Man Eater

XXX

The torches guiding the party back to the Villa Pictor were as numerous as they were welcoming-not that Claudia was convinced this was the sole intention. A maniac was abroad, kindling a primordial instinct in the slaves at the house. Light fires and banish the bogeyman. They felt safe within their wall of flame, and quite right too, she thought. The bogeyman had travelled with them.

Jumping down from the wagon, she noticed a string of horses in the yard. Military horses, godsdammit. She pursed her lips. That Prefect was like the smell of cabbage cooking. You can never quite eradicate it…

She followed the stretcher carrying Sergius Pictor into the atrium. He looked a whole sight better now, thanks to Orbilio’s expert ministrations-although quite what procedures he followed Claudia had no idea. She’d legged it across that footbridge faster than a jackrabbit on ice. If he needed a nurse, someone else could volunteer.

‘I’m fine, now,’ Sergius croaked, more with optimism than conviction, she thought. ‘You can set me down here.’

Claudia looked at him. Weak was an understatement. His skin was waxy, his eyes still red from the vomiting.

‘Drink this, dear.’ Alis held a cup of water to his lips, but he shook his head so violently, beads of sweat sprayed through the air.

‘Something the matter?’ Macer swept into the atrium to the jangle of armour and the clipclop of hobnailed boots, neither of which, Claudia noticed with a thrill of delight, were his own.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Sergius said wearily, as the legionaries snapped to attention behind their leader. ‘Damned glad.’ He heaved himself up on one elbow. ‘I want you to arrest her.’

From the edge of his eye, Macer darted a glance towards Claudia, and she didn’t much care for what she read in it. Pointedly, she began to admire the tall marble columns, the white marble busts, the garlands of white scented daphne.

‘Arrest who, sir?’

‘Alis.’

Macer’s wasn’t the only stare to freeze on the sick man. ‘Your wife?’ he asked incredulously.

‘Oh, yes.’ Sergius wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. ‘It’s not the first time, but now I think-no-I am certain.’

The tip of the Prefect’s nose glowed pink. ‘Certain of what, sir?’

‘That’s Alis is trying to kill me.’

*

Pandemonium broke out almost at once.

Alis, her pale face turning grey, swivelled her eyes towards Sergius, then sank to the floor before a word passed her lips, and Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, for the second time that day, put on his nursing cap and set to work while the rest of the room shouted each other down in an effort to make themselves heard. Claudia stood welded to the spot. Alis? Alis? Orbilio had loosened the neck of her tunic and was gently slapping her face.

Then, above the commotion, one voice cut through. ‘Sergius is right. I suspected it myself ages ago.’

Euphemia shouldered her way to the front and stared unblinkingly at Macer. He stared unblinkingly back. ‘And why is that, might I enquire?’

Credit it where it’s due, thought Claudia. He is one cool customer, our Prefect. Perhaps it was he who got under Fronto’s skin, she mused, rather than the other way around. Fronto. The dung-beetle who got himself killed just over there, in my doorway. A man who nobody misses apart from Balbilla, and she’d bring out the mothering instinct in a rabid hyena.

‘Lots of things.’ Euphemia stood with one hand on her hip, and looked every inch the trollop she was. ‘For instance, every month he’d go down with food poisoning when none of the rest of us did.’

‘But he is still alive,’ the Prefect observed drily, investigating something wedged between his teeth.

‘He’s young and he’s strong,’ she said. ‘More than her first husband was.’

Macer’s dental practices were abandoned. ‘Isodorus?’ he asked sharply. ‘Are you suggesting-’

‘Why not?’ said Sergius. ‘Only this time, she won’t get away with it. By her own admission, Alis fed me mushrooms she’d gathered herself. Let her talk her way out of that!’

Had she been conscious, it was doubtful Alis would have been capable of talking her way out of a sack of black-eye beans, but Claudia’s skin had begun to prickle. He was lying. Sergius Pictor was lying through his perfectly formed teeth, and Euphemia was backing him up. Why?

Tulola and Pallas were lobbying Macer to move Sergius. He was too ill to be arguing in the middle of the atrium, they said, for gods’ sake, put him in his bedroom, at least. Timoleon and Barea, Corbulo and Taranis, vociferously denied any inkling of what was going on. They’d only seen Alis drooling over her husband, why should they be suspicious?

Why, indeed, thought Claudia. Yet all the while, Sergius had been having it away with that heavy-breasted siren, then slipping his arm round Alis’ shoulders as though…

Of course. Now she saw why Euphemia had said such spiteful things. She was jealous of her sister. Holy Croesus, she and Sergius were in it together. They’d planned this, the devious bastards, right from the very start! Alis had told her, hadn’t she? Sergius was on the scene long before Isodorus popped his sickly clogs. It was Euphemia he was in love with. It was Euphemia he wanted to marry. But it was Alis who had all the money.

He gave them a gift, the writhing chimera. The snake would have been placed in position, Isodorus encouraged (dared?) to put his hand in the lion’s mouth. Claudia was willing to bet that neither Sergius nor Euphemia would call that murder. Assisted accident at best, the same way they callously planned to dispose of the silly, conscientious creature Sergius couldn’t even bear to sleep with.

Attempted murder by his wife? Nothing can be proved, that was never the intention, but this was why he wanted the might of the militia. There would be more than sufficient evidence for Sergius Pictor to divorce Alis… and guess where the money goes. Claudia thought of Sergius, putting himself through hell and back, and for what? The performing beasts would make him ten times as much money as Alis brought with her, but he got greedy. He wanted it all. The house, the farm, the circus, the girl.

Click! Claudia understood now how he’d made himself sick. Whose idea was the sulphur pools? It was the mud he was after. He’d caked himself, very thinly, in mud and sulphur, what else explained skin the colour of pussy willows? The combination clogged his pores and made him ill-Claudia had experienced much the same thing on the trip back from Tarsulae-and just like he’d poisoned himself today, the more people who witnessed his suffering, the better.

Bastard. He arranged for the yobs and for Fronto, and everything subsequent because he was getting desperate for an excuse to call in the army.

Staring up at the vaulted ceiling, she wondered whether Alis could prove any of this-or indeed whether Alis would want to. Claudia smiled to herself. This could backfire on you yet, my handsome, devious host. If Alis can question just half of your actions, bang goes your divorce, and even when the money comes rolling in, how will you get away? She’ll have you by the balls, old chap, you’ll be dancing to her tune like a puppet. And as for you-Claudia glanced across at Euphemia-Alis’ll have you married off within a month, and I’ll bet it won’t be in Umbria, either. Because if you can’t trust your own baby sister, who can you trust?

Orbilio was lifting the limp form of Mistress Pictor into his arms. Despite detailed investigative work by the army and the Security Police, it was unlikely even a slender case could be made against Sergius, and even if he and Euphemia fell out and accused one another, it was his word against hers. Nevertheless, Claudia felt a great weight lifted off her shoulders.

It was over.

Finally, the nightmare was over. She could return to Rome knowing she didn’t have to keep her back to the wall from now on.

As Orbilio carried Alis to her room, the clamour in the atrium became, if that was possible, even louder. Macer had to bellow to make himself heard, and was trying to verify the facts with his nephew. Claudia sidled over to Taranis.

‘You know she be murderess?’ he marvelled.

‘I know you be spy.’

His face went rigid. ‘You say again, please. I no understand.’

‘You understand perfectly, my primitive friend. You came to find out whether the Emperor planned to invade Britain, am I right?’

‘You know damn well.’ His hands dug into her upper arms as he spun her behind the pillar. ‘Is why you’re here, no? You and security man?’

To his amazement, she began to laugh. ‘Is that what you thought? That we’re here to keep an eye on you?’ He should consider himself so important. ‘Well, I regret to tell you this, Taranis, but my story was the gods-honest truth. I was run off the road.’

‘Tch!’ The Celt made a vulgar gesture with his hand, but it was aimed at himself, rather than Claudia. ‘Now you turn me in, heh?’

I ought to, if only for turning my room over. ‘The Divine Julius made one attempt on your barbaric coast. Augustus won’t fancy tangling with you lot again, take my word for it.’

‘Is good,’ Taranis said, nodding sagely. ‘Is good we no have war, is good you have problem in Pannonia, and is good-good for Atrebates-your general is dead. It take heat off Britain, no? We trade in peace.’

Claudia felt a faint ruffle of unease. ‘How could you possibly hear about invasion plans from this wretched little backwater?’

‘I try Rome, people notice me. So I take, what’s the word, accomplice, yes? I take accomplice. Freeborn man, poor. Need money. I pay him to stand outside Senate instead, he tell me what is said.’

The spy has a spy, whatever next?

‘I-’ he paused. ‘I sorry he try to kill you.’

Claudia goggled in indignation. ‘You tried to feed me to the crocodiles?’

‘Not me. Accomplice! I not know what happen.’ Be fair, Taranis did look miserable. ‘He come visit, to Vale of Adonis, to make report. I tell him you here, you bring security man with you, and he panic. He say to kill you, I say no need, but-’ He spread his hands apologetically and shambled away.

She thought back to the night she searched Timoleon’s room, and realized now the conversation she’d overheard was Taranis talking to his accomplice. What irony. If only she’d listened more carefully, she’d never have been dragged to the compound and a man would still be alive today.

Orbilio must have thought he was walking into a cockfight, there was such a rumpus in the atrium. ‘Sergius has kicked up a right storm,’ he remarked in Claudia’s ear, although what his next words were, she was never destined to find out, because they were drowned by a noise which by rights should have dislodged the roof tiles.

‘Enough!’ Macer held up an imperious hand to quieten the rabble, and gave an imperceptible nod to his trumpeter to indicate that one blast was sufficient. ‘If you could all retire to your rooms, please, I’ll conduct interviews in the morning, you can have your say then. Ah-not you, Mistress Seferius. A word, if you please.’ He beckoned her over with an obsequious crook of his finger. Orbilio, she noticed, took just one pace backwards, and that to rest his weight against a column.

The Prefect smoothed his bright, white, civilian tunic. ‘You’ll have heard about Agrippa, naturally? So you’ll appreciate I have a lot on my plate at the moment?’ Claudia shot him her prettiest smile. ‘Tying up the loose ends of your illegal gambling racket?’

His face turned ugly. ‘Do you accuse me of improbity, Mistress Seferius?’

‘Only if that fly-blown dive doubles as a brothel at weekends.’

‘That patronizing smile’, he hissed through his teeth, ‘will soon fade, because I have you, my girl. I have you.’

‘In your dreams, perhaps.’ She tried to sweep past, but he stepped to the side and blocked her way.

‘No, no, I have you, Mistress Seferius, bang to rights as they say.’

Claudia raised one insolent eyebrow in reply.

Macer drew himself up to his full height, and rolled his tongue round the inside of his upper lip. ‘This morning,’ he announced, and this time his voice carried to the rafters, ‘an itinerant pedlar reported a strong and unpleasant smell coming from one of the old patrician huts. Most of them have fallen into some disrepair along this neglected stretch of the Via Flaminia. I expect you had noticed.’

‘If you had a point, Macer, it’s long since gone blunt.’

‘Apologies, if I’m boring you. But you see, Mistress Seferius, when our itinerant pedlar went to investigate this objectionable odour, what do you think he found?’

‘Your wife?’ she asked sweetly.

Marcus Cornelius Orbilio had turned the other way, but his frame seemed to be shaking silently.

‘He found’, Macer sneered, ‘the bodies of three young men. One had bulging eyes, one had ginger hair and the other bore a birthmark just about,’ he ran his finger slowly down Claudia’s cheek, ‘here. Acid, it would seem, had been added to their wine.’ The Prefect examined his gold cloakpin. ‘It was not a pleasant death.’

Sweet Jupiter! Sergius Pictor wasn’t desperate, he was sick. To kill three boys, just to silence them-it was Coronis all over again. Claudia’s stomach clenched and unclenched. Surely he could have spared a few coppers to pay them off?

‘Prefect,’ Claudia said sadly, ‘I have a whole host of alibis.’ Obsessed to the point of delusion, poor chap. They’ll laugh him out of court on Wednesday. ‘Including your own nephew.’

Even as she spoke the words, she knew…

And, worse, Macer knew…

‘Yes.’ He smiled, and it was not a pretty smile. ‘He told me.’

Idly, he turned to face the captain of his soldiers. ‘Arrest the bitch,’ he said calmly, jerking his chin towards Orbilio. ‘And him too, if he tries to interfere.’

*

Claudia Seferius didn’t think twice. Spinning on her heel, she raced across the atrium and out through the courtyard.

‘After her!’ yelled Macer. ‘Stop her! Any way you can.’

Vaulting the rosemary, she fled past the parrots and the topiaries and leapt over the fishpond. Torches that had previously been so welcoming became her enemy. They threw her fleeing figure into stark relief and gave her a thousand shadows. She jumped at each one.

Any way you can, Macer said…

Oh no! The gate’s locked! She rattled it, pushed it, then when it refused to budge, ran to the far gate. The soldiers were gaining. They did not have to cleave a path, negotiate obstacles. Like migrating geese, they only had to stay in her slipstream.

Damn you, Macer, damn you to hell! Because even as she was boasting of Salvian’s alibi, she realized the hole she was digging for herself. Of course, the boy would tell his uncle. Trusting, idealistic-he saw no reason not to. Any way you can. Dead or alive. It might yet prove a grave she had dug for herself. A thousand silhouettes flickered around her. A thousand hobnailed boots echoed in her ears. Shit! This gate’s locked as well! Finding a toehold in the woodwork, Claudia shinned over it, her dusky pink skirts billowing as she darted between the peach trees and the pears.

Shouts told her that the soldiers were splitting up, fanning out. Thinning out… She glanced over her shoulder. Three only in direct pursuit.

‘Fuck!’ A legionary, unfamiliar with the terrain, had tripped on the steps and was rocking himself as he rubbed at his ankle-the way people do, when the sprain is severe. One down, two to go.

Croesus, she was almost upon the labyrinth of sheds. She didn’t know her way well enough to tangle with them. Think, Claudia, think!

One of the soldiers had paused to check his colleague, but the third man was gaining rapidly. Merciful Juno, be praised! Claudia grabbed the hoe leaning against a walnut tree and ducked behind its ample trunk. Wallop! Right in the solar plexus! The running soldier gasped once, then pitched forward on to his face.

Two down, one to go.

At the end of the orchard, she paused under the full light of a brand burning in its bracket on the wall, as though unsure which way to turn. She glanced to the left, then to the right, then to the left, then to the right. Fat lot of use, hoping Junius might suddenly spring to her rescue. Macer would have nabbed him long ago. Taken in for questioning, he would say.

Torture was the word.

For a second time she hesitated under a light, looking in all directions and hopping indecisively on the spot. Her pursuer was close now. But so was the first of the barns. Claudia spun to her left.

Junius was a stubborn cuss, he’d die rather than lie to the Prefect.

Timing her run, she jumped and swung upwards, her skirts barely clearing the branch as the legionary turned the corner. The blood in her temples pounded like thunderclaps, but he failed to connect the significance of a shower of soft, pink petals and Claudia sent a silent prayer of gratitude to Mars for setting brawn above brains for his warriors. The soldier swore loudly and then crashed his way into the first of the sheds. Banging and thumping told her he was searching the building, and she heard him thunder out of the other door. Straddling the smooth, grey bark she thought of Junius, bound in rawhide as one of Macer’s minions applied red hot irons on the soles of his feet…

Kill my bodyguard, she vowed, and I’ll kill you personally.

‘Cut her off!’

‘Get her before she reaches the sheds!’

Claudia timed her fall with the shouts. For the moment they had lost her. Now was the time to turn back, because Macer would not expect something so obvious.

Crouching along the shadows of the east wing, Claudia felt her way towards the south entrance where Macer’s horses were hitched to the posts. Ducking beneath Alis’ window, she heard loud wailing. The wail of a widow. Or was that Alis’ window?

Relief welled up in Claudia’s chest when she saw the horses were not only tethered, they were still saddled up. Dear, sweet Juno, I owe you one.

Third from right, he’s my mount. Can’t be difficult, can it, riding a horse? Just swing yourself up, dig your knees into the animal’s side and hey presto, the wind’s in your hair before you know it. And I’ll grab the reins of the others as I go, they can scatter when we’re clear of the valley.

Sprinting across the yard, Claudia failed to notice another figure.

Too late she heard the crunch of a boot on the cobbles.

‘Not so fast,’ a voice snarled in her ear.

Then the night shattered into a thousand fragments, and everything went black.