Man Eater

II

‘I honestly don’t know what the fuss is about.’

Claudia had changed out of the blood-soaked shift and was silently tapping her toe on the floor. The dining room faced east, where the first rays of sunshine had punched through the mist to give a rich, buttery quality to the landscape beyond and bejewelled the narrow stream that bounced down the hillside to make the valley so rich and so fertile. An early orange-tip butterfly made its wispy flight past the window to investigate the white clouds of arabis that tumbled over the rocks beside the water, and a wagtail bobbed up and down in delight. ‘It’s not as though I killed him.’

The only other occupant of the room glanced up from the pear he was peeling. ‘Darling girl, he’s not breathing and his pulse has stopped. I can’t see him dancing the fandango again.’

‘I’m well aware of his condition, Pallas.’ Round the walls, Ganymede was being swept from his flocks by a giant eagle and on the floor, boozy Bacchus frolicked among maenads. ‘The point I’m making’, Claudia ground her heel in Bacchus’ eye, ‘is that it wasn’t me who killed him.’

In fact, the whole thing was a mystery. Amid doors flying open and a positively prodigal amount of shouting and squawking, and despite Claudia’s obvious shock and revulsion, she had been conscious of immense confusion within the household. Perhaps it was not entirely surprising that Sergius recovered first. Propelling her gently away from the carnage (and unwittingly straight into his sister’s predatory arms), he could not apologize enough. The shame of it, having a guest subjected to violence. Was she hurt? Was she frightened? She mustn’t be put off by this, please don’t think badly of us, I hope you’ll feel safe still. Tulola, look after her, will you? Hot, honeyed wine, please, to put colour in her cheeks.

Pallas carefully cut away a blemish. ‘Didn’t winter very well,’ he said, chopping the pear in half and sniffing intently. ‘But then neither did the apples. Damp in the fruit store, presumably.’

Outdoors, the five monotonous notes from the wood pigeon perched on the bath-house roof added a curiously sleepy dimension to the proceedings.

‘Claudia, Claudia, what a terrible experience! How you must be feeling!’ Alis fluttered into the breakfast room, pale as ever. ‘Was it-? Oh, I say! What a wonderful tunic! So vibrant. Wherever did you find it?’

‘It’s Tulola’s.’ That, if nothing else, would teach her not to travel light in future. Bright orange cotton with a blue band round the neck and a large blue flounce? It might suit Egyptian hairstyles and heavily painted eyes, but on a sophisticated city girl, it was as out of place as a corpse at a wedding. Corpse? Bad joke, Claudia.

‘It suits you. I mean, really suits you.’

‘It makes me look like a common tart.’

Claudia hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until Pallas said drily, ‘Definitely Tulola’s, then.’

Alis’ eyes widened in shock. ‘Pallas!’

‘Dear child, you are quite right and I take it back.’ He laid down his chicken wing and swivelled his eyes towards Claudia. ‘My cousin’s morals do not aspire to such heights.’

Colour flooded Alis’ white cheeks. ‘Sssh!’

Pallas began to dissect a quail. ‘I think you’ll find Tulola is aware of my sentiments.’

Claudia bit her lip. ‘Forget Tulola, what about-’

‘Oh dear, were you two in the middle of a conversation?’ Alis clicked her tongue. ‘Well, don’t mind me.’ She unlocked one of the carved chests and examined a green glass jug. ‘Carry on as though I’m not here.’

It was wellnigh impossible, but Claudia made a gallant effort. ‘Why,’ she leaned over the breakfast table, ‘has Sergius sent for the military?’

Why not handle it himself? Come on, jurisprudence isn’t reserved for patricians. We merchant classes are equally entitled to administer justice among our own, it’s one of the perks.

‘Pallas, are you listening? I’m trying to work out-’

‘Why Sergius sent for the Prefect. I heard you.’ He searched around for a finger bowl. ‘I presume you’ve asked him?’

Claudia pushed across a bronze bowl filled with warm, scented water. ‘He felt, and I quote, it was essential for the officials to get to the bottom of the matter.’ She refrained from mentioning the crispness in his tone which brooked no argument.

‘There you are then.’ He shook the drips from his pudgy fingers. ‘Try a dried cornel and stop worrying. They’re simply divine and-’

‘I’m not worrying, I-’

‘Claudia, which do you think will look best centre stage at dinner tonight?’ Alis weighed a green bowl in one hand, a yellow bowl in the other.

‘-I repeat, I’m not worrying, but it’s not every day a man’s life-blood drains itself out on your nightshift.’ Claudia smiled a beguiling smile. ‘Couldn’t you have a word with him?’ There were enough skeletons in her closet to keep a pack of hungry jackals happy for a year. The last thing she needed was Officialdom picking over the bones.

‘Ah!’ The big man’s nose wrinkled ominously. ‘Unfortunately my stock is not that high with the man of the house-’ He let his voice trail off.

‘But you’re related?’

‘The connection is not as close as you might imagine.’ Pallas put a slice of pear in his mouth and chomped away for a while. ‘And I’m afraid Sergius leans to the impression that I have outstayed my welcome.’

‘Why? How long have you been here?’

He shot her a glance from the corner of his eye. ‘Two years.’

Laughing aloud is not generally prescribed to heal bruised ribs, but Claudia couldn’t help herself. I’m beginning to like you, she thought. I’m beginning to like you very much.

Across the room Alis clearly felt some decision ought to be made about the bowls, but before she could determine the verdict for herself, the green jug took the matter into its own handles and crashed to the floor.

‘Everyone ignore me,’ she quivered and Everyone obeyed. Claudia by letting a slave through to brush up the slivers, Pallas by cracking a snail shell.

‘Have you seen Tulola’s harem?’ He impaled the unfortunate mollusc on the point of his knife.

‘That ragbag collection of animals? Not yet.’

‘Darling girl, the beasts are Sergius’.’ His chins shook in amusement. ‘I’m talking about the men.’

Alis took advantage of the shocked pause. ‘Oh dear, I did so want to get a matching set for dinner. Why couldn’t it have been the yellow bowl?’

‘For gods’ sake, woman, a man’s been murdered! Claudia and I are trying to converse!’

‘I’m sorry, Pallas. Sorry.’ She twisted her face in a girlish gesture which had the unfortunate effect of making her look closer to thirty-eight than twenty-eight. ‘Pretend I’m not here.’

He did his best. ‘Not that her odalisques stay long, you understand. Our dear cousin bores easily.’

Claudia felt her pulse quicken. ‘Are you saying the dung-beetle was one of them?’

‘Wander round the west wing some time, it’s quite an experience, but as much as our Tulola goes for the rough trade, she hasn’t sunk that low.’

‘By rough trade, you mean…?’

‘Britons, Iberians, Germans. The ruff-tuff hairy types whereas me’-he peered down the neck of his tunic and pulled a face-‘I’m simply a martyr to depilation.’ Claudia flung herself on the couch opposite him. ‘What about the Negroes?’ Who could forget the sight of their sweat-drenched bodies harnessed to Tulola’s chariot?

‘She goes through, how shall I put it, phases.’ Pallas swallowed the remainder of a sausage before elaborating. ‘Last year, for instance, she was into tattoos. Kept a whole string of Scythians, and you know how partial they are to body art. The black boys, I’m afraid, she picked up at auction.’

To use as toys, the bitch. ‘So if he wasn’t one of Tulola’s conquests, who was the man in my bedroom?’ Pallas let out a soft belch and refilled his long-stemmed glass. ‘How should I know, darling? Never seen him before in my life.’

How odd. Claudia helped herself to wine, but it was the strong stuff and she merely sipped, although her mind was working faster than a goldbeater’s hammer. ‘Sergius has asked me to stay for the Prefect’s questions, and,’ not that she’d hang about once Drusilla turned up, ‘I was wondering how long it would take him to get here.’

‘Macer?’ The fat man picked up a pickled onion and began to eat it like an apple. ‘His barracks are in Tarsulae-’

Her ears pricked up. Tarsulae was the town where they’d spent the night before last, Claudia, Junius and the driver. She’d never forget that dump so long as she lived. In fact, her legs still bore a cluster of itchy red lumps from the damned bedding.

‘-which, as you know, is the only town for miles since the new road was built.’

‘I don’t suppose anyone could give me a hand with these crocks, could they?’ wailed Alis.

‘Looks good on his record, a manor that size,’ Pallas continued. ‘Even though the population is somewhat disproportionate.’

Tell me about it. In the fifteen years since the Emperor diverted the Via Flaminia, most of the locals had uprooted themselves and their families in order to be in at the start of the new prosperity. And, make no mistake, prosperous it was. Since Augustus had brought an end to three generations of civil war, trade had virtually doubled and whether you were a butcher or a banker, a midwife or a marble merchant, you could be assured of one thing: a damned good living on the far side of those mountains.

What sort of crimes would the military this side of the range be used to dealing with, Claudia wondered. Fiddling weights and measures, petty pilfering, adultery? No, no, those were civil cases. Patrolling the roads? Fat chance. To call those goat tracks roads would be like calling an ulcer a beauty spot, and as for the Old Road, well. She hadn’t seen many patrols yesterday.

Lazily she tossed a hazelnut from hand to hand. Such a simple matter, this, and more than likely the culprit would be some grudge-bearing slave, so why, why, why this compulsion for the military? Surely Sergius could sort it out himself? She didn’t know their purpose, but she’d seen his private security measures-big buggers who probably munched ears for breakfast, washed down with the blood of babes. Not so much slaves as mercenaries, twenty or thirty of them, and men like these weren’t cheap to run.

Indeed, you couldn’t hold your own in this neglected backwater without some degree of commercial nous, much less flourish, and precious little was required in the way of mathematics to deduce that one diverted road plus fifteen years of mass migration ought by rights to equal a decrease in fortune. Yet, she tapped her knuckle on the arm of the couch-this is solid bronze-and as for the upholstery-surely this particular shade of violet is unique to certain aloes? A strain that will grow only on the Isle of Socotra? Which happens to lie smack bang in the Indian Ocean?

The sudden realization as to why Sergius had called in the army sent a thousand spiders abseiling down Claudia’s backbone.

She remembered the glance she had caught of her handsome host as she followed Tulola to change her bloodstained nightshift. Although fleeting, she had interpreted the expression as that of a man mining for lead and finding a thick, strong vein of gold in its place. Now she was not so sure.

For all his outward signs of hospitality, Sergius believes he’s harbouring a murderess! No wonder he was so solicitous. Be kind to the nice lady and she won’t stab you…

The hazelnut clattered on to the floor and came to rest on a maenad’s nose. Why Claudia’s hand was shaking, she had no idea. Good grief, I’ve nothing to fear, it’s not as though I stabbed the wretched man… The little filbert splintered under Claudia’s dainty tooled sandal as she recalled the law concerning murder. It was quite straightforward. No ifs and ands and buts and maybes. In fact, there’s a children’s rhyme that covers it nicely. Confession is death, denial is trial. By Jupiter, Claudia Seferius would most certainly be contesting the charge.

Pallas was too busy with his boiled bacon to notice her slip away, Alis too heavily entrenched with her fripperies. Minerva’s magic, what have I got myself into?

Her bodyguard, a bandage round his head and his left eye a splendid magenta, was waiting in the atrium and his shoes squeaked on the marble floor as he approached.

‘Are you all right, madam?’ His face was pinched with worry. ‘There’s talk in the slave quarters-’

Claudia cut him short with a flick of the wrist. ‘Never listen to gossip, Junius.’ I do, but you shouldn’t.

‘But a man was killed in front of you?’

‘Some trivial misunderstanding.’ Try as she might to address his good eye, there was something magnetic about the shiny, swollen, purple thing on the other side of his nose. ‘The authorities will iron things out.’

‘You mean-?’ His square jaw dropped. ‘By the gods, madam! They’re not accusing you of the murder?’

‘Temporarily. Now hop along and stick a steak on that shiner, there’s a good boy.’

A whirl of orange cotton, she swept down the colonnade towards the far end of the atrium where condensation from the roof tiles dripped into the pool and a shaggy-haired slave in check pantaloons carried a loaded salver towards the west wing. Claudia snatched it out of his hands and marched to her room, kicking the door open with her toe. Juno be praised, the blood had been mopped up, there was not so much as a single stain to show the dung-beetle had ever been there, let alone expired on the spot.

For several long minutes her young bodyguard remained motionless in the shadows, his stern blue eyes fixed on Claudia’s door, and when he did finally leave, it was not towards the slaves’ barracks that his footsteps were directed, but to the back exit leading to the thickly wooded Umbrian hills. Within seconds, he was swallowed up by the swirling mist.

No way!

No way is Claudia Seferius going to trial.

Claudia Seferius has enough on her plate as it is-and for heaven’s sake. What sort of a man is this Sergius Pictor, thinking she has nothing better to do than to go round sticking knives into people? You’ll pay for this, so help me, you will! I’ll take every copper quadran you own.

It was here, in the central courtyard redolent with hyssop, wormwood and borage, which reinforced the notion that Sergius was having no problems with his investment portfolio. And it was here, in the gardens, with the mist fast dissipating, that Claudia made her resolution.

Don’t get mad. Get one up.

I will sue you to Hades and back for what you’re putting me through. I will take your fountains which sing and dance and make rainbows in the sunshine. I will take your parrots which perform antics with such insouciant charm. I will even take their topiaried counterparts which spread box and laurel wings to shelter white marbled busts and mythic bronze beasts. Which, of course, will also be mine.

She poked her tongue into the corner of her mouth. How did Sergius make his money? Bruised and bleeding as she was yesterday, and long before she saw the pens of exotic animals, Claudia was aware that there were neither vines nor olives to suggest traditional rural income. One thing, though. Sergius sure was a man to maximize his potential. None of the outbuildings (and there were scores of them) encroached on this narrow, precious fertile finger, but where herds of cattle might walk, gazelle grazed. Where sweeps of wheat might grow, row upon sprouting row of lupin and vetch, clover, bracken and spelt flourished as animal fodder. What, she wondered, waggling her finger through the bars of the parrot’s cage, is going on here?

Her gaze fell beyond the archway to the wild, untamed hills beyond. Thanks to the fog, this was her first real view of them, and what a contrast to the broad skies and rolling terraces of her Etruscan vines. Well aware that Umbria oozed streams galore and was positively bursting with natural springs, woodland floors carpeted with hellebores and spurges, anemones and violets were not for Claudia. She felt her shoulders slump. How long, Drusilla, before I can leave this godforsaken wilderness? Come to think of it, what on earth possessed her to leave Rome? Bloody Rollo. He was her bailiff, for gods’ sake, he was paid to sort things out!

‘I ask you!’ She addressed the parrot. ‘What’s the point of employing a chap if he can’t handle the odd spot of arson?’

‘Erk?’ The feathers on the bird’s crest perked up.

‘You heard. Arson.’

When news of the attacks first filtered through, Claudia had blithely dismissed the whole sordid business You’d be surprised at the number of people who get a thrill from sending flaming arrows into a fully stocked barn or tipping a pot of blazing naphtha over a neighbour’s thatched roof. Hence some pea-brained moron torching olive groves was by no means noteworthy. Until he started in on vineyards. Not any old vineyards, either. These, if you please, stood adjacent to her own.

Now arson isn’t difficult. Not with barns, not with roofs and especially not with olives. That lovely oily bark flares up in next to no time, and if you synchronize your blaze with a nice strong wind, you’ve got a fireball whipping through the groves like breath from a dragon. But vines?

‘That, my little lovebird, is where our friend came a cropper.’

The bird stretched out a shiny black wing and tipped its head on one side.

‘Arson in a vineyard is a labour-intensive exercise. It takes time to hack through the thick thorn hedge, time to smear oil on the newly pruned vines and even more time to stop and fire each one individually.’

In consequence, although he hadn’t been caught, a good description of the arsonist was circulating. So what was Rollo’s problem? What was behind that scribbled, secretive note, ‘Urgent, come at once’?

With April fast approaching, a month almost entirely devoted to games and festivals, Claudia had been loath to leave, but Rollo was not a man to cry wolf. However, if this was purely a request for personal approval to prune a few vines-in other words, if I’ve been run off the road by a gang of rowdies, had my bones battered, my flesh pulverized, my cat scared to death and a corpse thrown at me, all in the name of administration-then you can kiss your giblets goodbye, Rollo, and that’s just for starters.

‘Ouch!’

She snatched her finger back and sucked at the point where the beak had nipped, but the parrot merely winked in a particularly coarse manner then bobbed up and down on its perch.

‘I’ll have you know, you red-beaked budgie, it’s not easy being a widow.’

Good life in Illyria, she hadn’t married her husband for his looks! He was old, he was a ball of blubber and the state of his dental work left a lot to be desired, but the wine merchant had one massive thing in his favour. He was rich. Filthy, stinking, rolling-in-it rich and when he’d done the decent thing and shuffled off his mortal coil rather earlier than expected, Gaius had then done something to exceed even Claudia’s happy expectations. He’d bypassed his whinging relatives and willed the entire estate to his twenty-four-year-old widow.

Really, she thought, she had been very fond of the old chap.

Bless him, he’d left her enough money to last her a lifetime, provided, at the rate she was spending it, she did not expect to see thirty. Unfortunately, even that inheritance would come to naught unless she extricated herself from this trial fiasco. Dear Diana, so many problems had piled up in the seven months since her husband popped off, they were multiplying faster than rabbits in warm weather and she was hanging on by her fingernails as it was. She certainly had no intention of watching the business go under simply because some turnip got himself knifed on her doorstep.

‘You enjoy my breakfast, yes?’ The voice in her ear made her jump. It belonged, she saw now, to the same man with long shaggy hair and check pantaloons she’d mistaken earlier for a servant.

‘I am Taranis.’ Vertical crevices appeared in his wide cheeks, which one had to assume was a smile. ‘I am Celt.’

‘About your breakfast…I thought-’

‘Ach.’ He dismissed it with a slicing motion of his hand. ‘You think I am slave? I let you into secret, you are not the first.’

No, she thought, probably not. Slaves would be forced either to shave orgrow a proper beard, whereas she had a feeling this stubble was a regular feature. Also, slaves would be steered towards the bath house now and again.

‘You no recognize me from murder scene? I understand. Dead man come as shock. Me, I am friend of Tulola. You?’ Black eyes loitered on the fullness of her breasts, made more prominent since the borrowed tunic was a tad tight across the bosom and therefore tended to emphasize the curves.

‘Just passing through.’

His eyebrows met in the middle. ‘You are lost?’ Claudia explained about her clash with the thugs. ‘Savages!’ He spat in the dust. ‘They rape you, yes?’

‘They rape me, not on their bloody lives.’

‘Oh.’ The gleam went out of the Celt’s eyes. ‘I need to piss.’ He made a cross between a bow and a hop, no doubt the sort of gesture that had evolved in those Barbarian climes to imply courtesy but which, in reality, was probably just another means to keep warm.

Since the parrot was now engrossed in preening its mate, Claudia moved across to the fishpond, where graceful filaments of algae floated in the margins. Minerva’s orchestrating this, she thought wryly. Yesterday was her festival and while artisans and doctors, scribes and schoolmasters left votive offerings up on the Capitol, and white-robed priests led young heifers to the sacrificial blade by their gilded and beribboned horns, forceful, striding Minerva was playing practical jokes on those who’d displeased her. Claudia dabbled her fingers in the fishpond and decided that, if not top of the goddess’s hit list, she probably ran a close second.

The ripples that nibbled the surface were reminiscent of the ones that lapped Genua harbour in the days when she used to dance for a living. Days when a tunic of this quality, regardless of colour, would have been an object to die for. Kill for, even. The sort of tunic that, had one come into her possession, she could have sold for her keep for a month. A whole month without leers and jeers, sticky hands and mouthed obscenities… She shuddered involuntarily. Thank the gods, those days were way, way behind her. A spot of forgery here, a new identity there, topped by marriage to a fat and unsuspecting wine merchant-what could go wrong? Claudia rested her chin in her hands. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, that’s what. What is it with life, she thought. You map it all out, bury your past so deep that, in comparison, the Emperor’s Spanish silver mines are mere scratches on the surface…then along he comes. High in the Security Police and with a nose like a truffle-hog, that damned patrician (born rich, born respectable, what does he know about life in the gutter?) comes snooping and discovered that dancing wasn’t the only way she’d earned her living.

A squad of blue tits descended to search the burgeoning leaves for grubs as Claudia’s deliberations projected themselves into the future. Should this Macer fellow prove unequal to the task of investigating violent deaths, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he invites the Security Police to help-and I can do without it being made common knowledge, thank you very much, that there were certain other services on offer in Genua, apart from the dancing. Oh yes, she thought, as the tiny birds twittered and quarrelled and performed their acrobatics, the very last thing I need in my well-ordered life is the intrusion of some wavy-haired aristocrat with a twinkle in his eye who thinks that if he covers his mouth with the back of his hand, no one notices he’s laughing. Not that Claudia remembered what he looked like, of course. Good gracious, no, it was just that…

A shadow fell across the fishpond and a second reflection appeared in the water. Dark, sultry, her heavy breasts heaving, the girl who’d hung around the atrium yesterday leaned low over the sweet-smelling flags. The ripples on the water could take no blame for the contortions in her face.

‘I know what you’re up to,’ she hissed. ‘But you won’t get away with it.’

Pretending to study the irises, Claudia watched the scowling reflection for several seconds. Presumably another sister-nine, ten years younger than Tulola? – but, in true Pictor style, no one had bothered to introduce them and any reluctance on this madam’s part wasn’t down to shyness.

‘You just watch me,’ she replied evenly.

Sulkyboots was unfazed. ‘No,’ she rasped. ‘You watch me.’ She kicked a pebble into the fishpond and both reflections disintegrated.

Then suddenly the girl’s breath was hot on Claudia’s cheek and she smelled sweet aniseed from her mouth.

‘Interfere and I’ll kill you.’

A small obsidian blade was suddenly thrust in front of Claudia’s eyes.’

‘I mean it,’ she spat. ‘Fuck with me and I’ll kill you.’