‘Ah, Dino, we grew up together, remember? Shannu might be my baby brother, but,’ Sargon grimaced, ‘no amount of dancing round the subject can alter the fact.’ His voice took on a harsh note. ‘Shannu is insane.’
The Greek sighed. No beating about the bush, then. ‘You fear Arbil’s treading the same path?’
Calling for a torch bearer, Sargon shrugged. ‘He’s deteriorating fast, you’ve seen it yourself.’
‘Are you not worried for him?’
‘I’m more worried for me,’ he said sharply. ‘That it’s hereditary, and who knows when it might strike. That’s why I live life for today, Dino. You never know what lurks around the next corner.’ They ducked to avoid a cartload of cedars. ‘So what do you say? You and me, running the business side by side? Your expertise on the sales side combined with my—’
‘Expertise on backing chickens?’
‘Ability to increase our income,’ he corrected. ‘Oh, that makes your eyes light up. Well, Arbil thinks he knows the slave trade, my friend, but I’ve discovered a way of doubling our turnover. No extra work. No risks. Just this.’ He tapped his head. ‘Brainwork.’
The Collina Gate loomed out of the swirling mist. The cries of the alms-seekers grew closer, the shouts from the toll booth, the stink of the hovels beyond. Over to the west, the sky danced orange from a tenement which had caught fire, but the screams did not carry this far, there was no indication of the devastation and bereavement it would leave in its wake. Instead, the smell of salt fish mingled with freshly sawn timber, and with dung and hot pies and hemp.
‘Are you in, Dino?’ Sargon persisted. ‘We’ve grown up like brothers, trust each other, know one another inside out—’
‘Apart from the fact you sneak off now and again,’ Dino said amiably. ‘Are we talking a fifty-fifty split?’
‘Sixty-forty, you greedy bastard. But I need to know. Are you with me on this?’
By “this” Dino assumed Sargon meant the silent takeover of Arbil’s empire. Evidently he was planning to have his father restrained as insane sooner rather than later, and now he was being asked to join the connivance. Dionocrates thought of Rome, and what impelled him to come with such regularity, and that thought stirred his loins as well as his young blood. Rescued from Chios, all he’d known was the slave farm up in the hills.
Until recently.
What he’d found here went beyond his wildest fantasies, and the funny thing was, for all the wealth that had been showered upon him, the pleasure he’d discovered in the city came for free…
He weighed up the risks of plotting against the powerful Babylonian versus what he’d discovered in Rome. Risk he enjoyed, though. He ran his hand over the stubble which was forming on his chin. No doubt there was a flaw in Sargon’s arguments, one which could ultimately prove fatal, but for the life of him, Dino couldn’t think of what that flaw might be.
‘You know bloody well I am, Sargon.’ He wagged a playful finger. ‘Provided you let me pick the cockerels in future.’
*
As nightwatchmen patrolled the warehouses and wharves and scavengers cruised the riverbanks for carrion, the light in Magic’s head grew stronger. Like a bright, white ball of lightning, it hurtled relentlessly towards his brain. He could see it, he could feel it, he could even fucking hear it. It was a loud light, screaming, flashing, bursting his skull open.
He tried hiding. Under the table. Under the bedcover. Inside the cupboard. But the light followed, screeching inside his head.
This time it would not go away.
This time there was no voice to comfort him.
Tears coursed down his cheeks, he tasted their salt on his tongue and, far beyond the boundaries of the light, he heard keening.
Time passed.
Manure carts and the shovellers who followed clattered on the cobbles far below. Downstairs, an old man snored loud enough to shake the lichens from the rooftiles, but Magic couldn’t hear for the serrated ball of flame inside his skull. He could feel it attacking his flesh from within. White hot. Burning. And this time there were no gentle whispers, no soft, sweet songs to stop the light from pressing on his eyeballs.
‘Bitch,’ he screamed. ‘Filthy, treacherous bitch!’
His fingers fumbled for the woollen doll. He’d stolen it this morning, from a child in the Cattle Market, and she’d cried when he snatched it from her hands.
‘Bitch!’
With a sharp peeling knife, he hacked and hacked at the doll.
‘Take that! And that! And that!’
As the first tinge of dawn reddened the sky above the Esquiline Hill, the baying inside Magic’s head began to subside and the hideous light slithered away. He watched a piece of his paper patchwork peel from the wall, touched the globs of fat where his tallow had guttered. Crawling out from under his bed, he stared at the doll in his hands.
At Claudia.
Her shredded tunic hung by a thread on one shoulder. Magic ripped it off and began to keen again, rocking back and forth upon his heels as he pressed the frock over his eyes.
‘No one could care for you the way I could,’ he wailed. ‘No one.’
He picked up the doll and examined the deep gouges on its back and its thighs and its breasts. Not its.
Hers.
Her
back, and
her
thighs, and
her
breasts. Claudia’s breasts. Shaking fingers probed the rip marks in the wool. Claudia’s proud, generous breasts which she offered him every night, here in his room, when she came to him alone and in secret. Magic’s breathing became ragged. Last night, though, she hadn’t come. She had sent the light instead, and the light was evil. She had tricked him. The treacherous bitch had betrayed him.
He shook the doll. ‘I’ll teach you.’ His voice rose. ‘This is Magic you’re dealing with. Magic, you hear?’
Lighting the wick of another stinking tallow, he picked up his reed, sharpened the point and dipped it in ink.
‘don’t think you can deceive me you bitch’,
Magic paused and looked up at the welter of copies round his bedroom walls,
‘
your mine understand you are mine and the next time we meet it shall be for eternity
’.
XXI
The sun was heartily sick of captivity. For a week he’d been bullied by a gang of grey clouds, but now, on the first day of the Megalesian Games, it was time to fight back. What he didn’t know, however, because he was behind with the news, was that the bald aedile responsible for organizing the Games had succumbed to the same fever which had laid low his five charioteers, so the sun’s first sight of Rome was hardly encouraging. Without expert guidance, the inaugural procession was late setting off, the lictors and statue-bearers hoping to catch up as they quick-marched double-time past the crowds lining the slopes of the Capitol without so much as a thought to the poor aedile wallowing in sweat and delirium. Less would they care about Severina, curled into a ball and howling like an animal for the girl whose throat had been cut in the Wolf Cave…
Instead the sun’s second punch found a weakness in the cloud cover over what, at first glance, appeared to be nothing more interesting than the office of a moneyed merchant. The window faced on to the peristyle, and so it was across the fountains and the birdbaths, the fan-trained peaches and the herbaries that his rays picked out a desk encrusted with ivory behind a high-backed chair complete with padded armrests and cushions. There were seats for two visitors, upholstered in azure-blue wool, plus chests of satinwood and maple and other grained woods. Fragrant elecampane burned in wall braziers, there were frescoes of flowers, ripe fruits and another of a leopard tamed and entranced by Orpheus’ lyre.
All this, of course, our flaming voyeur could find in any rich man’s office anywhere across the Empire.
What he wouldn’t expect to see, however, were great seas of ink spilling over tessellated peacocks or a flying scatter of scrolls as a blue-eyed, cross-eyed cat twisted from chest to upholstery to fine, damasked drapes in a desperate bid to catch the small creature with a black face and long tail which stubbornly remained one pace ahead, while at the same time a young woman made concerted but unfortunately ineffective snatches in the air, resulting in pens, tablets and styluses rolling under furniture and rugs.
Resting his elbows on the cloudbank, the sun ticked off the laps as monkey, cat and Claudia darted round the room, giving marks out of ten for their balletic leaps and plunges. Then the monkey opened up the game by shinning out the window. Drusilla followed hot on its heels, but Claudia could not. She merely leaned forward, hands on her knees, and prayed her lungs had not sustained permanent damage. In fact, she was still gasping when Marcus Cornelius breezed in.
‘The end of another party?’ he asked cheerfully, examining the slashes in the damask and claw marks gouged deep in the finely grained woodwork. ‘No, I see it’s still in full swing.’ He stepped over a huge puddle of ink to watch a garden being systematically laid to waste.
‘Did it not occur to you,’ Claudia wheezed, ‘to buy the boy a spinning top?’
Orbilio returned a marble bust to its podium and straightened the two overturned chairs. ‘Drusilla was putting on weight and needed the exercise, so say thank you.’
‘Bog off.’
‘That’s gratitude. I entertain your foundling, streamline your cat, redecorate your office and all you can say is bog off. Did you know you have ink spots on your hem?’ The look she gave him sent the sun scuttling back behind the cloudbank, but the investigator was made of sterner stuff. ‘Guess what day it is today.’
‘The day you walk out of my life?’
‘Sorry, it’s
my
lucky day, not yours—you see, this morning I thwarted the Market Day Murderer.’
Claudia straightened up. ‘You have?’ In spite of herself, she was impressed. ‘You’ve actually caught him?’ Orbilio picked up some scrolls and laid them on the table beside a bronze stylus jar. ‘Thwarted,’ he corrected. ‘Not caughted. There’s a difference. Let me start at the beginning. You remember Zygia, the girl who was killed in the Lupercal? She had a lover, Severina, who told me Zygia knew who the Market Day Murderer was, only she wouldn’t tell Severina in case it endangered her life. Are you with me so far?’
‘Marcus, you have my undivided apathy.’
‘Anyway, Zygia was on her way to warn—what?’ Frowning, he looked at the large cedarwood chest whose lid Claudia was now holding open with one hand, while her other seemed to be gesticulating at its contents.
‘It’s empty,’ he said, craning his neck.
‘Not for long, Hotshot.’
He glanced towards the garden, to where Larentia and her daughter were bearing down. ‘Claudia, you’re not serious…?’
She gave him a smile as innocent as a freshly laid egg. Then pushed him hard in the stomach.
‘Mmmmf!’
‘Quiet,’ she hissed. ‘Ah, Larentia. Julia. The others said to tell you they couldn’t wait until you got back from shopping, they’ve gone on ahead to the Circus.’
Larentia’s wrinkles puckered deeper. ‘I thought I saw someone in here,’ she snapped. ‘A man.’
Claudia plumped herself down on the chest. ‘Trick of the light,’ she replied, indicating the sun’s efforts to break through the clouds.
The old woman sniffed suspiciously. ‘What the devil happened here?’
‘The monkey,’ Claudia replied, and indeed no more was needed on the subject, since it had been the bane of everybody’s life since it got loose last night. All attempts to catch it had ended in disaster—Leonides sustained an ankle injury, two others knocked themselves out colliding heads and the net used to snare it was shredded from the inside within seconds. Better by far to turn Drusilla on it and trust she gives it a heart attack.
‘Fortunata took to her bed,’ put in Julia. ‘Herky was so affected by the horrid beast, he won’t come out of the cellar and she’s sure he’s having a nervous breakdown in there.’
‘Mmmmf!’
‘What’s that?’ asked Larentia.
‘What’s what?’
‘That knocking sound.’
Claudia rested her weight even more firmly on the lid. ‘Problems with the underfloor heating,’ she said. ‘There’s a blockage in the hypocaust, that’ll be the man inspecting it. Aren’t you leaving it late for the parade? I hear they’ve got elephants, camels, not to mention a lion that jumps through hoops.’ Her voice ended on a tantalizing note, and the two women swallowed the bait.
‘Are you sure you can’t come?’ asked Julia, helping her mother on with her wrap.
‘If only,’ Claudia sighed, kicking the chest in rhythm with the knocks. ‘But Gaius’ closest friend—you remember Statius? No? Well, he’s dying, poor fellow, and I could never—’ sniff ‘—forgive myself for not calling on him before he—’ sniff ‘—passes over.’
‘Quite, quite.’ They shuffled to the door and she waved them off the premises.
Back in the office, Marcus Cornelius was leaning over the chest, red-faced and gasping for air. ‘I thought at one point you were trying to suffocate me,’ he said.
‘At one point,’ she replied prettily, ‘you were right.’
‘Statius?’ he grinned.
‘P. Leno Statius. It’s the name of the oculist down on the corner, the first name that entered my head.’
‘I wonder what the P stands for.’
‘Is it pertinent?’ she asked.
‘More likely Paulus, but that’s beside the point. You lied to me, Claudia Seferius. You’re not drowning in domestic trivia, you’re in your element.’
‘Suffocating, Marcus. I said I was suffocating. As a policeman, you should pay more attention to the cause of my imminent demise.’