Wolf Whistle (4 page)

Drusilla’s reaction was to dig her claws deep into flesh. Leonides’ was rather more pragmatic. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, wrinkling his nose.

‘That,’ replied Claudia, carefully extracting the cat, ‘is a Jovi. To whom I have promised a hot pie, a hot bath and a dish of honeyed apricots, so Junius? Would you mind?’

‘Me?’ The young Gaul jumped as though scalded.

‘Come, come, the fleas’ll wash off. And I did promise our friend here a lesson in martial arts. When he grows up he intends to guard the Emperor personally, don’t you, soldier?’

‘Yes, ma’am!’

Since Jovi had not yet learned how to jump to attention and salute simultaneously there was an awkward sprawl of limbs, yet in the short time it took for Junius to scoop the wee lad off the floor, the Gaul had been won over. Dangling him backwards over his shoulder, he carried his mucky, chuckling charge away to the kitchens.

Claudia turned to Cypassis. ‘Stop snivelling, girl! Rumours about setting dogs on me? Utter rubbish. I was simply making arrangements for Gaius’ aunts, you know how fussy they are.’

Personally she’d order funeral biers for the whole damned lot, but she presumed that was out of the question. The Thessalian girl sucked back her tears and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘That’s better. Now, fetch my pale lemon tunic, the one with long sleeves, and a fresh set of underwear, then meet me in the bath room. Oh, and bring a wrap, will you? My sunflower yellow one.’ Heaven knows, I need something cheerful after those gloomy alleyways. ‘I’ll need a comb and the mirror with the lotus-shaped handle, and my skin feels dry, so that little alabaster pot, the one which smells of camomile when you open the lid, fetch that, too.’

A long soak, a dab of scent, what more could a girl ask for?

‘A slab of ham and some sausage would go down well, and there’s bound to be a crusty
loaf
hanging about.
I’ll
need wine, red please, to wash it down, one of the fruity ones for preference, and see whether the cook’s managed to get his hands on one of the new season’s melons, will you? They should be in from Egypt by now.’

As Cypassis disappeared, repeating the list aloud to herself and omitting an item each time, Claudia looked up at her steward. ‘What do you think you’re laughing at?’

The Macedonian tried, without success, to straighten his face. ‘Nothing, madam. Will that be all?’

‘All? Good heavens, man, I’ve only just started. Once I’m done with my bath, I want to catch up on that huge pile of correspondence—’

‘You called it twaddle earlier, said to throw it in—’

‘Don’t interrupt, Leonides, it’s rude. You just bring those scrolls along to the peristyle in an hour’s time, there’s a good chap.’

As Claudia swept along the atrium towards the steam room, the lanky Macedonian smiled to himself. This was a grand house. Two upper galleries, well designed gardens and a magnificent banqueting hall. When the master was alive, the household ran like clockwork, lunch at this hour, dinner at that, guests were regular, quiet, and impeccably mannered. Much of the routine changed once Master Gaius married Miss Claudia (that bloody cat, for a start!), but since she became mistress in her own right, he could not recall a single dull moment under this roof. For Master Gaius, Leonides would have bent over backwards and done handstands. For the young mistress, he would lay down his life.

In her bath room, Claudia dismissed the attendants with a clap of her hands and sank into the luxurious hot water, where flowerheads of hyacinth and cyclamen and pink-lilac sea stocks bobbed about like ducks, wafting out their fragrance as they passed. Gradually muscles stopped screaming, lungs ceased to burn, and Claudia’s thoughts turned to the moneylender. Or rather, to the reason she had needed him in the first place. Where had it gone wrong? For the average woman, of course, dragging themselves out of the gutter and marrying, for his money, a man who obligingly pops his clogs when you’re still twenty-four would have been ample. Unfortunately when you’re not Miss Average but are addicted to thrills, the path is more often prickled than primrose and when danger is no longer around to seduce you, the buzz has to come from somewhere. Hence the fall of the dice, the pluck of the gladiators, the fluke of the turn for a chariot. All too quickly, though, Claudia discovered Luck was no reliable investment counsellor. Gambling debts mounted, her inheritance dwindled, the dealings with moneylenders increased. She crumpled a marigold in her fist. Worst of all, the wine business Gaius had left her was ailing, purely because men refused to deal with a woman! Somehow she’d rectify that, but until then…youth comes but once, so why waste it?

Refreshed and replete, she hooked the door to with her toe, grappling with wraps, jars and mirrors under one arm and a jug of Falernian wine under the other. There were two honey cakes in her right hand and a goblet, half full, in her left. The tortoiseshell comb she gripped with her teeth. The atrium, thank heavens, was deserted, affording privacy, air, space to breathe, time to appreciate the birds captured in silent song by the artist’s brush, to—

What was that?

Claudia tipped her head on one side. There it was again. Three knocks at the vestibule door. Not hard, not soft, but certainly not tentative. Curious, she decided against calling the porter back from his break and, after a valiant juggling act with her burdens, eased open the door herself.

The comb spat from her mouth.

The man leaning in the doorway would have been taller still, had it not been for the stoop where he was clutching his stomach. His hair was dark, with a tendency to curl, although right now most of it was matted with dark, sticky blood, which trickled down the side of his face to join the growing stain on his once-white tunic. His left eye was red and swollen and closing fast.

‘Lovely evening,’ he rasped. ‘Don’t you think?’

With unexpected grace, he slithered slowly down the door jamb into unconsciousness.

*

Claudia’s instinct was to slam the door in his face. By the gods, she didn’t need this! She threw down her wrap and the jug and the mirror, but not in order to play nurse. This man (correction, this human ferret) was the only person in Rome who knew the truth about Claudia, the single weak link in an otherwise sturdy chain. And now he turns up here! The honey cakes bounced, but the fall of the alabaster pot was broken by a heap of yellow cotton. Look at him. It wasn’t the first time they’d crossed swords, but every time it was akin to tossing water on to acid. Explosive. Tentacles of grey mist coiled up the street, bringing with them a conglomeration of onions, damp donkey fur and the sickly scent of pomegranates fallen from a cart. Lips pursed, Claudia prodded the comatose lump. He’d been worked over by experts, but the damage was purely superficial. Hell, let him bleed on his own wretched doorstep!

From a distance she heard a voice saying, ‘As far as I am aware, the gods of this threshold do not actually require a blood sacrifice.’

Incredibly, the voice appeared to be hers.

Marcus Cornelius Orbilio spluttered his way back to the land of the living. ‘When I give, I like to give generously,’ he said. At least that’s what it sounded like. It was hard to tell with his lip so puffy. ‘And anyway, you should see the others.’

Dammit, thought Claudia, if I wanted to laugh, I’d go watch a comedian.

‘Another of those quiet nights out with the boys?’ she asked, pushing him roughly towards the bath room.

‘Not exactly.’ His smile turned into a grimace of pain as she dabbed at his forehead. ‘They were Nerva’s men.’

‘Really?’ The cut was deep, but she did not believe it needed stitching. ‘They look pretty damn confident to me.’

‘Not nervous.’ Orbilio gripped his ribs, because it hurt like hell when he laughed. ‘Nerva.’

He smelled of sandalwood and wine, and you could tell his tunic had been aired over rosemary, even through the coarser scents of mud and blood. Claudia pressed harder on the cut. ‘The aedile responsible for restoring the Temple of Neptune?’

‘The very same. Only instead of dipping into the sea for inspiration, he’s been dipping into the State Treasury. That’s an exile offence, so he set his thugs on me. Four of them to be precise.’

Claudia shuddered. This was a night for foursomes, she thought, recalling the Midden Hunters trawling the slums. Funny, but she could have forgiven them, perhaps, had they been dirty and down-at-heel, skulking in the shadows. Instead she remembered the lavish embroidery, the cultured voice, and the bearded man with the horseshoe-shaped scar.

The wounded warrior was making a brave stab at humour. ‘I taught one or two of them a lesson, I think.’ Claudia examined the lump on his head and applied a compress.

‘They didn’t need extra tuition, Orbilio, they were doing perfectly well on their own. Will you sit still?’

‘That hurt!’

‘Don’t be a baby.’ It was only vinegar to flush out the wounds. ‘What happens next?’

‘Oh, I’ll have them in irons by midday, and then they can decide for themselves whether the money they were paid was worth the price of their lives.’

Claudia debated whether to tell him she was reaching for the salt and decided it would only make him fidget even more. ‘Actually, I was enquiring, in my usual polite and roundabout way, whether Nerva’s heavies had followed you here. Are we, for instance, needing to batten down the hatches and repel boarders?’

‘No need, they scarpered once the—
Youch
!’

‘You were saying?’ she asked sweetly.

Orbilio made a grab for the salt and applied it himself, a tad more gingerly she noticed. Wimp.

‘Those bastards meant to kill me. Goddammit, they were using me as a human battering ram. When Weasel’s door sprang open, I’m not sure who was the more surprised. Nerva’s men, me, or Senator Plautius with some curly-headed rent boy on his arm.’

Irony indeed. Had it not been for a senator who preached the high moral ground by day and stalked catamites by night, Orbilio would be floating half-way to Ostia by now.

The painkilling properties of her opobalsam salve were beginning to work. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked, as he struggled to his feet.

‘I’ll live.’

‘I was afraid of that. Now tell me what you’re doing here.’

‘Me? Oh. Just passing.’

‘On your hands and knees?’

A muscle twitched at the side of his swollen lip, but before he could respond, a small child had come barrelling into the room.

‘Hello, I’m Jovi, who are you? I got lost. Claudia found me on the Argiletum. I asked another lady to help, but she was asleep, so Claudia brought me to her house for the night and she gave me a hot pie and a bath. Have you had a hot pie?’

‘Um. No. But I wouldn’t mind one.’ Orbilio glanced hopefully at Claudia, who made a great show of finding a clean place to dry her hands on the bloodied linen towel.

‘I’ll fetch you some from the kitchens,’ said Jovi. ‘They’re very good pies, I ate two.
And
some honeyed apricots. There was a cake on the hall floor, I ate that as well, actually there was two, so you can have the other one if you like.’

He pulled Claudia’s second honey cake out from his shirt and handed it across. The transformation was astonishing, she thought. Clean, his hair was at least two shades lighter, and his face was quite cute, once the dirt’d been scrubbed off. The lice had probably clogged up the drains.

Marcus studied the hot, misshapen offering and politely declined.

‘Why do you wear a long tunic?’ Jovi pointed to Orbilio’s trademark patrician attire. ‘I’ve never seen a man in a frock before, are you a priest?’

‘He has knobbly knees, soldier. People laugh at them, so he keeps them covered up. Shouldn’t you be in bed?’

‘Pff! I’m far too excited to sleep!’ Jovi stuffed the honey cake into his mouth. ‘I’ll go fetch you them pies,’ he said, crumbs spraying everywhere. ‘There’s lots to choose from, I had quail and then I had duck, but there’s all sorts of others, which do you want? Cypassis says beef for brawn, fish for brains—’

‘He already has fish for brains, Jovi. You bring back anything that looks nice.’

As his little feet pitter-pattered up the atrium, Marcus sluiced water over his matted hair. ‘Why, Claudia Seferius, I do declare you’ve been unfaithful in my absence.’

Claudia froze in her tracks. That was the trouble with Supersnoop. He disturbed her. He disturbed her and she resented him for it, and when she turned there was ice in her eyes. ‘Don’t get ideas above your station, Orbilio. Didn’t you know this is National Stray Day? I’m merely doing my bit for the Empire.’

He studied her lazily for several seconds. ‘How much are you in for?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The loan sharks. How much are you in for?’

Claudia brushed an imaginary speck off her pale-lemon tunic. ‘Nasty crack on the head you sustained. Makes you ramble.’

‘My steward informs me’—Orbilio winced as he combed out his tangles—‘that a moneylender called at my house recently. Apparently he required to speak with a lady by the name of—well, I forget what she called herself, it really doesn’t matter.’

‘If it doesn’t matter, why are you telling me?’