Man Eater

by Marilyn Todd

  ‘You know she be murderess?’ he marvelled.

  ‘I know you be spy.’

  His face went rigid. ‘You say again, please. I no understand.’

  ‘You understand perfectly, my primitive friend. You came to find out whether the Emperor planned to invade Britain, am I right?’

  ‘You know damn well.’ His hands dug into her upper arms as he spun her behind the pillar. ‘Is why you’re here, no? You and security man?’

  To his amazement, she began to laugh. ‘Is that what you thought? That we’re here to keep an eye on you?’ He should consider himself so important. ‘Well, I regret to tell you this, Taranis, but my story was the gods-honest truth. I was run off the road.’

  ‘Tch!’ The Celt made a vulgar gesture with his hand, but it was aimed at himself, rather than Claudia. ‘Now you turn me in, heh?’

  I ought to, if only for turning my room over. ‘The Divine Julius made one attempt on your barbaric coast. Augustus won’t fancy tangling with you lot again, take my word for it.’

  ‘Is good,’ Taranis said, nodding sagely. ‘Is good we no have war, is good you have problem in Pannonia, and is good—good for Atrebates—your general is dead. It take heat off Britain, no? We trade in peace.’

  Claudia felt a faint ruffle of unease. ‘How could you possibly hear about invasion plans from this wretched little backwater?’

  ‘I try Rome, people notice me. So I take, what’s the word, accomplice, yes? I take accomplice. Freeborn man, poor. Need money. I pay him to stand outside Senate instead, he tell me what is said.’

  The spy has a spy, whatever next?

  ‘I—’ he paused. ‘I sorry he try to kill you.’

  Claudia goggled in indignation. ‘You tried to feed me to the crocodiles?’

  ‘Not me. Accomplice! I not know what happen.’ Be fair, Taranis did look miserable. ‘He come visit, to Vale of Adonis, to make report. I tell him you here, you bring security man with you, and he panic. He say to kill you, I say no need, but—’ He spread his hands apologetically and shambled away.

  She thought back to the night she searched Timoleon’s room, and realized now the conversation she’d overheard was Taranis talking to his accomplice. What irony. If only she’d listened more carefully, she’d never have been dragged to the compound and a man would still be alive today.

  Orbilio must have thought he was walking into a cockfight, there was such a rumpus in the atrium. ‘Sergius has kicked up a right storm,’ he remarked in Claudia’s ear, although what his next words were, she was never destined to find out, because they were drowned by a noise which by rights should have dislodged the roof tiles.

  ‘Enough!’ Macer held up an imperious hand to quieten the rabble, and gave an imperceptible nod to his trumpeter to indicate that one blast was sufficient. ‘If you could all retire to your rooms, please, I’ll conduct interviews in the morning, you can have your say then. Ah—not you, Mistress Seferius. A word, if you please.’ He beckoned her over with an obsequious crook of his finger. Orbilio, she noticed, took just one pace backwards, and that to rest his weight against a column.

  The Prefect smoothed his bright, white, civilian tunic. ‘You’ll have heard about Agrippa, naturally? So you’ll appreciate I have a lot on my plate at the moment?’ Claudia shot him her prettiest smile. ‘Tying up the loose ends of your illegal gambling racket?’

  His face turned ugly. ‘Do you accuse me of improbity, Mistress Seferius?’

  ‘Only if that fly-blown dive doubles as a brothel at weekends.’

  ‘That patronizing smile’, he hissed through his teeth, ‘will soon fade, because I have you, my girl. I have you.’

  ‘In your dreams, perhaps.’ She tried to sweep past, but he stepped to the side and blocked her way.

  ‘No, no, I have you, Mistress Seferius, bang to rights as they say.’

  Claudia raised one insolent eyebrow in reply.

  Macer drew himself up to his full height, and rolled his tongue round the inside of his upper lip. ‘This morning,’ he announced, and this time his voice carried to the rafters, ‘an itinerant pedlar reported a strong and unpleasant smell coming from one of the old patrician huts. Most of them have fallen into some disrepair along this neglected stretch of the Via Flaminia. I expect you had noticed.’

  ‘If you had a point, Macer, it’s long since gone blunt.’

  ‘Apologies, if I’m boring you. But you see, Mistress Seferius, when our itinerant pedlar went to investigate this objectionable odour, what do you think he found?’

  ‘Your wife?’ she asked sweetly.

  Marcus Cornelius Orbilio had turned the other way, but his frame seemed to be shaking silently.

  ‘He found’, Macer sneered, ‘the bodies of three young men. One had bulging eyes, one had ginger hair and the other bore a birthmark just about,’ he ran his finger slowly down Claudia’s cheek, ‘here. Acid, it would seem, had been added to their wine.’ The Prefect examined his gold cloakpin. ‘It was not a pleasant death.’

  Sweet Jupiter! Sergius Pictor wasn’t desperate, he was sick. To kill three boys, just to silence them—it was Coronis all over again. Claudia’s stomach clenched and unclenched. Surely he could have spared a few coppers to pay them off?

  ‘Prefect,’ Claudia said sadly, ‘I have a whole host of alibis.’ Obsessed to the point of delusion, poor chap. They’ll laugh him out of court on Wednesday. ‘Including your own nephew.’

  Even as she spoke the words, she knew…

  And, worse, Macer knew…

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled, and it was not a pretty smile. ‘He told me.’

  Idly, he turned to face the captain of his soldiers. ‘Arrest the bitch,’ he said calmly, jerking his chin towards Orbilio. ‘And him too, if he tries to interfere.’

  *

  Claudia Seferius didn’t think twice. Spinning on her heel, she raced across the atrium and out through the courtyard.

  ‘After her!’ yelled Macer. ‘Stop her! Any way you can.’

  Vaulting the rosemary, she fled past the parrots and the topiaries and leapt over the fishpond. Torches that had previously been so welcoming became her enemy. They threw her fleeing figure into stark relief and gave her a thousand shadows. She jumped at each one.

  Any way you can, Macer said…

  Oh no! The gate’s locked! She rattled it, pushed it, then when it refused to budge, ran to the far gate. The soldiers were gaining. They did not have to cleave a path, negotiate obstacles. Like migrating geese, they only had to stay in her slipstream.

  Damn you, Macer, damn you to hell! Because even as she was boasting of Salvian’s alibi, she realized the hole she was digging for herself. Of course, the boy would tell his uncle. Trusting, idealistic—he saw no reason not to. Any way you can. Dead or alive. It might yet prove a grave she had dug for herself. A thousand silhouettes flickered around her. A thousand hobnailed boots echoed in her ears. Shit! This gate’s locked as well! Finding a toehold in the woodwork, Claudia shinned over it, her dusky pink skirts billowing as she darted between the peach trees and the pears.

  Shouts told her that the soldiers were splitting up, fanning out. Thinning out… She glanced over her shoulder. Three only in direct pursuit.

  ‘Fuck!’ A legionary, unfamiliar with the terrain, had tripped on the steps and was rocking himself as he rubbed at his ankle—the way people do, when the sprain is severe. One down, two to go.

  Croesus, she was almost upon the labyrinth of sheds. She didn’t know her way well enough to tangle with them. Think, Claudia, think!

  One of the soldiers had paused to check his colleague, but the third man was gaining rapidly. Merciful Juno, be praised! Claudia grabbed the hoe leaning against a walnut tree and ducked behind its ample trunk. Wallop! Right in the solar plexus! The running soldier gasped once, then pitched forward on to his face.

  Two down, one to go.

  At the end of the orchard, she paused under the full light of a brand burning in its bracket on the wall, as though unsure which w
ay to turn. She glanced to the left, then to the right, then to the left, then to the right. Fat lot of use, hoping Junius might suddenly spring to her rescue. Macer would have nabbed him long ago. Taken in for questioning, he would say.

  Torture was the word.

  For a second time she hesitated under a light, looking in all directions and hopping indecisively on the spot. Her pursuer was close now. But so was the first of the barns. Claudia spun to her left.

  Junius was a stubborn cuss, he’d die rather than lie to the Prefect.

  Timing her run, she jumped and swung upwards, her skirts barely clearing the branch as the legionary turned the corner. The blood in her temples pounded like thunderclaps, but he failed to connect the significance of a shower of soft, pink petals and Claudia sent a silent prayer of gratitude to Mars for setting brawn above brains for his warriors. The soldier swore loudly and then crashed his way into the first of the sheds. Banging and thumping told her he was searching the building, and she heard him thunder out of the other door. Straddling the smooth, grey bark she thought of Junius, bound in rawhide as one of Macer’s minions applied red hot irons on the soles of his feet…

  Kill my bodyguard, she vowed, and I’ll kill you personally.

  ‘Cut her off!’

  ‘Get her before she reaches the sheds!’

  Claudia timed her fall with the shouts. For the moment they had lost her. Now was the time to turn back, because Macer would not expect something so obvious.

  Crouching along the shadows of the east wing, Claudia felt her way towards the south entrance where Macer’s horses were hitched to the posts. Ducking beneath Alis’ window, she heard loud wailing. The wail of a widow. Or was that Alis’ window?

  Relief welled up in Claudia’s chest when she saw the horses were not only tethered, they were still saddled up. Dear, sweet Juno, I owe you one.

  Third from right, he’s my mount. Can’t be difficult, can it, riding a horse? Just swing yourself up, dig your knees into the animal’s side and hey presto, the wind’s in your hair before you know it. And I’ll grab the reins of the others as I go, they can scatter when we’re clear of the valley.

  Sprinting across the yard, Claudia failed to notice another figure.

  Too late she heard the crunch of a boot on the cobbles.

  ‘Not so fast,’ a voice snarled in her ear.

  Then the night shattered into a thousand fragments, and everything went black.

  XXXI

  When Claudia came to, she realized Macer had taken no chances this time. He had tied her up like a despatch rider’s satchel—five hours of joggling would still never loosen the bonds. Claudia paused for breath. Talk about tunnel vision. That pompous, fussy, on-the-take Prefect was like Agrippa’s underground aqueduct—except whereas that was designed to keep litter and scrap out, the Prefect’s tunnel repelled justice, logic and anything resembling an open mind. I’ll have your lungs on a skewer for this.

  Lying on her side in the dark, it was difficult to take stock of her surroundings, but Claudia was pretty sure, from the cidery smell, that this was the old fruit store, the one that Pallas had suspected of being damp. Like the others, it would be stone-built, devoid of windows, boast a high, pitched roof, a floor of dry, compacted earth—and just the one door.

  Now then, Macer, you blockheaded, imbecilic numbskull of a nincompoop, just what have you tied me to, eh? Writhing and thrashing, twisting and squirming, Claudia could not even sit up. So what was it she was tied so securely by the arms, waist and ankles to? Well, it was heavy, but not solid—a sack? No, sacking would have chafed her back—her back?

  For the first time, Claudia realized her tunic was missing, that she was lying in just breast band and thong. Godsdammit, Macer really was taking no chances. Using her skin as a sensor, she began to eliminate the possibilities one by one. All right, we know it’s not a sack. Or (rub, rub) wood or metal or terracotta. It feels like… She jolted in the darkness and felt the blood freeze in her veins. It feels like flesh.

  Jupiter, Juno and Mars, I’m tied to a corpse!

  She felt a pulse of revulsion. Then another, and another and another. In a surge of nausea, she kicked and writhed, but the ropes held good and Claudia forced herself to subjugate the revulsion. A corpse is just a person who’s stopped breathing. A corpse is just a person who’s stopped breathing. She had no idea how many times she repeated it before some semblance of calm set back in and she began to pray to Fortune that the body wasn’t Junius. And yet, logically, who else could it be? Not Marcus, he was too smart and, dare she say it, too important. She remembered her vow. Kill my bodyguard, and I’ll personally send you to hell.

  There was a noise in her ear, not unlike the squeak of a door. A…groan? Junius? Her heart started walloping against her ribs. At her back, she felt the first flutterings of movement as the corpse began to revive. Then it began struggling, then thrashing, then jerking so violently she was forced to tell it, in no uncertain terms, to have a care, there are others involved in this, you know.

  ‘Claudia?’

  ‘Orbilio?’ I do not believe this! ‘Did you do this on purpose, for a cheap thrill?’

  ‘This doesn’t come cheap,’ he laughed, shaking his ankles. ‘I’ll be charging you twenty sesterces at least. Do you know where we are?’

  ‘The old fruit store, and I won’t pay a quadran over twelve.’ Then she reminded him that, if he pleased, there were other ankles attached to his.

  ‘Make it eight and you’re on.’ He gave another kick. ‘The rope has a bit of slack in it, can you feel it? If we can just roll from side to side and loosen it—’

  Like a landlocked hippopotamus, they wallowed and rolled, rolled and wallowed, momentum gathering all the time.

  ‘Oooof!’

  She heard the air spurt out of his lungs as she landed smack on top of him. ‘Don’t blame me, this was your idea.’

  ‘Ptth.’ She heard him spit out a mouthful of dirt. ‘Can (wheeze) you (wheeze) wriggle your foot free?’

  ‘I can see a rope dangling from the rafters.’

  ‘Could you (rasp) hurry?’

  ‘We could climb that—’

  ‘Claudia? Ple-eeze?’

  ‘—and escape through the roof.’

  ‘Claudia, move your godsdamned foot!’

  ‘Don’t shout, I’m only trying to help!’ Her face screwed tight in concentration. ‘Yess!’

  Puffing, they rolled on to their sides, Orbilio gasping for air for what she told him was a very selfish amount of time and would he please let her know when he’d finished playing with the dust in his mouth, so they could at least shuffle into a sitting position.

  ‘If we could find a rough edge,’ he said, oblivious to the verbal spillages, ‘we could saw through these ropes.’

  ‘Try using your tongue.’

  He ignored that as well. ‘But we’ll need to stand up, so…on the count of three, right? One, two—are you trying?’ He supposed the raspberry meant yes. ‘Again. One, two—up!’

  ‘You said on the count of three.’

  ‘That was three.’

  ‘It was only two.’

  ‘All right, all right, this is no time to argue. One, two, three. PUSH!’

  Backs together, they thrust their way to a standing position.

  ‘First it was sherbet,’ he said, ‘then it was milk.’

  Claudia’s eyebrows furrowed. ‘You took the trouble to sniff the contents of the jug before it landed on your head?’

  ‘You were the only one who was knocked out,’ he chuckled. ‘Tonight, when I went to my room for my sword after Macer set up the hue and cry, I realized, somewhat belatedly, that my milk had been laced.’

  ‘Ah, yes. That mysterious movable ulcer.’

  ‘Please!’ he protested. ‘Do you know how long I’ve gone without a drink?’

  Gently she knocked her head back against his. ‘The longest I’ve ever seen you without liquor, Marcus Cornelius, is thirty paces. Now are you going to get us out o
f here or not?’

  It took a complicated set of hop-skip-and-jumps, which in the dark proved often painful what with jutting shelves and unexpected crates, but eventually they found what they were looking for. At some stage in its history, a bronze cooking pot had been left on an unattended stove for a jagged hole to burn through. How thoughtful of it to wait in the store to be patched.

  ‘How is it,’ he asked, manoeuvring the vessel into position and rubbing off the thick crust of verdigris with his thumb, ‘that wherever Claudia goes, trouble trots beside her?’

  ‘Me? I’m just your average little catalyst.’ She heard the rope grate against the rough, serrated bronze. They all had their secrets, Tulola, Pallas, Sergius, Euphemia, even Taranis the Celt. Her stumbling into their lives merely accelerated the situation. She concentrated on the rope, rasping and scraping. Surely, yes surely she could detect a bit of give in it?

  ‘I could get used to this,’ he said languidly.

  Claudia’s mouth twitched at one side. Half an hour of wiggling up and down, back to bare back, loin cloth to thong? ‘I’ll bet you could.’

  Twang! As the strands burst free, they massaged the weals, then Orbilio spotted a tallow and suddenly there was light.

  ‘Can you reach?’ she asked, pinching her nose against the stinky candle. ‘It’s quite a way up, that rope.’

  ‘Forget it, there’ll be guards posted all round this building. Listen! Can you hear that?’

  ‘Yes. Rats.’ She’d seen two so far, and that was just since the light went on. Any bigger and Gisco could harness them to his chariots.

  ‘No, no. Can’t you hear a low, gurgling sound?’

  ‘Water?’ she ventured.

  ‘Exactly. Now hold this candle, will you?’

  Arm’s length was still too close for the evil pong. ‘What are you looking for?’

  Save your breath, Claudia. The Boy Wonder is in a world of his own. With a gleeful yelp, he pounced on a rusty iron sieve. ‘We need to trace the run of the pipes.’

  ‘What pipes?’ In candlelight, she could see verdigris on her arm, rope burns all over, and a couple of scratches on her shins.

  Orbilio tested the handle of the sieve. ‘Sergius diverted part of his stream—those beasts need a lot of fresh water—this is the runaway.’