Marilyn Todd - Man Eater

‘I made it look like an accident,’ he had argued as the car sped away from the villa. ‘A loose coal, dry straw-happens every day in the city. I made sure it was one of the new sheds being built, no harm done, but there’ll be enough smoke to agitate the animals and cause a bit of panic for a three-hour start at least.’

Those were the last words he’d been allowed to speak, because, Claudia said, if he so much as opened his mouth to cough, she would choke him with his own chitterlings. However, as the mules slurped at the lichen-covered trough and a tawny comma butterfly flitted back and forth, she grudgingly admitted that Junius’ getaway plan, while flawed in places, was pretty sound when you looked at it as a whole.

Checking Drusilla’s cage, she accepted the groom’s offer of assistance and jumped down. ‘You!’

She snatched her hand back as though it was scalded, and Marcus Cornelius Orbilio bowed gracefully. ‘Your servant, ma’am,’ he smiled.

‘Junius, why didn’t you tell me this barnacle was here?’

‘You told me not to say another-’

‘Oh, be quiet.’ She screwed her palla into a roll, stuffed it under the seat and glanced at the mules. Impatiently tossing their manes, their ears pricked forward, she decided to give them a wide berth. You could never trust mules. Irritable buggers at the best of times, this pair looked like cannibals.

‘I had a feeling you’d pull a stunt like this,’ Orbilio said, matching her frantic pace up the high street.

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ she replied, snatching a bun in each hand as she swept past the pastrycook’s.

‘Oh, no?’ Orbilio paused to settle with the irate shopkeeper and, when he looked up, Claudia Seferius was nowhere in sight. His oaths sent the pastrycook into a second cataclysm, but he was unaware of the raised fists and wild gesticulation as he bounded up the temple steps. In the temple grove, under the shade of Vulcan’s sacred lotus, a young woman with her curls in disarray sat feeding the sparrows. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Get past the priest.’ Everyone knows Vulcan’s intermediaries guard their god like Cerberus guards Hades. Many a deadly ritual has to be endured before entrance to the sacred grove is permitted.

‘Same way you did, I suppose.’ Which they both knew was nonsense. Orbilio would have claimed an emergency and flashed his personal seal to get past, but Claudia had no intention of admitting she’d promised to cough up for the May Day sacrifice…could she just check the premises to ensure they were sufficiently sanctified? Ple-ease?

‘Then would you mind telling me what brings you to Tarsulae this fine and sunny morning when you’re supposed to be under house arrest?’

Orbilio ran the tree’s leathery leaves between his thumb and forefinger and thought of Odysseus whiling away his days with the lotus-eaters. The comparison with Claudia was automatic-especially when the sharp prickles at the base of the leaves stuck into his thumb. He sucked at the blood with amusement. No wonder Odysseus stayed on. Pleasure and pain-you can’t fully appreciate the one without the other, can you?

‘To clear my name, of course.’ The temple priest gave Claudia an oily smile as she passed by, the warden an unctuous bow.

‘I’m not convinced burning down one of Corbulo’s sheds is the best way to set about it,’ he said, suspiciously eyeing the obsequious clerics, ‘but I’m prepared to bow to superior knowledge.’

‘You’re wittering again,’ she replied, skipping down the steps and into the street. Abruptly, she turned left past the law courts, where a fat, red-faced advocate was laying into his bow-legged secretary with a bullwhip.

‘Humour me,’ Orbilio said evenly.

Claudia stopped short and Orbilio nearly tripped over the flagstones. Better luck next time. ‘What woman in my position isn’t curious to know what sort of a man Fronto was, who his friends were, how he earned a crust, whether he was capable of arson?’

Actually she couldn’t give a toss. All she knew was that the dung-beetle was the cause of this bloody trouble and had he not been dead already, she was quite prepared to throttle him with her own bare hands.

‘Presumably Drusilla and your luggage can assist you in your search?’ he asked mildly, watching a yellow haired whore curse the punter who’d short changed her. In the gutter, a dirty child screamed for its mother.

Claudia tipped her chin up and looked him straight in the eye. ‘Someone searched my room,’ she said defiantly, turning on her heel. ‘From now on, I leave nothing to chance.’

‘I can understand that,’ he replied, without a hint of sarcasm, but she knew it was there. ‘And now you’re here, why don’t we wash the dust from our throats?’

‘I was intending to visit the widow,’ she said.

One eyebrow rose to say like hell you were, but otherwise he chose to ignore her. ‘I’ve something to show you. Over the street, there.’ He appeared to be leading her towards some smoky dive opposite the basilica. ‘Macer’s watering hole,’ he explained. ‘Hope you don’t mind roughing it.’

‘I’m with you, aren’t I?’ And don’t think it’s because of the way your hair curls over your collar, either, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, or the way you stifle a laugh with the back of your hand. Tall, dark and handsome’s six a quadran where I come from, you’ve only got to look round here ‘Well, maybe not.’

The words were Orbilio’s and referred to the tavern.

The sentiments were Claudia’s and referred to her thoughts.

Regulars? More like men with nowhere else to go. Their woollen tunics were stained with wine and stank of grease and sweat and stale urine, and if you put them together and pulled all their teeth, you’d be lucky to find a full set. Broken pots gathered dust in the straw, a desiccated crone snored beneath the benches, and a one eared dog growled at a rat which had ventured a shade too close to his chop bone.

‘See what I mean?’ he asked outside.

‘No,’ she replied, but they both knew she was lying and that they were both wondering why fussy, pompous Macer would choose that fly-blown joint.

‘I’ll have what he’s having,’ she told the waiter in the next tavern, then seeing it was milk, sent it winging straight back. ‘So our policeman has more than one vice, has he?’

Orbilio winced at the reminder of Gisco. ‘Stomach ulcer,’ he said, pointing to his left side. ‘Just here. Very tender.’

In the wine shops in Rome you could choose between red wine or white, vintage or thin, mustard or mulled, rose wine or hyssop, the list was virtually endless. Here she opted for a potent Lagean white and discovered that not only was it watered, they probably pickled eggs in the residue. However, the unweaned kid roasting on the spit and the smoked sausage and celery casserole more than compensated.

‘So, have you interviewed the widow?’ Claudia pictured her, painted and flabby and dressed like a newlywed.

‘I treat my cases the way a doctor treats his,’ Orbilio replied between mouthfuls. ‘They require a thorough examination and a bedrock of background information before I make my diagnosis. I’ll see Balbilla later.’

So that was her name. Claudia rolled it around on her tongue. Balbilla. Balbilla. The sort of name that would belch, slap you on the back and have a laugh like a horse. She almost felt sorry for Fronto.

‘Did you notice the amphitheatre as we came in?’ he asked.

You could hardly miss it. Behind the law courts, a splendid edifice soared to the skyline, its brickwork interspaced every cubit with a wafer-thin layer of baked clay whose purpose was purely to advertise the wealth and prosperity of the Tarsulani. Happy days.