘Oh, how you long for it.’
She bit harder.
‘Feel me, Claudia. Feel me against you.’ He tore off her cloak in one wrench. ‘Say you want it. Say how you want me.’
Her heart was pounding. She felt faint. Sick. About to pass out.
‘Go to hell!’ Was that mouse squeak really hers?
The hand in her tunic squeezed hard on her breast. ‘Don’t lie to me, Claudia. Never lie to me. Not to me, understand?’
‘Please,’ she begged, tears clouding her eyes both from pain and from fear. ‘Please let me go.’
‘Don’t be shy.’ The hand round her waist slid past her stomach. ‘Let me feel you. Oh, yes. Oh, that’s nice.’
‘Please! You’re hurting me—’
Her flailing arms could find no target, and tears coursed down her cheeks. Tears of shame, tears of fear, tears of guilt. How stupid could she be, sending Junius ahead? Talk about arrogance! Even if he had set off now to look, he’d never find her. Please, she prayed. Someone help me…
‘That’s really nice, Claudia.’ His breath was fast and ragged.
Her frantic kicks and her struggles only spurred him on. ‘Bitch on heat,’ he rasped. ‘You’re a fucking bitch on heat.’ The obscenities increased. Vulgar. Repetitive. An ugly, unstoppable chant. Just like Magic wrote in his tirades of filth.
Oh no! Sweet Jupiter, no! Claudia’s blood turned to ice and her head swam. Please, no. Not that unstable lunatic! Not here!
‘Magic?’ she squeaked.
Now she could see the ink blots on his clothing, his hands stained black from it. It was all that he did, writing. It was obvious. He ate only to stop himself from starving. Cared nothing for personal hygiene. And now it was no longer a question of rape. This man was a monster, his fantasies warped…
‘I knew you’d replied to my letters.’ He wrenched her skirts up. ‘Only someone was stealing them, did you know that? I’ll find him, this thief. I’ll bring you his balls as a present. Or maybe his heart? Would you like that? You could eat it.’
As his hand slithered across her naked thigh, his stinking breath threw out another tirade of cruelty. Claudia clawed at thin air. He was strong. Demented. She couldn’t break free, she couldn’t fight back. Or now could she?
Silly bitch, why didn’t you think of it before! If only she could reach that knife she’d strapped to her ankle…
Magic threw her headlong into the sacking and lifted his tunic to expose himself fully. ‘Want it?’ he breathed.
Claudia screwed up her courage. ‘Yes,’ she croaked.
As he launched himself upon her, she spun sideways. Felt the blade in her hand.
‘Whore,’ he yelled, then total surprise washed over his face. ‘But… But…’
As Claudia struggled free of the slippery sacks, he knelt staring at the knife in his side. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Claudia, why?’ His eyes were those of a whipped puppydog, a portrait of utter betrayal.
‘Why did you kill me?’ he asked. ‘Magic loves you! Magic’d never hurt you. Not ever.’
Claudia stood riveted on the cold, stone floor. Physical disease she could deal with. Jaundice, dropsy, pneumonia, no problem. But confronted with mental illness, she froze. She watched, mesmerized, as Magic staggered to his feet. Magic swayed. Magic pulled out the knife. Magic roared. Not with pain, but with anger, and any compassion Claudia felt, any confusion, vanished on the spot. Blood spurted from the wound in his side, gushing on to the flagstones, and suddenly he was lumbering towards her, stabbing with the knife. Her knife!
Terrified, Claudia ran into the street as Magic, hands red with blood, stumbled after her.
‘Bitch! You treacherous bitch! Come back here!’
Even in the next alley, she could hear him.
‘I’ll kill you, you fucking treacherous bitch! Do you hear me? I’ll fucking KILL YOU!’
Swamped by nausea, every limb shaking and her teeth clashing like castanets, Claudia fell against a wall for support. Where was everybody? Janus, she’d been dragged off the streets, almost raped and these people were still sleeping? Lumbering steps echoed in the grey dawn light. Holy shit, run!
And run she did. Past the mills which, at any other season, were beehives full of millers and sackmen, porters and donkeymen, the dry air alive with clipped orders, where flour would tickle your nose, make you cough. It would never echo like it did now. Claudia could hear her own light footsteps, and
a heavier, dragging tread from behind… Rounding a corner, she collided with a solid mass of horseflesh.
‘Move aside, you’re blocking the road!’
The boy who sat perched upon the animal looked down his snooty, freckled nose. ‘My father hired this horse for me to try out. It’s my birthday.’
‘Out the way!’
‘He’s magnificent, isn’t he? I might ask Father to buy him.’
Perhaps the horse might pay more attention. ‘Shift,’ Claudia told it, ‘or prepare for the gluepot.’
Any second now Magic will come stumbling round the corner…
The boy was stroking the animal’s mane. ‘He’s called Comet, he’s so fast.’
‘Is he?’ Claudia licked her lips. ‘Then it’s about time he showed us.’ She yanked the kid off and jumped into the saddle.
‘Hey!’
It was one hell of a way up. And having never sat astride a monster like this, bloody uncomfortable, too. ‘Gee up.’ That’s what they say, isn’t it. ‘Gee up’?
‘That’s stealing.’ The boy scrambled to his feet.
‘Damn right.’ Comet? It hadn’t budged a hoof.
The boy was frantic. ‘Gerroff, you!’
Claudia leaned into the animal’s ear. ‘Ssssssss.’
‘He’s mine, give him back!’ the boy cried, pulling at Claudia’s ankle.
She tried again. ‘Ssssssss.’
Then there was no question of how Comet came by his name. Houses, shops and streets flew past in a blur as Claudia clung to his shiny black neck. People screamed, cursed and yelled as the horse cut right through them, his hooves clattering and slithering over the cobbles. In the Circus Maximus, they do seven laps then they’re whacked. Kid’s stuff to this beast.
‘Whooa, boy. Whooa.’ But the horse wasn’t stupid. It knew a cobra when it heard one, and concentrated on putting more distance between them. Claudia began to feel dizzy. Then seasick. Finally, when vital organs started to shake hands with each other, she screwed up her eyes and clung like a barnacle. She thought of her mission to Arbil’s. Dammit, Marcus Cornelius, you’ll have to find another mug to play sodding detective. I’m paralysed.
Mercifully, gallop slowed to canter, canter to stop. Claudia prised her eyelids apart. Where the hell was she? Comet seemed happy, clip-clopping his way across this stable yard to bury his big, black nose in the manger. His breath steamed white on the cool morning air. As did Claudia’s.
An elderly groom came limping over. ‘Comet, old boy, what are you doing back so soon? I thought you’d been hired for the day?’
He seemed not to notice the rider, who landed in a boneless heap on the flagstones. Never mind asteroids, she thought. More like haemorrhoids. The horse snickered with pleasure and chomped noisily on the sweet-smelling hay.
‘Madam?’ A familiar face thrust itself in front of Claudia’s.
‘Junius?’ The horse has thrown me, I’m concussed. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Doing where? What was this? Was she dead? Were Claudia and Comet about to meet Gaius in the afterlife?
‘Just after dawn, you said.’ The young Gaul helped his mistress to her feet. ‘First post house beyond the Collina Gate?’
‘You mean—’ Claudia looked round in amazement. Of all the ironies…!
And yet was it so surprising? She knew she’d been close to the Gate, of course a horse would head home. It’s his nature, you clumping daft tart.
Clouds of brown dust billowed from her skirts when she shook them. Dammit, she needed the baths to wash away the smell—the feel—the taste—of that slimeball who called himself Magic. Her hands, she saw, were still shaking. From the ride, she told herself. What else?
Come on, it was self-defence, that stabbing. What other option was there?
She wiped her hair from her eyes. After a long, slow massage with aromatic oils, you’ll be fine. Muscle fatigue fades, so do bruises. You can throw yourself into the Games, there’s five full days left, and today there’s a play on by Terence. Later, there’s a reading by torchlight. Ovid. Or was it Virgil? Afterwards there’ll be dancing and drinking and music, we’ll all wear garlands, and incense will burn on every street corner. I must have been mad to think of leaving the city!
‘Junius,’ she said, spitting out another large chunk of Comet’s mane. ‘Make sure it’s mares who pull the car to Arbil’s ranch.’
I’ve no wish to fly on Pegasus again.
XXV
The landscape opened up. There were shrines at crossroad junctions, picnickers by the roadside, and musicians on the move, making it easy not to think of Magic. Soon the hillsides would be swathed in drifts of blossoms from the blackthorn and the pear. Isn’t that this year’s first swallowtail, fluttering drunkenly across the clearing? Watch the baby bunnies scatter at the clip-clop of the wheels.
Forget the gush of blood upon the flagstones of the granary.
Forget the rancid stench of his clothing and his breath.
Forget his slithering pursuit. His filthy, ugly hands upon your flesh.
Let the warble of the skylark mask the screeching of his threats. Pray the sight of bounding deer smothers the obscene intimacy of his touch…
‘I think that’s it, there.’
Claudia was jolted out of her nightmare when Junius tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed to a narrow turning on the right. The rich brown soil had become thinner, she noticed, and less fertile, being mostly olive groves; and the incline had grown markedly sharper. About half a mile along they passed a sign.
THESE LANDS BELONG TO ARBIL.
THEY ARE SUBJECT TO BABYLONIAN LAW.
A few minutes later they caught up with a cart, its axle low from charcoal and logs, fresh rushes and grass. Cabbages and parsnips bulged out of sacks, there were red beets and white, rhubarb and carrots. Coneys, pheasant and teal hung from rings around their broken necks and joggled with the bumps of the wheels. Then the wagon turned into a shed where a gang of youths dispensed pulses, dried fruit and grain. Each had a blue tattoo on his arm, and Claudia shivered. These then, were the Children of Arbil. The enormity of the complex was breathtaking. And the noise! Even prepared for Arbil raising kids as cash crops, Claudia hadn’t quite grasped the immensity of his task. The profusion of workers tilling, hoeing, irrigating and manuring the light, dry soil, called to one another as they worked. Oxen bent to the plough lowed mournfully. Chickens clucked, donkeys brayed, pigs, sheep and goats put in their own oars. Babies bawled, children squealed, there was singing, chanting, hammering and sawing from a constant throb of people. Hundreds of children live here, she thought, her eyes brimming with tears. Hundreds of children, for whom this was their only home, Arbil their only parent. Hundreds of them. Unwanted—and unloved.
Her car rumbled through an imposing marble gateway into a courtyard ringed with fountains and shaded with plane trees and shrubs. Statues of strange gods bearing even stranger symbols stood guard. Her eye caught an eight-point star beside one, bulls by another. And there was no mistaking that dragon! Waiting in the cool of a colonnade scented with pots of hothouse lilies, Claudia noticed movement behind the terracotta grid which bisected the garden and on the pretext of sniffing the oleanders which grew against the screen, put her eye to the diamond aperture. Three men huddled round the wicket gate, talking in tones too low to make out. One, she could see clearly. Dressed foppishly, with hair half-way down his shoulders, he bore the hook nose that betrayed his ancestry. That would be Sargon, the son, but there was something about him that seemed vaguely familiar. Where the devil had she seen him before? And what made her think of music? Of trumpets and drums?
The second of the trio was visible to her only in profile, but his distinctive Greekness stood out. Handsome, strong, he, too, had a sharp taste in dress—look at those fancy fringed boots. But…wasn’t he also familiar? For a moment she couldn’t place him, then, with a shudder, Claudia recognized the lush embroidery on his cuffs. Jupiter, Juno and Mars, this was one of the Midden Hunters who h
ad passed her the night she found Jovi. The cultured one who’d been taking the bet.
Pushing the bush aside for a better view of the third man, Claudia’s heart skipped a beat. He wore a simple belted tunic and high riding boots, but unlike his companions, there were no rings on his fingers, no gold torque hung round his neck. He was nodding, this third man. Making his mane of hair unmistakable.
Now what, Claudia frowned, brings Kaeso out here?
‘Yes?’ The hostility of the voice could have cracked ice.
Claudia plucked a pink oleander and buried her nose in its perfume before answering. The questioner’s raven black hair was knotted loosely at the back, bracelets jangled from ankles and wrists and a turquoise robe set off her Indus beauty to perfection. Only two things marred the girl’s loveliness. Her cold, narrowed eyes and the bruise on the side of her face.
In explaining the reason for her visit, Claudia expected to encounter resistance, disbelief even. A woman in business? With a proposition for Arbil? Instead the stiffness in the girl’s shoulders lessened. ‘Come inside.’ The lips were no longer pursed.
Surreptitiously Claudia wiped the milky juice which oozed from the plant’s leathery leaves down the back of her gown. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to wait here. In the cool.’
Instantly the rancour was back. ‘As you wish.’ Malevolent eyes swivelled to the terracotta grid and back to Claudia. ‘But beware,’ she hissed. ‘The man’s a degenerate.’
Curious, Claudia watched her stomp away, the bangles jarring with every angry stride, then she pulled the oleander bush aside and put her eye to the grid. The gate was closed now. Sargon leaned with his hand on the hasp and laughed as the good looking Greek cracked a joke. Of Kaeso there wasn’t a sign.
Except, in the spot where he’d stood, a wolf with a streak of silver down its back lay panting in the sunshine.
And then she remembered. That’s where the trumpets and drums fitted in. The two dandies, arriving separately and late—at the Bull Dance.
