Marilyn Todd - Wolf Whistle

The farce should be quite a show. Apparently the playwright was a sparkling newcomer whose wit and musical score There it was again! At Pillar Thirty-one. The flicker from behind. She glanced along the colonnade. Portly merchants eyeing up the painted nudes. Lovers, arm in arm, eyes locked. A small boy sitting on the step, picking intently at a scab on his elbow. People. Not exactly crowds, but nevertheless she wasn’t alone here. So why this flutter of unease for what was probably nothing but the effect of fast-moving clouds?

Around Pillar Forty-three, Claudia simply had to know. Had Kaeso’s House of Silence made a sucker out of her?

Backtracking round a cypress grove, the path diverged. This way to the Pantheon, that way to the baths. But wait. Behind an overhanging branch, a narrow, weed-choked path would prove it once and for all. Claudia did not consider the danger as she draped her bright magenta wrap around her elbows and was swallowed by the shrubs. She was intent only on defying an overheated imagination.

Dappled shade turned to deeper shadows. Dense undergrowth muffled sound, the greenery snagged in her hair. Ought she turn back? Narrowing to the point of obscurity, the path terminated at a building where ivy scrambled over walls for sparrows to make nests in. There was a coldness and a damp about the place. The long, wet grass was a stranger to the scythe and when the leaf litter rustled, Claudia squealed aloud. A blackbird hopped out, dangling a caterpillar from his beak, and she rolled her eyes in disgust. What’s to be scared of? This old voting hall, abandoned because who the hell wanted to traipse this far out of town to hear speeches? There were rumours about it being turned into a bazaar-’

‘BITCH!’

Claudia spun round. ‘Magic!’

He hadn’t changed his clothes, they were filthier than ever and stiff from the dried blood of two days back. ‘You faithless, whoring bitch!’

The hair was matted, just as she remembered, and the same uneven teeth and gagging stench. The only difference seemed to be that this time he wielded a knife in both his hands. Claudia screamed, even before she remembered the doll that he’d sent her, slashed to ribbons.

‘I followed you.’

Spinning on her heel, she raced across the courtyard. Inside the voting hall, I’ll be safe!

‘And saw you with those men!’

Up the steps she ran…

The voice changed, became wheedling. ‘Thought you’d kill old Magic? Well, you can’t.’

…across the portico…

‘Magic is immortal.’

…through the porchway…

‘Magic cannot die!’

…to the doors…

‘But you’ll die, you bitch! You deceived me!’

…which were locked and would not budge.

He stopped running when he knew he had her trapped. ‘All those men,’ he rasped. ‘Why? Why so many men, Claudia?’

Her fingernails chipped in a desperate attempt to claw open the lock. ‘Men?’ she croaked. He was deranged. But maybe she could reason with him and find a way out of this nightmare.

‘First the blond one, then the dark one.’ His eyes glittered harshly. ‘No thought of your promise to me!’ In the dank and slimy darkness, the glint from the twin blades shone menacingly. ‘What about the vows we took, do they mean nothing?’

It was no use, the doors were never going to open. Her heart was pounding, her breathing ragged. Think, girl, think. ‘That we still share, Magic.’ She forced her voice to be soft and reassuring. ‘Those men-’

‘Yes?’ His face twisted.

‘-they were cousins, that was all.’ She swallowed the bile in her throat, and forced herself to look at him and not the knives. ‘I told you…in my letters…about my duties.’ In an effort to quell the rising terror, had she overdone the soothing? Had it come out patronizing?

‘Then-’ He seemed to be trying to grasp something. ‘Then you’ll still come to me every night?’

‘Always.’

He nodded slowly, as though still taking it in. ‘And when the white light hurts my head, you’ll sing to me like Mamma did?’

‘Of course.’

His voice became petulant. ‘She doesn’t come to magic the pain away any more. She-’ The eyes blurred with tears. Was this her moment? Could she dash past him, unnoticed? ‘Mamma’s dead, isn’t she?’ he sobbed. ‘Mamma’s dead?’

Intuitively, Claudia knew that it was true. The mother who’d looked after him, protected him against himself and the world, probably drugged him when the mental pain became too bad. She could almost hear the woman whispering ‘magic’ as she wiped his sweating brow and trickled the draught through his lips.

‘Yes,’ she said, and heard the tremble in her voice. ‘Mamma’s dead.’

Distant eyes re-focused. Became beady. ‘That’s right,’ he said smugly. ‘She died the day your husband died. I wrote you a letter, told you how we were united in grief, you wrote back, remember? That’s when it started. Back in August. You do remember, don’t you?’

Claudia’s breath came out in a series of tiny gasps. ‘Every detail.’

The inadequate creature who called himself Magic shuffled closer in the doorway. ‘You’re mine,’ he said thickly. ‘Mine.’ In the dim light, she saw his eyes clamp on her breasts, and he all but licked his lips. Smile. For gods’ sakes, smile at him! He smiled back. Then the smile hardened and was replaced by a frown.

‘You tried to kill me.’ It came over sulky.

She took a step towards him. One step closer to Magic. One step closer to the steps which led to freedom. She could smell his stale breath and body odour, heard his laboured lungs. ‘No, I-’

‘Yes, you did! You fucking tried to kill me!’

This time, there was no reasoning with him. No words which would mollify, no looks to calm him down. Ducking under the flailing twin blades, Claudia ran headlong across the porch towards the marble stairs. Three steps from the bottom, she slipped, her feet trapped in the fabric of her wrap.

‘Now it’s your turn, you bitch!’

Magic plunged towards her, yelling obscenities and waving the knives. Kicking and squirming, Claudia rolled on to the bottom step, then the madman was on top of her, pinning her down with his knees. With her face pressed into the dirt and no escape possible, she braced herself for the thrust of the knife.

It didn’t come.

And suddenly the weight on top of her was gone. Croesus, he bottled it after all!

Claudia spun round on to her back. Magic hadn’t run off, he’d been hauled off. She saw an arm round his throat, a man’s knee in the small of his back. She watched a knife plunge upwards into his kidneys. Saw him arch with the pain. And as he arched, the knife came down straight in his heart.

The last thing she heard as the darkness swallowed her up was a voice in the distance saying, ‘I think you’ll find that terminates the correspondence course.’

*

As Claudia struggled back to consciousness, strange pictures formed and dissolved. A man with the head of a hawk. Another like a jackal. A woman in a blue dress with cow horns on her head ‘Janus!’

‘It’s only the priestess,’ a deep voice said soothingly. ‘You’re in the Temple of Isis.’ He paused. ‘You passed out, I carried you here.’

Isis? Memory crawled back, inch by inch. The Field of Mars. A path into the woods. The old voting hall. There was a fight…

‘Ssssh,’ the man said. ‘Easy, now.’

A cool compress was pressed against her forehead and the lap in which her head lay smelled of musk. Close by, the woodpecker from hell drummed for all it was worth. It turned out to be Claudia’s teeth.

‘Is he dead?’ she asked, remembering everything now.

Kaeso grinned. ‘Most emphatically.’