Marilyn Todd - Man Eater

‘Not exactly.’ Froggy was idly twirling his knife round his plate. ‘But that’s what made me late. Apparently some widow was on board, and now she’s been charged with murder.’

Restio whistled. ‘What a psycho!’

‘Not half,’ echoed Pansa. ‘Count ourselves lucky she didn’t do for one of us, eh, lads?’

A drunk bumbled over, a bargee-Froggy could tell by the smell of oxen which clung to him no matter how clean the poor sod’s clothes. ‘Piss-house is that way, mate,’ he said, jerking his thumb towards the far corner. The drunk belched gratefully and lumbered towards the door.

‘The trial’, he continued, taking care not to raise his voice beyond the reach of the table, ‘takes place here, in Narni, on Wednesday. You know what that means, don’t you?’

‘Narni?’ asked Ginger, through a mouthful of vegetables. ‘Why not Tarsulae?’

‘Where’, Froggy scoffed, ‘could they scrape up fourscore jurists in that shithole? No, the show’s coming here, so you see the significance? Everyone, and I mean everyone at the Villa Pictor will be called as a witness.’

‘Wow!’ said Restio, because although he hadn’t a clue what Froggy was driving at, he sensed it was important enough to warrant reverence.

Froggy leaned forward. ‘It seems to me, lads, that here’s our chance to make a bit of dosh-’

‘We got paid well for that,’ Pansa put in, but Froggy ploughed on.

‘As I see it, we have two choices. According to my contact at the courts, this old bag’s supposed to have arranged to meet with the bloke who got killed-’

‘But she couldn’t have,’ Restio protested. ‘Because we run her off the road and, according to that innkeeper in Tarsulae, she was headed north.’

‘Thank you, witness for the defence, you may step down now,’ said Froggy, topping up his wooden goblet. ‘Now if you’ll let me get on, as I said, we have two choices. Either we approach the widow’s lawyer, tell him what we know-oh, we can say it was an accident, didn’t realize anyone had been hurt, how sorry we were-only there’s no mileage in that.’

In all probability the widow was old, and she certainly wasn’t well off or she’d have been travelling the main road with a retinue of slaves and baggage. Frankly Froggy couldn’t see the old girl heaping rewards upon his head for coming forward-not on the scale he fancied, anyhow.

‘Which leaves us with our second option. You see, boys, I don’t think our client will want it bandied about that we were paid to run that rig off the road, do you? In fact, I think we’re on to a nice little earner with this one.’

‘Is going to rain.’

Good, thought Claudia, taking half a step back from the Celt. You might be tempted to stand out in it.

‘And Sergius, he not look so good.’ Taranis fell into step along the colonnade, his long hair flicking up at the ends as he walked. A stranger to the strigil, it was difficult to see what Tulola saw in him. Ruff-tuff hairy types Pallas had said, and from that aspect Taranis certainly fitted the bill. Self-respecting Romans shave their body hair…they don’t have whopping great tufts of it sticking out the neck of their tunics and the hems of their sleeves like horsehair stuffing from an old couch. Idly she wondered how Tulola came by so many oddballs.

‘You visit west wing later, heh? We play fours, you go with Barea and I do Tulola?’

‘I’d sooner drink hemlock.’

‘Ah!’ Two paws latched over her breasts. ‘You want Taranis to yourself-eeeeeeeeh.’

Claudia squeezed his testicles tighter. ‘Listen to me, lizardbreath. Lay so much as one black fingernail on me again, and I shall twist these right off and stuff them up your nostrils. Do I make myself plain?’

She took the tears in his eyes as affirmative and stalked off to her bedroom for a wrap. Drusilla, her ancestry bestowing magnanimity despite the string of indignities, was balanced on the windowsill studiously washing behind her ears. So the barbarian was right? It was going to rain.

‘Brrp.’ The cat bounded down. ‘Brrip, brrip.’

‘I know, poppet, but it won’t be for much longer.’ She raked her fingers along Drusilla’s arched spine. ‘Only we have a slight problem here.’

‘Mrra.’ The cat stretched up on tippytoes, her eyes squeezed tight in ecstasy.

‘The Prefect, you see, is a moron.’ Although he had yet to appreciate that particular aspect of his character.

‘Mrrap, mrrap.’ Drusilla’s stiffened tail received the fingernail treatment right up to its tip.

‘Are you getting dandruff? Oh no, it’s only flaky plaster. Anyway, what I was saying was, to avoid the idiocy of a trial, it is up to us to show Macer the error of his ways, is it not?’

‘Prrr.’

‘Prrrcisely. And in order to do this we must unveil the killer ourselves.’ One murder is undesirable. Two murders smacks of self-indulgence. ‘Do you have any suggestions where to begin?’

‘Brrrp.’

‘Neither do I.’

Drusilla lifted her wedge-shaped head. ‘Mrrow.’

‘Me? Framed? You’re getting as bad as Supersnoop.’ The wrong place at the wrong time, Orbilio. You’ll see. ‘But we have a nose for sniffing out murderers, don’t we, poppet? We’ll get him-or her, it could be a her, I suppose-and that’ll put paid to this ridiculous talk about exile. Ah! I have a treat for you.’

A cold partridge plopped on to the mosaic and the cat sniffed it carefully from all angles. You might call flabby poultry a treat, her manner seemed to imply, but you forget, my lady, that I’m used to dining on food I’ve hunted myself. Even as we speak, there’s a fresh mouse outside with my name on it. Catch you later.

With a smile at her lips, Claudia covered her shoulders with her palla.

‘I wouldn’t venture far, if I were you.’ The voice of the trainer in the courtyard made her jump. She’d forgotten how light he was on his feet.

‘Oh?’ Was this a warning?

The Etruscan quickly closed the distance between them. ‘There’s a storm brewing.’

Claudia’s breath came out in a hiss from where she’d been holding it. ‘I need the fresh air.’ Fresh? With that number of wild beasts? ‘What about you? Do you always work this late?’

He held the gate open for her. ‘Work? Oh, you’re thinking about that scene back there with Sergius.’

I wasn’t, but go on.

‘We do that, him and me. I throw pots, he throws insults, then it’s forgotten.’ A big cat snarled as they passed its shed. ‘Quiet, Sheba!’ He paused by the ostrich pen. ‘May I walk with you a way?’

Intense grey eyes bored into hers. For a man who works all day with animals, she thought, you always manage to smell of citron and woodsmoke.

‘Why not?’

In silence they passed along a line of clipped laurels, the imminence of the storm intensifying the scent of the leaves. A flash of lightning silhouetted a rhino against the sky and a bear growled.

‘You have a farm in my homeland, I gather?’

‘Vineyards,’ she corrected. ‘Across the Tiber then half-a-day’s hard ride. Is that close to your stomping ground?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m from the coast, but like most other Etruscans you’ll meet, I was uprooted without a great deal of ceremony.’

She picked up on the sour note. ‘The Emperor’s Land Purchase Scheme strikes again, eh?’

‘Worse than that. I lived in Carrera before Augustus turned it into a marble quarry.’

‘Well, if it’s any consolation, Corbulo, you shifted for a good cause. When you do take those show beasts to Rome, you’ll see half your motherland slapped over the temples.’ The Oil Market is positively dazzling.

‘Don’t start on about the Games, Claudia,’ he said, but this time there was a jocular tone to his words. ‘I’m getting enough of an earful from Sergius. He expects bloody miracles.’