by Mike Ashley
She should bloody well hope so, too. Caught up in the tragedy of yesterday, she had quite forgotten about sending a courier to fetch them and maybe she might call in at Fortune’s temple in the Cattle Market later to drop off a trinket or two. Fickle bitch, but not so bad when you boiled it down.
“You’ll pay for this!” Volso thundered, as the soldiers dragged him down the path. “By Hades, I’ll have you in court for slander, Claudia Seferius, and I’ll take every penny that you own in damages. This house. The vineyards. I’ll have the bloody lot, you’ll be so poor, you won’t be able to afford the sewage from my gutter.”
“Save it for the lions, Volso.” She bit into a peach, and the juice dribbled down her chin. “You planned Callista’s murder like a military campaign and thought you’d get away with it.” She mopped the juice up with a cloth. “Only there were three people you underestimated.”
“Come on,” he taunted, his square face dark with rage. “Let’s hear this crackpot theory, you bitch, because believe me, it will make for interesting evidence at your slander trial.”
Behind the group, she watched Marcus Cornelius let the bronze statue of a horse absorb his weight. He hadn’t had time to change his tunic, yet she swore that, above the smell of soldiers’ sweat, the leathery scent emanating from Volso and the pungent perfumes of the herbs in the flowerbeds – basil, thyme and marjoram – she could detect a hint of sandalwood. An expression had settled on his face as he watched her, which with anyone else, she would have interpreted as pride.
“Firstly, Volso, you underestimated the boy. He was young, keen, gullible, vulnerable, in fact, all the things you’d wanted him to be, and that was the problem. He was too young, too keen, too gullible.”
He ought to have picked someone who was greedy, not needy. The screams gave it away. Yes, he’d yelled as he’d been instructed. But the shrieks he’d let out were wild and exuberant. Whoops of pure joy. I’ve done it, they’d said. I’ve got away with the stash, the accomplice is outside, I am going to be RICH! She remembered the grin as wide as a barn. The dancing light of triumph in his eyes. That was not the expression of a thief who’d just strangled a woman in a burglary that had gone horribly wrong.
“Secondly, you underestimated my steward.”
Volso might run a tight ship next door, checking up for specks of dust and fingerprints on statues, taking the whip to his wife and his slaves if he found so much as one thing out of order. What he’d overlooked is that not everyone gets off on that level of control. It might work on the battlefield, but Claudia’s slaves wouldn’t know what a whip looked like, for gods’ sake, and Leonides wasn’t the type of steward to have his crew running around doing unnecessary tasks. The cellar was cleaned thoroughly, but only twice a year, and that was twice as often as any public temple.
She turned to Orbilio. “Did you find any of the substances I listed?”
“Oh, yes. We found traces of them on his boots and tunic from where he’d bumbled around your cellar in the dark while he counted out the timing. Flour from the grinding wheel, cinnamon where it had spilled out from the sack, a vinegar stain, a smear of pitch, the corporal has the full list.”
“You planted that, you bastard,” Volso snarled.
“We didn’t plant your bootprints in the dust,” Marcus retorted. “The impression from a shoe is almost non-existent unless there’s a body inside to make tracks.”
But the general wasn’t going down without a fight. “The fact that I was in the cellar proves nothing. In fact, I remember now. Two or three days ago, I called round to borrow some charcoals, ours had run out.”
Even the legionaries couldn’t stop sniggering. Paulus Salvius Volso running next door to borrow some coals? Jupiter would turn celibate first!
Volso turned back to Claudia. “And the third person I’m supposed to have underestimated? That’s you, I imagine?”
“Good heavens, no.” Claudia shot him a radiant smile. “My dear Volso, that was your wife.”
Apart from the fact that frogs would grow wings before Volso came back early to check on his wife who had not been feeling well, had he not left Callista’s body sprawled on the bedroom floor, he might still have talked his way out of it. But what devoted husband wouldn’t have lifted the remains of his beloved on to the bed? Only a callous bastard of the highest order could think of leaving her in an ignominious and distorted heap for people to gawp at.
In death, Callista had had the last word after all.
The legionaries were gone, their prisoner with them. The tranquillity of the garden had returned, and there was no indication among the rose arbours and herbiaries of the tragedy that had taken place here. Not just one death, either, but three. Callista’s. The boy’s. And Volso’s to come in the arena.
He had planned the two murders like a military campaign. Coldly and ruthlessly, he chose the day when slaves everywhere, not just his own, would be out. No doubt he’d expected his neighbour to be out, too, as she usually was on the Festival of Diana, but it wouldn’t matter unduly.
He would climb into Claudia’s garden using the ladder, then kick it away after him. He would hide in the cellar, biding his time until he heard screams and then whoever might have been in the house would certainly rush outside. He would give it a count of twenty before leaving the cellar, but then comes the daring part. He actually walks across the garden while everyone is clustered round the thief’s body! If challenged, of course, he can bluff it out by claiming he’d heard a scream as he was returning home and came to help. Then he would just nip over the garden wall to “check on his wife”, only to report back that she was dead.
As it happened, no-one saw him. Up and over, throttle the missus, up and back again in no time – before calmly letting himself out of Claudia’s house and sauntering up to his own, whistling without a care in the world as the porter had testified.
And now they were gone. All of them. Volso. Callista. The otter.
“Do you think we’ll ever know his name?” she asked Marcus.
In reply, he pursed his lips and shrugged. “I doubt it,” he said. Urchins like him disappeared by the dozen every day. It was the unseen tragedy of the big city and so-called civilisation.
Across the garden, a chink of gold reflected from beneath the mint. A small child’s goblet with a double handle. And so the tragedy goes on, she thought . . .
She looked up into his eyes. Resisted the urge to brush that stupid fringe from where it had fallen down over his face and trace her finger down the worry lines round his eyes.
“I was here,” she said, “when I saw the reflection of the arrow in the pool.”
There was a pause. “Here?” he echoed, frowning.
“Right here.” She pointed to the spot with a determined finger. Sweet Jupiter in heaven, she would never forget it. “White as snow, I actually watched it are through the air.”
Orbilio scratched his ear. “Not from here you didn’t,” he replied. “If Labeo was standing on the ladder and the boy was near the gate, and if he kept on running like you said after he’d been hit, then the arrow travelled like so.”
He indicated the trajectory of the missile with his hand.
“As you can see, the path doesn’t curve as you describe it. Also, the arrow wasn’t white, it’s almost black, and Labeo’s is far longer than the one you saw reflected in the water. What’s more, if it was travelling at the speed, angle and direction that you say, it would be you who was lying dead, not your little otter. Oh, and by the way, did I ever tell you that you’re stunning when you’re angry and you’re stunning when you’re not, and that you’re even more stunning when you’re breaking generals’ balls? I think a spring wedding would be rather fun, don’t you?”
“I’d marry an arena-full of Volso’s before I married you,” she said, “but what I don’t understand is this. If it wasn’t Labeo’s arrow that I saw reflected in the pool, what was it?”
Orbilio thought of the suffocating heat that played strange tricks
by bending light. He thought of the emotion of the moment, the reflection of a white dove overhead, in fact, he could think of any number of rational explanations. But then . . . But then . . . There was also the matter of a certain mischievous little cherub by the name of Cupid. So he said nothing.
He just pulled Claudia Seferius into his arms and kissed her.
The Spiteful Shadow
Peter Tremayne
From the world of ancient Rome we pass to Celtic Ireland. This is the home of Sister Fidelma, an Irish religieuse who is the creation of Peter Tremayne. She has appeared in fifteen books to date, starting with Absolution by Murder (1994) plus many short stories, including the past two Mammoth Books of Historical Whodunnits where she first appeared in “The High King’s Sword” in 1993. There is even talk of a television series. You can find all the up-to-date information you need on the Sister Fidelma website at www.sisterfidelma.com
Peter Tremayne is the alias used in his fiction by Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis. His many reference books include The Celtic Empire (1990), The Druids (1994) and Erin’s Blood Royal (revised 2002). Peter is also one of the few people who is fluent in the Cornish language.
“It is so obvious who killed poor Brother Síoda that it worries me.”
Sister Fidelma stared in bewilderment at the woe-be-gone expression of the usually smiling, cherubic features of Abbot Laisran.
“I do not understand you, Laisran,” she told her old mentor, pausing in the act of sipping her mulled wine. She was sitting in front of a blazing fire in the hearth of the abbot’s chamber in the great Abbey of Durrow. On the adjacent side of the fireplace, Abbot Laisran slumped in his chair, his wine left abandoned on the carved oak table by his side. He was staring moodily into the leaping flames.
“Something worries me about the simplicity of this matter. There are things in life that appear so simple that you get a strange feeling about them. You question whether things can be so simple and, sure enough, you often find that they are so simple because they have been made to appear simple. In this case, everything fits together so flawlessly that I question it.”
Fidelma drew a heavy sigh. She had only just arrived at Durrow to bring a Psalter, a book of Latin psalms written by her brother, Colgú, King of Cashel, as a gift for the abbot. But she had found her old friend Abbot Laisran in a preoccupied frame of mind. A member of his community had been murdered and the culprit had been easily identified as another member. Yet it was unusual to see Laisran so worried. Fidelma had known him since she was a little girl and it was he who had persuaded her to take up the study of law. Further, when she had reached the qualification of Anruth, one degree below that of Ollamh, the highest rank of learning, it had been Laisran who had advised her to join a religious community on being accepted as a dálaigh, an advocate of the Brehon Court. He had felt that this would give her more opportunities in life.
Usually, Abbot Laisran was full of jollity and good humour. Anxiety did not sit well on his features for he was a short, rotund, red-faced man. He had been born with that rare gift of humour and a sense that the world was there to provide enjoyment to those who inhabited it. Now he appeared like a man on whose shoulders the entire troubles of the world rested.
“Perhaps you had better tell me all about it,” Fidelma invited. “I might be able to give some advice.”
Laisran raised his head and there was a new expression of hope in his eyes.
“Any help you can give, Fidelma . . . truly, the facts are, as I say, lucid enough. But there is just something about them . . .” He paused and then shrugged. “I’d be more than grateful to have your opinion.”
Fidelma smiled reassuringly.
“Then let us begin to hear some of these lucid facts.”
“Two days ago, Brother Síoda was found stabbed to death in his cell. He had been stabbed several times in the heart.”
“Who found him and when?”
“He had not appeared at morning prayers. So my steward, Brother Cruinn, went along to his cell to find out whether he was ill. Brother Síoda lay murdered on his bloodstained bed.”
Fidelma waited while the abbot paused, as if to gather his thoughts.
“We have, in the abbey, a young woman called Sister Scáthach. She is very young. She joined us as a child because, so her parents told us, she heard things. Sounds in her head. Whispers. About a month ago, our physician became anxious about her state of health. She had become . . .” He paused as if trying to think of the right word. “She believed she was hearing voices instructing her.”
Fidelma raised her eyes slightly in surprise.
Abbot Laisran saw the movement and grimaced.
‘She has always been what one might call eccentric but the eccentricity has grown so that her behaviour has become bizarre. A month ago I placed her in a cell and asked one of the apothecary’s assistants, Sister Sláine, to watch over her. Soon after Brother Síoda was found, the steward and I went to Sister Scáthach’s cell. The door was always locked. It was a precaution that we had recently adopted. Usually the key is hanging on a hook outside the door. But the key was on the inside and the door was locked. A bloodstained robe was found in her cell and a knife. The knife, too, was bloodstained. It was obvious that Sister Scáthach was guilty of this crime.”
Abbot Laisran stood up and went to a chest. He removed a knife whose blade was discoloured with dried blood. Then he drew forth a robe. It was clear that it had been stained in blood.
“Poor Brother Síoda,” murmured Laisran. “His penetrated heart must have poured blood over the girl’s clothing.”
Fidelma barely glanced at the robes.
“The first question I have to ask is why would you and the steward go straight from the murdered man’s cell to that of Sister Scáthach?” she demanded.
Abbot Laisran compressed his lips for a moment.
“Because only the day before the murder Sister Scáthach had prophesied his death and the manner of it.
“She made the pronouncement only twelve hours before his body was discovered, saying that he would die by having his heart ripped out.”
Fidelma folded her hands before her, gazing thoughtfully into the fire.
“She was violent then? You say you had her placed in a locked cell with a Sister to look after her?”
“But she was never violent before the murder,” affirmed the abbot.
“Yet she was confined to her cell?”
“A precaution, as I say. During these last four weeks she began to make violent prophecies. Saying voices instructed her to do so.”
“Violent prophecies but you say that she was not violent?” Fidelma’s tone was sceptical.
“It is difficult to explain,” confessed Abbot Laisran. “The words were violent but she was not. She was a gentle girl but she claimed that the shadows from the Otherworld gave her instructions; they told her to foretell the doom of the world, its destruction by fire and flood when mountains would be hurled into the sea and the seas rise up and engulf the land.”
Fidelma pursed her lips cynically.
“Such prophecies have been common since the dawn of time,” she observed.
“Such prophecies have alarmed the community here, Fidelma,” admonished Abbot Laisran. “It was as much for her sake that I suggested Sister Sláine make sure that Sister Scáthach was secured in her cell each night and kept an eye upon each day.”
“Do you mean that you feared members of the community would harm Sister Scáthach rather than she harm members of the community?” queried Fidelma.
The abbot inclined his head.
“Some of these predictions were violent in the extreme, aimed at one or two particular members of the community, foretelling their doom, casting them into the everlasting hellfire.”
“You say that during the month she has been so confined, the pronouncements grew more violent.”
“The more she was constrained the more extreme the pronouncements became,” confessed the abbot.
“And she made just such a pronouncement against Brother Síoda? That is why you and your steward made the immediate link to Sister Scáthach?”
“It was.”
‘Why did she attack Brother Síoda?” she asked. “How well did she know him?”
“As far as I am aware, she did not know him at all. Yet when she made her prophecy, Brother Síoda told me that she seemed to know secrets about him that he thought no other person knew. He was greatly alarmed and said he would lock himself in that night so that no one could enter.”
“So his cell door was locked when your steward went there after he had failed to attend morning prayers?”
Abbot Laisran shook his head.
“When Brother Cruinn went to Síoda’s cell, he found that the door was shut but not locked. The key was on the floor inside his cell . . . this is the frightening thing . . . there were bloodstains on the key.”
“And you tell me that you found a bloodstained robe and the murder weapon in Sister Scáthach’s cell?”
“We did,” agreed the abbot. “Brother Cruinn and I.”
“What did Sister Scáthach have to say to the charge?”
“This is just it, Fidelma. She was bewildered. I know when people are lying or pretending. She was just bewildered. But then she accepted the charge meekly.”
Fidelma frowned.
“I don’t understand.”
“Sister Scáthach simply replied that she was a conduit for the voices from the Otherworld. The shadows themselves must have punished Brother Síoda as they had told her they would. She said that they must have entered her corporeal form and used it as an instrument to kill him but she had no knowledge of the fact, no memory of being disturbed that night.”
Fidelma shook her head.
“She sounds a very sick person.”
“Then you don’t believe in shadows from the Other-world?”
