Marilyn Todd - I, Claudia

‘No demon,’ she said sweetly, brushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘Just one little pussycat.’

‘Demon,’ he insisted. ‘Torn my face to shreds.’

True, true. But don’t fret, Otho, I shan’t bill you for the improvement, you can just thank me later.

‘Well, chum. Care to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here?’ Orbilio heaved the Thracian to a sitting position by the neck of his tunic. ‘We’ll find out sooner or later, you might as well make it sooner.’

Otho used his shoulder to wipe his mouth. ‘I work for Lucan the moneylender. This bitch owe many thousand sesterces, I come to collect.’

‘Is that true?’

That was Orbilio.

‘Of course it’s not!’

That was Gaius.

‘No one collects debts at three in the morning by forcing themselves on decent, respectable, defenceless matrons.’

Matron? Matron? Still, she could overlook the description, she supposed, seeing as how Gaius was so valiantly sticking up for her.

‘Is true, you ask Master Lucan. He confirm.’

Claudia’s eyes darted from Gaius to Orbilio and back again. Orbilio, she thought, was inclined to believe the thug, circumstances or no circumstances, because hadn’t Rufus blabbed about her and a big Thracian geezer on the day of the riot? Two big Thracians in a girl’s life was stretching coincidence, and she knew damned well how Orbilio felt about coincidences. In Gaius’s life, however Thracians were spread particularly thin on the ground… She flashed her husband a look of utter helplessness and waited.

‘What say we geld the bastard on the spot, Marcus?’ Bless you, Gaius!

Orbilio gave a half-smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘This charmer goes for trial.’

‘Why waste public money? Together we could-’

‘No.’

‘That’s not fair he’s-’

‘Gaius, if life was fair we wouldn’t need trials in the first place. This scumbag goes to court and that’s final.’

A public airing? Juno, I need leprosy more than I need that!

‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we-’

‘My sweet, your cousin’s quite right. Regrettable as it is, I agree we ought to hand him over.’

‘But-’

‘Now don’t distress yourself, Claudia. I give you my word, nothing like this will ever happen again. I’ll mount a permanent guard on the doors…’

He didn’t come in through the door Gaius!

‘…get a dog, even.’

Cover your ears, Drusilla.

‘Oh, Gaius, you’re wonderful. Thank you so much.’ She turned to Orbilio. ‘You, too, Cousin Markie,’ she added through her teeth. Dammit, twice in four days! She really had to break this habit before it went to his head.

Otho was bundled unceremoniously out of the room by the slaves, supervised by Junius, she noticed. Looks like he managed to wangle himself a promotion into the bargain, the sneaky little sod.

‘Leave that,’ she commanded the girl mopping up the blood. ‘We’ll sort it out in the morning, when the light’s better.’

In truth she was feeling too weak and jittery to want a servant hanging around. What she needed was a glass of wine and a good kip.

Orbilio combed his hair with his hands. ‘See you in the morning, then.’

Not if I see you first.

‘Look forward to it, Marcus…’

Oh, shit. ‘Gaius, are you all right?’

His face was contorted with pain, he was clutching his chest.

Claudia was out of bed in an instant, slipping and sliding in Otho’s blood as she ran across the room, but Orbilio had beaten her to it.

‘Sit down,’ he was saying, leading Gaius towards the bed.

Claudia held the lamp nearer his face. Shit. It was grey. Spasms of pain wracked his huge frame.

‘ Junius? Oh, there you are. Junius, fetch a doctor, the master’s ill.’

For centuries, the Roman people had revered their gods through propitiation, be it the sacrifice of a pregnant sheep, the donation of valuables, a hefty tithe or simply the pouring of a libation to remind the immortals they had not been forgotten. From mighty Jupiter to the humblest guardians of the storecupboard, the underlying factor was fear. And the message? Anger the gods at your peril. So with this so firmly instilled in his fine patrician blood, Orbilio couldn’t fathom why Claudia’s performance at the household shrine didn’t so much as break his stride.

‘You miserable sons of bitches,’ she was saying. ‘Every single day for the past four and a half years you’ve had more bloody attention than a bride on her wedding night. You’ve seen this shrine doubled in size, rebuilt in the finest Carrara marble money-and try telling me you’ve seen carvings to match and I’ll call you liars to your faces.’ She made a great show of pouring the libation.

‘Saw that, did you? Right. This is your final warning! I’ve done my bit, it’s about bloody time you started doing yours, do you hear me?’

Orbilio reckoned every deity in existence probably heard her-and was undoubtedly quaking in their celestial shoes with it. ‘Have you considered the possibility they’ve already fled in terror?’ he asked mildly.

‘Better still! If Gaius’s ancestors were half as bad as the present lot, good riddance.’

‘Not ideal, then?’

She snorted. ‘His mother’s a viper in human form, his sister’s got feathers for brains and his daughter would try the patience of Poseidon.’

‘I hear she’s marrying Scaevola next month.’

‘Damn right.’ She sounded relieved.

‘Is he the one with the weak chin and gappy teeth?’

‘No, that’s Marcellus, the one whose hands cover more ground than a legion on the march.’

‘At least that’s a problem I don’t have to contend with,’ he replied. ‘In-laws, I mean, not your brother-in-law’s wandering hands.’

In many ways, he rather wished he did have an inlaw problem, because once the notion of remarrying had entered his head there seemed little he could do to dislodge it. Petronella had come round eventually, as he knew she would, but it wasn’t what you’d call a satisfactory encounter. Physically, maybe (although even then he felt it was a question of going through the motions), but spiritually these casual encounters were turning more and more into emotional suicide since Claudia Seferius had crashed into his life. Like it or not, she was part of him now. Day and night she walked beside him, he saw her face in every mental picture, heard her voice in every conversation. His stomach lurched at the memory of her the other night, hair tumbling over her breasts, the moonlight on her face. In a pretence of questioning the Thracian, he’d bent over her bed to drink in the smell of her. The crumpled pillows, the spicy perfume, the brush of fine linen against his hand…those memories would take a long, long time to fade. Assuming he ever allowed them to.

‘You’d been married, though?’

His pulse quickened. So she’d been interested enough to find out about him?

‘Long ago, yes. She ran off with a sea captain and the last I heard they were holed up in Lusitania with three plug-ugly kids and a herd of goats. Or maybe it was the other way around?’

Mother of Tarquin, he loved it when she smiled. Her eyes were the colour of beechnuts, her cheeks as soft as sealskin. Orbilio folded his arms across his chest to stop himself reaching out.

‘Hardly a love match, then?’

‘She was a flighty piece to start with, despite her patrician blood. Frankly, I was glad to see the back of her.’ He wondered why he was telling her this. More to the point, he wondered why she was listening. ‘But it was the old, old story. Her father, my father, a good marriage contract. Of course, it all blew up in their faces when she ran off.’