by Marilyn Todd
Claudia’s hands were shaking as she positioned the cerise ribbon over the blade. Quickly, quickly, she urged Nemesis. Annia had grabbed fistfuls of Orbilio’s curls and was repeatedly smashing his head on the floor. The bands parted. Claudia raced into the atrium and, with both hands held high, raised Nemesis to strike.
Shit!
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bloody do it!
She told herself it was because she might miss, or that Annia might grab the knife, but the truth was, Claudia could not kill in cold blood. Shit, shit, shit. Dropping the weapon, she reached for a vase full of peonies and aimed it at Annia’s head. There was a crack. Water spurted in a thousand directions. Annia faltered and for one terrible minute Claudia feared the bitch was invincible. Then Annia’s eyes rolled and with a low moan she toppled sideways on to the floor.
It was over.
Claudia’s breath came out in a hiss. At long last, it was over.
The self-styled Market Day Murderer might not be crossing the Styx with the ferryman, but soon she would be marched through crowded streets to the cells beneath the Capitol. A trial would follow (a mere formality) and then would come her public execution—though Rome would want its money’s worth. For Annia, as for her victims, death would be protracted.
‘You know,’ Marcus wheezed. ‘I’m beginning to wonder whether being beaten up once a week is the norm around these parts.’
‘Count yourself lucky,’ Claudia grinned. ‘Some men don’t get beaten up twice in a lifetime, never mind twice in a fortnight.’
Across the atrium, the pool sparkled, merrily indifferent. Happy sunshine bathed the marble busts. She looked at Annia, whose skin was as flawless as the finest alabaster and whose flaxen locks lay soiled and sodden under a shower of lacquered petals. What a waste, thought Claudia. What a waste of Spanish peonies.
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you expect me to fetch the keys to those handcuffs, as well.’
When Orbilio blinked the blood out of his eyes there was a faint trace of a sparkle. ‘You don’t seem to have anything else on at the moment.’
Ah! Colour flooded Claudia’s cheeks. She’d forgotten she was naked apart from a thong! With a militant toss of her curls, she covered her breasts with her hands and marched towards the bath room. He could jolly well stay there for that! Right. What she needed on these cuts was centaury so they wouldn’t leave a scar, but first she ought to flush them out with opobalsam—
‘Claudia!’
The warning came too late.
Claudia spun round, but Annia was shaking off the pot shards and the peonies. Simultaneously three pairs of eyes picked out Nemesis, glinting in a pool of sunshine beneath a marble bust.
Time seemed to freeze. Like a painted fresco, every movement was captured in minutest detail and yet there was no sound. She saw Marcus, his hair matted with blood, try to trip Annia. She saw him open his mouth, knew that he shouted. She watched Annia duck round him, laughing. Triumphant. Her sodden hair the colour of quarzite. Claudia saw the cornelians on Nemesis, and the blood of hundreds as well as her own. The water clock dripped, and Annia was gaining. No way could Claudia get there first! She screwed up her eyes and launched herself at the weapon, the tip of her outstretched finger connecting just as Annia’s hand was about to close over the hilt. Nemesis spun across the floor.
‘Bitch!’ Annia screamed.
She turned upon Claudia, who rolled on to her back to fend off the blows. The knife was just three paces away!
‘Wish now you’d stuck it in me?’
By the gods, yes. Next time there’ll be no hesitation. Claudia’s arms lashed out to defend herself as Annia clawed and punched. With a mighty thrust, her knee found Annia’s stomach and she heard the air expelled from her lungs. Scrambling to her feet, she lunged for the blade, but this time it was Annia who kicked it away.
‘This is more fun, don’t you think, Claudia?’ Annia beckoned with both hands. ‘A fight to the death?’ So confident was she that she even took time out to glance across to Orbilio. ‘Does this excite you, Marcus? Make you hard? Two women, naked, in a catfight over you?’
Her confidence was unnerving. This was no arrogant posturing. Annia was sure she would win. She might be short, but she was strong and wiry, and dammit, she was using Nemesis as bait. Claudia’s eyes flickered round. That was the thing about atriums. There’s never anything in them. Sure, she could try and lift a marble bust, but Annia would quickly beat her to it. Turn, and the bitch would jump on her back. Run? Claudia had no doubts that, in her present frame of mind, Annia could outrun her. Her heart was thumping painfully and the sweat was pouring down her face. Dammit, there was no other choice. She’d have to try for the knife.
But where was it? Croesus, it must have slid under a couch.
A momentary glance was all it took. The second Claudia’s eyes left Annia’s, she flew, her hands clamping round Claudia’s throat, her thumbs crushing her windpipe. Retching, Claudia tried to pull Annia away. The grip held.
‘Are you watching this, Marcus?’ Annia called out.
Over a shoulder streaming with long golden hair, Claudia saw his face, bloodied and twisted and snarling with pain. He was shouting, and she couldn’t hear what he said. Did it matter? Did anything matter now? She was kicking and struggling, but her flailings were wild and her arms had the strength of a baby. Why bother? she thought. Why the hell bother? In Annia’s triumphant blue eyes, Claudia saw a reflection of herself. And the image was dying.
A red mist swirled over the image. Her head was on fire, sparks flashed. From somewhere she heard the word ‘push’. It made no sense, but blinded, with the mist turning to purple and a torrent raging past her ears, instinct told her she must obey. Balling her fists, Claudia pushed her knuckles hard against Annia’s ribcage.
‘What does defeat feel like, Claudia?’ trilled a triumphant sing-song voice. ‘Is this how you imagined failure?’
Her head was about to explode. The world had gone black, she heard gargling mixed with laughter mixed with shouting. Still Claudia shoved.
Sweet Janus, Annia’s voice would be the last thing she heard.
‘What does it feel like to die, Claudia?’
‘You tell me,’ a man growled.
There was a bump, and suddenly Claudia was tumbling backwards on to the floor. Black turned to purple, purple to red, red to white. The mist cleared, but her throat was still gargling. She looked up. Annia was standing with her back to the pillar. Her eyes started out from their sockets.
‘How…’ A rattle came deep in her throat and she jerked. ‘How…’
The next time she jerked, blood gushed from her mouth. Speedwell blue eyes glazed over. Then she tipped forward on to her face. As Claudia scrambled free of the falling body, she saw the hilt between Annia’s chiselled shoulderblades. Cornelians twinkled in the afternoon sun.
Behind the column, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio looked ashen. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Never better,’ she rasped. It was the truth.
Groggy, she rose to her feet. What a fine time for irony and Annia to meet. When she kicked the knife out of Claudia’s reach, she’d unwittingly sent it to Marcus. ‘Push,’ he had shouted, holding the weapon point forwards. ‘Push, Claudia!’
Nemesis indeed.
Annia impaled upon her own killing machine.
Marcus was shaking, there was blood in his hair, down his face, all over his tunic. The cousin he’d tried to protect lay dead by his own hand, his childhood memories shattered and destroyed. Yet he was smiling. ‘About those keys,’ he said softly.
When Claudia turned away, there were tears in the place where the red mist had been.
In the office, she leaned her hands flat on the desk and waited for her heart to stop pounding. The show was over here, as it was down on the Field of Mars. Around now, the Theatre of Marcellus would be spilling its audience into the street. Carefree and elated, they’d head for taverns and eateries or take strolls by the river and make
proposals of marriage to unsuitable partners, buoyed on the tide of excitement.
Claudia studied her peach-coloured tunic, heavy and stiff with her blood, then clipped it around her with the butterfly brooches. I have won, she told Annia. Not lost.
So I can wear this gown because it—and you—do not matter. In the peristyle, Drusilla rolled on to her back and twisted left and right on the gravel path as the sun set low over the Palatine.
That’s something else you’ve got wrong, Annia. Not only will Arbil stay in business to rescue orphans, but up there, in the Imperial Palace, Augustus won’t be toppled by seditions or uprisings resulting from Agrippa’s premature death. He’s too shrewd for that. He’ll find a way through.
We all do.
Satisfying red streaks adhered to an otherwise spotless pleated tunic as Claudia searched for the key to the handcuffs and she felt she could almost hear Annia’s ghost squawk in protest. Well, she thought, dangling her find from her index finger, Rome might be cheated of a trial and execution, but the death of this elfin killer has done no harm to a certain individual’s prospects for the Senate House.
‘Catch!’ She tossed the key to Marcus and stepped over Annia’s body lying in a pool of its own congealing blood.
‘Aren’t you going to give me a hand here?’ he asked.
‘Good heavens, man, you’ve already got two, surely you don’t expect me to run round after you like a lackey.’
‘We could negotiate,’ he muttered, after his fifth blind stab at the lock. ‘You get me out of this ticklish predicament, I get you out of your mess with the moneylender.’
‘Mess with the moneylender?’ Claudia echoed, passing the atrium pool. ‘I fear you’ve misjudged me, Marcus Cornelius. I have no debts to settle.’
Oh, come on. You didn’t seriously imagine Claudia Seferius would let Arbil bury a dozen precious gems with his wretched demon? Not when pebbles would serve equally well?
As she climbed the stairs, Claudia watched Orbilio wrestle with the lock. He’s trapped a killer, saved the Empire, stopped a paedophile—goddammit. She smiled a short, lopsided smile. He’ll be positively insufferable in the future.
Future?
Did I say future? On the top step, she paused, inhaling the lavender and myrrh wafting from the braziers. For a moment, she imagined she caught a whiff of sandalwood, too—his sandalwood—but then again, maybe not. The wooden gallery creaked underfoot and she sighed. Her immediate future involved a bath, a few healing herbs and a restorative hug from Drusilla…but beyond that?
Maybe, thought Claudia, it was time she considered the longer term. All right, she owned a wine business, this house, plus a villa and a vineyard in Etruria—but let’s face it, money isn’t everything.
Hadn’t she always said so?
About the Author
Marilyn Todd was born in Harrow, England, but now lives with her husband on a French hilltop, surrounded by châteaux, woodlands and vines. As well as sixteen historical thrillers, Marilyn also writes short stories, which are mostly crime-based. When she isn't killing people, Marilyn enjoys cooking. Which is pretty much the same thing. Look for her next novel, Jail Bait, coming in ebook form soon.
www.marilyntodd.com
Jail Bait
A deadly contagion has sent many of Rome’s wealthier citizens fleeing to the country—but for Claudia Seferius, caught in the act of stealing, plague is the least of her worries.
Taking refuge in the beautiful spa resort of Atlantis, Claudia makes friends with a charming young man called Cal, where a little flirting in tranquil lakeside surroundings seems an ideal way to pass the time. But within hours Cal is dead.
And he’s not the only one.
Pretty soon Claudia begins to wonder whether Atlantis isn’t a lot more dangerous than the disease-ridden streets she left behind…
*
The opening scenes from Claudia’s latest mystery, Jail Bait, follow here.
I
No-one could say for certain quite how it started. Some blamed that pot-bellied quarrymaster, home from Numidia. Others suggested it was the legacy of two Lebanese flautists passing through on their way to Iberia. Who could say? But like the first blue wisp of a heath fire, it passed virtually unnoticed, for the citizens of Rome had more pressing things on their minds.
The first two weeks of May had been treacherously hot, a vicious reminder of why so few festivals were scheduled in a month set aside not for rejoicing but for restraint. For purification rites rather than revelry. Some years the problem was cold, scorching the vines and wizening the buds; other years rain, inducing the blight and the mildew and worms in the cattle. In fact, so grim were May’s auspices, marriages were rarely contracted and as crops in the countryside shrivelled, cityfolk discovered that, virtually overnight, Rome was transformed from a glamorous metropolis into a stinking, fly-riddled furnace.
What use were great soaring arches, triumphal basilicas, if your children had no air to breathe? When the meat for your dinner turned rancid, fruit rotted, and the poison from the quills of the wryneck bird could not hold back the rats? No longer confined to the slums, vermin scampered openly over the Forum, leaving droppings on tables and plates and on pillows. Sleep was impossible. And when people arose, crotchety and drained, their tunics would cling to their flesh regardless of how often they bathed. Purple hollows formed under their eyes and even Old Man Tiber began showing his age. Dark brown and sluggish, his treacly current stank worse than the sewers, and although aqueducts fetched treasured water down from the hills, the channels were covered and this generated heat of its own.
Thus, as a million souls gulped tepid water and prayed to Jupiter for mercy’s sake, for all our sakes’, please send a change in the weather, so the little blue wisp gathered strength.
At first it was just the wife of a carpenter. A slight hoarseness. A fever. A few livid spots on her chest. Crushed by the heat and mistrustful of doctors, she dosed herself with fenugreek and took to her bed, smug at the money she’d saved.
Then two small boys, the sons of a wheelwright, succumbed and their mother had no such qualms about medics. They had expelled her husband’s bladder stones, cured her sister’s colic and had eased her father’s pain with henbane when he lay dying. But by the time the physician arrived at her home, four more cases had been reported on the Quirinal Hill.
And the little blue wisp that was Plague prepared to lay waste its territory.
II
One hundred miles to the north, the air was no less sultry, the heat every bit as oppressive, yet the plague was the least of Claudia’s worries. She’d needed out, and she’d needed out fast, and this luxurious spa was as good a place as any to lie low for a while. Only—
‘Hrrrrow!’
Inside her cage, Drusilla, Claudia’s blue-eyed, cross-eyed dark Egyptian cat, took the opportunity to remind her mistress how uncomfortable it was inside this wooden crate and how long it had been since she’d had a proper mouse, adding that if Claudia had any decent feelings whatsoever, she’d stop buggering about and get the hell indoors.
‘Stow it, you flea-riddled feline,’ Claudia hissed back. ‘I could have left you in Rome.’ To contend with feral dogs scavenging the runnels, to be chased from the bakeshops, kicked aside by the hucksters, snarled at by beggars. ‘You, my girl, should count lucky stars. Just look where I’ve brought you.’
Stretching out before them, the placid waters of Lake Plasimene shimmered in the haze, its reed-lined shores a blur, the wooded hills which sheltered them the merest blue smudge. In place of the multitude of sweating humanity all snapping, bumping, joggling their way through a maze of twisty lanes, day crickets rasped among the pines like blunted woodsaws and a spotted lizard scampered over the flagstones to disappear into a crack in the wall. Here, the air was redolent with bay trees and balm, and lavender and pinks filled the place of stale wine from smoky taverns and the sulphurous stench from the fullers’ yards.
From the corner of Drusilla’s wood
en crate came a subdued ‘Mrrr’ at the pronounced absence of screaming children, the graunch of millwheels, the deep piles of muleshit.
‘I know.’ Claudia sighed aloud in sympathy. ‘Hell, isn’t it?’
She paused outside the gold-painted gates to tip the lackey who had carried her trunk. It was not too late to turn back…
Oh, come on, who are you kidding? Thanks to the epidemic, half the city’s emptied out, there isn’t one goddamned bed from the Alps to the Sorrentine peninsular which has not been laid claim to, be thankful you’re booked in here! She shifted Drusilla’s crate to her other hand and passed through the archway. Nailed to the gate was a schedule of events and Claudia scanned the list. Thanks to Pylades the Greek discovering a spring on this cliff-like promontory which projected several hundred yards into the lake, all manner of diversions appeared to be on offer, from mud wallows to massage, perfuming to pedicures, and let’s not forget the spa waters themselves, but—
‘What’s on at the arena?’ she enquired of the janitor.
‘No arena,’ he sniffed. ‘Only the foundations dug out so far.’
Fair enough. ‘The theatre?’
‘Well, the wall is mostly up. I reckon first production should open, come autumn.’
Good grief, a girl could have popped her clogs from boredom long before then. ‘Then,’ Claudia lowered her voice, ‘where will I find the dice games?’
‘Dice?’
‘Yes, yes, I know they’re illegal.’ That never stops them. ‘Where can I join in?’
‘Ah,’ he said, scratching his beard. ‘There’s a choir performing tonight.’
‘Hrrrrroww.’ The sound might have come from Drusilla or her mistress.
With a depressing sense of foreboding, Claudia followed the travertine path towards the flight of red marble steps. Catering purely for the monied classes, Pylades had spared no expense in constructing this magnificent lakeside retreat, incorporating libraries and loggias, museums and great works of art…and choirs! Across the lake, a great crested grebe dived for molluscs and a black tern hovered over its reflection in the shimmering waters. Dammit, this exile into purgatory wouldn’t be necessary if she’d been given half a chance to explain. To point out that she’d looked upon that money as a loan. That come the end of the month she’d intended to replace those wretched coins, perhaps even add a spot of interest, should a certain Syrian charioteer finish first again.
