Virgin Territory

by Marilyn Todd

  She braced herself to ask the next question. ‘Do you know a woman named Hecamede?’

  ‘I know of a woman called Hecamede. Killed herself, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, she killed herself.’

  Her knees were weak as she made her way across the clearing. She did not say goodbye. She did not look round.

  She certainly did not tell him that Hecamede’s suicide was her fault. That, again, if only she’d seen what was in front of her nose, Hecamede would be alive today, coming to terms, albeit painfully, with what had befallen her little Kyana but at least having the satisfaction that justice was served at last to the man who’d abducted her.

  Because that was the second thing she’d sent Junius to check out.

  Stand in front of the harness maker’s, she told him, three paces from the corner, then turn and look over your left shoulder. What do you see? Take a wax tablet and a stylus and note down everything. Everything.

  He’d followed her instructions to the letter. Harnesses, hooks, customers, shopkeeper, coins, strips of leather, a painted sign, a spider in its web, the side street, kerbs, gutters, a poulterer on the other corner, the barber’s next door to the poulterer…

  Exactly. The barber’s next door. Had Claudia’s eyes not been riveted on the spider, her own survey would have taken in the shop over the road. She’d have realized earlier that not every barber pays for pre-vinegared spiders’ webs. That now and again, they go and collect them themselves.

  So simple. Hecamede was a local woman, she’d have been concerned only with local issues.

  Claudia passed out of the cool, leafy canopy into a blast of dry, dusty air, surprised to find herself weeping. Not for poor, blighted Aristaeus, whom she had nearly killed in the belief he was a child molester. Not for Kyana and the other little girls who had been abducted, tragic though it was. Not even for Sabina or the long-suffering Acte, despite their obscene murders.

  Claudia was weeping for Hecamede, whom she had failed. Hecamede who was slum poor, and whose accusations against a seemingly respectable barber fell on a bigoted magistrate’s deaf ears. Hecamede, one breast lolling out of her tunic, driven wild by grief until, finally, she was driven to suicide.

  Hecamede. Who had cut her wrists the way Claudia’s own mother had cut her wrists.

  Claudia had failed her, too.

  XXXII

  It was over. Finally, it was over.

  Physically drained and emotionally exhausted, Claudia halted on the plateau. Below, a molten silver streak cleaved a path towards the shimmering ocean beyond and suddenly she was impelled to immerse her whole body in this river of forgetfulness. A cold plunge which was no luxury, but a necessity.

  There was much to forget.

  The raw injustice big ugly Utti had been given, and the dreadful truth confronting Aristaeus after he made love to Sabina. Alas, it said much about Aulus that Aristaeus, Faustulus, even Claudia herself, believed him capable of the charge laid against him, but the unpalatable fact was, a grim brutality simmered underneath the surface in that family which was as sickening as it was incomprehensible.

  Linus, knocking his wife into next week. Aulus, chopping off thumbs left, right and centre. Even the viciousness of Senbi, Piso and Dexippus. It seemed Fabius had felt justified as long as the vacant creature calling herself Sabina wasn’t related…

  Claudia slithered down the slope, using rocks as footholds and tree roots as handholds. Far in the distance were the whitewashed walls and red shimmering tiles of the Villa Collatinus, surrounded by small, bleating puffs of white. A peaceful scene, and utterly uninviting.

  She listened to the babble of water as it raced over the stones in its excitement to reach the sea.

  Orbilio had believed Diomedes the killer, since who but a doctor would have the precise medical knowledge? There had been no ‘trouble’ before he arrived. And yet the same criteria applied to Fabius. Army life would teach a man how to kill, maim and immobilize. Did it, then, desensitize him to such a degree that he could plan the cold-blooded killing of two women? Cut their spinal cords, leave them paralysed—helpless and desperate for air—so he could rape them?

  Like the beechwood earlier, precious metal turned to base as the silver became nothing more exotic than water, yet it was no less appealing. She sat on a rock and pulled off her sandals, thinking of the murder weapon embedded in the tree trunk. In time, no doubt, the bark would grow to envelop it, obliterating all traces of this hideous crime, but despite the warmth of the sun trapped in the valley, Claudia shuddered.

  She waded into the middle of the river, her iris blue cotton darkening to blueberry, and sat facing downstream, hands outstretched on the river bed behind her, head tilted towards the sun. The icy water washed over her, floating her skirt and numbing the bruising on her neck. Stay here long enough and it’d wash away the guilt and the horror and maybe, just maybe, the fear of waking in the night and seeing the hollow eyes of Hecamede staring back at her.

  It was over. Praise be to Juno, it was over. She was stupid to have come to Sicily in the first place, but in a matter of hours that freighter would be whisking her back to Rome and life would continue as normal. Well, not Rome exactly, she thought, hauling herself upright, amazed at the weight of her wet stola. It’ll drop us on the mainland and we can cover the coastal route by road, picking up the Via Appia which will be a damn sight quicker than fighting headwinds. I can’t wait to get back to the—

  ‘Dammit, Aulus, you made me jump’

  Pervert. Still, he wasn’t the only man in the world who got turned on by watching women bathe and by wet cotton clinging to feminine curves.

  ‘Ooh, you made me jump,’ he mimicked. ‘Oooh, Aulus, you made me jump.’

  Claudia wrung out her skirt, wondering how much satisfaction she would feel when Old Conky heard his eldest son was a depraved monster. She picked her way towards her sandals, trying not to let him see how painful the jagged rocks were on bare feet, and she was gripped by an exhilarating surge of mischief.

  ‘Aulus,’ she said, heaping on the sympathy. ‘I know who killed Sabina and Acte, and I’m afraid it…wasn’t Utti.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Claudia smiled to herself. String him along a little further and the blow would fall the harder. ‘But I know who, and I know how, and I know why.’

  ‘You do?’

  The bolt shot home, you could see the emotions race across his face. Anger, hatred, resentment, possibly even respect. A strange light burned in his eyes and Claudia nonchalantly reached down for her sandals.

  ‘Pity you won’t have the chance to tell, then.’

  It was the venom in his voice that made her look up, and the scalpel in his hand which held her eye.

  Oh shit.

  ‘Orbilio knows,’ she said quickly, not daring to take her eye off the blade.

  ‘Is that why he left you alone?’

  ‘It’s a trap. I’m the bait. He’s up there, waiting…’

  It sounded feeble, even to her own ears. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, soft sod can hardly walk—and don’t think your servants can save you either, they’re busy lugging boxes over to Fintium.’

  Claudia kept her eye on the scalpel. To slice her spinal cord, he’d have to get behind her.

  ‘You won’t get away with this.’ Is that what Sabina and Acte had said? Were those their last words?

  ‘Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.’ He took a step closer, Claudia took a step back. ‘I’m knocking sixty, yet my father treated me like a schoolkid. No responsibility, no nothing. You’ve seen that brainless cow I’m married to. The old man even picked her, because it was a good match. Good for him, he gets a good dowry, but what do I get?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘I’d learned everything there was to know about wheat. How to combat rust, the optimum yield from threshing, the best way of burning stubble—everything there was to know and you know what he does?’

  ‘No.’ It came out a squeak.

 
He took another step closer, she took another step back. The sharp point of a rock against her instep drew blood.

  ‘He sells up. I’m thirty-three years old, and he doesn’t even consult me. I tell him the war’ll be over soon, he tells me to mind my own business. He tells me I should count my blessings that I, an equestrian, have a daughter serving Vesta. Had it not been for the war, they’d have had their pick of patricians.’

  ‘Sabina—’

  ‘After a lifetime tilling the soil, I have to forget about wheat and learn about fucking sheep. I don’t even like sheep! But he’s my father, I do what he tells me.’

  He took another pace, Claudia backed up, her eye still on the blade. As long as he was talking, she was safe.

  ‘Aulus, listen—’

  ‘Finally the old man tells me he’s given permission for my son, my son, to join the army. I told him, I’ve got a girl lined up, the dowry will mean we can live better—because by then, he’d spent all his bloody money building that damned house. Got to impress the locals, he said. Let them know who they’re dealing with. No one messes with Eugenius Collatinus.’

  ‘Look—’

  ‘He was right. No one did mess with him, except the one person he never suspected. Me. For sixteen years, I’ve been ripping him off and he didn’t suspect a thing. Not one damned thing. The day he had that riding accident, that was the day I began. Even bedridden, the old bastard wouldn’t let go of the reins, but I prized them away without him even knowing.’

  ‘Aulus, please—’

  ‘How? I’ll tell you how. His eyesight was bad. That little cow Acte thought she was the only one, but he couldn’t fool me, I knew what was going on. Dexippus is in my pocket, did you know that? Found him doing things to lambs you wouldn’t ask a butcher to do, and I went spare. Then I realized this gave me a hold over him. Through Dex, I could manipulate the old man. Write letters, keep ledgers. I controlled the whole bloody shooting match.’

  ‘Surely—’

  He made a slashing movement with the scalpel, the sinister swish audible even over the burbling waters. ‘Then things went wrong. Don’t ask me how, maybe I made a few bad investments, all I know is, the business began to go downhill.’

  Comprehension dawned. The food (or lack of it), the sparsely planted garden, the household economies. These were at Aulus’s instigation, and because he had pared them down to the bone gradually, no one had noticed. Only a visitor would comment and visitors, as she knew from experience, were unwelcome.

  ‘Do you know what a shock it was to find Sabina was coming home? Just didn’t seem like thirty years. The old man waits till the day she arrives to tell me he’s agreed a dowry with that old oil merchant. Eight thousand sesterces. Croesus, we didn’t have eight hundred in the coffers, let alone eight thousand.’

  He’d calmed down, but Claudiawasn’t in the clear yet.

  ‘Thank the gods when Sabina announces the old sod’s ravished her. Turned her head, I thought, holy orders. Actually felt sorry for the little mare. I mean, chastity isn’t natural, is it?’

  Claudia remained mute.

  ‘I said, it’s not natural. Is it?’ He was shouting and waving the scalpel, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

  ‘No.’ She cleared her throat. ‘No, Aulus, it isn’t natural.’

  ‘Damn right, and you listen to me when I’m talking to you.’

  ‘Yes, Aulus.’ She was suddenly the downtrodden and dutiful woman he expected. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What was I talking about?’

  Had he genuinely forgotten or was this a test? ‘Sabina’s dowry,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, she turns the merchant down, then damn me if the fucker doesn’t do a deal with the old man. He’d take her, daft in the head or not, for twenty thousand,’ Aulus snorted. ‘Twenty thousand. No bugger’s worth that.’

  ‘So you…?’

  ‘Tried to reason with the silly bitch, told her what the score was, that we were broke. I was totally honest, explained everything to her. Offered her all the money we had to run away, disappear, start a new life. I begged her, I actually went down on my knees and begged the little cow not to ruin my life and do you know what?’

  His face was in the grip of strange contortions.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’d never been a bloody Vestal. She’d run away once, she said, and didn’t like it. Spent thirty years in a hovel without servants, and now she was home she liked it.’

  His eyes were staring past Claudia. She wondered whether she dare make a move, but the scalpel was close enough to slit her throat—and Aulus had nothing to lose.

  Dammit, surely the ship was in by now. Why wasn’t someone out looking for her? And then she realized that, in reality, very little time had passed. Her gown was still dripping, the shadows had barely moved round with the sun.

  In that instant, Claudia knew with a chill certainty that she could not carry the strain much longer. After the physical fight with Fabius and the emotional encounter with Aristaeus, she was drained almost to her limit.

  It was too far out for the Collatinus slaves. Aulus was right, Orbilio was dead on his feet with the poison and the exercise. She was on her own.

  Tears of helplessness welled up.

  He was talking about that fateful day (was it really only twelve days ago?) when he met Sabina on the path. Claudia forced herself to listen, it was her only chance.

  ‘What do you mean, run away? I asked, and she said it was because of what I’d done to her when she was a child. What, I asked, and she…Janus, she said I did to her what I did to her mother. How sick can you get?’

  Claudia could not bring herself to state the obvious. Instead she said, ‘So you killed her?’

  He made a sound of impatience. ‘You won’t believe this, but it was an accident. I always carry a scalpel, it comes in useful in the dyesheds, in the clipshed, collecting berries and bark for the dyes. Like today, collecting baneberries. What you call all-purpose. Sabina turned her back on me. Just like that!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Turned her back and started to walk down the path. I grabbed her hair and, as Jupiter’s my witness, I swear I meant only to cut it off to teach her a lesson. She jerked…and the blade sliced the base of her neck.’

  He shrugged. ‘I realized then she’d made me kill her. I tried to punish her, hitting her and hitting her, but she was dead, there was nothing I could do to hurt her the way she’d hurt me. She’d made me kill her, and now she was getting away with it. But guess what? It gave me a hard-on. It gave me a bloody hard-on. So I did it. I did what she accused me of doing when she was six. I fucked the bitch!’

  Claudia was trembling. ‘What about Acte?’

  Aulus produced a gleeful slurping sound Claudia never wanted to hear again. ‘Got what she deserved, did Miss High-and-Mighty. Turned me down so often I lost count, yet I saw the old man putting his hands all over her, sucking on her, and her, the conniving bitch, egging him on so she could get her hands on my business, tricking me out of what’s mine.’

  Claudia’s legs could barely support her. The bank was too high, the riverbed too jagged, and all the time the scalpel was wavering in front of her. Her nerves were so stretched that, when Aulus did make his move, she wondered whether she’d have the reaction time she so desperately needed.

  ‘It was fun with Acte.’ He was laughing. Actually laughing. ‘I knew by then that Sabina didn’t die immediately, that she was aware she’d had to be punished for what she’d done, and so it was better with Acte.’

  ‘You didn’t beat her, though?’

  ‘Why should I?’ He seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘She didn’t need to be punished. All I gave her was what the old man had been giving her for years, but the best joke of all was, he hadn’t. Acte was still a virgin. I tell you, it was all I could do to stop myself running in and telling him that, for once, I’d got somewhere before he had!’

  Claudia swallowed hard. ‘Then you poisoned him?’

  ‘No one
can blame me for that. He’d had his run, it was time for the next generation to take over.’

  ‘What about me?’ It was the question she’d been dreading to ask, but it needed to be said. She had to know what was in store.

  ‘Ah, yes, the lovely Claudia. Since Utti killed Sabina and Acte, we can’t have you going the same way, can we? Let me see.’ He waved the scalpel up and down to taunt her. She refused to let him see it was working. ‘Are those bruises I see round your neck?’

  Instinctively her hand shot up to cover her throat. ‘Fabius knows about them,’ she said. ‘He put them there.’ Aulus clucked his teeth. ‘Perfect. When I hold you under this lovely clear water, he’ll be able to swear they were made earlier and put his old father in the clear.’

  Shit!

  ‘They’ll know it was you.’

  ‘Me?’ His face was a picture of innocence. ‘I’m out collecting berries.’

  ‘Wasn’t Fabius collecting them?’

  ‘My son doesn’t know his baneberry from his bum. They grow in damp places yet he goes searching the woods. I am surrounded by fools.’ His tone changed. ‘This has gone on long enough.’ He made a beckoning gesture. ‘Come here.’

  ‘Go bugger yourself!’

  ‘Claudia, Claudia. Why fight it?’ he said reasonably. ‘Drowning’s quick, it’s painless and, believe you me, there are plenty of other ways. I could even do to you what I did to the others, providing I bury you deep.’ Manic eyes swept over the blue cotton clinging to the curves of her body. ‘You’re a beautiful woman, I could really take my time.’

  ‘We could do a deal?’ Feeble, Claudia. Very, very feeble. ‘I have money.’

  ‘Too late, I’m afraid. You could have married Fabius and come to live with us, but you had to go and spoil it, didn’t you? You had to worm out my little secret?’