by Marilyn Todd
Her head was hurting badly from where it hit the wall, she’d bitten her tongue and she was also feeling sick. Whether the nausea was from the knock or from fright wasn’t really important.
‘What do you want?’
‘Good girl.’ The voice was back to its low, sibilant menace. ‘Now let’s go out back and talk, yes?’
He jerked his thumb towards the terrified coppersmith cowering in the shadows.
‘And you. Start hammering or you won’t have no hand to hammer with.’
Claudia found herself bundled into the back of the workshop, the ringing of the metal making her dizzy. To her surprise, there were tears in her eyes. Otho shoved her towards the back wall. Close up, she could see there was a deep red scar running the length of his cheek and she shivered. What befell the man who made it didn’t bear thinking about.
‘How much does he want?’ Dear Diana, was that squeak hers?
Otho placed his hands flat against the wall. She wasn’t pinned, but the result was the same. ‘How much you owe Master Lucan?’
‘T-t-two thousand sesterces.’
‘Two thousand four hundred.’ Otho bared his teeth. ‘You forgotten the interest.’
That much? Bugger. This visit was turning into a right bloody mess, she couldn’t let it continue.
‘All right. I’ll send him a hundred sesterces by…by the middle of next week.’ Miracles do happen occasionally, but this at least would buy her time.
Otho leaned forward, his face almost touching her own. ‘Three hundred,’ he whispered. ‘By the weekend.’
She felt whatever colour was left drain out of her face. ‘I can’t do that!’ Even if I throw myself on Gaius’s mercy and for some unbelievable reason he said yes, it was still impossible. ‘My husband’s away. There’s been a death in the family.’ Good heavens, was this pitiful babble really her? ‘I can’t raise three hundred in time.’
One finger gently traced a line down her cheek. ‘Three hundred, Claudia. Or you and I, we be matching book-ends. You have my promise on that.’
Her mind made rapid calculations. Would Gaius divorce her if she was disfigured? Not if she told him it was a vicious street gang. Except…except she’d look like a bloody chequerboard by the time Otho had finished and Lucan still wouldn’t be any closer to getting his account settled!
‘Look. Maybe you and I could do a deal.’ She tried to calm her breathing. ‘Instead of spending your money on tavern girls, suppose you and I…got together?’ The raddled old whores only charged eight asses, it would take three lifetimes!
‘Maybe.’ His accent was so thick now, it was almost unrecognizable. ‘But first let Otho see what he’ll be getting.’
His left hand slid slowly along her shoulder down her upper arm and across to her breast. She shuddered involuntarily and watched his face split into a grin. Claudia thought she’d never seen anything more closely resembling a death rictus. Her heart was thumping. This man enjoys hurting people. She forced herself to look him in the eye as his hand moved inside her stola and under her tunic.
‘Nice tits.’ He began to squeeze.
She could bring her knee up, now, and…
‘Well? Do we have a deal or don’t we?’
As his right hand moved between her legs two men burst through the door from the workshop, dragging a third man, bruised and bleeding.
‘Junius!’
The coppersmith hammered frantically in the background. There was no rhythm to it, he was simply pounding the metal as though his life depended on it. Which, of course, it might.
‘Look what we’ve found sniffing around the shop.’ They were laughing. ‘Her ladyship’s dog.’
Otho grabbed hold of Claudia’s hair and dragged her forward by it. ‘Yours, yes?’ His voice was back to its quiet, conversational menace. ‘What you think this mongrel’s after?’
Junius tried to struggle free, but a boot thudding into his kidneys changed his mind. He buckled to his knees. They hauled him upright.
‘Leave him alone!’
Otho moved forward to look at him. ‘I wonder maybe this dirty dog he cock his leg up her ladyship? What you think, boys?’
The lewd gestures sent Claudia’s blood cold. ‘Don’t be disgusting. He’s just a slave, let him go.’
The two thugs pretended to howl and bark.
“We can no do that, Claudia. You see, he been very bad dog,’ Otho said quietly, fixing Claudia with his eye. ‘He poke around in places that no concern him. We have to teach him a lesson.’
‘He was only looking for me, for pity’s sake. He’d get a thrashing if he returned alone.’
Otho ignored her. ‘Show him price for being naughty, boys.’
The thugs exchanged glances and grinned. Junius’s eyes pleaded with Claudia, but as she moved towards him Otho jerked her back by the hair, bringing tears to her eyes.
‘You watch.’ He twisted her hair round his wrist and pulled it tight.
There was nothing she could do as one thug laughingly headbutted the young Gaul on the nose, sending a stream of blood pouring down his tunic. As Junius’s hands flew towards his face, the headbutter rammed a pole behind his elbows to render him helpless while the other slipped a ring of metal round his knuckles. One held the pole firm as the other systematically pummelled the boy’s ribs. Claudia heard a sickening crack before they turned their attention on the softness of his stomach and kidneys. When they finally finished, panting from their efforts, Junius crumpled to the floor—and this time they left him.
‘Not just dogs.’ Otho ran his finger down Claudia’s cheek again. ‘Naughty bitches, too,’ he whispered. ‘So no forget, Claudia. Three hundred—by the weekend.’
He finally released her hair.
‘Always a pleasure, Claudia.’ When he planted a kiss on her cheek, she nearly threw up. He stood in the doorway and grinned. ‘Nice tits.’
One of the thugs leaned down over Junius, who was groaning quietly, balled his fist and slammed it into the boy’s mouth. There was a series of crashes from the workshop, as they wrecked it on their way out, their laughter carried away on the breeze.
For a moment Claudia couldn’t move. Breath had left her body, her knees could barely support her and she was shaking from head to foot.
‘Junius, I am so sorry.’ Tears were running down her face as she spoke. ‘I am so, so sorry.’
Gingerly she removed the pole and used her palla to wipe the blood from his mouth and stem the bleeding from his nose. The silence seemed more terrifying than the noise and with every second that passed she flinched, half-expecting to see Otho in the doorway.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she said shakily. ‘Can you walk?’
He nodded, but when she tried to lift him to his feet, the effort proved too much for both of them.
‘Hey, you!’ she called.
But the coppersmith had had enough for one day, the workshop was deserted. At the end of the alley the crowd had dispersed, leaving her male slaves, battered and bruised and looking utterly bewildered as they tried to comfort the sobbing women. Damn you, Lucan. Damn you to hell! Claudia wasn’t naive, she knew what she was tangling with, borrowing money from scum like that, and she’d been waiting for some sort of warning. But she’d never in a million years imagined he might engineer a whole bloody riot and send in his heavies. You can’t keep the likes of Lucan waiting for long, but the raw violence, the sheer brutality of this very first warning, was terrifying. All for two thousand sesterces. Plus four hundred in interest. Juno, the gambling had really got out of hand.
Trembling, Claudia despatched two slaves for Junius. He’d have to share the litter. She couldn’t go on to the baths now, there would be too much talk, and even allowing for the riot, it didn’t go halfway to explaining the state she was in. Thank goodness Gaius was away!
At the house Junius was helped into one of the guest bedrooms. It was the least she could do, give him a decent bed until his broken ribs had healed.
‘Juniu
s, I don’t want you to say a word about what you saw or what you heard, do you understand?’
She’d had to wait until his wounds had been tended and he was alone before she could slip in.
The young Gaul opened his only good eye. ‘I won’t.’
‘I’ll reward you for this, Junius. Give you your freedom. I’ll tell Gaius you saved my life or something. But only if you promise not to tell.’
‘Promise.’ He winced. ‘Are you all right?’
No. That was a bloody hard crack she’d received on the back of the head, not to mention the scare Otho had given her. She was still trembling.
‘I’m fine.’
His ribs had been bound, his face was already swollen like a melon and his torso was more purple than anything else. Almost as an afterthought she wondered whether he had a concubine who ought to be notified. He was a handsome enough boy, and she was pretty certain he wasn’t fooling around with any of the Seferius slaves.
‘Do you have a mistress, Junius?’
The eye widened in puzzlement.
‘I mean, are you in love with anyone?’
The head moved slowly up and down.
‘Shall I send word to tell her you’re hurt?’
The head moved slowly from side to side and the eye misted with what might have been a tear.
‘She already knows,’ he said thickly. ‘But thank you for asking.’
X
The wonderful thing about the baths, thought Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, as an attendant slowly scraped his back with a strigil, was the sheer hedonistic pleasure you got in the name of personal hygiene. What other fundamental consideration dares draw such wicked self-indulgence and then presumes to pass itself off as a necessity? And it wasn’t merely the physical rewards, great though they were. A whole cross-section of the human character passed through these portals, it was an education to watch. Or in Orbilio’s case listen, because an ambitious investigator could learn an awful lot from a bit of circumspect eavesdropping.
Most of it was politics—useful for pursuit of a later career albeit of little relevance to his current cases—or else it was horse-trading. A lot of that went on here. In fact, he thought, wiping a trickle of perspiration from his eyes, more important deals were struck in this very sweat room than in the Senate itself.
‘Lie down and I’ll do your chest next.’
Orbilio allowed himself to be laid out like meat on a slab, closing his eyes as the attendant scraped the oil off his body. There was a saying going around, something along the lines of ‘Baths, wine and sex ruins your body.’ Probably started by some of the moralists trying to impress Augustus, he thought, but without baths, wine and sex, what use was a good body? Moralists don’t live longer than the rest of us, he reflected sadly. It just seems that way.
The shrill voice of the hair-plucker broke through his thoughts.
‘Like your armpits plucked, sir?’
Orbilio shook his head. His eyes were still watering from the last time he’d let that little bastard loose on his body. Either the man’s tweezers were misaligned or his sight was failing, but all Orbilio could remember was that it was bloody painful. Besides, he’d prefer a girl to do it. Somehow it added to the feeling of wicked indulgence.
‘On your left side, if you don’t mind.’
The attendant flipped him over and continued his scraping. It was a wonderful sensation, feeling the bronze blade slide over your skin. Down. And down. And down. A man was at his most vulnerable here. Deaf, dumb and blind. He was sleepy from lying so the hot, damp air could open his pores, his body was oiled and the steam itself swirled so thickly it was impossible to see the man next to you, you only caught snippets of his conversation. Occasionally it was possible to put a name to one of the talkers, but the atmosphere in the room affected your lungs and few people could produce little more than hoarse whispers.
Which may or may not have been coincidental.
‘And now your right side.’
Orbilio rolled over. Baths, wine and sex. What a wonderful combination. If only he could incorporate all three at the same time it would be heaven on earth. And if Claudia Seferius was with him…Cupid’s darts, if he died on the spot afterwards he’d die a happy man. If, if, if. There were too many ifs in that particular scenario. As rather tended to be the case where she was concerned…
He tipped the attendant two asses from the bronze purse round his wrist, yawned, stretched, then decided to go the whole hog today and have a massage. He owed himself that, after the long hours he’d been putting in on those bloody murders. Not to mention the fact that the Sardinian fish-seller had left Rome, taking Vera with him, and Petronella refused to talk to him nowadays. Mother of Tarquin, a man needed something to redress the balance, and he was damned if he’d resort to common whores. So. He ran his hands through his hair. A massage it is.
The pattern on the mosaic guided him out of the stifling steam room and he took several deep breaths in the doorway to focus his senses. Stone chambers echoed with laughter, whistling, conversation and the piercing cries of vendors thronging the passageways and hawking everything from cakes to honeyed wine. Orbilio made his way between two flaxen-haired beauties lounging against the tiled walls. One raised her eyebrows in invitation, but he gave a swift shake of the head and passed on. The hot air was making him perspire again and he paused, wondering whether to take a cold plunge. Later, he decided. After the massage.
He chose Lupi, a masseur with a penchant for keeping his own counsel, because he wanted to relax unfettered by small talk and idle chitchat. He’d had quite enough of that this morning, hanging around the gossips and picking up bits here and bits there—and none of them any bloody use whatsoever. Who cared if this Senator dyed his hair or that matron padded her breast band?
‘Hmmm.’ Expert hands prodded his muscles. ‘You’re very tense today, sir.’
This wasn’t much of a revelation to Orbilio. No wine. No sex. No clues. It would be a miracle not to be tense. He’d seriously considered taking refuge again in his wine, but the hangovers had been getting worse and he needed a clear head. Callisunus was already intimating that he might redirect Orbilio on to some fraud case.
‘I place myself entirely at your mercy, Lupi. Do your worst.’
‘Yessir!’
The masseur, a burly fellow from Dacia, grinned as he oiled his hands with a spicy unguent and began to pummel Orbilio’s shoulders. Gradually the flesh yielded and the sound softened to a soft slap-slap-slapping. He knew Claudia visited these baths virtually every day and that her visits also happened to coincide with the times Gaius wasn’t here. Orbilio tried to tell himself that his own decision to come to the baths today was coincidence. Seferius was away in the country, maybe she had better things to do? Maybe she’d already come and gone? Orbilio had already established she didn’t spend the same amount of time on her visits as her husband.
Lupi began to knead his muscles like dough and Orbilio knew the masseur had felt the sudden pull of tension. Praise be to Mars he can’t read minds, Orbilio thought, wondering why the idea of Claudia with her husband should make him jealous. Jealous? Whatever made him think of such a word? Of course he wasn’t jealous!
‘Harder, Lupi.’
Surprise. Interest. Curiosity, even. But no, never jealousy. It must have come as a shock to Seferius about his son, he thought. Briefly, he’d considered going round to the house to offer his condolences, but she had the temperament of a she-wolf, that woman, and she was just as likely to follow through with her threat of telling Gaius that Cousin Markie had molested her. A smile played around his lips. There were other ways of skinning a coney. Yes, indeed there were!
It had been something of a knock, seeing Claudia and Gaius together at the games. He’d seen Seferius many times, never to speak to but certainly by sight, and he hadn’t thought too hard about the fellow. Rich. Fat. Middle-aged but wearing well. Then, when they were side by side, Orbilio realized that Gaius hadn’t gone to seed the way he’d th
ought. Overweight, although only in a solid, muscular sense. A man who had, quite literally, consolidated his bulk. Systematically, too. And suddenly the thought of the big man’s hands manipulating Claudia’s soft, white breasts was offensive in the extreme. Orbilio remembered when she’d linked her arm into his at the amphitheatre. Admittedly, she’d done it in a patronizing manner, but the sensations it had caused still rippled through his nerve ends.
‘Nearly done, sir.’
The Dacian’s skilled hands had worked small wonders. When Orbilio stood up, he felt five years younger, full of life and energy. A lightning dip in cold water left him feeling vigorous enough to run up Vesuvius backwards, although Petronella’s charms would have served well enough. Along the colonnaded walkway leading back to the dressing room he noticed Paternus the lawyer, head bowed in conversation with a man Orbilio didn’t recognize. Thin, weedy and with a voice to match, the lawyer had a tendency to leave discretion in the changing rooms with his other valuables. Orbilio lounged nonchalantly against a column, arms crossed, staring upwards at the sky.
‘…so I said, for twelve gold pieces it’s yours, my boy.’ That was the voice of the stranger.
The two men laughed.
‘I recall our friend the wine merchant extricating himself in much the same manner,’ the lawyer said. ‘I was handling his case against that Bithynian upstart…’
At that point, an extrovert general who enjoyed the sound of his own voice came strolling along, belting out a bawdy ballad, and the rest of the sentence was lost. They could be discussing any number of wine merchants, the city was full of them. However Orbilio convinced himself he had no option but to follow them.
‘…at which juncture, Seferius clapped the Bithynian on the back and said, you obviously haven’t heard about my latest…’
Once more the thin voice was drowned out, this time by a group of boisterous youths racing each other towards the cold pool. For a moment Orbilio was distracted, remembering the days when he, too, would rush headlong into the icy waters straight off. There was, he reflected, definitely something to be said in favour of maturity.
