Black Salamander

by Marilyn Todd

  And mine will be one of them, vowed Claudia. A whole year’s vintage rests on this.

  Puzzled, Orbilio leaned over the strawberry cairn, muttering something under his breath about greedy hedgehogs and did the offering to Aveta still count. Then he turned his attention back to the matter in hand.

  ‘You do realize,’ he said soberly, ‘that each of the couriers is an accessory to treason? That when this plot comes to light, nothing I can do will stop the army, the Senate, the whole Roman people from taking retribution on anyone tainted with this conspiracy, however innocently they’d been duped.’

  ‘Clemens was never going to make Jupiter’s Priest, anyway.’

  ‘Claudia, for gods’ sake,’ he said, throwing up his hands. ‘I’m talking about exile, seven, maybe ten years, penniless and stripped of your assets.’

  ‘The couriers’ assets,’ she corrected silkily, and pretending not to notice the look of exasperation on his face.

  ‘Very well, we’ll play it your way,’ he growled. ‘Just remember that when this blows up, the conspirators are going to take as many with them as possible. They won’t want people to think they were an isolated group working alone, they’ll get their glory any way they can, and if that means hundreds of innocents dying horrible deaths, so much the better in their eyes.’

  He fell silent, and Claudia knew it was gnawing away at him that, simply on account of their position in society, the conspirators themselves would be allowed to commit suicide. An honourable death…a system which no Republic would change.

  A bird began to sing, even though the sky was still blacked out, but she didn’t hear it. There are times, she thought, when duty becomes an obsession. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at the investigator, his brow deeply furrowed, and wondered when he’d last taken a decent furlough. Relaxed properly. Found time to unwind. Sure, the Empire had been thrown into turmoil with the death of its Regent, sure, there were conspiracies, but these were constant, ongoing, and one man can’t fight every battle alone.

  Claudia wondered why something wrenched inside her whenever she saw him like this, tortured and so terribly earnest. I mean, it wasn’t as if they meant anything to one another! Tall, dark patricians were ten a quadran back in Rome, and so what if they’d shared a few adventures now and again? It wasn’t as though she missed him when he wasn’t around—hell, she couldn’t escape his wretched baritone chuckle ringing in her memory whenever the moon was high and she had trouble sleeping, and all too often she saw him in a crowd—or at least a piece of him, reflected in the way one man strode so purposefully across the Forum, another spiked his fingers through dark curls, another smelled of sandalwood. And so what, when she re-ran the sequence of recent events in her head, if he was at the forefront? Too often her life pitted her against the law, and for heaven’s sake, he was the law. These things happen.

  She jolted upright. Janus! He’d seen the rock, he said, with the damning iron wedges still in place. Did he realize the significance of this? Claudia’s hand clamped over her mouth to prevent her being sick. Sweet Jupiter, one among the party was a killer, she knew that.

  But what she hadn’t realized, until now, was that that person would now be gunning for Marcus…

  *

  Crouched motionless behind a viburnum bush and heedless of the scent wafting from its flowerheads, white and flat as dinner plates, a pair of blue eyes watched intently.

  XVII

  July. When the sun is in Cancer and Jupiter watches over us, when fevered agricultural activity kicks in, scything hay and ricking it for winter, harvesting the barley, beans and wheat, pollinating figs. Everywhere around the Empire, Orbilio thought, hoes would be flashing between the vegetables, forks clicking under vines, there’d come the pungent hiss of burning fur as calves were branded with hot irons. Today’s the day when half-yearly rents fall due, giving rise to countless convoluted excuses, none of them original. Schoolmasters, the poorer ones, would look for work to tide them through holidays which start today, many coaching pupils they’d allowed to become lazy in the knowledge that their families could afford private tuition. With a quiet sigh, he watched the dawn rise over the glade. Some days, morning rushes to greet you like a child at play, wide eyed with open arms, but today’s dawn was a reserved and secretive creature, unwilling to reveal too much at once.

  Rather, he smiled, like a certain firebrand he could mention.

  Goddammit, why didn’t she admit she was a courier? That way he could relieve her of both map and culpability, and no matter what she was promised by way of payment, he could reimburse her, either through the state or his own pocket, heaven knows he was affluent enough. But would Claudia Seferius stoop to accept assistance? The sun would turn green before that happened.

  He shook his head. Her and her bloody independence! For a second, he abandoned himself to the birdsong, the coils of mist rising from the grass, the geometric patterns on the water. Good grief, he was the first to admire self-reliant individualists, but someone ought to point out to her the difference between initiative and bone headedness.

  The hour was still early, and the party slumbered on in restless, dreamless sleep. Claudia had left to snatch a couple of hours’ rest, leaving Marcus alone with the wooden nymph, both of them buried knee-deep in the mist. At one point, he thought he’d seen a shadow in the trees, but this was shortly after Claudia’s departure, and it was doubtless her shape he saw, or a deer perhaps, or simply a trick of the dawn light.

  She knew much more about the deaths than she was letting on. But for all the problems weighing on his shoulders, it was funny that all he could think about was how sexy she looked in lilac pantaloons, the way they shimmered when she moved, clung to the curves of her thighs when she sat down, and stretched tight across the roundness of her hips. Every ripple in this pool, every rising bubble, reminded him of the silky way the cotton billowed and, despite the sweet lush smell of grass and clover, her spicy balsam perfume lingered in the glade. Faint, tantalizing, and now the ripples became her curls, loose and springy as they burst free of their bondage. Janus, Croesus, how he ached to scrunch them in his hands, pull out the hairpins one by one, that bone pin carved in the shape of a flamingo, the ivory fawn, and let the curls tumble round her breasts as he buried his face in their spicy warmth…

  He laughed aloud in the clearing. Twice he’d used ‘spicy’, but was any word more appropriate than one which conjured up the exotic, the hot, the scandalous, the tempting Claudia Seferius?

  The desire which had stirred his loins abated, filling the vacuum with a different warmth and longing. An ache to share the long, hot days of summer, strolling in the parks and gardens, rowing on the Tiber, with picnics in the hills. To discuss his cases, take her to banquets on his arm and, when the sun began to set, counteract the emptiness of his customary wine-buffered nights.

  Whenever his work required him to travel, she would travel with him, alongside him all the way, and when they returned to Rome, it would not be to a rattling, great house on the Esquiline—they would come home. Together.

  That he would have to share her with a blue-eyed, cross-eyed cat with the filthiest of tempers he tried not to think about.

  No way, though, would he tolerate that bodyguard of hers. Junius. Uh-uh. Orbilio had not forgotten the malevolent glare he had shot at him when he had arrived, breathless and ragged, down the hillside to the valley where the group had been camped. Sometimes, he thought… Sometimes, the two of them… Bugger it, he was never certain what went on between Claudia and that drop-dead handsome Gaul. The way his eyes latched on to her. Possessive. Like a lover. Glances passed between them, coded messages for sure, but whether these were intimate exchanges or for business purpose, Orbilio couldn’t tell. (And didn’t want to, either.) But no, that last part wasn’t true. He did want to know, even if the knowledge drove a knife into his gut. In what way, exactly, was Claudia Junius’s mistress?

  He stripped off his clothes and slid into the bubbling spring. With eac
h minute of encroaching daylight, the water grew more and more pellucid, taking on a rich blue hue, the colour of a peacock’s breast. He let himself float, eyes closed, drinking in the happy warbles of the blackcaps, the fragrant woodland scents.

  The Silver Fox would be banned from here. He must collect his water downstream for fear of offending the gods. Did he miss the spring, and everything it stood for? A man didn’t need to believe in Gallic deities to find in this place a holiness, a bonding. Man with nature, man with god. The woodsman’s name was Arcas, Orbilio had been told. A Roman name, one which he must have adopted himself, since it meant ‘son of the bear’, and he wondered what significance could be attached to that.

  In legend, Arcas was the result of one of Jupiter’s many cavortings, this time of a beautiful nymph, who Juno, out of spite, turned into a lumbering grizzly instead. One day, when the boy was on the brink of manhood, he came across his mother in the woods and would have speared her with his javelin, had Jupiter not spirited them both away and set them as neighbouring constellations in the sky.

  What should Orbilio read into that?

  That the Silver Fox was the king of heaven’s son? All Gauls believed they were descended from Dis, so maybe it was not so much a god, as a chieftain he meant. Was Arcas therefore claiming to be a bastard son of the Sequani king? He wore the fox-fur armband, denoting nobility, that was one of the first things Orbilio had noticed in the firelight last night, and certainly it was no dog-Latin that he spoke. There was no air of peasantry about the Silver Fox. Was this an act? The product of deluded fantasies, which, when disproven by the Druid court, he could not accept? Or was the name taken from the bear aspect, him being the huntsman that he was? Did he feel in some way close to the constellations, guided by them? Or did he know nothing about the conquerors’ legends, simply picking a name he could get his Celtic tongue round?

  The very fact that he had chosen a Roman name, however, was significant. It suggested he had turned his back on the Sequani, and maybe a man who was truly innocent of his alleged crime but still received sentence to be shunned would feel bitter. It would then be logical for him to live out his term in secrecy close to his village, reappearing in Vesontio as Arcas the Gaul (as opposed to Whoever the Sequani) when the sentence was up. New identity, new beginning. Arcas would not be the first.

  That he trusted no one, Marcus read in his gimlet blue eyes. The challenge between them last night went beyond a squabble over money (although Arcas would be set for life after this.). Orbilio imagined every human encounter would be turned into confrontation as the Silver Fox took on the world.

  People might not like me, he was saying, but by the gods, they respect me.

  Orbilio left the fizzing waters of the pool and dried himself with his tunic. By allowing his mind to wander over subjects as diverse as Claudia and their enigmatic guide it had acted as a mental massage, leaving his brain refreshed and invigorated. Which was just as well because the next step was to work out who among the party was the traitor.

  *

  Outside the roundhouse, the travellers began to stretch and yawn, rubbing life into stiffened muscles and shaking the ants from their clothing. Among them, the murderer watched the patrician enter the camp, his hair dripping, his skin aglow. It was difficult to know what to make of him.

  Designer of mosaic floors, he said, and when Galba’s agent had riffled through his belongings, up popped a well-used portfolio with no shortage of professional sketches and high-quality samples. Absently, the agent watched a squirrel grooming its tail in an oak. Virtually every patrician’s son, on account of their expensive education, ended up a lawyer or a civil servant, or else set himself up as a merchant, but even aristocrats recognized art when they saw it in the family and few stood in the way. True, they tried to channel it into a career with kudos—say, an architect—but Orbilio would not be the first patrician to follow his muse. Galba’s agent could think of numerous poets, painters, even one who became a musician. In fact, the combination of clout and contacts would ensure his commissions were of the highest order, so that in itself was not a problem.

  But Libo had also carried excellent credentials. It was only when he was seen in whispered conversation with a centurion (not any old soldier, a centurion!) that the agent’s curiosity had been aroused, and when Libo handed over a sealed report, that was the clincher. He had to go.

  In an ideal world, thought Libo’s killer, that would have been a necessary elimination, no more deaths. Other than the obvious complications of finding an opportunity to sneak away unseen, robbing the perfumer had taken very little planning and had had the desired effect that without the prospect of payment at the other end, the lad had no reason to continue. Most satisfactory. Then there was the lyre-maker. Oh, the music that man could conjure up! Truly, the agent would not have deprived the world of talent such as his, had not the man turned and seen the hand inside his trunk. The explanation had not been believed, and it had been relatively easy to toss him unseen into the river.

  But if that sounds lucky, think again. Senator-Soon-To-Be-Dictator-Galba had not chosen his instrument without care. Aware of the consequences of being caught red-handed by the lyre-maker, the agent had picked the spot carefully beside the boiling waters of Alpine snow-melts, thundering over rocks, foaming, white and furious. Bodies are rarely recovered from torrents like that, which was really just as well.

  Few victims of an accidental slip land on a knife whose blade is pointing upwards!

  Nestor, of course, had been a doddle. Galba had arranged the rock fall right on schedule (that man was nothing if not thorough.), Nestor hadn’t see the blow coming. Quick, painless, no witnesses. The agent was well satisfied with events to date.

  Apart from the patrician.

  Who could be what he claimed to be. There was nothing to read into his air of smooth authority, breeding always throws up leaders, irritating though it be.

  Then again, he could be another undercover man, like Libo. But surely, if the Security Police were suspicious, they wouldn’t rely on just one man? Unless, perhaps, it was only the circumstances of Libo’s death they were concerned with?

  Or (a sour taste filled the agent’s mouth) Orbilio could be Galba’s creature. A double agent, as it were. To check up on the first…

  Neither of those last two scenarios was acceptable, thought the killer, which left no option but for Marcus to follow Libo through the dark paths of the underworld.

  Without emotion, the agent watched him select a clean tunic from his pack and slip it over his shoulders. Muscular and tanned, he walked with an easy grace, strong in mind and body, and to eliminate that particular threat would need some careful thought. Especially since he was familiar with one of the couriers! The agent’s eyes swivelled automatically towards Claudia and their hardness softened. Reluctant to kill her, several options had been mulled over and discounted, mostly, the agent was forced to admit, because she was constantly surrounded by that moonstruck bodyguard and her wretched cross-eyed cat. Orbilio’s arrival on the scene complicated matters even further but, during the course of the next two days, the agent had to separate the woman from her section of the map. It was imperative that the pieces the mercenaries ended up with were too obscure to pinpoint the treasure, hers was a pivotal portion. As, indeed, was one other’s.

  ‘Why don’t you send a fabricated map?’ the agent had enquired of Galba, and the fat man had stared back as though his brain could not translate the message from his ears.

  ‘What, and scupper the whole bloody scheme?’ The senator had snorted like a wild boar. ‘What do you suppose would happen once our tribal friends got wind this map wasn’t genuine? Keep the information to themselves, would they? Smouldering quietly at the unfairness of a double-cross? Or would they sell us out, d’you think?’

  ‘If all goes according to plan, they’d never know,’ the agent had protested.

  ‘Wouldn’t they?’ Galba’s laugh had echoed across the empty warehouse where they’d ar
ranged to meet. ‘You think the Helvetii don’t have spies among us? You leave the planning to me,’ he’d said. ‘Concentrate on doing your job well and in a few weeks’ from now, you’ll be—’ He’d clicked his fat fingers with impatience. ‘Remind me again what you want out of the Republic?’

  Furious and humiliated that Galba didn’t care enough about those prepared to carry out his dirty work to even remember their ambitions, the agent had simply mumbled something trite. But it had sown a little seed of doubt which had just this moment germinated. So much was at stake here, that maybe Galba, cold-blooded bastard that he was, had sent his own man to do away with the agent. The fewer who know, the better, or simply one less debt to be settled…

  The agent smiled. Well, wouldn’t he be in for a surprise? For several happy moments, the agent savoured visions of this arrogant patrician being toppled from his perch. Orbilio’s pleas for mercy perhaps. Or that exquisite moment when the smug smirk was replaced with an expression of utter surprise—

  But that, whichever way the agent decided to play it, was a treat for the future. Right now, it was back to the Don’t-Let-The-Mask-Slip theatrical performance.

  ‘Is there,’ the agent called out, ‘any chance of an egg with my breakfast?’

  *

  The party was in excellent high spirits. Their problems were over at last, they could relax, for the first time in days, their thoughts were forward-looking. Someone mentioned the bath house in Vesontio, and talk turned instantly to the enticing prospect of hot steam baths and massage, scented oils and beauty treatments for the ladies, while others considered the accommodation which awaited, swansdown mattresses, wine and proper food, or rich contracts ripe for the making. Laughter danced in the air like fireflies and since bickering had been rendered superfluous now there were so few anxieties left to niggle them, the travellers were content to drink in the birdsong of the morning and wash their rested bodies in the peacock-blue pool.