Man Eater (10 page)

Behind her, in the atrium, a commotion started up and one ear flicked backwards.

‘Nothing to concern you, poppet.’ Claudia patted Drusilla’s crenellated backbone and felt a certain give in the spikes. ‘You stay there and unwind. I’ll let you know if there’s anything worth waking up for.’

She prised her bedroom door open and peeped through the crack. Not only Marcus, Sergius was also soaked to the skin—and as Orbilio confirmed his identity courtesy of his personal ring-seal, Euphemia was wringing the hem of Sergius’ tunic as though it was the neck of a chicken. The only other person in the atrium was Tulola.

‘Tell me, policeman,’ she drawled. ‘Do you like—’ She paused to run her index finger down Orbilio’s breastbone. ‘Cuddles?’

Orbilio was goggling. ‘I…beg your pardon?’ Tulola’s eyes flashed like the sunlight on the atrium pool. ‘My pet, sweetie. She’s called Cuddles.’

I should have guessed, thought Claudia, as the cheetah fixed Orbilio with the sort of stare it probably bestowed on the average gazelle. Drusilla’s nose suddenly twitched and her ears pricked forward as she caught the scent of her spotted cousin and Claudia clicked the door quietly to. Satisfied there was no threat of invasion, Drusilla settled back down and Claudia left her to drift back into her pretend slumber. Clearly finding yourself navigationally dysfunctional kicks a real dent in a cat’s pride.

Leaning her back against the flat of the door, Claudia considered her impending trial. In eight days’ time, Macer intended to bring her before a specially convened court consisting of one judge and some seventy-five professional jurists. Since women were strictly forbidden to plead in court, even for their own case, she would have to hire an advocate who was skilled in both rhetoric and law, yet who wouldn’t be above turning a blind eye to the succession of witnesses for the defence she intended to bribe in her favour. A local man was out of the question, she’d need one from Rome—and that gave her precious little time to recruit him. Damn you, Macer. Damn you to hell. It’ll be virtually impossible to keep
this quiet
now.

She wondered whether he could be right about Fronto being the mysterious arsonist. Surely, she mused as she paced the floor, no self-respecting arsonist would trek half a day north. Why contend with the swirling Tiber, which is in full spate at the moment, when you have literally thousands of vines on your doorstep? Good grief, Falcon Mountain’s just up the road and that’s smothered with grapes. No, Macer had to be wrong about Fronto, just as he was wrong about everything else. If there’s one thing a firebug takes pleasure in, it’s admiring his craftsmanship at close quarters.

With a subdued squeak, Drusilla curled tight into a ball, covering her eyes with her paw.

‘Admit it, you’re just blinded by this tarty tunic.’

A faint purr was offered in lieu of a handy olive branch.

Claudia leaned over the bed and tickled the cat under its unresisting chin. ‘Think this is bad? Wait till you meet the owner.’ Talk about loud taste.

‘Prrr.’ Drusilla allowed herself to be stroked into a deep and sprawling sleep, which somehow contrived with her being nestled in a lovely deep dent in the bolster which smelled of her mistress’s hair.

‘In her clothes, in her men, even her personal habits.’

‘Ffffff.’

Strangely enough, it was difficult to fathom exactly where sex fitted in. Sure, it was rammed at you from all angles, but judging from Tulola’s calm reaction when Claudia interrupted her frolics with Timoleon, the enjoyment was entirely on the gladiator’s part. No puffing, no panting, not even a telltale blush on cheek or neck or bosom from Tulola, and even the moans were not genuine. Why, Claudia wondered, peeling off the flame-coloured tunic, would Tulola fake it? She held the garment at arm’s length. Orange and blue, what a ghastly combination. Yet Tulola was the one person who
could
carry it off.

Nymphomaniacs I understand. They equate sex with affection.

Prostitutes I understand. They need the money.

But promiscuity, just to manipulate? I don’t get it.

And what about that irritating gleam in her eye? Hardly a warm, inviting twinkle, and when you boil it right down, there’s nothing inviting about Tulola at all. Strikingly beautiful, maybe, but Claudia had known dozens of plain women, often dumpy with it, whose zest for life made them ripe fruits for red-blooded men to pluck, both parties reaping enormous pleasure from even the most casual of couplings. Surely the harem doesn’t consist solely of lazy men, who can’t be bothered to court a woman and therefore enjoy being ‘picked’ when the fancy takes her? Timoleon might fit the bill, possibly the Celt and the horse-breaker, too, but Corbulo? He struck Claudia as very much his own man, did Corbulo. And why did Tulola try to give the impression she was bisexual?

The Negroes, Claudia suspected, were the key. Them and the cheetah, she owned both and Tulola was about power. Power over men. Power to shock. That, she believed, gave her power over women, because, in her eyes, the more outrageous the behaviour, the more superior she became. Why couldn’t she see the system didn’t work? Pallas hit the button when he said the men don’t last long. Casual, competitive sex has a time limit, and it’s they who move on, rather than Tulola pushing them. To revenge herself on what she would see as perfidy, she opts for different characteristics next time round, and the cycle is perpetuated.

‘Silly bitch has it all wrong,’ Claudia confided to the comatose cat. ‘You see, Drusilla, men are rather like mosaics. Lay ’em right, and you can walk all over them for the rest of your life.’

Very carefully Claudia upended her wine jug over the orange tunic.

VII

As a statesman, Quintilian did not feel he set much of an example. As a picture of misery and decrepitude, he was brilliant. Shoulders bent, he plodded up the Capitol, succoured by the knowledge that the Senate was in recess until the end of next month. Ample time to peruse laws and initiatives at leisure and concentrate on private business.

Stopping by the Temple of Jupiter, not so much to admire the view as to let the jarring subside, Quintilian looked down on the Theatre of Marcellus in all its travertine glory, then beyond, to the island that divided the Tiber’s strong current. Had he been lower-born, he could have crossed that stone bridge and spent the night in the temple. Rumour had it, Aesculapius himself came to sick pilgrims in the form of a snake and cured them while they slept. Senators, alas, were required to find more dignified alternatives.

He groaned, remembering the time when he just had the toothache.

Gingerly he moved his tongue round his mouth until it found a hole where a walnut could fit comfortably and where the teeth either side felt like wagon wheels. So badly had the abscess nagged him that, when the dentist said the tooth had to be pulled, Quintilian jumped at the chance for relief. Only when he was strapped in that bloodstained chair did he begin to have misgivings. It is not a pleasant experience, he reflected miserably, to have an ulcerated gum scraped away from a tooth, which then gets shaken until it’s loose enough for the forceps. He had never known such pain. And the blood!

‘Don’t worry, old chap,’ the dentist had said, cheerfully pocketing his five sesterces. ‘The swelling will go down in a day or two, and the bruising should fade in a week.’

‘Ung.’

‘What’s that? Worried the bone underneath broke?’

‘Ung, ung.’ It never occurred to him.

‘Well, if you like, we can pop the old probe in,’ the dentist flexed some ghastly bronze apparatus between his reddened fingers, ‘see what’s where,’ he swabbed his patient’s bleeding mouth with a towel, ‘and fish any loose bits out with this.’

At the sight of the second instrument, long and thin and pronged and grooved, Quintilian was out of the shop and up the street faster than you could say here’s-your-change—and now the pain was even more excruciating.

‘Ridiculous, going out in your state,’ his wife had barked. ‘What are you trying to prove?’

Since his wife was always calling his abilities into question, he pretended not to hear.

‘Well, don’t come crawling to me when infection sets in,’ she shouted after him. ‘Oh, and the Consul’s coming to dinner.’

Next to the Emperor, consuls were Rome’s most influential citizens and his wife lived for the day Quintilian stepped into office, except disappointment was to be her destiny. He didn’t want a bloody consulship. He was lucky, he supposed, gazing across the Tiber to where another great granary was going up, that women can’t vote or she’d be lobbying direct. He grunted with satisfaction at the granary’s progress, it was one of his pet projects. At the last count, twelve million bushels of wheat were being shipped in each summer, and the figure was set to rise.

Leaving Jupiter to his immortal chores, Quintilian pressed on to do what he came for, to make his devotions at the shrines of Honour and Virtue and Fidelity as he had done every year since his first wife had died. It wasn’t the most successful of marriages, but at least she wasn’t a harridan. Or a snob. Owing to his current wife’s obsession with status, Quintilian’s fortune was dwindling fast, he’d be bankrupt by the time he reached sixty unless urgent steps were taken.

‘We
must
bring the villa up to scratch,’ she had argued. ‘Only then can we hope to entertain the Princeps.’

Silly, vain cow. Augustus was a family man, who rejoiced in simplicity and spurned affectation. Pausing in the shade of the Public Record Office, Quintilian watched a white-robed priest bless an offering from a well-known goldsmith who lived on the Esquiline. Assuming he would ever accept such an invitation to Umbria, the Emperor would find greater solace watching the swallows dip over the lake—the lake that he, incidentally, was draining to provide more land for wheat—and discussing administration. Should the treasury fund more of the imperial thrust into Germany? Should an extra legion be despatched, now Pannonia was annexed? Where should the next aqueduct run, since the Virgo, Agrippa’s underground masterpiece, was already proving inadequate for the increased consumption?

Too late! Quintilian’s wife had already ordered marble and stone and magnificent statues, organized work gangs, architects, gardeners. The watercourses alone cost 100,000 sesterces.

Puffed from his descent of the Capitol, he leaned against the side of the Rostra and thought of the great men who had addressed the populace from here. This was where the murdered corpse of the Divine Julius was shown to the people, where the hands of Cicero had been nailed by Mark Antony. Never before had Quintilian felt so distant from his illustrious senatorial predecessors. The bones in his face throbbed and throbbed. His cheek, his jaw, even his eye sockets, and the skin were stiff from the swelling. Sweat ran down his neck in rivulets to soak into his toga, making it even heavier than usual. He stumbled, scuffing the toe of his black senatorial boot, and when he tried to stand upright again, it was as though he was carrying a dead cow on his shoulders. Bloody quacks!

Being the third day of the Festival of Mars, the Forum was packed to capacity. Butchers’ cleavers splintered their blocks, mongrels plundered the scrap bins. Shouts of ‘stop thief’ or ‘make way for the chariot’ mingled with smells of pies and poultry, pickles and pancakes. A spice-seller skidded on a fish head, and a thousand exotic scents exploded into the air. Cinnamon and nutmeg and cumin clung to Quintilian as he bumbled his way through the shoppers and the charlatans. You could buy anything here today, from pastry-cutters to ivory plaques, cucumbers to scribes.

And the sun beat mercilessly on it all, pounding his head like a pestle.

Had it not been for that bloody wife of mine, he thought bitterly, I could be tucked up in bed with a poppy draught. And all for a paltry plot in Etruria. Yet the thought of the Seferius woman lifted his spirits and strangely the aches receded. By Jupiter, she could warm a man’s bedsheets, she could. Sly little bitch, mind—but he’d got her. This time he’d bloody well got her! Third time lucky, but lucky was just how Quintilian felt.

Maybe when the dust has settled and you realize women and business don’t mix, we could come to a different arrangement, eh? The Emperor was firm on the subject of single women. Within two years of bereavement they must wed again. Quintilian had never been sure about the legislation, although he saw no personal gain in opposing it, but, as with most laws, there was a loophole. Suppose a respected aristocrat (him for instance) became this woman’s guardian?

Despite his swollen face and raging jawache, he felt a stirring in his loins. Here? In the middle of the Forum? So outrageous was it, that his desire, so to speak, swelled and the prospect of making Claudia Seferius his mistress became even more attractive. No woman had ever had such a dramatic effect on him, not even in his youth, and Venus knows how active he was in the old days. Edging his way past a shoemaker, bent double under a roll of hides, he began to fantasize about love trysts whereby she would be waiting, naked, oiled, eager to show her gratitude at being spared a loveless marriage…

It was the loveless marriage bit that brought Quintilian back from the Elysian Fields. Thanks to his wife, his vines and his olives had been ripped out and replaced with bloody watercourses. The former had made him a fortune, the latter had cost him one.

He treated himself to a goblet of chilled wine from a street vendor. In theory senators were not allowed to dabble in trade, having to content themselves with their magisterial posts and, if that proved too dull, their estates. Few, though, walked within those lines and a blind eye was turned to surplus sold for profit, to the odd quarry managed through a middleman, to property bought and sold through an agent. He didn’t know what all the fuss was about. She’d run up debts and, to pay for her gambling, she’d put one of Seferius’ tenements on the market. Quintilian had bought it fair and square, yet the silly bitch went ape.