Marilyn Todd - Man Eater

‘It made me wonder why Pictor didn’t exhibit at least some of his animals there,’ Orbilio added. ‘Can you imagine the impact of even the tamest of shows upon the audience? The dancing bears, for instance, or the monkeys riding in saddles upon goats?’

‘Sergius is going for broke with these spectacles, it’s Rome or nothing, and he has no intention of getting pipped to the post by someone sniffing out what he’s up to.’ Sworn to secrecy, apparently the estate workers felt the bite of the lash if they so much as opened their mouths in public, because although the locals knew he kept a menagerie, they didn’t know the purpose behind it.

Orbilio ordered a bowl of stuffed dates and received a plate of pastries instead. ‘Fair enough, but you’d think he’d at least take the elephant to the Megalesian Games, wouldn’t you?’

Claudia bit into the crumbly, cheesy pastry. ‘The trouble is, Corbulo would need to go with the wrinkly beast,’ she explained. ‘Sergius’ schedule would be set back still further, he’d then miss the games in June. Why do you ask?’

‘Just curious,’ he said, licking his fingers. ‘It’s like a mosaic, this case. I’m sure all the pieces are there, only I can’t seem to make sense of them.’

Who can? ‘Who cares?’

You do, his eyes said, but she refused to listen to them.

‘A man who, until recently, worked for the newly appointed Prefect of Police is lured to the Villa Pictor and stabbed in order to make you appear a murderess,’ Orbilio said, ‘and the girl bribed as a witness has her neck broken in order to silence her.’

‘But in apparent and utterly confusing contradiction, I am almost a victim myself, by an unknown assassin at that-’

‘-and it is distinctly possible the head of the household is being poisoned.’

Claudia had seen Sergius, eyes rolling, legs dragging, supported by slaves on his way to the bath house as she was making her getaway this morning. The colour of his skin was neither yellow nor grey, but, like catkins on a pussy willow, it was a combination of the two.

‘I have a fair knowledge of herbs,’ she said-in fact it was better than average but that was none of his business-‘and I’ve never encountered symptoms like Pictor’s, and besides, who’d want to kill him?’ She helped herself to the last little pastry on the plate and wished the wine had been as good as the food. ‘Not Alis, that’s for sure.’

That little mouse wouldn’t have the guts to kill her own husband, especially while there was a Prefect, a senior representative of the Security Police, a junior tribune plus a whole host of uniformed officers prancing round the house. That wouldn’t be gall, that would be outright stupidity.

‘Unless she’s desperate for money,’ she added as an afterthought.

Orbilio leaned back and put his feet on the table. ‘How do you mean? What would she gain by killing Sergius?’

Claudia wetted her finger and collected several cheesy crumbs on the tip. ‘The estate must be worth a tidy sum, especially with the performing beasts.’

‘But-’ Orbilio frowned. ‘You obviously don’t know.’

‘Know what?’ She licked the crumbs off her finger. ‘The estate is hers already. She inherited it from Isodorus when he died.’

Claudia felt her eyeballs bulge. ‘You mean it’s Alis who’s rich and not Sergius?’ Now that put the wolf among the nannygoats. She ran back over events in her mind, but while it might change the perspective, the basic picture remained unaltered.

Shame.

The fire crackled amid sounds of laughter, clanking goblets, the clatter of plates. Watching him at ease in his chair, boots on the table, running his finger round the rim of his glass, there was an inexplicable tightness around her solar plexus. Damned indigestion. Wouldn’t you just know it?

Orbilio tapped his finger against his chin. ‘You know, I have a feeling that if we can just crack open the shell of this case, the whole nut will come tumbling out.’ That, thought Claudia, is the crunch, isn’t it? Knowing where to begin.

And praying that, before the killer is unveiled, more souls won’t be ferried across the river Styx.

Outside the tavern, Claudia ground her heel into a weed growing up through the flagstones and wished it was Orbilio’s nose.

‘I suppose you’ll be sticking to me like a tick from now on?’ she had asked ten minutes earlier, smoothing out the creases in her scarlet gown as he sorted the bill and thinking, now that will have set me up for the journey.

‘Front or back, which would you prefer?’

The look she gave him could have turned grapes to raisins, but Marcus Cornelius seemed to be adjusting the purse on his wrist with immense detail.

‘I was referring to the element of trust. You see, when it comes to me, yours appears filigree thin.’ That’s it, shame him into leaving you alone, that way you can slip away while his back’s turned.

‘I can’t imagine where you got that idea from.’ Orbilio was nonchalantly tossing a key in the air.

Claudia looked round in mock agitation.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘I’m looking for the rat I can smell.’ Not for nothing had that key materialized out of nowhere.

‘You’ll thank me in the end,’ he said, taking care to keep his eye on the metal object flipping into his hand. ‘I’ve been doing you a favour.’

Like hell. ‘Like what?’

‘Like…keeping Drusilla out of the midday sun.’ The key had disappeared deep into the folds of his tunic. ‘Like…knowing how frightened she’d be without Junius to keep her company-’

His voice trailed off into the gutter where it belonged, and much to Claudia’s disappointment, this aristocratic prig did not break out in the mass of suppurating sores that she prayed so violently for. He simply winked and strode off.

Now, as Claudia ground another weed into juice, there was a bubbling sound in her ears as her blood reached boiling point. Godsdamnit, Orbilio, this is not your manor. You can’t go locking up people’s cats willy-nilly, or banging up their bodyguards whenever the whim is upon you.

But no matter how intense her fury, no matter how numerous the curses she visited upon him and his family, his house, his job, indeed anyone who’d ever spoken to him in their entire lives, the fact remained.

Claudia Seferius was grounded.

So just what does a girl do when she’s stuck in this dead-end town for the rest of the afternoon? She digs out the grubs who ran her off the road, that’s what. Before she takes the skin off their backs to hang on her walls for her to paint pictures on.

Across the street a young mother, a child at her hip and another clinging to her skirts, helped her one-legged husband up the steps of the public baths. An old man, as thin as Barea, hobbled to the barber’s for a long overdue shave and outside the fuller’s yard a frizzy-haired washerwoman made sheep’s eyes at the temple warden when any fool could see she was wasting her time, it was boys he was interested in. A random slice of Tarsulae life, Claudia thought, which succinctly sums up this town. It shows the two very separate divisions, those who have little option but to stay on, to eke a living where otherwise they could find none and whose only alternative was the Emperor’s dole. And those who make a living from these proud, possibly stubborn, survivors.

She clapped her hands to cleave a path through a gaggle of pecking hens and feared not only for the future of the townspeople, but for the soul of the town itself. Tarsulae was degenerating fast. And as she began her search for the yobs, she pondered which of the two categories Fronto had fitted into.

‘How old yer say?’ The hunchback clipping his donkey with a pair of iron shears shook his head. ‘Nah! No young men left nowadays, they’ve all found work in Hispellum or Narni.’ Which is rather what Claudia had concluded, but it didn’t hurt to double check.