Virgin Territory

XIV

Old Conky had been right about the weather. All traces of rain had vanished when Claudia opened her shutters on Friday morning, and it was back to bright sunshine and vibrant blue skies. The sea, calm and clear, brushed the sands below, while a gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the pines and the oaks and the spurge bushes. The most perfect of days for the hundreds of water-blessing ceremonies that took place, not only on Sicily but throughout the Empire in veneration of the goddess Flora. The most perfect of days to sneak off to see to that cockroach Aristaeus without anyone the wiser.

This was a day of so many local ceremonies that she could be attending any one of them, watching sacred garlands consigned to the waters or posies laid around the tops of the wells.

The breakfast table looked suitably festive, bedecked with flowers and ribbons and, best of all, Claudia had the dining room to herself. But not for long. Matidia threw herself down, confiding she was in a real froth about what to say, because it was her turn to lead the procession. She wanted to make a speech, a really wonderful speech, better than all the speeches the other wives had given over the years.

‘Flora won’t give a brass fig,’ Claudia said, flicking a grape pip across the room. ‘I think you’re wasting your time.’

Matidia couldn’t have looked more shocked had Claudia announced she’d spent last night humping every slave on the Collatinus estate and was going back for seconds. The atmosphere was broken when Portius swept into the room. There were more ringlets in his hair than tendrils on a vine and he’d rather overdone the antimony round his eyes. He looked like a polecat.

‘Mother, I’ve solved the problem,’ he said eagerly. ‘Listen!

She prayed, and all her sister nymphs,

The three hundred nymphs that guard the groves,

The three hundred nymphs that live within the streams.

Three times she splashed the glowing hearth with wine,

Three times the flame, renewed, shot up to heaven.’

‘Darling, that’s brilliant. Oh, you’re such a clever boy, Portius, what would I have done today without you!’

Claudia nearly choked on her plum. Did he never learn? Another straight quote! Still, he was on to a surefire winner with that little gem, combining the water-blessing with a reference to Sabina in her role as a Vestal, and it was unlikely the good matrons of Sullium knew enough about Virgil to trip him up.

Her ears blocked out the praise being heaped upon Portius’s beautiful curls and she concentrated on what she had to do today. Orbilio said the grainship would drop anchor mid-afternoon, but she’d decided against breaking the news of her departure to the family until the last minute. It was, she felt, none of their damned business. Therefore she’d packed her own boxes, quietly if not particularly efficiently. By now Cypassis was well on the mend (thanks to Diomedes), although she was still weak in the legs. Leaving Cypassis to rest but allowing Pacquia to believe her maid was with her, Claudia had managed rather well on her own, she thought.

As she was draining the last of her breakfast wine, Old Conky came thumping in, his face as black as yesterday’s thunder.

‘That’s all we bloody need, half the workforce out.’

Matidia didn’t even glance up from her speech. ‘Hmm?’

‘Some local kid’s wandered off and our slaves have taken it upon themselves to search the ravines and gullies roundabouts.’

Claudia narrowed her eyes. ‘Whose child was it?’

Aulus tutted. ‘Who cares? What I want to know is, how am I supposed to meet production targets when half the bloody workforce has done a bloody bunk? Where’s Linus?’

‘What does the old man say?’ asked Portius. ‘About the search?’

Aulus tapped his temple. ‘Going senile,’ he replied. ‘Said let them get on with it. Can you believe that? Look, where’s Linus? I need him in the yard.’

In the privacy of her bedroom, Claudia slipped the belladonna in to the folds of her tunic, sending up a silent prayer to Jupiter, Bringer of Justice, that there was sufficient of the drug in her phial to lay that son-of-a-bitch Aristaeus flat in his grave. If she hurried, she might, just might, be in time to save the life of another little girl.

With her room at the front of the house, it was impossible to miss that familiar ring of laughter as Orbilio exchanged pleasantries with Fabius. More boys’ own army jokes, no doubt, but she waited until it fell silent before slipping away.

It had come as a complete shock last night, seeing Supersnoop standing where she expected to find Diomedes, and it rankled that merely looking at him brought on a strange tingle which left the Greek a very limp second. The tendril of a blue vetch entangled itself in Claudia’s shoe and she paused to free it. Lust, my girl. Decent, honest lust. Accept it for what it is, then the quicker you’ll find someone else to lust after. Because it didn’t matter to Claudia that Orbilio wasn’t interested in her. Why should it? If he had other fish to fry, what did she care? Dressed to the nines and absent from dinner last night, there was only one conclusion to draw. He’d been in some harlot’s bed before snooping round Diomedes’s room. So what? A small smile lifted one side of her mouth. So she hoped the bitch had crabs, that’s what!

Nevertheless, seeing him there had taken her breath away. But it was only for a moment and perfectly understandable, amid that gruesome array of saws, chisels, clamps and catheters casting eerie, flickering shadows in the lamplight. Not to mention that half-size statue in the middle of the bloody room! So you see, it had nothing to do with Orbilio, it would have been the same no matter who.

Our master sleuth did not, of course, unearth the Secret Scalpel duly encrusted with dried blood from its hidey-hole. Honestly, it beggared belief that anyone would be stupid enough to set aside a special scalpel purely for butchering women, and after a while he looked where Claudia would have looked in the first place. Amongst the other scalpels. Which was as unproductive as she expected it to be, too. Diomedes kept one full set in a special hinged box, but a whole host of back-ups and spares in the corner. Really! What did Orbilio expect? A knife with the word ‘me’ written in dried blood?

By coincidence, they’d bumped into Diomedes in the hall shortly afterwards and he’d given them both such an odd sideways look that, had Claudia been in possession of such a trivial thing as a conscience, it might have made her feel guilty about going through his papers while Orbilio searched for mythical clues.

Much of yesterday’s rain had drained away, but here and there-on blades of grass, in flower cups or in spider’s webs-small drops clung on obstinately, twinkling in the sunshine like precious jewels of red and white and gold. Despite the lateness of the season, with the dust washed off the leaves, the vegetation, high as it was, still contrived to look fresh and vibrant. Even the parched grass looked more like a miniature cornfield at harvest time.

For obvious reasons, Claudia made her climb alone. It was the only way to tackle Aristaeus, and she’d left so many contradictory instructions that it was impossible for anyone to know exactly where she had gone or with whom. She scanned the horizon. Not that the trireme would come early, but the gesture brought Rome that little bit closer. Great! There were so many things to do there. A girl could get away from people she wanted to get away from (people like debt collectors and oily investigators), she could enjoy the Senate debates, the odd funeral oration (hypocrisy is a marvellous thing), the games and the races. Claudia totted it up on her fingers. A speedy passage home would deliver her right at the start of the Victory Games. I ask you. Could life be sweeter?

The terrain up here was rugged, open and windswept, scrub and rock. Limestone, someone said. As if she cared what bloody rock it was! Her lungs were wheezing like a pair of faulty bellows as she stopped to examine the track. In theory the path she’d been following should have led her straight to Aristaeus. So why, suddenly, was there a choice?

She glanced back. The villa, Fintium, even Sullium-they were all out of sight now. Talk about remote. She looked again at the fork in the path. Both tracks led over peaks, and you could see woods on the other side. These southern slopes, of course, had been stripped of trees to make Sextus’s warships during his seven-year battle for independence and the land had never recovered. It was stony and arid and sheep was the best you could do up here. But over the rise waited a different, cooler world where umbrellas of oak and beech and birch shaded and refreshed you with their dazzling display of autumn colours. Sweet chestnut trees scattered their shiny bounty across the forest floor, mushrooms and fungi adorned branches and boles. The red breast of a robin flashed across the path, the harsh churr of a jay rang out from the canopy.

Claudia chose the right-hand fork for no other reason than a green spotted lizard lay sunning itself on a stone and up here any company was better than no company. But it didn’t take long to realize it was the wrong path-she was heading too far east. Damn! There wasn’t much time to play with, either. Juno, suppose Aristaeus wasn’t there? Suppose he was out, pretending to hunt for the missing child? She’d just have to lace his wine and pray no one else swallowed the wretched stuff. Hell, he was a recluse, wasn’t he? Who else would there be to drink it?

‘Lost, are you?’

Claudia nearly fainted with shock. She hadn’t heard him approach, and with the crackle of twigs underfoot, still bone dry despite yesterday’s downpour, that was quite some feat.

‘Do you take me for a fool? Of course I’m not!’

She had to lift her head to see him clearly. Bearded, dark-haired, going grey at the temples, he wore the leather leggings of the huntsman. To prove the point, he carried a small, sinew-backed bow in one hand and a brace of coneys in the other.

‘I was looking for a man called Aristaeus.’

‘Then you be looking in the wrong place.’

His Sicilian brogue was as broad as they came. The huntsman stepped past her and set off along the track at a cracking pace, a quiver of arrows joggling on his back.

‘At least have the decency to tell me where I should be looking!’

‘I thought you said you wasn’t lost.’ He neither slowed down nor bothered to look over his shoulder.

‘Disorientated. Look, can you help me?’

His sole response was a casual ‘Nope.’

Claudia slapped her forehead with the heel of her hand. Men! She called after him. ‘You know that girl who went missing in Sullium-’

‘Nope.’

She was having to shout now. ‘Aristaeus was the last person seen talking to her,’ she lied. ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

The last word she heard as he rounded the bend was another infuriating ‘Nope.’

Claudia was out of breath by the time she caught up with him. He was in a small clump of pines, heading towards a clearing. Two shaggy dogs ambled up out of nowhere, their tails wagging as they stuffed their wet noses into his hand. Only then did she notice the square hut built into the hillside on the far side of the clearing. She fell back against the red, fissured bark of a pine.

‘Holy shit, you’re Aristaeus!’

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until he said, ‘So?’

Without pausing he disappeared inside the hut and she could see him hanging the rabbits on a hook on the wall. Shit! If she’d known the local huntsman was also the man who collected spiders’ webs and was also the man who abducted children, she’d never have shown her hand.

The queasiness in her stomach made her search for some kind of makeshift weapon, and it came as something of a relief to note that he’d divested himself of his bow and arrows. On the other hand, she was able to see the dagger in his belt more clearly. Oddly enough, she didn’t remember seeing it there before…

Claudia sidled over towards a pile of logs. There was a handy looking chopper embedded in that wood.

‘So…’ she began, ‘tell me. Is that a statue of Diana over there?’

He was supposed to turn his head, she was supposed to yank out the axe, he was supposed to say ‘Why?’ and she was supposed to clonk him over the head.

Instead he said, ‘Yep.’ It made sense, Diana being patron of the hunt and all that, she was bound to protect her own. Now what?

‘Ooh! Is that a figpecker I can hear?’

Figpecker? Figpecker? Up here? Claudia, are you nuts?

‘I shouldn’t think so, no.’

He was giving her a damned funny look, so she smiled. Show lots and lots of teeth, Claudia. Put the man at ease. He’s frowning, so come on, more teeth. Dammit, she had no more left to show and he was still frowning. It was probably his special child-molester frown.

‘What on earth’s your dog doing?’

That did the trick. The second his back was turned she was yanking on the axe, trying to work it loose.

‘Let me do that.’

A broad, brown hand closed over the handle and out it came, like a hot knife through honey. Aristaeus pushed his face towards hers. His eyes narrowed as they bored into her own, and Claudia shivered involuntarily. A cold sweat broke out on her back as she realized she was powerless under his glare. Mesmerized. Paralysed. Suddenly he swung the axe in the air and let out a gigantic bellow.

Claudia’s eyelids snapped shut. Her senses were in sharp relief now. She could smell the woods on his tunic. Sharp. Bitter. The tang of leather, the sickly smell of blood. Rabbit’s? Child’s? She heard the swish of the axe, felt the whoosh of parted air. Time stood still. The blade crashed down. Crunch! She felt a sharp pain in her cheek. Terrified, her eyes opened. A pungent smell of sawdust hit her nostrils.

Aristaeus shot her another strange look as his thumb flicked off the splinter which had embedded itself in her cheek. Then he picked up one of the split logs and chopped that in two, before reaching for the other half. He repeated the process twice more before piling them into Claudia’s shaking arms.

‘You best put them on the fire.’

Claudia opened her mouth to protest, but no words came out.

‘There’s a pheasant in the pot, just needs warming up.’ He shoved her not ungently towards the hut. ‘Go on.’

She ought to refuse, she ought to confront him-but with a dagger in his belt and an axe in his hand, Claudia knew this wasn’t the time. She had the belladonna. She could afford to humour him.

The fire sprang into life almost immediately, the pot sending out tantalizing clues to its contents. Pheasant, salt bacon, beans, onions-what the hell. So what if Aristaeus dies with a full belly?

The fire was blazing majestically but, despite the warmth of the day, Claudia couldn’t help hunkering down right in front of it, rubbing her arms and her legs. She was cold to her marrow, as though, like the nymph Arethusa in Syracuse, she had been turned into icy cold water. The flames crackled and spat. The two dogs came up, panting and wagging their tails, and she absently tugged on their ears. They were strange creatures, long-haired, big-jowled, flop-eared, a type she’d never encountered before.

‘Celtish, them.’ His frame filled the doorway, blocking out much of the daylight. ‘I calls ’em Chieftain and Druid and they helps me hunt boar.’ He rolled up his sleeves before adding, ‘Ugly buggers, aren’t they?’

The smile transformed his craggy features and suddenly Claudia couldn’t quite picture this man raping and murdering little girls for want of anything better to do. Still, who’s to say what goes through a child molester’s head? She watched him dish the stew into the bowls, pour beer into two cheap but attractive goblets. There were two of everything, she noticed, including beds, stacked one on top of the other like army cots. The woodsmoke was distracting. Cherrywood, unless she missed her guess. He beckoned her to eat. She could hardly refuse…

‘Are you Celtish?’ she asked, forcing her vocal chords to perform normally.

‘Me?’ He didn’t look up. ‘Never been off the island.’

‘But you do…collect spiders’ webs?’

‘Yep.’

Claudia remembered Sabina’s funeral. Hecamede being dragged away, her body limp and unprotesting but her eyes imploring justice. Justice against the man who collected spiders’ webs. Justice against the man who killed her five-year-old daughter. Justice against the man Aristaeus. Who now sat across the table from Claudia, wiping his beard with his sleeve, pushing away his empty plate. Watching him top up his beer, Claudia didn’t trust herself to speak. However, she had ample time to tip the belladonna into his goblet when he turned to prod the fragrant logs.

Had she wanted to.

‘Why do you collect them?’

He shrugged as he sat down. ‘I bottles ’em in vinegar.’

Well, you would, wouldn’t you?

‘Drink your beer,’ he urged. ‘I brewed it myself, so I knows it’s good.’

Claudia wanted to say she didn’t touch beer, it was a thin, unwholesome drink brewed by Egyptians in the east and Celts in the west. (Hence her earlier question.) But there was an intensity in his eyes which was impossible to ignore and she took a tentative sip. It was bitter, as she expected. Perhaps he was trying to poison her? Codswallop. Snap out of it. But she couldn’t. Nothing seemed real. Time had no meaning. The experience was weird, dreamlike, as though she was in a different, alien world and to her surprise, she found herself drinking deeply. And at that moment Claudia knew that, as strong as she was, her destiny lay in this man’s hands. She would not, could not, fight it…and the feeling was as intoxicating as the beer.

‘Why do you bottle spiders’ webs?’ she asked.

‘They stops up small nicks.’

‘Like shaving, you mean?’

‘Yep.’ He reached for the jug. ‘I ships ’em to Syracuse. There’s a good market when the fleet’s in.’

She glanced at the two beds. ‘Do you live alone?’

The jug came down on the wood so hard she thought it would crack. ‘Why?’

It required considerably less mental agility than Aristaeus possessed to make the leap from this question (and he’d seen her eying up the cots) to her earlier remark about missing girls.

‘Idle curiosity,’ she said blandly. But somehow it sounded like an objectionable vice.

It was getting late. She had to be leaving if she was going to catch the boat. She rose, relieved he made no effort to stop her. From the corner of her eye she noted the square jaw, the set of his chin. Handsome? Not exactly. But confidence oozed out of every pore. The slow deliberation in his movements, the strength, the rugged magnetism. She realized suddenly that she was drawn towards this man, this recluse. This child molester?

But then everything today was topsy-turvy.

Maybe Hecamede was mad after all. Claudia visualized a love affair, its passion long spent. A woman spurned by the man she thought had loved her. Who left her pregnant. Years later, as her wits evaporated, every slight had become intensified until Aristaeus represented a walking personification of all things evil, a scapegoat for the worst crime she could imagine when her darling Kyana had gone missing.

Outside she noticed it was later than she thought, and with the race down the mountainside a sense of balance, of normality, was restored. More than once she ricked her back. Every jolt threatened to loosen a tooth, every boulder threatened to turn her ankle. Puffing profusely and red in the face, Claudia raced across the plateau to check the grainship in the bay.

What grainship?

The bay was empty! The bay was bloody empty!

She slithered down the hill to the villa, skidding across the atrium floor as she flung open Orbilio’s room. That, too, was empty. His chest was gone, the table bare. Nothing to show he’d ever been here.

She grabbed hold of Senbi as he passed. ‘Master Orbilio?’

‘He left, madam.’

‘And the ship?’

‘That left, too. Were you hoping to catch it?’

She shot him a glare. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, I love it here.’

Behind her, Vilbia gurgled and giggled beside the pool under the careful eye of her nursemaid, pushing on the tiny wheeled trolley she used as a walking aid. Claudia brushed the hair from her eyes. Well, she thought, it’s been that sort of a day. I got nowhere with the child molester, I missed my ship, I’m stuck with a backbiting miseryguts of a family and there’s a sadistic killer on the loose. Still. She puffed out her cheeks. It isn’t all bad. I’ve got four kittens to amuse me and there’s the little one to play with.

She walked over to Vilbia and knelt down. ‘Peekaboo!’

The tot looked up, broke into a sunny, gappy smile and held up her finger.

‘Claudie, look!’ she lisped. ‘Vilbi got a bogey!’