by Marilyn Todd
‘I didn’t realize it would upset you so much, this Melissa business, but look on the bright side—’
‘A sixteen-year-old girl slashes her wrists and you think there’s a bright side?’
Yes, Claudia, yes I do. Orbilio could barely contain his joy. It means you are in the clear. Completely and utterly exonerated! He wanted to sing to the heavens, dance till he dropped.
‘You can see what happened, can’t you? Oh, I’m not suggesting she deliberately set out to impersonate you, I’m sure she saw you as a role model.’
‘Orbilio, you don’t seriously expect me to believe Melissa murdered four high-ranking officials?’
In the dark he reached out, snapped off a spring of lavender and ran it through his fingers. ‘No.’ It was a grudging admission, but it was the truth.
‘Huh! After seven months I’d have thought you’d be delighted to have your scapegoat.’
‘My interest lies in the guilty, not the innocent. And no, it wasn’t Melissa.’
Orbilio began stripping the lavender of its florets, one by one.
‘For a start, this is a man’s crime. A woman might be capable of driving a blade into a bloke’s heart with that degree of force and accuracy, but…’
Together they watched the tiny blue specks blow away into the night.
‘But what?’
‘In my opinion, precious few women are equal to gouging out the eyes of their victims while they’re still warm. There’s an awful lot of blood and stringy bits and…’ The denuded stalk dropped to the ground. ‘Precious few men, come to that.’
‘So where does Melissa fit in?’
Orbilio chewed his lip. He couldn’t confide in her, it wouldn’t be fair. ‘I’ll tell you that,’ he replied, ‘when I find where she’s hidden the money.’
‘What money?’
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Claudia, there’s something I need to—’
He was interrupted by a small head which poked itself round the pillar behind him.
‘Wotcha! Heard about Publius?’
‘Rufus, this isn’t the time. Publius who?’
‘Publius Caldus the banker. Dead as a herring, he is.’ The boy made a gleeful gagging sound in his throat. ‘Dagger through the heart and his eyes dug out, same as the rest of ’em.’
XVII
‘Were someone to ask me to write it down, I honestly wouldn’t know where to start,’ Claudia told Drusilla.
She’d barricaded herself in her room, it was the only sure way to get peace and quiet these days.
‘The House of Seferius has turned into Pandora’s Box and had the very gates of hell been thrown wide, I swear Jupiter wouldn’t have more turmoil to contend with than I have.’
‘Ffffrow.’
‘Yes! As for you, you little hussy!’ Claudia’s fingernails raked up and down the cat’s backbone. ‘Don’t think I’m fooled by this extra podge.’ She gave Drusilla’s tummy a gentle prod. ‘I know you’re carrying kittens in there.’
Not one to miss an opportunity, the cat flopped over, squirming from side to side as Claudia’s fingertips tickled her soft cream underbelly. Her front claws began kneading the air. This was the time of day she liked best, when she’d had her supper and the light was failing. Moths would come out, and although she was particularly partial to moths nothing could beat cuddles with Claudia, because once she, Claudia and a jug of wine got together Drusilla knew she was in for a session and a half. Her blue squinty eyes closed in excruciating ecstasy.
‘Broop.’
‘The trouble is, poppet, everything’s spiralling out of hand. The minute I think I’ve got one aspect licked, another horror pops up. Look at this.’ Claudia’s hand reached out for the letter on the table. ‘From Lucan, waiting for me when I got home. Very polite, he is. Requests five hundred sesterces before Wednesday. What am I supposed to do, eh?’
She crumpled the parchment into a ball and lobbed it neatly out of the window.
‘I fobbed him off, of course. Sent him an equally polite letter back, enclosing fifty with the possibility of another fifty next week. I mean, you can’t say fairer than that, can you?’
Sneaking fifty out of the banqueting fund was a doddle.
‘I had such grand plans for raising the whole wretched sum, until Gaius scuppered it.’ Claudia changed hands, her fingers were aching. Drusilla continued to knead bread in the air. ‘It was that line I fed him about the galley captain which inspired me. I thought, why not put the trick into practice? Heaven knows, there are enough gullible bods in this city, I felt sure we could milk a handful without pushing our luck. And what did Gaius do?’
‘Brrrr.’
‘Gaius, the man who plays everything so close to his chest it gives him blisters? He blabs to the entire contingent at that bloody banquet last night how he, Gaius Seferius, wine merchant of repute, had been conned out of three hundred sesterces!’
‘Brup, brup.’
Bloody banquet. A veritable farce if ever there was one. Claudia’s eyes rolled at the memory. Melissa’s suicide left all manner of nightmares in its wake, not least the fact that she’d left no notes of the arrangements she had made. Or, to be more precise, the lack of! Consequently, of the dancers only six Syrian girls bothered to turn up, forcing Claudia to put them through their paces so many times their ankles buckled under the strain. The tumblers didn’t arrive until midnight, the fire eater didn’t arrive at all, nor did the poet or the comedian or the snake charmer. The acrobats were atrocious, and Claudia had had no qualms in docking their money and putting it towards paying off Lucan, but the musicians, to give them credit, excelled themselves. It was just a pity no singers turned up to accompany them.
A lesser woman would have spent the evening squirming with embarrassment. Not Claudia. The minute she realized the banquet would be a fiasco, at least from the point of view of entertainers, she announced to the assembled party this was to be a night of comedy. Imagine, if they pleased, the type of revelry they could expect if the hoi polloi were left to organize it. She congratulated herself, because appealing to their obscene snobbery was an instant success. The worst thing imaginable was for their cosy patrician/equestrian world to be invaded by the Great Unwashed, and so to watch the same old dance troupe perform endlessly, hear music without song or poetry and not even having the satisfaction of a bawdy female impersonator went a long way towards bolstering their own superiority. And the supreme irony of it was, she reflected happily, none of the arrogant sods was even remotely aware they’d been sent up!
Had it not been for Verres’s genius with the feast, of course, she’d never have got away with it, but there you are, that’s life for you. Some you win, some you lose, and that boar stuffed with live thrushes took their gluttonous breath away. As did the peacocks and cranes, the lampreys and oysters. Tomorrow, being Saturday and the Wine Festival, she could afford to give him a day off as a reward.
Another uplifting point was that although Gaius had invited Orbilio, luckily the odious little ferret had been too bogged down with Caldus’s murder to attend. The immediacy of the banker’s death meant that questions about alibis became a trifle touchy, but she’d handled it rather well, she thought. At least having Orbilio under her roof she’d been able to extract that poor old Publius copped it some time between five and seven, so it was relatively simple to say to her punters, hey, I waved to you in the Forum yesterday, must have been around six o’clock, why didn’t you wave back? With the wine flowing plentifully and everyone having a jolly time, it was instinctive for them to reply, Me? You made a mistake, I was at such-and-such at six, or whatever. Not one of the seven hesitated…which meant the list was narrowing nicely.
Claudia mentally stropped the dagger which would kill the killer.
‘Not that everything ran smoothly.’
‘Prrrrrr.’
‘Guess who found herself lumbered next to Ventidius Balbus all night, but I have to say there was nothing by way of entertainment which might h
ave nudged his memory back to Genoa. I mean, how those elephants dare call themselves dancers, I’ve no idea! And then demand a triple fee for it. Just because you danced non-stop, don’t think you can con me, I told them. It’s quality not quantity that counts in this household.’
‘Mmmrow.’
‘Balbus? Oh, you remember him, poppet. Puny little weed, eyes like boiled gooseberries. Dull as chastity, too. Spent the entire evening banging on about how he’s divorcing his wife, and all I could think was bloody good luck to the little woman.’
Drusilla set one long, elegant back paw to check an itch inside her ear. Claudia was uneasy, she could tell, so she pushed her wedge-shaped face into her friend’s.
‘Now don’t start worrying about me, Drusilla. Oh, I won’t deny it wasn’t harrowing, spending six hours beside the one man in Rome who might yet ruin everything, but I’m sure as eggs is eggs he didn’t make the connection.’ All the same, it does no harm to avoid the boring old sod wherever possible. She drained her glass.
‘But what about Junius, though? Dear Diana, you wouldn’t credit such imbecility, would you?’
It had put Claudia right off her food that evening—and they were in the middle of a particularly succulent duck, too. Gaius announced, very matter of factly if you please, that he’d spoken to Junius and thanked him for saving his wife’s life, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You’re a free man, he told him, promising to draw up the paperwork, and then asked Claudia to guess what. What? she’d asked, spearing a mushroom. Well, Gaius had said, you could have blown him down with a feather, the boy insisted he didn’t want his freedom. Naturally Claudia hadn’t believed a word of it. Gaius was behaving oddly of late, he was getting very muddled, poor soul. Don’t be absurd, she’d said. Every slave in the Empire wants his freedom! Yes, that was the point, said Gaius. It was rather rum, what? Rum, she’d muttered, was an understatement. Was the boy simple or what? No matter. She carved herself a juicy piece of duck and slipped half to Drusilla. She’d sort out this Gaulish oddity later, there was no point in letting good fowl go to waste.
‘Apparently he’d rather have the money.’
Damn.
‘How much money?’
‘I’ve given him a thousand.’
‘Asses?’
‘Sesterces.’
The duck stuck in her throat, and when her coughing fit eventually subsided, Gaius had actually asked:
‘I think that’s fair don’t you?’
She’d give Junius fair when she got hold of him! A thousand sesterces, indeed! What was wrong with the boy? She’d promised him his freedom, and instead he’s copped enough money to pay off half her debt to Lucan and he’s still hanging round the bloody house. Oh, she’d give him fair all right.
As if I need this hassle, either. Claudia ticked the problems off on her fingers. My husband’s cracking up, babbling away to himself, forgetting to do things like washing or attending his business meetings. My clients are being picked off one by one by a lunatic. I’ve driven my own maid to suicide, and now the whole household’s jittery in case they all get punished for it. My in-laws are giving me hell on all sides, I risk exposure by a bland little civil servant with a propensity for drivel—and now Junius starts playing up. She drained the jug.
‘Oh, poppet, I do feel wretched about Melissa.’
Contrary to what Orbilio had assumed from her tears, she’d neither liked nor disliked the girl, but she had trusted her. More to the point, Melissa had most definitely trusted her mistress, and it was that trust which had killed her. It was a gut-wrenching, stomach-churning sensation, knowing you and you alone bear the responsibility for the death, in some stinking alleyway, of a sixteen-year-old girl who has known nothing but misery. The days were bad enough, but at night the guilt takes on monstrous proportions. It torments you in your dreams, then it prods you awake. As there was no end to it, neither was there an answer. No refuge could be found in tears of self-pity. No amount of recrimination could bring the girl back. This was a burden Claudia would carry for the rest of her life.
‘Not that the silly cow is blameless, you understand. I told her to burn those clothes, but no, she decides to make herself a tunic out of that cotton. It’s her own silly fault.’ The words, she felt, might have carried more conviction had they not been hampered by sobs.
‘Oh, sod the lot of them! Gaius, Balbus, Melissa, Junius, Ligarius—you heard about him, didn’t you? Another one completely round the bend. According to Leonides, he’s still prowling around, except at least the big ugly lump has the sense to keep his mouth shut.’ Refreshed by the tickling, Drusilla sat bolt upright and began to wash her face.
‘Juno, I’ll have his balls, so help me I will, if Liggy makes trouble.’
‘Mmmrow.’
‘Yes, and talking of trouble, that venomous old bitch Larentia isn’t letting up, you know. The latest news from Rollo is that she’s paralysed down her left side, and when she isn’t babbling incoherently she’s shouting how that filthy, gold-digging whore is trying to kill her. I tell you, Drusilla, it’s like walking on splintered glass at the moment. Avoid one obstacle, and you run smack bang into another.’
Clean, invigorated, happy but sensing an end to this session, the cat stretched first the front half of her body, then the back half and leapt noiselessly down on to the rug.
‘That’s it, poppet, you go off and inspect your territory. It’s a beautiful night, warm, the stars are out, there’s a lovely half-moon and just the hint of a breeze.’
Drusilla paused on the windowsill, sniffed the air, then effortlessly launched herself into the void.
Oh, to be a cat, Claudia thought, pulling off her tunic. What a wonderful, wonderful life.
Poor old Publius. Discovered in his stables, Orbilio said, and Claudia found it difficult to keep her face straight. The happy-go-lucky banker would have seen the joke there, because he was, as everyone knew, mad about his horses. Only Claudia, however, was privy to the extent of his obsession. She’d meet him in the stables, where he’d be waiting eagerly with his clothes off (a sight not recommended for the squeamish) and a nosebag over his face. She’d slip a specially crafted bridle over his head (heaven knows what the manufacturer thought when Publius gave him the order), then the banker would go down on his hands and knees for Claudia to put him through his paces like the animal he pretended to be. Once he was well and truly fired up, she would slide a spike round the inside of each ankle, sit astride the banker’s back and spur him on to victory, so to speak.
Ah, well. To each his own, she thought, climbing under the bedclothes. To each his own.
*
She couldn’t hear it, she couldn’t see it, but Claudia knew. Somebody was in her room. The hairs on her neck prickled. Gooseflesh crawled over her arms and thighs. Instinctively her body stiffened, her ears alert to pick up the slightest movement. And then she caught it. Heavy breathing followed by a long, low chuckle.
‘Is no good enough, Claudia.’ Whisper or no, she had little difficulty placing that voice. ‘When Master Lucan ask for five hundred, he mean five hundred. He don’t mean no piddling fifty.’
There was garlic on his breath.
‘How did you get in?’
‘Tch, tch, tch.’ She saw the glint of white teeth in the darkness. ‘You no ask questions like that to a man in my business.’ Otho moved closer to the bed and hunkered down. ‘Five hundred, Claudia. By Monday.’
Her breath was coming short and shallow. ‘All right, all right. Tell him…no problem, he’ll have his damned money. Now get out of here!’
‘I do hope you no lie to me, Claudia.’ A hand reached out and touched her cheek. ‘Such smooth skin, it be shame to spoil it.’
The silence seemed eternal, but she couldn’t bring herself to break it.
‘You maybe want to deal, yes?’
‘No.’
He let out a soft, sibilant chuckle. ‘You no mean that, Claudia. You have no money. I know this. You no have the five hundred.’ He cla
mbered on to the bed beside her. ‘So I ask again, you want to deal?’
‘I’d rather die first.’
‘Suppose we talking, maybe ten sesterces?’ He leaned over her. ‘Ah, you push me away. That mean no, huh? Then suppose we say fifteen—Aieeee!’
Suddenly the huge Thracian was screeching like a banshee, clawing frantically at his face. Blood poured into his eyes.
‘Aieeee!’
Drusilla had returned from her night patrol.
‘Get it off!’ he shouted, his arms flailing. ‘Call your demon off.’
Claudia was still pinned beneath him, her fists pummelling his chest, when the door burst open. Light flooded the room. Strong hands clamped round Otho’s throat, hauling him on to the floor. Redundant now, Drusilla leapt lightly on to the windowsill, from which vantage point she could oversee events, ready to step in again if necessary.
‘What’s happening?’ Now Gaius’s huge frame was blocking the doorway. Behind him, half the household slaves had mustered. ‘Claudia, are you all right?’
Having easily overpowered the Thracian since he’d caught the man off guard, Orbilio began to truss his prey. ‘Looks like this great ape was trying to rape your wife.’
‘Rape, my arse! This bitch invite me, you ask her she—’
Otho was silenced by a fist slamming into his mouth.
‘Are you all right?’
It was clear Orbilio wasn’t talking to Otho and for the first time Claudia realized she, too, was covered with blood.
‘It’s his,’ she explained. ‘I’m fine.’
‘She bring demons of underworld on me,’ Otho mumbled through the stream of blood pouring out of his mouth. Claudia calculated he’d probably lost a few teeth with that punch.
‘No demon,’ she said sweetly, brushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘Just one little pussycat.’
‘Demon,’ he insisted. ‘Torn my face to shreds.’
True, true. But don’t fret, Otho, I shan’t bill you for the improvement, you can just thank me later.