by Marilyn Todd
‘I can’t.’ Ruth’s head shook violently from side to side. ‘She’s sick. She needs me.’
‘But there’s nothing we can do.’ In his hand, Lalo held a large canvas sack and there was an edge of exasperation in his voice. ‘You heard what she said. Get out, get away while you can. Come on, love. In the boat.’
He tried to drag her by the arm, but the girl began to whimper like a wounded animal and fell, prostrate, to the ground, great gulping sobs racking her body. ‘She’s only got a few more days left,’ she wailed. ‘A week at the most. Who’ll be there to dose her with mandrake when the pain becomes too great for her to bear?’
‘Ruth, we’re slaves,’ Lalo hissed. ‘Which is worse? To be separated—or to get away while we can and be happy for the rest of our lives?’
Separated? Then Claudia realized why Lavinia was urging the two people she loved so dearly to abscond and risk the penalties which went with running away. She knew Fabella well enough to know she’d sell this big, broad, handsome field hand the instant Lavinia breathed her last. And there’s no way Fab would have Ruth around, with her Hebrew dress and familiar manner.
‘I’ve made enough these past weeks to buy us a fresh start.’
Claudia’s heart cartwheeled as she recalled his constant succession of raw and swollen knuckles. Was Lalo, heaven forbid, a cog in the wheel of extortion, moonlighting as one of Pul’s heavies? Horrified, she watched as he opened the top of his bag to run a river of coins through his fingers.
‘All that boxing, all those wrestling matches after hours—please, Ruth.’ His voice had thickened with grief, but Claudia’s knees nearly gave way with relief. ‘We’ve come so far,’ Lalo begged. ‘Don’t throw our last chance away.’
‘I will never leave her, and that’s final.’ The determination in Ruth’s voice carried over the rumbles of thunder. ‘Anyway,’ a note of stubbornness crept in, ‘I don’t believe Fabella would be so cruel as to separate us. You go if you like,’ she said, turning away, ‘but I’m staying here with Lavinia.’
Lalo’s massive, gleaming shoulders sagged and behind the alder tree, Claudia’s mouth set in a line. To pass themselves off as Roman citizens, the risk was execution for the pair of them. Maybe Ruth had a point? But then again, from what Claudia had seen of Fabella, that old heifer would baulk at shelling out money for a tracker. And Lavinia was not some half-baked nitwit making suggestions she didn’t really mean. If that old peasant woman said go, she meant go. She avoided as much medication as was possible because she wished to die with dignity, her faculties intact—and those, as Claudia knew only too well, were sharper than splinters. Lavinia, she felt certain, was more than capable of putting herself into trances to shut herself off from the pain, and if she was capable of that, then she was equally capable of guzzling down a painkiller when it all became too much.
A stinging sensation welled up in Claudia’s eyes as she considered the proud old bird that was Lavinia. But Lavinia wasn’t dead yet…and she’d be mortified to know the two people she loved most would be torn apart over her. Purposefully Claudia stepped out of the shadows.
‘Lovely evening,’ she remarked, taking care to look at neither of them. A boat was moored to the jetty, in which a small battered trunk had been laid in the middle. Smart move. Row to the far side of the lake, take the quickest route to the Adriatic, and from there it’s only four days to Greece, five if they were heading for Egypt.
‘Oh, Ruth,’ she said, ‘there was something I wanted to ask you about the strength of white mandrake.’ Not one, but two ideas had begun to germinate in the fertile furrows of her mind.
‘Huh?’ Ruth didn’t seem predisposed towards convivial conversation, but there you are. Such is life.
‘I’m right, aren’t I, that about this much—’ Claudia indicated the amount between thumb and forefinger ‘—of the neat decoction can lay a man out cold for up to three hours?’
‘Um. Yes.’ Ruth wrestled to bring herself to be polite. ‘Yes, I suppose it will.’
‘Thank you.’ Claudia winked at Lalo. ‘Oh and Ruth?’
‘Mmmm?’ Through brimming tears, the girl turned round. And too late saw the blow which laid her out.
‘Lalo,’ Claudia grinned, sucking at her knuckles, ‘I do believe Ruth is ready to accompany you on your travels.
XXXIII
Kamar didn’t stand a chance.
He had been boiling balsam resin in his tripod to mix into a salve with rue and myrrh to reduce an imaginary inflammation round the stone merchant’s eye when he heard the rap at his door. Cursing at having to leave his brazier at so critical a juncture, he bumbled over to admit the next hypo-bloody-chondriac who needed his services and failed to see the wad of white cotton before it was under his nose. By then, of course, it was too late. Gasping, gagging, sagging backwards to the floor, he also missed hearing the door kicked shut and it was only when he tried to move his arms that he realized they’d been shackled behind his back.
‘What the…?’
‘How much were you paid to kill them?’
‘What?’
‘Answer me, you bastard.’ Claudia crunched home the lock. ‘How much?’
‘I’m a physician,’ he spluttered. ‘My job is to save lives.’
Dropping the wad which had been drenched with white mandrake, Claudia flexed the birch cane she’d found nestling beside the manacles in the adult play chest in the bath house. ‘Tell that to the families of those poor unfortunates ferried across the Styx before their time.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ But his leathery face bore none of the purple bluff of indignation. His complexion had drained to ghostly white.
‘Then allow me to assist your lapse of memory.’ With a whine, the switch cut through the air. ‘There was a silversmith, I believe.’
Kamar yelped when the cane made contact with his calf.
‘A woman who kept cats. Ooh, did that hurt? The middle-aged bride who died on her honeymoon. Gosh, that one made your eyes water, didn’t it? Where was I? Oh, yes, the woman whose heart gave out in the mud room—’
‘Y-you’re mad!’ His tortoise eyes bulging from their sockets, Kamar slithered backwards across the floor.
Madder than a rabid wolf sucking on a red-hot cinder, you haven’t seen the half of it. ‘And let’s not forget that poor orphan boy.’ For him, Claudia brought the cane down hard across the physician’s cheek, knowing it would leave a permanent scar.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ he wailed. ‘You’re not suggesting…? Not seriously…? Oh, come on!’
Claudia paused by his instrument rack and selected a bronze probe, fine and flexible. ‘This should flex nicely up your left nostril,’ she said cheerfully.
‘All right, all right.’ There was a rising note of panic in his voice. ‘From time to time, I may have…eased…a patient out of their distress. I believe I do recollect the silversmith, now you come to mention it—’
‘And the woman who kept cats?’
‘She was ill,’ Kamar bleated, ‘very ill.’ He flinched back from the bronze probe, jarring the leg of a table and sending clouds of white powder into the air. ‘I was only easing her passage—’
Pastilles from a limewood box cascaded on to the floor. ‘The same way you helped Cal?’
The Etruscan’s tongue darted round his lips. ‘I didn’t kill Calvus!’ His voice was shrill in protest and Claudia knew she had him on the run. In fact, one quick flex of the bronze probe was sufficient. ‘All right, all right—I admit, I knew the body had been placed to make it look like an accident, but…’ His eyelids were beating faster than a bumblebee’s wings. ‘I—I—don’t know why I covered it up. I just panicked. Then when everything went quiet…’ His voice trailed off and he offered up a look of utter helplessness.
Claudia waited. And the silence was more effective than either the probe or the cane.
Kamar groaned. ‘Look. Now and again, Pul tips me the wink about clients with terminal illnesses and fo
r their sakes well, yes, I do occasionally help them out of their suffering.’
‘For which the relatives are no doubt very grateful.’
His voice turned to a whine. ‘Why shouldn’t they show their gratitude in tangible form? I’m only doing my duty…’
Goodness gracious, he genuinely expected her to swallow that, too? Heavens, if this man was any dimmer, he’d need watering three times a week.
‘Wh-what are you doing?’
‘Trussing you up like a peahen for the table.’
When Claudia tied his ankles to the table leg with a sturdy linen bandage, his circulatory system was the last thing on her mind. She didn’t even hear him wince. Behind her, his balsam resin spluttered in the brazier and on the shelf above his balances an array of tins and flasks and copper vessels glinted in the lamplight.
‘Now, Kamar, you have a choice. Either I holler and bring Pylades running with a whole host of witnesses to hear what you’ve just told me, or you can whisper in my dainty shell-like ear where I can find him and we can negotiate your departure from Atlantis with some degree of dignity.’
‘Who’s “him”?’ Kamar blinked slowly several times.
Still playing games, eh? Claudia leaned forward and placed the tip of her nose to the tip of his. ‘He sold you out, you know.’
‘Who did?’ A flicker of puzzlement danced across the turtle face. ‘Pul?’
‘I’m after the miller, not the donkey grinding the corn. Where is Tarraco holing up?’
‘How should I know where he is,’ he said testily. ‘He escaped from bloody jail, he could be any…’ His voice trailed off, and a strange expression came over his face. ‘Wait—’ It had to be fear. Yet he looked suspiciously smug. ‘You said Tarraco sold me out, right?’
Claudia nodded.
‘Then why do you need me to tell you where he is?’
Shit. ‘Because.’ Claudia straightened up and to buy time pretended to read the papyrus label gummed to a small horn container. Think, girl. Think! Make it plausible. ‘Because Orbilio—’ (yes!) ‘—believed his story that you were the mastermind behind the racket and he was the innocent dupe, and so he…let him out of jail. Now, of course, we know otherwise, and while Marcus is chasing his tail with the er, paperwork, I’ve been authorized to make a deal with you.’
Kamar’s low brows knitted together. ‘You wouldn’t be lying to me?’
‘Now why should I do a thing like that?’ She smiled. ‘You’ve seen me talking to Orbilio, you know he’s paid for the room. I’m his top undercover agent.’ Had she pushed it too far?
‘A deal, eh?’
‘You have my word.’
‘And you promise that, if I give you what you want, you’ll let me walk away? No repercussions?’
‘My solemn oath.’
‘Very well,’ Kamar said, with what could almost pass as a twinkle in his eye. ‘In that case, I’ll tell you exactly where you can find your Tarraco.’
XXXIV
You could cut the heat with a wood saw as Claudia’s oars slurped through the oily, black water. She shivered. Clouds had long since swallowed the hills and behind her, dark and silent, Tuder’s island rose austere and jagged in the spears of white which flashed and flickered as the thunder rolled and rumbled. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
The Titan was breaking free of his chains.
With a boulder in her stomach and a stranglehold round her throat, she hauled the boat ashore, the crunch of gravel a pinprick in the wild night, and to the croak of a million frogs and with crickets buzzing in the grass, she zigzagged her way towards the villa. Along the colonnade, torches hissed and spat in the torrid night air, their pitch and their sulphur sour in her throat. Keeping close to the shadows, she worked her way round to the dining terrace. The purple upholstered couches had been taken indoors, but the pots of spiky palms pointed accusingly and the scent of the garlands was overpowering. Slipping off her sandals, Claudia padded up the steps, alert for the least sound or sensation. The last time she had seen the atrium, inhaled its myrrh, marvelled at its gilded rafters, had been the night Tarraco tried to seduce her… The night he presented her with his wife’s harebell-blue gown… She shuddered again, and mastered the brief spell of nausea. Tonight, as before, the hall was deserted, and flitting between the soaring columns and cold-eyed statuettes, Claudia paused to take stock. It was the old, old riddle, wasn’t it? Where’s the best place to hide a pebble? Answer, on the beach. With hindsight, it was obvious Tarraco would not hole up in the hills, but would scuttle back to home. He had his slaves to cover for him. They would be his eyes and ears until the furore subsided. Meanwhile, any number of legionaries could search Tuder’s island and not find his hiding place. Unless someone confessed.
An explosion of thunder overhead sent Claudia’s heart hurdling into her mouth and when a second roll joggled the ceramic votive dishes in the family shrine, her jittery wrist almost sent a vase of deep blue delphiniums crashing to the floor. Calm down, she told herself, steadying the jar. Relax. You can do this on your own.
Typical bloody aristocrat, bunking off. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. The one time you need help, and where is he? Probably finishing off his game of rams and rustlers with the luscious Phoebe, her of the straining seams, kohl eyes and generous bosom. Generous in the sense that she gave it to anyone who wanted it, that is. Well, wherever he’d slunk off to, Claudia had no time to lose. Sooner or later Kamar would come round and although she’d left him trussed up like a waterfowl and dosed with enough of his own anodyne to lay him out flat for three hours (thanks, Ruth!), at some stage his wife would wonder where old Turtleface had gone…and next time Tarraco would take care not to choose a hiding place which could be blabbed about.
It was now. Or it was never.
The atrium fountain splashed and sputtered as another silver shaft splintered the heavens, lighting up the potted ferns and herbs and animating the paintings on the wall. From a distant wing came the clatter of pans and skillets as supper pots were washed and cleared away, and the faint smell of leather permeated the air. Suddenly masculine voices drifted across. Tarraco? Claudia flattened herself against the stonework just as two swarthy slaves appeared in the doorway, rolling an amphora of olive oil across the floor to the storeroom. She dared not breathe. Please, Jupiter. Go easy on the thunderbolts! Her prayer was answered. The men trundled their cargo right past her, chatting, laughing, not thinking to peer in the shadows…
Her knees needed several minutes after the slaves had locked up before they were capable of darting across the open hall to the courtyard. First on the right, Kamar said. Looks like a bedchamber, but behind the tapestry depicting Jason’s search for the Golden Fleece lies a door which leads to a hidden chamber. Tarraco, he grinned, will be in there.
‘How can you be sure?’ Claudia had demanded.
‘I’ve been there many times,’ Kamar said smugly, and was so confident of his trade-in value that Claudia observed a distinct glint of victory in his eye as she stuffed the saturated wad of mandrake up his nose.
Now, as the heavens bellowed like a wounded bull, Claudia glanced along the courtyard to the two oak doors which faced a long line of clipped box trees and found her hands were trembling. With Orbilio nowhere to be found, who else could she enlist? As ever, Claudia Seferius was on her own…
Drawing one long resigned breath, she slipped through the door on the right. So far, so good. Kamar’s information was correct, the room did look like a bedchamber. In fact, it looked like the very same bedchamber in which Tarraco had intended to serve his fresh honeycombs! Pulling aside the very same tapestry he’d pulled aside, Claudia peered into the antechamber which led to the atrium. The same high-backed chair with its headrest of bronze and legs shaped like lion’s paws. The same desk, with its reed pens, pells of parchment and inkwells.
Claudia let the curtain fall back into place and tiptoed across the room, grateful for the jagged flashes of brilliance which lit her way through the b
lackness. She paused by the tapestry and waited for the next white flare to identify the marine adventures of a band of heroes in search of a golden ram’s fleece. Tugging on the embroidered dragon which guarded the fleece, the curtain slid aside on its pole to reveal a door so plain-faced it was clear it had never been intended for show. Claudia put her ear to the woodwork and listened.
Nothing.
Her heart was pounding faster than a threshing machine. She could delay. Go back and wait for Supersnoop to return. Jokes about Phoebe aside, she presumed he was out, rounding up loyal troops with which to confront Cyrus, but suppose, when they returned, Tarraco wasn’t here? He’d slip through their fingers once and for all. She pressed her ear harder, and heard only silence between the relentless rumbles of thunder.
Claudia’s forehead collapsed on to the wall as the weight of Spesium descended on her shoulders. This whole sordid mess was down to her—any future killings, any future beatings, any future misery, they were down to her. She had set him free. She must redress the balance.
From the kitchens a ripple of laughter broke out, and behind her, in the bedroom, the floater on the water clock pinged the hour.
Her mouth was dry as she lifted the latch. Thank heavens she’d had the good sense to bring her small, thin-bladed knife—
A faint chink of yellow appeared as she pulled the door towards her, but it was only a minuscule crack. Another tapestry hung on the inside. Damn! Claudia forced herself to stand still and absorb as much data as she could. Information was ammunition, she had to cling to that. Her palms were sweating. She reassured them with the touch of cold steel. You have to get this right. There will be no second chance. A musky scent (ajuga?) filtered through the cloth, and a few seconds later, she was rewarded with the haunting strum of a lyre. Juno be praised, Tarraco was trapped in his den.