Marilyn Todd - Dark Horse

Qus was one of the eight pallbearers, the only evidence of emotion being the five parallel scars on his forehead which now shone white in their ebony setting.

The smell of fishing boats hung rank in the air as the procession snaked its way past the harbour. Flax fibre nets had been spread out to dry, willow creels upended, children scrubbed barrels in preparation for preserving oysters and crayfish and squid in brine for the winter. Without a breeze to carry it away, the smoke from the torchbearers' flames rose upwards, like the black feathers of harpies, but Orbilio noticed none of it. It was his cousin's funeral, for gods' sake, he kept reminding himself. You've done enough damage letting him be killed in the way that he had, the least you can do is pay him the courtesy of mourning him properly.

But all he could think of was a girl with flashing eyes and a tongue like a bullwhip who had disappeared off the face of the earth.

Search parties had been sent out and he had placed Junius in charge in his absence, knowing that if anyone was going to find Claudia, it was the Gaul. Orbilio tenderly rubbed at his jaw. He couldn't blame the lad for taking a pop. Or for the threats he had made as he stormed off this morning.

'If she's dead,' Junius had said, wheeling his horse round, 'I will kill you.'

'Long live the governor!'

'Hurrah for Marcus Cornelius!'

A rain of petals showered over his black mourning cloak as he passed the waterside tavern where he had been staying the night Leo was murdered. Would these people still think him a hero if they knew the truth? Dammit, he should never have taken that bloody room. He should have gone straight to the villa, instead of buggering about playing cloak and dagger.

Outside the tavern, the man in his mid-forties, greying at the temple and with the spatulate artistic fingers that

Orbilio had envisaged handling fine works of art, watched the first of the two biers pass. Diplomatic, Orbilio decided. And shrewd. Magnus could hardly have joined Leo's cortege with Lydia present; while to pay his respects to Bulis would have been to snub his late patron. He acknowledged the sculptor's tight-lipped nod of sympathy and wondered what exchanges, if any, passed between Magnus and Lydia as she followed her ex-husband's body.

As the procession wound its way to the Temple of Neptune, a woman with malt-brown hair and green eyes sat defiantly on the steps with her arms wrapped round her knees. Nanai’, he concluded. Wondering whether she was here to mourn or to gloat.

It was only once the two biers were laid upon their respective pyres that Orbilio gave his full attention to delivering Leo's ovation, but when he stepped back to allow Saunio to deliver Bulis's, he noticed that the crowd comprised two very different groups. For the majority, this was the first Roman funeral they had witnessed and they were here partly to voice their allegiance to Rome, and partly out of curiosity. Why didn't the Romans simply bury their dead with their hands covering their faces like everybody else? But there was another group, a small minority comprising twelve, maybe thirteen people, who stood out from the crowd. The taverner's son, for example. As white as a barn owl. And the wheelwright, whose hands were shaking. These people, Orbilio realized, were scared. Scared of what? he wondered.

As the funeral attendants set a torch to the pyres, Shamshi rippled his way through to Orbilio's side. 'The organs of the sacrificial beast were sound,' he intoned. 'It augurs well for the souls of the departed.'

'The sun rose thrice more over our heads,' Orbilio countered, 'but no woman died.'

The smile that hovered at the corner of the Persian's mouth made his blood curdle. 'Did one not?' he asked softly, before drifting back into the throng and for a man who was watching his livelihood literally go up in smoke, he didn't seem unduly troubled, Orbilio reflected.

In front of him, the flames crackled and spat and the only outpouring of grief came from the artists, as Saunio's Beautiful Young Men clustered round to console the maestro as well as each other, ensuring outsiders could not breach their wall of self-contained mourning. At least they mourned. Qus might have been one of Magnus's sculptures. Nikias always looked like he was scowling. Lydia and Silvia were both visions in black, the one petite and fair, the other dark and statuesque, but not a glance had passed between them. And still Shamshi grinned.

Leo, Marcus felt, deserved better. Much, much better. But then we reap what we sow and whatever his intentions, however honourable they might have been, the bottom line was that Leo had not put them into practice. As a result, he'd left an aged uncle too bitter to grieve, plus an ex-wife and sister-in-law who couldn't find a tear to shed between them. His astrologer was indifferent, his bailiff detached, and even Nanai’, for whom he'd provided free housing for many years, felt he'd deserved all he'd got. Siring a son had blinded Leo to everything and everyone else. What made it particularly poignant was that he hadn't seen his motives as selfish. Robbing Petrus to pay Paulus came naturally to him. After all, everyone would be repaid in the end, the Villa Arcadia would be the most splendid palace in the whole of the Adriatic and, to cap it all, the rose-grower's daughter would give him a child every year until he lost count. By Leo's reckoning, this was a win-win situation, what's the problem?

Finally, after an eternity of waiting for messages from search parties that did not come, they approached the final rites of the double cremation. Censers were shaken vigorously, emitting clouds of fragrant grey smoke, handbells rattled, honeycakes thrown on the fire. Once the ashes were purified, a sense of relief fell over the assembly. Nothing stretches time like a body awaiting burial, and now a line had been drawn, allowing people to move on with their lives.

'You will come back to the villa?' Orbilio asked Lydia.

'The hell I will.' Her voice was pitched low and did not carry as far as the crowd. 'I want nothing more to do with that man or, and this is nothing personal Marcus, his kin. Be they related by blood or by marriage," she added, just loud enough for Silvia to hear.

The sun was sinking. Still no news of Claudia. What did Shamshi know, he wondered? He thought about the message that had brought so much trouble to this paradise island. Five words. Give back what is mine.

If only, if only…

One event sets off another, and so it goes on until a whole train is in motion and becomes unstoppable, out of control. The rage of frustration pulsed through his veins. Impotent. Useless. Hog-tied without any leads. The sun disappeared over the Istrian peaks, and with it withered his hopes.

All he knew for sure was there was a psychopath on the loose with god knows how many victims on his death roll. And that caught up in this whirlwind of evil was a woman with tumbling curls and dark flashing eyes.

Who might already be dead.

The instant the sun dipped behind the jagged peaks, the beechwoods turned to dark. Shadows appeared, shifting and menacing, and the gorge slipped into silence. These forests were home to all kinds of predator, Claudia reflected: boar, wolf, bear, snake. Just the place to be alone with a cadaver.

'Stay here,' Jason had growled, lowering a stiffening Geta against the bole of a spruce. They had reached the valley bottom, a dried-up river bed which only came to life in spring to drain away the snow melt. 'I need to do some reconnaissance.'

At the time, Claudia was just grateful for the rest. After a night which involved being kidnapped and trussed followed by shipwreck, mountaineering and artillery fire, not even the pack of hounds on her trail could prevent her from sinking into oblivion. A soft scuffle jolted her awake. She couldn't see anything in the blackness, but she sensed movement.