Dream Boat

Chapter Fifteen

Installing an indoors bath room, complete with piped water and underfloor heating, had depleted Claudia's inheritance considerably but never once had she regretted it. At times like this (and lord knows, times like this came thick and fast of late!), a long, hot soak in lemon-scented waters, listening to the strumming of a harpist followed by a hired masseuse trouncing the last few knots of stress was all it needed to restore equilibrium. Except today! Claudia waved the musician away, her throat too constricted for words to squeeze past.

Today, time was running out for Junius, the slave boy. Cypassis, her broad feet encased in wooden sandals to prevent them burning on the hot mosaic, clopped around with towels, strigils, scented oils and tweezers, picking up discarded laundry, sweeping up curls which had been snipped by the hairdresser and left where they had fallen, her face puffed and blotchy from crying.

'They'll split us up, madam, I-'

'Cypassis, no one is going to split my household.' Over my dead body! 'How many times do I have to tell you, there's no question of the army carting you away to test your loyalty to the Emperor with hot irons!'

Like dye in water, the idea that they'd be viewed as accomplices to Junius passing himself off as a Roman had spread around the staff, until suddenly the entire contingent expected be dragged off to the arena on Saturday! Even level-headed individuals, such as this big-boned Thessallian maid, had worked themselves up to such a frenzy that the very least they expected was a flogging at the post before being despatched to some new and cruel owner in the darkest corner of the Empire!

'This is the work of the gods,' Cypassis muttered. 'We mortals are being punished-'

'Spare me the superstitious claptrap and fetch my tortoiseshell comb!'

Cypassis made the sign to avert the evil eye before scuttling away, noisily blowing her nose. Divine retribution, indeed! Claudia squeezed her eyes shut and sank below the water line. All because the kitchen hands and gardeners who'd stood watch in the Camensis swore on the lives of their mothers that the ransom chest had been spirited away! Claudia blew bubbles under the water. Did these men not have one brain cell between them? Up she came, spluttering. Even Leonides, her lanky steward, could find no explanation for its disappearance.

'The shrine in the Camensis is circular,' she'd reminded him sharply.

Returning home from the Esquiline, white with Orbilio's plaster dust and covered with nicks from flying chippings, what Claudia had needed most was sleep not a discourse on divine intervention! Her head ached, her eyes pricked, someone had filleted every bone from her body.

'The shrine is open to the elements, apart from a waist-high criss-cross fence, and is approached by six stone steps, which means the far side, where it drops away, stands so high.' She'd indicated her own neck. 'Of the three statues on the podium, we were instructed to leave the chest behind the right-hand figure, and I suppose it did not occur to you to check the far side of the podium?'

'Madam?'

'I'll wager there's a deep impression in the grass where a heavy chest has landed.'

It was a human being, real live flesh and bones, who had visited the wood nymphs' shrine yesterday, not some invisible deity, and who, concealed by the bronze statuary, had hoisted the box over the side. They would have returned under cover of darkness to collect it by sneaking up from the back.

'You were in the Camensis, Leonides. Tell me what you saw.'

'That's the whole point, madam. I saw nothing! No one went near the shrine, only an Egyptian noblewoman and I can personally vouch that hers was a sightseeing trip- Oh. Oh. Oh, I see. That was Flavia, wasn't it?' His face turned ashen and waxy as he saw the auction block beckon and, sensible chap that he was, scurried off to see to madam's bath!

But the soak hadn't helped. Claudia was dizzy now from exhaustion, weak from lack of sleep, but she must press on. Time was trickling away. Too precious to waste. Must keep going.

Cypassis returned with the comb, knocking over a small phial of oil, which shattered on the tessellated floor to release a concoction of seaweedy smells into the steamy atmosphere. Claudia didn't notice. Her mind was reliving the ransom drop in the Camensis. The bitch! The scheming, cold-blooded, cold-hearted little bitch. Claudia saw it clearly, as though she'd been there herself: Flavia, disguised as an Egyptian noblewoman; recognising Junius, of course, at once; so greedy to get her claws on two thousand gold pieces, she throws him to the wolves. Time passes. The commotion dies down. Secure in her disguise, Flavia saunters through the Camensis. Up the steps. One-two-three heave. Over the side and thud.

Fancy yourself as an Egyptian, do you? Claudia would be the first to pickle her in natron and inter her mummified remains in a sarcophagus!

She climbed out of the sunken tiled bath. The voluminous linen towel was soft and fragrant, smelling of clove pinks and lavender, but the scent caught in her throat. Already, it was approaching noon. The Games of Apollo were well into their stride and with the morning parade faded to memory, the sacrifice to Apollo would be in full swing. Soon, hundreds of post-processional parties would spring up, discussing how encouraging the auspices had been, how succulent the sacrificial roast and, oh my, did you see that black eye on the senator's wife? Don't tell me she got that shiner tripping over!

The gossip would range from I hear peach blight's pushed up the prices to did you know you can reach Cadiz in under a week these days? Any other time and Claudia would be taking her place at the feasts. With her eagle-eyed bodyguard stationed behind her.

Two days. Two days were all she had left.

Must press on. Can't stop…

'Are you ready for your massage?' Claudia's favourite beautician, a fresh-faced young Syrian, had been promised the earth by Cypassis to shut her shop for the day and attend to her mistress at home. 'I brought along a special moisturising balm which contains honey, almond milk and the sap of aloes, much favoured by Queen Cleopatra. You'll find this soothing.'

For all Claudia cared, the girl could rub nettles into her skin. I'm sorry, Junius. I am so very sorry.

She squeezed away the tears which welled up and pricked. This is not the time for self-pity. You've dug out the skeleton, rescued the evidence, save your self-loathing for Saturday. Claudia rolled over on to her stomach, folding her hands under her chin. You still have two days left, stop bitching and put them to good use! Her father's motto echoed in the vaults of her memory: never go to war angry, that merely strengthens the opposition.

The philosophy wasn't his, of course, it was a standard army axiom, dragged out whenever a barbarian war band swooped down to slaughter soldiers or civilians in a merciless guerrilla attack, their aim being to goad Rome into quick retaliation and lure them into ambushes and the enemy's strategy. Wait! the generals would urge. The time to remember this outrage, to avenge your friends and colleagues, is the moment right before we strike. Because when we strike, where we strike, who, how and what we strike must be Rome's decision, not theirs.

The generals were right. Claudia followed plumes of steam coiling upwards to the ceiling. Her father was right, but then, wasn't he always? Mental lips kissed his whiskery cheek as he marched off to war, waving and grinning to his ten-year-old daughter. Not to march back ever again.

What would he have thought of her now, she wondered, begrudging the time spent catching up on sleep or relaxing in a bath? Those are necessities, girl, not time wasted, he'd have said. Look upon them as an opportunity to give your brain a workout while your body rests.

Claudia's head throbbed behind her eye sockets as it invariably did, when she thought about her father. Why hadn't he come home? The army had had no answers for her mother. There was no record of him being killed, they said, but then again, fighting had been fierce. Bloody and brutal, they added. Especially hard on the camp followers over the ridge. What they failed to say, however, was who, in the midst of so much hand-to-hand fighting when the battle might go either way, who gave a damn about one individual? So what if an orderly ran off in the melee?

Claudia flipped over on to her back, tilting her head so the Syrian girl could reach under her chin, and frog-marched her mind back to the business in hand. Namely saving Junius from ending up as the main course for a hungry lion!

But before she could proceed, Doodlebug had taken it upon himself to investigate the pleasures of the bath and was waddling round the rim trying to lap the water, urging the level to rise closer to his tongue.

'Out you go. Shoo, shoo!' Cypassis might as well have asked the sticky breeze to stop blowing. 'He'll fall in,' she warned.

'Then he'll add another string to his bow of accomplishments. Swimming.' Claudia was smiling in spite of herself.

To his delight, Doodlebug discovered a playmate in the water. Another small, black, podgy creature with amber eyes and floppy ears who ran when he ran, stopped when he stopped, leaned forward when he leaned forward too.

'I don't know what Drusilla will say when she finds out you've brought a dog in.' Cypassis sighed.

So far it had taken scheming on an Olympian scale to keep the two apart, but on one point everyone was agreed: disaster loomed ahead! But what was Claudia supposed to do? Leave Doodlebug at risk of being trampled under careless hob-nailed boots? Crushed under rubble? With Supersnoop's front door open as the army tramped back and forth, anything could happen in the street. Now Flavia, she would have happily seen run over by a chariot or kicked by a horse. Not an eight-week-old puppy!

Tipping forward at a precarious angle, Doodlebug dredged up what he thought (bless him) was a bark. Strange, the other fellow didn't respond! He let loose a second yelp-cum-cough and still nothing came back. Not even a whimper. He was teetering perilously close to himself, when Cypassis swooped to his rescue.

'Come on, you!' She tucked him up under her arm and marched him away, telling him that they'd have to call him Narcissus, if he kept up that relationship with his reflection and what would he like for his tea? A piece of stewed rabbit?

The beautician chuckled as she massaged an unguent of sweet-smelling calendula into Claudia's fingers, and suddenly the world was back in kilter and Claudia knew what she must do next. She must sleep. Deep, healing sleep, after which her judgement would no longer be clouded by emotion or hysteria or this overpowering sense of defeat. Like any good general, she could then line up her clues like troops and view the evidence objectively.

She slept.

And later, in her office, in a flowing linen robe scented with thyme and her hair hanging loose around her shoulders, a very different Claudia set out parchment, quill and ink. Her efficient rustle alerted the blue-eyed, cross-eyed cat stretched lengthways on the maple chest.

'Now then.' She unrolled a crisp sheet of parchment and anchored its corners with ivory figurines representing the seasons. 'With no idea of Flavia's whereabouts, we have to get Hotlips off this hook of house arrest. Why? In order for him to use his official clout to set young Junius free, of course, and we can only do that by solving the riddle of the body in the wall. Now, what clues do we have, Drusilla?'

'Prr.'

'I agree. Precious few.' Claudia leaned across to tickle the cat's pricked ears. 'But let's set them down on paper, anyway.'

'One.' She dipped her pin in the inkwell. 'Skeleton stripped of tell-tale clothes and jewellery.' The cat jumped up on the desk and knocked Autumn flying. 'Two. Skull has all its own teeth, bones show few signs of damage.' Which leaves us with a young person and no indication of their status! 'Three. Killer too squeamish to pull out knife, yet composed enough to pull rings off finger!'

'Prrrrr.' The cat rolled on to her back so Claudia's fingernails could work their magic on her tummy.

'Good thinking, poppet! Four. Is body a slave, a skivvy? Who wouldn't own rings in the first place?'

Better-placed slaves, such as Verres, Leonides (Junius, of course!), earned healthy bonuses and could often be seen at the races, bow-backed with the weight of their jewellery. You see, that was the irony. No one minded slaves getting rich. Indeed, many owned shops, businesses — taverns were a popular choice — they even owned slaves of their own. It was impersonating a citizen which carried the ultimate forfeit. To wear the toga, meant death.

Claudia rolled the figure of Autumn around in her fingers, absently feeling the bunches of ivory grapes, the carved basket of olives. 'Five,' she wrote, uncurling the corner and anchoring it back with the figure. 'No hasty cover-up. No hasty crime?'

The body had been stood against the original storeroom wall and pinned there with leather straps nailed into the brickwork. One, which had come away when the first hammer went into the wall yesterday, ran round the forehead, to stop the head sagging forward, and a second went under the armpits to support the weight of the corpse. The killer knew what he was about.

According to Orbilio, the force of the blow to the head would have killed her. He certainly hoped so, he added. Rather than the knife first driven into her ribs and then being coshed to prevent her from screaming.

'Mrrrp?'

'How do we know the corpse was a girl?'

Claudia's stomach flipped somersaults as she recalled that gut-wrenching moment, shortly after dawn, when they realised that it was not one body they were staring at, but two. Inside the pelvic bones, lay the remains of a second, minuscule skeleton.

She leaned back in her chair and saw past the floral painted wall, the leaping antelopes, the flying cranes and leopards. Was the victim's pregnancy the motive for her murder? It had happened before, the mistress threatening to tell the wife, cause a scene, demand he divorce his wife and set up home with her and the baby. Sometimes it's blackmail, sometimes the product of rape, but whatever the reason, the end was as brutal as it was tragic. The mother murdered, the baby dying — later — inside her.

'Unable to identify the victim, we'll have to work back from the killer.'

'Frrr.' Drusilla squirmed with pleasure, her eyes closing to slits.

'And the one thing that anyone who knows him can tell you, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio would not kill a woman, and never like that!'

Anyone, that is, except his boss! Unlikely, the trumped-up little jackass had grudgingly conceded, when he had finally bothered to call round late this morning. Though in his view that did not let Orbilio off the hook, and if he was covering up for someone, he said, may Jupiter help them both, because he bloody wouldn't, and get that bitch out of here, he knew about the Widow Seferius and her activities were not always legal! So much as another toenail across this fancy carved threshold and never mind house arrest, he'd lock her up for conspiracy.

The cat poured herself over Claudia's shoulder, purring into her ear.

'That man, Drusilla, is an imbecile.'

Unfortunately, though, his logic was a hill fortress which could not be stormed. Fact, he said. The house had been in

Orbilio's family for three generations. That rather cut the possibilities. Fact. It was impossible to date the remains, sufficient to say they weren't recent, but then Orbilio had lived there for eight years, was it? Oh, nine… he'd forgotten how young aristocrats are when they marry! Fact. There were no records of work to the storeroom, but then a murderer would hardly keep any, and none of the current household had been there for more than three years. The previous incumbents sold lock, stock and barrel one sunny morning down by the Tiber by Orbilio's wife, he believed, who had then absconded with the money she'd raised and, dear me, yes, the contents of Orbilio's money box, as well. Fact. Divorce followed soon after, did it not? Oh, and by the way. Where was his ex-wife these days?

Claudia had been ushered out of the door at that point, with Doodlebug squirming under her arm and Flea manacled once more to her wrist, and the last thing she'd heard was Orbilio calmly reminding his boss that his wife had eloped with a Lusitanian sea captain and was currently living the life of a lotus eater and also, as a point of order, she hadn't taken one damned coin from his money box. She'd sold the slaves instead.

Drusilla's purring stopped abruptly, giving way to a low growl. Hackles began to rise. Out in the courtyard, with the sun opaque and watery as it began to sink below the heavy, honeyed clouds, Doodlebug spotted the demon and proved again that he was perhaps not as fully house-trained as Claudia had led Marcus to believe.

Animal expletives filled the air. Quite an unusual sight, she thought, a cat treeing a dog. But no sooner had Doodlebug recovered from the biggest leap of his eight short weeks, he was off again, having learned that demons are also capable of reaching the flat surfaces of sundials. Round and round the monster chased him — through the roses, past the purslane, tearing up the chives and oregano, until… splash! Doodlebug found the one place where he was safe. Slap, bang in the middle of the goldfish pond.

'There you go, tiger.' Claudia waded in to rescue the soggy bundle and thought, I'll wring Flavia's neck the way I'm wringing out this poor puppy. I'll wring it so she turns midnight blue and squeaks! 'And as for you, you should be ashamed of yourself, you contemptible Egyptian feline-' Egypt! Claudia dumped Doodlebug into the arms of a passing gardener. Egypt. Why, for instance, would Flavia choose the dress of an Egyptian? Her hem making tiny puddles on her office floor, Claudia spread out a second sheet of parchment.

On the left, she wrote 'Why Egyptian?' and on the right, wrote 'Dreadlocks.' A plaited wig would disguise Flavia's hair as kohl would alter the shape of her eyes, and the dynamic costume would draw eyes away from the face. No greater significance than that. Pity.

She shook the spare ink off her nib. 'Why the need for money?' Was Flavia planning a trip? Say, to Egypt? For gods' sake, forget Egypt. It was only a bloody disguise.

The quill hovered above the inkwell like a hawk poised to strike. 'Westerners.'

Was Flavia planning to move west? To Ostia? To Sardinia? (Heaven forbid, to Iberia!) What scrambled logic went on inside that seething teenage brain? And who the hell, she scratched on the parchment, were these wretched 'Brothers of whores'? A giant blob of ink deposited itself on the parchment and slowly spread itself outwards.

Claudia allowed her mind to radiate outwards with it. Something Julia had said, right at the beginning. Her fingers drummed the desk. Not the Serving Women re-enactment, something else. Connected with music… Apollo. That was it. Flavia's preoccupation with Apollo. Typical teenage crush, of course, this yearning for the long-haired son of Jupiter, who plays a mean tune on the lyre. Show me a girl who hasn't fallen for a balladeer at some stage in her life and I'll show you a heart made of granite! But Apollo. God of music, poetry and healing. Apollo. Who drives his fiery chariot across the sky. Apollo, the sun god, worshipped by the Egyptians as Ra- Egyptians! In a swirl of pale-blue linen, Claudia raced across the peacock mosaic to the atrium, to the great Nile fresco which covered the wall. Egyptians! To whom the land where the sun sets, the land to the west, represents the dark realm of death. The underworld. Goddammit, the land of the Westerners.

Her eyes scanned upwards. Beyond the yawning hippos and the thrashing crocodiles. Beyond elegant papyrus plants, date palms and soaring pyramids. Higher, even, than the disc which represented Ra himself. Because there, in the top right-hand corner, was what she was looking for. Stylised symbols of birds, of human body parts, of animals proliferated in meaningless, vertical blocks, but there, nestling between the owl and the foot, was the hieroglyph Claudia had sought. The eye. The painted eye of the falcon god, Horus, the sacred emblem of the Pharaoh.

Not brothers of whores, you clot. No wonder it made no bloody sense — Flea had misheard.

Flavia had talked about that self-styled mystical cult who called themselves 'The Brothers of Horus'.

There was an Egyptian connection, after all.