Virgin Territory (31 page)

His spirits unexpectedly fell when he realized he was mistaken. One of the shepherds had fallen sick and Pacquia was running errands for Diomedes, which possibly explained the tortuous route. For here was the shepherd convalescing in the clipshed, probably because he had something contagious which the Greek didn’t want bandied about.

Leaving the man tossing fitfully in his sleep, Orbilio went to check on Tanaquil. Eugenius had been completely closed to reason when he spoke to him yesterday evening. The girl had stolen a horse, Collatinus said, and theft was a civil matter which, as Orbilio knew, was tried in the magistrate’s court.

For magistrate, read Ennius, Marcus thought irritably. He’d find her guilty and order her to make restitution. She might argue that she had returned the horse, which was only borrowed in the first place, but Ennius would be deaf to her appeals and insist she sell herself into slavery to cover the debt. No prizes for guessing who’d snap her up.

‘Don’t look so bloody sanctimonious, man,’ Eugenius had snapped. ‘Haven’t you ever hankered for a fullbreasted redhead to warm your toes once in a while? Spirited little filly, I like ’em like that.’ He swirled wine round inside his mouth. ‘Don’t you?’

Arguing with a bigot was like arguing with stone and Orbilio gave up. Collatinus appeared to have forgotten Acte pretty damned fast, and for a girl who’d given sixteen years of her life pandering to the old sod, it was bloody unfair. When he’d heard the old man had been taken ill in the early hours, he was actually rather glad.

Tanaquil had been locked in a shed which at present was empty, but which would shortly be filled with bracken for the sheep’s winter litter. Orbilio felt he owed it to the girl to tell her her fate before she found out from anyone else, and to tell her also that he intended to outbid Eugenius. Not that he expected to win. Ennius would see to that. But by Janus, he’d bloody well try.

The presence of four guards was unnecessary. Tanaquil couldn’t hope to escape, the shed was stone built—and how could she hope to reach the thatch without a ladder? But Eugenius was going to make as much capital as he could out of this, and so the guard was for show more than anything else. Approaching from the clipshed, it was the voices which stopped him in his tracks. Low-pitched, they were embroiled in heated argument, although he was unable to make out the words. When he turned the corner, the last person he expected to see with his lips to the crack in the stonework was Fabius.

‘Holy Mars, you gave me a fright!’

‘So I see.’ He’d jumped like the proverbial scalded cat.

Orbilio waited, but Fabius said nothing, either to him or to Tanaquil through the gap. He simply nodded and strode off, his face suffused with anger.

A single green eye blazed its fury through the crack. ‘I’ll kill him. When I get out, so help me, I’ll kill him.’

‘Fabius?’

‘Eugenius,’ she spat.

Orbilio rattled off a few platitudes to calm her down before finally breaking the news about the impending trial. She didn’t enquire as to his motives for outbidding Collatinus, neither did she thank him for his efforts.

‘I’ll have his guts for my girdle,’ she hissed. ‘He had no right to murder Utti.’

‘You didn’t tell me Utti had bloodstains on his tunic.’

‘Well, of course he did,’ she snapped. ‘He came running when I screamed and helped me turn Acte on to her back again. Whose side are you on, anyway?’

‘Tanaquil, why
were
you in the birch grove on Wednesday?’

‘I told you, I went for a walk.’ It sounded petulant.

‘What was Utti doing there?’

There was a long pause and a longer sigh. ‘He was following me,’ she said. ‘Only I didn’t say, because I didn’t want to incriminate him.’

‘By lying, it appeared you were covering up for him, you realize that?’ Of course she realizes that, you stupid oaf. The knowledge is eating her alive. He quickly moved on. ‘Why was Utti following you? Was he worried something might happen to you, a woman alone?’

‘Yes.’ She said it too quickly, as though she was pouncing on the idea. ‘Yes, that’s it, he wanted to protect me.’ She began to cry. ‘What’s going to happen to me, Marcus? Suppose they kill me, too?’

‘They’re not going to kill you, Tanaquil.’ Not in the sense you mean.

Injustice seethed within him and he decided to have one more go at Collatinus. Instead, the gigolo blocked the doorway, stressing how ill the old man was, how frail. ‘Bit sudden, isn’t it?’

‘He’s eluded Death for sixteen years,’ Diomedes said. ‘But now Death’s picked up the spoor, he’s not going to let go.’

‘How long?’

Diomedes shrugged insolently. ‘Who knows?’ he said, in a manner which made it clear to both of them that he did know and wasn’t telling. Orbilio resisted the urge to smash his fist right between those blond-lashed eyes.

But that was this morning. Since lunch…

Since lunch, he wasn’t feeling so well. He was cold, so cold he was wearing his toga on top of his tunic and was still shivering. An open charcoal brazier burned in the corner. Beside his couch, a portable water heater stood on its tripod. He lay down and pulled the bedcovers up to his chin, using the cold as an excuse for knees which weren’t functioning properly. He was certain there was a draught in the room, but he’d closed the windows and drawn the hangings. There was a noise, too. It was, he decided later, the sound of his own teeth chattering, an unwelcome accompaniment to the constant drumming inside his cranium.

Weakly he propped himself up on one elbow and tried to call for assistance. Instead he was violently sick.

*

Returning from Sullium, Claudia walked into a house which had a surprisingly festive air and she had to check the calendar nailed up on the wall beside Cerberus to confirm this wasn’t some spurious Sicilian holiday she’d forgotten about. Tossing Cerberus a joint of mutton—all bone and gristle, that hound—she was puzzled. No local deity to honour? No local custom to celebrate? It was left to Senbi to explain, as he handed her a letter.

‘It’s the Master,’ he said. ‘He has taken a turn for the worse.’

Claudia stopped in her tracks. ‘Bit sudden, isn’t it?’

Senbi shrugged. ‘That’s not for me to comment,’ he said, with what appeared to be a mouthful of oil. ‘I do know, however, that Master Aulus has already spoken with the undertaker.’

Like circling vultures, Claudia thought as Senbi padded off, each member of the family looking forward to Eugenius’s death with purely selfish interests.

Matidia would, at long last, be mistress in her own house. It would be her duty, not Acte’s, to line up the slaves of a morning and dish out the orders. Aulus would have the power he had waited fifty-eight years for, the power of initiative, of life and death, even of selling his entire family into slavery if he so desired. Portius would have his precious ticket to freedom and Fabius could farm his lands in Katane, ripping up his ailing vines and planting wheat in the rich, fertile soil, much to Linus’s delight, who would then be second in command to Aulus.

Really, the atmosphere in the house seemed to say. You’d think Eugenius would have done the decent thing and popped off long ago, wouldn’t you?

Diomedes waylaid Claudia in the peristyle. ‘The old man was asking for you earlier,’ he said quietly, his eyes brushing her face. ‘Wanted to know whether you’d signed…the contract.’

‘Sod that for a lark.’ That had never been her intention.

‘Which, er, contract might that be?’ Diomedes asked mildly, wondering whether her bad mood had any connection with the letter Senbi had just handed her. He heard her sigh.

‘I suppose I owe it to him to tell him,’ she said. ‘How bad is he?’

‘Bad,’ the doctor replied. He stepped in front of her and looked deep into her eyes. ‘Claudia, there’s something I want to say to you.’

He had to move fast. Aulus had collared him just a few minutes ago and pointed out in no uncertain terms that it was that bitch Acte who’d pushed for his appointment, but since Eugenius was shortly to join her in the Underworld, their influence was finished. Aulus was telling him now, he wanted no truck with mountebanks, Diomedes could bloody well sling his hook. And don’t think he didn’t know about the fucking whipworm, because he fucking did, and Diomedes’s fucking wages would be docked because of it. When they came back from the funeral, he wanted Diomedes gone or he would have him forcibly removed.

He spread his accent thicker to catch her wavering attention. ‘Claudia, I want to ask you—’

‘Later, Diomedes.’ She brushed past him. ‘I’ll speak to Eugenius first.’

‘Of course.’ With effort, the Greek swallowed his disappointment and ushered her into the room. ‘Although I doubt he can hear you.’

The first thing that hit her was the smell. They say you can smell death, but until now Claudia hadn’t realized it was so sickly-sweet, so pungent, so utterly repellant. She resisted the urge to hold her handkerchief over her nose as she crossed towards the bed.

The man who had held the Collatinus family in his hand for seventy-seven years, playing with them like pieces on a board, controlling their lives, their marriages, their children, had finally relinquished his grip. His eyes were hollowed, his temples sunken, his nose sharp and pointed as happens immediately prior to the Great Reaper gathering his harvest. The skin of his forehead was hard and tight and translucent, and it was difficult to imagine the man behind the little walnut face terrorizing family and servants, clients and buyers with his bullying and his railing and his insults. Around her, the pornographic friezes shimmered and wavered in the light of the torches which had been lit, the leers ugly and repulsive, and you could almost hear the lewd laughter from the cripples and hunchbacks and lepers. From the figure on the couch, small as a child, came a series of harsh rattles in the throat. She would never know whether Eugenius had been genuinely grieving for Sabina or merely mourning the loss of a prized asset.

She feared it was the latter, and couldn’t wait to pack, to get away from this house. The villa, the inhabitants, the whole place made her sick to her stomach.

‘Claudia, I need to talk to you.’

‘Later.’ She waved the doctor away and made for the bath house. Cold water. Give me cold water to wash in. As cold as you can make it.

Now about that lowlife Varius, she thought later, towelling herself dry. Insolent little turd. She glared at the letter, innocently rolled up on top of her stola, but which had been burning a hole in her hand from the moment Senbi delivered it. In itself, it wasn’t so much an affirmation of the reasons behind his claim to Seferius blood, more a means of informing Claudia that he knew her whereabouts. Implicit was the threat that should Varius come to harm for whatever reason, others might be made aware of the circumstances.

Bugger!

But life isn’t always unkind and it was pure providence when, heading back to her room, Claudia heard a frantic scuffle and turned just in time to watch Senbi go flying on a mysterious patch of grease near the front entrance. There was a satisfying crunch as his outstretched arm- bone gave way at an unnatural angle.

Fluttering footsteps approached across the atrium floor. Corinna, fully made up and looking almost pretty, was smiling.

‘Claudia,’ she said, laying a hand on her arm. ‘Could you spare me a moment?’

‘Well…’
When you looked closely, you could see it was all make-up. Beyond the carmine smile and ochre cheeks, Corinna’s eyes were dead. ‘I am rather busy.’

She really wasn’t in the mood for Corinna’s custody plans.

‘Oh, but!’ Corinna gave a light laugh, the first Claudia had ever heard from her. My, my, there was nothing like a death to cheer this family up, was there? ‘You see, it’s
Linus…’

Claudia rubbed her aching temple. ‘What about him?’ she asked wearily.

‘Well, you see, I’ve killed him,’ she said, with a self-deprecating gesture. ‘Stabbed him in the stomach with a knife.’

XXIX

Being Corinna, of course, she was wrong on both counts. Linus was neither dead nor stabbed in the stomach.

She’d got him in the left-hand side.

Claudia’s first instinct was to fetch Orbilio, because if this could be hushed up, so much the better. His two-year stint as an army tribune and subsequent service in the Security Police would give him as fair a knowledge of first aid as was necessary, but unfortunately it appeared Supersnoop had succumbed to a bout of food poisoning. Serve him right, he should eat proper meals at proper times, instead of scoffing whenever he felt like it.

Diomedes, fresh from setting Senbi’s arm, was unfazed by Claudia’s account of how Linus had been larking about with his sons, slipped and fell on his knife. The wound wasn’t serious, he assured her, the blade had missed the vital organs. Give him a week and he’d be as good as new. What surprised him was Linus’s silence throughout. Presumably he felt an utter prat, falling on a knife in front of his sons and Diomedes rather enjoyed prodding the wound as he cleaned and stitched it.

‘Claudia,’ he said quietly, drawing her to one side. ‘I need a word with you.’

‘Yes, yes, Diomedes. But later, eh?’

Good life in Illyria, what was it with this man? If there was such a thing as reincarnation, the Greek should come back as a barnacle. Claudia slammed the door on him and rounded on Linus grey and pallid and with dark circles under his eyes.

‘Listen to me, you scumbag, that was just a warning.’ She had sent Corinna out of the room long ago. ‘Your wife has had it up to here with you, the beatings and the whoring.’

‘It was only—’

‘Next time, she said, it’ll be your balls she takes the knife to.’