by Marilyn Todd
But it wasn’t. It was a reflection of the wrath of Sabbio Tullus. Of some terrible, unnamed repercussion. Of Tarraco, whose boat was moored here the day young Cal was killed. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. Tarraco already had one tragedy behind him and now his second wife had disappeared. His second rich, middle-aged wife, to be precise. Lais, who had inherited all of Tuder’s wealth with or without a certain Spaniard’s connivance…
With a shudder, Claudia realized she knew absolutely nothing about this place or the people in it, yet in the space of three short days she had become aware of a huge and deadly shadow hovering over Atlantis. Cal was dead and so, according to Lavinia’s gossip, were others.
A young mother last night in childbirth. The silversmith with the tumour. An orphan boy, whose cousin, as Lavinia pointed out, so fortuitously inherited. The woman who kept cats. The nightmare vision in Claudia’s dream came back to haunt her. And then there was the woman who died, lying on one of these very slabs…
This is madness, she told herself. Wild imaginings born of helplessness. But instinct fought back. And instinct told her that, by meddling, her own life might be in jeopardy…
What was that?
The hairs on her scalp began to prickle. Footsteps. Heavy. Male. Like drumbeats in a sinister play, they grew louder with each rhythmic beat. Closer. Closer…
Claudia stopped breathing. Please pass by. Sweet Jupiter in heaven, make them pass by.
The footsteps grew louder, and Claudia thought of Pul, his bulging pectorals, his shining skull with just that stupid topknot on the poll. She pictured that tight leather vest, straining from heavy musculature. The curved blade on his hip—
Holy shit, Pul wouldn’t need a weapon. He’d use a pillow, to hold over her face. No screams, no struggles. Just—what was the phrase that oh-so-homely Sarmatian woman used? Her heart would stop beating.
Like a white heifer to the sacrificial block, Claudia had allowed herself to be led to this chamber and imprisoned in a rigid coffin…and now she might pay the ultimate price for stupidity. Panic beat in her chest. I don’t want to die. Mighty Mars, help me! Please don’t let me die. She remembered how Pul’s almond eyes had followed her as she conversed with Dorcan after Cal’s funeral, had pinpointed her with hostility as she talked with Kamar at the Agonalia. Always around, always watchful. From the moment she’d first clapped eyes on him, Claudia had known Pul was evil…
The footsteps stopped, and now Claudia could only hear the terrible pounding of her blood in her ears. He was outside her cubicle. Waiting. For what? In her mind, she saw his monstrous walrus moustache lifting in a blood-thinning smile as he plumped the pillow he’d pulled from under her head…
Sweet Jupiter.
A brown hand closed round the curtain at the end of the cubicle. Brown on blue. They would be the last colours she ever saw in this life—
Slowly the hand drew back the drape.
XIX
Claudia opened her mouth and screamed. There was nothing subtle about the sound, it was a bug-scrunching, ear-splitting, milk-curdling yell which would have reached as far south as the Libyan deserts and north to the rugged homelands of the Scythians who’d invented this bloody treatment, may they rot with scrofulous sores. She squinted up her eyes, her nose, her entire face and she screamed. She screamed until her lungs were on fire. Until her tonsils were raw. Until, in fact, a whole platoon of attendants came running.
‘Mighty Earth Mother, what’s wrong?’ gasped the Sarmatian supervisor. ‘Are you in pain, dear?’
‘It was a spider,’ an amused baritone explained. ‘A big, hairy black thing which scuttled over her neck, but she’s fine now. I er—’ he lowered his voice to confide ‘—squashed it.’
Tittering broke out behind the curtains and Claudia dared not unscrew her eyes. She knew—she bloody knew that Sarmatian cow would be laughing at her. Her and a dozen others! She waited until the women clopped off.
‘Orbilio, you bastard!’ Her lungs were down to a burning wheeze. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘There’s no segregation in the treatment area,’ he said amiably. ‘I mean, who could make improper advances to a sarcophagus? Indeed,’ narrowed eyes capered the length of her mudpack and his mouth turned down at the edges, ‘who’d want to?’
She’d skin him. Flay him alive and then fly his hide as a kite.
‘I was not crying rape,’ she protested through tightly gritted teeth—and immediately realized her error. Perhaps, with luck, he was too busy sniggering to notice?
‘You weren’t, were you?’
Damn.
Orbilio leaned over, leaving her in no doubt that he had not misread the terror etched on her face when he pulled back the drapes. Watching a pulse beat at his neck and with the smell of his sandalwood unguent tingling down her throat, she waited for him to ask, ‘Who were you scared of, Claudia? Who did you think I was just now?’
Goes to show the scrambled state of your brains, you silly bitch! It sounded utterly preposterous, even to herself, to admit that she’d cowered in fear of her life from a total stranger with whom she’d exchanged not so much as a nod. Claudia sent a silent prayer of thanks to Jupiter that thoughts weren’t as easily communicated as words put down on parchment.
Marcus straightened up and hooked a stool across with his toe. Another time, the scrape of wood on tile would have set Claudia’s teeth on edge. Right now, she didn’t even notice.
‘Why won’t you trust me?’ he asked quietly.
‘Who says I don’t?’ she said. ‘Last night I slept in that wide double couch you so magnanimously paid for and you made no assault on my virtue.’
Orbilio rested one booted foot on the stool and grinned. ‘If that’s a complaint…’
Claudia’s mouth twisted at one corner, while her mind heaved a sigh of relief. Not only was he no mindreader, he hadn’t picked up on her mistake. She’d implied, over breakfast, her night had been spent with Tarraco—
‘Claudia,’ he sighed, leaning his weight upon the bent knee, ‘we’ve played mind games long enough. Isn’t it about time you came clean with me?’
‘But my dear Marcus, I shall. The instant this shell is cracked off.’
The quip fell short of its mark. ‘Would it speed our weary progress,’ he suggested carefully, ‘to know I’m aware of your involvement with Sabbio Tullus?’
Claudia heard something crack, and had a feeling it was her optimism, not the mud coffin.
‘What did you take from his strongroom? Uh-uh.’ Orbilio held up a hand. ‘The truth, please. How much did you steal?’
‘The—’ gulp ‘—truth?’
‘The truth.’
Claudia’s eyes followed the plumes of steam coiling round the ceiling and noticed that lamps had been lit to counteract the twilight. ‘Three hundred.’
‘What else?’
‘All right, three thousand, but you can tell Tullus I intend to pay back every single quadran come the end of the month. I’ve just had a cash flow problem with that consignment of wine to Armenia—Orbilio, are you listening?’
Never mind Armenia, his mind seemed to have wandered to the Libyan desert. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I am.’
The eyes refocused and a sharp light hovered round the edges of his pupils. ‘You’re saying it was only money you stole?’
‘Borrowed,’ she corrected sternly. ‘You know what it’s like, a poor young widow struggling to remain in business when every merchant in Rome is trying to edge her out—what else did you imagine I ran off with?’
Something about the set of his face suggested it wasn’t Tullus’ jewels or a rare piece of artwork Supersnoop was worried about.
Orbilio bridged his fingers. ‘Who told you there was a weakness in the wall of Tullus’ depository?’
Claudia thought of telling him she’d noticed a looseness round the stonework some time back in the winter, but his face was steeled and unforgiving, and right now he was every inch the Security Police. Whose functi
on, as if she needed any reminding, was to protect both Emperor and Empire. Not a physical bodyguard like the Praetorians, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio belonged to a small and elite corps of men whose job it was to root out fraud, extortion, treason, forgery—in fact any crime which might undermine the foundations of this new and precarious epoch in Roman history. At the moment, Augustus was without legal heir, and whilst this issue was high on the political agenda, nothing concrete had yet been resolved by way of a legitimate (cynics might say acceptable) appointment.
Suddenly Claudia began to feel very, very cold.
‘The architect,’ she replied, in a voice so croaky she hoped he’d attribute it to the after-effect of her scream. You stupid, stupid cow. You were set up from the outset. ‘He…owed me a favour.’
‘I thought as much.’ Marcus stood up and began to pace around the cubicle, stroking his jaw in thought. ‘Are you aware,’ he said finally, ‘that the day after Tullus reported the break-in, the architect’s body was found in a back alley? His throat had been cut, his purse and rings were missing, but frankly I don’t buy the robbery theory.’ Claudia concentrated on the lamplight making gold out of the silver plumes of steam, because she was unable to cover her ears.
‘I suspect the architect was an unwitting pawn, the same as you were, although I doubt we’ll ever know the reason for his involvement. Blackmail, probably. How did he seem when he imparted the secret of Tullus’ strongroom?’
‘Edgy,’ she admitted, remembering a few weeks back when the architect had been walking towards her, wrapped round a girl younger than his granddaughter. Please don’t tell my wife, he begged. Let’s meet and see if I can’t repay the favour… Suddenly, everything fell into place! His nervousness had nothing to do with his wife finding out, hell, the whole wretched business was a stage set start to finish, the girl no doubt a common streetwalker. And to think Claudia had actually congratulated herself on wheedling out of him the information about that loose brick at the back of the depository. ‘Why me?’ she asked.
‘Nothing personal,’ Marcus said, sucking in his cheeks. ‘Anyone short of cash and willing to take a risk would have fitted the bill. You see,’ he sat down again and crossed his legs, ‘a robbery had to take place and it was imperative Tullus caught the thief in the act.’
‘Codswallop,’ Claudia scoffed. ‘I chose the day, the date, the time—’
‘Did you?’ A smile played around the corner of his mouth. ‘I’m willing to bet that, when you think back over the conversation with the architect, he let slip something along the lines of such-and-such a day is always quiet, especially around dawn—ah.’ He nodded smugly. ‘I see this is starting to ring a bell with Mistress Seferius.’
‘All right, Cleverclogs, so the idea was planted, but I still don’t understand. Someone with a beef against Sabbio Tullus set me up to deplete his fortune—’
‘Wrong. Tullus is a wealthy man, you’d have to make a hundred trips to empty even half his coffers. No, no, they were after something far more precious than gold or silver, and it didn’t belong to Tullus. It was his nephew’s property they were after.’
Who happened to be related, however distantly, to the Emperor’s wife. Brilliant, Claudia! Absolutely brilliant. Now it’s treason good and proper.
‘Then why involve a third party?’ she asked. ‘Surely it would make more sense to sneak in and sneak out, then cement the stone back in place?’
‘Because,’ Orbilio said, cracking his knuckles in satisfaction, ‘it was vital Tullus caught the thief red-handed and drew attention to the robbery. The nephew, you see, had to be made aware of the break-in so that when he checked his casket, he found an empty space inside.’
‘Instead of what, exactly?’ she asked, and received only a vague gurgling from the back of his throat in reply. ‘All right, why not send him a letter, informing him of the theft?’
‘Because the theft had to be publicized. It was important that as many people as possible knew that Tullus’ strongroom had been turned over.’
Claudia’s brain was starting to hurt. ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me the reason,’ she said wearily, although she already knew what his response would be. Several minutes ticked past, when neither of them spoke, then Claudia said, ‘I was supposed to get caught, wasn’t I?’
‘By the time you’d been arrested, brought to trial, etc, etc, etc, the real scent would have gone cold—’
‘Whose scent?’
‘But whether you were caught or not, I suspect they’d already taken what they wanted, probably earlier, during the night—’
‘Orbilio, you miserable sod, will you please tell me who?’
‘Claudia, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be here and neither would you—’ He broke off suddenly, as his implication became clear.
‘And just why wouldn’t I be here, Marcus?’ Claudia asked sweetly. Not only would she skin him alive and fly his hide as a kite, she’d make a rope of his chitterlings and drag him round the Empire on the end of it.
‘Oh.’ At least he had the grace to blush. ‘Well—I thought that if I took the heat off you in Rome by booking this break in Atlantis, you er—’
No, Marcus Cornelius. You erred. ‘Yes?’ she prompted.
‘You might help me on a case,’ he finished feebly. ‘You see, I’m only on a short leave of absence—’ he began, but Claudia cut him short.
‘Typical. When the going gets tough, the toffs get going. Well, do I have news for you. Because if you imagined that, in taking the heat off by whisking me away to Atlantis, you’d have me reeling in gratitude, you were way off course, Marcus Cornelius. To then have the gall to expect said gratitude to manifest itself in the form of my doing your dirty work for you is nothing less than an insult.’ Why did it rankle, she wondered, that he hadn’t just helped her out for its own sake? ‘There are many things,’ she hissed, ‘I stand accused of, but being a copper’s nark isn’t one of them. Now get out, before I have you thrown out.’
XX
When Marcus Cornelius staggered out of the tavern by the basilica, he’d already lost count of the number of wine shops whose fare he had sampled so far.
Dammit, he thought his plan was foolproof.
Around him, the Agonalia had reached fever pitch. Men covered in fleeces wearing rams’ horns on their heads chased bleating young maidens (and some not so young) round the streets, cheap wines flowed from the fountains, the beat of the music was sensual, loud and hypnotic. Some might even say manic. He spiked his fingers through his hair. Goddammit, he’d spent a fortune on Atlantis, none of which he could reclaim in legitimate expenses, in order to advance his bloody career prospects, and what happens? Sod all’s what happens.
So much for the Great Pyramid of a case to lay before his boss.
No case.
No excuse for deserting his post outside the Imperial Palace.
Mother of Tarquin, it seemed so straightforward, back in Rome. Because he liked to keep tabs on a certain little firebrand, he’d picked up on the fact that Claudia’s name was linked with the Tullus strongroom robbery and he hadn’t been taken in for one second with that malarkey about respectable widows not being involved in common smash-and-grabs. This was right up her street, she was as guilty as hell, and he knew it.
On the other hand, he was also aware of darker forces moving in the background. Precisely who was behind it, he couldn’t say, but whatever Claudia might stoop to, treason wouldn’t enter her equation. And since he had a problem to resolve here… The letter purporting to be from an old friend seemed ideal.
Why, though? Why wouldn’t she help him for once? Was that too bloody much to ask for, after he’d shelled out a fortune to bring her up to Atlantis? Croesus, he was sleeping in a bloody garret! Had she no heart?
He stumbled into another tavern. Of course she had a heart, he’d heard it beating once. Right under her left breast, and he’d seen that naked once as well. He thumped his fist for a refill. Janus, that woman drove him wild! She had a temp
er which could set off an earthquake. Jousting with her was better than sex.
Well, almost.
Marcus was aware of the stirring in his loins as he fought his way through the crush of the tavern into the screeching multitudes outside. What would it be like, making love to a woman like that? Heaven. Hell. Torment. Pain. Tumult—
Wasn’t there something he was supposed to do this evening?
Orbilio dismissed the niggle in his head and imagined instead what it must be like when the hunter finally won the spoils. He imagined burying his head in that wild tumble of curls, knowing it would smell of spicy, feisty, balsam perfume, and imagined the taste of her skin. Hot and slightly salty from her sweat. In his mind, he pictured himself standing behind her, nuzzling the back of her neck with his lips as his fingers loosed the ribbons which fastened her gown. In his mind, he could hear the soft swish of cotton as it caressed her skin on its way to the floor. In his mind—
‘Marcus.’
In his dreams! He turned to find the well-upholstered Phoebe bearing down upon him, her arms open wide to embrace him, stretching the seams across her ample breasts to bursting point, and the part of him that stiffened wasn’t the part she would have wished.
‘Marcus, where did you sneak off to after breakfast, you naughty boy?’
‘I—’ His mind was a blank as he tried to extricate himself from this human boa constrictor. Surely there was something he ought to be doing? Something official?
‘Such fun, this rustic little festival,’ she purred, frog-marching him towards a group of drunken revellers. ‘They’re playing rams and rustlers,’ she trilled. ‘Which will you be? A ram?’ She nudged his ribs. ‘Or would you prefer to rustle me?’
Orbilio forced what he hoped was a laugh, although he had a sneaking suspicion that any neutral bystander would have mistaken it for water swirling down a drain. ‘I have a prior engagement—’
‘Nonsense,’ a female voice rang in his ear. ‘Marcus would love to wrestle, sorry rustle you.’
Where did she spring from? ‘Claudia—’ he pleaded under his breath.