Marilyn Todd: Wolf Whistle

Refreshed and replete, she hooked the door to with her toe, grappling with wraps, jars and mirrors under one arm and a jug of Falernian wine under the other. There were two honey cakes in her right hand and a goblet, half full, in her left. The tortoiseshell comb she gripped with her teeth. The atrium, thank heavens, was deserted, affording privacy, air, space to breathe, time to appreciate the birds captured in silent song by the artist’s brush, to What was that?

Claudia tipped her head on one side. There it was again. Three knocks at the vestibule door. Not hard, not soft, but certainly not tentative. Curious, she decided against calling the porter back from his break and, after a valiant juggling act with her burdens, eased open the door herself.

The comb spat from her mouth.

The man leaning in the doorway would have been taller still, had it not been for the stoop where he was clutching his stomach. His hair was dark, with a tendency to curl, although right now most of it was matted with dark, sticky blood, which trickled down the side of his face to join the growing stain on his once-white tunic. His left eye was red and swollen and closing fast.

‘Lovely evening,’ he rasped. ‘Don’t you think?’

With unexpected grace, he slithered slowly down the door jamb into unconsciousness.

*

Claudia’s instinct was to slam the door in his face. By the gods, she didn’t need this! She threw down her wrap and the jug and the mirror, but not in order to play nurse. This man (correction, this human ferret) was the only person in Rome who knew the truth about Claudia, the single weak link in an otherwise sturdy chain. And now he turns up here! The honey cakes bounced, but the fall of the alabaster pot was broken by a heap of yellow cotton. Look at him. It wasn’t the first time they’d crossed swords, but every time it was akin to tossing water on to acid. Explosive. Tentacles of grey mist coiled up the street, bringing with them a conglomeration of onions, damp donkey fur and the sickly scent of pomegranates fallen from a cart. Lips pursed, Claudia prodded the comatose lump. He’d been worked over by experts, but the damage was purely superficial. Hell, let him bleed on his own wretched doorstep!

From a distance she heard a voice saying, ‘As far as I am aware, the gods of this threshold do not actually require a blood sacrifice.’

Incredibly, the voice appeared to be hers.

Marcus Cornelius Orbilio spluttered his way back to the land of the living. ‘When I give, I like to give generously,’ he said. At least that’s what it sounded like. It was hard to tell with his lip so puffy. ‘And anyway, you should see the others.’

Dammit, thought Claudia, if I wanted to laugh, I’d go watch a comedian.

‘Another of those quiet nights out with the boys?’ she asked, pushing him roughly towards the bath room.

‘Not exactly.’ His smile turned into a grimace of pain as she dabbed at his forehead. ‘They were Nerva’s men.’

‘Really?’ The cut was deep, but she did not believe it needed stitching. ‘They look pretty damn confident to me.’

‘Not nervous.’ Orbilio gripped his ribs, because it hurt like hell when he laughed. ‘Nerva.’

He smelled of sandalwood and wine, and you could tell his tunic had been aired over rosemary, even through the coarser scents of mud and blood. Claudia pressed harder on the cut. ‘The aedile responsible for restoring the Temple of Neptune?’

‘The very same. Only instead of dipping into the sea for inspiration, he’s been dipping into the State Treasury. That’s an exile offence, so he set his thugs on me. Four of them to be precise.’

Claudia shuddered. This was a night for foursomes, she thought, recalling the Midden Hunters trawling the slums. Funny, but she could have forgiven them, perhaps, had they been dirty and down-at-heel, skulking in the shadows. Instead she remembered the lavish embroidery, the cultured voice, and the bearded man with the horseshoe-shaped scar.

The wounded warrior was making a brave stab at humour. ‘I taught one or two of them a lesson, I think.’ Claudia examined the lump on his head and applied a compress.

‘They didn’t need extra tuition, Orbilio, they were doing perfectly well on their own. Will you sit still?’

‘That hurt!’

‘Don’t be a baby.’ It was only vinegar to flush out the wounds. ‘What happens next?’

‘Oh, I’ll have them in irons by midday, and then they can decide for themselves whether the money they were paid was worth the price of their lives.’

Claudia debated whether to tell him she was reaching for the salt and decided it would only make him fidget even more. ‘Actually, I was enquiring, in my usual polite and roundabout way, whether Nerva’s heavies had followed you here. Are we, for instance, needing to batten down the hatches and repel boarders?’

‘No need, they scarpered once the- Youch!’

‘You were saying?’ she asked sweetly.

Orbilio made a grab for the salt and applied it himself, a tad more gingerly she noticed. Wimp.

‘Those bastards meant to kill me. Goddammit, they were using me as a human battering ram. When Weasel’s door sprang open, I’m not sure who was the more surprised. Nerva’s men, me, or Senator Plautius with some curly-headed rent boy on his arm.’

Irony indeed. Had it not been for a senator who preached the high moral ground by day and stalked catamites by night, Orbilio would be floating half-way to Ostia by now.

The painkilling properties of her opobalsam salve were beginning to work. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked, as he struggled to his feet.

‘I’ll live.’

‘I was afraid of that. Now tell me what you’re doing here.’

‘Me? Oh. Just passing.’

‘On your hands and knees?’

A muscle twitched at the side of his swollen lip, but before he could respond, a small child had come barrelling into the room.

‘Hello, I’m Jovi, who are you? I got lost. Claudia found me on the Argiletum. I asked another lady to help, but she was asleep, so Claudia brought me to her house for the night and she gave me a hot pie and a bath. Have you had a hot pie?’

‘Um. No. But I wouldn’t mind one.’ Orbilio glanced hopefully at Claudia, who made a great show of finding a clean place to dry her hands on the bloodied linen towel.

‘I’ll fetch you some from the kitchens,’ said Jovi. ‘They’re very good pies, I ate two. And some honeyed apricots. There was a cake on the hall floor, I ate that as well, actually there was two, so you can have the other one if you like.’

He pulled Claudia’s second honey cake out from his shirt and handed it across. The transformation was astonishing, she thought. Clean, his hair was at least two shades lighter, and his face was quite cute, once the dirt’d been scrubbed off. The lice had probably clogged up the drains.

Marcus studied the hot, misshapen offering and politely declined.

‘Why do you wear a long tunic?’ Jovi pointed to Orbilio’s trademark patrician attire. ‘I’ve never seen a man in a frock before, are you a priest?’

‘He has knobbly knees, soldier. People laugh at them, so he keeps them covered up. Shouldn’t you be in bed?’

‘Pff! I’m far too excited to sleep!’ Jovi stuffed the honey cake into his mouth. ‘I’ll go fetch you them pies,’ he said, crumbs spraying everywhere. ‘There’s lots to choose from, I had quail and then I had duck, but there’s all sorts of others, which do you want? Cypassis says beef for brawn, fish for brains-’

‘He already has fish for brains, Jovi. You bring back anything that looks nice.’

As his little feet pitter-pattered up the atrium, Marcus sluiced water over his matted hair. ‘Why, Claudia Seferius, I do declare you’ve been unfaithful in my absence.’