by Marilyn Todd
‘Uh-uh. He went white as a sheet when Macer made his accusation, but I have a feeling he knows more than he’s letting on.’ She tapped one finger thoughtfully on the windowsill. ‘Maybe Fronto stumbled on to the training programme and asked too high a price for his silence?’
‘Why send for the might of the military? Sergius would more likely want it hushed up.’
‘Full circle,’ she replied, ‘and that’s what’s so damned peculiar.’ A vixen screamed across the valley, tightening the screw of tension. Blood throbbed in Claudia’s ear. ‘If Sergius is on the level, he could have dealt with the matter himself, and if he’s not, why play cat and mouse with the Prefect? Why aren’t you drinking your wine?’
‘Uh—stomach ulcer.’ He patted his rough, hessian belt. ‘Right here. Very tender.’
‘I thought it was the other side?’
‘Eh? Oh, the pain moves about. Wicked. What do you know about arson?’
The nearness of his profile began to irritate her. ‘It wasn’t me.’ She could see every line, every goddamned crevice. ‘Subject closed.’ Bloody moonlight.
‘Wrong words to use to a policeman who is both tenacious and uncompromising.’ Today’s dust was still lodged in his throat, why else was his voice even deeper and huskier?
‘Born under the sign of the Bull, were we?’ Any second now, the ceiling would come brushing her head and the walls smash together like the Clashing Rocks off Sicily.
He shot her a suspicious glance. ‘What makes you ask?’
‘You give out so much of it, it was an obvious conclusion.’ Someone was already sucking the oxygen out of the room.
‘I think it’s time to join the party.’ She turned to face the open window, resisting the impulse to gulp the fresh air. ‘Sounds like they’ve started without us.’
‘We don’t have to join them,’ he spoke so quietly she could barely make out the words. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’
What I want, Marcus Cornelius, is for you to take me in your arms, to feel you pressed against me so tight I can hear both our hearts beating at once. ‘Of course I bloody want to.’ It’s a party, right?
She heard a loud exhalation, smelled the sweetness of rosemary on his breath. ‘I see.’ There was a terrible long pause. ‘Well, for gods’ sake, be careful, will you? Three people are dead before their time, one attempt has already been made on your life—’
‘These points didn’t seem to trouble you when you followed me to Tarsulae.’
‘Pre-empted,’ he said stiffly. ‘Running away won’t help one iota.’ He leaned forward, and now she could smell sandalwood and juniper as well. ‘I’ll protect you as much as I can—’
‘I don’t need a bloody nursemaid,’ she snapped. And I don’t need your dark eyes under my nose reminding me how bloody handsome you are, and I don’t need that damned sandalwood stinking my wine…
‘Oh, yes, you do!’ he barked back. ‘Stop pretending, Claudia. You thrive on risk. You get high on the odds, that desperate thrill of uncertainty, those heart-stopping near misses—’
Her eyes flashed in the lamplight. ‘How dare you preach at me!’
‘Preach? You think my job’s different? Compulsion, addiction, obsession, call it what you like, Claudia, it drives me the same as it drives you, only with me there’s a difference.’
‘Damn right. I’m free to go where I choose, with whoever I choose and whenever I choose, and you know what, Orbilio? I’ve had just about enough of you.’ This room’s not big enough to take both of us. ‘Now get out!’
‘Dammit, woman—’
‘Out!’
‘Listen for a minute. I’m on equal footing with the villains, I know their game and the rules they play by, but out there is another player,’ he jabbed his thumb towards the banqueting hall, ‘with a very different set of rules.’
Claudia wanted to scream, Don’t you think I don’t know that? Don’t you think I’m not starting at shadows every time I leave the sanctuary of these four walls? That every time I see Alis or Corbulo or Barea I wonder are they going to turn on me and slit my throat?
She gave a short, hollow laugh. How can you get through to an over-rich, over-confident, overpowering sexual magnet like Supersnoop? You can tell him you’re frightened, he’d understand that, and sure, he’ll be happy to comfort you…for the night. But try telling him how deep it really goes. That with danger comes a fire in your belly you never want extinguished. That unless you feel the cold thrill of horror you don’t feel truly alive. How can you explain the passion, the craving, the hunger for this prodigal life force to Marcus Know-it-all Orbilio?
On the other hand, survival was high on Claudia’s agenda and extra security (no matter what tall, dark, handsome form it came packaged in) was not to be sniffed at. Sergius’ guards had done bugger all when she was nearly fed to the crocodiles—and, as for the army, Macer had laughed in her face. Fed up with house arrest, was she? Well, he had a nice warm lock-up available if she preferred,
And Marcus had a point. The attack could come from anywhere… Since there was no obvious suspect, the whole family fell under suspicion. Claudia parted her lips and hoped it resembled a suitably abject smile. ‘Let’s call a truce.’
It seemed to take a fair bit of adjustment on his part, but Orbilio caved in eventually. He lifted his gaming cup, still full of wine. ‘To you,’ he said.
‘To peace,’ she corrected. Why was it from this angle the moon lit exactly one half of his face and that one paltry little flame managed to light the other?
Orbilio kissed the lip of the dice cup to the lip of her glass. ‘What about to friendship?’
She felt her heart thumping against her ribcage, and when she nodded, albeit reluctantly, a curl fell over her eye. ‘To friendship.’ Dammit, where did that stupid little quiver in her voice come from?
‘What about to,’ his own pitch had dropped to a gruff rasp, ‘to more than friendship?’
A pulse was beating at the base of his throat, and Claudia watched the light of the lantern flicker in the shine of his unruly mop, saw it reflect dark hairs on the back of his hand.
So much from one little flame, how hard it has to work in the cloying blackness.
Too much.
‘Too soon,’ she said, and the faience pendant round her neck threatened to choke her.
‘Too bad.’ Orbilio’s face broke into a sad, lopsided grin and, taking Claudia’s nose between his thumb and his index finger, he gave it a gentle tweak. ‘That really is too bloody bad,’ he said quietly.
XXIV
The party was in full swing by the time Marcus Cornelius Orbilio had composed himself. On the pretext of checking the security of the courtyard, the animal sheds, the barns and the outhouses, his feet had covered some considerable distance and it was only now, standing barefoot on the marble floor of the atrium, that he fully appreciated the benefits of his own handmade patrician boots. Making his inspection, Orbilio had been only too glad of the cheap woollen tunic which itched and the rough leather sandals which flipped and flopped and chafed and blistered. They took his mind off a woman with wild curls and wilder eyes who kindled a white-hot passion inside him.
For the past hour or more he had breathed nothing but the acid stench of animal ordure, yet he could taste only the heavy, heady spice of her perfume. Was he being fanciful in thinking, in that distinctive mix of rare aromatics, there was a faint hint of the Indus Valley, the subtle fragrance of Babylonian lilies? He had been to Babylonia, spent long, hot nights under her stars as longhaired men in embroidered robes played thin and haunting melodies for the dancing girls, and he still remembered how those same girls jangled as they swayed in time to the music and the graceful way they arched under his love-making.
He wanted to take Claudia to Babylon, to Nineveh, now, this minute. He wanted to show her the wide, open skies, the rich, fertile plains, feel the baking sun of the desert, the sluggish pull of the Euphrates. He wanted to sail with her down the Tigris, show her ancient site
s and magical rites, mysteries and pyramids and strange symbols etched on the walls. But most of all, by the gods yes, most of all he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and claim her as his own.
There on her bed, which was soft and springy and smelled of nothing but her, he had wanted to kiss and caress her, slowly, tenderly, nibbling and nuzzling until the crowing of the cock when the first motes of dust danced in shafts of early-morning sunshine and then—and then—
Orbilio rammed his feet back into his penitent sandals and winced at the blisters with an emotion close to pleasure. He was so close, dammit, so close! Spearing his fingers through his hair, he remembered the rise and fall of her breasts in that slinky blue tunic, the one wayward curl which caught in her eyelashes, the way her tongue darted over her lips to cover the tremor in her voice.
He could have pursued it.
Then and there, she was ripe for the taking, he knew it, she knew it. One hair’s breadth, that’s how close he was. A hair’s breadth from heaven and, Orbilio swallowed, equally a hair’s breadth from hell. To seduce her then, while she was vulnerable, and he would have lost her for ever. Janus, though, how he had burned for her. Still burned for her—
He steadied one hand against a column and thought how a man should make love to Claudia Seferius. Of the hundred lamps on every windowsill, chest, table and chair. Of a night full of laughter and longing, passion and pain. He imagined the lingering build-up, the tantalizing and the teasing, the stopping and the starting. Mother of Tarquin, the knowledge that he’d have to wait weeks, maybe months, wrenched at his gut, but to put a halter on Claudia Seferius would, at this moment, be like trying to bottle moonlight. At the Pictor family shrine, Marcus Cornelius poured a libation.
I cannot promise celibacy, he offered silently, there will be women, I cannot live without them, but so you accept my libation, hear also my vow. Such liaisons will mean nothing to me, for in my own way I pledge, henceforth, fidelity to Claudia Seferius.
Through the heavy oak doors of the banqueting hall, he could hear the babble of pitilessly cheerful chatter, relentless shrieks of laughter, and among it all, the distinctive cadences of a tempestuous widow with wicked curls and sinful eyes who marched to the beat of her personal drum and woe betide the man who interferes with the tempo. Orbilio silently saluted her. Far from perfect, that vow was the best he could offer. He would continue to seek physical gratification from other women, but when he made love, when he truly gave of himself, it would be to one woman and one woman only.
The timing he would leave up to her.
Inching open the door, he was greeted by a scene that might well have come from a Bacchanalian orgy. Tables and couches had been pushed back to accommodate a race, now in full throttle, where the mounts were men and the riders the women, their skirts hitched high to gain adequate purchase. The subject of his pledge was clinging like a limpet to a red-faced Pallas, Alis rather daintily to Corbulo, Tulola to Barea and Euphemia’s lusty thighs were clamped round Sergius, whose recovery was (Claudia was right) more than adequate. In the van, however, and leading by a considerable margin, strong sturdy Timoleon barely tottered under the weight of the junior tribune, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the party spirit by pretending to whip his horse along the straights. Taranis, the only man without a partner (and that presumably down to Orbilio), acted as umpire and marked each lap of the columns with a pitcher of wine.
Unseen, Orbilio quietly closed the door and decided there was only one way he could possibly make his entrance at this late stage.
The question is, where, at this time of night, could he find someone capable of harnessing a camel?
*
The bloody thing spat and shat all over the shop and stank worse than a midden in summer, but you couldn’t have scripted a better comedy had you won the myrtle crown as a playwright. Accustomed to the shifting sands of its Libyan home, the reflective marble of the banqueting hall came as a right nasty shock to old Humpy, who promptly showed his dissatisfaction by attempting to ditch his rider at full gallop.
Amazed by the speed it could reach from a standing start, bets were immediately placed on how much longer the valiant rider could hang on.
Barea clapped Salvian on the back and espoused the benefits of army training, although everyone else seemed of the opinion that it was Orbilio’s grip, rather than his jousting experience, that saved the day.
Four times the shimmering surface rose up to grab him, but you don’t have a pedigree stretching back to Apollo without some adhesive qualities and by the time poor Humpy had come to terms with this slippery, slidy flooring, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was being greeted with raucous approval and generally hailed as a hero, even though his body appeared to be doing another circuit without the aid of the camel. By the time Orbilio’s eyes had stopped rolling, a heated debate was in progress, since the camp was now firmly divided between whether Humpy surrendered on the eighth or the ninth lap and what do you mean, you can’t help, you were riding the stupid thing, weren’t you?
When the general consensus had more or less settled on nine, Taranis pointed out that the animal appeared to be backing into Tulola’s cheetah, who would have got quite a decent fanghold had Corbulo not jerked Humpy out of range at the last moment, a debt it repaid by doing its damnedest to bite him until it was hauled away, honking and urinating, so that by the time a cohort of slaves had mopped up with sawdust and perfumed the room with incense and juniper, there was not a dry eye in the house and brave was the man (or woman) who could stand up straight after that.
Wisely Tulola calmed things down by calling for the roasts, because, as Pallas said, ‘A man’s gotta chew what a man’s gotta chew.’
It was wellnigh impossible, thought Claudia, rubbing the stitch in her side, to picture one of these people as a cold-blooded murderer.
Indeed, thinking about it logically, why should they be?
Supersleuth was a policeman, whose job revolved round intricate cases of treason, corruption, forgery and extortion—crimes that had two facets in common. One, they were all committed against the State, and two, by their very nature they had to be complex. More often than not murder ran hand in hand with such activities, usually in an effort to kick over the traces, and as a result his investigations would necessitate plunging deep. (How else could he have uncovered her own past?) Simple solutions were rare animals as far as the Security Police were concerned, and the case he’d made about Claudia being framed had, at the time, made sense.
In retrospect, though, wasn’t he reading too much into this miserable affair? Assuming Fronto and Crocodile Man had been in cahoots (for reasons she’d probably never know and didn’t really care about), surely it was safe to conclude the whole nasty business was now over and done with? That, whatever Fronto was up to, the scam had died with his accomplice? In the space of ninety hours, three people had met with violent death, but over the past two days it had been exceptionally quiet without a single attempt on her life—or anyone else’s for that matter. Suppose, like poor deluded Macer, Crocodile Man also laid the blame for his partner’s death at Claudia’s door. What was wrong with exacting his revenge? In short, what was wrong with a simple solution? Why couldn’t the revenge plan have backfired? Why couldn’t Coronis have slipped on the shiny surface and broken her neck?
More than satisfied that none of the partygoers could possibly be a killer, Claudia jostled to take her place for the roast and, in doing so, found herself brushing against a rough, woollen workshirt. The sensation was electric. Damn you, Marcus. Damn you to hell.
Wedging herself between Barea, in a long Phoenician tunic, and Corbulo the Camel Tamer, she deliberately set out to flirt. ‘Is that what they mean by painting the town red?’ she quipped. ‘Or are you a genuine redneck?’
‘Ritual ochre,’ he laughed, taking a great draught of wine. ‘Tonight,’ he made an elaborate flourish with his hands, ‘I am an Etruscan king.’
Tonight I could believe it. In white kilt and traditional gold
torque, Corbulo strutted like a peacock, a prince among men, a pearl among pebbles. And had the double bump on his nose not screamed his heritage, then the way he’d looped and bound his hair did. She glanced across to where Orbilio was settling himself on the couch. Was it accident or was it contrived, that the hero of the hour just happened to be directly opposite? Who cares, she thought. Not me. I’ve decided there’s something horribly claustrophobic about the atmosphere in bedrooms where the lights are low and the moon is swelling. Nevertheless, as Corbulo’s tundra eyes bored deep into hers, Claudia felt a strange stirring inside.
‘That’s the trouble where you come from.’ She forced herself to listen to Timoleon baiting the Celt. ‘Men are men, but by Janus, your women are ugly.’
‘Huh!’ Taranis wiped his hands down the length of his pantaloons, his only concession to fancy dress being to twine his hair. ‘I have job to do, selling bears. When I make money, then maybe I take wife.’
‘Betcha bed the grizzly by mistake,’ the gladiator muttered under his breath.
‘You laugh,’ the Celt rejoined, ‘but you no marry.’
‘Damn right. Women are fine for one purpose, but who the hell wants to spend time with them? Bore me rigid, they do.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ threw in Barea, flashing a contradictory wink at Claudia as he wrestled with the unaccustomed volume of linen.
‘Drink to what?’ asked Tulola. ‘Marcus, is that milk? Darling, how gross. Oh, look everybody.’ Even the cheetah glanced up from its lump of gazelle. ‘My masterpiece!’
Four slaves staggered into the hall carrying a whole roasted boar. On its head it wore a miniature cap of freedom, from its tusks dangled woven baskets bulging with dried dates and walnuts, and attached to its teats as though suckling sat a little bread piglet.
Salvian, who’d come dressed as a Spaniard, put his fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. His face was a map of cuts and scabs from its first scrape of the iron blade, but behind the redness and the rashes, a chrysalis was beginning to emerge. Like shaving a pomegranate, yesterday’s razor had been totally unnecessary, yet psychologically the ceremony had boosted his confidence and Tulola rose in Claudia’s estimation. Salvian, she mused, as the hams and the hares and the ducks were wheeled in, is finally growing into his armour.
