by Marilyn Todd
His laughter, echoing through the still morning air, was as refreshing as the water in the atrium pool and it was singularly unfortunate that the first person she bumped into in the colonnade outside Orbilio’s room happened to be a Greek physician with blue eyes and obedient blond locks.
XXVIII
It doesn’t matter whether you live in the centre of Rome or the outer reaches of the Empire, every eighth day is market day and that’s that. Hides are traded, cheeses are sold, gossip is embroidered and fashions are admired by stallholders who set up stands long before the first rays of dawn clear the hilltops or shadows lift from the ravines.
Claudia was too fired up to sleep and in any case it was too noisy. Bitumen, it seemed, was an essential element of sheep dip. Eugenius already had enough watery olive lees to float a warship, sulphur from his fullers’ yards and sufficient hellebore and squill to fill the Pharos. What he did not have was bitumen, and without bitumen sheep could not be dipped. Instead they were crammed together in makeshift pens, bleating and baa-ing every god-given moment, clearly preferring ticks and footrot and scab to pressing flesh (or rather fleece) with their neighbours and you could tell they were not going to be mollified by the odd feed of broom and willow. Moreover, you couldn’t take a walk without tripping over a shepherd, they really did clutter the place up.
She eyed them closely. Young men, mostly. Rough, tough, sure-footed; men able to withstand all manner of hostile conditions and that didn’t just mean the weather. Loneliness must be a problem. Maybe a real problem for some of them. And maybe, just maybe, an uncontrollable problem for one of their number…?
Orbilio believed the killer was Diomedes, Claudia thought it more likely to be a local resident—but had anybody considered the shepherds? Well used to rough terrain, they could move quickly over ground most of us would struggle with, which could explain their rapid disappearance after the event.
How often did they see a woman? How often did they take a woman? How did they feel about the prospect of a soft virgin? They were strong men, accustomed to fighting off mountain thieves and wild animals—and they carried small, sharp knives about their persons. Claudia studied each weatherbeaten face carefully and decided they all looked capable of this heinous crime. She hoped the bitumen would arrive shortly.
In the meantime, it was market day in Sullium.
Portius climbed into the car beside her, the gems on his fingers looking like gaudy knuckledusters. ‘The old man’s taken a turn,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Gone right downhill.’
Claudia refrained from telling him she knew all about it. That’s where Diomedes was off to at dawn, to visit his patient. There was time, though, to ask him about the tramp in the clipshed, and although he admitted it was really too soon to tell, he did think the prognosis looked good.
He looked strained, she thought. His eyes stared past hers at Orbilio’s closed door, as though something was bothering him.
‘I must see Eugenius,’ he said, without any great emotion in his voice. ‘Can I call to see you on my way back?’
That, she thought, was as good a reason as any to nip into Sullium.
Since Pacquia was still officially assigned to Claudia, she’d left the girl playing with heated cauteries, chamber pots and goodness knows what, on the strict understanding that it was to be a secret between the three of them, Claudia, Diomedes and Pacquia, and that she was to report to Claudia the minute the tramp said anything sensible. At present he was alternating between sleep and incoherent ramblings, but one thing they had discovered. He had a name, Melinno.
It didn’t mean anything to anyone.
‘I’m sorry about your grandfather,’ she said.
‘Father will be pleased,’ Portius was saying, fanning himself with the most ostentatious band of pink and blue ostrich feathers. ‘He and Linus rub along well enough, they’ll be happy for Fabius to go off and work his own lands.’
She was thinking about Melinno and nearly missed it. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Portius licked his middle finger and wiped a smudge of antimony away from his left eyelid. ‘Fabius was given a parcel of land in Katane when he left the army and, being a centurion, the old so-and-so’s done rather well for himself.’ He coiled a ringlet back into place. ‘It’s just up your street.’
‘How so?’
‘Didn’t you know? The old man made him plant vines on it.’
‘Made him?’
Portius’s mouth puckered and his eyes rolled theatrically. ‘You should have heard them! Big Brother knows nothing about grapes, wanted to grow wheat like everyone else in Katane, but would the old man wear it?’ He leaned over conspiratorially. ‘Between you and me,’ he said in an exaggerated whisper, ‘I don’t see Bacchus getting much veneration from it, Fabius hasn’t a clue about wine.’
Who had? But it certainly explained one thing.
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Where do you fit in?’
Why were they talking about the business as though Eugenius was already dead?
Portius laughed. ‘You must be joking. When Father takes charge, I’m off.’
‘Rome?’ Claudia found her fingers were crossed.
‘Capri,’ he said, and she sent up a silent prayer of gratitude. ‘Rather more to my eclectic tastes, don’t you think?’
Claudia laughed aloud. ‘Hence the Virgil quotes?’
Portius assumed a tortured artist pose with his hands. ‘Please don’t say that!’ he mocked, then added seriously, ‘My parents don’t know the difference between Virgil and valediction. That poetry is my escape, Claudia. Father thinks it’s genius—which it is, of course, except it’s not mine. It’s my ticket to Capri.’
Only a couple of miles off the mainland, its high cliffs and dense greenery made the island an impenetrable haven for pederasts and paedophiles, sycophants and orgies, where prying eyes did not see the ‘games’ enacted there nor ears catch the splash when, occasionally, those ‘games’ went wrong and there was a body to dispose of…
Gooseflesh rippled up her arms. Portius? She looked at him again, peeling off the veneer of antimony and carmine, jewels and unguents. Underneath was a boy, a man, eighteen years old, strong and healthy which was more than his appetites appeared to be. How unhealthy were they? It was a point to bear in mind.
Pulling up in the Forum, the driver watered his mule and Claudia disappeared into the crowd before Portius could finish describing the steep, grey cliffs of Capri and the delights awaiting him. Many of the streets were narrow and without pavements, packed shoulder to shoulder with men, women and children, their legs buckling under the weight of market produce. Blackberries, duck, pottery, ivory, ointments. She heard the clip of iron scissors on hair, the clap of wooden plates from the beggars. The air was filled with hot, spicy sausages and rich, spicy wine. A salt seller sawed lumps from his block, acrobats tumbled, and along the street a fight broke out between two women at the communal oven. Babies squawked, children played chase, their grubby little fists clutching tunics and stolas and togas as they darted between your feet. Donkeys brayed and women haggled and backstreet barbers, eager not to miss out on the trade, brought their chairs and their wares into the square, grating their whetstones and scraping the chins.
It was, Claudia thought, as close to heaven as mere mortals get.
Searching for a place to eat her slab of honey bread, still steaming and rich with the scent of the wood-fired oven, she turned away from the Forum, past the law courts towards the temple of Minerva. Recalling how Minerva didn’t exactly favour Claudia Seferius, she decided against tempting the goddess by nibbling her bread on the temple steps and followed the street down the hill. It was unpaved, and just to prove this was a poor area, shopping baskets contained more beets and less meat, lentils rather than cheese. Shops became booths, plaster peeled away from the buildings and the wooden overhangs looked rickety and dangerous. Sharing her honey bread with a small urchin who could have been boy or girl, Claudia watched a funeral procession pass by
the lower road. How different from Sabina’s. No hired mourners, no hired musicians, no hired torchbearers to light the path of the soul.
‘That’s Hecamede,’ the child said, helping itself to another chunk of the hot honey bread while still chewing on the first.
‘Kyana’s mother?’ Claudia was shocked.
‘Yep.’
The urchin crammed in so much bread, its mouth couldn’t close properly. To avoid a close-up in mastication, Claudia stared down the street. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Topped herself.’
‘How?’
No answer, and when she turned round the child had gone, along with the rest of the honey bread and a gold brooch set with carnelians. It was left to a passing crone with three dark hairs sprouting from a mole on her chin to explain that Hecamede could finally take no more. On the anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance, she cut her wrists and bled to death.
Claudia pictured her last hours. Lost and lonely, inconsolable in her grief. Did she think of Aristaeus? Or were her last thoughts focused solely on little Kyana, five years old and full of mischief? Little Kyana, who disappeared the day Aristaeus went to collect spiders’ webs.
Claudia raced after the funeral procession, intercepting the undertaker at the second block of tenements. When he reached the pyre, she said, he must do it properly. He must deliver the funeral oration personally, extolling Hecamede’s virtues as a mother and then afterwards ensure a sow was sacrificed to Ceres with all the pomp and ceremony he would bestow upon a wealthier patron. Pop-eyed, the undertaker agreed, mentally noting that the ring he had been given in payment would look particularly nice on his mistress’s finger.
It was only later, approaching the villa, that Claudia remembered seeing something that was important, if only she could remember what it was. Damn! So many people milling around, so many sounds and smells compounded by the mental confusion and shock surrounding Hecamede’s suicide, was it any wonder?
Doubtless, though, it would come back to her at some stage.
Providing it wasn’t too late.
*
Marcus Cornelius Orbilio had spent much of his morning listening. Listening and following.
It intrigued him to watch little Pacquia, dark-skinned and thin as a billhook, weaving back and forth between the villa and the clipshed via an extremely convoluted route which took in the dyesheds, the bleaching yards and the orchard. Sometimes she carried water in a bowl, sometimes cloths, sometimes objects hidden by cloths, but each time she was whistling, as though her errand was of no importance.
What on earth, he wondered, running an ivory comb through his hair, was Claudia up to this time?
His spirits unexpectedly fell when he realized he was mistaken. One of the shepherds had fallen sick and Pacquia was running errands for Diomedes, which possibly explained the tortuous route. For here was the shepherd convalescing in the clipshed, probably because he had something contagious which the Greek didn’t want bandied about.
Leaving the man tossing fitfully in his sleep, Orbilio went to check on Tanaquil. Eugenius had been completely closed to reason when he spoke to him yesterday evening. The girl had stolen a horse, Collatinus said, and theft was a civil matter which, as Orbilio knew, was tried in the magistrate’s court.
For magistrate, read Ennius, Marcus thought irritably. He’d find her guilty and order her to make restitution. She might argue that she had returned the horse, which was only borrowed in the first place, but Ennius would be deaf to her appeals and insist she sell herself into slavery to cover the debt. No prizes for guessing who’d snap her up.
‘Don’t look so bloody sanctimonious, man,’ Eugenius had snapped. ‘Haven’t you ever hankered for a fullbreasted redhead to warm your toes once in a while? Spirited little filly, I like ’em like that.’ He swirled wine round inside his mouth. ‘Don’t you?’
Arguing with a bigot was like arguing with stone and Orbilio gave up. Collatinus appeared to have forgotten Acte pretty damned fast, and for a girl who’d given sixteen years of her life pandering to the old sod, it was bloody unfair. When he’d heard the old man had been taken ill in the early hours, he was actually rather glad.
Tanaquil had been locked in a shed which at present was empty, but which would shortly be filled with bracken for the sheep’s winter litter. Orbilio felt he owed it to the girl to tell her her fate before she found out from anyone else, and to tell her also that he intended to outbid Eugenius. Not that he expected to win. Ennius would see to that. But by Janus, he’d bloody well try.
The presence of four guards was unnecessary. Tanaquil couldn’t hope to escape, the shed was stone built—and how could she hope to reach the thatch without a ladder? But Eugenius was going to make as much capital as he could out of this, and so the guard was for show more than anything else. Approaching from the clipshed, it was the voices which stopped him in his tracks. Low-pitched, they were embroiled in heated argument, although he was unable to make out the words. When he turned the corner, the last person he expected to see with his lips to the crack in the stonework was Fabius.
‘Holy Mars, you gave me a fright!’
‘So I see.’ He’d jumped like the proverbial scalded cat.
Orbilio waited, but Fabius said nothing, either to him or to Tanaquil through the gap. He simply nodded and strode off, his face suffused with anger.
A single green eye blazed its fury through the crack. ‘I’ll kill him. When I get out, so help me, I’ll kill him.’
‘Fabius?’
‘Eugenius,’ she spat.
Orbilio rattled off a few platitudes to calm her down before finally breaking the news about the impending trial. She didn’t enquire as to his motives for outbidding Collatinus, neither did she thank him for his efforts.
‘I’ll have his guts for my girdle,’ she hissed. ‘He had no right to murder Utti.’
‘You didn’t tell me Utti had bloodstains on his tunic.’
‘Well, of course he did,’ she snapped. ‘He came running when I screamed and helped me turn Acte on to her back again. Whose side are you on, anyway?’
‘Tanaquil, why were you in the birch grove on Wednesday?’
‘I told you, I went for a walk.’ It sounded petulant.
‘What was Utti doing there?’
There was a long pause and a longer sigh. ‘He was following me,’ she said. ‘Only I didn’t say, because I didn’t want to incriminate him.’
‘By lying, it appeared you were covering up for him, you realize that?’ Of course she realizes that, you stupid oaf. The knowledge is eating her alive. He quickly moved on. ‘Why was Utti following you? Was he worried something might happen to you, a woman alone?’
‘Yes.’ She said it too quickly, as though she was pouncing on the idea. ‘Yes, that’s it, he wanted to protect me.’ She began to cry. ‘What’s going to happen to me, Marcus? Suppose they kill me, too?’
‘They’re not going to kill you, Tanaquil.’ Not in the sense you mean.
Injustice seethed within him and he decided to have one more go at Collatinus. Instead, the gigolo blocked the doorway, stressing how ill the old man was, how frail. ‘Bit sudden, isn’t it?’
‘He’s eluded Death for sixteen years,’ Diomedes said. ‘But now Death’s picked up the spoor, he’s not going to let go.’
‘How long?’
Diomedes shrugged insolently. ‘Who knows?’ he said, in a manner which made it clear to both of them that he did know and wasn’t telling. Orbilio resisted the urge to smash his fist right between those blond-lashed eyes.
But that was this morning. Since lunch…
Since lunch, he wasn’t feeling so well. He was cold, so cold he was wearing his toga on top of his tunic and was still shivering. An open charcoal brazier burned in the corner. Beside his couch, a portable water heater stood on its tripod. He lay down and pulled the bedcovers up to his chin, using the cold as an excuse for knees which weren’t functioning properly. He was certain there was a draught
in the room, but he’d closed the windows and drawn the hangings. There was a noise, too. It was, he decided later, the sound of his own teeth chattering, an unwelcome accompaniment to the constant drumming inside his cranium.
Weakly he propped himself up on one elbow and tried to call for assistance. Instead he was violently sick.
*
Returning from Sullium, Claudia walked into a house which had a surprisingly festive air and she had to check the calendar nailed up on the wall beside Cerberus to confirm this wasn’t some spurious Sicilian holiday she’d forgotten about. Tossing Cerberus a joint of mutton—all bone and gristle, that hound—she was puzzled. No local deity to honour? No local custom to celebrate? It was left to Senbi to explain, as he handed her a letter.
‘It’s the Master,’ he said. ‘He has taken a turn for the worse.’
Claudia stopped in her tracks. ‘Bit sudden, isn’t it?’
Senbi shrugged. ‘That’s not for me to comment,’ he said, with what appeared to be a mouthful of oil. ‘I do know, however, that Master Aulus has already spoken with the undertaker.’
Like circling vultures, Claudia thought as Senbi padded off, each member of the family looking forward to Eugenius’s death with purely selfish interests.
Matidia would, at long last, be mistress in her own house. It would be her duty, not Acte’s, to line up the slaves of a morning and dish out the orders. Aulus would have the power he had waited fifty-eight years for, the power of initiative, of life and death, even of selling his entire family into slavery if he so desired. Portius would have his precious ticket to freedom and Fabius could farm his lands in Katane, ripping up his ailing vines and planting wheat in the rich, fertile soil, much to Linus’s delight, who would then be second in command to Aulus.
Really, the atmosphere in the house seemed to say. You’d think Eugenius would have done the decent thing and popped off long ago, wouldn’t you?