Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

Had she wanted to.

‘Why do you collect them?’

He shrugged as he sat down. ‘I bottles ’em in vinegar.’

Well, you would, wouldn’t you?

‘Drink your beer,’ he urged. ‘I brewed it myself, so I knows it’s good.’

Claudia wanted to say she didn’t touch beer, it was a thin, unwholesome drink brewed by Egyptians in the east and Celts in the west. (Hence her earlier question.) But there was an intensity in his eyes which was impossible to ignore and she took a tentative sip. It was bitter, as she expected. Perhaps he was trying to poison her ? Codswallop. Snap out of it. But she couldn’t. Nothing seemed real. Time had no meaning. The experience was weird, dreamlike, as though she was in a different, alien world and to her surprise, she found herself drinking deeply. And at that moment Claudia knew that, as strong as she was, her destiny lay in this man’s hands. She would not, could not, fight it…and the feeling was as intoxicating as the beer.

‘Why do you bottle spiders’ webs?’ she asked.

‘They stops up small nicks.’

‘Like shaving, you mean?’

‘Yep.’ He reached for the jug. ‘I ships ’em to Syracuse. There’s a good market when the fleet’s in.’

She glanced at the two beds. ‘Do you live alone?’

The jug came down on the wood so hard she thought it would crack. ‘Why?’

It required considerably less mental agility than Aristaeus possessed to make the leap from this question (and he’d seen her eying up the cots) to her earlier remark about missing girls.

‘Idle curiosity,’ she said blandly. But somehow it sounded like an objectionable vice.

It was getting late. She had to be leaving if she was going to catch the boat. She rose, relieved he made no effort to stop her. From the corner of her eye she noted the square jaw, the set of his chin. Handsome? Not exactly. But confidence oozed out of every pore. The slow deliberation in his movements, the strength, the rugged magnetism. She realized suddenly that she was drawn towards this man, this recluse. This child molester?

But then everything today was topsy-turvy.

Maybe Hecamede was mad after all. Claudia visualized a love affair, its passion long spent. A woman spurned by the man she thought had loved her. Who left her pregnant. Years later, as her wits evaporated, every slight had become intensified until Aristaeus represented a walking personification of all things evil, a scapegoat for the worst crime she could imagine when her darling Kyana had gone missing.

Outside she noticed it was later than she thought, and with the race down the mountainside a sense of balance, of normality, was restored. More than once she ricked her back. Every jolt threatened to loosen a tooth, every boulder threatened to turn her ankle. Puffing profusely and red in the face, Claudia raced across the plateau to check the grainship in the bay.

What grainship?

The bay was empty! The bay was bloody empty!

She slithered down the hill to the villa, skidding across the atrium floor as she flung open Orbilio’s room. That, too, was empty. His chest was gone, the table bare. Nothing to show he’d ever been here.

She grabbed hold of Senbi as he passed. ‘Master Orbilio?’

‘He left, madam.’

‘And the ship?’

‘That left, too. Were you hoping to catch it?’

She shot him a glare. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, I love it here.’

Behind her, Vilbia gurgled and giggled beside the pool under the careful eye of her nursemaid, pushing on the tiny wheeled trolley she used as a walking aid. Claudia brushed the hair from her eyes. Well, she thought, it’s been that sort of a day. I got nowhere with the child molester, I missed my ship, I’m stuck with a backbiting miseryguts of a family and there’s a sadistic killer on the loose. Still. She puffed out her cheeks. It isn’t all bad. I’ve got four kittens to amuse me and there’s the little one to play with.

She walked over to Vilbia and knelt down. ‘Peekaboo!’

The tot looked up, broke into a sunny, gappy smile and held up her finger.

‘Claudie, look!’ she lisped. ‘Vilbi got a bogey!’

The letter which arrived the following morning did nothing to lift Claudia’s spirits. It was from Leonides, warning her that he thought Master Orbilio might be on his way to Sicily…

She scrunched it into a ball and tossed it into one of the frankincense burners as she marched towards the peristyle. Call this a garden? A few poky cypresses, a handful of measly shrubs and a bit of statuary do not make for a place of rest and relaxation. You need chirruping birds, the heady scent of herbs, a knockout display of floral colour and a fountain that boils and bubbles all day long. That was a garden!

Through the arch Claudia could see the vegetable garden and the walls of the orchard beyond. Cypassis, her big-boned maidservant, was emerging with a boy as young as herself, possibly younger, and whereas her face wore the bright-eyed bloom of sated love, the lad had a glazed expression in his eyes and a stupid grin on his face. One didn’t need to be a genius to deduce this was his first time.

The shadow of Diomedes fell over Claudia. ‘That girl shouldn’t be on her feet so soon after the fever.’

Claudia grinned. ‘I don’t actually think she’s been on her feet, but I’ll pass on your concern.’ In his hands he held a tray from which only Eugenius would consider eating-boiled fish, cucumber sauce and a bowl of some sort of milky gruel. Claudia grimaced and Diomedes laughed.

‘Light diets for the invalid,’ he said, ‘though he’s always complaining the food’s too tough or not fresh enough.’

Aren’t we all?

‘I–I thought, you might have been leaving us yesterday,’ he added.

‘Me? Good heavens, no. Whatever gave you that idea?’

She gave the physician another once-over. His eyes, blue and as measureless as the ocean beyond, danced with warmth and light as he watched her. His nose was finely chiselled, his mouth exactly the right size-and the way his hair fell neatly into place was unbelievably sexy. With Orbilio out of the way, she ought to give him another chance. She studied his hands. They were small, for a man, with long slim fingers. Another thought occurred to her. Doctors had to be ambidextrous-it would be interesting to see how that affected bedside techniques… Again she felt a stab of longing. Yes, indeed, it had been a very long time.

Whatever Supersnoop had insinuated, Claudia felt perfectly safe with Diomedes. One or two of his patients might well end up under the earth, but it wouldn’t be intentional. Call it instinct, call it experience, she did not believe a man could look at a woman the way he was looking at Claudia right now and in the blink of an eye turn into a slavering, bloodthirsty ghoul.

However, if Cleverclogs wanted to bark up unsuitable trees, who was she to stop him? Her personal opinion was that the killer was a local man, from Sullium or maybe Fintium, and assuming Orbilio was right and the murder weapon did turn out to be a scalpel, heaven knows there were enough physicians and apothecaries with access to one-not to mention the cutlers whose job it was to make the blessed things. Any old bod could get his paws on one.

Diomedes was saying how he thought she might have caught that trireme yesterday though he was jolly glad she hadn’t, when Marius and Paulus came charging down the colonnade, yelling at the tops of their voices. Brandishing wooden swords, they lunged and thrust, dodging and darting, through the arch before attacking the vegetables beyond. No radish was safe as they rampaged across the neat, orderly beds. A trail of decimated leeks and quaking spinach leaves quivered in their wake.