Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

‘Good shot.’ He couldn’t make out the words, they were still a gargle from the throttling, but he probably got the gist.

Confident his quarry was dead, the huntsman pulled his arrow free and rolled the corpse over. Claudia backed away, covering her nose with her hands. The stench was vile. Aristaeus pointed to the black stain oozing over the front of Aulus’s tunic.

‘Looks like he fell and crushed his baneberries,’ he said with a grin.

*

Later, when the joke about baneberries had worn off and the pain in her throat had eased to a throbbing, she thanked him properly.

‘I tracked you,’ he explained, ‘to give you this.’

He held out a golden filigree net, as light and insubstantial as gossamer.

Claudia took the gift in trembling hands. It was a hair snood, the sort women wear when they’re alone-or with their lover. When their hair hangs loose and they have no need of curls or ringlets or ribbons. In the centre was a single, golden ornament.

‘It’s beautiful.’ One of those items which is both inexpensive and yet utterly priceless. ‘Thank you.’ It wasn’t necessarily the bruising round her throat which was the problem at the moment.

Eventually, when the mist cleared from her eyes, she explained why Aulus was trying to kill her.

‘I’m glad it weren’t Fabius,’ Aristaeus said. ‘They makes a good pair, him and that readhead.’

‘Fabius and Tanaquil ?’ The hustler who dyed her hair and padded her breastband?

‘Thought, after the way those two hit it off in Syracuse, you’d have known about them love trysts in the birch grove? When I heard of this second murder I assumed it was her, not poor Acte.’

‘Tanaquil and Fabius ?’ In love? In Syracuse?

‘Real upset he was when her brother died, terrified she’d up and leave him because of it. Tried to stop the execution, but, course, the old man never budged on nothing.’

Which explained this morning’s tantrum. Discovering Sabina really was his sister, he was petrified Tanaquil would leave him in case insanity ran in the family. Fat chance. That redhead had Fabius just where she wanted him. From now on, Fabius would follow her orders, it was what he did best, and as for Tanaquil, not only had she fallen on her feet financially, she’d slotted Fabius into the role her brother had played.

‘Don’t reckon they needs to run off to Katane, now he’s got this lot to see to.’

‘Do you know why he joined the army as a footslogger?’ That, like the reasoning behind Sabina’s blue flagon, had been nagging away at Claudia for ages.

Aristaeus wiped the blood off his spent arrow. Perhaps he wanted it as a souvenir, most likely he wanted to destroy evidence of his involvement.

‘Fabius was fifteen when Eugenius forced him to watch the impaling of six thousand fugitives. He believed there was a better way to serve justice by fighting men face to face, and I’m inclined to agree with him.’

He snapped the arrow shaft in two and threw the pieces into the water.

Claudia thought of the little freighter bobbing in Fintium bay, of the man waiting on board. ‘I have to go,’ she said, and the huntsman nodded.

‘Safe journey.’ She thought his voice sounded gruffer than usual.

He began the arduous ascent, the quiver of arrows slung across his nutbrown back, showers of red arbutes raining from the branches he used to lever himself up. Soon, she thought, it will be winter. The leaves will fall, there will come a bite in the air which is welcome for the olives but not for the rest of us. The asters will blacken, and snow will cover the mountains and drive down the wolves.

She trickled the snood through her hands. A golden spider in its golden filigree web, made by the man who collects spiders’ webs.

Her throat was throbbing, her knee was on fire, her left ankle had puffed up like an inflated pig’s bladder. Heaven knows how she’d find the strength to climb that bank, let alone make it to Fintium.

But, she thought, kilting up the huntsman’s tunic, it was definitely the right decision, coming to Sicily.

Hadn’t she always said so?