Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

‘And he’s not showing any aptitude for sheep rearing now he’s home, is that what you’re telling me?’

Eugenius looked up sharply. ‘Not unless you call route marches an interest.’ He tugged at his lower lip. ‘On the other hand, now he’s back in the fold, ha-ha, I feel that if he had a suitable wife it might be different.’

A faint flame of intuition began to glow. ‘Strangely enough, Eugenius, I am tempted to agree with you.’

She picked up the glass of alum water and walked over to the wall.

‘Don’t drink that,’ he said, ‘it’s vile.’

Claudia shot him a glance which said she believed it as she poured it straight out of the open window. With any luck, Orbilio would be sitting underneath eavesdropping.

‘It’s coming up to noon,’ she said gently. The slaves would be back any moment to convey him to the litter which would accompany Sabina’s funeral procession.

‘It’s funny,’ he said absently. ‘Sometimes I think the years have dragged, being crippled and bedridden, then I think to myself, hold on. Last January you were bouncing your grandson on your knee and now here we are in October and he’s got four children of his own.’

Claudia smiled to herself. They were all the same underneath, weren’t they? Soft men inside rock hard shells.

Now, from her perch beside the old lighthouse, she noticed the last vestiges of daylight were almost extinct. High in the hills, lamps and lanterns shone from the houses in Sullium. Closer to hand, torches flickered at the Villa Collatinus and oblongs of yellow thrown from the windows gave a honey glow to the courtyard. But with dusk the chill had intensified and could no longer be ignored. Claudia threw her palla round her shoulders, but made no move to pick her way home.

Sabina’s funeral this afternoon had made for a good turnout. For a small town, the wailing women weren’t bad, although Claudia would have preferred to see a bit more ash plastered about. Also the undertaker leading the cortege tended to give the impression he was more important than the dear departed, but on the whole it went well, the men with black togas drawn over their heads, the women with their hair dishevelled. Indeed, a stranger might have been fooled into thinking they cared.

Fabius shone, quite literally, in his uniform so that whenever the sun caught it, anyone looking his way was positively blinded. Even Claudia had to admit he cut a dashing figure with his broad chest and gleaming bronze armour. The red crest on his helmet, running side to side to reflect his centurion status, ruffled in the breeze in the most stately and dignified fashion, drawing the attention of many a maiden along the route, yet even as she recalled the procession, she could think only of another man, a patrician, in the scarlet tunic and hammered breastplate of the tribune. Not that his would need to be beaten out to exaggerate the muscular development of the professional athlete…

Dammit, that man gets on my whiskers!

Claudia pushed thoughts of Orbilio’s torso to a dim and distant recess of her mind and concentrated on the funeral cortege as it filed slowly through the streets. As they were entering the Forum, the wailing women almost drowning out the trumpeters, she spotted Utti in the crowd, his ugly mug practically obliterated by the bodies of two small children, one perched on each shoulder for a better view. Before Claudia had had a chance to identify Tanaquil, another familiar form had sidled up.

‘You’ll help me find her, won’t you?’ The rings under Hecamede’s eyes were darker, the hollows in her cheeks deeper. ‘Only you promised.’

‘I did no such thing.’ Praise be to Juno, both breasts were tucked up safely!

‘You did, you give me your word.’

Two of the Collatinus slaves pulled her roughly away and frogmarched the pitiful figure out of sight. Diomedes moved up beside Claudia.

‘What was that about?’

‘Oh, nothing, really. The woman’s touched. Thinks someone’s stolen her child and tried to point him out to me, but there was nothing there except some bloody great spider. She said he-whoever he might be-was collecting them at the time.’

‘Aristaeus, you mean?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Aristaeus. The man who collects spiders’ webs.’ Claudia faltered, nearly tripping over her hem. ‘Say that again. You mean there really is a man who goes around collecting spiders’ webs?’

‘Of course. Didn’t you know?’

Failing to see how anybody could possibly make a profession out of something like that, Claudia shook her head.

‘Strange man,’ Diomedes continued. ‘Lives up in the hills. A-what’s the Latin word? — recluse.’

Child molesters would be, wouldn’t they?

As she began to follow the white line of the path along the peninsula, Claudia’s mind pictured this seedy individual, this raptor of little girls. Middle-aged, potbellied, probably more hairs coming out of his nostrils than left on his head. No doubt he stank like a drain, too. She thought of Hecamede, driven out of her wits because this sordid specimen had run off with her little Kyana and no one giving a damn, simply because they were dirt poor. It touched a raw nerve and she felt her breath catch in her throat.

Claudia knew what poor was like.

Claudia grew up poor.

Claudia knew that poor didn’t count for shit.

And she knew something else, too. She knew she’d never be poor again. Ever.

More overpowering than the smell of cinnamon and myrrh as Sabina’s pyre burned was that earlier image of Hecamede-one breast lolling out of her tunic as she wept in the filthy gutter. Now, as the night noises from the mountains began to fill the air, the cry of a screech owl, the bark of a fox, she resolved that Aristaeus wasn’t going to get away with his filthy practices any longer.

‘Claudia Seferius is on your case, my lad,’ she said aloud. ‘Make no mistake, your time’s up.’

It would take her mind off the Agrigentum business. A means of passing the time until Friday, when she had that boat to catch.

Even if the voyage did entail being cooped up with that smarmy investigator for a whole week or more.

The man Melinno threw down his pack and leaned forward, hands on his knees, until his breath came back. He’d thought that climb up Mount Tauros was tough-by Janus, this bugger made Tauros look like a pimple. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and took a swig from his canteen.

Strictly speaking, it weren’t his canteen, mind. He’d swiped it from a legionary who’d passed out cold back in Zankle. It had been full of that cheap sour wine them footsloggers seemed so fond of, but Melinno had flushed out the field flask and filled it with sweet, fresh mountain water. He shook it and replaced the bung. Getting low, but he’d passed enough streams, there’d be another one shortly. Wouldn’t there?

Defiantly he shook some into his cupped hand and sluiced his face. Howay, man, there’s bound to be water up here. Stands to reason. Mountains? Water? Why, aye.

Melinno hefted his pack on to his shoulders and resumed his trudge along the narrow path. It were only a goat track, slippy and slidy, and he’d only another hour of daylight at best. Frustrating for a man who needed to cover ground, but that was the price you paid for October. There was more hours of dark than day, and it were worse up here, because for much of the afternoon the sun had been blotted out by the Great Burning Mountain on his left. It were doused at the moment, this forge of the fire god, but a bloke could never tell. Word was, nineteen summers back and just before sunrise, some old shepherd actually saw with his own eyes the mighty Vulcan hobble up to his forge and start fanning the flames. The whole mountain had burst into fire, rivers of living red hell burning everything in their path. Aye. Well. Melinno didn’t want none of that. The quicker he did his business and left, the better, as far as he was concerned.