Dream Boat (10 page)

Barging through a group of acrobats, Claudia recalled something Julia had said when she'd delivered the first note from the kidnappers. One little clue, which Claudia should have picked up on earlier. Whose ramifications, if her suspicions were on target, would be momentous.

Behind her, the tumblers untangled themselves from the

pavement and called a warning to the tightrope walker up ahead. Too late. With a startled yell, he went pinging off his wire, straight into the bosom of a fat patrician wife.

But where did Junius fit in? she wondered, stepping over a small dog snoozing in the shade of an ivory carver's stall. Around her, hammers from a cobbler's last tap-tap-tapped its repetitious call. Bronze workers chipped out a hollow echo. And over the whole expanse of Rome, hot air from the marshes trapped everything from bread smells to fried fish, from the sulphur of the fuller's to the pungent stench of sweat. If Claudia's burgeoning hypothesis was correct, it would take one hell of a diversion to distract her bodyguard, who was by no means gullible nor stupid, from the task in hand—

'Out of my way, you!'

Claudia's hand flipped up the tray of oysters, raining crinkly grey shells on the travertine flags. She didn't wait to hear what the oyster-seller called her, ducking instead into the cramped premises of a basket weaver's. She tossed him a silver coin and put her finger to her lips as she ran up the wooden ladder to his attic. Here, the garret window gave a clear view across the Forum: the acrobats, the tightrope walker, the oyster man, on his hands and knees as he scrabbled to retrieve his lumpy cargo. Every colour of the rainbow swarmed beneath the basket weaver's window: scarlet shot with gold or silver thread in the rich robes of merchants; the white togas of patricians; the blue pantaloons the Persians wore; yellow shawls favoured by the Syrians; green turbans from the east. There were skins of every hue, mahogany and fair, ebony and olive; bald heads, veiled heads, goatee beards and sweatbands.

However, none of this swirling tide of humanity seemed lost. No one stood scratching his or her head in perplexity, looking this way and that, shielding their eyes or jumping over the heads of the crowd to see which way their quarry had gone. No one stood still. No one frowned.

One question answered, then. The dusty smell of willows prickled Claudia's nostrils. I'm not being followed. Dear me,

a blind man couldn't miss that trail of destruction in the Forum. Her pulse raced that little bit harder. She was sure, now, she was on the right scent.

Outside the shop, she hailed a passing litter. The Field of Mars, she told the bearers, and could they run? Could they hell! Dispatch runners might learn a thing or two from these chaps as, panting heavily, they set her down outside the wooden amphitheatre. Around the makeshift seats, sawdust lay in heaps made soggy in the muggy heat. Bare-backed carpenters sawed and hammered, chipped and planed as the shadows lengthened. The killer breeze kept up its stealthy whisper. Wooden boards were hauled into place with the aid of ropes and ladders and suddenly the swirling waters of the River Tiber became hidden behind a painted backdrop of green rolling hills taken over by a hostile army encampment, while in the orchestra pit, a cacophony of drums and cymbals clashed, and horns blared out in uncoordinated practice.

Ordinarily, since it fell on the second day of Apollo's Games and was therefore eclipsed by the pageants and processions of the opening ceremonies, the Festival of the Serving Women was one on which every expense would be spared. Indeed, of the half-million sesterces which the Treasury poured into the Games as a whole, it was doubtful whether one hundredth made their way to this paltry, low-key celebration, such was the lure of the larger stage productions. Comedies by Terence, tragedies and epics - burglars were spoiled for choice, with every household in the city emptied for the shows.

This year, however, the Prefect organising the Games had a name to make. Young, thin and with a deathly pallor, he kept one eye on the scenery, an ear out for the orchestra, one hand sealed his correspondence with his ring. while his brain kept track of the money he had sunk in sponsoring this venture. In fact, there wasn't one single component of his body which wasn't moving in some direction or another as he supervised the work.

'For gods' sake, find another tuba player!' His exasperated tones rang shrill. 'That idiot's tone deaf, and what cretin

blocked the second exit with that statue? Get it out - no, I don't care where you put it, just move the bloody thing, and who the hell thinks that curtain is up straight? Croesus, you can see knees at that far end, now get it horizontal and make sure it sweeps right down to the stage.'

All the while, his hands made eloquent gestures to the carpenters and painters, the technicians and the dancers, in the way a man's hands would, of course, when he's ploughed a considerable amount of his own money into a dead donkey of a show.

'I need to talk to you,' Claudia said. 'It's urgent.'

'So's this,' the Prefect snapped. 'We're due our first dress rehearsal in the morning, and the bloody scenery's not up. Where the hell is my fig tree?
That?
Croesus, man, that's a crab apple! The serving women lit their signal from a fig tree in the camp. F-I-G tree, fig. Is this about my wife?'

For a second, Claudia didn't realise he was addressing her. 'Er, no. I wanted to ask you about—'

'Then it's not urgent. Come back at first light.'

Looking at him, growing paler with every inefficiency, Claudia wondered whether she was wasting her time here. His mind was clearly preoccupied with a whole series of disasters, not least his wife it seemed, but now a faint tinge of pink had appeared in the sky. Dammit, this could
not
wait till morning! Flavia had been kidnapped, it was imperative she tested her theory.

'Sorry,' she said firmly. 'But I need to talk to you about the girl who's playing the lead in Friday's re-enactment.'

'Get that herald out of here, he comes in
after
the - why do I waste my breath!' The young Prefect paused in his signalling and orders. 'Did you say the
girl
who spearheads the Serving Women's Assault?'

'Yes,' Claudia said wearily. 'Her name's Flavia.'

The Prefect pushed his fair hair out of his eyes and Claudia glimpsed, for an instant, the attractive young man he would have been, were he not bowed by the weight of ambition. 'You're in the wrong theatre, then.' He flashed her a short,

harassed smile. 'Our actors are exclusively male. I say - are you all right?'

'What? Oh, yes. I'm fine.' Apart from that shaft of pain in the pit of my stomach.

It was just as Claudia had feared. There never was any kidnap. Flavia had set the whole thing up herself! And Flea was her accomplice.

Why use a tinderbox to start a fire, when Claudia's temper would do the trick? The little bitch, she stormed. The nasty, spiteful, unprincipled bitch! There had been no satisfaction in finding her conjecture proved correct, only anger, and Claudia was shaking with rage.

Flavia, the devious, self-serving little cow, had invented her role in the
Serving Women
drama as a smokescreen to fool her snobby foster parents. Deep breaths. Dee-eeep breaths. That's better. Keep calm, keep rational. Conserve your energies for roasting Flavia over a fire and to setting her screaming to music!

Screaming. Strange. Claudia could hear it clearly, as she approached her own front door. Screaming. Wailing. Screeching—

'What the blazes—?'

I've been gone less than two hours, suddenly all hell's broken loose! Moans and sobs seeped from every rafter of her household, wails came from the cellars, from the kitchens, from the gardens.

'It's Junius, madam.' It fell on her lanky Macedonian steward to explain. 'He's—'

Claudia's stomach flipped somersaults. 'He's what?' She wanted time to stop, go backwards, so she wouldn't hear the answer . . . her heart beat like a kettledrum.

'He's—' Leonides swallowed and could not meet his mistress's eye. 'He's in prison.'

'Jail?' Is
that
all? Mentally she pulled up her sleeves and prepared for battle. Arrest my bodyguard? I do not think so. 'On what charge?'

'Wearing the toga,' Leonides said. 'He was caught in the act. . .' The sentence trailed off into silence.

Claudia's blood froze in her veins. She became a living statue. 'When?' A frog croaked the question. The same frog which hopped up and down in her innards.

'Shortly after noon.' Leonides' own voice was a rasp. 'Someone apparently recognised him in the Camensis, dressed in a toga and surrounded by "his" slaves—'

'And felt obliged to report him to the authorities?' Around her, the atrium tumbled.

'Yes, madam.' His voice was barely a whisper as they both pictured the scene.

Soldiers clanking through the Camensis, their armour reflecting like gold in the sunshine. The detail would halt, surround the young buck and his happy band of picnickers. Junius would be hauled to his feet and clapped in irons. Shackled together in a neck brace, Junius, the hired whores and the other three members of Claudia's bodyguard would be marched off to the dungeons, pelted along the way with dung and rotten fruit.

Mighty Juno, tell me this isn't true. That this is Leonides' idea of a practical joke. That Junius will come bouncing out of the cellar any second. But Juno remained silent, and the cellar door remained shut.

And Claudia was forced to swallow the bitter pill of truth. That in her haste to save Flavia's life, she'd sent her own bodyguard to his doom.

The penalty for impersonating a Roman citizen is death.

In her mind, Claudia replayed their earlier conversation in this very hall. His protest. Her reply. 'Not what would happen if you're caught, rather what I'll do to you if you don't.'

'The whores were released after several hours' questioning,' Leonides explained. 'That's how the story got out, but the men remain under lock and key.'

He went there, he said. Straight away. But the Dungeon Master was refusing all access to prisoners, the cells were already too full, and all he could glean (and only then with

the transfer of silver) was that the three henchmen would get off with a public flogging, whereas the Gaul - here Leonides drew a graphic finger silently across his throat.

On behalf of his mistress, the steward had proffered a substantial bribe and, when that failed, had lodged a protest. The stepdaughter of the Widow Seferius had been kidnapped, he explained. Junius was acting solely on instructions, they were setting a trap. But his pleas had bounced off the thick prison walls.

'Reasons don't matter, mate,' the Dungeon Master had sneered. 'A slave's a slave, as you well know, and the penalty for impersonating a citizen is death. Ain't no exceptions. Next case!'

Shit.

For several long minutes, Claudia stood alone in the gloaming, her mind whirling like a millrace. To stop by the dungeons would be a complete and utter waste of time. The death cells permitted no visitors . . . What should she do? What
could
she do? She had never felt so impotent in her life.

She paced, she wrung her hands, she sat, she paced some more. There must be something I can do. Frustration grew. Solidified into a heavy ball inside her stomach. A ball which answered to the name Defeat.

Wait, though, a little voice said. Aren't balls made to be kicked? Claudia obliged, and when the ball had disappeared into space, a small flame of hope kindled in its place. She might be powerless herself, but there
was
someone . . . Perhaps the only someone in the whole of Rome capable of pulling the right strings to get Junius off the hook. His name was Marcus Cornelius Orbilio. The question, though, wasn't could he, but would he?

The last time he'd called, she'd brandished a sharp little gelding knife, threatening to barbecue his bunions and make jam of his jawbone, saying that if he ever came near her again, she'd report him for harassing a poor grieving widow until finally it seemed Supersnoop had got the message: keep out

and stay out, I do not want you in my life, not even on the periphery!

Because there was something about him which unsettled her. Not the hard muscles which strained against the linen of his tunic, or the way he turned unscheduled laughs into a cough. The emotion plumbed deeper, murkier waters. Waters where she had never swum before. Orbilio was the only person who made her feel . . . safe. That was the word. Marcus Cornelius made her feel safe and the feeling was strange to her. She distrusted it. For what it did to her insides, to her sleep, to her heartbeat. So she'd evicted the nuisance like an unwelcome lodger, and had discharged him from her life. There was no reason on Jupiter's earth why he should help her.

But for Junius' sake, she had to try.

'Fuss over nothing, in my opinion,' Flea scoffed, as Claudia clapped the manacles back on. 'Once you plead for Junius at his trial, the jurists will absolve him in a jiffy.'

'Jiffies are for free men,' Claudia snapped back, hauling the girl into the street. 'What you've conveniently forgotten is that because Junius is a slave, there will
be
no bloody trial.'