by Marilyn Todd
In the oblong of light shining from the hall as she sailed out of his bedroom, a mass of dark ringlets skimmed through the air to land at his feet. And now he knew why Tulola Pictor was so desperately keen to play forfeits.
XXVI
The goddess Aurora still had one or two snores in hand before duty bade her rise and push away the night skies, and Claudia, flanked by her vigilant bodyguard, was taking the opportunity to walk off the sweetmeats when she noticed so disgusting a spectacle propped against the lion shed that she couldn’t resist the urge to examine it.
‘Good grief, Orbilio, last time I saw something that gruesome, it lay belly up in a drainage ditch.’
A muscle twitched at the side of his mouth. ‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’
She peered closer. ‘Dodgy oyster, was it?’
‘Let’s just say it left a nasty taste. What’s wrong with the party? Not over already?’
No, but the prospect of watching a flabby has-been wrestling an unwashed, hairy Celt, both of them buck naked, was simply too horrible to contemplate and she told him so, nodding her head at the same time to dismiss her bodyguard.
Orbilio waited until the Gaul had disappeared round the monkey shed before prising himself off the wall. ‘Forget what I said earlier,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Pack your things and go.’
Claudia held up her hands in mock horror. ‘Marcus Cornelius! You, of all people, incite an honest citizen to break the law? Shame on you!’
‘Bugger the law, bugger Macer, this place is evil, Claudia. Evil.’
‘Too much milk,’ she said to the moon, ‘makes a man light-headed.’
‘Claudia, I’m serious. Get out of here.’
I see. Or at least, I’m beginning to. ‘I suppose this wouldn’t have any connection with your returning to Rome at the same time, would it?’
That’s torn it! Now he’d know she’d been rifling his papers. When she’d slipped inside his room ten minutes earlier, Claudia’s initial reaction had been shock. Something had clearly taken place here—tables tipped over, chairs upended, it was a right bloody mess—but the signs pointed away from some desperate search. A fight? The mosaic was slippery with oil of bay, as though someone had tried to disguise a rotten smell, so no, not a fight. Also, and even more telling, the inside of Orbilio’s maplewood chest was still in immaculate order. His clothes, his comb, his purse, everything rested neatly in its allotted place. It had not been intentional, her search—at some stage this evening she’d dropped her faience necklace, and rumour said Orbilio had found it—but when faced with a couple of scrolls bearing the seal of the Head of the Security Police, who wouldn’t have been curious? The first informed her that Orbilio had not confined his extra-marital activities to charioteers (apparently an ex-tribune, ex-prefect, ex-consul was also after his valuables), and the second, even by his boss’s silvery-tongued standards, was terse: ‘Get your fat arse back to Rome. Right now.’ Behind the lion shed, Claudia braced herself for the onslaught…which never came.
‘I’m going nowhere,’ he growled, ‘until this case is solved. Go—tonight—and leave me to cover for you.’
‘I don’t need a man to hide behind, thank you.’
‘I’m not suggesting you do.’ He was rivalling the big cat for snarls. ‘This is something I need to sort out myself, that’s all.’
How interesting. The Empire is in crisis, yet here we have a dedicated and professional aristocrat suddenly telling us he’s turning his back on duty and ambition and a shot at the Senate for the sake of… Of what, exactly, Marcus? A widow of lower rank and dubious past? Pleasant scenery? An obligation to see this non-crime through to its non-existent finish? Somewhere along the line, young Master Supersnoop, the arithmetic does not quite satisfy the tallyman.
‘Well, you’re not the only one with unfinished business,’ she said airily. Adding in reply to the half-raised eyebrow, ‘The day will soon dawn when the merest mention of my name will bring Macer out in warts. I want to be here when the bumps rise.’
‘You’ll have a bloody long wait,’ he barked, ‘because whoever’s behind this—’
My, my, we are in a bad mood. ‘There is no deadly deed, Orbilio, trust me on this.’
She might as well have saved her breath.
‘—the Prefect will come out smelling of lavender. His type always do.’
‘Like your boss, you mean?’
‘Even if this turns out to be a conspiracy with Quintilian at its heart, Macer is a supporting pillar of this dwindling community—’
‘Did you say pillar or pillock?’
‘For gods’ sake, can’t you take this seriously?’
‘Take what seriously?’ She pulled her wrap tighter and wasn’t sure it was purely down to the chill, predawn breeze. ‘Two men tried a scam and it failed. Happens twice a day in Rome…that’s what pays your salary.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting the arson attacks?’
Claudia shrugged. ‘There’ll be a hundred Frontos the length and breadth of Umbria. No doubt one’s torching a vineyard even as we speak.’
‘Your estate’s in Etruria.’
‘Don’t split hairs, Orbilio, you’re in no condition for skilled work.’
Suddenly he punched his fist into the timber shed, sending the lion into a paroxysm of roars. ‘The bitch drugged my sherbet.’
‘The what dragged your shirt out?’ Claudia had to shout.
‘Forget it.’ The big cat stopped snarling and Orbilio wiped his face with his hands. They seemed to be shaking.
If that’s what comes of being on the wagon, thought Claudia, I can make an excellent case for staying pickled.
The lion staged another small protest before settling down. Two sheds along, a bear considered growling out in sympathy, then decided against it. It was the fact that it arrived at its decision mid-growl that made Claudia and Orbilio exchange glances.
‘Corbulo?’ she called out. ‘Corbulo, is that you?’
‘Stay behind me,’ Marcus hissed, plucking a brand from its iron bracket. Whispers of wind played with the flames.
‘No fear,’ she whispered back, grabbing another torch. ‘You’re not fit to fight a flummery.’
But that wasn’t strictly true, because a dagger had appeared in his right hand and the grip was steady. Oh, well. Two can play at that game.
‘Where the hell do you keep that?’ he asked in amazement.
‘Safe,’ she replied. Although from time to time it gets a mite uncomfortable.
A dark figure flitted between the elephant shed and the giraffe house and Claudia felt the hairs on her scalp prickle. Corbulo would not behave so furtively. There it was again. Darting. Silent.
‘This way,’ Marcus whispered.
‘No, this way.’
‘Claudia, just for once, do as I say, will you?’
‘Let’s compromise,’ she mouthed, ‘and do it my way. Come on!’ Without giving him a chance to argue, she ran down the path and disappeared behind the camel shed.
Orbilio groaned. Please. Anything but dromedaries. ‘Listen!’ he said, catching her elbow and spinning her round. ‘What’s that?’
The yelp from the area of the seal pool was no animal.
Together they raced in the direction of the cry, lifting their torches high to avoid tripping. The gate was still barred. Sleepy seals honked at the intrusion.
‘Over there!’ he cried. ‘The hay store!’ As they sped across the stone slabs, they could hear gurgling sounds, a frantic tattoo.
‘Remus!’
The sight that greeted her as Orbilio flung open the door would stay with Claudia the rest of her life.
‘Holy shit!’ In one fluid movement, Marcus had bracketed the brand and sheathed his dagger. ‘I’ll take the weight, you cut him down!’
For ten seconds, or ten minutes, or maybe even ten hours, Claudia stood paralysed, hoping—praying—this was a dream and she’d wake any second. Against the wall, its eyes popping, a life-sized model of an Etruscan
noble thrashed and jerked and made grotesque rattles from its throat. The frenzied drumming they’d heard was its feet.
But why was the puppet’s facepaint the colour of knapped flint? Why were its lips purple?
‘Claudia, for gods’ sake, I can’t hold him much longer!’
Snapping out of her hideous reverie, she realized Orbilio was supporting Corbulo by the hips and suddenly she was leaping up the bales to saw at the rope. Janus, it was thick! She turned her head away from the black suffusion, her hands too busy with the knife to dwell on the implications. Rasp, rasp, rasp. Below her, Orbilio struggled with the strain of his burden. Rasp, rasp, rasp. In the twisting of the fibres lay the rope’s strength. Come on, you bastard. Then—whoosh! Corbulo and Orbilio collapsed into the straw, the policeman wrenching at the noose to expose its livid legacy as the trainer’s eyeballs rolled upwards.
‘Sweet Jupiter!’ Claudia jumped down. ‘Is he—?’ The dusty shed seemed to have made her mouth dry.
‘He’s only passed out.’ Orbilio shot her a quizzical look. ‘He’ll be fine.’
All around, the signs of a skirmish were obvious, and it was also apparent that this was no chance encounter. Even the most dedicated homicidal maniac refrains from carrying a knotted noose on his person.
The Etruscan spluttered at the water splashed on to his face.
‘Sssh!’ Claudia ordered. ‘Don’t say anything.’
‘Who was it?’ asked Marcus.
‘Lie still,’ she urged. ‘Save your strength.’
‘Corbulo, who did this?’ Orbilio ignored the glower from beneath a tumbling mass of feminine curls.
The trainer gave a faint shake of his looped braids. ‘Dunno.’ The hoarse whisper was barely audible. ‘Left—party.’ Bloodshot eyes flickered at Claudia. ‘Needed—to sober up.’
‘Did you see anyone prowling about?’ Marcus persisted.
Corbulo shook his head. ‘Ambush,’ he croaked. ‘From behind.’
‘Damn!’ Orbilio began to pace the barn, but on the second turn he dropped to his knees. ‘Well, well, well. Recognize this?’ he asked.
In the flat of his hand, a scrap of material the colour of egg yolk trembled in the same pre-dawn breeze that had chilled Claudia earlier. Only now it seemed to blow straight from the Arctic.
XXVII
Tulola’s celebrations were almost spent, the guests along with them. They’d drunk too much, eaten too much, and were starting to bounce off the pain barrier. Corbulo had not been missed, neither had Claudia or Orbilio and their haggard faces, when they burst into the room, seemed little different from the others’.
‘Oi, oi, hold on a minute.’ The horse-breaker was amused rather than angry when Orbilio grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved the scrap of fabric in his face. ‘Why should I want to see Corbulo hanging like game from a meat hook?’
‘Then what happened to the robe?’ Orbilio released Barea the way a terrier lets go an ankle. ‘You aren’t wearing it.’
‘Same reason, I suppose, that you’re out of costume,’ Barea replied. ‘Glad to be shot of it. Damned women’s clothes, if you ask me. Don’t know why Pallas kept the bloody thing.’
‘So it was yours!’ Timoleon turned to face the fat man. ‘Now why aren’t I surprised.’ It was an insult, rather than a question.
‘That garment was presented to me by a Phoenician nobleman with more class in his little finger than you’ve got in your whole body, you blowsy pig-sticker.’
The mood was all wrong, Claudia thought. Mockery? Indifference? And then she realized. They were frightened. All of them. She recalled the expression on Alis’ face when the news broke, it was that of a stag whose antlers had been caught in the huntsman’s net. They had all felt the shockwaves, but only she had been too slow to cover up, and suddenly Claudia was reminded of a pack of lionesses, each moving as one.
She had a horrible feeling that Orbilio, however hard he searched, would never find that missing tunic, because the Pictors had closed ranks. Fear had formed a bond that friendship never could.
Claudia thought of Corbulo, refusing to be fussed and insisting that, honestly, a good night’s sleep was all that he needed, he was fine. Any single person here in this room tonight, she reflected miserably, could have taken that tunic as a disguise and followed the trainer.
She looked around, and shivered. Any single person here in this room tonight could be the killer.
*
Oh-so-silently suspicion stalked the Villa Pictor, insinuating itself into the outbuildings, the fields, the gardens and the orchards. It masqueraded as shadows, as creaks, as gusts of wind, and coiled its way into every crevice of every mind. The clamour of the kitchens was reduced to terse whispers, plates rattled in nervous hands, field workers looked over their shoulders and Junius camped beneath his mistress’s window. In the atrium the water-clock dripped with exasperating slowness, the sunshine that flooded the marble took for ever to creep across the floor. In the courtyard, grown men jumped at the lovebird’s squawks and avoided the shadows of the mythical beasts. When the elephant trumpeted, a flowerpot smashed to smithereens in the gardener’s hands. Three of the slaves, a man and his daughters, tried to decamp under cover of darkness, but Macer had left eight of his men as contingency, four north and four south, two on and two off.
At the same time the runaways were marched back to their barracks, Taranis also slipped quietly into his own room, unshouldered his bulging rucksack and unleashed a bitter Celtish curse.
Like the build-up to a storm, the atmosphere was oppressive, torrid. People sat with their backs to the walls and pretended they were hung over from the night before—it explained the beads of sweat on their foreheads, the gooseflesh down their arms, the nausea in the pits of their stomachs.
No one dared voice the fact that they were prisoners on the estate.
No one dared whisper that trust was a thing of the past.
Only Orbilio threw caution to the wind as he went about his investigations, and his attitude puzzled Claudia greatly. There was a fanaticism about him now, and instinct told her it was Marcus who had overturned his own furniture.
Somewhere along the line, she thought, this has got personal.
Meanwhile, Corbulo appeared in part to be the weathervane for the family’s emotional wellbeing, for it was upon Corbulo that hopes were silently, secretly, collectively pinned. Here was the man who had brought Sergius to the pinnacle of success finding the road to recovery difficult—and it had frightened them. Always they had seen Corbulo as strong and reliable and while physically he seemed mended, his movements were wooden, his thoughts remained locked in his head. When Corbulo got better, everyone would get better. Or so they told themselves…
Come Saturday night, when the moon had reached half and the rest of the Empire rejoiced at the equinox in full voice, the relatives and guests of Sergius Pictor were gathered round his dining table, leaning on their elbows and playing with their food in abject silence. The little girl who strummed the lyre might just as well have not bothered.
‘Look at us.’ Sergius drove the point of his knife into the tabletop as the pork and stuffed marrows were cleared away virtually untouched. ‘You’d think we were facing mass execution.’
He was right. No appetites, no colour, no feelings even. Just a numbness, in both body and spirit. Passing time until Something Else Happened.
More eyes were watching the blade quivering in the woodwork than the irritation which washed over Sergius’ face. ‘There’s a madman on the loose, I can’t deny it,’ he snapped. ‘But I’m buggered if he’s going to take us down with him.’
Too late, thought Claudia. On the walls, Ganymede was swept off to his new job on Mount Olympus and he was the lucky one. He got away.
‘Won’t anyone answer me? Are we to sit in silence for the rest of our lives?’
‘You think we sing and tell jokes, yes, while the killer pick us off one by one?’ The lines in the Celt’s face became trenches, and the girl
on the lyre hit two duff notes in succession.
‘That’s why Taranis wears long pants,’ Timoleon growled in something close to his normal manner. ‘He’s always wetting them.’
‘Tch!’ The Celt made a gesture that none of them had seen before but they all recognized as vulgar. The gladiator curled his lip in disdain.
But small though the squabble was, the spell had been broken. Pallas made a lunge for the prawn rissoles before they were cleared from the table, perhaps not with his usual vigour, but he hung on to them none the less.
‘What exactly do you have in mind?’ Orbilio asked, and Claudia was surprised that, although he addressed the question to Sergius, his eyes flashed dark on Tulola.
Sergius began to sniff victory. ‘At this very moment,’ he said, ‘half of Rome is comprehensively pissed and the other half’s well on the way. What say we forget this maniac and celebrate ourselves? Tomorrow?’
‘I think that’s a wonderful idea,’ gushed Alis.
‘Me too.’ Euphemia speared a scallop with the same knife she’d drawn on Claudia. ‘I’m fed up seeing your miserable faces all the time.’
Hark who’s talking, thought Claudia, ‘Celebrate how?’ she asked.
Sergius wiggled his blade out of the tabletop and called for the fruit. ‘I rather thought an outing to the springs would be nice.’
‘I d-don’t think we should leave—’
‘Rubbish, sweetie.’ Tulola waved aside the Tribune’s protests. ‘It’s a brilliant idea. This hanging around is driving us demented, even you, Salvian, young as you are.’ She leaned over and tickled him under the chin until he turned red as a turkey cock.
‘M-my uncle—’ he spluttered.
But Sergius was not a man to be put off the scent. ‘Come along, you lot, what do you say?’
Careful glances were exchanged, which in turn became conspiratorial glances until finally they became smug, triumphant glances.
And at least ten hands shot up.
*
In Rome, Senator Quintilian bade farewell to the last of his callers and settled back contentedly, running his hands over the carved boar’s head that comprised the arm of his chair. This was the time of day he liked best, when the long, noisy line of clients and lobbyists had finally trickled away, leaving behind their dreary petitions, most of which he’d burn later. Dismissing his scribe, he poured himself a large glass of tansy wine and closed his eyes. Skilful time management ensured him one hour—one single, solitary, precious hour—before different calls were made upon his person, usually generated by that ambitious wife of his, but just as important, nevertheless.
