Marilyn Todd - Black Salamander

‘So how come you’ve taken two buns?’

Damn! ‘I dine late,’ she said, licking the honey from her top lip.

‘Then why are you going out early?’

Somewhere, Claudia could hear teeth grinding. Hers. ‘Orbilio, it’s a lovely summer’s evening, in case you hadn’t noticed. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to explore this beautiful city?’

‘Mmm.’ He frowned in concentration. ‘Well-’

‘That was not a serious question.’

‘Maybe not,’ he said mildly, ‘but it deserves a serious answer. And I can think of at least one category of person whose thoughts wouldn’t be on exploring this particular town, where the Sequani tongue predominates, where the buildings are nothing to write home about, being mostly timber framed and thatched, and where organized entertainment is painfully thin on the ground. The person, for instance, who has an appointment to keep?’

‘Is blue blood a prerequisite for tunnel vision?’

‘An appointment, moreover, for trading certain packages?’

‘Marcus, Marcus, Marcus.’ Claudia fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Surely if you, as one of Rome’s leading investigative lights, believed a certain citizen was conveying treasonable information, you would do your utmost to ensure this was not passed to the enemy?’

‘I would.’

Still they stood side by side, leaning against opposite doorposts, sipping wine and not looking at each other.

‘Therefore you would be confident that said citizen was actually in possession of said document?’

‘I would.’

‘And to acquire said information, you’d have had to make a search of said citizen’s belongings?’ Breathe in. Deep breath. Cross fingers. ‘Therefore you must know by now I am not a courier.’

There was a beat of six. Had the bluff worked? ‘I haven’t searched your belongings,’ he growled.

Yes!

‘And you know damn well why.’

Don’t I just! Not because he couldn’t. Even though the satchel had been attached to Claudia tighter than a barnacle, a professional like Supersnoop had the nous to find a way, and neither was it because he feared Claudia would notice. His hands were far too deft for that. No, no. Marcus Upright Orbilio had not searched her satchel because it breached his code of ethics.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she said, topping up their glasses with a guileless smile.

Orbilio rubbed a weary hand over his face. ‘Time is running out for silly mind games,’ he said eventually. ‘So I shall spell it out.’

Although clearly the alphabet was not his strong point. Several minutes passed, in which Claudia could feel the heat from his body shimmering across the handspan which divided them. There were moments, she thought she could hear his heartbeat, even above the clamour of chariots rattling over the flagstones below, above the incomprehensible jabber of Sequani hucksters and the pleas of beggars, unmistakable in any language. Noises filtered up from the wine room below, the clink of plates, the chink of goblets, laughter, banter, and tantalizing aromas of roast boar and sucking pig, of garlic, leeks and fresh baked yeasty bread.

‘Jupiter alone is privy to what happened in your past,’ Orbilio said, so quietly she had to strain to catch the words. Then he cleared his throat, and his baritone was crisp and level once again. ‘I could have searched your bags,’ he said, turning for the first time to face her. ‘Any time I wanted, and you’d have never known. But I would.’ He would never know the strength of mind it took to keep on staring straight ahead, so he might only catch her profile. Unblinking and unconcerned.

‘And I am not prepared to live with that deception.’ His voice rasped. ‘On the other hand,’ and suddenly there was steel in his voice, ‘neither am I prepared to stand aside while you profit from Rome’s downfall.’

He could not see the hand at her side which clenched so tightly that her nails drew blood from the palm as they dug into the flesh.

‘Cheap shot, Marcus. Which, incidentally, has failed to hit its target’-my integrity-‘if only for the simple reason that, had you felt it prudent to remove and presumably destroy the various sections which comprise the map, you would have done so. Therefore your strategy must be to allow the rebellion to continue right on schedule.’

It was not enough that he nipped this plot in the bud. He wouldn’t rest until he’d brought the conspirators to book, and he could only do that by letting the couriers hand over their precious deerskin pouches and following the middleman, in the hope it would lead…where? The middleman was working for the rebels.

And then, as though snow had come blasting down from the Alps, Claudia understood why Orbilio was here, in her room this afternoon. It was his intention to be part of the plan. To relieve her of her portion of the map and hand it over in her place, to inveigle himself with the rebels. She wondered why that should make her sick to her stomach. After all, he ran risks every day, why should this be any different? Wasn’t he always putting himself in the firing line? It’s his job. He chooses to do it. She shouldn’t feel queasy with worry ‘Assuming our conclusions are correct,’ he said, and Claudia was glad she remained in profile, because without intending to, one renegade eyebrow shot skywards when he said ‘our’. Something kicked inside her stomach, too. ‘The conspirators in Rome are out to double-cross the rebel chieftains.’

‘Who must keep on believing that payment for their role in the overthrow of the Empire is still coming, even when it isn’t, because the conspirators need that money to keep the Roman soldiers sweet.’ Don’t think I haven’t been paying attention, Marcus Cornelius! ‘However, if the bribe is so vast,’ she said, ‘why don’t you trace it from source?’ Why join forces with the rebels, why put yourself in so much danger?

A wry smile twisted his face. ‘Tried that-and guess what? No single individual has moved the bulk of his assets within recent weeks, and believe me, we’d know about financial shifts on that scale in the Security Police-oh, and before you say it, a whole group of them couldn’t have moved bits and pieces of their fortunes-you’d be talking about a hundred conspirators, and even if there was just a fraction of that number, we’d have heard a whisper through informants.’

‘Suggesting how many are involved at top level?’

‘No more than two or three.’

A vague thought flickered on the edge of Claudia’s mind. Something Dexter had said. Dexter. Dexter. What was it? Connected with his work. Binding senatorial archives. Ah, yes! The State Treasury. Suppose the State Treasury had been raided?

‘The whole lot moved under cover to pay off the tribes?’ He shot her a do-me-a-favour kind of smile. ‘Impossible,’ he said, ‘Absolutely im-’ He stiffened. ‘But it’s funny you say that, because Senator Galba is in charge of the Treasury-and Senator Galba also organized this delegation to tie in with the inaugural ceremony of the temple in Vesontio.’

‘Four years ahead of the actual half-century to celebrate the Roman/Sequani peace deal.’

‘It will take four years to build a temple to Castor and Pollux,’ he said, although for an objective opinion, it came over as pretty unconvincing.

Down below, angry male voices rang out from the wine room. Theo, shouting that they should just pay the man and stop quibbling, while Volso argued back that it wasn’t that simple, was it? Five thousand sesterces were to be handed over, daylight bloody robbery in itself, but why should he, Volso, have to pay more than his share? For crying out loud, Theo yelled, where can the drivers, let alone the bloody horses, find that kind of money? This was a co-operative venture, why couldn’t he bloody co-operate. Co-operative? Volso was on the verge of apoplexy. Whose fault was it they took that sodding shortcut? Get the army to cough up, if Theo felt so strongly about co-oper-bloody-ration.