Man Eater (3 page)

It was wellnigh impossible, but Claudia made a gallant effort. ‘Why,’ she leaned over the breakfast table, ‘has Sergius sent for the military?’

Why not handle it himself? Come on, jurisprudence isn’t reserved for patricians. We merchant classes are equally entitled to administer justice among our own, it’s one of the perks.

‘Pallas, are you listening? I’m trying to work out—’

‘Why Sergius sent for the Prefect. I heard you.’ He searched around for a finger bowl. ‘I presume you’ve asked him?’

Claudia pushed across a bronze bowl filled with warm, scented water. ‘He felt, and I quote, it was essential for the officials to get to the bottom of the matter.’ She refrained from mentioning the crispness in his tone which brooked no argument.

‘There you are then.’ He shook the drips from his pudgy fingers. ‘Try a dried cornel and stop worrying. They’re simply divine and—’

‘I’m not worrying, I—’

‘Claudia, which do you think will look best centre stage at dinner tonight?’ Alis weighed a green bowl in one hand, a yellow bowl in the other.

‘—I repeat, I’m not worrying, but it’s not every day a man’s life-blood drains itself out on your nightshift.’ Claudia smiled a beguiling smile. ‘Couldn’t you have a word with him?’ There were enough skeletons in her closet to keep a pack of hungry jackals happy for a year. The last thing she needed was Officialdom picking over the bones.

‘Ah!’ The big man’s nose wrinkled ominously. ‘Unfortunately my stock is not that high with the man of the house—’ He let his voice trail off.

‘But you’re related?’

‘The connection is not as close as you might imagine.’ Pallas put a slice of pear in his mouth and chomped away for a while. ‘And I’m afraid Sergius leans to the impression that I have outstayed my welcome.’

‘Why? How long have you been here?’

He shot her a glance from the corner of his eye. ‘Two years.’

Laughing aloud is not generally prescribed to heal bruised ribs, but Claudia couldn’t help herself. I’m beginning to like you, she thought. I’m beginning to like you very much.

Across the room Alis clearly felt some decision ought to be made about the bowls, but before she could determine the verdict for herself, the green jug took the matter into its own handles and crashed to the floor.

‘Everyone ignore me,’ she quivered and Everyone obeyed. Claudia by letting a slave through to brush up the slivers, Pallas by cracking a snail shell.

‘Have you seen Tulola’s harem?’ He impaled the unfortunate mollusc on the point of his knife.

‘That ragbag collection of animals? Not yet.’

‘Darling girl, the beasts are Sergius’.’ His chins shook in amusement. ‘I’m talking about the
men
.’

Alis took advantage of the shocked pause. ‘Oh dear, I did so want to get a matching set for dinner. Why couldn’t it have been the yellow bowl?’

‘For gods’ sake, woman, a man’s been murdered! Claudia and I are trying to converse!’

‘I’m sorry, Pallas. Sorry.’ She twisted her face in a girlish gesture which had the unfortunate effect of making her look closer to thirty-eight than twenty-eight. ‘Pretend I’m not here.’

He did his best. ‘Not that her odalisques stay long, you understand. Our dear cousin bores easily.’

Claudia felt her pulse quicken. ‘Are you saying the dung-beetle was one of them?’

‘Wander round the west wing some time, it’s quite an experience, but as much as our Tulola goes for the rough trade, she hasn’t sunk that low.’

‘By rough trade, you mean…?’

‘Britons, Iberians, Germans. The ruff-tuff hairy types whereas me’—he peered down the neck of his tunic and pulled a face—‘I’m simply a martyr to depilation.’ Claudia flung herself on the couch opposite him. ‘What about the Negroes?’ Who could forget the sight of their sweat-drenched bodies harnessed to Tulola’s
chariot?

‘She goes through, how shall I put it, phases.’ Pallas swallowed the remainder of a sausage before elaborating. ‘Last year, for instance, she was into tattoos. Kept a whole string of Scythians, and you know how partial they are to body art. The black boys, I’m afraid, she
picked up at auction.’

To use as toys, the bitch. ‘So if he wasn’t one of Tulola’s conquests, who was the man in my bedroom?’ Pallas let out a soft belch and refilled his long-stemmed glass. ‘How should I know, darling? Never seen him before in my life.’

How odd. Claudia helped herself to wine, but it was the strong stuff and she merely sipped, although her mind was working faster than a goldbeater’s hammer. ‘Sergius has asked me to stay for the Prefect’s questions, and,’ not that she’d hang about once Drusilla turned up, ‘I was wondering how long it would take him to get here.’

‘Macer?’ The fat man picked up a pickled onion and began to eat it like an apple. ‘His barracks are in Tarsulae—’

Her ears pricked up. Tarsulae was the town where they’d spent the night before last, Claudia, Junius and the driver. She’d never forget that dump so long as she lived. In fact, her legs still bore a cluster of itchy red lumps from the damned bedding.

‘—which, as you know, is the only town for miles since the new road was built.’

‘I don’t suppose anyone could give me a hand with these crocks, could they?’ wailed Alis.

‘Looks good on his record, a manor that size,’ Pallas continued. ‘Even though the population is somewhat disproportionate.’

Tell me about it. In the fifteen years since the Emperor diverted the Via Flaminia, most of the locals had uprooted themselves and their families in order to be in at the start of the new prosperity. And, make no mistake, prosperous it was. Since Augustus had brought an end to three generations of civil war, trade had virtually doubled and whether you were a butcher or a banker, a midwife or a marble merchant, you could be assured of one thing: a damned good living on the far side of those mountains.

What sort of crimes would the military
this
side of the range be used to dealing with, Claudia wondered. Fiddling weights and measures, petty pilfering, adultery? No, no, those were civil cases. Patrolling the roads? Fat chance. To call those goat tracks roads would be like calling an ulcer a beauty spot, and as for the Old Road, well. She hadn’t seen many patrols yesterday.

Lazily she tossed a hazelnut from hand to hand. Such a simple matter, this, and more than likely the culprit would be some grudge-bearing slave, so why, why, why this compulsion for the military? Surely Sergius could sort it out himself? She didn’t know their purpose, but she’d seen his private security measures—big buggers who probably munched ears for breakfast, washed down with the blood of babes. Not so much slaves as mercenaries, twenty or thirty of them, and men like these weren’t cheap to run.

Indeed, you couldn’t hold your own in this neglected backwater without some degree of commercial nous, much less flourish, and precious little was required in the way of mathematics to deduce that one diverted road plus fifteen years of mass migration ought by rights to equal a decrease in fortune. Yet, she tapped her knuckle on the arm of the couch—this is solid bronze—and as for the upholstery—surely this particular shade of violet is unique to certain aloes? A strain that will grow only on the Isle of Socotra? Which happens to lie smack bang in the Indian Ocean?

The sudden realization as to why Sergius had called in the army sent a thousand spiders abseiling down Claudia’s backbone.

She remembered the glance she had caught of her handsome host as she followed Tulola to change her bloodstained nightshift. Although fleeting, she had interpreted the expression as that of a man mining for lead and finding a thick, strong vein of gold in its place. Now she was not so sure.

For all his outward signs of hospitality, Sergius believes he’s harbouring a murderess!
No wonder he was so solicitous. Be kind to the nice lady and she won’t stab you…

The hazelnut clattered on to the floor and came to rest on a maenad’s nose. Why Claudia’s hand was shaking, she had no idea. Good grief, I’ve nothing to fear, it’s not as though I stabbed the wretched man… The little filbert splintered under Claudia’s dainty tooled sandal as she recalled the law concerning murder. It was quite straightforward. No ifs and ands and buts and maybes. In fact, there’s a children’s rhyme that covers it nicely. Confession is death, denial is trial. By Jupiter, Claudia Seferius would most certainly be contesting the charge.

Pallas was too busy with his boiled bacon to notice her slip away, Alis too heavily entrenched with her fripperies.
Minerva’s magic, what have I got myself into?

Her bodyguard, a bandage round his head and his left eye a splendid magenta, was waiting in the atrium and his shoes squeaked on the marble floor as he approached.

‘Are you all right, madam?’ His face was pinched with worry. ‘There’s talk in the slave quarters—’

Claudia cut him short with a flick of the wrist. ‘Never listen to gossip, Junius.’ I do, but you shouldn’t.

‘But a man was killed in front of you?’

‘Some trivial misunderstanding.’ Try as she might to address his good eye, there was something magnetic about the shiny, swollen, purple thing on the other side of his nose. ‘The authorities will iron things out.’

‘You mean—?’ His square jaw dropped. ‘By the gods, madam! They’re not accusing
you
of the murder?’

‘Temporarily. Now hop along and stick a steak on that shiner, there’s a good boy.’

A whirl of orange cotton, she swept down the colonnade towards the far end of the atrium where condensation from the roof tiles dripped into the pool and a shaggy-haired slave in check pantaloons carried a loaded salver towards the west wing. Claudia snatched it out of his hands and marched to her room, kicking the door open with her toe. Juno be praised, the blood had been mopped up, there was not so much as a single stain to show the dung-beetle had ever been there, let alone expired on the spot.

For several long minutes her young bodyguard remained motionless in the shadows, his stern blue eyes fixed on Claudia’s door, and when he did finally leave, it was not towards the slaves’ barracks that his footsteps were directed, but to the back exit leading to the thickly wooded Umbrian hills. Within seconds, he was swallowed up by the swirling mist.

*

No way!

No way
is Claudia Seferius going to trial.

Claudia Seferius has enough on her plate as it is—and for heaven’s sake. What sort of a man is this Sergius Pictor, thinking she has nothing better to do than to go round sticking knives into people? You’ll pay for this, so help me, you will! I’ll take every copper quadran you own.

It was here, in the central courtyard redolent with hyssop, wormwood and borage, which reinforced the notion that Sergius was having no problems with his investment portfolio. And it was here, in the gardens, with the mist fast dissipating, that Claudia made her resolution.

Don’t get mad. Get one up.

I will sue you to Hades and back for what you’re putting me through. I will take your fountains which sing and dance and make rainbows in the sunshine. I will take your parrots which perform antics with such insouciant charm. I will even take their topiaried counterparts which spread box and laurel wings to shelter white marbled busts and mythic bronze beasts. Which, of course, will also be mine.

She poked her tongue into the corner of her mouth. How
did
Sergius make his money? Bruised and bleeding as she was yesterday, and long before she saw the pens of exotic animals, Claudia was aware that there were neither vines nor olives to suggest traditional rural income. One thing, though. Sergius sure was a man to maximize his potential. None of the outbuildings (and there were scores of them) encroached on this narrow, precious fertile finger, but where herds of cattle might walk, gazelle grazed. Where sweeps of wheat might grow, row upon sprouting row of lupin and vetch, clover, bracken and spelt flourished as animal fodder. What, she wondered, waggling her finger through the bars of the parrot’s cage, is going on here?

Her gaze fell beyond the archway to the wild, untamed hills beyond. Thanks to the fog, this was her first real view of them, and what a contrast to the broad skies and rolling terraces of her Etruscan vines. Well aware that Umbria oozed streams galore and was positively bursting with natural springs, woodland floors carpeted with hellebores and spurges, anemones and violets were not for Claudia. She felt her shoulders slump. How long, Drusilla, before I can leave this godforsaken wilderness? Come to think of it, what on earth possessed her to leave Rome? Bloody Rollo. He was her bailiff, for gods’ sake, he was paid to sort things out!

‘I ask you!’ She addressed the parrot. ‘What’s the point of employing a chap if he can’t handle the odd spot of arson?’

‘Erk?’ The feathers on the bird’s crest perked up.

‘You heard. Arson.’

When news of the attacks first filtered through, Claudia had blithely dismissed the whole sordid business You’d be surprised at the number of people who get a thrill from sending flaming arrows into a fully stocked barn or tipping a pot of blazing naphtha over a neighbour’s thatched roof. Hence some pea-brained moron torching olive groves was by no means noteworthy. Until he started in on vineyards. Not any old vineyards, either. These, if you please, stood adjacent to her own.