Man Eater

XXXI

When Claudia came to, she realized Macer had taken no chances this time. He had tied her up like a despatch rider’s satchel-five hours of joggling would still never loosen the bonds. Claudia paused for breath. Talk about tunnel vision. That pompous, fussy, on-the-take Prefect was like Agrippa’s underground aqueduct-except whereas that was designed to keep litter and scrap out, the Prefect’s tunnel repelled justice, logic and anything resembling an open mind. I’ll have your lungs on a skewer for this.

Lying on her side in the dark, it was difficult to take stock of her surroundings, but Claudia was pretty sure, from the cidery smell, that this was the old fruit store, the one that Pallas had suspected of being damp. Like the others, it would be stone-built, devoid of windows, boast a high, pitched roof, a floor of dry, compacted earth-and just the one door.

Now then, Macer, you blockheaded, imbecilic numbskull of a nincompoop, just what have you tied me to, eh? Writhing and thrashing, twisting and squirming, Claudia could not even sit up. So what was it she was tied so securely by the arms, waist and ankles to? Well, it was heavy, but not solid-a sack? No, sacking would have chafed her back-her back?

For the first time, Claudia realized her tunic was missing, that she was lying in just breast band and thong. Godsdammit, Macer really was taking no chances. Using her skin as a sensor, she began to eliminate the possibilities one by one. All right, we know it’s not a sack. Or (rub, rub) wood or metal or terracotta. It feels like… She jolted in the darkness and felt the blood freeze in her veins. It feels like flesh.

Jupiter, Juno and Mars, I’m tied to a corpse!

She felt a pulse of revulsion. Then another, and another and another. In a surge of nausea, she kicked and writhed, but the ropes held good and Claudia forced herself to subjugate the revulsion. A corpse is just a person who’s stopped breathing. A corpse is just a person who’s stopped breathing. She had no idea how many times she repeated it before some semblance of calm set back in and she began to pray to Fortune that the body wasn’t Junius. And yet, logically, who else could it be? Not Marcus, he was too smart and, dare she say it, too important. She remembered her vow. Kill my bodyguard, and I’ll personally send you to hell.

There was a noise in her ear, not unlike the squeak of a door. A…groan? Junius? Her heart started walloping against her ribs. At her back, she felt the first flutterings of movement as the corpse began to revive. Then it began struggling, then thrashing, then jerking so violently she was forced to tell it, in no uncertain terms, to have a care, there are others involved in this, you know.

‘Claudia?’

‘Orbilio?’ I do not believe this! ‘Did you do this on purpose, for a cheap thrill?’

‘This doesn’t come cheap,’ he laughed, shaking his ankles. ‘I’ll be charging you twenty sesterces at least. Do you know where we are?’

‘The old fruit store, and I won’t pay a quadran over twelve.’ Then she reminded him that, if he pleased, there were other ankles attached to his.

‘Make it eight and you’re on.’ He gave another kick. ‘The rope has a bit of slack in it, can you feel it? If we can just roll from side to side and loosen it-’

Like a landlocked hippopotamus, they wallowed and rolled, rolled and wallowed, momentum gathering all the time.

‘Oooof!’

She heard the air spurt out of his lungs as she landed smack on top of him. ‘Don’t blame me, this was your idea.’

‘Ptth.’ She heard him spit out a mouthful of dirt. ‘Can (wheeze) you (wheeze) wriggle your foot free?’

‘I can see a rope dangling from the rafters.’

‘Could you (rasp) hurry?’

‘We could climb that-’

‘Claudia? Ple-eeze?’

‘-and escape through the roof.’

‘Claudia, move your godsdamned foot!’

‘Don’t shout, I’m only trying to help!’ Her face screwed tight in concentration. ‘Yess!’

Puffing, they rolled on to their sides, Orbilio gasping for air for what she told him was a very selfish amount of time and would he please let her know when he’d finished playing with the dust in his mouth, so they could at least shuffle into a sitting position.

‘If we could find a rough edge,’ he said, oblivious to the verbal spillages, ‘we could saw through these ropes.’

‘Try using your tongue.’

He ignored that as well. ‘But we’ll need to stand up, so…on the count of three, right? One, two-are you trying?’ He supposed the raspberry meant yes. ‘Again. One, two-up!’

‘You said on the count of three.’

‘That was three.’

‘It was only two.’

‘All right, all right, this is no time to argue. One, two, three. PUSH!’

Backs together, they thrust their way to a standing position.

‘First it was sherbet,’ he said, ‘then it was milk.’

Claudia’s eyebrows furrowed. ‘You took the trouble to sniff the contents of the jug before it landed on your head?’

‘You were the only one who was knocked out,’ he chuckled. ‘Tonight, when I went to my room for my sword after Macer set up the hue and cry, I realized, somewhat belatedly, that my milk had been laced.’

‘Ah, yes. That mysterious movable ulcer.’

‘Please!’ he protested. ‘Do you know how long I’ve gone without a drink?’

Gently she knocked her head back against his. ‘The longest I’ve ever seen you without liquor, Marcus Cornelius, is thirty paces. Now are you going to get us out of here or not?’

It took a complicated set of hop-skip-and-jumps, which in the dark proved often painful what with jutting shelves and unexpected crates, but eventually they found what they were looking for. At some stage in its history, a bronze cooking pot had been left on an unattended stove for a jagged hole to burn through. How thoughtful of it to wait in the store to be patched.

‘How is it,’ he asked, manoeuvring the vessel into position and rubbing off the thick crust of verdigris with his thumb, ‘that wherever Claudia goes, trouble trots beside her?’

‘Me? I’m just your average little catalyst.’ She heard the rope grate against the rough, serrated bronze. They all had their secrets, Tulola, Pallas, Sergius, Euphemia, even Taranis the Celt. Her stumbling into their lives merely accelerated the situation. She concentrated on the rope, rasping and scraping. Surely, yes surely she could detect a bit of give in it?

‘I could get used to this,’ he said languidly.

Claudia’s mouth twitched at one side. Half an hour of wiggling up and down, back to bare back, loin cloth to thong? ‘I’ll bet you could.’

Twang! As the strands burst free, they massaged the weals, then Orbilio spotted a tallow and suddenly there was light.

‘Can you reach?’ she asked, pinching her nose against the stinky candle. ‘It’s quite a way up, that rope.’

‘Forget it, there’ll be guards posted all round this building. Listen! Can you hear that?’

‘Yes. Rats.’ She’d seen two so far, and that was just since the light went on. Any bigger and Gisco could harness them to his chariots.

‘No, no. Can’t you hear a low, gurgling sound?’

‘Water?’ she ventured.

‘Exactly. Now hold this candle, will you?’

Arm’s length was still too close for the evil pong. ‘What are you looking for?’

Save your breath, Claudia. The Boy Wonder is in a world of his own. With a gleeful yelp, he pounced on a rusty iron sieve. ‘We need to trace the run of the pipes.’

‘What pipes?’ In candlelight, she could see verdigris on her arm, rope burns all over, and a couple of scratches on her shins.

Orbilio tested the handle of the sieve. ‘Sergius diverted part of his stream-those beasts need a lot of fresh water-this is the runaway.’

‘Sewage, you mean?’

‘Whatever,’ he said cheerfully, prodding the handle into the compacted soil. ‘Pushed for space,’ he tried another spot, ‘he laid underground pipes for his outbuildings to go over the top.’

‘Do we sift our way out? That’s radical.’

He looked up and grinned. ‘That’s what I like about you, always willing to try out new ideas.’ A couple more exploratory probes. ‘I know two waste pipes meet, one from the monkey house, one-’

‘How do you know?’

‘I always check the lie of the land, my dear. You never know when-’

‘-a Gisco might be after you.’

He shot her a ha-ha-very-funny look as he prodded the soil. ‘Here we are.’ There was a dull clunk as iron connected with terracotta.

‘I still don’t get it.’ It came out nasal, on account of her hand clamped over her nose.

‘Well,’ he proceeded to tap his way along the pipe, ‘each channel is four hands square at best.’ He paused to swipe the perspiration from his eyes. ‘It would be far more comfortable if we could find the junction, where it widens to accommodate both outlets. Can you hold that candle steady?’

Claudia willed the muscles in her hand to change from jelly into steel. He’s talking about escaping…through the sewer?

‘How-’ She cleared her throat. ‘How far does it go, do you know?’ They could easily get stuck! Buried alive…

‘At a guess? Two hundred paces.’

‘Two hundred?’

‘Maybe three or four. Look.’ He pointed to a dark, damp mound.

‘A leak?’

‘A blockage,’ he corrected, shovelling frantically. ‘Which has put such a strain on the joints, we don’t have the bother of how to smash our way through.’

‘It’s quicker if we both dig,’ Claudia offered. Any excuse to dump this revolting lump of goat fat. As she balanced the candle on a shelf, Orbilio jumped up as though scalded.

‘Holy, holy shit!’ he said.

In the bright halo of light, a hand was sticking out of the earth.

As Orbilio clawed at the soil, she saw the arm was attached to a torso, and the torso attached to a neck, which still bore the deep mark of the garotte. Attached to the neck was a head with a crown of baby-fine hair, and a thin pink nose.

‘Macer!’ Claudia gulped. Orbilio’s expression was grim as he hauled the body out of the drainage pipe.

‘Look again,’ he said roughly.

For it was not the Prefect who lay dripping in his lap. It was his nephew.