Marilyn Todd - Man Eater

None of the amphibians resisted the lasso round their tails. Now I’m full, they seemed to say, I’ll let you play tag if you like. Even so, the search was not easy, and it was lucky one of the party hailed from Egypt and was able to throw light on these primordial creatures’ habits.

As the search party trod the murky waters, Claudia felt an overwhelming relief that, finally, the nightmare was over. It made no sense, but this was the person who had watched Claudia Seferius leave the villa, had lain in ambush for her return, planning long and hard that her murder should look like an accident, the same way Coronis’ murder was designed to look like an accident.

This, then, was the person who’d stabbed Fronto-but what had Claudia seen, or was imagined to have seen, that turned her into such a liability?

Probably-regrettably-she would never know.

Suddenly a cry went up as the bloody trophy was ferried back and the crowd began to concentrate itself on one small part of the shore. They were all here, she realized. Storm or no storm, master and slave alike, the whole household would have assembled for the climax.

The corpse, when it was finally hauled on to the slippery bank, was a total mess. One leg had been taken off completely, the other severed above the knee, and an arm was missing. Claudia began to retch.

‘All right?’

Orbilio held her while she was sick, wiped her mouth with his handkerchief. She could do no more than nod.

‘Just the reaction,’ she explained, although the words didn’t actually make it past her larynx.

*

Later, in the shelter of the house, with mulled wine on the inside and dry clothes on the outside and Claudia Seferius out cold from a hyoscine draught, everyone was agreed that they had never, in their lives, seen such a sickening spectacle as that mangled body.

Equally they were unanimous in that they had no clue as to who the dead man might be.

Old age might bring maturity and wisdom, experience and nous, and it might well conceal a chicanery all of its own, but it is no substitute for the zeal and fire of youth. Or the fact that youth brings about a speed of recovery verging on the indestructible.

Claudia yawned, stretched and tickled Drusilla’s ears. ‘Time, young lady, for you to pack up your mouse bones, your furballs and any other souvenirs you might have acquired from the Villa Pictor.’

Only this time, please, let’s leave the fleas behind.

Claudia reached for the goblet beside her bed and sniffed. ‘Ugh. Henbane.’ No wonder she’d slept so well. A good twelve hours at a guess, although there was no sun to pinpoint it further. The rains might have gone, but the clouds hung like hammocks, low and heavy, the sky bark-grey and cheerless.

‘Mrrrr.’ Drusilla wriggled in pleasure and rolled on to her side.

Whoever had come into her room to open the shutters had also been thoughtful enough to leave a tray. Claudia slapped a chunk of pecorino cheese, her favourite, on to a still-warm roll flavoured with parsley and chives as Drusilla helped herself to a prawn.

‘Thank heavens there’s no red meat on this tray, we had quite enough of that last night, thank you very much.’

Claudia quickly skimmed over the lump of humanity mashed to a squelch by the crocodiles and moved on to the question of why that total stranger should want to kill her in the first place. Very odd. But then the whole place was very odd.

‘I suppose it was me he was after?’ Who else could he have mistaken me for? Not a man. Tulola? Too tall. Euphemia? Too fat. ‘Alis?’ she said aloud.

Drusilla, chomping on another prawn, didn’t turn so much as a whisker.

‘I know you can hear me, you little fraud.’ Judging by the debris all over this counterpane, you’ve been stuffing yourself since the moment my breakfast arrived. ‘I said, could anyone mistake me for Alis?’

‘Brip.’

‘I don’t know why, poppet, I was simply asking whether it was possible. Not that it matters. We’re heading back to Rome.’

‘Mrrip.’

‘House arrest? Forget that.’ Not even Macer, with his unique propensity for putting two and two together and coming up with twenty-two, could lay this latest attack at Claudia’s door. ‘No, very soon we’ll be home again, life will be back to normal before you know it.’

Normal? What was normal? Between being born in the south and her dancing days in Genua, life had been anything but predictable, and since marrying the old wine merchant…? Put it this way. If Claudia Seferius had been a knife, she’d never have gone rusty.

Realizing Drusilla was not going to be sidetracked so long as one pink prawn remained standing, she eased the cat to one side and slid out of bed.

‘First your mistress needs a long, hot soak-’for all youth’s advantages, it couldn’t heal injuries like hers overnight ‘-and then we’ll set off. How’s that?’

A lump of fish fell from Drusilla’s mouth. Her body arched and her hackles were fully erect before Claudia’s ears picked up the whistle.

‘Junius!’ One of the first things she’d taught him was that three-note signal. ‘What brings you to darkest Umbria?’

The Gaul’s jaw dropped. ‘By the gods, madam. Are you all right?’

In the course of four days I’ve been run off the road, bounced down a hillside and had a dying dung-beetle thrust upon me. I’ve seen the sharp point of Euphemia’s knife, been accused of murder, discovered Coronis, been beaten then half throttled by a total stranger and you ask, am I all right?

‘Bubbling with health.’ To prove it she shot him her healthiest, heartiest, halest of smiles. ‘Now, answer the question.’

‘Three reasons.’ Junius, unconvinced, produced a scroll from the belt of his tunic and passed it through the open window. ‘First, this was waiting for you up at the villa.’

Claudia recognized the seal. It was the report from her surveyor.

‘I think it could have waited,’ the young Gaul continued, ‘but while I was there, one of Macer’s officers called to see your bailiff.’

‘So?’ It sounded terribly routine to a girl for whom a deep soak in steaming hot water beckoned very loudly.

‘I’d briefed him on most of what had happened, I just hadn’t had a chance to tell him about the servants.’

‘What servants?’

‘You told Macer you’d sent them ahead by ox cart, when, of course, we never took any with us.’

‘Water under the Milvian Bridge, Junius. Last night some homicidal maniac damned near killed me, so I don’t think anyone’s going to lose sleep over one titchy-witchy fib, do you?’

‘There’s something else, too.’

Claudia waved an airy hand. ‘Don’t care, don’t want to know. I appreciate your efforts, but my advice is go to the kitchens then see if you can grab forty winks. In an hour or two, we set sail for Rome.’

‘But, madam-’

‘Butts are where archery is practised, Junius.’ To emphasize her point, she snapped the shutters to.

She heard a finely rounded oath of Gallic origin then, when silence prevailed (or what passed for silence, when you’re billeted next door to a hundred yowling beasts), she flung back the shutters and studied the sky. Was that a break in the clouds she detected?

‘With luck, poppet,’ she picked up Drusilla and swung her several times round in the air, ‘we should be home for the equinox.’

Always a good excuse for a knees-up, and heaven knows she needed one after this. Umbria? You can keep it. It’ll take a lot to prise me away from Rome in the future, and then if I travel, I stick to main roads. ‘Bbbrow!’

That’s the trouble with Egyptian cats. The effect of twirling them isn’t immediately obvious, they’re bosseyed to start with.