Marilyn Todd - Jail Bait

Rats with razor-sharp teeth began to gnaw at her insides. She was cold. Icy cold.

There was a dark patch on the floor. And something glinting in the flickering, stinking tallow light. An emerald. Don’t look. Block it out, block it out, for as long as you can…

‘The dark patch on the floor there, that’s blood,’ she tried to tell the yawning cheetah, except there was a pebble bunging up her voice box. Human blood, stale and dry, and the emerald clinched any doubt. It was set in an earring. The one which was absent from the body fished out of the lake… ‘I suppose you got to know Lais’ double quite well, while she was kept prisoner here.’ But the cheetah was bored, it kept yawning.

While a giant’s hand crushed her heart in his fist, Claudia forced herself to pick up the candle and hold it up to walls covered with these Etruscan paintings. Tomb paintings. The stone tabletops were sarcophagi. The giant squeezed tighter. All Etruscan burial sites were the same. Gouged underground out of the rock. Leading off from this central chamber would be other, narrower resting places. But one thing was certain.

There was only one entrance.

Sealed with a huge block of granite.

‘It’s all right,’ she added, trying for a smile. Not that the Etruscans cared whether she was grinning or not, ‘Tarraco said the graves had been robbed generations ago, probably during the time of the Great Battle up on the lakeshore.’

Hysteria rose in her breast.

One woman had been imprisoned in this ancient tomb of the kings, then killed on this spot. Was it Lais’ intention to make it a double? Would Pul heave back that granite door any minute, and place his large hands round her own neck? As though in a dream, two words barrelled through this ancient tomb. Natural causes. Lais had it all planned! She’d been humouring Claudia from the start, knowing how long the drug would take to work in the wine. With an aching wrench of self-pity, Claudia realized too late that to keep up the pretence of being a spy was the last thing she should have done. She should have tried to run, go down fighting. Instead she set herself up as a swooning, love-sick girl coming in search of the man she’d set free from the cells who seeks refuge from the storm, and where better than the old Etruscan tombs? But, oops, there’s an accident, look. Lightning fells a tree, traps her inside… In a couple of months, when Lais makes her miraculous reappearance, she discovers this fallen tree trunk. How tragic!

Natural bloody causes, all right.

Claudia was destined to die of thirst and starvation.

‘Sit down, Kamar, you’re making me dizzy.’

‘Sit down?’ The physician’s voice was shrill with panic. ‘After what that bitch did to me? This, this, this-’ he pointed to the weals on his legs ‘-and what about this, eh?’ A bony finger indicated his cheek. ‘The fucking bitch has scarred me for life. How am I supposed to explain that to my patients? To Pylades? Croesus, he’ll sack me the second he claps eyes on me.’

‘I’m sure you’ll think of something,’ Lais soothed. Inside her hidden room, lamplight shone brighter than a midsummer noon, bouncing off the gilded statues and solid silver figurines, although she had taken care to close the lids of the treasure chests when Kamar was announced. Pul she could trust. But Kamar? Too self-centred for unconditional allegiance.

To counteract the stench of white mandrake which still clung to the lanky physician, Lais dabbed her musky scent behind her ears, on all her pulse points, wrists and throat and ankles, and trickled a few drops down her cleavage. Ah, there were times when she missed Tarraco. Those expert hands, tender lips… She shivered at the delicious memory. There would be others, of course. Just as young and equally devoted, but she would take care never to marry again. She had been burned by the Spaniard’s betrayal. It would not happen again.

Shit! She hurled her glass against the wall, watched it shatter into a thousand shimmering pieces. What made him shag that kitchen wench? Wasn’t one woman enough for his overpowering ego? Lais recalled the twinge of remorse when, a few days after staging her dramatic disappearance, she’d sneaked out of this hidden chamber one night and found he’d left honeycombs on her bed. A tender thought, but one which unfortunately came too late. The damage had been done.

Her toe tapped furiously against the tessellated floor. Bastard. Sneaking off to liaise with some common slave, and expecting to get away with his little indiscretion. Got a bit above your station, didn’t you? Thought you owned this bloody place, strutting round like one of your peacocks, when it was me, me, who put the gold thread in your robes and introduced you to the subtle pleasures of antiques and art. Lais grabbed a mirror. By the gods, she was still a fine-looking woman, what did he need that little scrubber for? Sex? Wasn’t he getting enough here? With his wife? Lais hurled the mirror across the floor, oblivious to Kamar jumping out of its path. Bastard. She had chosen him, for gods’ sake, not the other way around. She had been the one to dispose of that braying donkey Virginia, and how had he repaid her?

‘He loved me once, you know.’

‘Huh?’ Kamar had been preoccupied with matters of his own.

‘Nothing.’ But it was true. She might have made the initial overtures, but from that one spark, Tarraco had fallen for her, courting her, fetching gifts, playing on his magic lyre. She remembered the night he first seduced her, softly, tenderly, arousing every passion, and Lais knew it could not be for her fortune. Virginia had (thanks to her) left everything to him. No, no. Tarraco had loved her for herself, and whilst Lais had not loved him in return, she had felt a certain tenderness for her little bit of Spanish rough.

Not enough to let him live with her, of course. He was a consort, not a partner. His quarters were on the far wing, over there, far from her hidden chamber and her secrets, but all the same. There were times of late when she missed his whispered words of love, and the way his lips nibbled the back of her neck. The kitchen wench had been disposed of, naturally. A bauble stolen from a guest and planted in her room. Instant dismissal. But that was only half the story.

The other half was on his way to bloody Spain, when by rights he should be facing down a half-starved tiger in public execution for that monstrous act of betrayal.

Still. A queen does not necessarily need a consort. Her strength to stand alone would be inspiration to her people, another cause for them to revere her. How long, Lais wondered idly, before Pylades bowed to the pressure…?

‘I don’t like it.’ Kamar’s thin lips had all but disappeared. ‘I don’t like it at all. Suppose someone raises the alarm?’

‘What are you gabbling on about now?’

‘That Seferius bitch,’ Kamar said. ‘Suppose someone goes looking for her?’

‘Who?’ Lais sneered. ‘She’s a wild one, that girl. Unpredictable. Some skivvy will quietly pack up her things, people will assume she went back to Rome.’ And if anyone down there asks questions, then they won’t find many answers.

‘No,’ Kamar said, wringing his hands. ‘I mean, suppose someone comes looking for her out here? ’

‘Then they’ll go back empty-handed, won’t they? She’s a hundred yards under the ground, sealed in by a great slab of rock. No one heard that other poor cow screaming her head off, now did they? Well, they won’t hear Claudia yell, either.’

‘She’s in cahoots with some Security chap. I don’t think he’ll take no for an answer.’

‘Marcus Cornelius?’ Lais licked her finger and ran it lightly over her eyebrow. ‘I shouldn’t worry about him.’