Perched on the bluff, high above the bay, Claudia conceded this had to be one of the loveliest views she had ever seen. To her left, Pharos Point stretched out to sea, crowned by the stubby lighthouse from which it took its name. On the far side of the headland, where the terrain changed dramatically to dry scrub and sparse vegetation, lay the shacks and shanties that comprised the poor and insignificant fishing village of Fintium where she’d landed, demonstrating clearly how the island’s geography contributed to its fluctuating fortunes.
Now when was it she’d put ashore? So much travel, so much change of scenery, it was confusing. She totted it up on her fingers. Today is Monday, which makes it, let me see, the ninth day of October. That’s right, because we arrived in Syracuse last Monday, which was the second, had that run-in down by the docks, sailed on Tuesday and put ashore in shabby Fintium three days ago, on Friday.
Had nothing gone according to plan on this trip? Claudia gazed at the tableau laid out in front of her.
The tightly packed pines below, into which the blue flash of a jay disappeared.
The sweep of white sand, deserted as always, which would take every bit of an hour to cover, headland to headland, on foot.
The flat white rock a half-mile westwards upon which Eugenius Collatinus had chosen to site his villa.
Further on, where the outcrop dropped away and therefore out of sight, ran the river from which, at exorbitant cost, Eugenius had his water pumped up.
Behind her, barren hills rose almost vertical except for a plateau to the west. A mile north the grey, hilltop town of Sullium nestled between two peaks.
Claudia let her eyes rest on the gentle bob of the African Sea.
In Rome, travellers talked of how you could see the very walls of Carthage from here. The product of a nimble memory, of course, but to a certain extent that could be forgiven and Claudia had a feeling her own recollections might follow the same route themselves. Africa might not actually be visible, but it was not so very far across these sparkling waters and much of this island’s produce-the wine and the olives-ended up in Carthaginian stomachs now that the wars were forgotten. At least until next time.
Thanks to an offshore breeze, the heat of the afternoon sun was much mitigated. High in the sky a buzzard mewed and a yellowbird butterfly set a fluttering course for Tunis. Such beauty, she thought. Such tranquillity. Such cleanliness.
So much, it’s positively unwholesome!
Where’s the graffiti you see at home? She didn’t know, until she saw it painted on the wall outside the caulker’s, that that stuck-up senator, Longimus, was a bigamist.
And who’d have guessed Vindex the mule doctor was a eunuch?
The hurly-burly of Rome came flooding back, its streets thronging day and night and with entertainment on practically every corner. After just two weeks, Claudia was pining for the gruff shouts of the wagon drivers, the shrill laughs of the whores, the squabbling of the lawyers. It was decidedly odd, not being on guard against a poke in the eye from a porter’s pole, not coughing from the dust of the stonemasons’ mallets, not sidestepping a sudden swish of dirty water down the gutters. All this scenery-good life in Illyria, she exclaimed to herself, it just wasn’t natural.
But what was natural around here? Not the Collatinuses, that was for sure. Barking mad, the lot of them. In fact, the only one who wasn’t barking was Cerberus, their soppy, sloppy guard dog, and even Claudia, who knew precious little about canine behaviour, could have told Fabius that a kick in the ribs wasn’t the answer.
Nor was theirs a high-spirited madness-good heavens, if only! They were simply unpleasant. There was no other word for it.
Claudia had long forgiven Sabina for her part (or, rather, lack of) in that dockside fiasco last Monday. It was not, she supposed, Sabina’s fault she had a cog missing-but her mother… Holy Mars, Matidia was enough to make a physician break his seal of secrecy! If that woman possessed any brain cells whatsoever, they had to be evenly distributed round her body. Squashed together and concentrated between her ears they might at least have served a useful purpose, but instead Matidia’s thoughts were as sparse and as colourless as her hair, which she hid beneath a succession of elaborate-if perfectly hideous-wigs.
Funnily enough, this very airy-fairyness was the strongest evidence yet to corroborate Sabina’s claim to Collatinus blood, although even her mother didn’t connect the chubby child who left home with the willowy creature who came back.
‘I thought your eyes were grey, darling,’ Matidia said mournfully on greeting her long-lost daughter and Claudia’s ears had pricked up.
Aha! Was the imposter about to be denounced at last?
‘Or do I mean blue?’
No wonder her husband, Aulus, dissolved his frustrations in the wine goblet. Since his own father, Eugenius, was something of a tyrant, running both business and household with an iron fist in spite of an accident which left him bedridden, Aulus, at the age of fifty-eight, could perhaps have been forgiven the odd indulgence-had he been less of a bigot and a bully, and uncommonly proud of both qualities. His patronizing air bounced right off Claudia, but probably went a long way towards explaining why the good folk of Sullium rarely accepted his social invitations and dished them out even less.
Of course, in Aulus’s case, Claudia thought cheerfully, it was easy to look down one’s nose at people. When you’ve got a hooter that long, what other option is there?
Aulus had sired two other children-sons, both as tall and gaunt as their parents. Portius, a mere eighteen with kohl-rimmed eyes and bejewelled fingers, was probably a mistake in his conception and everything had gone downhill since. He was, Matidia enthused, a genius, a prodigy. He had had the Call, she said. He worshipped his Muse with unstinting devotion, she said. Why, you could catch Portius night and day kneeling to Euterpe, she said, laying offerings at her feet and listening to the notes of her flute that gave him the rhythm to his poetry, notes which we mortals were denied unless we, too, had had the Call. She said.
Then there was Linus. What could you say about Linus? Thirty-one, with his high forehead and receding, gingerish hair, he looked at you the way most people look at cowpats stuck on the sole of their sandals. In true Collatinus tradition he had taken himself a tall, bony wife with a short neck and stooped shoulders and there were, no doubt, many ways of describing Corinna. Mousy, bland and nondescript dashed to the fore. Unfortunately, there were precious few ways of remembering her. She came, and then she went. Finish. No conversation, no animation, no impact.
A far cry from their offspring, four ghastly, unruly brats. Well, let’s be charitable and say three, because Vilbia was still toddling. Just give her time.
Add to that a wide range of secretaries, scribes, servants, tutors and slaves. Mix well. Stir in an extra helping of jealousy, vanity, squabbling, back-biting and miserliness, top with a tartar-and a visitor quickly begins to get the picture.
There’s Dexippus, Claudia reflected, Eugenius’s secretary, with his thick lips and strange, brooding stare. There was Piso the tutor, bald on top apart from a little tuft of wispy dark hair right at the front, with a penchant for the cane. And there was Senbi, their hard-boiled household steward, who, along with his son, Antefa, kept the slaves in line and whose word was law, whose justice was rough.
The guest bedrooms, being at the front of the house and thus well distanced from those of the family which flanked the garden, gave Claudia some degree of protection, but was it enough? Would Rome be far enough from this bunch of callous, self-absorbed individuals?
‘And to think I was in a hurry to get away from Syracuse.’ Claudia addressed her remark to a pair of swallows describing frantic parabolas overhead.
‘Tsee!’ Selfish creatures. Totally disinterested in other people’s problems. ‘Tsee!’ They swooped and soared and flew on.
Tuesday, the morning after the alleyway incident, Claudia made the rounds to see who might be sailing west and secured eight passages on the Pomona, a merchant galley prepared to drop them off at Fintium. With Syracuse bursting at the seams with army veterans, Fabius had been as happy as a pig in a ditch and she’d had to prize him away in the end.
‘I thought you wanted to mark time,’ he’d said petulantly, trying to fathom out why his belongings were sitting in a heap at the bottom of a gangplank.
‘What on earth for?’ The mast was being stepped, it wasn’t long now.
‘Why didn’t you wait for their eyes to open?’
Another good sign, the oarsmen were boarding.
‘Fabius, they’re animals. One doesn’t “mark time” for animals. Do have a care!’ A stream of indignant feathers flew from the bars in the crate his toe had stubbed. ‘Those are our chickens.’
What have I let myself in for? she wondered. Dammit, they didn’t even feed you on these poky little coastal tubs, you had to provide for yourself!
Fabius nursed his injured toe. ‘Yesterday you said…’
Claudia moved to let a stevedore past, his back bowed with the crate on his shoulder. ‘Yesterday I wasn’t expecting to be raped behind the storehouses,’ she snapped.
‘You did say only eight places?’ His eyes rested on the red fireball and her pet gorilla haring down the wharf towards them, their progress impeded only slightly by the burden of bedding and provisions. ‘What about Tanaquil?’
Claudia stepped daintily into the bow and shrugged, her face a picture of innocence as she asked, was it her fault the Pomona was full?
With Sabina having difficulty negotiating the rail, she offered to hold the blue flagon, but the make-believe Vestal declined with her usual infuriating politeness.
‘A talisman, is it? Your good-luck charm?’
Distracted momentarily, with one foot on the deck boards and the other on the gangplank, Sabina produced one of her rare frowns. ‘Claudia, dear,’ she said in the sort of tone you’d use to a backward child, ‘I keep my soul in it.’
Such was the impact of the statement that Claudia nearly missed the interchange on the quayside. Fabius, clearly untrustworthy, was in the middle of having a quiet word with the captain, man to man, or in this case coin to coin. Within seconds, Sabina’s new-found friend and her big, ugly brother were hopping merrily aboard. Which, of course, they would, seeing as how the ship was only half-full. Claudia heard teeth gnashing as the oars began to lap, and wasn’t surprised to find they were hers.
Now, across the Sicilian countryside, yellow and parched from the summer heat, Claudia was watching Collatinus’s workforce making their weary way to the outhouses for their evening meal. She leaned down and pulled on her own sandals. Why did nothing go according to plan?
Contrary to what she told Fabius, her real reason for leaving Syracuse quickly was business in Agrigentum, and once they’d cleared harbour it was her turn to have a quiet word with the captain. It was at this point she discovered Gaius’s old ox-hide map was less than accurate. Agrigentum, the captain said apologetically, was not on the coast. He could drop her off at the nearby port of Empedocles? Instant calculations decided there might be mileage to be made from Eugenius Collatinus and so as the merchantman struggled against the prevailing headwind, Claudia squinted into the distance, barely able to make out Agrigentum’s honey-coloured walls perched high on the hill.
Damn!
The coaster, manned by oars and therefore less impeded by westerlies than ships relying solely on sail, took barely three days to reach Fintium. More, and Claudia might well have been tempted to jump overboard, what with Tanaquil’s incessant chatter and Utti’s cauliflower ears all over the place. The only consolation was that Sabina stayed below in her quarters and Fabius was quite spectacularly seasick.
But the upshot was that, after a full twelve days at sea, Claudia did not have the inclination to make the lumpy, bumpy half-day wagon ride back to Agrigentum. Early days, she thought. No hurry. She stood up and straightened a ring on her finger. Tomorrow, she’d see what Sullium had to offer. Because something had to be happening in this tedious little backwater.
Hadn’t it?
*
It was the painted eye which first caught his own. The carved and painted eye which adorned the prow and kept watch for evil spirits. Seemingly alone, it bobbed quietly and unblinkingly on the bright blue swell, gazing up at the cottonball clouds. Then gradually more and more shattered planks hove into sight, and finally Marcus Cornelius Orbilio lent his strong arm to hauling up the bodies. Unlike the eye, these floated face downwards, staring at the sponges and the seaweed, their fingers and arms and necks and ears glistening with jewels which they had hastily crammed on to ensure that whoever found them would have the wherewithal to give them a good funeral.
Two of the men had killed themselves, rather than face death by drowning. They recovered nine bodies in total. And that was just on the first day of his voyage.
Everyone knew about the storm in the Ionian, three tortuous days of it, though the helmsman assured him she’d blown herself out.
He was right, and the knowledge did not make Orbilio feel better.
Faster than a racing chariot, the trireme, sleek and light, cleaved a lovely line through the water. It had set out at first light the morning after he had called at Claudia’s house, but by then, as he learned from her Macedonian steward, Claudia had already been gone a week. Except…
The flautist, piping time for the oarsmen, changed his key, indicating that they would shortly be putting in to harbour. This would be what, Orbilio’s seventh night with the navy? He’d really hoped to catch up by now. Unfortunately, as much as the warship made brilliant speed on the water, two hundred men do need to eat and sleep and for that, they put ashore. Swings and roundabouts, he thought. Swings and roundabouts.
Claudia, too, would be held up. Assuming she was safe (praise Jupiter she was, he had no way of knowing), the storm would have added two days to her voyage. Also, he knew the Furrina was bound only for Syracuse. Changing ships would add a further day-and suppose she went sightseeing? Or took the overland route?
Gulls wheeled and shrieked as the boat shipped oars. Anchors were heaved over the side. Tired oarsmen, their stiffened, corded muscles glistening with sweat, checked the money in their purses. They were responsible for their own rations, and would have to purchase them ashore.
Orbilio watched the dark waters claim the last segment of the sun. The waning moon was already high. Tomorrow would be the tenth day of October. He might, if the gods were with him, arrive in Fintium before her.
He hoped he was not too late.