Black Salamander

XXII

‘Drink this.’ Dexter pushed a grape-green phial at the brick-maker’s bereaved daughter. ‘No, Gemma, drink it,’ he said firmly, steering the liquid between her reluctant lips and holding her shoulders while she shuddered.

Gemma wasn’t the only one to need a shot of Arcas’s home-made liqueur, a golden distillation made from yellow grassland gentians, deceptively sticky and sweet until you swallowed it, after which, however, it was like swilling raw naptha. Nectar of the gods it might not be. Effective was another matter. Colour flushed Gemma’s tear-stained cheeks, albeit in two bright red splotches.

Out of sight, the heavy thwack of the huntsman’s axe resonated through the forest as the men cobbled together a double pyre for the funeral. Sniffing noisily, the glass-blower’s wife wove garlands of oak leaves to wreathe round the heads of the dead, while a couple of the other women dressed the brick-maker and his wife in a clean change of clothes and combed their hair. Maria slipped a coin under each of their tongues to pay the old ferryman who’d be rowing their souls to Hades, and Clemens, in the absence of cypress, was using spruce and fir to purify the cremation site, gentian liqueur in place of wine.

‘This rather buggers things up,’ Titus said to Claudia, stacking more logs on the pyre. ‘Sending out the biggest smoke signal imaginable to the Sequani headhunters-look-we’re-here, X marks the spot. And where’s our Silver Fox while this is going on? Marcus is the one swinging the axe, not him.’

‘He’s aware of the hazards,’ Claudia explained, tossing on a pile of twigs. ‘For the past two hours he’s been out laying a false trail, and believes that by the time the rebel forces spot the fire and then follow his bogus spoor, we’ll be well shot of the danger zone.’

‘I bloody hope so,’ Titus said, wiping the sweat from his brow, but nevertheless keeping sure that that single hank of hair remained over his eye. ‘He’s picked a good spot, right down in the valley, but this is going to be one hell of a bonfire.’

Claudia grunted noncommittally, because inside she felt sure the wily Silver Fox had no intention of leaving a giant blaze aflame. There would be no time to see the funeral through to the end, the area was too dangerous to linger until the fire died of its own accord, then wash and purify the bones, wrap them up and take them away for proper burial later. It would be dusk before this pyre burned itself out, and one more hour in this place was risky, much less another night. She suspected that, once the group was out of sight of the fire, Arcas would backtrack to douse the flames. It would be hard luck on the brick-maker and his wife, their remains ending up a grilled supper for wild beasts. But at least Gemma would be spared the grisly knowledge.

‘I don’t know how to break this to Clemens,’ Iliona said, helping Claudia throw on another heap of branches. ‘But I can only play party music on my flute.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Claudia assured her, ‘the clients won’t complain.’ But it was only when she was quite alone, gathering the petals from wild dog roses to scatter on the corpses, that she began to wonder why the killer had needed to dispose of the hapless couple.

The brick-maker had been in such a state that to rob him of his deerskin pouch, assuming he had one, would have been child’s play. So edgy was he, it would have been simplicity itself to plant the suggestion that it had become lost during yesterday’s rout, especially by removing a few other items from his bag. There was certainly no need to kill him for it.

Unless…

Unless what? That in his agitation he was about to blab about it? Big deal. Only other couriers would have taken his ramblings seriously-and they (we!) were in no position to shout. Besides, who gives a damn? The brick-maker didn’t know it was part of a treasure map, so what if he revealed himself to be a smuggler? No, no, he couldn’t have been killed simply for the sake of his silence.

What then? Showering the petals, white to pink to rosy red, over the luckless pair, Claudia could not think of a single advantage that had been gained by their murder. Except-maybe-time. Another half-day tied up. Another detour. Another delay before they arrive in Vesontio.

Claudia stared at the cold, waxy bodies lying on the woodland floor. In the canopy, chiffchaffs warbled and magpies chattered, and faint snatches of sunlight filtered through to stipple the soft, dark pile of leaf litter. A ladybird alighted on one of the oak leaves in the woman’s hair, and even now, long after death, Claudia caught the sickly reek of laudanum.

You have died, she whispered silently, because the killer is becoming a fraction too obsessive. There was absolutely no need for this butchery. No need to tweak out this extra half a day. But it would appear that he (she?) cannot help himself. The opportunity was simply too good to miss.

And maybe this same obsessiveness, she thought, this need to overplay his hand, will also prove his downfall. This was his first mistake, and this mistake might just be sufficient to bring him (or her.) to justice.