Marilyn Todd - Black Salamander

Maybe the landslip was Mother Nature’s work after all?

Steam and the delicious smell of mint tea drifted upstream from the cauldron, crackling over an aromatic fir fire, while sunlight filtered through the trembling aspens to make dazzling patterns on the fizzy waters of this wide rushing river.

Briskly, Claudia rubbed at her hair. Oh yes, a peaceful and contented scene all right, reminiscent of public holidays when city folk crowd into the Alban hills for picnics and bonfires and musical celebrations. Except this was no happy-go-lucky chaplet-and-garland day. The motive behind thirty-two people being trapped in this sweltering valley might be sinister or simply the result of prolonged, heavy rain, but the point is, Claudia reminded herself, whether the saboteur walks among us or not, one of our bunch is a cold-blooded killer.

‘Hey!’ The shout echoed along the ravine. ‘Up there! Look!’

Everyone followed to where Hanno’s gnarled finger was pointing.

‘I can’t see anything,’ Dexter said. ‘My eyes are too weak to see far in the sunlight,’ but nobody heard him, because by now they’d all risen to their feet in excitement and were yelling and pointing and squinting simultaneously.

Upstream on a bend and unable to see what the others could, Claudia felt her legs go weak with relief. The army. At long last, the army had found them. From now on, the convoy was safe.

‘Who is he, can you tell?’ the slipper-maker asked. His profile was slanting lower all the time, marking the company’s descent and Claudia frowned. He? Surely the slipper-maker meant ‘they’?

‘Not Helvetii,’ Volso said, shielding his eyes for a better view. ‘Or Sequani for that matter. They wear pantaloons, rather than tunics.’

They. That’s better.

‘He looks Roman to me,’ Titus said.

He?

‘And to me,’ piped up one of the drivers.

‘And me.’ That was Hanno.

The wooden bridge echoed with the rumble of footsteps running in greeting, but still Claudia couldn’t quite see. Then a bolt of white lightning shot through her. Sweet Juno in heaven, I’m hallucinating. Too much root of burdock, too little wine, those mushrooms must have been the wrong type. I’m seeing things.

But…surely she recognized that long patrician tunic? That mop of wavy, dark hair? A catapult ricocheted all round her ribcage. Someone sucked the air out of her lungs.

‘Trust him,’ she muttered to a brimstone butterfly. Of all the bravehearts sent to rescue us, it had to be him in the bloody vanguard.

Yellow wings fluttered closer.

‘Who?’ Claudia framed the question the little butterfly could not. ‘I’ll tell you who!’ Her voice came out in a hiss. ‘Marcus Fancypants Orbilio, that’s who.’

And I need him around like I need a kick up the bum. With her teeth grinding down to their gums, she launched a rock into orbit. Trust Hotshot to have to prove himself a hero. Him and his bloody ambitions for the Senate.

Still. Claudia scrubbed the feeling back into the two lumps of meat which had once been her feet but which had stayed too long in the icy cold river. When you’re rescued from a shipwreck, you don’t whinge about the quality of the blankets they wrap you in, do you?

As she clambered back over the rocks towards the riverbank, the numbness playing havoc with her ankle joints, she noticed Junius jogging up the road towards her.

‘Have you crated Drusilla?’ she asked. ‘Stuffed our bits and pieces back in the trunk?’

‘Um-’

‘It’s about bloody time the army did something useful for a change.’

Goodbye, outdoorsy life with your fresh air, open skies and whatnot. Roll on Vesontio’s theatres, dinner parties, dress shops and herbalists.

‘Ah-’

Give me stuffy streets and noisy tenements any day. Nothing beats the taste of dust from the hooves of the charioteer’s nags, the racket from a few brawling drunkards, the thwack of boxers’ knuckles connecting with chins. Claudia checked her satchel, the one which had never left her sight, not even at night when she used it as a pillow, and saw the seal of the salamander staring back at her.

‘Junius, why are you standing there with a face like a thunderclap?’ She rubbed at the pins and needles which had set into her feet. ‘Either we’re packed or we’re not, and if you tell me we’re not, you can expect to be served your own liver for tea.’

‘Well, madam-’

Claudia forced the icy blocks into her sandals. ‘Wells are for water,’ she snapped, without looking up. ‘Now what’s the problem? Don’t tell me you want to remain in this godforsaken hellhole?’

He was a Gaul, after all. Maybe one day she ought to check where he came from…

‘It’s not that, madam.’ Ideally he’d have paused, found time to phrase his words, but her glare wouldn’t permit such a luxury and therefore his words tumbled out in a gush.

As the sun dived behind a cottonball cloud, Claudia listened to her bodyguard’s report, only what he was saying didn’t make sense. She made him repeat it, just in case he’d been at the magic mushrooms too, but no. Both accounts, while jumbled, retained the same salient points.

‘Let me get this straight.’ Claudia ticked them off on her fingers. ‘There’s no army here to rescue us.’

‘Correct.’

‘Superman out there’-mobbed by the crowd, Orbilio had all but disappeared in the crush-‘has come here completely alone.’

‘Correct.’

‘Pretending, what’s more, to be part of the delegation.’

‘His story’-try as he might, Junius could not fully disguise the sullenness which spoiled his handsome face as he jerked a thumb in the direction of the man crossing the bridge downstream-‘is that he was taken ill in Bern and spent three days in bed, by which time the convoy was long gone.’

‘Having completely forgotten about one of its aristocratic members?’ Claudia snorted.

‘According to him,’ Junius said sourly, ‘he urged the soldiers and servants to leave. Said he’d follow on by himself.’

The story had more holes than a beggar’s tunic, Claudia decided, and a vicious kick sent a pebble winging into the river. What’s his game this time? she wondered, and for several minutes stood on the bank, staring into the swirling white waters as though the rapids might throw up some answers. They didn’t, of course, and she was damned if she’d go up there and pose the question herself. No way. He irritated her, this tall patrician. The way he tried to conceal his amusement with the back of his hand. The way he smelled of fresh sandalwood unguent. The way that little pulse beat at the side of his neck. The way, in fact, he looked right now, crumpled and filthy, his face grey with exhaustion. Barging past Junius, the traps and rigs and horses, Claudia bumped to a halt at the raucous throng which had clustered round the new arrival, some clamouring for information, others chronicling their own adventures, some (Maria!) bemoaning their fate. Carefully, Claudia scrutinized the hillside on the Helvetian side of the gorge, but saw nothing that resembled sunshine gleaming off a load of armoured bodies. No ropes. No mules. No provisions. And the air was distinctly short on hollered instructions…

Shit.

Dancing dark eyes homed in on hers. Shit, shit, shit.

The bubbly blonde wife of the slipper-maker (or was it the glass-blower?) grabbed Claudia’s arm. ‘Marcus has had an incredible escape,’ she gushed.

He has? What about us? Where’s the sodding rescue team?

‘He followed the directions given to him, but of course the road’s fallen away and he had to clamber all the way over that mountain.’ A little plump finger dripping with awe pointed up to the ridge. ‘Don’t you think that’s incredible?’ she said breathlessly.