by Marilyn Todd
Oh, no. Sweet Jupiter, no!
As the reverberations of the fall crushed the breath out of her, the full horror became clear. This wasn’t rape. He intended to kill her! Because there was only one palisade on Sergius’ estate. It enclosed the crocodiles…
Hacking, choking, Claudia twisted her foot and found a toehold between the posts. Not much, just enough to give her purchase so she could jerk free of the sack. She heard a thud as he vaulted the fence, and too late she was back in a headlock. Claudia heard him (her?) grunt with the effort. Man or woman, it needed precious little brute force, a crime like this, based on the mechanics of haulage. Her ankle wrenched under the strain and she tasted blood where she bit through her lip with the pain. At her back, the sack was twisted round and round, tighter and tighter for leverage. Dear Juno, if there is any mercy in your breast, give him heart failure. Right here on the spot.
Utterly helpless, she was wrenched from the palisade. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Don’t let me die, she prayed. Don’t let me die in a grainsack. Not a grainsack. Not gagged and trussed and—
Wait a minute. Claudia gulped at the hope that dangled in front of her. He could have suffocated or strangled her at any point and he hadn’t. Why not?
Because her death must appear accidental, that’s why not. Dark night. Storm. Terrified beasts who might rampage any second. Poor Claudia. Took fright and ran. Didn’t know where she was going. Until it was too late.
Very soon, then, he would have to remove the evidence. But how? Pulling off the sack would free her to fight back, unless…of course! She’d have to be unconscious.
Bugger that for a game of knucklebones.
As the attacker fought to heave his struggling bundle over the peak of the earthworks, she let out a short moan and fell limp. Heaven knows there were enough rocks about, any one could have knocked her cold. But would he fall for it?
Minutes passed and nothing happened. Was this a test? Would a boot ram into her ribs any second and expose her trickery? Or was he taking advantage of the lull to get his wind back?
The tension was as terrifying as the struggle. Then he grabbed the top of the sack and yanked, and she prayed that in tipping a dead weight out in the dark, he wouldn’t be concentrating on where her hand went.
It closed over a rock.
Seizing hold of her ankles, he began to lug her over the brow. Above the storm and the growls and the trumpeting, she could hear him wheezing with the effort.
Sinister splashes came from the water below and she felt her heart lurch. Timing was crucial…
When he leaned forward to push his unconscious victim down the bank, Claudia lashed out. There was a sickening squelch as stone drove into flesh, and his mouth formed a wide O as the cry was drowned by a clap of thunder. Stunned only momentarily, his face twisted in fury and he swung towards her. With reflexes dulled by the fight, she just had time to brace herself as strong hands closed round her throat. The night, low and heavy, obscured her attacker’s face. Who are you? Why are you doing this? Thumbs pressed into her neck, deeper and deeper…then suddenly one hand released her and they both stumbled.
Blinded by the blood in his eyes, her assailant had lost his balance. As he looked round for a foothold, the rock she still clutched in her fist caught him on the nose, and this time she made no mistake in the force she should use. His nose exploded under the impact, his hands flew up to protect himself and, in that split second, he realized he had lost. A second cry rent the air as he stumbled backwards, his feet scrabbling furiously on the bank, his hands clawing gouges in the mud as the momentum carried him down the bank towards the snapping jaws of hell.
Then, in a flash of silver lightning, Claudia saw for the first time the face of the person who was trying to kill her.
XIV
‘Janus!’
For a split second the shock was so great that she couldn’t breathe, let alone move, and when she did recover, it came as a bigger shock still to find her instinct was to pull, rather than push.
Using one of the larger rocks as leverage, Claudia flung herself flat and stretched out her arm. ‘Take it!’ she yelled. ‘Take my hand!’
The face below was white with terror, panic barely a short gasp away.
You could see the dilemma. The loose earth had slipped far enough, and like a burr on a blanket, her attacker was stuck on the side of the embankment. To move would court disaster.
The words ‘Fetch help’ were mouthed to her, but it was too late. The rains had already begun.
‘No time,’ she yelled back, as the look of bewilderment on her assailant’s face deepened. ‘Take my hand!’
They started with just a few large drops, yet within seconds a cataract was falling from the sky, beating the parched earth like a drum, the overflow gushing down gulleys.
‘Quick!’
There was no time to dither. Any second now and the packed earthworks would turn to slippery mud. In the waters below, stippled with raindrops, larger shapes twisted and dived.
Claudia strained forward, her hair plastered flat to her face. ‘It’s your only chance!’
Like most opportunities, this came but the once. With a hiss, the side of the bank began to slip forward, the gap between them widening with obscene slowness. For several seconds, inhuman scrabbling kept the burr on the blanket, but the torrents had turned the earth to slime. There was only one direction left.
Claudia felt her own weight slide and she lurched at the rock with both hands, throwing herself on top of it. The angle she landed and the desperation she needed to cling on gave her no choice but to watch.
And listen. Above the howling of the wind and the battering of the rain, unearthly screeches rent the air. Then, mercifully, the sky began to go dark, yet she could still hear the frantic thrashings, the snapping of jaws, the crushing of bone even as the blackness closed in…
‘Claudia! Claudia, wake up!’
Someone was hitting her. Godsdammit, someone was slapping her face.
‘It’s all right, you’re safe. It’s over.’
Now someone was holding her wrists.
‘Dammit, Claudia, stop kicking me.’
‘Marcus?’ Where was she? Why were security policemen holding her down? ‘Marcus?’
‘I like it when you call me Marcus. Makes you sound sweet and pliable, warm-hearted and understanding.’
‘Clog off.’
‘That’s better. Thought for a minute you were losing your touch.’
Claudia sat up. ‘What happened to my head?’
‘You’ve had a knock,’ Orbilio replied, supporting her shoulders, ‘but I reckon you’ll live.’
Claudia looked round. She was lying in the lee of one of the animal sheds, camels by the sound of it, where he must have carried her. The rain was hammering down on the roof. ‘There’s a lump on my temple the size of an ostrich egg.’
‘Quail’s egg,’ he corrected, wiping her hair off her face and wrapping his cloak round her shoulders. ‘So stop trawling for sympathy. Can you stand?’ He helped her gently to her feet.
‘How did you find me?’
‘Your wrap. I found it lying on the path, ripped to shreds.’
‘Oh.’ She wanted to thank him, but didn’t know how. ‘What are all those lights?’
‘Once I got you to safety, I sent for help. They’re searching for the body. Er—I’m presuming there is a body to find?’
Claudia nodded numbly. She wanted to tell him what had happened, but for some reason her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering and her hands seemed to be shaking like an old man with palsy.
He shouted for one of the slaves to come over. ‘Help Mistress Seferius to the house, will you? Give her a sleeping draught and—’
‘No.’ If her mouth wouldn’t work properly, at least he’d understand the violent shaking of her head. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘No, you’re not.’
She tried to say, try and stop me, but it came out like a death rattle. Instead, sh
e pushed him aside and set off in the lashing rain towards the embankment, her torn tunic flapping and her calves caked with mud. She had to see this through to the finish. Barely a dozen paces later, her knees turned traitor.
‘Silly bitch,’ he said, grinning at her from ear to ear. ‘Come along.’
Scooping her into his arms, he carried her to the top of the bank and set her down on a wide, flat rock well clear of any landslips. ‘Stay,’ he ordered, as though addressing a dog.
Hell, she couldn’t move if she tried, but it was a good vantage point. A hundred torches had been lit, guttering in the deluge but still managing to survive. Ladders and ropes had been brought along for safety, since dusty paths had turned to quagmires, irrigation channels to flash floods. Gingerly she rubbed the lump on her forehead and huddled deep under Orbilio’s weatherproof cloak.
None of the amphibians resisted the lasso round their tails. Now I’m full, they seemed to say, I’ll let you play tag if you like. Even so, the search was not easy, and it was lucky one of the party hailed from Egypt and was able to throw light on these primordial creatures’ habits.
As the search party trod the murky waters, Claudia felt an overwhelming relief that, finally, the nightmare was over. It made no sense, but this was the person who had watched Claudia Seferius leave the villa, had lain in ambush for her return, planning long and hard that her murder should look like an accident, the same way Coronis’ murder was designed to look like an accident.
This, then, was the person who’d stabbed Fronto—but what had Claudia seen, or was imagined to have seen, that turned her into such a liability?
Probably—regrettably—she would never know.
Suddenly a cry went up as the bloody trophy was ferried back and the crowd began to concentrate itself on one small part of the shore. They were all here, she realized. Storm or no storm, master and slave alike, the whole household would have assembled for the climax.
The corpse, when it was finally hauled on to the slippery bank, was a total mess. One leg had been taken off completely, the other severed above the knee, and an arm was missing. Claudia began to retch.
‘All right?’
Orbilio held her while she was sick, wiped her mouth with his handkerchief. She could do no more than nod.
‘Just the reaction,’ she explained, although the words didn’t actually make it past her larynx.
*
Later, in the shelter of the house, with mulled wine on the inside and dry clothes on the outside and Claudia Seferius out cold from a hyoscine draught, everyone was agreed that they had never, in their lives, seen such a sickening spectacle as that mangled body.
Equally they were unanimous in that they had no clue as to who the dead man might be.
XV
Old age might bring maturity and wisdom, experience and nous, and it might well conceal a chicanery all of its own, but it is no substitute for the zeal and fire of youth. Or the fact that youth brings about a speed of recovery verging on the indestructible.
Claudia yawned, stretched and tickled Drusilla’s ears. ‘Time, young lady, for you to pack up your mouse bones, your furballs and any other souvenirs you might have acquired from the Villa Pictor.’
Only this time, please, let’s leave the fleas behind.
Claudia reached for the goblet beside her bed and sniffed. ‘Ugh. Henbane.’ No wonder she’d slept so well. A good twelve hours at a guess, although there was no sun to pinpoint it further. The rains might have gone, but the clouds hung like hammocks, low and heavy, the sky bark-grey and cheerless.
‘Mrrrr.’ Drusilla wriggled in pleasure and rolled on to her side.
Whoever had come into her room to open the shutters had also been thoughtful enough to leave a tray. Claudia slapped a chunk of pecorino cheese, her favourite, on to a still-warm roll flavoured with parsley and chives as Drusilla helped herself to a prawn.
‘Thank heavens there’s no red meat on this tray, we had quite enough of that last night, thank you very much.’
Claudia quickly skimmed over the lump of humanity mashed to a squelch by the crocodiles and moved on to the question of why that total stranger should want to kill her in the first place. Very odd. But then the whole place was very odd.
‘I suppose it was me he was after?’ Who else could he have mistaken me for? Not a man. Tulola? Too tall. Euphemia? Too fat. ‘Alis?’ she said aloud.
Drusilla, chomping on another prawn, didn’t turn so much as a whisker.
‘I know you can hear me, you little fraud.’ Judging by the debris all over this counterpane, you’ve been stuffing yourself since the moment my breakfast arrived. ‘I said, could anyone mistake me for Alis?’
‘Brip.’
‘I don’t know why, poppet, I was simply asking whether it was possible. Not that it matters. We’re heading back to Rome.’
‘Mrrip.’
‘House arrest? Forget that.’ Not even Macer, with his unique propensity for putting two and two together and coming up with twenty-two, could lay this latest attack at Claudia’s door. ‘No, very soon we’ll be home again, life will be back to normal before you know it.’
Normal? What was normal? Between being born in the south and her dancing days in Genua, life had been anything but predictable, and since marrying the old wine merchant…? Put it this way. If Claudia Seferius had been a knife, she’d never have gone rusty.
Realizing Drusilla was not going to be sidetracked so long as one pink prawn remained standing, she eased the cat to one side and slid out of bed.
‘First your mistress needs a long, hot soak—’for all youth’s advantages, it couldn’t heal injuries like hers overnight ‘—and then we’ll set off. How’s that?’
A lump of fish fell from Drusilla’s mouth. Her body arched and her hackles were fully erect before Claudia’s ears picked up the whistle.
‘Junius!’ One of the first things she’d taught him was that three-note signal. ‘What brings you to darkest Umbria?’
The Gaul’s jaw dropped. ‘By the gods, madam. Are you all right?’
In the course of four days I’ve been run off the road, bounced down a hillside and had a dying dung-beetle thrust upon me. I’ve seen the sharp point of Euphemia’s knife, been accused of murder, discovered Coronis, been beaten then half throttled by a total stranger and you ask, am I all right?
‘Bubbling with health.’ To prove it she shot him her healthiest, heartiest, halest of smiles. ‘Now, answer the question.’
‘Three reasons.’ Junius, unconvinced, produced a scroll from the belt of his tunic and passed it through the open window. ‘First, this was waiting for you up at the villa.’
Claudia recognized the seal. It was the report from her surveyor.
‘I think it could have waited,’ the young Gaul continued, ‘but while I was there, one of Macer’s officers called to see your bailiff.’
‘So?’ It sounded terribly routine to a girl for whom a deep soak in steaming hot water beckoned very loudly.
‘I’d briefed him on most of what had happened, I just hadn’t had a chance to tell him about the servants.’
‘What servants?’
‘You told Macer you’d sent them ahead by ox cart, when, of course, we never took any with us.’
‘Water under the Milvian Bridge, Junius. Last night some homicidal maniac damned near killed me, so I don’t think anyone’s going to lose sleep over one titchy-witchy fib, do you?’
‘There’s something else, too.’
Claudia waved an airy hand. ‘Don’t care, don’t want to know. I appreciate your efforts, but my advice is go to the kitchens then see if you can grab forty winks. In an hour or two, we set sail for Rome.’
‘But, madam—’
‘Butts are where archery is practised, Junius.’ To emphasize her point, she snapped the shutters to.
She heard a finely rounded oath of Gallic origin then, when silence prevailed (or what passed for silence, when you’re billeted next door to a hundred yowling beast
s), she flung back the shutters and studied the sky. Was that a break in the clouds she detected?
‘With luck, poppet,’ she picked up Drusilla and swung her several times round in the air, ‘we should be home for the equinox.’
Always a good excuse for a knees-up, and heaven knows she needed one after this. Umbria? You can keep it. It’ll take a lot to prise me away from Rome in the future, and then if I travel, I stick to main roads. ‘Bbbrow!’
That’s the trouble with Egyptian cats. The effect of twirling them isn’t immediately obvious, they’re bosseyed to start with.
The bath was tempting but… ‘Let’s just see how that report reads, shall we?’
Claudia threw herself face-down on the bed. Drusilla dived through the open window without so much as a backward glance.
‘Ingrate!’ Bet you won’t be so proud when it comes to a piece of bacon at lunchtime.
Claudia broke the seal and flipped open the letter. ‘Madam,’ it read, ‘I am pleased to report that I have assessed the two Etruscan sites and my conclusions are as follows. With reference to the damage by fire, this is entirely superficial and has no real bearing on the plans you have for either property…’ blah, blah, blah ‘…and in conclusion, I would say this. Hunter’s Grove would be a suitable proposition for the growing of vines since the soil, though light, has excellent water-retention properties and is devoid of both chalk and tufa. White grapes will grow best here, and I strongly recommend the Thrasian variety to optimize soil conditions.’
Thrasian grapes, eh? He was smarter than she thought, this surveyor chappie.
‘As for Vixen Hill, although the site is superficially appealing, being south-facing and fed by a small brook, it is my recommendation that you steer clear of this property, since the land is not, as has been made to appear, in a state of neglect. The soil is exhausted and totally unsuitable for wine production, or indeed any other agricultural project. Should you require any further…’ etc, etc, etc. She let the scroll drop on to the floor and rested her chin on the bolster. The auction is on Saturday, the same day as the spring equinox. Do I bid in person or do I send an agent? No matter. There are far more pressing issues. Such as, which of Tulola’s brightly coloured tunics could I borrow next? And can I be certain the bath house operates a segregation policy?
