Marilyn Todd - Man Eater

Orbilio was lifting the limp form of Mistress Pictor into his arms. Despite detailed investigative work by the army and the Security Police, it was unlikely even a slender case could be made against Sergius, and even if he and Euphemia fell out and accused one another, it was his word against hers. Nevertheless, Claudia felt a great weight lifted off her shoulders.

It was over.

Finally, the nightmare was over. She could return to Rome knowing she didn’t have to keep her back to the wall from now on.

As Orbilio carried Alis to her room, the clamour in the atrium became, if that was possible, even louder. Macer had to bellow to make himself heard, and was trying to verify the facts with his nephew. Claudia sidled over to Taranis.

‘You know she be murderess?’ he marvelled.

‘I know you be spy.’

His face went rigid. ‘You say again, please. I no understand.’

‘You understand perfectly, my primitive friend. You came to find out whether the Emperor planned to invade Britain, am I right?’

‘You know damn well.’ His hands dug into her upper arms as he spun her behind the pillar. ‘Is why you’re here, no? You and security man?’

To his amazement, she began to laugh. ‘Is that what you thought? That we’re here to keep an eye on you?’ He should consider himself so important. ‘Well, I regret to tell you this, Taranis, but my story was the gods-honest truth. I was run off the road.’

‘Tch!’ The Celt made a vulgar gesture with his hand, but it was aimed at himself, rather than Claudia. ‘Now you turn me in, heh?’

I ought to, if only for turning my room over. ‘The Divine Julius made one attempt on your barbaric coast. Augustus won’t fancy tangling with you lot again, take my word for it.’

‘Is good,’ Taranis said, nodding sagely. ‘Is good we no have war, is good you have problem in Pannonia, and is good-good for Atrebates-your general is dead. It take heat off Britain, no? We trade in peace.’

Claudia felt a faint ruffle of unease. ‘How could you possibly hear about invasion plans from this wretched little backwater?’

‘I try Rome, people notice me. So I take, what’s the word, accomplice, yes? I take accomplice. Freeborn man, poor. Need money. I pay him to stand outside Senate instead, he tell me what is said.’

The spy has a spy, whatever next?

‘I-’ he paused. ‘I sorry he try to kill you.’

Claudia goggled in indignation. ‘You tried to feed me to the crocodiles?’

‘Not me. Accomplice! I not know what happen.’ Be fair, Taranis did look miserable. ‘He come visit, to Vale of Adonis, to make report. I tell him you here, you bring security man with you, and he panic. He say to kill you, I say no need, but-’ He spread his hands apologetically and shambled away.

She thought back to the night she searched Timoleon’s room, and realized now the conversation she’d overheard was Taranis talking to his accomplice. What irony. If only she’d listened more carefully, she’d never have been dragged to the compound and a man would still be alive today.

Orbilio must have thought he was walking into a cockfight, there was such a rumpus in the atrium. ‘Sergius has kicked up a right storm,’ he remarked in Claudia’s ear, although what his next words were, she was never destined to find out, because they were drowned by a noise which by rights should have dislodged the roof tiles.

‘Enough!’ Macer held up an imperious hand to quieten the rabble, and gave an imperceptible nod to his trumpeter to indicate that one blast was sufficient. ‘If you could all retire to your rooms, please, I’ll conduct interviews in the morning, you can have your say then. Ah-not you, Mistress Seferius. A word, if you please.’ He beckoned her over with an obsequious crook of his finger. Orbilio, she noticed, took just one pace backwards, and that to rest his weight against a column.

The Prefect smoothed his bright, white, civilian tunic. ‘You’ll have heard about Agrippa, naturally? So you’ll appreciate I have a lot on my plate at the moment?’ Claudia shot him her prettiest smile. ‘Tying up the loose ends of your illegal gambling racket?’

His face turned ugly. ‘Do you accuse me of improbity, Mistress Seferius?’

‘Only if that fly-blown dive doubles as a brothel at weekends.’

‘That patronizing smile’, he hissed through his teeth, ‘will soon fade, because I have you, my girl. I have you.’

‘In your dreams, perhaps.’ She tried to sweep past, but he stepped to the side and blocked her way.

‘No, no, I have you, Mistress Seferius, bang to rights as they say.’

Claudia raised one insolent eyebrow in reply.

Macer drew himself up to his full height, and rolled his tongue round the inside of his upper lip. ‘This morning,’ he announced, and this time his voice carried to the rafters, ‘an itinerant pedlar reported a strong and unpleasant smell coming from one of the old patrician huts. Most of them have fallen into some disrepair along this neglected stretch of the Via Flaminia. I expect you had noticed.’

‘If you had a point, Macer, it’s long since gone blunt.’

‘Apologies, if I’m boring you. But you see, Mistress Seferius, when our itinerant pedlar went to investigate this objectionable odour, what do you think he found?’

‘Your wife?’ she asked sweetly.

Marcus Cornelius Orbilio had turned the other way, but his frame seemed to be shaking silently.

‘He found’, Macer sneered, ‘the bodies of three young men. One had bulging eyes, one had ginger hair and the other bore a birthmark just about,’ he ran his finger slowly down Claudia’s cheek, ‘here. Acid, it would seem, had been added to their wine.’ The Prefect examined his gold cloakpin. ‘It was not a pleasant death.’

Sweet Jupiter! Sergius Pictor wasn’t desperate, he was sick. To kill three boys, just to silence them-it was Coronis all over again. Claudia’s stomach clenched and unclenched. Surely he could have spared a few coppers to pay them off?

‘Prefect,’ Claudia said sadly, ‘I have a whole host of alibis.’ Obsessed to the point of delusion, poor chap. They’ll laugh him out of court on Wednesday. ‘Including your own nephew.’

Even as she spoke the words, she knew…

And, worse, Macer knew…

‘Yes.’ He smiled, and it was not a pretty smile. ‘He told me.’

Idly, he turned to face the captain of his soldiers. ‘Arrest the bitch,’ he said calmly, jerking his chin towards Orbilio. ‘And him too, if he tries to interfere.’

*

Claudia Seferius didn’t think twice. Spinning on her heel, she raced across the atrium and out through the courtyard.

‘After her!’ yelled Macer. ‘Stop her! Any way you can.’

Vaulting the rosemary, she fled past the parrots and the topiaries and leapt over the fishpond. Torches that had previously been so welcoming became her enemy. They threw her fleeing figure into stark relief and gave her a thousand shadows. She jumped at each one.

Any way you can, Macer said…

Oh no! The gate’s locked! She rattled it, pushed it, then when it refused to budge, ran to the far gate. The soldiers were gaining. They did not have to cleave a path, negotiate obstacles. Like migrating geese, they only had to stay in her slipstream.

Damn you, Macer, damn you to hell! Because even as she was boasting of Salvian’s alibi, she realized the hole she was digging for herself. Of course, the boy would tell his uncle. Trusting, idealistic-he saw no reason not to. Any way you can. Dead or alive. It might yet prove a grave she had dug for herself. A thousand silhouettes flickered around her. A thousand hobnailed boots echoed in her ears. Shit! This gate’s locked as well! Finding a toehold in the woodwork, Claudia shinned over it, her dusky pink skirts billowing as she darted between the peach trees and the pears.