Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

How often did they see a woman? How often did they take a woman? How did they feel about the prospect of a soft virgin? They were strong men, accustomed to fighting off mountain thieves and wild animals-and they carried small, sharp knives about their persons. Claudia studied each weatherbeaten face carefully and decided they all looked capable of this heinous crime. She hoped the bitumen would arrive shortly.

In the meantime, it was market day in Sullium.

Portius climbed into the car beside her, the gems on his fingers looking like gaudy knuckledusters. ‘The old man’s taken a turn,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Gone right downhill.’

Claudia refrained from telling him she knew all about it. That’s where Diomedes was off to at dawn, to visit his patient. There was time, though, to ask him about the tramp in the clipshed, and although he admitted it was really too soon to tell, he did think the prognosis looked good.

He looked strained, she thought. His eyes stared past hers at Orbilio’s closed door, as though something was bothering him.

‘I must see Eugenius,’ he said, without any great emotion in his voice. ‘Can I call to see you on my way back?’

That, she thought, was as good a reason as any to nip into Sullium.

Since Pacquia was still officially assigned to Claudia, she’d left the girl playing with heated cauteries, chamber pots and goodness knows what, on the strict understanding that it was to be a secret between the three of them, Claudia, Diomedes and Pacquia, and that she was to report to Claudia the minute the tramp said anything sensible. At present he was alternating between sleep and incoherent ramblings, but one thing they had discovered. He had a name, Melinno.

It didn’t mean anything to anyone.

‘I’m sorry about your grandfather,’ she said.

‘Father will be pleased,’ Portius was saying, fanning himself with the most ostentatious band of pink and blue ostrich feathers. ‘He and Linus rub along well enough, they’ll be happy for Fabius to go off and work his own lands.’

She was thinking about Melinno and nearly missed it. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Portius licked his middle finger and wiped a smudge of antimony away from his left eyelid. ‘Fabius was given a parcel of land in Katane when he left the army and, being a centurion, the old so-and-so’s done rather well for himself.’ He coiled a ringlet back into place. ‘It’s just up your street.’

‘How so?’

‘Didn’t you know? The old man made him plant vines on it.’

‘Made him?’

Portius’s mouth puckered and his eyes rolled theatrically. ‘You should have heard them! Big Brother knows nothing about grapes, wanted to grow wheat like everyone else in Katane, but would the old man wear it?’ He leaned over conspiratorially. ‘Between you and me,’ he said in an exaggerated whisper, ‘I don’t see Bacchus getting much veneration from it, Fabius hasn’t a clue about wine.’

Who had? But it certainly explained one thing.

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Where do you fit in?’

Why were they talking about the business as though Eugenius was already dead?

Portius laughed. ‘You must be joking. When Father takes charge, I’m off.’

‘Rome?’ Claudia found her fingers were crossed.

‘Capri,’ he said, and she sent up a silent prayer of gratitude. ‘Rather more to my eclectic tastes, don’t you think?’

Claudia laughed aloud. ‘Hence the Virgil quotes?’

Portius assumed a tortured artist pose with his hands. ‘Please don’t say that!’ he mocked, then added seriously, ‘My parents don’t know the difference between Virgil and valediction. That poetry is my escape, Claudia. Father thinks it’s genius-which it is, of course, except it’s not mine. It’s my ticket to Capri.’

Only a couple of miles off the mainland, its high cliffs and dense greenery made the island an impenetrable haven for pederasts and paedophiles, sycophants and orgies, where prying eyes did not see the ‘games’ enacted there nor ears catch the splash when, occasionally, those ‘games’ went wrong and there was a body to dispose of…

Gooseflesh rippled up her arms. Portius? She looked at him again, peeling off the veneer of antimony and carmine, jewels and unguents. Underneath was a boy, a man, eighteen years old, strong and healthy which was more than his appetites appeared to be. How unhealthy were they? It was a point to bear in mind.

Pulling up in the Forum, the driver watered his mule and Claudia disappeared into the crowd before Portius could finish describing the steep, grey cliffs of Capri and the delights awaiting him. Many of the streets were narrow and without pavements, packed shoulder to shoulder with men, women and children, their legs buckling under the weight of market produce. Blackberries, duck, pottery, ivory, ointments. She heard the clip of iron scissors on hair, the clap of wooden plates from the beggars. The air was filled with hot, spicy sausages and rich, spicy wine. A salt seller sawed lumps from his block, acrobats tumbled, and along the street a fight broke out between two women at the communal oven. Babies squawked, children played chase, their grubby little fists clutching tunics and stolas and togas as they darted between your feet. Donkeys brayed and women haggled and backstreet barbers, eager not to miss out on the trade, brought their chairs and their wares into the square, grating their whetstones and scraping the chins.

It was, Claudia thought, as close to heaven as mere mortals get.

Searching for a place to eat her slab of honey bread, still steaming and rich with the scent of the wood-fired oven, she turned away from the Forum, past the law courts towards the temple of Minerva. Recalling how Minerva didn’t exactly favour Claudia Seferius, she decided against tempting the goddess by nibbling her bread on the temple steps and followed the street down the hill. It was unpaved, and just to prove this was a poor area, shopping baskets contained more beets and less meat, lentils rather than cheese. Shops became booths, plaster peeled away from the buildings and the wooden overhangs looked rickety and dangerous. Sharing her honey bread with a small urchin who could have been boy or girl, Claudia watched a funeral procession pass by the lower road. How different from Sabina’s. No hired mourners, no hired musicians, no hired torchbearers to light the path of the soul.

‘That’s Hecamede,’ the child said, helping itself to another chunk of the hot honey bread while still chewing on the first.

‘Kyana’s mother?’ Claudia was shocked.

‘Yep.’

The urchin crammed in so much bread, its mouth couldn’t close properly. To avoid a close-up in mastication, Claudia stared down the street. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘Topped herself.’

‘How?’

No answer, and when she turned round the child had gone, along with the rest of the honey bread and a gold brooch set with carnelians. It was left to a passing crone with three dark hairs sprouting from a mole on her chin to explain that Hecamede could finally take no more. On the anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance, she cut her wrists and bled to death.

Claudia pictured her last hours. Lost and lonely, inconsolable in her grief. Did she think of Aristaeus? Or were her last thoughts focused solely on little Kyana, five years old and full of mischief? Little Kyana, who disappeared the day Aristaeus went to collect spiders’ webs.

Claudia raced after the funeral procession, intercepting the undertaker at the second block of tenements. When he reached the pyre, she said, he must do it properly. He must deliver the funeral oration personally, extolling Hecamede’s virtues as a mother and then afterwards ensure a sow was sacrificed to Ceres with all the pomp and ceremony he would bestow upon a wealthier patron. Pop-eyed, the undertaker agreed, mentally noting that the ring he had been given in payment would look particularly nice on his mistress’s finger.