Marilyn Todd - I, Claudia

‘On your left side, if you don’t mind.’

The attendant flipped him over and continued his scraping. It was a wonderful sensation, feeling the bronze blade slide over your skin. Down. And down. And down. A man was at his most vulnerable here. Deaf, dumb and blind. He was sleepy from lying so the hot, damp air could open his pores, his body was oiled and the steam itself swirled so thickly it was impossible to see the man next to you, you only caught snippets of his conversation. Occasionally it was possible to put a name to one of the talkers, but the atmosphere in the room affected your lungs and few people could produce little more than hoarse whispers.

Which may or may not have been coincidental.

‘And now your right side.’

Orbilio rolled over. Baths, wine and sex. What a wonderful combination. If only he could incorporate all three at the same time it would be heaven on earth. And if Claudia Seferius was with him…Cupid’s darts, if he died on the spot afterwards he’d die a happy man. If, if, if. There were too many ifs in that particular scenario. As rather tended to be the case where she was concerned…

He tipped the attendant two asses from the bronze purse round his wrist, yawned, stretched, then decided to go the whole hog today and have a massage. He owed himself that, after the long hours he’d been putting in on those bloody murders. Not to mention the fact that the Sardinian fish-seller had left Rome, taking Vera with him, and Petronella refused to talk to him nowadays. Mother of Tarquin, a man needed something to redress the balance, and he was damned if he’d resort to common whores. So. He ran his hands through his hair. A massage it is.

The pattern on the mosaic guided him out of the stifling steam room and he took several deep breaths in the doorway to focus his senses. Stone chambers echoed with laughter, whistling, conversation and the piercing cries of vendors thronging the passageways and hawking everything from cakes to honeyed wine. Orbilio made his way between two flaxen-haired beauties lounging against the tiled walls. One raised her eyebrows in invitation, but he gave a swift shake of the head and passed on. The hot air was making him perspire again and he paused, wondering whether to take a cold plunge. Later, he decided. After the massage.

He chose Lupi, a masseur with a penchant for keeping his own counsel, because he wanted to relax unfettered by small talk and idle chitchat. He’d had quite enough of that this morning, hanging around the gossips and picking up bits here and bits there-and none of them any bloody use whatsoever. Who cared if this Senator dyed his hair or that matron padded her breast band?

‘Hmmm.’ Expert hands prodded his muscles. ‘You’re very tense today, sir.’

This wasn’t much of a revelation to Orbilio. No wine. No sex. No clues. It would be a miracle not to be tense. He’d seriously considered taking refuge again in his wine, but the hangovers had been getting worse and he needed a clear head. Callisunus was already intimating that he might redirect Orbilio on to some fraud case.

‘I place myself entirely at your mercy, Lupi. Do your worst.’

‘Yessir!’

The masseur, a burly fellow from Dacia, grinned as he oiled his hands with a spicy unguent and began to pummel Orbilio’s shoulders. Gradually the flesh yielded and the sound softened to a soft slap-slap-slapping. He knew Claudia visited these baths virtually every day and that her visits also happened to coincide with the times Gaius wasn’t here. Orbilio tried to tell himself that his own decision to come to the baths today was coincidence. Seferius was away in the country, maybe she had better things to do? Maybe she’d already come and gone? Orbilio had already established she didn’t spend the same amount of time on her visits as her husband.

Lupi began to knead his muscles like dough and Orbilio knew the masseur had felt the sudden pull of tension. Praise be to Mars he can’t read minds, Orbilio thought, wondering why the idea of Claudia with her husband should make him jealous. Jealous? Whatever made him think of such a word? Of course he wasn’t jealous!

‘Harder, Lupi.’

Surprise. Interest. Curiosity, even. But no, never jealousy. It must have come as a shock to Seferius about his son, he thought. Briefly, he’d considered going round to the house to offer his condolences, but she had the temperament of a she-wolf, that woman, and she was just as likely to follow through with her threat of telling Gaius that Cousin Markie had molested her. A smile played around his lips. There were other ways of skinning a coney. Yes, indeed there were!

It had been something of a knock, seeing Claudia and Gaius together at the games. He’d seen Seferius many times, never to speak to but certainly by sight, and he hadn’t thought too hard about the fellow. Rich. Fat. Middle-aged but wearing well. Then, when they were side by side, Orbilio realized that Gaius hadn’t gone to seed the way he’d thought. Overweight, although only in a solid, muscular sense. A man who had, quite literally, consolidated his bulk. Systematically, too. And suddenly the thought of the big man’s hands manipulating Claudia’s soft, white breasts was offensive in the extreme. Orbilio remembered when she’d linked her arm into his at the amphitheatre. Admittedly, she’d done it in a patronizing manner, but the sensations it had caused still rippled through his nerve ends.

‘Nearly done, sir.’

The Dacian’s skilled hands had worked small wonders. When Orbilio stood up, he felt five years younger, full of life and energy. A lightning dip in cold water left him feeling vigorous enough to run up Vesuvius backwards, although Petronella’s charms would have served well enough. Along the colonnaded walkway leading back to the dressing room he noticed Paternus the lawyer, head bowed in conversation with a man Orbilio didn’t recognize. Thin, weedy and with a voice to match, the lawyer had a tendency to leave discretion in the changing rooms with his other valuables. Orbilio lounged nonchalantly against a column, arms crossed, staring upwards at the sky.

‘…so I said, for twelve gold pieces it’s yours, my boy.’ That was the voice of the stranger.

The two men laughed.

‘I recall our friend the wine merchant extricating himself in much the same manner,’ the lawyer said. ‘I was handling his case against that Bithynian upstart…’

At that point, an extrovert general who enjoyed the sound of his own voice came strolling along, belting out a bawdy ballad, and the rest of the sentence was lost. They could be discussing any number of wine merchants, the city was full of them. However Orbilio convinced himself he had no option but to follow them.

‘…at which juncture, Seferius clapped the Bithynian on the back and said, you obviously haven’t heard about my latest…’

Once more the thin voice was drowned out, this time by a group of boisterous youths racing each other towards the cold pool. For a moment Orbilio was distracted, remembering the days when he, too, would rush headlong into the icy waters straight off. There was, he reflected, definitely something to be said in favour of maturity.

Oh, shit! Paternus and his companion were heading for the steam room! Orbilio ran his hand over his chin. There was no need for him to follow them. The conversation had absolutely no bearing on the case. Gaius was of no interest to him. No interest whatsoever. He’d head for the exercise yards.

‘Back already?’ The attendant proffered a small flask of oil. ‘Glutton for punishment, aren’t you, sir?’

The dense impenetrability of the steam room closed in, making him catch his breath.

‘Fancied a bit of extra pampering today.’ Orbilio declined the oil. Another scraping and he’d be down to bare bone! ‘I’m looking for two friends who just came in. One’s small and skinny, the other’s-’