Man Eater (17 page)

‘Well, um, Augustus has several strategies.’ Somehow he’d lost the thread here.

‘Sergius hates his darling wife to talk about it, but hadn’t you wondered about the lack of brats? He wants his precious circus first—’

‘Euphemia, please!’ Alis wailed.

‘Hence the Emperor’s strategy. Abstinence! Can you believe that?’

Frankly, no, thought Orbilio. Augustus might cart his wife with him round the provinces, but his infidelities were legendary. Who, he wondered, thought that one up?

‘You’ll have to excuse me.’ He yawned noisily. ‘Long day.’

He was enjoying the quiet of the garden, with the cicadas rasping and moths dicing with death round the torches, when the messenger arrived from Rome. The letter bore the seal of the heron and Orbilio swore under his breath. He tipped the rider, and made two full, slow circuits of the colonnade before he even thought about reading it.

His boss was an oily bastard, who’d weaselled his way to the top, surrounding himself with high-calibre officers whose consistent results compensated for his own shortcomings. When they did well, he did well. When they failed—huh—talk about a man with sloping shoulders! A foul-mouthed so-and-so at the best of times, Jupiter alone knows what he had to say to an officer who’d abandoned a complex fraud case in the middle of the night to investigate a murder that was not even in his jurisdiction.

Orbilio found a marble bench and broke open the seal.

As ever, his boss was to the point.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ the letter began. ‘The Emperor is shouting down my throat and I’ve had to transfer Metellus to your case—not because you’re arsing about in the country, but because a certain ex-tribune, an ex-prefect as well as an ex-consul claims you raped his wife.’

The bitch! Orbilio rubbed his forehead. The absolute bitch!

‘If that’s not enough, now I get a complaint from Gisco to say you’re shagging his wife, too. What is it with you, Orbilio? Too much red meat? Is that what makes you ride every filly within reach?’

He put it down. He couldn’t read, the parchment was shaking so badly it was making him cross-eyed. Mother of Tarquin, I’ve really cocked up this time. He leaned back and closed his eyes, waiting for the nausea to subside before picking up where he left off.

‘The rape charge I’ve thrown out,’—did he know the woman’s reputation?—‘but get this. Under no circumstances can I allow an officer of mine to be responsible for any further outbreaks of cuckolding, least of all amongst our most prominent citizens. A few weeks of “night starvation” ought to bring you to your senses, so until I say so, you will not set foot within these city walls. Do I make myself clear?’

Underneath, and written in his boss’s own writing, as opposed to that of his scribe, was a postscript.

‘So you know I mean business, I’ve told Gisco where to find you.’

*

For a cheap inn down the squalid end of town, it was doing a roaring trade by the time Froggy elbowed his way through the guffaws of laughter, the maudlin tales, the off-key shanties. The rest of his gang, he noticed with a tinge of rancour as he thumped down his goblet, had already dipped deep into one pitcher of wine and were calling for a second before he’d taken so much as a swill of the first.

‘You’re late tonight,’ chimed Pansa, tipping a set of knucklebones out of a dog-eared leather bag before stacking up an assortment of coins. ‘Much longer and we’d have started without you.’

Froggy said nothing. He drained his goblet then pulled up a stool in the space the others had made for him, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn’t pee without checking with him first.

‘Put the bones away,’ he ordered.

‘No one’s watching,’ Ginger protested amiably. ‘You can’t see what goes on in this corner.’

‘I know that,’ Froggy replied irritably. It was why they always sat here on a market-day evening. Gambling, even in this dive, was still illegal. ‘I want to talk.’

A collective groan rippled round the table, but the coins disappeared back into their respective purses. Froggy had been their leader since they could remember and they knew when they were beaten—Ginger, imaginatively named after his thatch of red hair; Pansa, who walked with his hand shielding the birthmark on his cheek; the two brothers Lefty and Restio; plus Festus, the shield-maker’s son. Reluctantly Pansa scooped up the knucklebones.

Glancing about, Froggy satisfied himself the other revellers weren’t listening. Right now their attention was fixed on a couple of newcomers making passes at the serving girls, and the innkeeper, who was having none of that, was pointing out a brothel over the way if they wanted, and of course they did. This was Narni. The Via Flaminia passed through it, so did the river Nera, and so did a constant procession of soldiers, bargees, porters and stevedores. The wealthier types—the merchants and their agents—lodged in more salubrious establishments, but there remained a whole host of clerks and labourers left to fend for themselves until their masters’ business was done. The whores of Narni, like those of many a staging town, offered a bright spot of comfort in an otherwise bleak and ragged existence.

Froggy turned back to his friends. ‘You know that job we did recently?’

‘The burglary up by the—’

‘The other one,’ he said, brushing his hair as a spider—or worse—fell from the rafters. Whatever the creature, he crushed it under his fist on the table. ‘Sunday morning.’ He wiped the remains of the insect down the seam of his tunic. ‘When we ran that rig off the road.’

Easy money, that. He paused as plates piled high with boiled bacon and lentils were plumped in front of them, another part of the market-day ritual. A dish of grits completed the feast.

‘What about it?’ asked Ginger, blowing on his spoon. ‘Something go wrong?’

‘Not exactly.’ Froggy was idly twirling his knife round his plate. ‘But that’s what made me late. Apparently some widow was on board, and now she’s been charged with murder.’

Restio whistled. ‘What a psycho!’

‘Not half,’ echoed Pansa. ‘Count ourselves lucky she didn’t do for one of us, eh, lads?’

A drunk bumbled over, a bargee—Froggy could tell by the smell of oxen which clung to him no matter how clean the poor sod’s clothes. ‘Piss-house is that way, mate,’ he said, jerking his thumb towards the far corner. The drunk belched gratefully and lumbered towards the door.

‘The trial’, he continued, taking care not to raise his voice beyond the reach of the table, ‘takes place here, in Narni, on Wednesday. You know what that means, don’t you?’

‘Narni?’ asked Ginger, through a mouthful of vegetables. ‘Why not Tarsulae?’

‘Where’, Froggy scoffed, ‘could they scrape up fourscore jurists in that shithole? No, the show’s coming here, so you see the significance? Everyone, and I mean
everyone
at the Villa Pictor will be called as a witness.’

‘Wow!’ said Restio, because although he hadn’t a clue what Froggy was driving at, he sensed it was important enough to warrant reverence.

Froggy leaned forward. ‘It seems to me, lads, that here’s our chance to make a bit of dosh—’

‘We got paid well for that,’ Pansa put in, but Froggy ploughed on.

‘As I see it, we have two choices. According to my contact at the courts, this old bag’s supposed to have arranged to meet with the bloke who got killed—’

‘But she couldn’t have,’ Restio protested. ‘Because we run her off the road and, according to that innkeeper in Tarsulae, she was headed north.’

‘Thank you, witness for the defence, you may step down now,’ said Froggy, topping up his wooden goblet. ‘Now if you’ll let me get on, as I said, we have two choices. Either we approach the widow’s lawyer, tell him what we know—oh, we can say it was an accident, didn’t realize anyone had been hurt, how sorry we were—only there’s no mileage in that.’

In all probability the widow was old, and she certainly wasn’t well off or she’d have been travelling the main road with a retinue of slaves and baggage. Frankly Froggy couldn’t see the old girl heaping rewards upon his head for coming forward—not on the scale he fancied, anyhow.

‘Which leaves us with our second option. You see, boys, I don’t think our client will want it bandied about that we were paid to run that rig off the road, do you? In fact, I think we’re on to a nice little earner with this one.’

XIII

‘Is going to rain.’

Good, thought Claudia, taking half a step back from the Celt. You might be tempted to stand out in it.

‘And Sergius, he not look so good.’ Taranis fell into step along the colonnade, his long hair flicking up at the ends as he walked. A stranger to the strigil, it was difficult to see what Tulola saw in him. Ruff-tuff hairy types Pallas had said, and from that aspect Taranis certainly fitted the bill. Self-respecting Romans shave their body hair…they don’t have whopping great tufts of it sticking out the neck of their tunics and the hems of their sleeves like horsehair stuffing from an old couch. Idly she wondered how Tulola came by so many oddballs.

‘You visit west wing later, heh? We play fours, you go with Barea and I do Tulola?’

‘I’d sooner drink hemlock.’

‘Ah!’ Two paws latched over her breasts. ‘You want Taranis to yourself—
eeeeeeeeh
.’

Claudia squeezed his testicles tighter. ‘Listen to me, lizardbreath. Lay so much as one black fingernail on me again, and I shall twist these right off and stuff them up your nostrils. Do I make myself plain?’

She took the tears in his eyes as affirmative and stalked off to her bedroom for a wrap. Drusilla, her ancestry bestowing magnanimity despite the string of indignities, was balanced on the windowsill studiously washing behind her ears. So the barbarian was right? It was going to rain.

‘Brrp.’ The cat bounded down. ‘Brrip, brrip.’

‘I know, poppet, but it won’t be for much longer.’ She raked her fingers along Drusilla’s arched spine. ‘Only we have a slight problem here.’

‘Mrra.’ The cat stretched up on tippytoes, her eyes squeezed tight in ecstasy.

‘The Prefect, you see, is a moron.’ Although he had yet to appreciate that particular aspect of his character.

‘Mrrap, mrrap.’ Drusilla’s stiffened tail received the fingernail treatment right up to its tip.

‘Are you getting dandruff? Oh no, it’s only flaky plaster. Anyway, what I was saying was, to avoid the idiocy of a trial, it is up to us to show Macer the error of his ways, is it not?’

‘Prrr.’

‘Prrrcisely. And in order to do this we must unveil the killer ourselves.’ One murder is undesirable. Two murders smacks of self-indulgence. ‘Do you have any suggestions where to begin?’

‘Brrrp.’

‘Neither do I.’

Drusilla lifted her wedge-shaped head. ‘Mrrow.’

‘Me? Framed? You’re getting as bad as Supersnoop.’ The wrong place at the wrong time, Orbilio. You’ll see. ‘But we have a nose for sniffing out murderers, don’t we, poppet? We’ll get him—or her, it could be a her, I suppose—and that’ll put paid to this ridiculous talk about exile. Ah! I have a treat for you.’

A cold partridge plopped on to the mosaic and the cat sniffed it carefully from all angles. You might call flabby poultry a treat, her manner seemed to imply, but you forget, my lady, that I’m used to dining on food I’ve hunted myself. Even as we speak, there’s a fresh mouse outside with my name on it. Catch you later.

With a smile at her lips, Claudia covered her shoulders with her palla.

‘I wouldn’t venture far, if I were you.’ The voice of the trainer in the courtyard made her jump. She’d forgotten how light he was on his feet.

‘Oh?’ Was this a warning?

The Etruscan quickly closed the distance between them. ‘There’s a storm brewing.’

Claudia’s breath came out in a hiss from where she’d been holding it. ‘I need the fresh air.’ Fresh? With that number of wild beasts? ‘What about you? Do you always work this late?’

He held the gate open for her. ‘Work? Oh, you’re thinking about that scene back there with Sergius.’

I wasn’t, but go on.

‘We do that, him and me. I throw pots, he throws insults, then it’s forgotten.’ A big cat snarled as they passed its shed. ‘Quiet, Sheba!’ He paused by the ostrich pen. ‘May I walk with you a way?’

Intense grey eyes bored into hers. For a man who works all day with animals, she thought, you always manage to smell of citron and woodsmoke.

‘Why not?’

In silence they passed along a line of clipped laurels, the imminence of the storm intensifying the scent of the leaves. A flash of lightning silhouetted a rhino against the sky and a bear growled.

‘You have a farm in my homeland, I gather?’

‘Vineyards,’ she corrected. ‘Across the Tiber then half-a-day’s hard ride. Is that close to your stomping ground?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m from the coast, but like most other Etruscans you’ll meet, I was uprooted without a great deal of ceremony.’

She picked up on the sour note. ‘The Emperor’s Land Purchase Scheme strikes again, eh?’

‘Worse than that. I lived in Carrera before Augustus turned it into a marble quarry.’

‘Well, if it’s any consolation, Corbulo, you shifted for a good cause. When you do take those show beasts to Rome, you’ll see half your motherland slapped over the temples.’ The Oil Market is positively dazzling.