by Marilyn Todd
There are times, she thought, blowing the hair out of her eyes, when life proves it can be worth living.
'This,' she wheezed, stuffing the scrap of tunic from their last encounter under his nose, 'is no fair exchange for my gold bracelet.'
The boy could barely see for tears of pain.
'Take a long, lingering look at the sun up there, because it'll be the last you see of it for some time.'
Claudia tipped his head up towards the sky, and her grip was as tight as a stonemason's vice.
'What do you reckon? Six years down the silver mines for conspiracy to kidnap? Add on theft and, oh dear, that's nine and whoops, I almost forgot the attempted murder charge, which I think you'll find neatly doubles your sentence.'
Claudia slid off the fleecy bank, jerking the thief to his feet.
'Still, dark as it is down the mines,' she said, and it was easy to be cheerful in victory, 'at least they provide their prisoners with decent clothing.'
Her eyes indicated the gaping hole in his tattered tunic and the urchin's grimy breast thrusting through the rip. A breast which also happened to be pert and round and full - with a rosy pink nipple peeking through!
'Janus!'
It was bad enough when Claudia had believed the guttersnipe was male. Now it transpired the hardcase was a girl!
Chapter Six
Due to increased congestion along the Appian Way, the horse carrying Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was forced to slow to a canter, and whereas a lesser horse would have registered its disapproval with several loud snorts and a repeated flick of its mane, this one kept its feelings to itself. The rider, however, being every bit as thoroughbred as the stallion, sensed the disappointment in the strong black shining flesh beneath his saddle. Comforting pats on its neck quickly mollified his mount and, with a twitched-ear acknowledgement, it continued at a happy trot, eyeing coldly, though, the plodding mules and oxen, the pedestrians and soldiers which had cut short its gallop on the open road. Look at them, the stallion snickered. Heat weary, trudging slower than a funeral. Poor breeding always tells!
Orbilio tossed a coin to a mother with a withered arm, whose toddler child was a mass of open sores.
'Bless you, sir,' she cried, 'oh, bless you,' and suddenly a crowd of beggars surged around him, attracted by the woman's vocal gratitude, only his thoughts had closed in to engulf him and Marcus rode on, as impervious to their pleas as he was to the beauty of the countryside, the dappled wooded hills, the shimmering heat haze, the waysides teeming with buttercups and campion, columbines and mallow. How could his boss do this to him? It's an administrative role, overseeing that the Roll of Honour was inscribed correctly on Mount Alban!
'Don't you think it's important, then?' sneered the fat toady who headed Rome's Security Police. 'Recording the participating luminaries in marble for posterity?'
'Of course I do, sir.' That aspect was not in dispute. Every year, both consuls plus all the other magistrates in Rome rode out to Mount Alban to make sacrifice to Jupiter at the long lines of semi-circular altars laid out in his honour. It was a solemn and religious ritual which culminated in the lighting of a giant beacon on the mountain, and naturally there had to be a record. It was his being assigned to the task that galled!
'Jupiter's balls, man, we're the Security Police!' his boss had bawled. 'We're not bound by bloody bureaucracy.' He snorted in derision. 'You don't expect spies and agents to be hampered by an army of clerks and scribes, now do you?'
'No, sir.' The sensitive nature of their work put them outside every government department, including the army. 'But—' 'The Mount Alban ceremony, Orbilio, involves every highflier leaving the city at once. We have our bloody work cut out making sure that Rome remains secure on the one hand, while at the same time ensuring those illustrious dignitaries in the hills can sleep safe from the assassin's knife.'
'I realise that, sir.' If there was ever a better time to mount a coup, no one could think of one! 'It's just that—'
'Therefore, having achieved our objectives, I made a personal petition to the Senate to allow us to follow through this year and supervise the Roll of Honour.'
And in so doing, had tied Orbilio tighter than a hog for market! Stressing each official's individual significance in the government of the Empire, his oily little boss had added that he felt it only appropriate this should be reflected in the social standing of the officer appointed to oversee the Roll of Honour. It was his pleasure, he said, to assign the department's only patrician to said task, and naturally this was greeted with the predictable hum of approval. Bastard.
Reining in his horse at a water trough, Orbilio dismounted, patting the gleaming black flanks and inhaling the rich, leathery smell of the saddle. He knew damn well why his boss was doing this. To get him out the way. After all, you can't hurry a stonemason, not with that number of names to chip out! Drawing a cup of water for himself, Orbilio sluiced it over
his face and allowed some to trickle down the inside of his neck. And with him duly sidelined, who would take the credit for averting that uprising in Gaul? None other than a short, fat, oily worm who would spread his pudgy hands and murmur, 'Oh, it was nothing,' and for him that's exactly what it was. Nothing. That slimy little bastard had sat back in his office, doing bugger all while Orbilio risked life and limb in Gaul.
Marcus replaced the cup beside the water trough and remounted. His boss, goddammit, had instigated no action, no policy, he'd not even sent him back-up. He'd just waited to see how events played themselves out. Then, once he realised Orbilio's hunch was on target, it was from his comfy office in Rome that he had distributed sheafs of propaganda and accepted the ensuing accolades. Indeed, by the time an exhausted Marcus Cornelius returned to the capital, having single-handedly settled the tribes and thwarted insurrection, it was to find his boss playing down the bloody incident and ordering him to supervise this sodding Roll of Honour.
As his horse's hooves resonated on the metalled road, the rich, sweet scent of honeysuckle, the low-pitched hoopoe's croon, the rasp of crickets in the long grass beside the road left no imprint on Marcus Cornelius. Somehow he had to find a way to dump this bloody quill-pushing job and knuckle down to some proper work. Rooting out forgers, frauds and killers.
But how? How? He wanted one day to take his own seat in the Senate, and he wanted it so badly sometimes it hurt. Apart from the obvious 'dereliction of duty' charge which would descend on him if he simply walked away from this wretched Roll of Honour, it would look as though he was sticking two fingers up at every senior government official as well as at the Senate itself. Damn. Damn, damn and damn his boss to hell.
You'd think he'd have given him at least some of the credit for taking on the Gaulish rebels single-handed. Oblivious to the chariots which rattled down the Appian Way or the melodious strains of a band of travelling musicians, Orbilio slowed his stallion to a walk. Well. Maybe not entirely single-handed. A smile played around his lips. He had had an accomplice.
Admittedly not a willing one, but nevertheless, without the help of a certain Claudia Seferius, the Gauls would still be at one another's throats.
True, without her involvement, it's doubtful they'd ever have considered a revolt, but that, Orbilio felt, was quite beside the point!
What mattered was that, together, he and Claudia had averted a national disaster, and what was his reward? A downgrading from what he did best, which was catching murderers and rooting out corruption in high places, capped, if you please, by rejection from the woman he . . . the woman he what?
Dammit, no, he wouldn't bloody say it!
An anvil slammed into his gut, as he pictured a girl with flashing eyes and flashing temperament, a girl who took life's coiners on two wheels. Shared moments flickered in his memory: skirmish with head hunters; horrific wicker man sacrifices. The danger. The anxiety. Tense times when it might have gone either way. Through it all, though, whether crying tears of laughter or lying bloodied and bruised at death's door, there was not a sing
le second when that wildcat hadn't been at the forefront of his thoughts. A lump formed in Orbilio's throat. How many times had he stopped himself from reaching out to touch skin softer than rose petals, from kissing the luscious dip inside her collarbone, from running his tongue inside her ear? He'd lost count of how often he'd imagined what it would be like to pull out the ivory pins holding up her hair, watch the heavy curls tumble down across the high swell of her breasts. Too many sultry nights had passed when he couldn't sleep for the desperate ache inside him; yearning to take her in his arms and make love to her, slowly and with care, the pleasure in the giving not the getting. Yet what had happened when he called at her house the other day?
'Do the letters FFO DOS mean anything to you, Orbilio?' she had asked.
'No-o . . .' Instantly, he was on his guard. 'Should they?'
'Try holding them up to the mirror,' she said, flouncing out of the room. 'See if they make sense then.'
Mother of Tarquin, did she think he had no feelings? 'Claudia!' He caught up with her in the peristyle. 'Claudia, you can't deny there's something between us, something strong and powerful and solid.'
She pulled up short, and turned her head away. 'No, Marcus, I can't deny that.' Her voice was soft. He'd had to strain to catch the words. 'Neither can I, in all honesty, deny that what's between us has a name.'
His breath had caught in his throat. Finally, goddammit, she was going to admit it! Admit to this surge of electricity which crackled in the air whenever the two of them were together!
'It's called,' she whispered, 'a marble sundial.'
Swallowing his grin, he'd tried another tack. He reminded her that wherever she went, trouble came up like a rash behind her. 'Someone,' he concluded cheerfully, 'has to bale you out of all your scrapes.'
'Marcus Cornelius, you are surely the most arrogant, the most opinionated, the most conceited man I have ever had the misfortune to meet!'
'You forgot to mention my devilish good looks.'
It was always like this. Bolts of white-hot lightning flashed between them, passion crackled in the air, yet whenever he tried to move in closer, to pursue the relationship, Claudia pushed him further and further away. Any further and he'd need to communicate by courier!
Why could she not acknowledge what existed: the passion and the sparks? Sure, she was scared of getting burned - she'd grown up tough, and that toughness had bred an uncompromising streak rarely found in women - but what did she have to lose by breaking the siege just for once? He'd never know, because that latest episode had ended in a quarrel, with her accusing him (him! a patrician, with lands and riches more than he could spend!) of being some seedy treasure hunter after her inheritance! Croesus! Orbilio had slammed his fist into the palm of his hand and reminded her that he was an investigator,
not a bloody gigolo! He knew to the copper quadran how close she sailed to the financial wind and, unwisely perhaps in retrospect, he'd reminded her that she was, at that precise moment, stony broke.
It was an intimacy too far.
'How dare you!' she'd hissed. 'How dare you pry into my personal affairs, you grubby little ferret! I'll put up with many things, Orbilio, but I won't tolerate snooping, and if you ever so much as show your face around here again, I'll -'
He'd forgotten what exactly she'd threatened him with. A gelding knife, he believed, although that was immaterial. What he'd been trying to do, in his clumsy roundabout way, was to offer her his help, but would she listen? Would she hell! She'd drummed him out, with any headway he'd been making collapsing like so much rubble at his feet. If only he could find some way of making Claudia come to him for once, not the other way around.
The Appian Way became more congested the closer they drew to the city and he had trouble steering his horse through the crush. Peddlers up from Naples, fortune-tellers from Brindisi. Landowners departing the sticky city enclaves for fresher, cooler mountain air. Soldiers on patrol, making the roads safe for everybody, young and old alike. Along this stretch, tombs sprouted up to line the route, travertine or marble monuments to the lives of merchants, marshals and magistrates including, ahead there on the right, the circular turret of Gaius Seferius.
Orbilio reined in beside it, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. Remus, it was hot! Shading his eyes, he glanced up at the sun, directly overhead and casting virtually no shadow. Noon. No time to be out in this scorching, vile heat, yet he lingered beside the tomb, reading Gaius's life story in the frieze which ran around it. Like most others, it had been neatly edited, but there he was, the wine merchant, surrounded by his vines and scribes, and Orbilio placed his fist on his heart in salute. He had liked Gaius. Forthright, irascible, shrewd and funny . . . nevertheless he didn't mourn too deeply the big man's passing, for it left the field wide open for his widow!
The same widow who, at twenty-four, had inherited the whole shebang and found, almost immediately, that those men who had once been Gaius's friends were suddenly her enemies. Enemies who would not tolerate a woman merchant, who had first tried to buy her out and when that failed, set their course to freeze her out. Inasmuch as he had a vested interest in this human tornado, Orbilio knew she'd taken to passing on hefty bribes of late, as well as selling her wine at a loss to give people the impression the business was succeeding. Oh, Claudia. Why don't you ever let anyone help?
'Gee up!'
Marcus guided his horse through the army of herders steering pigs and sheep, goats and cattle into town. He picked his way past rickety wagons up from Campania, through squads of high-spirited schoolboys making the most of the holidays, through a veritable sea of servants, porters and slaves on errands, his horse snorting down its pedigree nose at this honking, braying, bleating throng.
Orbilio plodded on, up the Slope of Mars, past the temple of the god of war and along the covered portico, whose welcome shade invited many travellers to stop and snooze a while. What he needed, he reflected, was a meaty investigation to sink his teeth in, a case dramatic enough to justify delegating the Roll of Honour to a junior. Murder would be his first choice, although a juicy kidnap, a senator dabbling in a spot of forgery, a general up to his epaulettes in fraud, no, he wouldn't sneeze at those. Passing through the Capena Gate, he realised it would have to be a prestigious family involved, or he'd not be able to extricate himself from this administrative role, but where oh where was Orbilio going to find a family with such an obliging skeleton tucked up in its closet?
He sent a silent prayer to Jupiter, Bringer of Justice, to deliver him such a case and then, for the remainder of his ride, let his mind drift on a woman who not so much hit the ground running, as hit it like a spinning top. Why is it, he wondered, that whenever I'm with Claudia, I'm completely lost for words?
Outside his townhouse on the Esquiline Hill, Orbilio swung himself out of the saddle. Perhaps he ought to pay her a call? Pretend he was passing and—
'Master! Master Orbilio, come quickly!'
'Tingi?' In all the years this mournful Libyan had been his steward, Marcus had never seen him flustered. 'Whatever's the matter, man?'
'The new banqueting hall, sir. It's terrible! Really terrible.'
Mother of Tarquin, was that all? For a minute, Orbilio had thought it was something serious, not just a problem with the extension he was planning. Builders! Has one ever come and gone without leaving a bigger mess behind?
'Don't worry about it, Tingi.' He brushed the dust from his tunic with a ox-tail whisk and slapped his boots. 'The room will look fine when it's finished.'
Being a town house, expansion wasn't easy, but it had occurred to Orbilio that if he extended the room behind his office - that old storeroom no one ever bothered with - to run the whole length of the courtyard, then he could have a dining hall suited to entertaining on a grand scale and perfect for all weathers.
'No, no, sir. It's the wall.'
'Exactly, Tingi!' Marcus slapped his steward on the shoulder. 'I don't want a wall, that's the point.' He wanted sliding doors, which wo
uld open the length of the room to merge the dining hall with the garden. Perfect for summer banquets!
Inside the atrium, he paused to acclimatise to the dappled shade cast by a tall, honeycomb screen which brought a coolness to the room in stark contrast to the sweltering heat outdoors. Here, the air was fragrant with incense and myrrh, and with laurel which was sacred to Mars.
'I'll have a light lunch of cheese and fruit, then I'm off to the baths.' Followed (yes, he was sure now!) by a visit to Claudia Seferius.
'The wall, sir -' the Libyan paused, slowly shaking his head. 'There's no way I can describe it, you must see for yourself.'
Perhaps this torrid heat made him pine for his desert homelands? Orbilio decided to humour him, because Tingi wouldn't fuss over nothing. Woodworm? Dry rot? A prickle of unease ran down the young investigator's spine. There was a look on his steward's face . . . Commiseration? Sympathy? For what? Curious, Marcus followed him down the peristyle, past the kitchens, past his office to the little storeroom.
'Where the hell are the builders?' he roared. This dry weather won't hold for ever, I've got rafters, tiles, wooden panels piled up round my garden, where have the lazy sods sloped off to?
'I sent them away,' Tingi said, 'because, look!' He led the way over the rubble in the storeroom and pointed to the far wall.
That shouldn't still be standing, for a start! Orbilio fumed. What are the silly buggers playing at? Then he followed the ashen glance of his steward. 'Shit!' He clambered over the rubble, skinning his knuckles and shins as he slipped on the stones. 'Holy bloody shit.' With his bare hands, he pulled at the plaster, enlarging the gap begun by the demolition men.
'As soon as I realised, I ordered work to stop,' Tingi was saying, but Marcus didn't hear. His head was spinning.