Black Salamander

XXVIII

Of the many fictions maintained, the one which informs us that class plays no part in modern-day living must be the largest. Or, if not, at least the cause of most mirth. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, as befitted his aristocratic status, had been assigned a seat in the governor’s box, sending Maria’s eyes whizzing out of their sockets as it dawned on her that it was not Titus she should have been shoving her husband closer towards, but the designer of mosaic floors. The poor woman almost fell off her cushion when, after a muted exchange with the governor, Marcus excused himself, to park amongst the rest of the delayed delegation.

‘That’s breeding for you,’ she whispered to Dexter. ‘Refusing a seat in the imperial box. You be sure you sit next to him at the banquet tonight. Dexter, are you listening to me?’

‘My throat’s sore and the glands are right up.’

‘Never mind that.’ Maria turned and fluttered her fingers in Orbilio’s direction. ‘Marcus has contacts in all the right places, and if you play it right this evening, we might be talking of premises not just in Rome and Vesontio, but maybe Naples, Massilia, Byzantium. And for goodness sake, will you stop fussing over that lumpy tradesman’s daughter.’

‘Gemma is a sweet girl,’ Dexter protested. ‘Only yesterday she fetched some ointment for my big toe and this morning she paid a special visit to the herbalist to get a salve for my throat.’ He flashed a proprietorial smile over Gemma’s head. ‘The way she follows me around,’ he said, ‘she’s like a puppy.’

Maria’s lip curled. ‘Perfect training, then, for the dog she’s growing into!’

To a blast on silver trumpets, a procession of pure white horses entered the Forum, caparisoned in gold and silver and blue, their riders performing daredevil stunts-handstands, backflips and somersaults-on the backs of their dancing, prancing mounts. Musicians followed. Then tumblers, jugglers, acrobats. African dancers in skimpy feather costumes. Monkeys dressed up as cavalrymen and riding on black goats filled the Forum with laughter, and it looked like summer was about to join the festivities. The sun was breaking through at last, great chunks of blue sky pushing out the clouds.

‘Give me one good reason why I don’t post a bulletin to have your bodyguard arrested.’

Dear Diana, she knew Orbilio didn’t like the boy, but this was ridiculous. Briefly Claudia speculated whether there was a deeper motive behind his wanting Junius out of the way. From the corner of her eye, she watched him applauding the clowns. Now where did you get that idea from? Silly bitch. What makes you think he’d be jealous? Look at him. Not a care in the world. Sows oats faster than a farmer in November, different women every week. She wondered why that should cause a knot in her stomach.

‘Orbilio, let me give you three,’ Claudia said sharply.

‘One: Junius is no back-stabber. If he wanted to kill someone, he’d do it face to face.’ Where the hell had that boy disappeared to? Why take his pack? ‘Two: he has nothing to gain from working for Galba, since he’s not only a foreigner, but a slave to boot. Neither has a place in any fancy Republic, therefore it’s a Roman you’re after, not a Gaul. And thirdly,’ she leaned her face so close to his, she could smell the sweetness of his breath, ‘at the time Nestor got himself murdered, Junius’s body was pressed tight against mine.’ She counted to three. Let him take the bones out of that. ‘Are my points clear?’

Orbilio’s face darkened. ‘Extremely,’ he croaked, and his gaze remained fixed on the mock gladiators, the polished steel of their swords glinting in the sunlight, the clash of weapons reverberating round the Forum. There were net fighters, with daggers and vicious tridents. Small-shield men-bucklers-with their sickle-shaped blades. Big-shield fighters, with short swords and visors. Orbilio kept his eye on them all. Unblinking. Swallowing hard. Only when the last pair of lumbering armadillos had passed, their heavy swords clanging against one another’s gleaming armour, did he venture to speak. ‘We’d best run through the list, then.’

Dammit. Claudia’s fists clenched in her lap. His voice was level, he hadn’t even taken his eye off the parade. Silly cow, imagining he felt anything. That’ll teach you to try and incite the little green monster-serves you bloody well right.

‘What list?’ she asked, and he pressed his thumbs to the bridge of his nose. Her voice was airy. the toss of her head light. Mother of Tarquin, didn’t she know? Could she not read the signs? Or was she too busy pressing her body to that sly Gaulish bastard’s?

‘The lost delegation,’ he said evenly, part of him proud of his self-control, ‘starting with…well, how about our jolly astrologer? You told me he was hot as mustard with regard to the convoy remaining in the valley and, remember, the whole tactic was to delay their arrival as long as possible.’

‘Volso was a courier,’ Claudia admitted, not bothering to clap the giraffe, the camel and the elephant. Curiosities they might be in Vesontio, they were staler than pie crusts to her. ‘Clearly our Salamander invested a considerable amount of time and effort in identifying suitable carriers,’ she said. Men and women whose greed and ambition would override any scruples. She twisted uncomfortably in her seat and put it down to the hot summer sun. ‘In Volso’s case, his reward was probably a lovenest with his little transvestite whore plus sufficient funds to buy his (her?) fidelity.’

It wouldn’t, of course. Boys like that are so damaged inside, so lost, that the only time they feel close to being in control is when they’re wielding power over their infatuated lovers. Men like Volso, for instance, who can delude themselves that they’re ‘normal’, because the object of their desire dresses like a woman, moves like a woman. Flaunts her sexuality like a woman.

‘Excuse me, did you say transvestite whore?’

‘And in any case, his vertigo is no act. He couldn’t possibly have murdered Nestor, not on the edge of a precipice.’

‘Sorry, I’m still having trouble following that bit about the transvestite whore.’

‘When you grow up, sonny, I’ll explain all about the birds and the bees, but in the meantime, my money’s on old Hanno.’ Has been all along. ‘Never mind his age, he’s strong, cunning and enjoys everybody’s trust. Motive, means and opportunity,’ she said. ‘Arrest him, if you’re so fond of manacles.’

Another time, ‘let’s-save-that-for-our-honeymoon’ would have tripped off his tongue. Instead Marcus bit into his nail and felt a piece chip off. ‘Are you suggesting he killed his own grandson? That show of grief-’

‘The string of pack mules going down was part of the plan. To ensure we were without supplies such as ropes and the like. As you say, delaying tactics…and who better than a muleteer to predict the behaviour of horses? Unfortunately, in an attempt to save some of the others, the ledge crumbled and his grandson fell to his death. That was pure accident, I saw it happen.’

Often, in the night, she could hear the screams of the boy and the mares. Re-lived the sight of their bloodied bodies twitching two hundred feet in the ravine below.

Three rows behind, the unsuspecting Hanno was chortling away at the actors clowning out a pantomime in their cork masks and thick-soled buskins, his leathery face crumpled into crevices deeper than the rutted side streets, his bony shoulders heaving in merriment. What an act.

‘Why should a popular muleteer nearing the end of his life work for a creep like Galba?’ Orbilio asked.

‘Money. To retire in comfort and spend his final days in luxury. To set up a stud farm. Who knows? You can ask him while you slip him in irons.’

‘Sorry.’ Orbilio turned round to face the front again. ‘I can’t accept Hanno’s our killer.’

I can. ‘Why not?’

‘Because…’ he coughed apologetically, ‘because I like him, that’s why.’

Claudia laughed, and not at the mime. ‘Isn’t that the idea,’ she retorted. ‘The one person you never suspect.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the chuckling prune. It had to be Hanno. Who else?

‘What about Titus?’ Marcus asked.

‘Titus plans to make his fortune through the side door,’ Claudia said slowly. The day they were up on the plateau, before Theo spotted the coil of woodsmoke, she had rifled through the spice merchant’s pack. ‘It occurred to me then,’ she mused, ‘that when you told us to discard all bar the necessities, Titus kept certain gums and resins with him.’

Not the pepper. Not the cinnamon. Not capers, cloves or cardamom.

‘Presumably the most expensive of his stock?’ Orbilio suggested. ‘Or leastways, the most precious. After all, he carried myrrh, which he generously donated for the brick-maker’s pyre.’

‘The myrrh was a fragrant smokescreen,’ Claudia said, waving back at a squad of tiny tots dressed up as wild beasts. ‘The majority were narcotics.’ Of which laudanum was just one.

Orbilio’s breath came out in a whistle. While he digested the importance of her discovery, the leopard pulled the tiger’s hair, and suddenly two small boys were rolling around in the Forum, stripes and spots and tails flying to all points of the compass. A little ostrich flew in to help, and got her beak pulled off for her pains.

‘Titus,’ he whistled. ‘Running drugs.’

‘Those Armenian seeds, in particular, have a very distinctive aroma, which even myrrh cannot mask,’ Claudia explained. ‘Once sniffed, never forgotten-especially if one throws them into a fire.’ She watched as her point was absorbed and considered. The marsh plant, on its own, was harmless. But when heated, it smoked blue like incense, and was as intoxicating as a bucketful of wine-and every bit as addictive.

‘He picked a good market,’ Orbilio said, grinding his teeth because there was not a damned thing he could do to stop the filthy racket, Titus was breaking no law. ‘The Sequani have fires burning in their roundhouses from autumn through to spring, they’ll make him a very wealthy man.’ He swallowed the bitter taste which had risen in his mouth. ‘I should never have trusted that blasted fringe dangling over one eye.’

A tiny, fat flamingo pulled off the rhinoceros’s horn, making her cry, while the leopard and the tiger remained locked together, exchanging kicks and punches.

‘Don’t read anything sinister into that,’ Claudia said, catching the woollen hoof which came flying through the air. When they had hauled her back over the ledge, roped up to Theo, Titus had been the first to grab hold of her arm and vanity had not topped his list of priorities. ‘He trains that hank of hair over his face, because one eye’s green and the other is brown.’ Hardly a freak, yet curiosity enough to send superstitious buyers scuttling elsewhere, for who knows what other curse Titus might carry?

‘All the more reason for him to hook up with the Salamander.’

‘Uh-uh.’ Claudia tossed back the tiny grey hoof. ‘Titus might be misguided, but at heart, he is not a wicked man. Besides, he already has everything he wants,’ she said. ‘A failsafe get-rich-quick scheme and a wife who is as besotted with him as he is with her.’

He wouldn’t risk his wild adventuress for all the gold in Dacia, let alone a few bob from Galba! Not that Claudia could picture Iliona settling down anywhere, be it Rome, Vesontio or Crete, after this past week. Having had her spirit set free by its tumultuous events, her thirst for novelty and risk would grow stronger and, for this reason alone, Titus was unlikely to make the killing he hoped for. Iliona wanted to taste life, not waste it, and in that lay the Sequani’s only chance to avoid mass addiction.

‘If you want to put a stop to his trade before it starts,’ she said, ‘simply have a quiet chat with Iliona. Talk to her about land-locked Arcadia, where goat-legged Pan is worshipped. Reminisce about the sights of the Nile, the pyramids, spooky hieroglyphs and jackal-headed gods. Oh, and don’t forget to toss in a mention of Babylon, where the dead are buried in honey and bitumen forms fireballs on the ground in a thunderstorm. Then see how she fancies settling down to a rigorous winter in Gaul!’

That girl will put adventure before wealth any day, sweeping her husband along on her tidal wave of passion.

‘Happy ever after, eh?’ His laughing eyes swivelled towards the bookbinder and his wife. ‘Can you say the same for those two?’

Down in the Forum, a little hippopotamus was raining blows on a squirming crocodile, and the zebra pulled the whiskers off a wailing hyena. The polar bear was on her knees in floods of tears, because her white coat was black down one side.

‘Maria is bitter,’ Claudia explained sadly, ‘because life hasn’t come to her door, perfumed and covered with roses. She’s barren, and she channels her frustration through Dexter by convincing herself that this resentment has been brought about by marrying beneath her.’ Claudia crossed one leg over the other and rested her elbow on her knee. ‘For his part, Dexter has become the child he never had, his succession of ailments a means of getting noticed.’

But as for happy ever after? Oh dear. Gemma might be overweight and frumpy, but she was barely seventeen with twice as many childbearing years ahead of her as Maria. Were she to bestow on Dexter the attention he so desperately craves, and the signs were already there, who knows where it might lead? Maria, though, had already recognized that threats don’t always come in obvious packages and she was shrewd enough to see that the risk of losing Dexter might force her to re-evaluate both their lives. Well, she still had a marvellous figure. Time to use it, Claudia reckoned. Tonight in her husband’s bed.

More pertinently, however, was that at this juncture in their lives, both Maria and Dexter were too self-absorbed to venture beyond their own selfish needs-although it had given Claudia something of a shock this morning, seeing Maria decked out in the Spider’s colours. But these were ancient Sequani insignia, too, and Maria was out to impress the governor.

The tiny tots were finally pulled apart, to be led away squealing and squabbling, bawling and blubbing, leaving the Forum reduced to a carnage of fabric ears and woollen tails, of spots and stripes and manes. A fire-eater came along to take the crowd’s attention away from the sweepers.

‘Oh, and before you put forward our chubby priest as a murderous contender,’ she said, ‘take a look at his face.’

Was there ever a more graphic picture of misery? No prizes for guessing whether Clemens had heard about Ecba’s murder before he’d had time to hand his pouch over! There he sat, head in hands, rocking backwards and forwards, his mouth working silently, although whether this was to recite more taboos or to argue his case with the Salamander, Claudia couldn’t possibly tell.

‘Eliminating suspects could take days.’ Orbilio scrubbed his face with his hand. ‘Could-it-be-him, could-it-be-her, cases for, cases against.’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘It seems so long ago, the blocked ravine, the trek over the hills, that I’m starting to question whether the whole thing wasn’t a product of my own imagination.’

‘Why don’t you just arrest me and be done with it?’

‘You, young lady, have a fetish about manacles and as much as I’d like to pursue this interest of yours, have you seen Theo this morning?’ His eyes scanned the crowd. ‘I want to pick his brains about the eight men sent to meet us on the road. Strange, how no word’s come back.’

Claudia frowned at the fire-eater. How did he do that

‘Theo?’ She knew the sword swallowers’ trick-specially made collapsible blades-but fire? ‘Can’t say I have.’

‘You said he was a courier?’

‘So?’ The key had to be a special coating on the stick, so that the flames, though large, were at the same time lacking in heat.

‘Claudia, in case you haven’t noticed, the Salamander’s map carriers haven’t had an overly successful mortality rate.’

Fire-eaters were instantly forgotten. ‘You can’t imagine he’s in danger? He’s a soldier, for gods’ sake, he-Marcus?’ His eyes were staring into space, his mind somewhere between Africa and the moon. ‘Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?’ A glacier took hold of her body, chilling her flesh and freezing her marrow. Holy shit! Suddenly her lungs wouldn’t work. ‘Theo’s another of the agent’s victims, isn’t he?’

Orbilio said nothing. He simply stared deep into his thoughts. And the chill inside her bones deepened. She pictured his boyish face, the freckles, the wide silly smile. ‘Marcus? For gods’ sake, answer me! Is Theo dead?’

‘What?’ His gaze came back into focus. ‘Oh. No,’ he said, and his voice was strange. Kind of strangled. ‘No, actually. I don’t believe Theodorus is dead. In fact, I don’t believe he’s in danger.’ Serious eyes burned into Claudia. ‘But I do believe we’ve found our killer.’