Marilyn Todd - Man Eater

‘Corbulo?’ she called out. ‘Corbulo, is that you?’

‘Stay behind me,’ Marcus hissed, plucking a brand from its iron bracket. Whispers of wind played with the flames.

‘No fear,’ she whispered back, grabbing another torch. ‘You’re not fit to fight a flummery.’

But that wasn’t strictly true, because a dagger had appeared in his right hand and the grip was steady. Oh, well. Two can play at that game.

‘Where the hell do you keep that?’ he asked in amazement.

‘Safe,’ she replied. Although from time to time it gets a mite uncomfortable.

A dark figure flitted between the elephant shed and the giraffe house and Claudia felt the hairs on her scalp prickle. Corbulo would not behave so furtively. There it was again. Darting. Silent.

‘This way,’ Marcus whispered.

‘No, this way.’

‘Claudia, just for once, do as I say, will you?’

‘Let’s compromise,’ she mouthed, ‘and do it my way. Come on!’ Without giving him a chance to argue, she ran down the path and disappeared behind the camel shed.

Orbilio groaned. Please. Anything but dromedaries. ‘Listen!’ he said, catching her elbow and spinning her round. ‘What’s that?’

The yelp from the area of the seal pool was no animal.

Together they raced in the direction of the cry, lifting their torches high to avoid tripping. The gate was still barred. Sleepy seals honked at the intrusion.

‘Over there!’ he cried. ‘The hay store!’ As they sped across the stone slabs, they could hear gurgling sounds, a frantic tattoo.

‘Remus!’

The sight that greeted her as Orbilio flung open the door would stay with Claudia the rest of her life.

‘Holy shit!’ In one fluid movement, Marcus had bracketed the brand and sheathed his dagger. ‘I’ll take the weight, you cut him down!’

For ten seconds, or ten minutes, or maybe even ten hours, Claudia stood paralysed, hoping-praying-this was a dream and she’d wake any second. Against the wall, its eyes popping, a life-sized model of an Etruscan noble thrashed and jerked and made grotesque rattles from its throat. The frenzied drumming they’d heard was its feet.

But why was the puppet’s facepaint the colour of knapped flint? Why were its lips purple?

‘Claudia, for gods’ sake, I can’t hold him much longer!’

Snapping out of her hideous reverie, she realized Orbilio was supporting Corbulo by the hips and suddenly she was leaping up the bales to saw at the rope. Janus, it was thick! She turned her head away from the black suffusion, her hands too busy with the knife to dwell on the implications. Rasp, rasp, rasp. Below her, Orbilio struggled with the strain of his burden. Rasp, rasp, rasp. In the twisting of the fibres lay the rope’s strength. Come on, you bastard. Then-whoosh! Corbulo and Orbilio collapsed into the straw, the policeman wrenching at the noose to expose its livid legacy as the trainer’s eyeballs rolled upwards.

‘Sweet Jupiter!’ Claudia jumped down. ‘Is he-?’ The dusty shed seemed to have made her mouth dry.

‘He’s only passed out.’ Orbilio shot her a quizzical look. ‘He’ll be fine.’

All around, the signs of a skirmish were obvious, and it was also apparent that this was no chance encounter. Even the most dedicated homicidal maniac refrains from carrying a knotted noose on his person.

The Etruscan spluttered at the water splashed on to his face.

‘Sssh!’ Claudia ordered. ‘Don’t say anything.’

‘Who was it?’ asked Marcus.

‘Lie still,’ she urged. ‘Save your strength.’

‘Corbulo, who did this?’ Orbilio ignored the glower from beneath a tumbling mass of feminine curls.

The trainer gave a faint shake of his looped braids. ‘Dunno.’ The hoarse whisper was barely audible. ‘Left-party.’ Bloodshot eyes flickered at Claudia. ‘Needed-to sober up.’

‘Did you see anyone prowling about?’ Marcus persisted.

Corbulo shook his head. ‘Ambush,’ he croaked. ‘From behind.’

‘Damn!’ Orbilio began to pace the barn, but on the second turn he dropped to his knees. ‘Well, well, well. Recognize this?’ he asked.

In the flat of his hand, a scrap of material the colour of egg yolk trembled in the same pre-dawn breeze that had chilled Claudia earlier. Only now it seemed to blow straight from the Arctic.

Tulola’s celebrations were almost spent, the guests along with them. They’d drunk too much, eaten too much, and were starting to bounce off the pain barrier. Corbulo had not been missed, neither had Claudia or Orbilio and their haggard faces, when they burst into the room, seemed little different from the others’.

‘Oi, oi, hold on a minute.’ The horse-breaker was amused rather than angry when Orbilio grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved the scrap of fabric in his face. ‘Why should I want to see Corbulo hanging like game from a meat hook?’

‘Then what happened to the robe?’ Orbilio released Barea the way a terrier lets go an ankle. ‘You aren’t wearing it.’

‘Same reason, I suppose, that you’re out of costume,’ Barea replied. ‘Glad to be shot of it. Damned women’s clothes, if you ask me. Don’t know why Pallas kept the bloody thing.’

‘So it was yours!’ Timoleon turned to face the fat man. ‘Now why aren’t I surprised.’ It was an insult, rather than a question.

‘That garment was presented to me by a Phoenician nobleman with more class in his little finger than you’ve got in your whole body, you blowsy pig-sticker.’

The mood was all wrong, Claudia thought. Mockery? Indifference? And then she realized. They were frightened. All of them. She recalled the expression on Alis’ face when the news broke, it was that of a stag whose antlers had been caught in the huntsman’s net. They had all felt the shockwaves, but only she had been too slow to cover up, and suddenly Claudia was reminded of a pack of lionesses, each moving as one.

She had a horrible feeling that Orbilio, however hard he searched, would never find that missing tunic, because the Pictors had closed ranks. Fear had formed a bond that friendship never could.

Claudia thought of Corbulo, refusing to be fussed and insisting that, honestly, a good night’s sleep was all that he needed, he was fine. Any single person here in this room tonight, she reflected miserably, could have taken that tunic as a disguise and followed the trainer.

She looked around, and shivered. Any single person here in this room tonight could be the killer.

*

Oh-so-silently suspicion stalked the Villa Pictor, insinuating itself into the outbuildings, the fields, the gardens and the orchards. It masqueraded as shadows, as creaks, as gusts of wind, and coiled its way into every crevice of every mind. The clamour of the kitchens was reduced to terse whispers, plates rattled in nervous hands, field workers looked over their shoulders and Junius camped beneath his mistress’s window. In the atrium the water-clock dripped with exasperating slowness, the sunshine that flooded the marble took for ever to creep across the floor. In the courtyard, grown men jumped at the lovebird’s squawks and avoided the shadows of the mythical beasts. When the elephant trumpeted, a flowerpot smashed to smithereens in the gardener’s hands. Three of the slaves, a man and his daughters, tried to decamp under cover of darkness, but Macer had left eight of his men as contingency, four north and four south, two on and two off.

At the same time the runaways were marched back to their barracks, Taranis also slipped quietly into his own room, unshouldered his bulging rucksack and unleashed a bitter Celtish curse.

Like the build-up to a storm, the atmosphere was oppressive, torrid. People sat with their backs to the walls and pretended they were hung over from the night before-it explained the beads of sweat on their foreheads, the gooseflesh down their arms, the nausea in the pits of their stomachs.