Black Salamander

XXVI

Apart from a pair of cresset lights burning on either side of the doorway, the house was total darkness by the time Claudia returned to her lodgings. One or two stars twinkled between the scudding clouds, but the night was warm and the river smelled sour, even from here. Down at the waterfront, where she’d spent several hours, the stench was considerably worse. Raw sewage, stale beer, the lingering odour of stevedores’ sweat. But at least there was life down there. Vitality. The shrill laugh of whores, drunken singing, brawls which spilled from the swillpens into the streets. Back here, in the dark, sinister shadow of Black Mountain, only the silent footfalls of a cat revealed the scene was not a still-life painted fresco.

Looking up at the bolted shutters, Claudia was suddenly conscious of the two distinct categories which divided her fellow travellers. On the one hand there were those, like Titus and Iliona, who’d found stimulation from their unplanned adventure and whose limbs would be intertwined, naked and sated, as they slept in one another’s arms. Then there were the Dexters and Marias who had not, and now lay side by side, awake and unspeaking, in the hollow emptiness of their room, separated by a hand-span and a gulf of understanding. Involuntarily, Claudia shivered. Then, dismissing Junius, she slipped into the tavern. What a night!

‘I’ll light you to your room, miss,’ the porter said, hobbling out of his cubbyhole.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she retorted, snatching the oil lamp from his hand. ‘I can manage perfectly well by myself.’

With a suit-yourself shrug, the porter retreated to his jug of ale and game of odds-and-evens, stubbing his toe on the table in the darkness and cursing as his counters scattered over the floor, ruining the run of play.

With an eerie flicker, the lamp lit Claudia’s way up the stairs. Wretched bloody Gauls. Can’t they build with anything but timber? Talk about gloomy. And even between the beams, they’d made no attempt to paint the lumpy plaster. All you got was a clumsily fashioned statue of some silly bitch riding side-saddle stuck in a niche in the wall halfway up this rickety staircase. Epona, didn’t they call her? For a goddess, Claudia thought, you’re not much of a rider. She was tipped sideways, rather like Claudia when she tumbled over the edge yesterday. Pausing to straighten the statuette, she realized that the sculpture had a thick stone spike on the bottom, which fitted-or in this case, did not-into a socket. Curious, Claudia peered into the hole and saw that it contained several bronze and silver coins, and it was this munificent offering which kept Epona offbalance. Easily remedied…

With the Celtic goddess upright once again, Claudia continued her way up the stairs and by the light of the porter’s oil lamp counted her profits. Previous guests had been generous to the lovely Epona. Twelve sesterces. Quite a What was that?

With one puff, she extinguished the lamp. All evening she’d felt sure she was being followed. Even Junius had clutched his dagger tightly in his hand, rather than loosely in its scabbard and she knew it wasn’t Supersnoop on their tail. He’d have throttled his own shadow rather than let it give him away. She tiptoed across the room and listened, there were faint scufflings on the landing.

Whoever it was out there would know she was still in possession of the deerskin pouch, although by the gods, it wasn’t for the want of trying! Her instructions had been clear. Go down to the waterfront to the Temple of Neptune, turn right, then take the first street right again. You’ll see a modern brick-built warehouse showing the sign of the salamander. Go inside, up the stairs, second floor, first door on the left, knock this signal: one long, two short, two long. Ask for the slave dealer, Ecba.

Like Clemens with his wretched taboos for Jupiter’s Priest, Claudia had memorized the instructions, could have recited them backwards and in Phrygian in her sleep. Therefore, after taking a convoluted route, as though out for a gentle evening stroll, she had worked her way down to the wharves. Here it would be much easier to give her tail the slip, and it would appear so innocent, too. After all, what wealthy Roman gentlewoman would knowingly make for the rough part of town, where sailors catcalled obscenities from the safety of their ships, where raddled whores with ravaged faces spat at her? With so much loading and unloading going on, barrels, sacks, crates, amphorae being wheeled, winched, hefted, rolled, it was easy to get lost in the crush.

For thirty dull minutes she and Junius had remained flat on their stomachs underneath the granary, conveniently raised on stone piers to prevent rat damage, their prostrate bodies hidden by a consignment of fleeces, while gangplanks were lowered and raised, masts stepped and unstepped, oxen hooked up to and unhooked from barges. Wagons rolled in, wagons rolled out. Chains rattled over the quayside, ropes dragged, hoofs scuffed impatiently, but no two pairs of boots which passed back and forth were the same.

The warehouse had been easy to find. A stone salamander slithered over the pediment, picked out in black paint. Up two flights. One long, two short, two long knocks on the door. ‘I’m looking for Ecba,’ she called. ‘The slave dealer.’

Nothing.

Next time louder. The third knock they’d have heard in Dalmatia.

He’s out. Why shouldn’t he be? He’s not to know the delegation has finally arrived. I’ll wait.

Two hours passed, with no sign of the slave dealer.

Why should there be? This was his place of work, not his home. She enquired at the barber’s shop opposite. The barber, a big man with the aquiline features of the Babylonian, sent a gobbet of spittle past Claudia’s skirt. He came. He went. He minded his own business. And if the grating of heavy shutters sliding across his shopfront between himself and Claudia didn’t get the message across, the rattling of safety chains did.

Terrific.

Two more hours passed. It got dark. She got hungry. No Ecba.

They picked up food from the wharves-hot spicy sausage, crumbly bread-then sauntered back to the lofty building marked with the black salamander. In this light, it looked sinister and menacing, as it twisted and slithered over the doorway.

‘Ecba? Ah.’ An inebriate sailor grinned, sprawled over the top step. ‘Yah.’

‘You know him?’

‘Ecba?’ The grin broadened. ‘Nah.’

Four hours had passed in total. Night had fallen, but the industry along the riverbank had not. Watermen still bustled about, porters balanced boxes, bales and hides. No one here had ever heard of Ecba, but then slave dealers were unpopular everywhere. Even if he was drinking in the tavern behind them, the dock labourers’ lips would stay tight.

By the wee small hours, Claudia had had it up to here with fishy smells and oxen, bad breath and oily fleeces. She would simply have to wait until morning to conduct her business with Ecba. But now, returning to her room, there were faint shufflings on the landing. Had whoever set out to follow her been waiting?

Sorry, buster. Claudia pulled out her little knife from the folds of her gown. Can’t hang around for you to make the first move. Now let’s see what you’re made of-silently, she eased open her door.

‘I love you.’

What?

Blinking in the blackness, Claudia wondered whether she was hearing things.

‘You must believe that, my darling.’ The voice was harsh and whispered, and came from two doors along. Whose room was that? ‘I can’t live without you.’

A crack of light appeared on the polished wooden floor, like a glowing golden poker.

‘All my lovers say that,’ a woman’s voice trilled.

‘Don’t! Don’t torment me like this.’ The gruff tones of the astrologer were unmistakable.

‘Oh, but it’s true.’ The girl let out a flirtatious giggle. ‘The oil merchant I hooked up with while you took your silly little detour, he said he loved me, as well.’

‘Well, I’m the only one who’s ever meant it,’ Volso rasped. ‘Can you imagine what it was like, without you this past week? Wanting you? Wanting to touch you, taste you, feel your arms around me? It was agony. Absolute agony.’

‘Good.’ The door swung wider and his female visitor skipped across the threshold, licking her finger to smooth the line of her brow with one hand and veiling her face with the other. ‘Maybe next time I’ll make you wait longer.’

‘No!’ Volso lunged and pulled her back, his hungry hands surging over her body. ‘I can’t live without you, you know that. Not another day. Janus, you drive me wild!’ For a count of thirty his lips noisily plundered hers before the girl broke free and ran, laughing, towards the stairs. At the top she paused, turned and blew him a kiss, then with a giggle and a fluttering of long, slim fingers, she skipped down the stairs.

Astonished, Claudia continued to watch as Volso, groaning, clicked his door shut. The glass-blower was right. You are a dark horse, she thought, and through the slit of her door, turned her eyes towards the girl. What a vixen. Clearly promiscuous, probably preys on lonely, unattractive men like Volso purely for the power she wields over them. Claudia frowned. Why, though, was she stopping halfway down the stairs? A dainty hand lifted the statuette out of its socket, and even in the darkness, she could see the flash of amber on the girl’s forefinger. What a lump it was, too! The size of an ostrich egg. Did Volso buy her that? The other hand was hidden, and Claudia realized it was fishing around in the hole she’d just raided. In the darkness, her lips twitched. Sorry, love. Beat you to it.

‘Bastard!’ The girl spun round and flounced back up the stairs. ‘Volso!’ She battered on his door. ‘Volso, you bastard, open up.’

‘Ssssssh.’ The urgency in his whisper was palpable. ‘Keep your voice down, my love. What’s the matter?’

‘Matter, you thieving bastard? I want my money, that’s what’s the matter.’

Smothering her mouth with her hand, Claudia stifled a laugh. So that’s Volso’s little dreamboat, his siren, his beloved? A common whore. He leaves the money-phew, some payment-rather than hand it over personally, no doubt it makes him feel ‘cleaner’ that way. Maybe he can even delude himself into believing that this nubile coquette actually wants him for his own sake.

A faint ray of pity limped its way across to the lonely, ugly astrologer.

‘I d-don’t understand,’ he stammered. ‘I left it where you told me to. Under the statue.’

‘Well, it’s not there now,’ she hissed, no longer the flirt, but the hard, mercenary whore. The veil had tipped back, to reveal a sheet of glossy black hair which shimmered by the light of the single lamp from Volso’s room, and Claudia could see other things, too, the earstud which glittered with a giant emerald, the kohl-rimmed eyes and bright red carmined lips, and the fact that Volso’s lover was barely past the age of puberty Suddenly, Claudia’s heart constricted. So young. So very, very young to be peddling your flesh to old men. Salty water filled her eyes. Far too young to be wise in the ways of obsessing men with your rare and tender beauty. Far too young to have a score of lovers, teasing, taunting, manipulating their fractured emotions as you play one off against the other.

Sweet Jupiter. Claudia swallowed in the darkness. Give it up. While you can. Get out now. You’re far too young to make middle-aged men clamour and compete for your fidelity, knowing inside-as they do-that as surely as the sun will rise in the east, you will leave them and move on.

The girl moved and the lamplight showed Volso’s whore in cruel clarity. Shit! His lover was not female at all. It was a youth. Dressed in women’s clothes.