by Marilyn Todd
Gisco. The charioteer. Gisco, whose jealous nature and volatile temperament were legendary. In fact, the last man who’d forced Gisco to wear the cuckold’s horns had been found in a back alley, bound and gagged, with his balls tied round his neck…
When he’d learned that, he’d bundled the redhead into her clothes and out the side door in one single motion, but for Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, twenty-five years old and so healthy he was verging on immortality, the flame of Venus burned strong.
Thus—lying beside a total stranger, as the tenement fire snuffed out a dozen lives and wrecked scores more—he was able to run his hands abstractedly through his hair and tell his conscience to piss off. He was young and single and had no dependants, why shouldn’t he sow his wild oats? Then he felt it again. Prod, prod, prod. The fishwife had picked up the word ‘single’ and was throwing it back at him.
‘You’re an aristocrat, Marcus, whose ambition burns as fiercely as that inferno in the valley below. To pass through those ivory-inlaid doors of the Senate, my boy, you need a wife to your name.’
Mother of Tarquin, he needed the reminder like he needed the hammering in his head, but one thing was certain. Never again would he make the mistake of letting his family contract a political alliance. Divorced, thankfully, from a profligate wife who ran off with a sea captain, he resolved that the next time he married, it would be for love.
Orbilio rolled over on to his stomach. In a bid to circumvent the rules, he had cultivated the acquaintance of a crusty ex-tribune, ex-prefect, ex-consul. Sucking up to people was not Orbilio’s strong point, but if it meant smoothing a primrose path to the Senate House, so be it, and only last night the ex-tribune, ex-prefect, ex-consul had confirmed to him personally that, in his eyes, merit was paramount and Orbilio need have no further qualms.
It was on the strength of those wheels being oiled that Orbilio had got so comprehensively oiled himself. No, sir. He would not be coerced into marriage again, not even by his own uncle, and especially not to the poor creature his uncle was pushing at him. The girl was fourteen years old, for gods’ sake! He rolled on to his back again. The appeal of pubescence was lost on Orbilio. He wanted a companion, a friend, a lover. A woman to laugh with, cry with, grow a wrinkled old rind with, not a mechanical producer of sons. With Gisco’s little redhead wife he’d enjoyed vigorous sex flavoured with the fun of conniving and the spice of forbidden fruit, but what he needed, what he desperately missed (and it sounded corny but there you are), what he needed was the love of a good woman.
Or, in Orbilio’s case, the love of a bad woman.
A woman, for instance, whose untamed locks had a shine you could shave in, whose spicy perfume sent shockwaves down a man’s spine, whose very image haunted him from sun-up to sun-down—after which, the pain increased tenfold.
When he took a woman like that into his arms, there would be none of the hurried thrusts and quick gratification he’d sought with Attica. He would light lamps, thousands of them, on every level and every ledge, every surface and every sill and, in the flickering heat, he would kiss her eyelashes and drown in the dip of her collarbone. He would explore every inch of her skin until his tongue tingled with the taste of her sweat, then let his nose wallow in the scent of her curls—long damp tendrils that clung to her breasts, short damp tendrils that led down to heaven.
The moon would rise and the moon would fall before he was through, and there would be no question of forgetting her name as he sometimes had with Attica.
He would whisper it, over and over again. Claudia Seferius. Claudia Seferius. He would run his tongue gently round her ear, feel the flutter of her breasts. Claudia Seferius. Claudia Seferius. The featherlight touch of his fingertips would part her thighs, pulsing, pulsing, the drumbeat of their hearts setting the tempo. Claudia Seferius. Claudia Seferius. Faster and faster their bodies would sway until finally in unison…
The knock made him jump. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir. There is a messenger outside who says he cannot wait until morning.’
Shit! ‘No matter, Tingi, I wasn’t asleep.’ Now wasn’t that the truth?
Grateful to the darkness which hid the throbbing thickness between his legs, Orbilio opened the door to his Libyan steward.
‘The young man is also in rather a distressed state, sir.’
He recognized him the second he set eyes on him. Standing in the shadows, that muscular form was unmistakable, despite the bandage round his head, and Orbilio felt his heart lurch.
He was never sure of the relationship between them—
Claudia called him a boy, but here stood a man, barely younger than himself, the slave whose eyes never wavered from his mistress and who hung closer than her own shadow. Jealousy alone, though, had not rearranged Orbilio’s heartbeat. The injuries Junius had sustained might well be mirrored on Claudia.
Drawing himself up to his not inconsiderable height and throwing a towel round his waist, Orbilio listened to the words tumbling out of the exhausted Gaul. Pinch me, I am dreaming.
‘Mistress Seferius, you say, is accused of murder?’
Junius nodded sullenly.
‘Of a complete stranger?’
He nodded again, and Orbilio was no fool. The slave liked him as much as he, himself, liked the Gaul. How it must stick in his craw, this visit.
‘And she doesn’t know you’ve sent for me?’
‘No. Sir.’ The sir was either an afterthought, forgivable under the circumstances, or it was added as an insult.
Orbilio met the stare head on and gave no quarter in his own. ‘Give me the address again.’
It was with a satisfying sense of mischief that he despatched the weary bodyguard to saddle up, then nudged the sleeping beauty in his bed.
Nothing, not a moan, not a groan, not a twitch. Dammit, where did he get her from? Vaguely he remembered doing the rounds of several taverns, but surely he’d not lowered himself to picking up a common whore? Praise the gods, the quality of the garments on the floor set his mind at rest. At least he’d had the sense to pick up a courtesan. Catching his reflection in the glass, unshaven, sunken-eyed, with his head coming off at the hinges, it was a miracle he’d been any use to her, except those scattered clothes spoke volumes…
‘Up you get.’ He gave her bottom a gentle kick and realized he hadn’t paid her. Remus! He drew on a fresh woollen tunic. What was the going rate? Tavern whores charge eight asses, but a high-class hooker? Think, man, think!
Sluicing water over his face and wincing as the cold water dribbled down his arm to his elbow, Orbilio heard himself humming. Claudia Seferius! In trouble up to her beautiful, kissable lips and who’s the chap to pull her out of the mire? The humming turned into a whistle. Murder isn’t necessarily a job for the Security Police and the Security Police isn’t necessarily confined to murder cases, but it was what Orbilio did best. He towelled himself dry and decided the stubble on his chin could wait. With his widespread network of informants and spies, he’d solve it in no time—then let’s see how many of my letters she returns.
Lacing his boot, he recalled the last time he saw her, the wind whipping her curls about as she stood on the deck in Sicily. Wherever she walked, that woman, trouble walked beside her, and that day had been no exception. Barely one hour before she had escaped death by a cat’s whisker, yet to see her in the prow of that freighter, proud eyes flashing, her back as straight as any arrowshaft, it was almost impossible to believe the evidence. A man thought only of the liquid swish of her skirts, the molten folds of cotton over her breasts.
Scheduled to sail with her, Orbilio had instead been called away at the last moment on the Governor’s orders. What had happened during that voyage from Sicily? What had caused her to return his letters? Dammit, the air sizzled whenever they were in the same room together, what had—
‘Dammit, you! Up!’ Harshly he pulled the bedclothes off the slumbering form. The chill night air would wake her more surely than his voice.
The woman in his bed began t
o groan like an ungreased axle, clawing at the bedclothes, but his grip was the stronger. ‘You’re out of here,’ he snapped, ‘and I mean now!’
He shook bronze into his hand. ‘Ten sesterces should see you right.’
The moaning stopped. ‘Did you say…ten sesterces?’
Orbilio rolled his eyes. There was no time to argue. ‘Twenty, then, you money-grabbing bitch.’
More coins showered the bed.
‘But get one thing straight. Don’t sniff round me again, because no one rips Marcus Cornelius off twice. Besides,’ he got hold of the bed frame and tilted, ‘you’re a bloody poor lay.’
The woman tumbled out with an ignominious bump as the bedframe clattered back down.
‘Any whore worth her salt leaves a man with a memory of his night gymnastics, but you—’
He stopped abruptly. Sitting bolt upright on the tessellated floor, outrage bulging her forty-year-old eyes, was the heavy-hipped wife of the ex-tribune, ex-prefect, ex-consul.
Orbilio produced his most disarming grin while his mind turned somersaults.
Quite how he’d ended up with his patron’s wife in his bed remained a total blank. Bu t it was fairly certain that by calling her a whore and a money-grabbing bitch, his prospects weren’t as hot as he’d hoped.
Especially when she seemed intent on spitting obscenities at him, interspersed with ‘don’t-you-think-you-can-treat-me-like-this-and-get-away-with-it’ and ‘you-haven’t-heard-the-last-of-me-not-by-a-long-chalk’.
Shit.
He thought he caught other threats, including one that seemed to imply that those ivory-inlaid doors would be slammed in his face assuming he was ever foolish enough to contemplate such a move, but on the whole her tirade was drowned by his feeble (but insistent) protestations.
‘Joke, you say?’
The vindictive bitch was deaf to his excuses as she snapped on her sandals.
‘Well, if you fancy a joke, Marcus Cornelius Gigolo, how about the one that goes: You’ll pay so dearly for what you called me, you scheming bastard, you won’t have those twenty sesterces left to rub together by the time I’ve finished with you!’
With that, she slammed the door and he could hear her clip-clopping over the tiles like some old billy goat, which—having seen her by lamplight, chins sagging and her make-up streaked—she more than closely resembled.
His hands were shaking as he gathered together the rest of his possessions, grateful more than words could express for the long ride ahead. Bacchus, old boy, you are out of my life. Forever. Henceforth it’s milk for Marcus. Goat’s milk, cow’s milk, camel’s milk, dandelion bloody milk, just keep me away from the wine. He adjusted his belt and pulled tight his cloak just as Tingi knocked at the door.
Yet it was not via the door that Marcus Cornelius Orbilio finally made his exit.
It was through the open window, with Tingi’s words still ringing in his ears as he legged it towards the stables.
‘There’s a Master Gisco in the atrium. Shall I show him in?’
V
Prefect Macer might not have been the highest star in the military firmament, but, by Jupiter, he was the brightest. From the elaborate embroidery on his scarlet tunic to the eye-watering shine on his hammered breastplate, the good soldier eliminated any doubts the good citizens of Umbria might harbour as to their place in society once he had entered the scene.
It was clear he also felt his star was in the ascendant.
For the short term, his bearing announced, I might be posted to the back of beyond, but don’t get used to my face.
Basking in this new-found importance, he’d mustered the entire Pictor household in the banqueting hall first thing after breakfast and was now intent on establishing identities. Barea came from Lusitania, did he? Whereabouts? Which tribe did you say you belong to, Taranis? The Atrebates? Never heard of ’em. Negotiating for bears, eh? Is it true Caledonian beasts fight better? Well, I never—Scrap Iron, isn’t it? What an honour. I must have seen you fight a dozen times…
Claudia found her gaze wandering towards the window. Perfect spring day, no trace of fog. She could make out patches of beans, cabbages, leeks and onions, pens of pigs and goats. Yellow blossoms of the cornelian cherries attracted bees. A reaping machine rusted happily against a buckthorn hedge. Chickens were scratching, oxen were being yoked, field workers were trekking off, hoes slung over their shoulders.
Cats, however, were still thin on the ground, especially Egyptian ones.
Claudia swallowed the lump in her throat, but another filled up the gap. Two days and two nights. Could it, after all, be more than the preponderance of foreign scents that had impeded her built-in tracking device? Could it…I mean, suppose… What if Drusilla really was… It was one hell of a bounce down the hill. Claudia had time to jump clear, but Drusilla? Back in January, one of her kittens worked its wobbly way on to the roof but, before Junius could rescue it, it had slipped. The feel of that tiny, twisted piece of velvet in Claudia’s hands was agony beyond words… And even if Drusilla hadn’t been hurt in the accident, there were the wolves…
Macer had moved on to the traditional where-were-you-when-the-lights-went-out sort of questions, but Timoleon was reluctant to relinquish centre stage. Good. Let the lump of gristle talk all he wants.
Unfortunately for Claudia, there had been no chance for that quiet word in Macer’s ear. No chance to slip him a bung to ease her passage through these troubled waters. Upon arrival, he thrust his splendidly plumed helmet into the hands of a waiting lackey (his sideways expression, incidentally, making it abundantly clear that his opinion of Claudia’s orange tunic ran along parallel lines to her own) and demanded to examine the corpse forthwith.
‘I shall need complete access to the premises and after that I have one or two primary investigations to make before I can begin the business of taking statements. I presume you can accommodate my officers overnight?’ He’d been addressing the head of the household, but it was Pallas who’d whispered ‘Tulola can’ under his breath.
Now, with the early-morning sunshine bouncing off his breastplate, the Prefect wriggled the hilt of his sword in its scabbard. ‘Salvian, round up who’s missing, we don’t have all bloody day.’
A boy with the same thin nose and baby-fine hair, either a son or a nephew, stepped forward uncertainly. Like children’s clothes, his armour seemed designed for him to grow into, it seemed impossible he could be a junior tribune already. He had barely taken two paces when the sound of male laughter barrelled round the lofty marbled banqueting hall.
‘Then Barea said, “Er what?” To which I replied, “Since you’re riding that stallion without a saddle, you err on the side of caution!”’
The voice was Corbulo’s, but the exuberance on the faces of both him and Sergius was instantly subdued by Macer’s frown. The trainer pulled up a stool to Claudia’s left. Sergius took a stand between Alis and her ever-scowling sister.
‘Is that everyone?’ The Prefect fingered his gold medallions. ‘Right, let’s get down to—where’s Tulola? Salvian, lad, you had orders to fetch her, now jump to it.’
The coughs and the shuffles began. Pallas decided to instruct Barea on the seventeen ways to cook sucking-pig, Timoleon and the Celt stared each other out, Sergius laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder. The look she gave him was of utter adoration and this, to Claudia’s astonishment, was mirrored in his own. Euphemia glowered at the ceiling and pulled at her lower lip. What I wouldn’t give to know what’s going through your little noodle, thought Claudia. Or do you pull a knife on every visitor? Across the room, half hidden behind a pink marble column, the driver of the gig huddled among the slaves and servants fidgeting nervously. It was the first time she’d seen him since the accident, and his arm was in a sling.
Macer yawned and plucked a hair from his tunic. ‘May I enquire why you keep the menagerie, sir?’
A flame of excitement flushed Sergius’ face. ‘Just as Augustus has brought peace and stability, you’ll
find audiences will tire of watching the same old animals trotting round the arena.’ His eyes were dancing with animation and he leaned forward to emphasize his point. ‘I intend to revolutionize all that, Macer. I shall be the talk of all Rome, there’ll be nothing like it in the whole of the Empire!’
Claudia felt equally fired with enthusiasm, although not necessarily for the same reason. Her accuser’s radical aims put him on the edge of a veritable fortune and the richer he was, the harder she could sue…. Stealing a glance at his wife, clearly hanging on his every word, she wondered what had attracted him to Alis. It was easy to see why Alis had fallen for those saturnine looks, but Sergius? Am I that cynical, Claudia wondered, that I can’t accept he married her for her personality?
‘S-s-sorry, s-sir, I can’t f-find her anywhere.’ The junior tribune clanked across the room to make his report.
‘She hasn’t disappeared into thin air, boy. Look harder!’
Red-faced, Salvian clattered back out and Macer did what he should have done long ago, so they could catch up on their backlog of chores—he began to eliminate the slaves. Forty sloped off straight away, the slavemaster swearing on his mother’s grave they’d been asleep in their barracks and no one could possibly have passed without his notice. Nonsense, thought Claudia. At least half of them sneak past every other night, either to steal from the kitchens or visit the women. But that’s Macer for you. Educated, aristocratic, and without an inkling about human behaviour.
Pallas was explaining to Barea that the best way to stuff a porcupine was with dormice and oysters seasoned heavily with rue when the door was flung wide.
‘I do hope you haven’t started without me.’ Emerald green shimmered across the floor, her Egyptian hairstyle all the more pronounced by a dozen gold leaves woven into it.
The colour drained from the Prefect’s face. ‘Mother of Hades. What’s that?’
His weren’t the only eyes on stalks. Claudia’s could have brushed cobwebs off the ceiling, because attached to Tulola’s wrist by a heavy leash padded a long, liquid feline. Its head seemed strangely small for so powerful a body, its ears deceptively flattened, its eyes surely too high-set? Two black teardrops ran from the corner of each eye, and its pelt was ferociously spotted black.