by Marilyn Todd
Poleaxed, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio collapsed.
‘Is he—dead?’ she whispered.
Corbulo mopped his wound with his handkerchief. ‘No,’ he said, casting a professional eye over his shoulder as he inspected the side of Claudia’s prison. ‘But I doubt he’ll walk again.’
*
Claudia’s mother was not prone to dishing out advice, but then again she wasn’t one for taking it either. Once, however, when Claudia was about twelve, she had prised herself off the filthy, wine-stained pallet she called bed to impart counsel and wisdom to her impressionable daughter.
‘Only one thing to remember in this life, love,’ she’d sobbed, wiping the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘You come into it on your own, and alone is how you go out.’
Not that Claudia’s mother went out alone. She was accompanied by a liver no self-respecting augur would spit on, plus 164 empty wine jugs.
Claudia knew it was 164.
She’d had plenty of time to count them while her mother’s body stiffened in the coagulated blood from her slashed wrists…
Claudia had not thought of her mother for a long, long time, but now, inside the leopard’s cage, the words shimmered back across the years. You are alone. You can rely on no one but yourself.
In a rare moment of dependence, she had waited for Marcus Cornelius Orbilio to spring to her rescue and the price she paid was heavier than she could ever have imagined possible. As a result of her selfishness, a young aristocrat lay crippled for life, his career in tatters, his pleasures just memories. No more jousting on the Field of Mars, rousting on a Saturday night. Never again would he feel the throb of horseflesh between his legs, the thrill of a woman, the pulse of a long, hard run.
It would, she reflected bitterly, have been better to let him take his chances on Thursday with Gisco and that famous gelding knife. Was it really only three days ago? A lifetime had passed since then.
Head buried in her hands as she knelt on the rough wooden floor, Claudia was denied even the luxury of self-pity. The crate, like everything else, had been planned in the most meticulous detail. It was a transport cage. It was on wheels. And Corbulo had not been inspecting the box, he’d been harnessing it.
The ceremony, whatever it might be, was about to begin.
He paused to staunch the blood from his chest by dipping his handkerchief in a barrel of drinking water and pressing it hard against the wound. As the red ochre drizzled away with the blood, Claudia could see the Etruscan’s neck, unlined and unmarked. Now she knew what had happened that night in the hay store. It was Corbulo who had stolen the yellow tunic, Corbulo who had flitted so furtively round his own territory. The bastard had timed it to perfection—the gurgles, the drumming of his feet against the door. Croesus, he’d even painted the purple marks on his neck, because who’d check for treachery in the heat of cutting him down? He’d have balanced himself on a hay bale, judging his jump to the second they burst through the door.
And Salvian, young, innocent Salvian, had realized this. Macer told him about the robbery which was no robbery, and Salvian connected it with the hanging which was no hanging. Corbulo wore a scarf to the Springs…maybe it blew away a fraction for Salvian to notice the lack of evidence, maybe Timoleon’s jibes set a train of thought in motion, or maybe, just maybe, Salvian was smarter than anyone had given him credit for. She could imagine the scene, the junior tribune marching up to arrest the trainer and, tragic as the outcome was, Claudia smiled through her tears at the young man’s confidence. Had he lived, he would have been a man to be reckoned with. As it is, his wife and unborn child still had every right to be proud of him.
The cage was cramped, she could sit, kneel or crouch, but it was impossible to stand upright. Claudia scanned the compounds for other signs of life. The slaves would be well into their stride by now, the family would be up, the field workers breaking their fast for the day. But Corbulo worked alone. He was famous for it. What would bring someone here? Claudia did not believe in lucky flukes, but prayed for one anyway.
The cage began to roll forward, rumbling past bears and lions and camels. She could hear the mules whinny and snicker, and then she was bumping faster and faster. She saw the stiff neck of the giraffe, saw its silly, gormless face watching her. Did Corbulo realize the road block was still in place? Surely Macer, if no one else, would still be looking for her? Or had Corbulo taken care of that, as well? The elephant swung his trunk through the gap in his wall. The elephant? Sweet Juno, they weren’t going down the hill, they were going up! Forget the Via Flaminia, he was using an old Umbrian path that went straight over the hill. Where was he taking her?
‘Is this some Etruscan sacrifice you’re planning?’
Not that they made human sacrifices, the gentle Etruscans, but with Corbulo’s mind unhinged as it was, you could never tell. They began to bump downhill, the mules galloping at the crack of the whip. Wildly Claudia clung to the bars, her knees clattering painfully on the wooden boards.
‘I’ve tried, Claudia,’ he yelled back at her. ‘The gods know I’ve tried to make you pay for all that you’ve done to us, but each time, you’ve escaped by the luck of the gods, you and that tosser policeman. Did he really think he could outwit me?’
No, but I did. And it’s because of me he lies crippled. Faster and faster the mules and the cage clattered down the hill. Leaves whipped the sides, weeds and grasses caught in the woodwork. Claudia’s hands were bleeding from the splinters in the bars.
‘This wasn’t how I’d planned it.’ He was shouting. ‘I’d hoped to make you pay while I sat back and watched.’ She heard a hollow laugh. ‘Instead we’ll have to go together, but at least I die a true Etruscan.’ Claudia pulled at the bars. They were too thick to snap. What is it, this obsession with Etruria?
‘Well, if you’re so damned patriotic,’ she snapped, ‘why don’t you kill yourself on Etruscan soil?’
There was a sharp pull on the reins. ‘You arrogant bitch,’ he snarled, jumping down to the ground. ‘To think I lowered myself to begging, as well.’
Lowered himself? It’s virtually impossible to rationalize the thoughts of a madman, but when you’re trapped inside a cage with a painted warrior brandishing a dagger on the other side of the bars, it wouldn’t hurt to try.
‘Begging?’
‘At Tulola’s banquet. Remus, you don’t think I was drunk, do you?’ He rattled the blade along the sides of the bars and Claudia cowered at the back of the crate. ‘I had to pretend, or you’d never have swallowed the rest of the play—but!’ A hand lashed in and grabbed the neck of Claudia’s rough, woollen tunic. ‘I asked you for a job, I asked you to go into partnership with me.’
He jerked her towards him so hard, her cheek bruised against the wood.
‘And you laughed at me. You patronized me, and then you fucking laughed at me!’
He had misunderstood her, even then. He had not recognized in her the affection she had felt, the gratitude that here was a man offering his life savings to bale her out. But how could he? As a Nubian cannot comprehend snow, how could Corbulo recognize what he did not have within him in the first place?
‘What was the next phase, Corbulo? Was I supposed to marry you, only for the poor bride to suffer an accident like little Coronis?’
As he let go the tunic, his hand lashed upwards, sending her reeling into the side of the cage. ‘You think I’d marry a tramp like you?’
Claudia could feel slivers of wood in her hair, and a large bump forming on the back of her head.
‘Think I don’t know what’s going on?’ he sneered. ‘First it was your bodyguard, then the policeman. What was it like, fucking the schoolboy? Did you learn much?’
Junius? Orbilio? Salvian? Mother of Hades, this man’s from a different galaxy! ‘More than I would from fucking a murderer,’ she said evenly.
Quick as a bolt of white lightning, Corbulo’s fist closed round her throat, whamming Claudia’s face into the bars. ‘I wouldn’t w
aste my seed.’
As he sprang back to take the reins, Claudia pitched forward on to the floor. Blood drizzled from her nose, she could hear it, drip, drip, drip, on to the boards as the crate rumbled on down the hillside. It clattered across the valley and she could hear the mules straining with the steepness of the next hill. There was a roaring sound in her ear, from where he’d banged her head. Croesus, where was he taking her?
‘Where does Fronto fit in?’ she asked, wiping her face with the hem of the ploughman’s tunic.
If she could only piece together the reason behind Corbulo’s madness (and there had to be a reason, however tenuous), she had ammunition. At the moment she was not only physically helpless, she was spitting into a wind which was rapidly becoming gale force.
‘Him!’ The derision in his voice was harsh, even through the boom inside her skull. ‘Now there was a sap! Do you know, he actually believed I’d take him into partnership with me? My own land, and he thought I’d give him half. I mean,’ Corbulo began to laugh, ‘can you seriously believe that?’
Claudia called on the spirits of the Umbrian woodlands to trip the mares, derail the crate, make her arms grow another cubit so she could undo the bolt. In stories and the epics, Corbulo would be unseated by an overhanging branch…
‘What land?’ she shouted back. She could hear the mules puffing, and she’d never heard animals pant like that. It was almost continuous.
‘My land, I’m talking my land.’ His voice was ragged from working the reins. ‘It was easy to persuade Fronto that it was to his own advantage, setting fire to the olive groves. I told him, if the land was burned—the olives, the vines—we could buy it cheap, him and me, and go into business together.’
‘You mean, you set up me and Quintilian?’ Whether you liked this man or not, it was a clever sting. ‘Why?’
The mares had not stopped to give Corbulo a rest—this was the end of the line. The air seemed steamy, damp. Claudia half expected to hear Cinna’s Cappadocian anecdotes cutting through the heavy atmosphere. Let me help you with them buskins, duck. Claudia felt delirium rising, the rapid welling of panic.
‘Corbulo.’ There was an urgency in her voice now. ‘What is it that’s so special about those particular plots of land?’
‘Those?’ he asked casually, unharnessing the crate. ‘Nothing. Arson was just a means of getting you away from your precious cronies in Rome. Why do you think I paid that masseuse in the bath house to suggest the damned shortcut?’
There was a jolt as the cage settled. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
Corbulo was staring at her as though she was a rather backward camel he was training. ‘How else could I get my lands back?’ he asked patiently. ‘Now tell me, Claudia.’ He lifted one end of the cage and began to turn it sideways. ‘Isn’t that a lovely view?’
The mules hadn’t been puffing. The boom hadn’t been inside her head. The dampness wasn’t panic.
This was panic!
Claudia Seferius stared wide-eyed through the bars of her cage. Adjacent on the precipice, before it fell 500 feet to the valley below, churned a massive, roaring, crashing waterfall.
XXXIV
Where do you begin to describe terror? Is it this sudden inability to breathe? The gasping for breath? The shallow snatches of air? Is it the blast of freezing air that hits you? The sensation of falling? Reeling? Of spiralling into unconsciousness?
At the brink of oblivion, Claudia pulled herself back. You can’t give in, a voice inside her screamed. While you’re conscious, you have at least a chance.
Corbulo stood on the edge and placed his hands on his hips.
Claudia pressed her fingers to her temples and battled with hysteria.
Marble Falls, the locals called it. She remembered now. Officially they were named after the engineer who, two centuries previously, diverted the forces of two rushing torrents and a lake in order to drain the marshy uplands and put paid once and for all to the flooding which blighted this ancient landscape. But Marble Falls was more appropriate, the Umbrian people felt, because viewed from the bottom, a wall of white marble fell from the hillside.
Viewed from the top, it was awesome.
Droplets of water, breaking free of the liquid marble, rose in their thousands to cloud the valley and now, with the sun heating them in earnest, manufactured humid, claustrophobic air. Lush vegetation—birch and poplar and willow—hung over the cascade to breathe in the excitement of the raging forces, their leaves turned to silver by the swirling steam.
Even on her knees, Claudia felt herself swaying. It was wide enough to launch a ship, this torrent, one of the mighty ocean-going merchantmen, a ten-thousander as they were called. What chance a tiny crate?
Tentatively she craned her neck. Rocks, boulders, more trees, more bushes, smaller cascades where the exuberant waters split and rejoined, split and rejoined as they abandoned themselves to the forces of gravity. Her vision blurred, and not from the spray. At the bottom, although obscured by the hot, dense clouds, this mighty mass of water plunged into the river Plennia, renamed after the same engineer who built the falls and widened the stream to cope with the torrent.
Claudia hoped his ghost walked and his grave was turned over by jackals.
‘I didn’t—’ She stopped, took another breath and forced herself to hang on to it. ‘I didn’t know Etruscans were famed for leaping to their deaths over waterfalls,’ she said in a voice with only the slightest tremble in it.
Corbulo turned. ‘You never know when to stop, do you? You and that tongue of yours?’
Claudia forced the jellified twigs that were her legs into a sitting position and hugged her knees in a nonchalant fashion. From that angle, only she could see that her fingers were white from the fear and that her hands shook like a baby bird’s wings unless she clasped them tight.
‘Why? Will begging save my life? You’ve convinced yourself you own my lands, that by killing me you’ll get them back. So go ahead. Push the damned cage. Then see where it gets you.’
‘Bitch!’ Corbulo ran to the crate and the bars rattled in his hands. Janus, for a moment there she thought he was going to. ‘You conceited, insolent, know-it-all bitch! How dare you—you of all people—accuse me of making this up? It’s my ancestors who lie buried there, my blood which was spilled there, my sweat that manured the soil, so don’t you lecture me on ownership, you empty-headed golddigger, you!’
It was a dangerous line, but Claudia persisted.
‘Your sweat,’ she scoffed. ‘How far does it travel, this precious Etruscan perspiration? How is it so different from the rest of us that it can reach from Carrera on the coast to my vineyards in the east?’
It was working, sweet Jupiter, yes, it was working. The mind that had planned and honed each meticulous detail could yet be defeated by rage.
‘Carrera? Who ever lived in Carrera? We’re farmers, my people, and bloody good farmers at that.’ He snorted derisively. ‘Your husband. Called himself a farmer, did he? I was a lad when he bought that land, eight years old, and I still remember the outrage among my people when he turned prime agricultural soil into vineyards. Vineyards!’
Claudia’s mind made quick computations. Her husband set himself up, must be twenty-four, twenty-five years ago. That’s right, Corbulo’s in his early thirties. ‘We’ve had this conversation, I believe. And I told you then, wine pays handsomely.’ The Empire virtually runs on it.
The trainer wasn’t listening. ‘Ten years ago he added a parcel to the south. That land belonged to my father—’
‘Ten years ago, I was fourteen,’ she pointed out, quite reasonably.
‘But you know the story, don’t you?’
Of course I do. Her husband trotted it out at every dinner party. ‘What story?’
‘It was that bloody Compulsory Purchase Scheme. Our lands for just half-a-dozen gold pieces plus some stinking slum in Rome. I ask you, Claudia, who could survive in two filthy rooms hemmed in by foul-mouthed drunks, babies crying
day and night and dogs pissing up your front door? Nothing but stale sweat and rancid fats in your nostrils, and all the time, wherever you walk, that godsawful dust from the stonemasons drying the air!’
‘A million of us manage quite successfully.’ Some of us even love it.
Corbulo kicked the cage and she felt it lurch closer towards the waterfall. Janus! With an iron grip, Claudia hugged her knees as though conversations like this were commonplace in her calendar.
‘Well, I couldn’t. And neither could my father, or my mother, or my two little sisters. The girls, they were only ten and thirteen, but they died of the flux within a month. It broke my parents, watching their babies die, knowing that had we had space and fresh air and clean, running water they’d be alive today, with babies of their own, and did your husband give a damn?’
Her husband had his faults, she thought, but a sense of injustice wasn’t one of them. This story did the rounds at dinner parties not out of venom, but as a warning to others. For a start, no peasant was forced off his own land, they went voluntarily and in the case of Corbulo’s father, very rapidly. Augustus was keen to stabilize the economy and men like him were not only exceptionally well paid, they were given good apartments and a weekly dole. But with Corbulo’s father, it went deeper. He’d neglected his acres, working the soil as little as possible and drinking his money away and (this was the point of her husband’s after-dinner speech) when he was remunerated for his lands, he lost the whole lot on one single cockfight. A chicken, godsdammit. Corbulo’s father sold his birthright for a chicken.
‘So did he, Claudia?’ The trainer’s roar was louder than the falls. ‘Did your husband give a fuck about us?’
Rumour also had it that his father sold his eldest daughter into prostitution. Small wonder the mother threw herself into the Tiber.
Claudia felt her anger boil at this appalling waste of human life, and if Corbulo truly cared about his family, he left it pretty damned late.
‘For gods’ sake, man, yours is not the only family who moved out under the scheme. I can name you a dozen who uprooted to Rome, and not only did they survive, they put their sons in the Senate. So spare me the hard-luck stories.’ She leaned forward and gripped the bars, her face barely inches from his. ‘You could have gone back any time you wanted, and if land’s so cheap’—it wasn’t—‘why didn’t you godsdamned buy some?’