Marilyn Todd - I, Claudia

‘Wotcha! Heard about Publius?’

‘Rufus, this isn’t the time. Publius who?’

‘Publius Caldus the banker. Dead as a herring, he is.’ The boy made a gleeful gagging sound in his throat. ‘Dagger through the heart and his eyes dug out, same as the rest of ’em.’

‘Were someone to ask me to write it down, I honestly wouldn’t know where to start,’ Claudia told Drusilla.

She’d barricaded herself in her room, it was the only sure way to get peace and quiet these days.

‘The House of Seferius has turned into Pandora’s Box and had the very gates of hell been thrown wide, I swear Jupiter wouldn’t have more turmoil to contend with than I have.’

‘Ffffrow.’

‘Yes! As for you, you little hussy!’ Claudia’s fingernails raked up and down the cat’s backbone. ‘Don’t think I’m fooled by this extra podge.’ She gave Drusilla’s tummy a gentle prod. ‘I know you’re carrying kittens in there.’

Not one to miss an opportunity, the cat flopped over, squirming from side to side as Claudia’s fingertips tickled her soft cream underbelly. Her front claws began kneading the air. This was the time of day she liked best, when she’d had her supper and the light was failing. Moths would come out, and although she was particularly partial to moths nothing could beat cuddles with Claudia, because once she, Claudia and a jug of wine got together Drusilla knew she was in for a session and a half. Her blue squinty eyes closed in excruciating ecstasy.

‘Broop.’

‘The trouble is, poppet, everything’s spiralling out of hand. The minute I think I’ve got one aspect licked, another horror pops up. Look at this.’ Claudia’s hand reached out for the letter on the table. ‘From Lucan, waiting for me when I got home. Very polite, he is. Requests five hundred sesterces before Wednesday. What am I supposed to do, eh?’

She crumpled the parchment into a ball and lobbed it neatly out of the window.

‘I fobbed him off, of course. Sent him an equally polite letter back, enclosing fifty with the possibility of another fifty next week. I mean, you can’t say fairer than that, can you?’

Sneaking fifty out of the banqueting fund was a doddle.

‘I had such grand plans for raising the whole wretched sum, until Gaius scuppered it.’ Claudia changed hands, her fingers were aching. Drusilla continued to knead bread in the air. ‘It was that line I fed him about the galley captain which inspired me. I thought, why not put the trick into practice? Heaven knows, there are enough gullible bods in this city, I felt sure we could milk a handful without pushing our luck. And what did Gaius do?’

‘Brrrr.’

‘Gaius, the man who plays everything so close to his chest it gives him blisters? He blabs to the entire contingent at that bloody banquet last night how he, Gaius Seferius, wine merchant of repute, had been conned out of three hundred sesterces!’

‘Brup, brup.’

Bloody banquet. A veritable farce if ever there was one. Claudia’s eyes rolled at the memory. Melissa’s suicide left all manner of nightmares in its wake, not least the fact that she’d left no notes of the arrangements she had made. Or, to be more precise, the lack of! Consequently, of the dancers only six Syrian girls bothered to turn up, forcing Claudia to put them through their paces so many times their ankles buckled under the strain. The tumblers didn’t arrive until midnight, the fire eater didn’t arrive at all, nor did the poet or the comedian or the snake charmer. The acrobats were atrocious, and Claudia had had no qualms in docking their money and putting it towards paying off Lucan, but the musicians, to give them credit, excelled themselves. It was just a pity no singers turned up to accompany them.

A lesser woman would have spent the evening squirming with embarrassment. Not Claudia. The minute she realized the banquet would be a fiasco, at least from the point of view of entertainers, she announced to the assembled party this was to be a night of comedy. Imagine, if they pleased, the type of revelry they could expect if the hoi polloi were left to organize it. She congratulated herself, because appealing to their obscene snobbery was an instant success. The worst thing imaginable was for their cosy patrician/equestrian world to be invaded by the Great Unwashed, and so to watch the same old dance troupe perform endlessly, hear music without song or poetry and not even having the satisfaction of a bawdy female impersonator went a long way towards bolstering their own superiority. And the supreme irony of it was, she reflected happily, none of the arrogant sods was even remotely aware they’d been sent up!

Had it not been for Verres’s genius with the feast, of course, she’d never have got away with it, but there you are, that’s life for you. Some you win, some you lose, and that boar stuffed with live thrushes took their gluttonous breath away. As did the peacocks and cranes, the lampreys and oysters. Tomorrow, being Saturday and the Wine Festival, she could afford to give him a day off as a reward.

Another uplifting point was that although Gaius had invited Orbilio, luckily the odious little ferret had been too bogged down with Caldus’s murder to attend. The immediacy of the banker’s death meant that questions about alibis became a trifle touchy, but she’d handled it rather well, she thought. At least having Orbilio under her roof she’d been able to extract that poor old Publius copped it some time between five and seven, so it was relatively simple to say to her punters, hey, I waved to you in the Forum yesterday, must have been around six o’clock, why didn’t you wave back? With the wine flowing plentifully and everyone having a jolly time, it was instinctive for them to reply, Me? You made a mistake, I was at such-and-such at six, or whatever. Not one of the seven hesitated…which meant the list was narrowing nicely.

Claudia mentally stropped the dagger which would kill the killer.

‘Not that everything ran smoothly.’

‘Prrrrrr.’

‘Guess who found herself lumbered next to Ventidius Balbus all night, but I have to say there was nothing by way of entertainment which might have nudged his memory back to Genoa. I mean, how those elephants dare call themselves dancers, I’ve no idea! And then demand a triple fee for it. Just because you danced non-stop, don’t think you can con me , I told them. It’s quality not quantity that counts in this household.’

‘Mmmrow.’

‘Balbus? Oh, you remember him, poppet. Puny little weed, eyes like boiled gooseberries. Dull as chastity, too. Spent the entire evening banging on about how he’s divorcing his wife, and all I could think was bloody good luck to the little woman.’

Drusilla set one long, elegant back paw to check an itch inside her ear. Claudia was uneasy, she could tell, so she pushed her wedge-shaped face into her friend’s.

‘Now don’t start worrying about me, Drusilla. Oh, I won’t deny it wasn’t harrowing, spending six hours beside the one man in Rome who might yet ruin everything, but I’m sure as eggs is eggs he didn’t make the connection.’ All the same, it does no harm to avoid the boring old sod wherever possible. She drained her glass.

‘But what about Junius, though? Dear Diana, you wouldn’t credit such imbecility, would you?’

It had put Claudia right off her food that evening-and they were in the middle of a particularly succulent duck, too. Gaius announced, very matter of factly if you please, that he’d spoken to Junius and thanked him for saving his wife’s life, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You’re a free man, he told him, promising to draw up the paperwork, and then asked Claudia to guess what. What? she’d asked, spearing a mushroom. Well, Gaius had said, you could have blown him down with a feather, the boy insisted he didn’t want his freedom. Naturally Claudia hadn’t believed a word of it. Gaius was behaving oddly of late, he was getting very muddled, poor soul. Don’t be absurd, she’d said. Every slave in the Empire wants his freedom! Yes, that was the point, said Gaius. It was rather rum, what? Rum, she’d muttered, was an understatement. Was the boy simple or what? No matter. She carved herself a juicy piece of duck and slipped half to Drusilla. She’d sort out this Gaulish oddity later, there was no point in letting good fowl go to waste.