Dream Boat

Chapter Nine

There's something wrong here, Claudia thought, her long legs scissoring across the Forum. Very wrong! Four men don't just disappear into thin air. Junius would never bunk off without leaving word.

'Almond buns? Hot pastries, lady?'

Claudia's glare told the vendor what he could do with his delights, and the huckster melted back into the crowd.

Goddammit, there's a real smell of fish surrounding this affair, but I have an idea, a theory about this abduction, and I need to test it.

Claudia glanced at the angle of the sun, now over the Aventine and sliding fast. With her bodyguard missing and the threat as to what would befall Flavia, were the authorities to become involved, sour in her mouth, Claudia had had little choice other than to station untrained reinforcements in the form of slaves from her own household around the Camensis and to hell if they were spotted, she'd done her best, given the taxing circumstances. Verres the cook had taken two kitchen hands, ostensibly to collect herbs for the table. Leonides, her steward, had settled down beside the spring with a good book. Two beefy labourers chopped back shrubs and trusted to Jupiter that the kidnappers knew sod all about pruning techniques.

Barging through a group of acrobats, Claudia recalled something Julia had said when she'd delivered the first note from the kidnappers. One little clue, which Claudia should have picked up on earlier. Whose ramifications, if her suspicions were on target, would be momentous.

Behind her, the tumblers untangled themselves from the pavement and called a warning to the tightrope walker up ahead. Too late. With a startled yell, he went pinging off his wire, straight into the bosom of a fat patrician wife.

But where did Junius fit in? she wondered, stepping over a small dog snoozing in the shade of an ivory carver's stall. Around her, hammers from a cobbler's last tap-tap-tapped its repetitious call. Bronze workers chipped out a hollow echo. And over the whole expanse of Rome, hot air from the marshes trapped everything from bread smells to fried fish, from the sulphur of the fuller's to the pungent stench of sweat. If Claudia's burgeoning hypothesis was correct, it would take one hell of a diversion to distract her bodyguard, who was by no means gullible nor stupid, from the task in hand 'Out of my way, you!'

Claudia's hand flipped up the tray of oysters, raining crinkly grey shells on the travertine flags. She didn't wait to hear what the oyster-seller called her, ducking instead into the cramped premises of a basket weaver's. She tossed him a silver coin and put her finger to her lips as she ran up the wooden ladder to his attic. Here, the garret window gave a clear view across the Forum: the acrobats, the tightrope walker, the oyster man, on his hands and knees as he scrabbled to retrieve his lumpy cargo. Every colour of the rainbow swarmed beneath the basket weaver's window: scarlet shot with gold or silver thread in the rich robes of merchants; the white togas of patricians; the blue pantaloons the Persians wore; yellow shawls favoured by the Syrians; green turbans from the east. There were skins of every hue, mahogany and fair, ebony and olive; bald heads, veiled heads, goatee beards and sweatbands.

However, none of this swirling tide of humanity seemed lost. No one stood scratching his or her head in perplexity, looking this way and that, shielding their eyes or jumping over the heads of the crowd to see which way their quarry had gone. No one stood still. No one frowned.

One question answered, then. The dusty smell of willows prickled Claudia's nostrils. I'm not being followed. Dear me, a blind man couldn't miss that trail of destruction in the Forum. Her pulse raced that little bit harder. She was sure, now, she was on the right scent.

Outside the shop, she hailed a passing litter. The Field of Mars, she told the bearers, and could they run? Could they hell! Dispatch runners might learn a thing or two from these chaps as, panting heavily, they set her down outside the wooden amphitheatre. Around the makeshift seats, sawdust lay in heaps made soggy in the muggy heat. Bare-backed carpenters sawed and hammered, chipped and planed as the shadows lengthened. The killer breeze kept up its stealthy whisper. Wooden boards were hauled into place with the aid of ropes and ladders and suddenly the swirling waters of the River Tiber became hidden behind a painted backdrop of green rolling hills taken over by a hostile army encampment, while in the orchestra pit, a cacophony of drums and cymbals clashed, and horns blared out in uncoordinated practice.

Ordinarily, since it fell on the second day of Apollo's Games and was therefore eclipsed by the pageants and processions of the opening ceremonies, the Festival of the Serving Women was one on which every expense would be spared. Indeed, of the half-million sesterces which the Treasury poured into the Games as a whole, it was doubtful whether one hundredth made their way to this paltry, low-key celebration, such was the lure of the larger stage productions. Comedies by Terence, tragedies and epics — burglars were spoiled for choice, with every household in the city emptied for the shows.

This year, however, the Prefect organising the Games had a name to make. Young, thin and with a deathly pallor, he kept one eye on the scenery, an ear out for the orchestra, one hand sealed his correspondence with his ring. while his brain kept track of the money he had sunk in sponsoring this venture. In fact, there wasn't one single component of his body which wasn't moving in some direction or another as he supervised the work.

'For gods' sake, find another tuba player!' His exasperated tones rang shrill. 'That idiot's tone deaf, and what cretin blocked the second exit with that statue? Get it out — no, I don't care where you put it, just move the bloody thing, and who the hell thinks that curtain is up straight? Croesus, you can see knees at that far end, now get it horizontal and make sure it sweeps right down to the stage.'

All the while, his hands made eloquent gestures to the carpenters and painters, the technicians and the dancers, in the way a man's hands would, of course, when he's ploughed a considerable amount of his own money into a dead donkey of a show.

'I need to talk to you,' Claudia said. 'It's urgent.'

'So's this,' the Prefect snapped. 'We're due our first dress rehearsal in the morning, and the bloody scenery's not up. Where the hell is my fig tree? That? Croesus, man, that's a crab apple! The serving women lit their signal from a fig tree in the camp. F-I-G tree, fig. Is this about my wife?'

For a second, Claudia didn't realise he was addressing her. 'Er, no. I wanted to ask you about-'

'Then it's not urgent. Come back at first light.'

Looking at him, growing paler with every inefficiency, Claudia wondered whether she was wasting her time here. His mind was clearly preoccupied with a whole series of disasters, not least his wife it seemed, but now a faint tinge of pink had appeared in the sky. Dammit, this could not wait till morning! Flavia had been kidnapped, it was imperative she tested her theory.

'Sorry,' she said firmly. 'But I need to talk to you about the girl who's playing the lead in Friday's re-enactment.'

'Get that herald out of here, he comes in after the — why do I waste my breath!' The young Prefect paused in his signalling and orders. 'Did you say the girl who spearheads the Serving Women's Assault?'

'Yes,' Claudia said wearily. 'Her name's Flavia.'

The Prefect pushed his fair hair out of his eyes and Claudia glimpsed, for an instant, the attractive young man he would have been, were he not bowed by the weight of ambition. 'You're in the wrong theatre, then.' He flashed her a short, harassed smile. 'Our actors are exclusively male. I say — are you all right?'

'What? Oh, yes. I'm fine.' Apart from that shaft of pain in the pit of my stomach.

It was just as Claudia had feared. There never was any kidnap. Flavia had set the whole thing up herself! And Flea was her accomplice.