Jail Bait

XXXII

The sky had turned to obsidian as Claudia sat with her knees drawn up to her chin, staring out across the lake to Tuder’s island.

Defeat stared defiantly back.

She was sitting with her back to the wall at the mouth of the tunnel, and high above, the babble of post-dinner conversation filtered down from the little domed loggia, broken by the occasional lewd chuckle or high-pitched fluting laughter. She could picture them. Halfway to rolling drunk and with slaves on hand to top up their goblets, senators making the most of this unofficial recess with casual affairs which would be frowned upon (nay, condemned) in normal times.

But these were far from normal times. In Rome, Plague marched in triumph through a city hammered to its knees with the death of the Regent, and with its Emperor driven ragged over these twin crises. Who exercised restraint over absent senators and magistrates, legates and commissioners? Goosepimples raised themselves up on Claudia’s skin at this foretaste of what the Empire would be like without Augustus at the helm. Decadent, debased. Devalued. A thousand Tarracos would spring up across the provinces, flourishing in the void created by general locking horns with general, of senators vying for ascendancy. In their struggle for personal glory, the common man would be forgotten-except by pimps, racketeers and loansharks.

With the spectre of anarchy chilling her veins, Claudia glanced up the tunnel, towards the cistern which Mosul filled from the lake then doctored with chalk to palm off as holy water. It was from one of the apertures in this rock that Claudia had seen Cal’s body, red and twisted, lying on the shingle and it was here, at this very spot, that his blood still stained the stone. Even in the darkness, she could see it. Feel it. Hear it calling out to her…

Shit.

Knowing Atlantis held a sackful of secrets to its bosom, and buckling under the weight of her determination to unveil Cal’s killer, Claudia had sought refuge with the one man she imagined outside this wretched tangle-only to find he had been at its very core. And even then, the situation might not have been exacerbated, had Claudia not been hooked by Lavinia’s tales of mysterious deaths, recounted in such a clever and roundabout way as to first deny there was anything odd about the stories, yet stringing enough of them together to suggest the very opposite was true. Claudia buried her head in her hands. What was that old proverb about cats and curiosity?

If only she could find a way to snare the Spaniard. Bring him to justice…

‘Ruth,’ a husky voice commanded. ‘Ruth, we have to leave.’

Claudia’s head jerked up. Down by the jetty, two outlines shot into stark relief by a vivid streak of lightning, showing bright the yellow bodice and fringed skirt of Lavinia’s young Jewish servant. Her midriff glistened in the cloying humidity of the electric storm, as the tears ran down her cheeks. Claudia rose to her feet and, fully aware of the irony about cats and curiosity, moved closer to the couple, her presence concealed by an alder trunk.

‘I can’t.’ Ruth’s head shook violently from side to side. ‘She’s sick. She needs me.’

‘But there’s nothing we can do.’ In his hand, Lalo held a large canvas sack and there was an edge of exasperation in his voice. ‘You heard what she said. Get out, get away while you can. Come on, love. In the boat.’

He tried to drag her by the arm, but the girl began to whimper like a wounded animal and fell, prostrate, to the ground, great gulping sobs racking her body. ‘She’s only got a few more days left,’ she wailed. ‘A week at the most. Who’ll be there to dose her with mandrake when the pain becomes too great for her to bear?’

‘Ruth, we’re slaves,’ Lalo hissed. ‘Which is worse? To be separated-or to get away while we can and be happy for the rest of our lives?’

Separated? Then Claudia realized why Lavinia was urging the two people she loved so dearly to abscond and risk the penalties which went with running away. She knew Fabella well enough to know she’d sell this big, broad, handsome field hand the instant Lavinia breathed her last. And there’s no way Fab would have Ruth around, with her Hebrew dress and familiar manner.

‘I’ve made enough these past weeks to buy us a fresh start.’

Claudia’s heart cartwheeled as she recalled his constant succession of raw and swollen knuckles. Was Lalo, heaven forbid, a cog in the wheel of extortion, moonlighting as one of Pul’s heavies? Horrified, she watched as he opened the top of his bag to run a river of coins through his fingers.

‘All that boxing, all those wrestling matches after hours-please, Ruth.’ His voice had thickened with grief, but Claudia’s knees nearly gave way with relief. ‘We’ve come so far,’ Lalo begged. ‘Don’t throw our last chance away.’

‘I will never leave her, and that’s final.’ The determination in Ruth’s voice carried over the rumbles of thunder. ‘Anyway,’ a note of stubbornness crept in, ‘I don’t believe Fabella would be so cruel as to separate us. You go if you like,’ she said, turning away, ‘but I’m staying here with Lavinia.’

Lalo’s massive, gleaming shoulders sagged and behind the alder tree, Claudia’s mouth set in a line. To pass themselves off as Roman citizens, the risk was execution for the pair of them. Maybe Ruth had a point? But then again, from what Claudia had seen of Fabella, that old heifer would baulk at shelling out money for a tracker. And Lavinia was not some half-baked nitwit making suggestions she didn’t really mean. If that old peasant woman said go, she meant go. She avoided as much medication as was possible because she wished to die with dignity, her faculties intact-and those, as Claudia knew only too well, were sharper than splinters. Lavinia, she felt certain, was more than capable of putting herself into trances to shut herself off from the pain, and if she was capable of that, then she was equally capable of guzzling down a painkiller when it all became too much.

A stinging sensation welled up in Claudia’s eyes as she considered the proud old bird that was Lavinia. But Lavinia wasn’t dead yet…and she’d be mortified to know the two people she loved most would be torn apart over her. Purposefully Claudia stepped out of the shadows.

‘Lovely evening,’ she remarked, taking care to look at neither of them. A boat was moored to the jetty, in which a small battered trunk had been laid in the middle. Smart move. Row to the far side of the lake, take the quickest route to the Adriatic, and from there it’s only four days to Greece, five if they were heading for Egypt.

‘Oh, Ruth,’ she said, ‘there was something I wanted to ask you about the strength of white mandrake.’ Not one, but two ideas had begun to germinate in the fertile furrows of her mind.

‘Huh?’ Ruth didn’t seem predisposed towards convivial conversation, but there you are. Such is life.

‘I’m right, aren’t I, that about this much-’ Claudia indicated the amount between thumb and forefinger ‘-of the neat decoction can lay a man out cold for up to three hours?’

‘Um. Yes.’ Ruth wrestled to bring herself to be polite. ‘Yes, I suppose it will.’

‘Thank you.’ Claudia winked at Lalo. ‘Oh and Ruth?’

‘Mmmm?’ Through brimming tears, the girl turned round. And too late saw the blow which laid her out.

‘Lalo,’ Claudia grinned, sucking at her knuckles, ‘I do believe Ruth is ready to accompany you on your travels.