Man Eater

XIX

Tarsulae in daylight was nowhere near as tacky as Claudia had envisaged, although it took a while to convince her. When she’d passed through (was it really only six days earlier?) it was late, they were tired, it was simply a case of stabling the horses and flopping into the nearest, least verminous bed before an early-morning start in that damned fog. Today, with the sky a confection of white puffs on blue, her first proper view of the town was of a jagged line of tombs, some circular, some turreted, some simple oblong boxes, stretching down a hill so steep the mules were puffing before they were halfway to the top. Undoubtedly coloured by earlier experiences, Claudia found it difficult to shake the impression that a long, dangling tongue flanked by sharp teeth reached out to suck up and devour travellers foolish enough to pass by. She closed her eyes on the approach and pretended it was to enjoy the spring sunshine on her face.

‘We’re here, madam,’ Junius said quietly.

Claudia’s eyes snapped open. ‘What did I tell you?’

‘Not to open my mouth between here and the Capitol or you’d have my guts for gargoyles.’

‘Then do as you’re told or prepare to walk back to Rome.’

The rig was entering the Mausoleum Gate, where the grass was cropped by wild goats and robber jackdaws sought nest sites in the masonry. The face of an unnaturally mutilated blind girl lit up as she heard silver clatter into her begging bowl, and Claudia sent up a silent prayer. Merciful Apollo, please don’t let her mother drink it away. The gate itself, a splendid lofty triple arch, bore an inscription that testified how the original span had been extended to honour Augustus in his victory at Actium nineteen years earlier. Graffiti qualified how, four years later, the augur who had pronounced favourable the auspices for this glorious extension had been stoned out of town, his house sacked.

Like an ageing mistress, Tarsulae seemed resigned to the inevitable and yet there was dignity in her surrender. Shutters down side streets might rot on their hinges, but the balconies that lined the main thoroughfare were dotted with pot plants and the aired bed linen that hung over the railings reflected the townswomen’s rabid tournament for spotlessness.

The Villa Pictor was not the only estate isolated by the rugged contours of the Umbrian landscape, far from it, and whereas even at the best of times it would have been a lonely existence, with the trade route diverted round the mountains, the jewels within Tarsulae became more and more precious for her dwindling populace. A caller outside the Temple of Vulcan broadcast the evening procession of trumpets, a notice painted on the wall of the wheelwright reminded people of the race between schoolboys on Sunday morning. Big deal.

‘Not long now, poppet,’ Claudia addressed the cage in the back. ‘We change animals at Tarsulae, stock up on provisions and hey-nonny-no, it’s Narni by nightfall.’

And Rome, the fire that stokes the Empire’s furnace, where the Tiber runs yellow with sand and mud, where the streets are so narrow you can shake your neighbour’s hand from the balconies, yes, Rome will be ours by Sunday. No tame foot races there, I can tell you. Yesterday, Salian Priests in scarlet striped tunics and sacred shields would have made their elaborate leaps round the city centre and tomorrow, what a pity I’m missing it, the spring equinox will be greeted like a soldier back from the wars, with singing and dancing and feasting long into the night…

At the smell of water, the mules snorted, tossed their dejected heads and made a beeline for the trough, despite Junius’ pull on the reins. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Imbecile. Fancy starting a fire to create a diversion! Claudia would have clipped him round his Gaulish ear, had it not been for the fact that the rig was juggling her bones and she needed a firm grip on the buckboard, but she had told him in no uncertain terms that short of finding another dead body on the wrong end of a hilt, the very last thing she needed was a second charge of arson thrown against her.

‘I made it look like an accident,’ he had argued as the car sped away from the villa. ‘A loose coal, dry straw-happens every day in the city. I made sure it was one of the new sheds being built, no harm done, but there’ll be enough smoke to agitate the animals and cause a bit of panic for a three-hour start at least.’

Those were the last words he’d been allowed to speak, because, Claudia said, if he so much as opened his mouth to cough, she would choke him with his own chitterlings. However, as the mules slurped at the lichen-covered trough and a tawny comma butterfly flitted back and forth, she grudgingly admitted that Junius’ getaway plan, while flawed in places, was pretty sound when you looked at it as a whole.

Checking Drusilla’s cage, she accepted the groom’s offer of assistance and jumped down. ‘You!’

She snatched her hand back as though it was scalded, and Marcus Cornelius Orbilio bowed gracefully. ‘Your servant, ma’am,’ he smiled.

‘Junius, why didn’t you tell me this barnacle was here?’

‘You told me not to say another-’

‘Oh, be quiet.’ She screwed her palla into a roll, stuffed it under the seat and glanced at the mules. Impatiently tossing their manes, their ears pricked forward, she decided to give them a wide berth. You could never trust mules. Irritable buggers at the best of times, this pair looked like cannibals.

‘I had a feeling you’d pull a stunt like this,’ Orbilio said, matching her frantic pace up the high street.

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ she replied, snatching a bun in each hand as she swept past the pastrycook’s.

‘Oh, no?’ Orbilio paused to settle with the irate shopkeeper and, when he looked up, Claudia Seferius was nowhere in sight. His oaths sent the pastrycook into a second cataclysm, but he was unaware of the raised fists and wild gesticulation as he bounded up the temple steps. In the temple grove, under the shade of Vulcan’s sacred lotus, a young woman with her curls in disarray sat feeding the sparrows. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Get past the priest.’ Everyone knows Vulcan’s intermediaries guard their god like Cerberus guards Hades. Many a deadly ritual has to be endured before entrance to the sacred grove is permitted.

‘Same way you did, I suppose.’ Which they both knew was nonsense. Orbilio would have claimed an emergency and flashed his personal seal to get past, but Claudia had no intention of admitting she’d promised to cough up for the May Day sacrifice…could she just check the premises to ensure they were sufficiently sanctified? Ple-ease?

‘Then would you mind telling me what brings you to Tarsulae this fine and sunny morning when you’re supposed to be under house arrest?’

Orbilio ran the tree’s leathery leaves between his thumb and forefinger and thought of Odysseus whiling away his days with the lotus-eaters. The comparison with Claudia was automatic-especially when the sharp prickles at the base of the leaves stuck into his thumb. He sucked at the blood with amusement. No wonder Odysseus stayed on. Pleasure and pain-you can’t fully appreciate the one without the other, can you?

‘To clear my name, of course.’ The temple priest gave Claudia an oily smile as she passed by, the warden an unctuous bow.

‘I’m not convinced burning down one of Corbulo’s sheds is the best way to set about it,’ he said, suspiciously eyeing the obsequious clerics, ‘but I’m prepared to bow to superior knowledge.’

‘You’re wittering again,’ she replied, skipping down the steps and into the street. Abruptly, she turned left past the law courts, where a fat, red-faced advocate was laying into his bow-legged secretary with a bullwhip.

‘Humour me,’ Orbilio said evenly.

Claudia stopped short and Orbilio nearly tripped over the flagstones. Better luck next time. ‘What woman in my position isn’t curious to know what sort of a man Fronto was, who his friends were, how he earned a crust, whether he was capable of arson?’

Actually she couldn’t give a toss. All she knew was that the dung-beetle was the cause of this bloody trouble and had he not been dead already, she was quite prepared to throttle him with her own bare hands.

‘Presumably Drusilla and your luggage can assist you in your search?’ he asked mildly, watching a yellow haired whore curse the punter who’d short changed her. In the gutter, a dirty child screamed for its mother.

Claudia tipped her chin up and looked him straight in the eye. ‘Someone searched my room,’ she said defiantly, turning on her heel. ‘From now on, I leave nothing to chance.’

‘I can understand that,’ he replied, without a hint of sarcasm, but she knew it was there. ‘And now you’re here, why don’t we wash the dust from our throats?’

‘I was intending to visit the widow,’ she said.

One eyebrow rose to say like hell you were, but otherwise he chose to ignore her. ‘I’ve something to show you. Over the street, there.’ He appeared to be leading her towards some smoky dive opposite the basilica. ‘Macer’s watering hole,’ he explained. ‘Hope you don’t mind roughing it.’

‘I’m with you, aren’t I?’ And don’t think it’s because of the way your hair curls over your collar, either, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, or the way you stifle a laugh with the back of your hand. Tall, dark and handsome’s six a quadran where I come from, you’ve only got to look round here ‘Well, maybe not.’

The words were Orbilio’s and referred to the tavern.

The sentiments were Claudia’s and referred to her thoughts.

Regulars? More like men with nowhere else to go. Their woollen tunics were stained with wine and stank of grease and sweat and stale urine, and if you put them together and pulled all their teeth, you’d be lucky to find a full set. Broken pots gathered dust in the straw, a desiccated crone snored beneath the benches, and a one eared dog growled at a rat which had ventured a shade too close to his chop bone.

‘See what I mean?’ he asked outside.

‘No,’ she replied, but they both knew she was lying and that they were both wondering why fussy, pompous Macer would choose that fly-blown joint.

‘I’ll have what he’s having,’ she told the waiter in the next tavern, then seeing it was milk, sent it winging straight back. ‘So our policeman has more than one vice, has he?’

Orbilio winced at the reminder of Gisco. ‘Stomach ulcer,’ he said, pointing to his left side. ‘Just here. Very tender.’

In the wine shops in Rome you could choose between red wine or white, vintage or thin, mustard or mulled, rose wine or hyssop, the list was virtually endless. Here she opted for a potent Lagean white and discovered that not only was it watered, they probably pickled eggs in the residue. However, the unweaned kid roasting on the spit and the smoked sausage and celery casserole more than compensated.

‘So, have you interviewed the widow?’ Claudia pictured her, painted and flabby and dressed like a newlywed.

‘I treat my cases the way a doctor treats his,’ Orbilio replied between mouthfuls. ‘They require a thorough examination and a bedrock of background information before I make my diagnosis. I’ll see Balbilla later.’

So that was her name. Claudia rolled it around on her tongue. Balbilla. Balbilla. The sort of name that would belch, slap you on the back and have a laugh like a horse. She almost felt sorry for Fronto.

‘Did you notice the amphitheatre as we came in?’ he asked.

You could hardly miss it. Behind the law courts, a splendid edifice soared to the skyline, its brickwork interspaced every cubit with a wafer-thin layer of baked clay whose purpose was purely to advertise the wealth and prosperity of the Tarsulani. Happy days.

‘It made me wonder why Pictor didn’t exhibit at least some of his animals there,’ Orbilio added. ‘Can you imagine the impact of even the tamest of shows upon the audience? The dancing bears, for instance, or the monkeys riding in saddles upon goats?’

‘Sergius is going for broke with these spectacles, it’s Rome or nothing, and he has no intention of getting pipped to the post by someone sniffing out what he’s up to.’ Sworn to secrecy, apparently the estate workers felt the bite of the lash if they so much as opened their mouths in public, because although the locals knew he kept a menagerie, they didn’t know the purpose behind it.

Orbilio ordered a bowl of stuffed dates and received a plate of pastries instead. ‘Fair enough, but you’d think he’d at least take the elephant to the Megalesian Games, wouldn’t you?’

Claudia bit into the crumbly, cheesy pastry. ‘The trouble is, Corbulo would need to go with the wrinkly beast,’ she explained. ‘Sergius’ schedule would be set back still further, he’d then miss the games in June. Why do you ask?’

‘Just curious,’ he said, licking his fingers. ‘It’s like a mosaic, this case. I’m sure all the pieces are there, only I can’t seem to make sense of them.’

Who can? ‘Who cares?’

You do, his eyes said, but she refused to listen to them.

‘A man who, until recently, worked for the newly appointed Prefect of Police is lured to the Villa Pictor and stabbed in order to make you appear a murderess,’ Orbilio said, ‘and the girl bribed as a witness has her neck broken in order to silence her.’

‘But in apparent and utterly confusing contradiction, I am almost a victim myself, by an unknown assassin at that-’

‘-and it is distinctly possible the head of the household is being poisoned.’

Claudia had seen Sergius, eyes rolling, legs dragging, supported by slaves on his way to the bath house as she was making her getaway this morning. The colour of his skin was neither yellow nor grey, but, like catkins on a pussy willow, it was a combination of the two.

‘I have a fair knowledge of herbs,’ she said-in fact it was better than average but that was none of his business-‘and I’ve never encountered symptoms like Pictor’s, and besides, who’d want to kill him?’ She helped herself to the last little pastry on the plate and wished the wine had been as good as the food. ‘Not Alis, that’s for sure.’

That little mouse wouldn’t have the guts to kill her own husband, especially while there was a Prefect, a senior representative of the Security Police, a junior tribune plus a whole host of uniformed officers prancing round the house. That wouldn’t be gall, that would be outright stupidity.

‘Unless she’s desperate for money,’ she added as an afterthought.

Orbilio leaned back and put his feet on the table. ‘How do you mean? What would she gain by killing Sergius?’

Claudia wetted her finger and collected several cheesy crumbs on the tip. ‘The estate must be worth a tidy sum, especially with the performing beasts.’

‘But-’ Orbilio frowned. ‘You obviously don’t know.’

‘Know what?’ She licked the crumbs off her finger. ‘The estate is hers already. She inherited it from Isodorus when he died.’

Claudia felt her eyeballs bulge. ‘You mean it’s Alis who’s rich and not Sergius?’ Now that put the wolf among the nannygoats. She ran back over events in her mind, but while it might change the perspective, the basic picture remained unaltered.

Shame.

The fire crackled amid sounds of laughter, clanking goblets, the clatter of plates. Watching him at ease in his chair, boots on the table, running his finger round the rim of his glass, there was an inexplicable tightness around her solar plexus. Damned indigestion. Wouldn’t you just know it?

Orbilio tapped his finger against his chin. ‘You know, I have a feeling that if we can just crack open the shell of this case, the whole nut will come tumbling out.’ That, thought Claudia, is the crunch, isn’t it? Knowing where to begin.

And praying that, before the killer is unveiled, more souls won’t be ferried across the river Styx.