Jail Bait

XXXIV

You could cut the heat with a wood saw as Claudia’s oars slurped through the oily, black water. She shivered. Clouds had long since swallowed the hills and behind her, dark and silent, Tuder’s island rose austere and jagged in the spears of white which flashed and flickered as the thunder rolled and rumbled. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

The Titan was breaking free of his chains.

With a boulder in her stomach and a stranglehold round her throat, she hauled the boat ashore, the crunch of gravel a pinprick in the wild night, and to the croak of a million frogs and with crickets buzzing in the grass, she zigzagged her way towards the villa. Along the colonnade, torches hissed and spat in the torrid night air, their pitch and their sulphur sour in her throat. Keeping close to the shadows, she worked her way round to the dining terrace. The purple upholstered couches had been taken indoors, but the pots of spiky palms pointed accusingly and the scent of the garlands was overpowering. Slipping off her sandals, Claudia padded up the steps, alert for the least sound or sensation. The last time she had seen the atrium, inhaled its myrrh, marvelled at its gilded rafters, had been the night Tarraco tried to seduce her… The night he presented her with his wife’s harebell-blue gown… She shuddered again, and mastered the brief spell of nausea. Tonight, as before, the hall was deserted, and flitting between the soaring columns and cold-eyed statuettes, Claudia paused to take stock. It was the old, old riddle, wasn’t it? Where’s the best place to hide a pebble? Answer, on the beach. With hindsight, it was obvious Tarraco would not hole up in the hills, but would scuttle back to home. He had his slaves to cover for him. They would be his eyes and ears until the furore subsided. Meanwhile, any number of legionaries could search Tuder’s island and not find his hiding place. Unless someone confessed.

An explosion of thunder overhead sent Claudia’s heart hurdling into her mouth and when a second roll joggled the ceramic votive dishes in the family shrine, her jittery wrist almost sent a vase of deep blue delphiniums crashing to the floor. Calm down, she told herself, steadying the jar. Relax. You can do this on your own.

Typical bloody aristocrat, bunking off. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. The one time you need help, and where is he? Probably finishing off his game of rams and rustlers with the luscious Phoebe, her of the straining seams, kohl eyes and generous bosom. Generous in the sense that she gave it to anyone who wanted it, that is. Well, wherever he’d slunk off to, Claudia had no time to lose. Sooner or later Kamar would come round and although she’d left him trussed up like a waterfowl and dosed with enough of his own anodyne to lay him out flat for three hours (thanks, Ruth!), at some stage his wife would wonder where old Turtleface had gone…and next time Tarraco would take care not to choose a hiding place which could be blabbed about.

It was now. Or it was never.

The atrium fountain splashed and sputtered as another silver shaft splintered the heavens, lighting up the potted ferns and herbs and animating the paintings on the wall. From a distant wing came the clatter of pans and skillets as supper pots were washed and cleared away, and the faint smell of leather permeated the air. Suddenly masculine voices drifted across. Tarraco? Claudia flattened herself against the stonework just as two swarthy slaves appeared in the doorway, rolling an amphora of olive oil across the floor to the storeroom. She dared not breathe. Please, Jupiter. Go easy on the thunderbolts! Her prayer was answered. The men trundled their cargo right past her, chatting, laughing, not thinking to peer in the shadows…

Her knees needed several minutes after the slaves had locked up before they were capable of darting across the open hall to the courtyard. First on the right, Kamar said. Looks like a bedchamber, but behind the tapestry depicting Jason’s search for the Golden Fleece lies a door which leads to a hidden chamber. Tarraco, he grinned, will be in there.

‘How can you be sure?’ Claudia had demanded.

‘I’ve been there many times,’ Kamar said smugly, and was so confident of his trade-in value that Claudia observed a distinct glint of victory in his eye as she stuffed the saturated wad of mandrake up his nose.

Now, as the heavens bellowed like a wounded bull, Claudia glanced along the courtyard to the two oak doors which faced a long line of clipped box trees and found her hands were trembling. With Orbilio nowhere to be found, who else could she enlist? As ever, Claudia Seferius was on her own…

Drawing one long resigned breath, she slipped through the door on the right. So far, so good. Kamar’s information was correct, the room did look like a bedchamber. In fact, it looked like the very same bedchamber in which Tarraco had intended to serve his fresh honeycombs! Pulling aside the very same tapestry he’d pulled aside, Claudia peered into the antechamber which led to the atrium. The same high-backed chair with its headrest of bronze and legs shaped like lion’s paws. The same desk, with its reed pens, pells of parchment and inkwells.

Claudia let the curtain fall back into place and tiptoed across the room, grateful for the jagged flashes of brilliance which lit her way through the blackness. She paused by the tapestry and waited for the next white flare to identify the marine adventures of a band of heroes in search of a golden ram’s fleece. Tugging on the embroidered dragon which guarded the fleece, the curtain slid aside on its pole to reveal a door so plain-faced it was clear it had never been intended for show. Claudia put her ear to the woodwork and listened.

Nothing.

Her heart was pounding faster than a threshing machine. She could delay. Go back and wait for Supersnoop to return. Jokes about Phoebe aside, she presumed he was out, rounding up loyal troops with which to confront Cyrus, but suppose, when they returned, Tarraco wasn’t here? He’d slip through their fingers once and for all. She pressed her ear harder, and heard only silence between the relentless rumbles of thunder.

Claudia’s forehead collapsed on to the wall as the weight of Spesium descended on her shoulders. This whole sordid mess was down to her-any future killings, any future beatings, any future misery, they were down to her. She had set him free. She must redress the balance.

From the kitchens a ripple of laughter broke out, and behind her, in the bedroom, the floater on the water clock pinged the hour.

Her mouth was dry as she lifted the latch. Thank heavens she’d had the good sense to bring her small, thin-bladed knife A faint chink of yellow appeared as she pulled the door towards her, but it was only a minuscule crack. Another tapestry hung on the inside. Damn! Claudia forced herself to stand still and absorb as much data as she could. Information was ammunition, she had to cling to that. Her palms were sweating. She reassured them with the touch of cold steel. You have to get this right. There will be no second chance. A musky scent (ajuga?) filtered through the cloth, and a few seconds later, she was rewarded with the haunting strum of a lyre. Juno be praised, Tarraco was trapped in his den.

There was no time for sentiment. No time to recall aching melodies that conjured up sun-drenched Iberian hills and unrequited love, No time to consider scarlet fillets tying back his hair. With a toss of her head, Claudia jerked open the screen.

‘Freedom,’ she declared, sweeping into the windowless chamber, ‘invariably comes with a price round its neck. Don’t you agree?’

The lyre stopped in mid-pluck, at the same time the colour drained from Claudia’s face.

‘I most certainly do.’ The mastermind behind the reign of murder and extortion turned in the chair and lowered the instrument to the floor.

Claudia’s eyes darted round the room as her brain made rapid calculations. Those two doors facing the courtyard were obviously false fronts. This was the only one entrance. Therefore the only exit… Run! But her feet had welded to the floor. Behind her, a huge shadow loomed up. The smell of leather was strong in her nostrils.

The lyre player smiled a smile which did not extend to the eyes and slowly rose from the chair.

You silly cow! To come here alone, how could you be so utterly stupid?

The occupant of the hidden room took a step forward.

Claudia took a step back.

And collided with a mountain with a walrus moustache.

With panic rising in her throat, Claudia knew her thin-bladed knife would be useless against the awesome force that was Pul. A hand clamped round her throat and propelled her forward into the room.

‘My mistake. I–I was looking for…’

‘I know what you were looking for.’ The laugh of the Oriental’s paymaster was deep and throaty. ‘Bring her closer, Pul.’

Kicking, squirming, grappling was useless against the massive henchman, and Claudia found herself dragged across the floor like flotsam on a rip tide. Yet even through her terror, she was absorbing the opulence of the furnishings. The imaginative frescoes. The brilliance of the golden lampstands which lit this hidden chamber. A cry caught in her throat. The chamber where the campaign of terror was mapped out. Where orders were given for lives to be bought and sold, for human misery to be traded for treasure-and what treasure! Against every wall stood chests of maplewood, chests of cedar, chests inlaid with mother-of-pearl, each lid flung wide to reveal heaps of gold and silver plate, ivories, crystals and jewels. This, then, was what profit looked like from a trade in human souls…

‘Closer.’

Like a knitted doll, Claudia was hurled across the floor, where lampglow cast a long, slim shadow across the fine mosaic. From her sprawling position, Claudia’s eyes ranged upwards from the hem of the pleated linen tunic, whose gold thread rippled like a mountain stream. They paused at the emerald-studded pin clipped to the shoulder, then moved on to the chin jutting out defiantly.

Of course, it was not the chin she had expected to challenge in its lair.

She had expected a chin with a hint or two of stubble, a jawline firm and muscled. Instead the chin required no razor, and the jawline, as she remembered only too well, was truly a borderline case.

Upwards her gaze continued to amble. To the snub nose. To the eyes, glittering and hard, and skin plastered with too much cosmetics…

‘Now then,’ Lais said, sinking regally into her high-backed chair, ‘what put you on to me?’