Marilyn Todd - Jail Bait

Besides, why worry her? There were better things to do when they got together, making more babies for a start, and checking on his neighbour-and before he left for Frascati he intended to have a word with that bloody architect and find out what the mucking hell he was playing at, not checking the mortar work on the depository. Munching on a bun, Tullus called for his secretary.

‘Any news on the Seferius chit?’ he asked through a spray of yellow crumbs.

‘Not a whisper, sir. Wherever she’s gone, she’s taken no servants and left no forwarding address.’

‘What about word from our agents?’

The secretary spread apologetic hands and Tullus grunted. Bloody saffron buns, bloody heavy-handed cook, he’d got bloody indigestion. He rubbed at the ache in his chest. ‘Heartburn,’ he mumbled. ‘Bloody heartburn from those bloody cakes.’

Reaching for a second bun, he ordered the clerk to make an urgent appointment to meet with the architect who built that strongroom and also to send a letter to his wife, informing her he’d be down by Tuesday next.

After all, Claudia Seferius can’t be that hard to track down, now can she?

*

Across the other side of Rome, in the warehouse district on the Aventine, the object of Tullus’ revulsion held a sprig of chamomile to his nostrils to counteract the putrid stench rising from the river and studied the flab around his visitor’s jowls, the overlap of his huge belly. He certainly didn’t look like the best, but then, as he knew himself, looks could be very deceptive.

‘Your wine, sir.’ An unctuous dwarf arrived to set a silver tray down on the desk and poured two glasses of the tepid wine, one for his master and one for the fat man who stank of cardamom.

‘Is he trustworthy?’ the fat man asked, crinkling his nose at the attendant.

Tullus’ nephew sniffed at the chamomile. With the plague ravaging the city, servants were thin on the ground, thanks to jittery slave traders who refused to come within twenty miles of the Forum. The opportunity to snap up a free man with impeccable references as well as a flair for discretion was not to be sneezed at. In fact, the young man decided smugly, the dwarf was proving something of a bargain.

‘The minion is eminently trustworthy,’ he murmured, fixing his chubby visitor with his cold, fish eyes. ‘The question, my friend, isare you?’

So soon, thought Claudia. She hadn’t expected Orbilio to pop up so soon. Ordinarily, of course, she’d have mapped out a strategy for dealing with him, but too many events had intruded-Cal, the bear, that wretched funeral-in too little time, with too many sidetracks. And now he was here. The thief-taker, goddammit, was here.

In the Great Hall, she cannoned into a middle-aged woman with a snub nose and hard eyes and the pair of them went tumbling. Stony-faced cow didn’t even apologize, thought Claudia, stepping over the woman’s tangled legs and blind to the venomous glare.

You should have anticipated his arrival, she told herself. You should not have assumed he’d turn up at some unspecified time in the future. You should have thought this through-dear Diana, you’ve encountered him often enough. For a start, there was the investigation into your husband’s death. Then Sicily. Umbria. Plus he was around that time-Jupiter, Juno and Mars, what is this? Some kind of maths test? Who cares how many times their paths had crossed, who gives a damn the way his hair falls across his forehead when he’s tired, and come off it, she’d hardly noticed that little scar underneath his collarbone as he lay sprawled on the couch!

Outdoors, the air pulsated, the crickets rasped as she skipped down the steps towards the shoreline, where two red dogs chased and tumbled in the long rough grass. Across the marshes, cranes trumpeted to one another and smells of roasting goose wafted down from the kitchens. A horse whinnied far in the distance.

Official business, he said…

Arbutes, tree spurge and straggly capers clung to the rock which thrust its way out of the water. Atlantis. Perched on top of this cliff. Atlantis. A triumph of marble and porphyry and cool colonnades. Where a glass of cloudy water can cure anything from gout to an ingrowing toenail. Where fortunes change hands for the privilege of being pummelled with oils and lolling in tubs of foul-smelling mud.

A miracle, the augurs pronounced, when Pylades discovered Carya’s sweet spring. Really? Claudia watched a lazy heron flap across the lake. Was Atlantis truly a place of miracles? Or mirages?

Of high standards? Or just double standards?

As a lone curlew let free its bubbling call, her mind considered the anomalies. The cave, the tunnel, Mosul the priest-as incongruous as they were linked. Because why should Pylades go to the substantial expense of gouging out an underpass and not show off this feat of civil engineering? Why not allow guests direct access to the spring? Surely not to keep sick pilgrims at a distance? That was unheard of! And yet Pylades had certainly segregated the classes here. Members of the aristocracy, alternating between their vast country estates and this spa. Merchants, flaunting their wealth as they indulged in long mudbaths and canoodled with women who in no way resembled their wives. Rich hypochondriacs, attracted to the waters for their chest/kidney/liver problems, oh yes, the wily Greek had separated the wine from the vinegar all right! Of course, there were always the artisans, gambling on wheedling noteworthy commissions from the relaxed holidaymakers, but by and large his clientele were the very cream of society.

Except for Lavinia.

See what I mean? Claudia paused to watch a two-tailed pasha flutter round the arbutes, to be joined by a second butterfly, this time an early grayling. Every time I turn my mind to Supersnoop and his wretched official business, another diversion leads me astray!

Without realizing where her steps had been leading, Claudia found herself down on the point where, perched on the jetty with one foot swinging free and his hair still tied back in a fillet, Tarraco whittled away at his woodcarving, undeterred by heat which could have fried oysters to a crisp.

‘I knew you would come.’ He did not look up.

‘Actually-’ She’d never even considered keeping the appointment.

‘Here.’ He blew the sawdust off the carving and tossed it across with a lopsided grin. ‘The only bear you encounter today.’ He turned to unhook the rowboat Claudia was so familiar with.

‘Sorry-’ she began, and then thought, what the hell? I’ve had it up to here with is-it-murder-is-it-not, of suspecting everyone I meet, of being petrified the army will clap me in irons any minute. At least there’s one place which offers a refuge outside the messy muddle of my life. One man who is not involved or under suspicion.

As Tarraco began to turn the boat around in the water, her eye was drawn to a figure watching from the sun porch and despite the searing heat, she shivered. Coincidence? That that just happened to be the spot from which Cal was supposed to have fallen?

Fluttering her fingers in a wave, Claudia smiled a cheesy smile at the man who leaned his weight against a glistening, gilded column.

Marcus Cornelius did not wave back.

*

The dispatch rider felt sure he must have put Pegasus to shame, the speed with which he covered the distance from Rome. The seal of the heron was sufficient to appease the most officious of post-station bureaucrats, and in the one instance where it was not and some pompous little twit had demanded to check the documents in full, the rider had ignored the silly sod and simply helped himself to a fresh horse. Let others set him right regarding the seal of the Security Police!

‘Will there be an answer, sir?’