Dream Boat (6 page)

Hobby horses, whipping tops, hoops and rattles went flying to all points of the compass as the urchin sprawled headlong over the counter, spewing out a tirade of filth matched only by that of the toy seller.

'I object to being robbed,' Claudia told the squirming youth as she hauled him off the counter by the scruff of his grimy tunic. 'I object to being lied to, and I object to foul language being used inside my house.' She jerked him round and slammed him hard against the wooden shutter of the shopfront, finding the crunch of his teeth under the impact eminently rewarding. 'But most of all, I object to the obstruction of justice when a young girl's life is in danger.'

'Please! Please, miss.' The street Arab's words rolled into a gabble. 'Here's your bracelet back, don't turn me in, only I need the money, miss, for me baby sister. She's very sick, I need to pay a doctor.'

'Nice try.' Claudia smiled approvingly at the trembling lower lip, the catch in the voice. 'Unfortunately, you need to practise those tears, and you somewhat overdid the wheedle.' She grabbed a handful of tunic from his chest and bunched it in her fist. 'Come along!'

'Never!' With a sudden twist, the boy squirted free, leaving Claudia clutching nothing more substantial than a lump of filthy wool. Bugger! Just when she'd got her breath back, too - and dammit he
still
had her bangle set with pearls!

Pie sellers and spice dealers goggled at the frantic chase, while those too slow to move out of the way found their toes crushed or else took to juggling their wares. The alleyways rang with shouts of encouragement, curses, howls of protests and cheers as the young woman whose long, dark tresses billowed out behind her snaked and slithered after a smelly, foul-mouthed youth.

What the hell have I got myself into this time? Claudia wheezed, charging through alternating smells of wood and molten copper, aniseed and paint. I'm so broke, I couldn't pay the ransom were my own life at stake, yet here I am, playing jackals and hounds through the mean backstreets of Rome to safeguard the life of a girl I don't even bloody like!

She hurdled over a box of squirming octopus and squid and ducked underneath a line of washing. Except, she thought, dancing out of the way of a small, black oinking piglet,

personalities don't come into this. We're talking pond scum holding a fifteen-year-old to ransom, who foolishly imagine extortion is something they can get away with. They wish!

Dammit, this boy can run!
There wasn't even time to pinch a date from the oasis Arab's stall. Up the hill they sped, along narrow twisty lanes, arching left, hooking right, and down the hill the other side, where paint peeled from the plaster on the tenements, windows were barred, and the stench from the runnels was vile. Twice Claudia slipped on cobbles greasy from rotting vegetation, blood, fishscales and discarded oil turned rancid in the heat, but still she pursued her quarry.

The boy was luring her deeper into the ghetto, but at least it wasn't a ghetto he was familiar with. This was the second time they'd passed that toothless drunk slumped in the doorway. Claudia's lungs were on fire. Her legs couldn't stand the pace much longer.

She thought of Flavia. This urchin was their only link with the kidnappers. Dammit, whose side were the bloody gods on?

Gasping, her lungs ragged, she lumbered behind him down another dark and sunless alleyway, no more than a double arm's span in width. What the -?

'Oh, Jupiter,' she puffed, and would have grinned had she had enough energy. 'I owe you one.'

The end of the lane was blocked by a twenty-foot wall.

The little fish was trapped!

Claudia slewed to a halt. At some stage, the owner of a town house on one street had wished to extend. Unable to go upwards, he'd bought a house in a parallel street and simply linked the two together, and to hell with the street in between.

Whoever he was, Claudia could have kissed him. Until she saw the knife in the boy's hand.

It was a small knife. Obviously concealed deep within the urchin's tunic, probably in a specially sewn pouch. It was a last-ditch-desperate knife, sharp and glittering, but it was held in a tight, professional grip.

'Back off, bitch!' The boy had turned feral, snarling and vicious in his fear and desperation. 'Don't think I won't use it.'

Frankly, the thought hadn't entered her head.

'I will. I'll bloody use it.'

Claudia's heart was pounding like a woodpecker on overtime. Her whole body shook. 'Go ahead.' To an outsider, her voice sounded calm. It was only inside her head that there was screaming.

'I mean it.' The boy's eyes bulged. Sweat cut runnels in the grime on his face.

Back off, a little voice cried. Leave it alone. You can't win them all, let it go. 'So do I,' she said, with commendable clarity.

Her mouth was dry. Her breathing had stopped. When fear meets an immovable force, there are only two possible outcomes. The boy had two choices: strike or lay down the weapon. Sweet Janus, there was no middle road.

The hand which clutched the blade trembled slightly. From anxiety or the strength of the grip? He had every right to be anxious. He'd backed himself into a corner, literally, and the error was of his own making. Pride, resentment, stupidity, weakness, the passions swirled around him like a whirlwind. Which path would he choose? The snarl meant

nothing. Bravado. An authentic streak of viciousness. Only he could know.

Dammit, this could still go either way.

Crouched forward, the boy jabbed the air. To show he meant business? To stall for time?

Back off, Claudia. Now. While you can. Walk away. This simply isn't worth it. The voice nagged on in her head, but unfortunately Claudia Seferius had never been a good listener.

This was Life with a capital L. Precious. Precarious.

You had to taste terror to appreciate life, because without fear, there could be no highs to offset against it. You had to taste death to understand its opposite.
You had to gamble. 
Claudia was a born gambler, and always the stake was the same. Adventure. The difference between tedium and the unknown; humdrum or the zest for living. And who in their right minds would settle for humdrum and tedious, when life turns on the spin of a coin?

The coin continued to spin.

Sweat stuck the cotton to her back, fear made the blood thunder past her temples. Time - precious time, maybe all the time she had left - became at once both meaningless and dear.

She thought of the coin. And wondered how long it would remain spinning in the air.

Time, already stretched to its limit, now became stuck fast at zero. In this dingy, narrow alley, street sounds from beyond were muted. Only Claudia's heart crashed like a boar in the undergrowth. Perspiration trickled down her forehead and dripped into her eye. She didn't blink. Couldn't -

Come on. Come on, come on, get it over with . . .

Suddenly -
'Bitch!'
With a wild lunge, the boy rushed towards her.

SHIT!

Frozen for so long, his mood shift caught Claudia off her guard. Almost. As he dived forward, she dropped to the ground. It was a move he hadn't expected. It knocked his knees from

under him. Claudia latched on to his thin, bony ankle. He kicked free, but as he did so, they spun a full semi-circle together and simultaneously sprang to their feet.

The boy's furious expression told her all she needed to know about his feelings at being back at the point where he had started. Heart thumping, she followed his eyes. Frightened eyes. Angry eyes. Green as a feral cat's. Now the cat was cornered once again, and it did not know what to do.

With a high-pitched, ululating sound screaming from the back of his throat, he shot forwards, head down, and suddenly Claudia realised the coin of life had, after all, landed her way. The knife was held out to the side.

His body language told her his intention was to head-butt her in the stomach, not to kill. Just like the first time, she realised somewhat belatedly. Because by charging forward, as he had, he'd expected her to flatten herself against the house wall as he made good his escape. But still he ran towards her. With her breath suspended and his primitive cry ringing in her ears, she waited until the last possible second, made a feint to the left, skewed to the right. As she spun, she grabbed the boy's wrist and twisted as hard as she could.

'Aaargh!' With a sharp yelp of pain, the blade shot out of his grip and spun harmlessly back down the alley.

Jack-knifing him round, the momentum carried them both forward until they tumbled - praise be to Juno - on to a soft pile of fleeces, newly washed and ready for market. And this time, when she grabbed hold, Claudia made sure it was by the boy's hair and not by the tunic. White fleeces, brown fleeces, some with black spots lay strewn all over the cobbles.

There are times, she thought, blowing the hair out of her eyes, when life proves it can be worth living.

'This,' she wheezed, stuffing the scrap of tunic from their last encounter under his nose, 'is no fair exchange for my gold bracelet.'

The boy could barely see for tears of pain.

'Take a long, lingering look at the sun up there, because it'll be the last you see of it for some time.'

Claudia tipped his head up towards the sky, and her grip was as tight as a stonemason's vice.

'What do you reckon? Six years down the silver mines for conspiracy to kidnap? Add on theft and, oh dear, that's nine and whoops, I almost forgot the attempted murder charge, which I think you'll find neatly doubles your sentence.'

Claudia slid off the fleecy bank, jerking the thief to his feet.

'Still, dark as it is down the mines,' she said, and it was easy to be cheerful in victory, 'at least they provide their prisoners with decent clothing.'

Her eyes indicated the gaping hole in his tattered tunic and the urchin's grimy breast thrusting through the rip. A breast which also happened to be pert and round and full - with a rosy pink nipple peeking through!

'Janus!'

It was bad enough when Claudia had believed the guttersnipe was male. Now it transpired the hardcase was a girl!

Due to increased congestion along the Appian Way, the horse carrying Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was forced to slow to a canter, and whereas a lesser horse would have registered its disapproval with several loud snorts and a repeated flick of its mane, this one kept its feelings to itself. The rider, however, being every bit as thoroughbred as the stallion, sensed the disappointment in the strong black shining flesh beneath his saddle. Comforting pats on its neck quickly mollified his mount and, with a twitched-ear acknowledgement, it continued at a happy trot, eyeing coldly, though, the plodding mules and oxen, the pedestrians and soldiers which had cut short its gallop on the open road. Look at them, the stallion snickered. Heat weary, trudging slower than a funeral. Poor breeding always tells!

Orbilio tossed a coin to a mother with a withered arm, whose toddler child was a mass of open sores.

'Bless you, sir,' she cried, 'oh, bless you,' and suddenly a crowd of beggars surged around him, attracted by the woman's vocal gratitude, only his thoughts had closed in to engulf him and Marcus rode on, as impervious to their pleas as he was to the beauty of the countryside, the dappled wooded hills, the shimmering heat haze, the waysides teeming with buttercups and campion, columbines and mallow. How could his boss do this to him? It's an administrative role, overseeing that the Roll of Honour was inscribed correctly on Mount Alban!

'Don't you think it's important, then?' sneered the fat toady who headed Rome's Security Police. 'Recording the participating luminaries in marble for posterity?'

'Of course I do, sir.' That aspect was not in dispute. Every year, both consuls plus all the other magistrates in Rome rode out to Mount Alban to make sacrifice to Jupiter at the long lines of semi-circular altars laid out in his honour. It was a solemn and religious ritual which culminated in the lighting of a giant beacon on the mountain, and naturally there had to be a record. It was his being assigned to the task that galled!

'Jupiter's balls, man, we're the Security Police!' his boss had bawled. 'We're not bound by bloody bureaucracy.' He snorted in derision. 'You don't expect spies and agents to be hampered by an army of clerks and scribes, now do you?'

'No, sir.' The sensitive nature of their work put them outside every government department, including the army. 'But—' 'The Mount Alban ceremony, Orbilio, involves every highflier leaving the city at once. We have our bloody work cut out making sure that Rome remains secure on the one hand, while at the same time ensuring those illustrious dignitaries in the hills can sleep safe from the assassin's knife.'

'I realise that, sir.' If there was ever a better time to mount a coup, no one could think of one! 'It's just that—'

'Therefore, having achieved our objectives, I made a personal petition to the Senate to allow us to follow through this year and supervise the Roll of Honour.'

And in so doing, had tied Orbilio tighter than a hog for market! Stressing each official's individual significance in the government of the Empire, his oily little boss had added that he felt it only appropriate this should be reflected in the social standing of the officer appointed to oversee the Roll of Honour. It was his pleasure, he said, to assign the department's only patrician to said task, and naturally this was greeted with the predictable hum of approval. Bastard.