Marilyn Todd - Jail Bait

‘I do, Spaco,’ she said softly. ‘I do.’

With his ugly face suffused with pleasure, the diminutive assassin hammered his fist against his heart in salute as he retreated towards the trapdoor at the far end of the chamber, but her imperial majesty had already seated herself and was occupied with distaff and spindle when her husband popped his head round the door.

‘Spinning again?’ he mocked gently.

She simply smiled and said, ‘You know how it relaxes me, dear.’

It was unlikely, she decided, preoccupied as he was with the business of reining in the Empire, that Augustus would have heard the dwarf’s footsteps on the secret, wooden staircase.

Come to that, it was doubtful a mouse could have heard them.

*

Out along the Athens Canal, the heat throbbed like a brickworks kiln as Claudia leaned her arms on the balustrade and watched forked lightning dance across a sky the colour of driftwood. Why don’t you rain? Get it over with. But she knew in her heart, as another thunderclap drowned out the gurgling from the marble nymphs’ jugs, that this was yet another twist of Fate’s knife. Another spoke in her wheel of personal fortune.

‘You let him go?’ Orbilio had said slowly. ‘You set Tarraco free?’

They had been rowing back to shore and Claudia deliberately trailed her fingers in the water to avoid catching his hang-dog expression and explained that she didn’t, at the time, think he’d killed Lais.

‘Half of that I can’t quibble with,’ Marcus had replied so quietly she had to strain for the words. ‘The part where you didn’t think.’ She heard him sigh as he pulled on the oars, and wished to hell he’d shout at her, or swear or throw a tantrum. Instead he shook his head sadly from side to side. ‘Oh, Claudia. Why must you always rush in feet first to follow your heart?’

‘Wouldn’t one have to be curled in a ball to go feet first and still follow one’s heart?’ That ought to do the trick. Spur him into anger. But Marcus Cornelius did not rise to the bait.

‘Why not hang on for a while? Even-dare I suggest it-talk it over with me first?’

What could Claudia say? That if she’d waited, Cyrus would not have granted her permission to visit the prisoner? That, if she lived to be five hundred like the ancient Sibyl of Cumae, she could never justify to this high-born policeman her faith in a low-born Spanish gigolo?

Now, as the storm lowered itself on its hunkers over Plasimene, smells of roasted duck and game from the banqueting hall became entwined with the colonnade’s scents of marigolds and bay, and the clatter of knives on silver platters made music with the thunder along the Athens Canal. The combination of pleasure and oppression made her feel faint.

That she had believed in Tarraco was what made it so bloody hard to swallow! Eight years of acting the role of, what did he call it, ‘pleasure boy’ had honed his acting skills and with hindsight, Claudia saw that, after killing the bear, he was not just reading her character. The professional had been sizing her up.

With a violent shove, a terracotta pot filled with white, scented lilies went flying off the balustrade, to smash into a thousand smithereens. By admitting his crimes, actually even stressing his guilt (‘The evidence is overwhelming, is it not?’), Tarraco had manipulated her into believing him innocent, and now, thanks to her, he was free. Free. To keep his head down until the dust had settled. To slither back when the furore died down and step up his filthy campaign.

Croesus, he was going to get away with it, too.

Claudia’s hands raked her hair. With any number of caves and hidey-holes dotted round these wild, Etruscan hills, he could be anywhere. Him and his cronies, biding their time-and how long before the authorities stopped searching? If, indeed, they began. Claudia sent another pot crashing to its doom. As long as the gang remained at large, the townspeople would be too terrified to testify against them for fear of retribution, which begged the question, on what evidence did this conspiracy exist? The hunch of a young investigator whose ambitions were widely recognized? Backed up by a woman whose double-bedded accommodation he was paying for? A woman, moreover, connected to a potential treasonable theft?

Goddammit, were Tarraco to spend a week holed up in those hills, he’d be lucky.

Well. Claudia swiped the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. All the fragrant lilies in the world lying shattered on that path won’t solve the problem, but maybe-just maybe-there was another way to fell this mighty oak. It all hung on the courage of one old olive grower, who might or might not be being poisoned…

In the Great Hall, where the air was artificially cool, the hard-eyed, ravaged harpy for whom Claudia’s nickname of Stonyface seemed never more appropriate came bearing down on her. But not in greeting, the way she had the night she’d been conferring with Kamar behind the statue. Lips pinched, eyes narrowed, Stonyface thundered down the stepped marble floor, her snub nose set to the ground and seemingly oblivious to the sparkling watercourse, the guffaws of laughter from the dining hall, and also, it seemed, to pedestrians.

‘Out of my way, you stupid-’ preoccupied features suddenly leaped back into focus ‘-Oh.’ The hand which was about to barge Claudia aside froze in mid-air and the concrete jaw forced itself into some semblance of a smile. ‘I thought you were a slave girl.’

Claudia’s reciprocal smile told Granitepuss how she felt about that.

‘Only I imagined everyone was at dinner,’ the woman snapped in what presumably passed for an apology, before brushing past and slamming the door in her wake. But not before Claudia had caught the full force of the stewed walnut liquor which had freshly dyed out her grey.

Dear me, can’t she see, at her age, that less is more? If she fell into that watercourse right now, all you’d see would be her feet, the sheer weight of cosmetics would keep her under! No, no; subtlety’s the key in middle age. The hand that paints on those eyebrows should be light, and playing down her snub nose would make her infinitely more winsome than the girlishness she insisted on trying to achieve. Yet such was the haughtiness surrounding this old bag, it suggested not so much a blindspot as hardline inflexibility. In fact, so preoccupied was Claudia with wondering what turned perfectly attractive women into dogs that she almost failed to note the significance of what Lavinia was doing as she flung wide the door ‘NO!’ she cried. ‘For gods’ sake, Lavinia, no!’

The little sparrow of a woman lay propped up on her daybed, her fleece of white hair cascading over the strawberry damask bolster, her wig sitting in her lap like a docile, curly lapdog. One wrinkled hand held a red medicinal phial, the other held the bottle’s clear glass stopper.

Claudia flew across the room. ‘Don’t drink that!’

‘Tch.’ The old woman raised the phial to her lips. ‘You can’t win in this place,’ she said, although there was no punch in her voice and those mischievous eyes twinkled like sapphires in the sun. ‘One minute they tell you to finish off your medicine, the next they try and stop you. Well-’ half a second before Claudia reached the wheeled couch, she tipped the contents down her throat ‘-Lavinia has a mind of her own.’

Now what? Oil of lavender burned in a brazier and beside a board set out for Twelve Lines, a silver bowl sat heaped with candied fruits. Much to the delight of a shiny black beetle. A roll of thunder crashed overhead, rattling the counters.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Claudia said.

Lavinia peered down the end of her nose. ‘You didn’t come just to intervene, then?’ If anything, the eyes were brighter than ever.