Marilyn Todd - Man Eater

Behind her, in the atrium, a commotion started up and one ear flicked backwards.

‘Nothing to concern you, poppet.’ Claudia patted Drusilla’s crenellated backbone and felt a certain give in the spikes. ‘You stay there and unwind. I’ll let you know if there’s anything worth waking up for.’

She prised her bedroom door open and peeped through the crack. Not only Marcus, Sergius was also soaked to the skin-and as Orbilio confirmed his identity courtesy of his personal ring-seal, Euphemia was wringing the hem of Sergius’ tunic as though it was the neck of a chicken. The only other person in the atrium was Tulola.

‘Tell me, policeman,’ she drawled. ‘Do you like-’ She paused to run her index finger down Orbilio’s breastbone. ‘Cuddles?’

Orbilio was goggling. ‘I…beg your pardon?’ Tulola’s eyes flashed like the sunlight on the atrium pool. ‘My pet, sweetie. She’s called Cuddles.’

I should have guessed, thought Claudia, as the cheetah fixed Orbilio with the sort of stare it probably bestowed on the average gazelle. Drusilla’s nose suddenly twitched and her ears pricked forward as she caught the scent of her spotted cousin and Claudia clicked the door quietly to. Satisfied there was no threat of invasion, Drusilla settled back down and Claudia left her to drift back into her pretend slumber. Clearly finding yourself navigationally dysfunctional kicks a real dent in a cat’s pride.

Leaning her back against the flat of the door, Claudia considered her impending trial. In eight days’ time, Macer intended to bring her before a specially convened court consisting of one judge and some seventy-five professional jurists. Since women were strictly forbidden to plead in court, even for their own case, she would have to hire an advocate who was skilled in both rhetoric and law, yet who wouldn’t be above turning a blind eye to the succession of witnesses for the defence she intended to bribe in her favour. A local man was out of the question, she’d need one from Rome-and that gave her precious little time to recruit him. Damn you, Macer. Damn you to hell. It’ll be virtually impossible to keep this quiet now.

She wondered whether he could be right about Fronto being the mysterious arsonist. Surely, she mused as she paced the floor, no self-respecting arsonist would trek half a day north. Why contend with the swirling Tiber, which is in full spate at the moment, when you have literally thousands of vines on your doorstep? Good grief, Falcon Mountain’s just up the road and that’s smothered with grapes. No, Macer had to be wrong about Fronto, just as he was wrong about everything else. If there’s one thing a firebug takes pleasure in, it’s admiring his craftsmanship at close quarters.

With a subdued squeak, Drusilla curled tight into a ball, covering her eyes with her paw.

‘Admit it, you’re just blinded by this tarty tunic.’

A faint purr was offered in lieu of a handy olive branch.

Claudia leaned over the bed and tickled the cat under its unresisting chin. ‘Think this is bad? Wait till you meet the owner.’ Talk about loud taste.

‘Prrr.’ Drusilla allowed herself to be stroked into a deep and sprawling sleep, which somehow contrived with her being nestled in a lovely deep dent in the bolster which smelled of her mistress’s hair.

‘In her clothes, in her men, even her personal habits.’

‘Ffffff.’

Strangely enough, it was difficult to fathom exactly where sex fitted in. Sure, it was rammed at you from all angles, but judging from Tulola’s calm reaction when Claudia interrupted her frolics with Timoleon, the enjoyment was entirely on the gladiator’s part. No puffing, no panting, not even a telltale blush on cheek or neck or bosom from Tulola, and even the moans were not genuine. Why, Claudia wondered, peeling off the flame-coloured tunic, would Tulola fake it? She held the garment at arm’s length. Orange and blue, what a ghastly combination. Yet Tulola was the one person who could carry it off.

Nymphomaniacs I understand. They equate sex with affection.

Prostitutes I understand. They need the money.

But promiscuity, just to manipulate? I don’t get it.

And what about that irritating gleam in her eye? Hardly a warm, inviting twinkle, and when you boil it right down, there’s nothing inviting about Tulola at all. Strikingly beautiful, maybe, but Claudia had known dozens of plain women, often dumpy with it, whose zest for life made them ripe fruits for red-blooded men to pluck, both parties reaping enormous pleasure from even the most casual of couplings. Surely the harem doesn’t consist solely of lazy men, who can’t be bothered to court a woman and therefore enjoy being ‘picked’ when the fancy takes her? Timoleon might fit the bill, possibly the Celt and the horse-breaker, too, but Corbulo? He struck Claudia as very much his own man, did Corbulo. And why did Tulola try to give the impression she was bisexual?

The Negroes, Claudia suspected, were the key. Them and the cheetah, she owned both and Tulola was about power. Power over men. Power to shock. That, she believed, gave her power over women, because, in her eyes, the more outrageous the behaviour, the more superior she became. Why couldn’t she see the system didn’t work? Pallas hit the button when he said the men don’t last long. Casual, competitive sex has a time limit, and it’s they who move on, rather than Tulola pushing them. To revenge herself on what she would see as perfidy, she opts for different characteristics next time round, and the cycle is perpetuated.

‘Silly bitch has it all wrong,’ Claudia confided to the comatose cat. ‘You see, Drusilla, men are rather like mosaics. Lay ’em right, and you can walk all over them for the rest of your life.’

Very carefully Claudia upended her wine jug over the orange tunic.

Marilyn Todd

Man Eater

As a statesman, Quintilian did not feel he set much of an example. As a picture of misery and decrepitude, he was brilliant. Shoulders bent, he plodded up the Capitol, succoured by the knowledge that the Senate was in recess until the end of next month. Ample time to peruse laws and initiatives at leisure and concentrate on private business.

Stopping by the Temple of Jupiter, not so much to admire the view as to let the jarring subside, Quintilian looked down on the Theatre of Marcellus in all its travertine glory, then beyond, to the island that divided the Tiber’s strong current. Had he been lower-born, he could have crossed that stone bridge and spent the night in the temple. Rumour had it, Aesculapius himself came to sick pilgrims in the form of a snake and cured them while they slept. Senators, alas, were required to find more dignified alternatives.

He groaned, remembering the time when he just had the toothache.

Gingerly he moved his tongue round his mouth until it found a hole where a walnut could fit comfortably and where the teeth either side felt like wagon wheels. So badly had the abscess nagged him that, when the dentist said the tooth had to be pulled, Quintilian jumped at the chance for relief. Only when he was strapped in that bloodstained chair did he begin to have misgivings. It is not a pleasant experience, he reflected miserably, to have an ulcerated gum scraped away from a tooth, which then gets shaken until it’s loose enough for the forceps. He had never known such pain. And the blood!

‘Don’t worry, old chap,’ the dentist had said, cheerfully pocketing his five sesterces. ‘The swelling will go down in a day or two, and the bruising should fade in a week.’

‘Ung.’

‘What’s that? Worried the bone underneath broke?’

‘Ung, ung.’ It never occurred to him.

‘Well, if you like, we can pop the old probe in,’ the dentist flexed some ghastly bronze apparatus between his reddened fingers, ‘see what’s where,’ he swabbed his patient’s bleeding mouth with a towel, ‘and fish any loose bits out with this.’