Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

This was a day of so many local ceremonies that she could be attending any one of them, watching sacred garlands consigned to the waters or posies laid around the tops of the wells.

The breakfast table looked suitably festive, bedecked with flowers and ribbons and, best of all, Claudia had the dining room to herself. But not for long. Matidia threw herself down, confiding she was in a real froth about what to say, because it was her turn to lead the procession. She wanted to make a speech, a really wonderful speech, better than all the speeches the other wives had given over the years.

‘Flora won’t give a brass fig,’ Claudia said, flicking a grape pip across the room. ‘I think you’re wasting your time.’

Matidia couldn’t have looked more shocked had Claudia announced she’d spent last night humping every slave on the Collatinus estate and was going back for seconds. The atmosphere was broken when Portius swept into the room. There were more ringlets in his hair than tendrils on a vine and he’d rather overdone the antimony round his eyes. He looked like a polecat.

‘Mother, I’ve solved the problem,’ he said eagerly. ‘Listen!

She prayed, and all her sister nymphs,

The three hundred nymphs that guard the groves,

The three hundred nymphs that live within the streams.

Three times she splashed the glowing hearth with wine,

Three times the flame, renewed, shot up to heaven.’

‘Darling, that’s brilliant. Oh, you’re such a clever boy, Portius, what would I have done today without you!’

Claudia nearly choked on her plum. Did he never learn? Another straight quote! Still, he was on to a surefire winner with that little gem, combining the water-blessing with a reference to Sabina in her role as a Vestal, and it was unlikely the good matrons of Sullium knew enough about Virgil to trip him up.

Her ears blocked out the praise being heaped upon Portius’s beautiful curls and she concentrated on what she had to do today. Orbilio said the grainship would drop anchor mid-afternoon, but she’d decided against breaking the news of her departure to the family until the last minute. It was, she felt, none of their damned business. Therefore she’d packed her own boxes, quietly if not particularly efficiently. By now Cypassis was well on the mend (thanks to Diomedes), although she was still weak in the legs. Leaving Cypassis to rest but allowing Pacquia to believe her maid was with her, Claudia had managed rather well on her own, she thought.

As she was draining the last of her breakfast wine, Old Conky came thumping in, his face as black as yesterday’s thunder.

‘That’s all we bloody need, half the workforce out.’

Matidia didn’t even glance up from her speech. ‘Hmm?’

‘Some local kid’s wandered off and our slaves have taken it upon themselves to search the ravines and gullies roundabouts.’

Claudia narrowed her eyes. ‘Whose child was it?’

Aulus tutted. ‘Who cares? What I want to know is, how am I supposed to meet production targets when half the bloody workforce has done a bloody bunk? Where’s Linus?’

‘What does the old man say?’ asked Portius. ‘About the search?’

Aulus tapped his temple. ‘Going senile,’ he replied. ‘Said let them get on with it. Can you believe that? Look, where’s Linus? I need him in the yard.’

In the privacy of her bedroom, Claudia slipped the belladonna in to the folds of her tunic, sending up a silent prayer to Jupiter, Bringer of Justice, that there was sufficient of the drug in her phial to lay that son-of-a-bitch Aristaeus flat in his grave. If she hurried, she might, just might, be in time to save the life of another little girl.

With her room at the front of the house, it was impossible to miss that familiar ring of laughter as Orbilio exchanged pleasantries with Fabius. More boys’ own army jokes, no doubt, but she waited until it fell silent before slipping away.

It had come as a complete shock last night, seeing Supersnoop standing where she expected to find Diomedes, and it rankled that merely looking at him brought on a strange tingle which left the Greek a very limp second. The tendril of a blue vetch entangled itself in Claudia’s shoe and she paused to free it. Lust, my girl. Decent, honest lust. Accept it for what it is, then the quicker you’ll find someone else to lust after. Because it didn’t matter to Claudia that Orbilio wasn’t interested in her. Why should it? If he had other fish to fry, what did she care? Dressed to the nines and absent from dinner last night, there was only one conclusion to draw. He’d been in some harlot’s bed before snooping round Diomedes’s room. So what? A small smile lifted one side of her mouth. So she hoped the bitch had crabs, that’s what!

Nevertheless, seeing him there had taken her breath away. But it was only for a moment and perfectly understandable, amid that gruesome array of saws, chisels, clamps and catheters casting eerie, flickering shadows in the lamplight. Not to mention that half-size statue in the middle of the bloody room! So you see, it had nothing to do with Orbilio, it would have been the same no matter who.

Our master sleuth did not, of course, unearth the Secret Scalpel duly encrusted with dried blood from its hidey-hole. Honestly, it beggared belief that anyone would be stupid enough to set aside a special scalpel purely for butchering women, and after a while he looked where Claudia would have looked in the first place. Amongst the other scalpels. Which was as unproductive as she expected it to be, too. Diomedes kept one full set in a special hinged box, but a whole host of back-ups and spares in the corner. Really! What did Orbilio expect? A knife with the word ‘me’ written in dried blood?

By coincidence, they’d bumped into Diomedes in the hall shortly afterwards and he’d given them both such an odd sideways look that, had Claudia been in possession of such a trivial thing as a conscience, it might have made her feel guilty about going through his papers while Orbilio searched for mythical clues.

Much of yesterday’s rain had drained away, but here and there-on blades of grass, in flower cups or in spider’s webs-small drops clung on obstinately, twinkling in the sunshine like precious jewels of red and white and gold. Despite the lateness of the season, with the dust washed off the leaves, the vegetation, high as it was, still contrived to look fresh and vibrant. Even the parched grass looked more like a miniature cornfield at harvest time.

For obvious reasons, Claudia made her climb alone. It was the only way to tackle Aristaeus, and she’d left so many contradictory instructions that it was impossible for anyone to know exactly where she had gone or with whom. She scanned the horizon. Not that the trireme would come early, but the gesture brought Rome that little bit closer. Great! There were so many things to do there. A girl could get away from people she wanted to get away from (people like debt collectors and oily investigators), she could enjoy the Senate debates, the odd funeral oration (hypocrisy is a marvellous thing), the games and the races. Claudia totted it up on her fingers. A speedy passage home would deliver her right at the start of the Victory Games. I ask you. Could life be sweeter?

The terrain up here was rugged, open and windswept, scrub and rock. Limestone, someone said. As if she cared what bloody rock it was! Her lungs were wheezing like a pair of faulty bellows as she stopped to examine the track. In theory the path she’d been following should have led her straight to Aristaeus. So why, suddenly, was there a choice?

She glanced back. The villa, Fintium, even Sullium-they were all out of sight now. Talk about remote. She looked again at the fork in the path. Both tracks led over peaks, and you could see woods on the other side. These southern slopes, of course, had been stripped of trees to make Sextus’s warships during his seven-year battle for independence and the land had never recovered. It was stony and arid and sheep was the best you could do up here. But over the rise waited a different, cooler world where umbrellas of oak and beech and birch shaded and refreshed you with their dazzling display of autumn colours. Sweet chestnut trees scattered their shiny bounty across the forest floor, mushrooms and fungi adorned branches and boles. The red breast of a robin flashed across the path, the harsh churr of a jay rang out from the canopy.