by Marilyn Todd
Slowly Claudia laid down her glass. ‘But there’s substance behind the stories, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Lavinia’s a crippled old olive grower with time on her hands, she likes to gossip,’ she cackled. ‘That is a very striking gown, if I may say so.’
‘I’m glad you approve. You were saying?’
‘I always approve the understated,’ Lavinia flashed back. ‘Is there something wrong with the hem, you keep rubbing it? Oh, Ruth. I told you to take the day off, enjoy the Agonalia.’
The young Judaean girl rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘There’s no pleasing the old bat,’ she laughed to Claudia. ‘One minute she’s desperate for company, the next she can’t wait to be rid of me. Here.’ She thrust a small copper beaker towards her mistress. ‘You forgot to take your medicine.’
‘Forget didn’t come into it,’ snapped Lavinia. ‘It stinks like death and is as bitter as bile. Now get to town, girl, before the ox that they’re roasting’s nothing but bones.’ She shooed her away with her hand. ‘And don’t come home before the stars are high, either.’
‘I don’t mind staying,’ Ruth offered. ‘Honestly.’
‘Tch. Think Lavinia can’t manage on her own for a couple of hours? Go and find Lalo, have a good time. Besides.’ One blue eye winked wickedly. ‘I’m gossiping.’
‘Not again.’ Ruth’s mouth twisted as she turned to Claudia. ‘Pay no attention,’ she said. ‘Half the time the old crow makes it up and the rest she embroiders—’
‘—as elaborately as a seamstress with gold thread,’ Lavinia finished. ‘You’re repeating yourself, Ruth, it’s a sign of old age.’
‘So’s forgetting your medicine.’ She thrust the beaker in the old woman’s wrinkled hand. ‘Don’t believe,’ Ruth told Claudia, ‘a word about the woman who kept cats.’
‘Nonsense, that was scandalous.’ Lavinia set the goblet down and leaned across to Claudia. ‘Just as well the poor woman’s heart gave out when it did, heaven knows what her reaction would have been when she found out her husband had all twelve moggies strangled.’
‘See what I mean?’ laughed Ruth, stuffing the beaker back into her mistress’s hands. ‘Makes it up as she goes along. Now will you drink this, you stubborn old bag, or do I have to pinch your nose?’
‘That—’ Lavinia threw the liquid over an undeserving fern ‘—solves both our dilemmas, so why don’t you join the Agonalia and leave me to tell Claudia about the silversmith?’
‘Lavinia, please! I insist you stop this tittletattle at once,’ Ruth wailed. ‘He was in tremendous pain, poor man, there was a canker eating at his belly from the inside, he could have gone at any time, and the same, I’m sure, was true of the woman who wore red, so don’t you bring that up, either.’
Lavinia pulled a face and said, ‘You wouldn’t think she was my servant, would you? Very well, Ruth, you win. I give you my solemn promise to stick to politics this afternoon and before you nag, no wine, either, you have my word. Now do stop fussing, child, and run along.’
She watched the girl out of sight before reaching behind a pillar to drag out another full jug. ‘Terrible thing about that little orphan boy,’ she chirruped, pouring the thick, vintage wine. ‘Ten years of age and he was killed in a hunting accident right—’ she pointed to the woods up on the hill ‘—there. Fortuitous for the kid’s cousin, mind. Inheriting his fortune.’
‘Are you suggesting—?’
‘Lavinia simply repeats what she’s heard, and she heard it was an accident, same as the woman in red that Ruth mentioned. Died in her honeymoon bed, poor cow, two doors along from me, as a matter of fact, and ho, did the tongues wag over that. Just because she was thirty years older than her man and had a few bob stashed by. But then they said the same about your young man, when his first wife died.’
‘Excuse me?’ Claudia rubbed at her temple. She must have drunk too much wine. ‘I don’t—’
‘Think I haven’t seen the two of you together?’ Lavinia shot her a shrewd look. ‘Noticed the way those dark eyes follow you around? Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with the hem of your robe?’
‘Lavinia,’ Claudia said carefully, ‘are we talking about Tarraco, by any chance?’
‘Married or not, that boy is keen on you, and I’m—’
‘Whoa.’ Claudia tried to hang on to Lavinia’s thread. ‘You did say married?’
Lavinia’s chuckle bordered on evil. ‘Forgot to mention his wife, eh? Well, Lais isn’t the first middle-aged woman he married, only let’s hope this doesn’t end in tragedy like his previous union.’
Lais?
Tarraco?
Suddenly it made sense. The slave who rose to riches…
‘Don’t tell me,’ Claudia said slowly. ‘Tuder bought a Spanish slave at auction, Lais was smitten—?’ She rose unsteadily to her feet and began to pace the colonnade. Wrong. Lais wasn’t smitten. Lais had been seduced in a cold and calculating campaign. Then when Tuder died, Tarraco had made his move—and now look who’s master of the island.
Hang on. ‘Did you say second wife? What do you mean, the first marriage ended in tragedy?’
But the effort of so much gossip on top of too much wine had exhausted the old woman. Slumped on her daybed, Lavinia snored softly beneath her coiffured wig, her wrinkled face turned up towards the sun and with an indigestible ball inside her stomach (the dates, what else?) Claudia retreated indoors.
No wonder Tarraco knew so much about women. Their sizes, their tastes, what gifts would make the most impact. Tarraco was not an artist at all.
Tarraco was a bloody gigolo.
His first wife was dead, Tuder was dead, and considerable wealth was involved. She recalled him strutting round the island. Marble come from high Pyrenees, cedar only from Lebanon. This bust? Pff, is nothing, wait till you see the colossus. What she had taken as pride in his possessions was nothing more than pompous boasting and the ball of dates (what else?) solidified further. In her bedchamber, Claudia jerked off the harebell gown and hurled it into a corner.
‘Bastard!’
He hadn’t got the robe made up, the bloody thing belonged to Lais. It wasn’t even clean, there were spots around the hem.
‘Dirty, double-dealing dago.’
With a fruit knife, Claudia hacked at the cotton until it hung in shreds, the sweat pouring down her forehead and leaving dark drips on the pale harebell blue. No wonder he’d dismissed the servants. With him still married to the master’s wife, he daren’t risk the scandal of adultery.
‘Bastard, bastard, bastard!’
Wait. Claudia leaned back on her knees and tapped her finger against her lower lip. Where exactly was Lais while all this was going on? With the plague in Rome, she’d hardly have headed for the capital. Claudia straightened up and stared across the shimmering lake, her face puckered in thought. For the question of Lais had raised another, more deadly, issue.
Because, if Claudia had rowed the Spaniard’s boat out to the island, Tarraco must have been ashore in Atlantis.
The afternoon Cal had been killed.
XV
Ankles puffed up in heat as merciless as it was unrelenting, bones felt like lead and hair hung in damp ropes. In Rome, the chaos was worsening as more and more roads became clogged with locked spokes or carts tipping over in the rush to exit the capital. The military were working round the clock, but as verges piled higher and higher with everything from crockpots to copper, saltfish to spoons, the smell of oxen and asses attracted bluebottles by the billion, and the dispirited legionaries likened their task to that of Hercules tackling the Augean stables. They ferried in water, beans and bread, they dug makeshift latrines and erected temporary awnings for the trapped stew of humanity, but, when a man’s livelihood rots by the roadside and his children are in danger from dirt and disease, the soldiers were on a hiding to nowhere.
Morale hit rock bottom.
And while the army battled with the congestion, a dark shape formed in the void, and the name of t
he dark shape was Anarchy.
For safety, pedestrian travellers either postponed their trips or journeyed in groups. Empty houses were looted, horses stolen; women feared for their lives. At nightfall, shutters were bolted, doors locked and then barred—for who was left to patrol the streets and keep them safe?
Gradually a million people became trapped in their homes, scared to go out for fear of bandits. Maggots infested the foodstuffs. Rats multiplied too fast to keep count.
The death toll was rising.
And not all the symptoms tallied with plague.
*
‘Ouch!’
Marcus Cornelius flinched when the wooden bear bounced off the crown of his head, although it was with no mean deftness that he caught the second carving before further damage was inflicted. Gingerly his fingers explored the tender swelling and, despite the pain, he grinned. Since his conversation with Dorcan, he’d been wandering aimlessly with just his thoughts and suspicions for company, yet of the fifty or so bedchambers in Atlantis, he was not so disorientated that he couldn’t work out whose open window ejected such a treasure trove of goodies.
‘We’re making progress, then?’ he called up. ‘When you shower me with gifts.’
‘Orbilio?’ A head thrust itself through the gap, and he couldn’t fail to notice that several elegant curls had slipped their leash. Or that they rested on perfect, naked shoulders. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, prowling underneath my bedroom window, you filthy pervert, you?’
‘Flattery, as well as gifts. Now I know you love me.’
‘I’d love a suppurating sore more than I’d love you.’
Oh yes, he sighed. He was definitely making progress. ‘Claudia,’ he said, ‘we do need to talk.’
‘Talk?’ A finely tooled sandal came winging through the air. Green. ‘You call yourself a criminal investigator and all you want to do is talk? I don’t suppose it occurred to you to consider earning your crust for a change?’
‘My business with you is official,’ he answered mildly, lobbing back the shoe.
There was a long silence, which he savoured.
Followed by a longer silence, which he did not.
Finally, when he craned his neck upwards again, he saw that the shutters had been snapped shut and to salvage the remains of his dignity, Orbilio stuffed his thumbs in his belt and sauntered on down the path praying that his tiddly-om-pom whistle was as jaunty as he hoped. Round the promontory his footsteps took him, beneath the domed loggia and past a thicket of alders. He glanced up at the sun porch and thought he caught a movement halfway up the cliff face. Surely not…? But there it was again. A shadow on—or rather inside—the rock. Frowning, he stared at the impenetrable grey wall, at the straggly shrubs which clung to the rock, at the strange shadows they threw. Then a sapphire-blue dragonfly whizzed, breaking the spell, and Marcus continued his stroll.
At the foot of the zigzag steps which led up to the walnut grove surrounding Carya’s shrine, a man with shoulder-length hair and a sharp taste in dress was being approached by a small boy with a package under his arm. Marcus melted into the shadow of the cliff. The boy, nut-brown and naked, proceeded to hand over the parcel. The Spaniard unwrapped the sacking and Orbilio watched a thousand ribbons scatter over the path. Tarraco fired off a succession of questions, the boy pointed up to Atlantis and, in his private hiding place, Orbilio grinned to himself. The shreds were the unmistakable hue of summer harebells…
A flash of bronze caught the sun as it spun through the air before being clasped in the fist of the boy, who scampered away, testing the coin in his teeth as Tarraco glowered at the heap of blue cotton. Then, with fists clenched and a face like thunder, the Spaniard ran up the steps. Orbilio waited until he’d disappeared into the walnut grove before retracing his route round the promontory, and this time there were no strange shadows flitting in a descending line down the rock face and his whistle was slick and robust. He paused to watch an osprey cruise the shimmering waters and a trickle of sweat wriggled down his backbone to join a party of its cousins. His meeting with Dorcan this evening should eliminate one or two—
‘Tuder,’ a voice said and, startled, Orbilio peered round a protruding tongue of rock to where Claudia Seferius was perched on a tree stump, her knees drawn up to her chin.
‘Chewed a what?’ he said. ‘Oh, by the way.’ He tossed across the wooden carvings. ‘You dropped these.’
‘Correction.’ Claudia weighed the figures in each hand. ‘I rather think I threw them. Like this.’ At the second plop, a screeching moorhen shot out of the reed-bed, its wings beating the surface of the water.
‘That’s not nice,’ Marcus said, settling his back against the rock face as the ripples in the lake began to settle. ‘You’ll give the tadpoles headaches. Why do you want to talk about Tuder? He’s dead.’
‘Exactly. And how did he die?’
‘I’m afraid you have me there.’
‘You, Orbilio, are not that lucky.’ Claudia stood up and shook the splinters from her skirt. ‘However, I think that, as a detective, you could start to earn the exorbitant salary they pay you—’
‘Actually, it’s a pittance—’
‘—and set the tiny bean inside your thick skull to finding out what happened to our wealthy banker.’
Swallowing a laugh, Orbilio noted with a tinge of disappointment that, whilst the curls ran free, those perfect shoulders had disappeared beneath a blaze of jade-coloured cotton, and jade, he decided, suited her better than that wishy-washy blue. ‘I’m sure you have a theory or two as to his demise, though?’
Beside him in the shade, Claudia snorted disdainfully. ‘How typical of the army to stick to single figures. Any number of things could have happened to poor old Tuder with what was going on out there. Maybe he burst in on Lais and her tacky love-slave and, mortified by her betrayal, plunged a knife deep into his broken heart, or—’
‘A progressive illness snuffed out the last, faint flame of life?’
‘Or,’ she glared, ‘he took a gallop round his island, discovering too late the strap on his saddle had been cut, or—’
‘Suffered a massive stroke?’
‘Or,’ she spat through clenched teeth, ‘he takes a deep draught of Falernian wine, only to find it was poisoned. Or—’
‘He died of the pox after a lifetime of debauchery and couldn’t give a toss whether his middle-aged wife remained chaste or slept with an entire legion every night. Claudia, he’s dead,’ Marcus pointed out, ‘and it’s unlikely the truth will ever come to light, because there are only two people who could tell us. One is Tarraco, and I don’t see him soiling his pretty nest somehow, and the second person is his dear, sweet wife.’
Orbilio paused to buff his bronze buckle.
‘And Lais,’ he said quietly, ‘surprise, surprise, has disappeared.’
XVI
Dead to the world, drunks sprawled under horse troughs as a thief relieved them of their bootlaces and sparrows squabbled over piecrusts. The Forum was deserted in the throbbing midday heat and amid the smashed pots and mussel shells, dogs snarled over meat bones and the glassy-eyed mother swaying with a baby on her shoulder to music inside her head did not see six well-built men slip down the side street, wielding clubs and staves and axes.
The leader, a hard-faced thug with one empty eye socket, paused to check his bearings before signalling the group to turn right at the basilica. The street began to narrow. They passed gaily painted apartment blocks, smart but not posh, so these would be for the scribes and the clerks and their families. The tenements became smaller, packed closer together, homes for freed slaves or tradesmen on the first rung of the ladder, then the buildings ran out altogether and soon the men were trudging down a stony path towards the lake.
The grass was dry and crisp and yellow, lined with firethorns and fig trees. They passed a small but unattended olive grove, an umbrella pine with newly shorn sheep and their lambs nestling down in its shadow. One bleated softly, bu
t the men paid no heed. At a signal from One Eye, they checked their weapons, then nodded brusquely to one another before approaching the wooden shack which stood on its own. Blue smoke coiled from the roof, and a buzzard mewed in the distance as the thugs circled the building.
‘Right,’ growled the leader, grasping his club in his hand as he kicked open the door.
A woman screamed, a man jumped up from his pallet. ‘You!’ One Eye snarled, pointing to the woman as he raised his weapon high above his head. ‘Shut it!’
The woman, seeing the vicious nails which protruded from the head of the club, merely screamed louder.
‘I mean it, you bitch!’ He grabbed her by the scruff of her tunic and stuck his dead eye into hers. ‘One more squeak and Loverboy ends up like me.’
The woman, swelling with her second child, gulped back her hysteria and forced her head to nod up and down. So far, her man had not moved.
‘You were warned,’ One Eye growled, ‘what would happen if you didn’t pay.’
‘I have paid,’ the young man retorted. His face was white, but his voice was steady and clear. ‘On the Ides of every month, I’ve handed over forty bronze pieces and I’ve never been late.’
‘The price went up, remember? To fifty sesterces.’
‘By the gods, man, I can’t afford that! We barely scrape by as it is.’
‘So you’re refusing?’ A sly smile twitched at the thug’s mouth.
The young man spread his hands in helplessness. ‘We can’t afford more than forty,’ he protested. ‘I cure fish for a living, you can see how it is—’
From a cradle in the corner, a baby began to bawl, setting off a dog out the back.
‘Shut that brat up,’ the thug shouted to its mother.
The woman stumbled over to the cot, but the child was not comforted and as it cried harder, so the dog’s barking increased.
‘Silence that fucking mutt!’ One Eye yelled through the open doorway. For maybe twenty seconds the dog snarled and thrashed on its chain, then, with a pitiful whimper, fell quiet. The woman collapsed, sobbing convulsively into her infant bundle and muffling the sound of its screams. The leader of the gang glanced up the path to check no one had been alerted to the racket, then turned back to the man.