Marilyn Todd - Black Salamander

The wait seemed interminable, and she was left wondering what crickets do all the time. Do they just spend eight hours solid rubbing their back legs, and if so, don’t they ever chafe themselves?

‘Salamander?’ he said at length, rolling over on to his stomach. ‘No.’ His voice was bleak with disappointment. ‘The Security Police keeps an imprint of every seal in case of forgery, but…’ he clicked his tongue, ‘no black salamander.’

More time passed, and it occurred to her that this silence was a professional ruse, in which case Supersnoop was right out of luck. Claudia lay down on the cool grass at right angles to him and closed her eyes. Something else slithered into the water, she could hear it paddling across, while on this side of the pond, a weasel chattered and churred among the trees. Funny, but until now she’d imagined the countryside was silent during the night-not like Rome, whose streets rang with dray carts clattering over the travertine flags, forcing porters to shout over whores touting for business and barrows trundling out the dead under cover of darkness. Heaven, how she ached to be among the thick of it again! Asses braying at the dogs which yapped under their hooves, cats yowling their territories from the rooftops and brawls which spilled into the alleys. However, as long as there was at least some noise around, Claudia supposed she could put up with this fresh-airsy deep-breaths stuff. For a little while, anyway.

‘I give in,’ he said eventually, yawning. ‘Tell me why you raised the subject of the salamander seal.’

Claudia shot a triumphant wink at the silvered nymph. ‘Now, it’s not that I was prying or anything-’

‘Perish the thought.’

‘-but during the course of our travels, I’ve had occasion to…help some of the others with their packing. There was a boy, a perfumer, I can’t remember his name, who carried a yellow deerskin pouch sealed with the salamander, although unfortunately he was robbed and turned back at Bern. But the curious thing is, Clemens is carrying an identical pouch. What do you make of that, Cleverclogs?’

‘Clemens robbed the perfumer?’

Claudia threw her sandal at him. He caught it in one lazy hand.

‘Tell me about your fellow travellers,’ he said, his fingers absently tracing the tooling in the leather. ‘The lyre-maker, for instance, who was swept away in the ferocious torrent-did anybody actually see him fall?’

No. ‘No idea.’

‘And Nestor. Hundreds of rocks raining down, what rotten luck he sustains a solitary blow, which kills him.’

‘Tragic.’

‘Mm.’ Orbilio tossed the sandal back to its owner and stood up, looping his thumbs into his belt as he gazed across the moonless glade, the heat throbbing with the beat of the cicadas. ‘My theory is this,’ he said. ‘Nestor, the lyre-maker, the perfumer, they were all carrying pieces of the treasure map, the same as Clemens and…well, let’s say at least one other person.’

He rubbed the back of his neck, where her glower had singed the hairs.

‘But suppose the conspirators don’t want the rebels to lay their grubby hands on the gold? They’ll need every gem and trinket in the coming months to purchase the army’s allegiance-after all, there’s no point in restoring the Republic if, two weeks later, a few uppity generals wrest control from you. They’ll need to convince the military high command that a Republic is in their better interests, bribing them with-I dunno, more lands for veterans, better garrisons, hospitals, generous pensions when they retire-while at the same time, they need to keep them occupied. The more time that passes after the overthrow, the harder it will be to dislodge the pretenders, and should the new administration manage to distract the army by sending them against the Treveri and the Helvetii, proven enemies of Rome, the takeover will be a resounding success, long live the new Republic.’

‘Hence the diversion of this section of the convoy.’ Whoops. She hadn’t meant to let slip her suspicions about sabotage, but either Hotshot hadn’t noticed, or…or he had taken her knowledge of the situation as read.

‘The conspirators need to fool the rebels into believing this detour was the result of a misunderstanding, that the landslide was a natural disaster. But I saw that rock from the top, Claudia. The iron wedges which had been driven into the fissures to weaken them were still in place. However, it goes deeper than simply stalling for time. The conspirators must ensure that, by the time this delegation reaches Vesontio, the map will have been rendered meaningless.’

‘Mercenaries have keen noses,’ Claudia protested. ‘They’ll smell rats.’

‘Possibly, but providing everyone who survives this jolly little jape testifies to the series of accidents which befell them, even the chieftains would find this hard to disprove, especially when they have been presented with so many of the missing pieces.’

And mine will be one of them, vowed Claudia. A whole year’s vintage rests on this.

Puzzled, Orbilio leaned over the strawberry cairn, muttering something under his breath about greedy hedgehogs and did the offering to Aveta still count. Then he turned his attention back to the matter in hand.

‘You do realize,’ he said soberly, ‘that each of the couriers is an accessory to treason? That when this plot comes to light, nothing I can do will stop the army, the Senate, the whole Roman people from taking retribution on anyone tainted with this conspiracy, however innocently they’d been duped.’

‘Clemens was never going to make Jupiter’s Priest, anyway.’

‘Claudia, for gods’ sake,’ he said, throwing up his hands. ‘I’m talking about exile, seven, maybe ten years, penniless and stripped of your assets.’

‘The couriers’ assets,’ she corrected silkily, and pretending not to notice the look of exasperation on his face.

‘Very well, we’ll play it your way,’ he growled. ‘Just remember that when this blows up, the conspirators are going to take as many with them as possible. They won’t want people to think they were an isolated group working alone, they’ll get their glory any way they can, and if that means hundreds of innocents dying horrible deaths, so much the better in their eyes.’

He fell silent, and Claudia knew it was gnawing away at him that, simply on account of their position in society, the conspirators themselves would be allowed to commit suicide. An honourable death…a system which no Republic would change.

A bird began to sing, even though the sky was still blacked out, but she didn’t hear it. There are times, she thought, when duty becomes an obsession. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at the investigator, his brow deeply furrowed, and wondered when he’d last taken a decent furlough. Relaxed properly. Found time to unwind. Sure, the Empire had been thrown into turmoil with the death of its Regent, sure, there were conspiracies, but these were constant, ongoing, and one man can’t fight every battle alone.

Claudia wondered why something wrenched inside her whenever she saw him like this, tortured and so terribly earnest. I mean, it wasn’t as if they meant anything to one another! Tall, dark patricians were ten a quadran back in Rome, and so what if they’d shared a few adventures now and again? It wasn’t as though she missed him when he wasn’t around-hell, she couldn’t escape his wretched baritone chuckle ringing in her memory whenever the moon was high and she had trouble sleeping, and all too often she saw him in a crowd-or at least a piece of him, reflected in the way one man strode so purposefully across the Forum, another spiked his fingers through dark curls, another smelled of sandalwood. And so what, when she re-ran the sequence of recent events in her head, if he was at the forefront? Too often her life pitted her against the law, and for heaven’s sake, he was the law. These things happen.