Marilyn Todd - Dream Boat

'Janus!'

It was bad enough when Claudia had believed the guttersnipe was male. Now it transpired the hardcase was a girl!

Due to increased congestion along the Appian Way, the horse carrying Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was forced to slow to a canter, and whereas a lesser horse would have registered its disapproval with several loud snorts and a repeated flick of its mane, this one kept its feelings to itself. The rider, however, being every bit as thoroughbred as the stallion, sensed the disappointment in the strong black shining flesh beneath his saddle. Comforting pats on its neck quickly mollified his mount and, with a twitched-ear acknowledgement, it continued at a happy trot, eyeing coldly, though, the plodding mules and oxen, the pedestrians and soldiers which had cut short its gallop on the open road. Look at them, the stallion snickered. Heat weary, trudging slower than a funeral. Poor breeding always tells!

Orbilio tossed a coin to a mother with a withered arm, whose toddler child was a mass of open sores.

'Bless you, sir,' she cried, 'oh, bless you,' and suddenly a crowd of beggars surged around him, attracted by the woman's vocal gratitude, only his thoughts had closed in to engulf him and Marcus rode on, as impervious to their pleas as he was to the beauty of the countryside, the dappled wooded hills, the shimmering heat haze, the waysides teeming with buttercups and campion, columbines and mallow. How could his boss do this to him? It's an administrative role, overseeing that the Roll of Honour was inscribed correctly on Mount Alban!

'Don't you think it's important, then?' sneered the fat toady who headed Rome's Security Police. 'Recording the participating luminaries in marble for posterity?'

'Of course I do, sir.' That aspect was not in dispute. Every year, both consuls plus all the other magistrates in Rome rode out to Mount Alban to make sacrifice to Jupiter at the long lines of semi-circular altars laid out in his honour. It was a solemn and religious ritual which culminated in the lighting of a giant beacon on the mountain, and naturally there had to be a record. It was his being assigned to the task that galled!

'Jupiter's balls, man, we're the Security Police!' his boss had bawled. 'We're not bound by bloody bureaucracy.' He snorted in derision. 'You don't expect spies and agents to be hampered by an army of clerks and scribes, now do you?'

'No, sir.' The sensitive nature of their work put them outside every government department, including the army. 'But-' 'The Mount Alban ceremony, Orbilio, involves every highflier leaving the city at once. We have our bloody work cut out making sure that Rome remains secure on the one hand, while at the same time ensuring those illustrious dignitaries in the hills can sleep safe from the assassin's knife.'

'I realise that, sir.' If there was ever a better time to mount a coup, no one could think of one! 'It's just that-'

'Therefore, having achieved our objectives, I made a personal petition to the Senate to allow us to follow through this year and supervise the Roll of Honour.'

And in so doing, had tied Orbilio tighter than a hog for market! Stressing each official's individual significance in the government of the Empire, his oily little boss had added that he felt it only appropriate this should be reflected in the social standing of the officer appointed to oversee the Roll of Honour. It was his pleasure, he said, to assign the department's only patrician to said task, and naturally this was greeted with the predictable hum of approval. Bastard.

Reining in his horse at a water trough, Orbilio dismounted, patting the gleaming black flanks and inhaling the rich, leathery smell of the saddle. He knew damn well why his boss was doing this. To get him out the way. After all, you can't hurry a stonemason, not with that number of names to chip out! Drawing a cup of water for himself, Orbilio sluiced it over his face and allowed some to trickle down the inside of his neck. And with him duly sidelined, who would take the credit for averting that uprising in Gaul? None other than a short, fat, oily worm who would spread his pudgy hands and murmur, 'Oh, it was nothing,' and for him that's exactly what it was. Nothing. That slimy little bastard had sat back in his office, doing bugger all while Orbilio risked life and limb in Gaul.

Marcus replaced the cup beside the water trough and remounted. His boss, goddammit, had instigated no action, no policy, he'd not even sent him back-up. He'd just waited to see how events played themselves out. Then, once he realised Orbilio's hunch was on target, it was from his comfy office in Rome that he had distributed sheafs of propaganda and accepted the ensuing accolades. Indeed, by the time an exhausted Marcus Cornelius returned to the capital, having single-handedly settled the tribes and thwarted insurrection, it was to find his boss playing down the bloody incident and ordering him to supervise this sodding Roll of Honour.

As his horse's hooves resonated on the metalled road, the rich, sweet scent of honeysuckle, the low-pitched hoopoe's croon, the rasp of crickets in the long grass beside the road left no imprint on Marcus Cornelius. Somehow he had to find a way to dump this bloody quill-pushing job and knuckle down to some proper work. Rooting out forgers, frauds and killers.

But how? How? He wanted one day to take his own seat in the Senate, and he wanted it so badly sometimes it hurt. Apart from the obvious 'dereliction of duty' charge which would descend on him if he simply walked away from this wretched Roll of Honour, it would look as though he was sticking two fingers up at every senior government official as well as at the Senate itself. Damn. Damn, damn and damn his boss to hell.

You'd think he'd have given him at least some of the credit for taking on the Gaulish rebels single-handed. Oblivious to the chariots which rattled down the Appian Way or the melodious strains of a band of travelling musicians, Orbilio slowed his stallion to a walk. Well. Maybe not entirely single-handed. A smile played around his lips. He had had an accomplice.

Admittedly not a willing one, but nevertheless, without the help of a certain Claudia Seferius, the Gauls would still be at one another's throats.

True, without her involvement, it's doubtful they'd ever have considered a revolt, but that, Orbilio felt, was quite beside the point!

What mattered was that, together, he and Claudia had averted a national disaster, and what was his reward? A downgrading from what he did best, which was catching murderers and rooting out corruption in high places, capped, if you please, by rejection from the woman he.. the woman he what?

Dammit, no, he wouldn't bloody say it!

An anvil slammed into his gut, as he pictured a girl with flashing eyes and flashing temperament, a girl who took life's coiners on two wheels. Shared moments flickered in his memory: skirmish with head hunters; horrific wicker man sacrifices. The danger. The anxiety. Tense times when it might have gone either way. Through it all, though, whether crying tears of laughter or lying bloodied and bruised at death's door, there was not a single second when that wildcat hadn't been at the forefront of his thoughts. A lump formed in Orbilio's throat. How many times had he stopped himself from reaching out to touch skin softer than rose petals, from kissing the luscious dip inside her collarbone, from running his tongue inside her ear? He'd lost count of how often he'd imagined what it would be like to pull out the ivory pins holding up her hair, watch the heavy curls tumble down across the high swell of her breasts. Too many sultry nights had passed when he couldn't sleep for the desperate ache inside him; yearning to take her in his arms and make love to her, slowly and with care, the pleasure in the giving not the getting. Yet what had happened when he called at her house the other day?