Marilyn Todd: Man Eater

‘You no recognize me from murder scene? I understand. Dead man come as shock. Me, I am friend of Tulola. You?’ Black eyes loitered on the fullness of her breasts, made more prominent since the borrowed tunic was a tad tight across the bosom and therefore tended to emphasize the curves.

‘Just passing through.’

His eyebrows met in the middle. ‘You are lost?’ Claudia explained about her clash with the thugs. ‘Savages!’ He spat in the dust. ‘They rape you, yes?’

‘They rape me, not on their bloody lives.’

‘Oh.’ The gleam went out of the Celt’s eyes. ‘I need to piss.’ He made a cross between a bow and a hop, no doubt the sort of gesture that had evolved in those Barbarian climes to imply courtesy but which, in reality, was probably just another means to keep warm.

Since the parrot was now engrossed in preening its mate, Claudia moved across to the fishpond, where graceful filaments of algae floated in the margins. Minerva’s orchestrating this, she thought wryly. Yesterday was her festival and while artisans and doctors, scribes and schoolmasters left votive offerings up on the Capitol, and white-robed priests led young heifers to the sacrificial blade by their gilded and beribboned horns, forceful, striding Minerva was playing practical jokes on those who’d displeased her. Claudia dabbled her fingers in the fishpond and decided that, if not top of the goddess’s hit list, she probably ran a close second.

The ripples that nibbled the surface were reminiscent of the ones that lapped Genua harbour in the days when she used to dance for a living. Days when a tunic of this quality, regardless of colour, would have been an object to die for. Kill for, even. The sort of tunic that, had one come into her possession, she could have sold for her keep for a month. A whole month without leers and jeers, sticky hands and mouthed obscenities… She shuddered involuntarily. Thank the gods, those days were way, way behind her. A spot of forgery here, a new identity there, topped by marriage to a fat and unsuspecting wine merchant-what could go wrong? Claudia rested her chin in her hands. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, that’s what. What is it with life, she thought. You map it all out, bury your past so deep that, in comparison, the Emperor’s Spanish silver mines are mere scratches on the surface…then along he comes. High in the Security Police and with a nose like a truffle-hog, that damned patrician (born rich, born respectable, what does he know about life in the gutter?) comes snooping and discovered that dancing wasn’t the only way she’d earned her living.

A squad of blue tits descended to search the burgeoning leaves for grubs as Claudia’s deliberations projected themselves into the future. Should this Macer fellow prove unequal to the task of investigating violent deaths, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he invites the Security Police to help-and I can do without it being made common knowledge, thank you very much, that there were certain other services on offer in Genua, apart from the dancing. Oh yes, she thought, as the tiny birds twittered and quarrelled and performed their acrobatics, the very last thing I need in my well-ordered life is the intrusion of some wavy-haired aristocrat with a twinkle in his eye who thinks that if he covers his mouth with the back of his hand, no one notices he’s laughing. Not that Claudia remembered what he looked like, of course. Good gracious, no, it was just that…

A shadow fell across the fishpond and a second reflection appeared in the water. Dark, sultry, her heavy breasts heaving, the girl who’d hung around the atrium yesterday leaned low over the sweet-smelling flags. The ripples on the water could take no blame for the contortions in her face.

‘I know what you’re up to,’ she hissed. ‘But you won’t get away with it.’

Pretending to study the irises, Claudia watched the scowling reflection for several seconds. Presumably another sister-nine, ten years younger than Tulola? – but, in true Pictor style, no one had bothered to introduce them and any reluctance on this madam’s part wasn’t down to shyness.

‘You just watch me,’ she replied evenly.

Sulkyboots was unfazed. ‘No,’ she rasped. ‘You watch me.’ She kicked a pebble into the fishpond and both reflections disintegrated.

Then suddenly the girl’s breath was hot on Claudia’s cheek and she smelled sweet aniseed from her mouth.

‘Interfere and I’ll kill you.’

A small obsidian blade was suddenly thrust in front of Claudia’s eyes.’

‘I mean it,’ she spat. ‘Fuck with me and I’ll kill you.’

Balbilla squeezed past the counter and peered up the main street for the umpteenth time. That fog had lifted, you could see a long way, but there was still no sign of Fronto. She chewed her lip and frowned.

‘What’s wrong, love?’

‘Nothing, Dad.’ Umpteen times they’d had that exchange, too.

High noon and market day at that, the street was as busy as it ever got. Word was, once you could hardly move through the crush, leastways, not without getting your bum pinched, but Balbilla had been spared that indignity. When the Emperor diverted the road, she was just eight years old and it had been left to her father to explain why folk didn’t travel this way no more. And, later, why her family and friends had moved away.

‘We won’t have to move, will we, Dad?’

Her mam had died giving birth to her brother, so it had been just the three of them, Balbilla and her Dad and the baby, and even he’d died before he turned three. She didn’t want to have to move on.

‘Course not, Bill.’ She remembered the way her father had ruffled her hair. ‘We’re Tarsulani, we don’t go no place.’

And so they hadn’t, but the trade from his shop had dwindled. Once, long ago, he ran a profitable clothes dealership. Then he moved into the second-hand market. And five years ago, around the time she met Fronto, he’d been reduced to selling rags.

Her nose wrinkled as she squinted into the sun. All around Tarsulae the same daily scenes were being enacted. Kiddies playing, dogs grubbing, spits turning, gossips embroidering the meagre news. There were mingling smells of over-used cooking oil, badly tanned hides, temple incense and yeasty bread. By the Mausoleum Gate, the little beggar girl who’d been blinded by her mother so she could earn more rattled her bowl, and opposite the Temple of Vulcan, the brickmaker was bad-mouthing his pregnant wife, taking out on her the fact that he had no livelihood left in this ramshackle town. Sneaking out from the basilica was the advocate’s bow-legged secretary, off to tup his boss’s wife while the lawyer was engaged with a client, and down by the tavern was that new Prefect, she’d forgotten his name, adjusting his chinstrap before clambering into the saddle. But no Fronto.

‘Dad, I’ve got to nip home, all right?’

It was one of his bad days, she felt awful at leaving him, but she just had to know. Besides. There was something she had to tell Fronto. Something important.

‘Want me to close up?’

Her father shook his grey face vigorously. In all his life, he’d never shut during the day and he wouldn’t start now, sick or not.

‘Well, I’ll be back soon as I can.’

Chances were, no customers would call to bother him, and if they did he wouldn’t notice. He spent a lot of time sleeping now she’d got him that draught from the herbalist.

‘Why don’t the old sod give up like any normal bloke?’ Fronto had been most indignant when she’d told him she intended to help out in the shop. ‘Croesus, I’ve offered him dosh enough to see his days out, he don’t need to work.’

‘It’s charity, love, and you know how Dad feels about hand-outs.’ Stubborn was too kind a word. Many’s the time she’d begged him to move in with them. (Well, she could clear it with Fronto later, couldn’t she?)