Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

‘All right, there was that investigator chappie. Whatshisname.’

‘Mrrap.’

‘Maybe I do remember his name, so what?’ Claudia sniffed loudly as she threw back her bedcovers. She thought she’d built up something of a rapport with that Orbilio fellow, but she’d neither seen nor heard from him since those grisly murders a few weeks back. ‘He can boil his head in porridge for all I care.’

Two sandals ricocheted off the wall to prove the point.

She had jettisoned all ties with the past in order to wangle herself a wealthy, ageing husband and the new Claudia had emerged like a bright and splendid butterfly, every trace of those dark days kicked over so many times the trail was impossible to follow.

Unless, of course, you were a particularly tenacious member of the Security Police.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. ‘Madam, it’s me. Cypassis.’

What was it with this woodwork that made it so damned attractive to knuckles?

‘Well?’

Her big-boned maidservant slipped furtively into the room, carrying the most foul-smelling tallow candle ever to have been moulded. ‘It’s about-’

‘For gods’ sake, girl, put that out.’ Claudia jumped out of bed, flung open the door and fanned new, if not fresh, air into the room. She lit an oil lamp before asking, ‘So?’

The customary dimpled smile had disappeared, and the girl’s eyes were as wide as sieves.

‘It’s Mistress Sabina, madam,’ Cypassis said. ‘She’s disappeared.’

Claudia’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Define disappeared .’

They breed them tough in Thessaly, but not tough enough. Cypassis’s lower lip trembled when she spoke. ‘Just that. One minute she was in her room, the next…’

Claudia picked up a large, bronze mirror by its lotus handle and waved it menacingly. ‘You’ve been at it again, haven’t you?’

‘I-’

‘Dammit, girl, we’ve only been here five minutes.’ Lamplight glinted on bronze. ‘Whose bed was it?’

The mirror was now so close Cypassis could see her own reflection. She knew better than to try a denial. ‘Dodger’s,’ she said weakly.

What? That bow-legged little runt? Claudia shook her head in despair. This was typical of Cypassis. She was neither a marriage-breaker nor a heart-breaker, she simply left a trail of warm memories and hot mattresses wherever she went. Commendable sentiments, which didn’t excuse her behaviour tonight.

‘Give me one good reason why I don’t turn you into cash this instant.’

Tears welled up in the slave girl’s eyes. ‘I was only gone a half-hour. She was sleeping when I left, I thought…’

Claudia waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘Never mind what you thought, have you asked around?’

Cypassis’s thick plait bounced as she nodded. ‘The tavern, the stable yard, the street-everywhere. No one’s seen her.’

Or admits to having seen her. It was that sort of town. Claudia yanked aside the window hangings and peered up and down the street. ‘Fabius?’

‘He’s out visiting army vets, he hasn’t come back yet.’

Ah. ‘So apart from us, no one knows Sabina is missing, is that right?’

The plait bounced up and down again.

‘Quick. Round up Junius and Kleon and the others,’ Claudia said. Assuming they can walk.

‘I’ll make up for this, madam, I promise.’

Claudia slipped out of her shift and kicked it across the room. ‘Damn right you will. In the meantime, you make bloody sure the boys are mustered by the back stairs in ten minutes flat.’ She plucked the first stola from the top of the box.

‘Let me-’

‘You’ve done enough damage. Now hop to it before I change my mind about selling you.’

Frankly she couldn’t give a toss what happened to that silly cow Sabina, and the only reason Cypassis was involved was because Fabius hadn’t thought to bring female servants for his sister. Honestly, that man! Two decades of army life had developed his muscles to such an extent they completely filled the space in his cranium. Without the constant discipline and routine he’d grown used to, Fabius could no more think for himself than fly backwards. However, Claudia urgently needed to find Sabina. The whole idea was to travel to Sicily under the Collatinus umbrella-she certainly didn’t want her own name bandied about. Word travels fast in the Empire. Especially if you go around losing Vestal Virgins left, right and centre.

The party headed straight for the Temple of Minerva, because if Syracuse was the island’s capital, its hub and its nerve centre, then this was the kernel of Syracuse. Minerva, patron of Sicily. Minerva, patron of October. And since yesterday was the first of the month, the sacred Kalends, the temple would have been a magnet for worshippers. It was the obvious place to start-this splendid monument built by the Doric people who once ruled here but not on account of its gold and marble and ivory. Minerva, like Vesta, was a virgin.

Inside, the group split up with Claudia choosing the gallery. Not that she suspected Sabina to be up here, but the portraits were exquisite. Let the others search the nooks and crannies. She was halfway along when Junius beckoned.

‘Look,’ he whispered reverentially. In his open palm was a garnet ring. Sabina’s sole adornment.

‘Where did you find it?’ Unlike his, Claudia’s voice echoed to the vaulted rafters.

‘At the foot of the statue, with the other offerings.’

Claudia’s breath came out in a rush. It meant Sabina had simply gone walkabout. No kidnap, nothing sinister.

Just as I’d hoped, she thought. Sabina came to give thanks for safe-conduct…which means she won’t be far away.

‘Cypassis, you go back to the tavern in case she’s returned, and Kleon, you go with her.’ This was not the time of night for a girl to be wandering alone. ‘Oh, and if Fabius gets nosy, say she’s taking a late bath or something. You two,’ she addressed the Nubians, ‘try the Temple of Apollo, and while you’re up there, check the bridge to the mainland. See whether the sentry’s let her pass, or whether he’s noticed anything unusual tonight.’ You could never be too careful. There was a definite smell of fish in the air.

‘Junius, follow me.’

The young Gaul brightened visibly as Claudia made her way towards another temple with bronze doors and a richly cladded pediment. No sign.

‘She kept telling me she could make herself invisible,’ she said irritably. ‘I’m beginning to believe her.’

She stopped to ask a whore, fat as a hippo and black as a banker’s mood, her tunic flung wide in invitation, but she laughed in their faces.

‘I only watch the men, dearie.’ She waggled huge breasts at Junius. ‘Fancy your luck, laddie?’

Cheeks aflame, he followed Claudia deep into the bustle and banter of what was known, quite rightly, as the best natural harbour in Sicily. A myriad of tiny yellow lights flickered on the ships moored in the bay. The dockside swarmed with humanity from all walks of life and Junius kept close to his mistress. Syracuse might be the island’s arsenal and by day her air might reek with the smell of her foundries and ring with the sound of her hammers, but when the sun went down, no matter how hard-working and earnest, men were men the world over.

They were now entering that part of the city where apprentices spent money they didn’t earn on women who gave them more than they bargained for, and where pick-purses and cut-throats gorged on drunks and greenhorns.

‘There’s no way she’s down here,’ she said, but as they turned to head home, a familiar face stood out in the crowd. Claudia shouldered her way through the drunken throng.