Man Eater

XXIX

Blame it on the heat, blame it on the chilled red wine, blame it on the boogie, but by the time lunch was over, the presence of one muscular man-tracker by her side did not seem desperately intrusive. Not, for instance, the way it had been in her bedroom. Nevertheless Claudia was still not sure how she came to be sitting under a willow in the middle of the island one minute and walking round the lake with this handsome patrician the next-especially since not one word had been spoken aloud. Behind them, the Temple of Sarpedon grew smaller and smaller, and even the lake fell from view.

‘A copper quadran for your thoughts,’ Orbilio said at last, swishing his ankles in the long grass beside one of the many gabbling streams that drained the lake and made these meadows so green and so lush.

‘Treecreepers.’

‘I… beg your pardon?’

‘If treecreepers always creep up,’ she pointed to an oak across the stream, ‘and nuthatches always creep down, what happens when they meet?’

There it was. That infuriating hand covering his mouth. What’s wrong with a smile, for gods’ sake? You don’t pay tax on it, no one can steal it, why be stingy with it? Claudia, who had no time for misers, said, ‘Tulola-’

‘That bitch! She’s evil, she corrupts! Everything and everybody!’

A dipper braved the gabbling waters, oxen lowed in the meadows and a dappled white butterfly came to rest on a radish.

‘Relax,’ Claudia breezed. (What a grouch) ‘She doesn’t always get her man.’

There was a dangerous fire in his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’ Also something lodged in his throat, by the sounds of it.

‘Salvian,’ she explained. ‘Loyalty to his lovely wife triumphed over lust.’

Poor Tulola. Where will she end up? Next month she’ll be thirty, with Barea, Taranis, even Timoleon moving on. Moving away. Away from her. She’s no fool, she knows they’ve used her, and even Salvian, with his ill-fitting armour and his stammer and his blushes, can see the gold is only gilt. What, she wondered, were the chances of Tulola asking the oracle what lies ahead? Does she plan to take Rome by storm with her sensationalism? Claudia hoped not. She’d be shunned, literally, by the upper classes, who prefer to keep their vices to themselves. Or is she (radical thought) banking on getting back with Pallas? Surely she must realize that, like the others, he’s just trading off her while it suits him and, worse, his respect for his ‘cousin’ is nil.

‘But that wasn’t my point.’ She told him about Tulola and Palla’s marriage.

‘Is anyone what they seem?’ he asked, tossing a stick into the stream and watching its progress round rocks and through miniature rapids.

‘Timoleon never was,’ she said, momentarily diverted by the flash of a kingfisher diving upstream.

Once saluting to the roar of the crowds, fifty-seven dead men notched on his belt and riches and adulation dripping off him like bathwater, Timoleon had degenerated into a flabby caricature of himself with only the past and a nickname, Strong Arm, to sustain him. Ten more years and what’s left? Already pushed out by younger blades nipping at his heels, Timoleon had sought recourse in his native Umbria-only to discover he still doesn’t belong. Friendless despite his massive wealth, a bandit he remains, whether the killings were legal or not. She swallowed bile. Fifty-seven lives snuffed out, each valued at just one handful of laurel leaves…

‘What do you make of Taranis?’ Orbilio asked, leading the way back towards the spring.

What, indeed? It was the Celt who bore the brunt of Timoleon’s frustrations. Not because of a certain laxity in personal hygiene. Not because he didn’t shave his body hair. Eight years in the arena had sharpened Timoleon’s primitive skills, because underneath the barbarian’s shaggy mane and baggy pants, Scrap Iron sensed what the others had not.

A threat.

‘I’m inclined to agree.’ Orbilio pushed aside the willows for her as they rejoined the lake. ‘But like the gladiator, it’s just a gut feeling.’

Codswallop. Instinct is the result of years of experience, of watching, listening, fitting pieces together. Claudia always trusted her intuition, and considered all that she’d seen and heard about Taranis.

‘He’s no trapper, that’s for sure.’

The way he backed off when wild beasts were around was amazing. So what sort of threat could he pose? Then she remembered he was always talking politics, always asking questions…

‘Look at that!’ Orbilio’s voice was full of awe.

She looked to where he was pointing. In the water, a huge blue chasm gaped up at them, circular, like an eye. A bright, hideous, aquamarine eye. The eye of the river god. Claudia shuddered.

‘I’ll be damned, it’s a well in the lake. Watch this!’

He picked up a pebble and threw it at the hole. Claudia half expected it to squint, but the stone was caught in the surge. Instead of plopping straight to infinity, it slipped and swayed and took a lifetime before gravity finally triumphed and the little pebble was swallowed by the watery abyss.

‘See?’

She felt silly and foolish, and hated him for seeing her that way.

‘Have you ever seen such an astonishing colour,’ he was saying, and she hated him for showing her own vulnerability to her. Which is probably why she blurted out Sergius’ affair.

His breath came out in a whistle. ‘Euphemia, eh? I wondered why the little sexpot hadn’t married.’

‘I’ve no idea how long it’s been going on, but I’ll bet one gold piece to a golliwog Alis knows nothing about it.’ Like me, she’d have seen nothing wrong with Euphemia’s thighs clamped round her husband’s neck at the party. Keep it in the family, and all that. ‘I reckon Sergius plans to install Euphemia in Rome as his mistress and keep Alis at bay here in Umbria.’

Save your breath, Claudia, Orbilio’s on a different planet. He seemed to have something stuck on his teeth, the way he was twisting his mouth this way and that, sucking his lower lip, biting it, chewing his tongue. Probably the cold duck at lunchtime, she thought, stepping over a pile of deer droppings. Glad I went for the chicken.

‘It’s the same old problem,’ he said eventually, staring at the rippling reflections of the poplars and the willows, at the twinkling coins in the shallows. ‘Motive. Find a reason and we find our murderer.’

‘Our murderer? It’s me who was nearly pickled in crocodiles,’ Claudia pointed out, as bubbles of air shimmied their way to the surface.

‘Oh, you can’t fault the killer’s versatility,’ he agreed. ‘Fronto is knifed, Coronis has her neck broken, Corbulo has his neck stretched.’

Yes, and each of them cold, calculated acts… Claudia concentrated on the shouts of the rowers, the girls egging them on. It was safer. She watched a gang of children chase each other over the footbridge in a game of pirates, she felt the warmth of the sun through her dusky pink tunic.

‘Here.’ Orbilio delved into his purse, pulled out a silver denarius and flipped it towards her. ‘Make a wish.’ Claudia scooped the spinning coin in her fist and examined it. The Emperor on one side, Venus on the other. Venus. Goddess of love. Love and sensual pleasure. Venus, protector of the month of April, which is just around the corner. Well, bugger Venus. Claudia lobbed the denarius into the deepest water she could reach and heard a soft chuckle beside her. Well, bugger him, too.

Children’s footsteps reverberated on the little wooden bridge as they thundered off to kidnap the temple pigeons. With their squeals still ringing in his ears, Marcus said, ‘And let’s not forget what happened to Sergius.’

The Pictor party lay flat on their backs, sleeping off their lunch to the drone of the bees and the songs of the warblers. Even an attack by marauding buccaneers with sticks for swords hadn’t disturbed their gentle reveries.

‘That wasn’t poison-’ Claudia contradicted.

Suddenly the peace was shattered. From under the cypresses came a gurgling, retching sound. They ran forward. Sergius, rolled into a ball and clawing at his stomach, was spewing his guts up, his face convulsed in agony.

Frozen, Claudia and Orbilio stared at one another.

‘That’s poison!’ they chorused in unison.