Jail Bait

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Under the circumstances-heat which sweat-stained their clothes and attracted ravenous insects, the funeral going on all around them-you’d expect the citizens of Spesium to ease up a bit, but no. If anything, people seemed more careworn, more anxious. Farmers had fetched their cheeses, eggs and cattle in for market day, they were damned well going to sell them, and the Corn Measurer doled out the grain, flanked by two solid henchmen who put paid to all thoughts of pilfering. Rich men and poor, artists and administrators frantically thrust and jostled through the crush, shouting and squeezing and gripping their purses amid the clatter of wheelwrights and the grinding of shovels mixing cement as more and more apartment blocks were thrown up. So much brick dust, thought Claudia, so much construction, I could almost be back in Rome.

Then she saw him, standing head and shoulders above the crowd, a whopping great bear of a man with a black bushy beard and hair spiking out in a thousand directions, shaded by a scarlet awning over his stall. He was, at that moment, offering half-price enemas to a portly magistrate.

‘Dorcan, you old fraud!’ Claudia waited until the lardball waddled off before approaching the giant. ‘I thought I caught a glimpse of your ugly mug earlier.’ She examined the array of potions laid out on the counter. ‘What brings you so far north?’

Dorcan, whose ancestry could only be guessed at, exhibited a row of perfect white teeth and it was only when he tipped his head back and roared, like he did now, that you could see they were someone else’s, held together by strands of gold wire. ‘Remember my instant cure for hangover?’

‘Not personally.’ Claudia ran her finger over a thin plait billed as the original thread from the Minotaur’s labyrinth. ‘Although if I recall, it was a gruesome mix of goat dung and rennet, was it not?’

‘That’s the one. Got me into a real spot of bother, I tell you.’ His was not so much a laugh, more the bellow of a bull. ‘See, I never expected the silly sods to eat the ruddy stuff, they was supposed to rub it on their foreheads.’

Claudia picked up a dried snake purporting to be a clipping of Medusa the Gorgon’s hair. ‘Is that why you had to grow the beard?’

‘That come about after a misunderstanding over my fertility ointment when it appears I was somewhat heavy-handed with the mustard.’ Dorcan leaned over the counter and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Made their dicks glow like embers, it did.’

Claudia’s eyes were beginning to stream. ‘How many times have you been run out of town?’

The giant counted them off on his fingers. ‘Well, there was that incident over the toothache cure, which I sold as black chameleon and they caught me grinding chicken bones. My ointment for nappy rash went down none too well, owing to the fact it made their little bums go green-’

‘Stop,’ she wailed, fearing she might stay permanently doubled up, when a child ran over, making such a screech on a whistle made of wood that she was forced to stick her fingers in her ears.

‘Put it away, lad, until you’ve learned how to play it,’ Dorcan chided, but the child’s mother did not see the jest.

‘I say,’ she asked stiffly, ‘do you have a cure for moths?’

Claudia, who had no idea moths got sick, stuffed her fist into her mouth when Dorcan smoothly knocked over the sign which read ‘Reduces Fever’ and handed over the small clay pot it rested against. The woman counted out three bronze coins and she and her unmusical offspring moved on.

‘So then, my lovely,’ the burly bear pocketed the money and propped the sign against a thin blue phial, ‘I presume you haven’t travelled one hundred miles of metalled road just to sample my world-famous remedies. What brings you to Atlantis?’

Claudia ignored the question. ‘You’re a chap who hears things, Dorcan. I’m looking for a man.’

Another day aren’t-we-all would have tripped off his tongue, but suddenly he scowled and dragged her underneath his scarlet awning. ‘Don’t have no truck with them,’ he growled, and for a second she was bewildered.

‘No, Dorcan,’ she patted his arm, ‘I appreciate your concern, but it’s not an abortionist I’m after.’

His face dropped back into its amiable position. ‘That’s a bloody relief,’ he said. ‘You won’t believe what them backstreet quacks gets up to. Now that, ma’am-’ he turned to address an elderly matron-“is a string from the lyre of Orpheus himself, the only one in existence and a snip at three gold pieces.’

‘Ooh, I don’t know-’

‘Strum on this, you’ll charm the feathers off a bird and have creditors eating out of your hand.’ He gave a wicked wink. ‘Works a treat on daughters-in-law, too. Why, thank you, ma’am, and may the gods smile upon you.’ Stashing the gold, he brought another lyre string out from under the counter and beamed at Claudia. ‘What man are you after, my lovely?’

Claudia described the Spaniard and Dorcan said, yes, he knew the bloke, though not to speak to, mind. Tarraco his name was. Not what you’d call social, keeps himself very much to himself, steering clear of the drinking dens and that, and he never takes parts in the local athletics, the discus, foot races and the like, although whether he’ll attend the new theatre when it’s finished Dorcan couldn’t say. But Tarraco was a rum bird, in his opinion. A real dark horse.

‘What does he do out on Tuder’s island, do you know?’

‘Do?’ The big, black bushy eyebrows shot straight up. ‘Tarraco don’t do nothing, lovely. Tarraco owns the bloody place.’

‘But… What about Tuder? I thought-’

‘Tuder?’ Dorcan threw his head back and roared again. ‘If you’d kept them pretty eyes of yours open, you’d have seen the banker’s tomb right beside where they was burning Cal.’

This time it was Claudia’s turn to be surprised. ‘You knew Cal?’

Dorcan shrugged his massive shoulders and began straightening the jars and pots. ‘Not really, no.’

Since he refused to meet her eye, Claudia fired off a different arrow. ‘Who’s that chap?’ she asked, indicating the kilted Oriental standing on the temple steps, fingering his walrus moustache.

Dorcan puffed out his cheeks and rolled his eyes. ‘Now-that is a man you should avoid,’ he said soberly. ‘His name is Pul, and he’s not so much an Oriental as a half-caste. His father was a Bessian tribesman, his mother came from far beyond the Caucasus, that’s all anyone really knows of Pul. Except-’ he spoke from one side of his mouth ‘-he’s the law around here.’

‘Don’t give me that,’ Claudia scoffed. ‘What about the military?’

‘You see any hammered breastplates here? Any feathered helmets?’

‘There’s a barracks, I passed it on the way in yesterday.’

‘Sssh.’ The charlatan held up a cautionary finger as a goldsmith approached the booth, his apron sparkling with precious dust. ‘Colic, sir? I have the very remedy.’ He passed across a brew of myrtleberries crushed in white wine. ‘Drink this with every meal and in two days you’ll be fine.’

Around them, the Forum buzzed like any other town on market day, with the squeal of fretful children, the protesting bleat of goats, the aromas of pepper, cumin and nutmeg in the air. Surveyors with their rods and lines pushed through the crowd, wagoners and carters spilled out of taverns, clapping one another on the back. How could it be possible, in a society run by an army which prized itself on discipline, that a civilian such as Pul could control a lively commercial centre?

A distant echo rumbled inside Claudia’s head. Cal, laughing in the alder thicket. Remember the golden rule, he said. Whoever possesses the gold, rules.

‘You haven’t explained why Walruschops makes the law and not Pylades,’ she said.

‘Did I give you that impression? No, no, no.’ Again, Dorcan seemed intent on rearranging his relics. ‘I just meant Pul’s not a man to be crossed.’ His eyes alighted on the temple steps where Pul had been-but was no longer standing. ‘That was all.’

The hell it was. But Claudia sensed she’d got all she could out of the big man this morning and, purchasing an alabaster pot containing a cream which he swore was the selfsame recipe used by Cleopatra to maintain her own flawless complexion, she set off back to Atlantis.

Down on the lakeshore, a group of fowlers wearing wide-brimmed hats against the sun strode towards the town across the grass, the sacks on their backs bulging with the morning’s endeavours, their dogs splashing in the shallows, but siesta time held Atlantis in its thrall. The ramp was all but deserted when, from the bath house, Ruth emerged, her skin red and glowing from either fluster or the sweatroom, with a pile of towels in her arms. She was halfway up the red marble steps when Mosul came barrelling down, his face like thunder, knocking her to the ground. This time his head was no longer covered in ritual, and Claudia could see he was bald, apart from a horseshoe of grizzled grey hair. She watched as one by one Ruth picked up the towels, shook and refolded them, but her eyes, Claudia noticed, never left the priest’s back. The expression in them was of undiluted hatred.

Pausing to pluck a sprig of lavender, Claudia considered the curious events unfolding around her. Lavinia. Could she walk or not? Why were Lalo’s knuckles fighting raw? How come Dorcan had suddenly popped up in Spesium? Individually these things were minor, meant nothing. But collectively…? Engulfed by the coolness and tranquillity of the Great Hall, Claudia questioned whether she was overreacting. So what if Pul threw his weight around this brand-new town? Damn, it was like a haunted villa. Once you hear there’s ghosts around, you start to jump at shadows. And without doubt, she’d been spooked by Tullus and the fact that he’d brought the army breathing down her neck!

Hell, you met Cal, she thought, sweeping down the corridor towards her bedchamber. In the end he probably seduced one wife too many and a bitter husband took his revenge. It is not, Claudia told herself, your problem.

Oh, but it is, a little voice answered. I made a promise.

You were tired and emotional and stressed to the eyeballs, she barked back, now forget it.

A dip in the plunge pool followed by a long massage with spicy oil of basil will soon put matters in perspective. So whilst her spirits might not actually have been brushing the ceiling, they were far from earthbound as she flung wide the door. They did not remain airborne for long. Claudia Seferius was about to discover there were yet more surprises in store in Atlantis.

Sprawled on his back across the wide double couch lay a man, arms outstretched in sleep. He was in desperate need of a shave and looked as though he’d ridden to Hades and back to judge from the lines etched deep in his cheeks, but other than that, she decided, for a Security Policeman he looked fit and healthy enough.

She remained in the doorway until her heartbeat was back on an even keel, watching the rise and fall of his chest as she took in the long, patrician tunic and trademark high boots, the dark shadows underneath his eyes and the darker curls of his hair on the counterpane. Despite a layer of brown dust which clung to his clothes, Claudia picked up a strong hint of sandalwood, and possibly rosemary too.

Stroking her chin, she considered her next move, but really, when it came down to it, the answer was staring her right in the face.

Atlantis was on a lake, for gods’ sake.