Man Eater

XXV

Milk, it has to be said, does not fan the flames of passion quite like a good, old-fashioned Falernian wine. In fact, it gets to a point when the very thought of another mouthful makes a man not so much rampant as downright bilious. After an energetic bout of hoop trundling, Orbilio felt a pounding in his head and a shaking in his hands that owed nothing to his camel ride.

‘Try this, sweetie.’ Tulola thrust a goblet of fragrant, pink liquid under his nose. ‘It’s my special-recipe sherbet.’ She pushed the milk aside and pulled a face. ‘That’s fit only for pigswill,’ she said.

Orbilio sniffed the frothy concoction. ‘What’s in it?’ he asked. They drank it in the Orient and they drank it in Arabia, but he’d never considered it a Man’s Drink exactly. Wine, definitely. Beer? Well, the Egyptians survived on it, but it would never catch on, and as for those foul, fermented brews-no wonder the men who drank it were barbarians!

‘Pomegranates, catmint, saffron and carob pods,’ she laughed. ‘Satisfied?’ She leaned low to whisper in his ear. ‘Because if not, I can arrange that, too.’

She clapped her hands and two girls in transparent tunics began to dance to their own lyre strains as figs, sorbs and medlars were passed round. ‘You can have either of those girls. Both, if you wish.’

‘Another time, perhaps.’ She knew damned well he wasn’t interested. ‘Great sherbet, though.’

‘Great party, too, don’t you think?’

‘I do,’ he said graciously, although few seemed to be enjoying it as much as Tulola. Corbulo was drinking himself under the table, Timoleon was boring Sergius and Euphemia with his exploits, Alis was comparing with Pallas the virtues of braising versus a good fricassee and Taranis had grown positively maudlin. Across the room, his complexion dark against the brilliant yellow, Barea cringed under a heavy lashing from Claudia’s tongue. Under the circumstances, Marcus thought, the Lusitanian had got off rather lightly.

Orbilio smiled to himself. Rarely did he go undercover, but when he did, the art of lipreading came into its own, and he had been thoroughly entertained by her performance with Corbulo. Up to the point where the Etruscan’s hand closed over her wrist and drew her slowly towards him. Orbilio’s gut twisted. She had not resisted. The conversation became not only secret but intimate, but it was only when Claudia began tugging on Corbulo’s looped braids and whispering so earnestly, that he realized how serious a rival the trainer really was.

He refused the figs and the sorbs and the medlars, and tried to quench the burning in his heart with the sherbet.

‘What’, Tulola purred in his ear, ‘do you think of my library?’

‘I haven’t been in there.’ Yet he thought he’d searched all the rooms…

‘Which would you prefer? Philosophy? Travelogues? Eulogies?’ She waved her arm to indicate her six Negroes who, while his thoughts were turned inwards, had arranged themselves in a circle facing outwards. ‘We have them all.’

Holy Mars. ‘You don’t mean-’

Tulola rolled on to her back and let out a throaty laugh. ‘Of course, I do. Wonderful, aren’t they?’ She spun back on to her stomach and clicked her fingers. ‘I think the occasion calls for poetry, don’t you?’

Orbilio nodded dumbly. Croesus above, were there no depths Tulola could not plumb? Weren’t these men degraded enough, pulling her chariot, without being turned into a human library?

‘Can you imagine how difficult it is,’ she drawled, tracing a sinuous tongue round her lips, ‘finding handsome specimens able to recite?’

He should not have been surprised when the poetry turned out to be explicit erotica, but he was, and this time he couldn’t lay the nausea entirely at the door of his milk. Orbilio gulped at the sherbet and to hell with its potency. It was cool and refreshing, with the sweet, fizzy tang of pomegranate and in three swallows the goblet was empty. In front of the couch, the cheetah yawned.

What was he doing, for gods’ sake, playing this bloody charade? He could put paid to it this instant, by announcing Agrippa’s death. Why didn’t he?

Tulola clapped her hands again and two waiters brought in a giant phallus dripping with figs and apricots, plums and cherries, which had been preserved in honey over winter. Orbilio felt the room begin to swim.

Why had he held back? The reason lay in this very hall, a vision of loveliness in pastel blue, her curls tumbling over her faience necklace as she laughed and made jokes with young Salvian. Janus, Croesus, what did she see in the trainer?

When Tulola topped up the sherbet, Orbilio swigged the lot as he pictured lighting the lanterns in his bedroom-hundreds, no thousands of them-one at a time. The heat would be cloying and heady, bay leaves and alecost would burn in the braziers, oil of cade would be splashed over orange blossoms strewn white on the floor. Compared to Claudia’s sensuality, Tulola’s raw sex grated-the dirty verses, the fruit phallus, the demeaning spectacle of men trained like animals. Even to imagine making love to Claudia at this moment would be to defile the very act, but he couldn’t help thinking that when it was over…when it was finally over and there was no breath left in either of them and the couch was damp with sweat and the air heavy with the scent of their fusion…he knew then he would be home.

‘Master Orbilio.’

Home – and never want to leave.

‘Master Orbilio.’

A gentle tug on his tunic broke the spell, and he realized he was alone in the banqueting hall, that the fruit course was long finished.

‘Where are the others?’ His mouth was furred, he must have fallen asleep.

The young girl who was trying to attract his attention seemed confused. ‘It’s the darts match, sir.’

‘Right, I’m on my way.’

‘Oh, no, sir. I’m not here to get you, I’m to tell you to go straight to your room. Lady wants you, says that it’s urgent.’

He stumbled to his feet. They felt weighted. ‘Which lady?’ he asked, but the room was empty again and the ceiling was spinning. Bloody camel, he thought, crunching his way across the debris of snail shells and cherry stones, grape pips and lobster claws. Well, they say riding one makes a man seasick, serves you bloody well right.

Brighter than daylight thanks to the scores of torches, the atrium was deserted as Orbilio fumbled his way across the wide open space. This was how it must have looked the night Fronto was murdered, he realized, skirting the pool, but that was as far as his thoughts went, because when he turned right, the torches, the columns, the marble busts all multiplied a dozen times. Goddammit, that ugly, humped son-of-a-bitch has given me concussion as well.

What was wrong, he wondered, as he stumbled towards his bedroom? What was so urgent, so private, that whoever it was had to see him now, this minute, in his own guest room?

‘Hello?’ The shutters were closed, the room was in darkness. He nudged the open door with his toe. ‘Hello?’

Janus, it’s a trap!

Too late the door slammed behind him, smothering him in blackness, and then the blast hit him. Judean balsam. The sultry heat of the Indus. Babylonian lilies…

‘I might have known,’ he began, but two hands shot out of the void and pulled his head fiercely towards her. When his lips touched hers, the full force of Vulcan’s fire shot through his body and he jerked like a snapped twig.

It was like being at the centre of a whirlwind. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was sucked out of the Empire, out of Umbria, out of the house, out of this room. There was nothing else in the universe but himself and a passionate, sensuous woman, burning, hungering, devouring each other in the vortex. Curls tumbled and fell round his fingers.

He heard the rip of wool as she tore at his costume, felt the cold of plaster against the heat of his flesh. In a single wave, linen cascaded to the floor and he could see the faience necklace shimmering against her skin in the dark.

He did not know who moaned, him or her, when he reached out and ran his hands down the curves of her body. With a frightening intensity, she trembled under his touch, her kisses more and more frantic as her breastband unknotted in his palm. Eager nipples were thrusting against his tongue and he could feel her shuddering as his fingers explored the wetness of her thong.

Together they spun along the wall, tearing at each other in hungry fury, a ferocious explosion of lust, love, passion. A trickle of hot blood ran down his back where her nails raked, and when he blinked away the sweat which dripped into his eye, he tasted the salt from her body, felt the furnace of her fingers on his chest. He groaned at the searing pain in his loins as her hands moved lower and lower, up and down, round and round, until he could take it no more.

He cried out. She cried out. And then they were crying out together, thrashing, throbbing, drowning in each other’s furious ecstasy. When it was over, when-panting and running with sweat and with the flat of his hands supporting, the weight of his body against the wall-Orbilio marvelled how this was nothing like he’d ever imagined. Far from spent, every muscle still twitched, his skin was aflame and his vision, even in the dark, remained clouded.

‘Claudia,’ he croaked, his throat almost closed. ‘Oh, Claudia.’

The huskiness of the laugh jolted him backwards. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake, sweetie.’ The pendant clattered to the floor as Tulola’s long, low stride took her across to the doorway. ‘Be a love and return this, will you?’

In the oblong of light shining from the hall as she sailed out of his bedroom, a mass of dark ringlets skimmed through the air to land at his feet. And now he knew why Tulola Pictor was so desperately keen to play forfeits.