‘My dear Marcus
—’
That was odd, the Head of the Security Police addressing his staff with such familiarity. She doublechecked the seal but, no, this was no forgery and with a twitch of her brows, she started again.
‘My
dear Marcus, You seem to be labouring under a misunderstanding—clearly you did not get my little joke if you thought I meant to sack you. Next time you’re in Rome, I’ll explain that little pun, but in the meantime, sterling work, old man, sterling work. Take your time about coming back—the Emperor is in good hands, protected by the Praetorian Guard, and as for the case, I have just this day briefed Augustus on our efforts
—’
Our? Claudia would bet her house, her jewels, her vineyards that that weasel’s input was nil. She read on.
‘Now, if you could find time to see your way clear to sending me the checklist you mentioned, the “dos” and “don’ts” for Jupiter’s priest, my brother might be interested. I believe he mentioned a while back that he had some intention of applying for the post.’
There was an equally queasy closing line, which Claudia skipped, mainly because she couldn’t read it through the tears of laughter which were coursing down her cheeks. Who’d believe it? The Head of the Security Police grovelling to his better-born staff, because he wanted his boneheaded brother in the most important pastoral role in the Empire, the post of Jupiter’s Priest?
Clearly Orbilio had acquired a full list of the taboos and regulations governing this role and was using it as a lever to force a leave of absence from his boss, who would, in turn, use this inside knowledge to ensure his brother
was at least shortlisted for
the post. Frankly, Claudia doubted the brother had so much as considered the application, but that would not prevent an ambitious man from propelling his trusting sibling forward. Orbilio’s boss was a creep and a social climber, but credit where it’s due, he had suckers like an octopus, that man. Never once had he taken so much as one half-step backwards in the course of his career; his progress was always, always upwards, even though it was invariably at the expense of others.
Still. Claudia let the parchment spring back into a roll and tucked it inside the folds of her gown. There was nothing in that note which incriminated her, and with a bit of jiggery-pokery and Fortune smiling down, she could tamper with the heron seal and make it look like new again. It was a trick she’d picked up in Naples, from a one-armed—
‘I don’t suppose you are waiting for me?’
Calmly, she studied the reflection which appeared in the water. A man’s reflection, dark and swarthy, with a glint of gold in the cloth. ‘You suppose right.’
Tarraco crouched down, one knee touching the woodwork, in what she now knew was a familiar pose. ‘You must believe,’ he whispered, drawing a circle in the dust with his finger, ‘the way I feel.’ There was a pause long enough for him to draw three more concentric rings. ‘The gown was a mistake, I see that, but Lais walked out before you arrived in Atlantis. Why do you not accept the apology?’
Far out on the water, terns dived like arrows for fish and a wagtail trilled and bobbed, sending out alternate flashes of yellow and white. Claudia fixed her gaze on the distant hills and kept her lips tight together, and she heard him sigh, a small, almost insubstantial sound.
‘You think that by saying nothing, Tarraco will go away?’ The aroma of pinecones mixed with woodshavings floated under her nostrils. ‘What is between us, Claudia, that will not go away.’
Her sole response was a single arched eyebrow.
‘Very well,’ he said, rising slowly to his feet. ‘You attend races, yes?’
Try and keep me away. ‘Maybe.’
‘Then this afternoon, everything will be decided,’ he said, ‘one way or another.’ He stared out across the water. ‘My mother had the second sight and you’ll see, Claudia,’ he said, turning on his heel, ‘my words, also, are prophetic.’
Through narrowed lids, Claudia watched him walk back down the pier. How true, Tarraco. Your words are absolutely pathetic.
Nevertheless, several minutes passed before Claudia’s legs felt confident enough to skip up the flight of stone steps to Atlantis, and she’d have preferred some reassurance that the hammering came from the carpenters working on the grandstand, rather than something inside her chest.
‘What the
…?’
A tornado had swept through her bedroom in her absence, tipping over chairs and chests and mattresses. Her tunics lay scattered over the floor, her underclothes, her sandals. Her jewel box had been upended, cosmetics decanted from pots. Globs of creams and lotions and pools of spicy perfume swirled across the dolphin mosaic, along with a less recognizable smell, and feathers from pillows which had been gutted down the middle still floated in the
sultry air.
Suddenly a hand lashed out to cover her mouth, jerking her head back, and from the corner of her eye she saw the glint of a blade.
‘Mmmf! Mmmmf!’ It was the closest she could get to a scream, but surely someone could hear it? Heaven knows, there were enough servants about.
‘Where is it?’ he snarled.
‘Mmmmmmf!’
‘Shut up or I’ll slit your throat like I slit that whore’s last night.’ The cold touch of the steel convinced her. ‘Now where is it?’ Slowly he released his hand and Claudia could see it was fat. ‘Where’s that fucking letter?’
‘I don’t—’ What was that smell? Pepper? Coriander?
‘Don’t mess with me, bitch.’ He pulled her head back so hard, she couldn’t swallow. ‘My client wants his property back.’
Terror snatched Claudia’s breath from her body. Other than Marcus, only Dorcan knew she was here in Atlantis—and the amiable charlatan had betrayed her. Involuntarily, Claudia shuddered. She had a very bad feeling about this…
The fat man bragged about slitting the throat of a prostitute. It was common knowledge a certain big, black, shaggy bear had a soft spot for whores—
‘What…
happened to Dorcan?’
‘What do you think?’ the voice in her ear sneered.
Panic fluttered like a trapped bird in Claudia’s stomach. What I think is…
that without witnesses there can be no repercussions.
The fat man meant business. And his business, she knew now, was murder.
She thought of the charlatan. His booming laugh, that showed off someone else’s teeth. His remedies for gout and coughs and impotence, usually the same. His collection of sphinx claws and unicorn horns. Now he was dead. That life—that larger than life—snuffed out. In an instant.
Despite ragged lungs Claudia forced her voice to be calm. ‘Very well. I’ll give you what you want.’ Trembling hands reached into the folds of her gown. She had maybe a countdown of
six…
‘No funny business,’ the fat man warned. Down to
five…
‘I swear.’ Down to four.
Shaking hands withdrew Orbilio’s letter. Three.
A fat hand reached out to take it.
Two.
In his other hand, the knife primed for action.
One…
Sweet Juno, help me. Help me now! With a flip of her wrist, Claudia tossed the scroll across the floor, ducking back just far enough to evade the flick of the blade designed to slash through her windpipe.
‘Bitch!’ His free hand connected with her cheekbone and sent her sprawling backwards on to the gutted mattress. The fat man raised the knife to strike.
‘HELP,’ she yelled at the top of her lungs. ‘
HELP!
’
Immediately there was a scuffle of response in the corridor outside and the fat man swore. Torn between snuffing out the witness or returning the document to his client, he had little choice and as the running footsteps grew closer, he lunged at the scroll, barging through the squad of servants charging down in answer to Claudia’s scream.
‘What happened?’ they asked, goggling at the mess and at her, sprawled across the floor with a bruise swelling up half her face.
‘Lover’s tiff,’ she explained, dabbing the blood from her lip. ‘You know how it is.’
In the tussle with the fat man, survival was all that mattered. Staying alive. But now he’d gone, Claudia threaded the pieces together. Dorcan, that big, bluff, happy-go-lucky giant, had sold her out. That figured. He’d sell his sister’s wedding band for a silver denarius and wouldn’t even make a secret of the fact. But Dorcan, for all his mercenary faults, would never intentionally harm anyone. Neither, by reputation, would Sabbio Tullus.
Sending in the fat man smacked of double-cross.
Dorcan, then, must have sent his information to Tullus’ nephew, who in turn sent this thug, his tame assassin, to recover what he believed Claudia had stolen from his strongbox.
With her arms hugged tight to her chest, Claudia thanked her rescuers and watched them file out through the door. Alone in the silent scramble of her overturned room with the smell of cardamom rank in her nostrils, it was little consolation that the double-crosser had been double-crossed.
Sooner or later either the fat man or his master would realize they’d been fobbed off with the wrong document.
Next time, Claudia, like Dorcan, might not be so lucky.
XXIII
The bubbling up of a cloudbank to the west that particular Sunday was the first of many changes which would impact upon the lives of every single person throughout the entire Roman Empire, not simply those cocooned within the environs of Atlantis. But on that bright, light, sunny afternoon where the sky was as blue as the gentle Aegean and the clouds as welcome as guests at Saturnalia, there was no inkling of the momentous times which lay ahead. Simply a rejoicing, and Pylades’ sponsored foot race could not have been a more fitting tribute to the upturn in the weather. Suddenly, the same Etruscan hills which had previously been blurred and distant rushed forward, their oaks and pines and scrub showing up as clearly as their pebbled shores, and beyond, more hills hove into sight, rolls and rolls of them, stretching away to infinity. Islands, too, jumped closer, became enlarged.
Including Tuder’s craggy lump. The whiteness of the marble on the villa reflected in the new, still clarity of the lake, yet its more exotic treasures—the ancient tombs, the colossus on its eastern shore—lay beyond general view, a testament to the private nature of the banker who retired here. But no one this afternoon cared two hoots about the banker. Or his widow. Or the man who married her. In the lee of the cliff-like promontory, along the grass on the south-facing shore, the wealthy and the noble milled about, flaunting their hairdos, their jewels, the latest fashions, and round and round they strutted, pomaded and rouged, plucked and pomandered—and that was just the men! Tiers of temporary seating had been set up along both straight stretches of an ellipse marked out in chalk, the two short ends of the oval left clear for the judges, and Pylades strutted amongst the excited babble, a figure of importance despite his stocky, diminutive frame as he passed pleasantries with guests and dignitaries or double-checked the arrangements with the organizers. Kamar, bestowing a wise nod here, a handshake there, was shadowed by his wishy-washy wife, whose desperation to escape was all but tattooed across her cheekbones. Further down, beside the steps and dispensing Carya’s cloudy waters to the townspeople, since the gates had been thrown open to one and all this afternoon, Mosul appeared chirpier than at any other time since Claudia’s arrival, could that even be a smile hovering on his lips? Thankfully, no such accusation could be levelled at Pul, pug-faced as usual in his tight leather vest and strange kilt, standing watchful at the back.
When he nodded a curt acknowledgement to someone in the crowd, Claudia followed the line of his sights and found, to her surprise, the greeting had been exchanged with Tarraco, dressed to put his peacocks to shame and with the sun reflecting off the sumptuous embroidery on his tunic and the braided torque of gold around his neck, Claudia knew the Spaniard was not unaware of the attention he attracted.
You don’t know when to stop, do you? she thought. You just don’t know when to stop.
Trumpets blasted out a fanfare, a signal that the show was about to begin. Claudia settled beside Lavinia up in row seven and said, ‘Care to give me a swig from that wineskin?’
‘What wineskin?’ the old woman chortled.
‘The one I saw you taking a crafty slug from, before you tucked it back under your wrap.’ There was a strange smell in the air, sharp and unpleasant, and it seemed to come from Lavinia. Claudia sniffed again and identified white mandrake. ‘No Ruth and Lalo?’
‘Tch.’ The old woman directed a venomous glance towards the usher. ‘Slaves not allowed in the seating area,’ she mimicked. ‘I’ll give him bloody slaves! Because of that, Lavinia’s lumbered here with Fab and Sab and I can’t take much more of them, I tell you. Mind,’ Lavinia let loose a mischievous chuckle, ‘I’ve bet Fabella’s silver bracelet the wheelwright son, the blond boy there, wins this afternoon. Oh-oh, here they come.’
The boards vibrated as the heavyweights took their places, oblivious to Lavinia’s hand pulling her wrap across a lump on her lap. ‘I can’t find that bracelet anywhere,’ Fabella said.
‘She can’t,’ her sister echoed.
‘I’d hate to lose it, it was a present from my hubby and you should see it glisten in the sunshine.’
‘She checked under the bed, everywhere.’
‘I’ve asked around, no one’s handed the bracelet in, and I just can’t think where I could have dropped it. Was I wearing it when we called in to say good night to you, mother? Perhaps you could get Ruth to have a look?’