I, Claudia

X

The wonderful thing about the baths, thought Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, as an attendant slowly scraped his back with a strigil, was the sheer hedonistic pleasure you got in the name of personal hygiene. What other fundamental consideration dares draw such wicked self-indulgence and then presumes to pass itself off as a necessity? And it wasn’t merely the physical rewards, great though they were. A whole cross-section of the human character passed through these portals, it was an education to watch. Or in Orbilio’s case listen, because an ambitious investigator could learn an awful lot from a bit of circumspect eavesdropping.

Most of it was politics-useful for pursuit of a later career albeit of little relevance to his current cases-or else it was horse-trading. A lot of that went on here. In fact, he thought, wiping a trickle of perspiration from his eyes, more important deals were struck in this very sweat room than in the Senate itself.

‘Lie down and I’ll do your chest next.’

Orbilio allowed himself to be laid out like meat on a slab, closing his eyes as the attendant scraped the oil off his body. There was a saying going around, something along the lines of ‘Baths, wine and sex ruins your body.’ Probably started by some of the moralists trying to impress Augustus, he thought, but without baths, wine and sex, what use was a good body? Moralists don’t live longer than the rest of us, he reflected sadly. It just seems that way.

The shrill voice of the hair-plucker broke through his thoughts.

‘Like your armpits plucked, sir?’

Orbilio shook his head. His eyes were still watering from the last time he’d let that little bastard loose on his body. Either the man’s tweezers were misaligned or his sight was failing, but all Orbilio could remember was that it was bloody painful. Besides, he’d prefer a girl to do it. Somehow it added to the feeling of wicked indulgence.

‘On your left side, if you don’t mind.’

The attendant flipped him over and continued his scraping. It was a wonderful sensation, feeling the bronze blade slide over your skin. Down. And down. And down. A man was at his most vulnerable here. Deaf, dumb and blind. He was sleepy from lying so the hot, damp air could open his pores, his body was oiled and the steam itself swirled so thickly it was impossible to see the man next to you, you only caught snippets of his conversation. Occasionally it was possible to put a name to one of the talkers, but the atmosphere in the room affected your lungs and few people could produce little more than hoarse whispers.

Which may or may not have been coincidental.

‘And now your right side.’

Orbilio rolled over. Baths, wine and sex. What a wonderful combination. If only he could incorporate all three at the same time it would be heaven on earth. And if Claudia Seferius was with him…Cupid’s darts, if he died on the spot afterwards he’d die a happy man. If, if, if. There were too many ifs in that particular scenario. As rather tended to be the case where she was concerned…

He tipped the attendant two asses from the bronze purse round his wrist, yawned, stretched, then decided to go the whole hog today and have a massage. He owed himself that, after the long hours he’d been putting in on those bloody murders. Not to mention the fact that the Sardinian fish-seller had left Rome, taking Vera with him, and Petronella refused to talk to him nowadays. Mother of Tarquin, a man needed something to redress the balance, and he was damned if he’d resort to common whores. So. He ran his hands through his hair. A massage it is.

The pattern on the mosaic guided him out of the stifling steam room and he took several deep breaths in the doorway to focus his senses. Stone chambers echoed with laughter, whistling, conversation and the piercing cries of vendors thronging the passageways and hawking everything from cakes to honeyed wine. Orbilio made his way between two flaxen-haired beauties lounging against the tiled walls. One raised her eyebrows in invitation, but he gave a swift shake of the head and passed on. The hot air was making him perspire again and he paused, wondering whether to take a cold plunge. Later, he decided. After the massage.

He chose Lupi, a masseur with a penchant for keeping his own counsel, because he wanted to relax unfettered by small talk and idle chitchat. He’d had quite enough of that this morning, hanging around the gossips and picking up bits here and bits there-and none of them any bloody use whatsoever. Who cared if this Senator dyed his hair or that matron padded her breast band?

‘Hmmm.’ Expert hands prodded his muscles. ‘You’re very tense today, sir.’

This wasn’t much of a revelation to Orbilio. No wine. No sex. No clues. It would be a miracle not to be tense. He’d seriously considered taking refuge again in his wine, but the hangovers had been getting worse and he needed a clear head. Callisunus was already intimating that he might redirect Orbilio on to some fraud case.

‘I place myself entirely at your mercy, Lupi. Do your worst.’

‘Yessir!’

The masseur, a burly fellow from Dacia, grinned as he oiled his hands with a spicy unguent and began to pummel Orbilio’s shoulders. Gradually the flesh yielded and the sound softened to a soft slap-slap-slapping. He knew Claudia visited these baths virtually every day and that her visits also happened to coincide with the times Gaius wasn’t here. Orbilio tried to tell himself that his own decision to come to the baths today was coincidence. Seferius was away in the country, maybe she had better things to do? Maybe she’d already come and gone? Orbilio had already established she didn’t spend the same amount of time on her visits as her husband.

Lupi began to knead his muscles like dough and Orbilio knew the masseur had felt the sudden pull of tension. Praise be to Mars he can’t read minds, Orbilio thought, wondering why the idea of Claudia with her husband should make him jealous. Jealous? Whatever made him think of such a word? Of course he wasn’t jealous!

‘Harder, Lupi.’

Surprise. Interest. Curiosity, even. But no, never jealousy. It must have come as a shock to Seferius about his son, he thought. Briefly, he’d considered going round to the house to offer his condolences, but she had the temperament of a she-wolf, that woman, and she was just as likely to follow through with her threat of telling Gaius that Cousin Markie had molested her. A smile played around his lips. There were other ways of skinning a coney. Yes, indeed there were!

It had been something of a knock, seeing Claudia and Gaius together at the games. He’d seen Seferius many times, never to speak to but certainly by sight, and he hadn’t thought too hard about the fellow. Rich. Fat. Middle-aged but wearing well. Then, when they were side by side, Orbilio realized that Gaius hadn’t gone to seed the way he’d thought. Overweight, although only in a solid, muscular sense. A man who had, quite literally, consolidated his bulk. Systematically, too. And suddenly the thought of the big man’s hands manipulating Claudia’s soft, white breasts was offensive in the extreme. Orbilio remembered when she’d linked her arm into his at the amphitheatre. Admittedly, she’d done it in a patronizing manner, but the sensations it had caused still rippled through his nerve ends.

‘Nearly done, sir.’

The Dacian’s skilled hands had worked small wonders. When Orbilio stood up, he felt five years younger, full of life and energy. A lightning dip in cold water left him feeling vigorous enough to run up Vesuvius backwards, although Petronella’s charms would have served well enough. Along the colonnaded walkway leading back to the dressing room he noticed Paternus the lawyer, head bowed in conversation with a man Orbilio didn’t recognize. Thin, weedy and with a voice to match, the lawyer had a tendency to leave discretion in the changing rooms with his other valuables. Orbilio lounged nonchalantly against a column, arms crossed, staring upwards at the sky.

‘…so I said, for twelve gold pieces it’s yours, my boy.’ That was the voice of the stranger.

The two men laughed.

‘I recall our friend the wine merchant extricating himself in much the same manner,’ the lawyer said. ‘I was handling his case against that Bithynian upstart…’

At that point, an extrovert general who enjoyed the sound of his own voice came strolling along, belting out a bawdy ballad, and the rest of the sentence was lost. They could be discussing any number of wine merchants, the city was full of them. However Orbilio convinced himself he had no option but to follow them.

‘…at which juncture, Seferius clapped the Bithynian on the back and said, you obviously haven’t heard about my latest…’

Once more the thin voice was drowned out, this time by a group of boisterous youths racing each other towards the cold pool. For a moment Orbilio was distracted, remembering the days when he, too, would rush headlong into the icy waters straight off. There was, he reflected, definitely something to be said in favour of maturity.

Oh, shit! Paternus and his companion were heading for the steam room! Orbilio ran his hand over his chin. There was no need for him to follow them. The conversation had absolutely no bearing on the case. Gaius was of no interest to him. No interest whatsoever. He’d head for the exercise yards.

‘Back already?’ The attendant proffered a small flask of oil. ‘Glutton for punishment, aren’t you, sir?’

The dense impenetrability of the steam room closed in, making him catch his breath.

‘Fancied a bit of extra pampering today.’ Orbilio declined the oil. Another scraping and he’d be down to bare bone! ‘I’m looking for two friends who just came in. One’s small and skinny, the other’s-’

‘That way, sir. To your right.’

Orbilio thanked him and followed the mosaic. He passed two men, groaning and grunting, and prayed they were just reacting to the oppressive air.

Paternus’s voice sounded ever reedier. ‘…advise you to tread carefully. I have it on good authority-nay, the best-that Seferius has a preference for…’

Damn! No matter how hard his ears strained, Orbilio couldn’t pick up the whispers.

‘Never!’ The lawyer’s companion sounded incredulous. ‘Gaius Seferius! Are you sure?’

‘Is the Emperor a Roman? Naturally, you won’t bandy this around, will you?’

‘Trust me. One presumes Seferius guards his secret well?’

Paternus sucked his teeth. ‘In view of Augustus’s, shall we say, sensitivity on the issue, you can bank on it.’ There was a long pause, and Orbilio fought for breath as the steam swirled and eddied.

‘To be frank,’ the other man said at length, ‘I also enjoy-how can I put it? — pleasures which one’s wife is not willing to provide.’

The lawyer let out a weedy laugh. ‘Who doesn’t?’ he said. Orbilio couldn’t see, but he sensed Paternus had edged closer to his companion. ‘My own preference-’ The voice dipped to a hushed tone. After several minutes of intense whispering, at the point when Orbilio was starting to fidget, he heard the lawyer scoff.

‘Claudia Seferius? Believe me, she’s not what she seems, either.’

Orbilio’s head shot up and suddenly he was on the alert. Gossip and filth were second nature to him. He picked up all manner of information to store away in the library of his mind, calling upon it whenever the occasion demanded. It came in useful during his investigations, because faced with another’s knowledge of his own peccadilloes, it was surprising how a man tended to remember events rather more clearly, or how names were dropped with a greater frequency. There was an upside to everything, Orbilio reflected, especially when it allowed him to pocket the money Callisunus allocated for bribes. Thus he’d expected to routinely squirrel away this information about Seferius, but not by any stretch of the imagination had he imagined hearing Claudia’s name brought up. Particularly not in such a derogatory tone.

‘Bugger!’ The extrovert general, blundering through the steam room in much the same way he’d charge across a battlefield, tumbled headfirst across Orbilio’s outstretched legs.

Apologies were exchanged as both parties accepted the blame, but by the time the general had left so, it appeared, had Paternus and his friend.

Orbilio took another dip in the cold bath to tighten his pores. He admired Seferius, the way he’d clawed his way up, and it must have been a proud day for him when he was finally appointed to the equestrian order. Moreover this promotion for a man whose father had been a humble road-builder and whose great-grandparents weren’t even freeborn. No indeed, it was no mean achievement, amassing the four hundred thousand sesterces necessary before you could even consider admission to the order which in itself was no foregone conclusion. Orbilio would have liked to hear more about Seferius’s improprieties, maybe drop subtle hints to Claudia? As he towelled himself dry, he began to question the ethics of stirring up trouble between husband and wife, but decided he could justify it somehow, if he put his mind to it, because the prospect of Claudia divorcing her husband…

‘Enough of this, Marcus Cornelius,’ he muttered aloud. ‘She doesn’t even like you, so you can rein in those thoughts immediately.’

Many a night he’d plotted how best to win her round. The quickest way, he supposed, was to solve these bloody murders and perhaps, when he stopped treating her like a suspect, she might open up a bit. Trouble was, he thought, she still was in the frame. However hard she tried those strong-arm tactics, Claudia Seferius was indeed very much still in the frame.

He dressed, drank a goblet of wine topped up with water, treated himself to a couple of pastries, then made a beeline for the exercise yard. A workout with weights ought to sweat out his frustrations.

‘Pssst!’

He stopped instinctively. Occasionally it was an informer, most times it was for someone else, but it always paid to keep your ears open. He pretended to fix the lace on his boot.

‘Pssst!’

He glanced round. There was no one there.

‘Over here!’

A small face peered round the base of a fluted pillar.

‘Rufus? Rufus, what are you doing here?’ A grubby finger hooked itself into a gesture of beckoning and Orbilio followed, shaking his head ruefully. ‘What do you want?’

The ragamuffin settled himself cross-legged behind the column. ‘You know that classy tart you was interested in? Well, she’s been in a right old hoo-ha this morning.’

‘Oh?’

‘There was a riot down by the cattle market and she was right in amongst it and no mistake.’

‘Sure it was her again?’

‘Yep. Can’t miss that orange litter, cor, what a colour! Anyways, she tries to run off, like, and guess what? Some big geezer yanks her into a shop.’

‘Rufus, are you telling me she’s been kidnapped?’

‘Her? Leave off! Duffed up a bit, that’s all.’

Orbilio sat down beside the boy. ‘Rufus, I want you to tell me exactly what you saw. Understand? Don’t leave anything out, describe everything as you remember it.’

His head was buzzing. He should be chasing leads on Crassus. Dammit, he should be chasing leads on all four victims, checking accounts, grudges, lunatics, locksmiths, slaves, family, friends…

‘Rufus, what were you doing following her?’

‘I wasn’t following her, I was-’

Thieving. Orbilio covered his ears with his hands. ‘No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. How did you know where to find me?’

The dirty face broke into a knowing grin. Orbilio grinned back, tossed him four quadrans, then, taking pity, tossed him another four. Venus is fickle today, he thought, scratching the back of his head. There but for a handful of street yobs, Claudia Seferius and Marcus Cornelius Orbilio would have met at the baths this morning. It felt as if he’d swallowed one of the lead weights from the exercise yard. He jumped to his feet. No longer did the prospect of a day to himself appeal. The thought of ball games and athletics palled, because suddenly it seemed urgent to nail the bastard who went round chiselling eyes out of their sockets.

‘Mister?’

‘What?’

‘Can I come along with you?’

‘No, you most certainly cannot.’ He wanted to say it was dirty and dangerous, but he quickly realized that that was probably all this poor kid had ever known. ‘Don’t you have a family?’

‘Nope.’

There were so many like Rufus, he thought sadly. Despicable as the practice was, he could see the case for abandoning unwanted babies up on the midden heaps. At least it would be relatively quick, whereas kids like Rufus-who was what? seven or eight? — were doomed to die in some fetid alley without ever knowing love or warmth or happiness-or even a full belly.

‘I think it’s high time you had a bath, my lad,’ he said, lifting Rufus up by the back of his tunic. ‘Come along.’ There was more than a hint of resignation in his voice. ‘Let’s get you fed first.’