‘He’s mine, give him back!’ the boy cried, pulling at Claudia’s ankle.
She tried again. ‘Ssssssss.’
Then there was no question of how Comet came by his name. Houses, shops and streets flew past in a blur as Claudia clung to his shiny black neck. People screamed, cursed and yelled as the horse cut right through them, his hooves clattering and slithering over the cobbles. In the Circus Maximus, they do seven laps then they’re whacked. Kid’s stuff to this beast.
‘Whooa, boy. Whooa.’ But the horse wasn’t stupid. It knew a cobra when it heard one, and concentrated on putting more distance between them. Claudia began to feel dizzy. Then seasick. Finally, when vital organs started to shake hands with each other, she screwed up her eyes and clung like a barnacle. She thought of her mission to Arbil’s. Dammit, Marcus Cornelius, you’ll have to find another mug to play sodding detective. I’m paralysed.
Mercifully, gallop slowed to canter, canter to stop. Claudia prised her eyelids apart. Where the hell was she? Comet seemed happy, clip-clopping his way across this stable yard to bury his big, black nose in the manger. His breath steamed white on the cool morning air. As did Claudia’s.
An elderly groom came limping over. ‘Comet, old boy, what are you doing back so soon? I thought you’d been hired for the day?’
He seemed not to notice the rider, who landed in a boneless heap on the flagstones. Never mind asteroids, she thought. More like haemorrhoids. The horse snickered with pleasure and chomped noisily on the sweet-smelling hay.
‘Madam?’ A familiar face thrust itself in front of Claudia’s.
‘Junius?’ The horse has thrown me, I’m concussed. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Doing
where
? What was this? Was she dead? Were Claudia and Comet about to meet Gaius in the afterlife?
‘Just after dawn, you said.’ The young Gaul helped his mistress to her feet. ‘First post house beyond the Collina Gate?’
‘You mean—’ Claudia looked round in amazement. Of all the ironies…!
And yet was it so surprising? She knew she’d been close to the Gate, of course a horse would head home. It’s his nature, you clumping daft tart.
Clouds of brown dust billowed from her skirts when she shook them. Dammit, she needed the baths to wash away the smell—the feel—the
taste
—of that slimeball who called himself Magic. Her hands, she saw, were still shaking. From the ride, she told herself. What else?
Come on, it was self-defence, that stabbing. What other option was there?
She wiped her hair from her eyes. After a long, slow massage with aromatic oils, you’ll be fine. Muscle fatigue fades, so do bruises. You can throw yourself into the Games, there’s five full days left, and today there’s a play on by Terence. Later, there’s a reading by torchlight. Ovid. Or was it Virgil? Afterwards there’ll be dancing and drinking and music, we’ll all wear garlands, and incense will burn on every street corner. I must have been mad to think of leaving the city!
‘Junius,’ she said, spitting out another large chunk of Comet’s mane. ‘Make sure it’s
mares
who pull the car to Arbil’s ranch.’
I’ve no wish to fly on Pegasus again.
XXV
The landscape opened up. There were shrines at crossroad junctions, picnickers by the roadside, and musicians on the move, making it easy not to think of Magic. Soon the hillsides would be swathed in drifts of blossoms from the blackthorn and the pear. Isn’t that this year’s first swallowtail, fluttering drunkenly across the clearing? Watch the baby bunnies scatter at the clip-clop of the wheels.
Forget the gush of blood upon the flagstones of the granary.
Forget the rancid stench of his clothing and his breath.
Forget his slithering pursuit. His filthy, ugly hands upon your flesh.
Let the warble of the skylark mask the screeching of his threats. Pray the sight of bounding deer smothers the obscene intimacy of his touch…
‘I think that’s it, there.’
Claudia was jolted out of her nightmare when Junius tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed to a narrow turning on the right. The rich brown soil had become thinner, she noticed, and less fertile, being mostly olive groves; and the incline had grown markedly sharper. About half a mile along they passed a sign.
THESE LANDS BELONG TO ARBIL.
THEY ARE SUBJECT TO BABYLONIAN LAW.
A few minutes later they caught up with a cart, its axle low from charcoal and logs, fresh rushes and grass. Cabbages and parsnips bulged out of sacks, there were red beets and white, rhubarb and carrots. Coneys, pheasant and teal hung from rings around their broken necks and joggled with the bumps of the wheels. Then the wagon turned into a shed where a gang of youths dispensed pulses, dried fruit and grain. Each had a blue tattoo on his arm, and Claudia shivered. These then, were the Children of Arbil. The enormity of the complex was breathtaking. And the noise! Even prepared for Arbil raising kids as cash crops, Claudia hadn’t quite grasped the immensity of his task. The profusion of workers tilling, hoeing, irrigating and manuring the light, dry soil, called to one another as they worked. Oxen bent to the plough lowed mournfully. Chickens clucked, donkeys brayed, pigs, sheep and goats put in their own oars. Babies bawled, children squealed, there was singing, chanting, hammering and sawing from a constant throb of people. Hundreds of children live here, she thought, her eyes brimming with tears. Hundreds of children, for whom this was their only home, Arbil their only parent. Hundreds of them. Unwanted—and unloved.
Her car rumbled through an imposing marble gateway into a courtyard ringed with fountains and shaded with plane trees and shrubs. Statues of strange gods bearing even stranger symbols stood guard. Her eye caught an eight-point star beside one, bulls by another. And there was no mistaking that dragon! Waiting in the cool of a colonnade scented with pots of hothouse lilies, Claudia noticed movement behind the terracotta grid which bisected the garden and on the pretext of sniffing the oleanders which grew against the screen, put her eye to the diamond aperture. Three men huddled round the wicket gate, talking in tones too low to make out. One, she could see clearly. Dressed foppishly, with hair half-way down his shoulders, he bore the hook nose that betrayed his ancestry. That would be Sargon, the son, but there was something about him that seemed vaguely familiar. Where the devil had she seen him before? And what made her think of music? Of trumpets and drums?
The second of the trio was visible to her only in profile, but his distinctive Greekness stood out. Handsome, strong, he, too, had a sharp taste in dress—look at those fancy fringed boots. But…wasn’t he also familiar? For a moment she couldn’t place him, then, with a shudder, Claudia recognized the lush embroidery on his cuffs. Jupiter, Juno and Mars, this was one of the Midden Hunters who had passed her the night she found Jovi. The cultured one who’d been taking the bet.
Pushing the bush aside for a better view of the third man, Claudia’s heart skipped a beat. He wore a simple belted tunic and high riding boots, but unlike his companions, there were no rings on his fingers, no gold torque hung round his neck. He was nodding, this third man. Making his mane of hair unmistakable.
Now what, Claudia frowned, brings Kaeso out here?
‘Yes?’ The hostility of the voice could have cracked ice.
Claudia plucked a pink oleander and buried her nose in its perfume before answering. The questioner’s raven black hair was knotted loosely at the back, bracelets jangled from ankles and wrists and a turquoise robe set off her Indus beauty to perfection. Only two things marred the girl’s loveliness. Her cold, narrowed eyes and the bruise on the side of her face.
In explaining the reason for her visit, Claudia expected to encounter resistance, disbelief even. A woman in business? With a proposition for Arbil? Instead the stiffness in the girl’s shoulders lessened. ‘Come inside.’ The lips were no longer pursed.
Surreptitiously Claudia wiped the milky juice which oozed from the plant’s leathery leaves down the back of her gown. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to wait here. In the cool.’
Instantly the rancour was back. ‘As you wish.’ Malevolent eyes swivelled to the terracotta grid and back to Claudia. ‘But beware,’ she hissed. ‘The man’s a degenerate.’
Curious, Claudia watched her stomp away, the bangles jarring with every angry stride, then she pulled the oleander bush aside and put her eye to the grid. The gate was closed now. Sargon leaned with his hand on the hasp and laughed as the good looking Greek cracked a joke. Of Kaeso there wasn’t a sign.
Except, in the spot where he’d stood, a wolf with a streak of silver down its back lay panting in the sunshine.
And then she remembered. That’s where the trumpets and drums fitted in. The two dandies, arriving separately and late—at the Bull Dance.
The afternoon Zygia died…
Claudia—let’s be clear about this—did not believe in Shape Shifters. Like demons and vampires, these were creatures of legend, and that’s where they belonged. Not in modern day Rome. In broad daylight. Kaeso’s a natural hunter, she reminded herself. He wears camouflage colours. His movements by definition are lithe and athletic. But if Kaeso wasn’t a werewolf, she knew from experience that he was a highly theatrical animal. The magic tricks, the silent house, his standing in shadows, even Tucca the mute were all carefully choreographed. Props to disorientate. A means to control…
That he saw her arrive went without question.
That he crept up on her in the courtyard ought not have surprised her.
‘I did not expect to find you visiting Arbil,’ he remarked. Loosely tethered to a hook on the entrance arch stood a beautifully groomed horse, its chestnut hide glistening under the mid-morning sun.
‘I could say the same for you.’ Claudia decided her own voice failed to match Kaeso’s for casualness.
‘Me?’ Muscular shoulders lifted and fell. ‘I was raised here, grew up with Sargon and Dino.’ He nodded to where the dandy patted his wolf’s black-tipped shoulderblades and where the Greek stood, hands on hips, gazing up at the clouds. ‘I like to keep in touch.’
The hell you do. ‘Is that often?’
‘When I’m passing.’
‘Then I wished you’d been passing the Collina Gate around dawn,’ she flashed back. ‘Magic dropped in for iced wine and cakes.’
His expression hardened. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
And she did, adding, ‘It was all pretty straightforward. He tried to rape me, so I stabbed him.’ The usual.
There was a swift intake of breath. ‘Dead?’
‘Alas, it was only a flesh wound.’
‘Magic,’ Kaeso swung into the saddle and kicked his horse into a canter, ‘has performed his very last trick, I assure you.’
Now there, Kaeso, I am inclined to believe you. But I’m still interested to know what brings you out here the day before Market Day. Claudia recalled the ritual murders. They, too, were all about control…
Shit, this is madness, she thought irritably. I don’t know what I’m doing in this Babylonian wilderness. What the hell did Supersnoop think I could achieve from one short visit? She was on the point of leaving when a thick, gutteral brogue apologized for keeping her waiting and, not for the first time, Claudia’s curiosity got the upper hand. So this was Arbil? She took in the crimped hair and curled beard (both suspiciously black), and the ankle-length robes which strained over his stomach as he led her to a seat beneath a plane tree.
‘What can I do for you, my dear?’
For a man in his fifties, she’d expected the slave trader to have weathered well under his immense cushion of wealth, but he hadn’t. Those pouchy eyes, the skin hanging in flaps from his cheeks, the discoloured whites of his eyes screamed a legacy of drink and debauchery. Had he not been so podgy, she’d have described him as raddled, and it was with the Indian girl’s words ringing in her ears that Claudia invented a business proposal which was vague but sufficiently plausible to engage Arbil’s interest. Or so she hoped. All the time she’d been presenting her case, he’d been nodding intently. Had it worked? Had he swallowed the bait?
‘Come indoors, my dear, come indoors.’
Beware
, those bitter lips had said.
Beware
. But what choice did Claudia have, other than to follow? The atrium resembled no atrium she had ever seen before, and it took her breath away. Winged cherubs set with precious gems guarded the doorways and clusters of statues, part-men and part-beasts, huddled in groups, but where were the friendly centaurs, the silly, daft satyrs? The faces of these creatures were twisted in leers, some had three toes and thick horns, others were more reptilian in appearance and one had the body of a scorpion. Claudia shivered. Strange paintings covered the walls, dragons and vipers and whirlwinds, their colours dark and menacing, but dwarfing it all stood a giant bronze female, nude and aggressively provocative.
‘Ishtar,’ explained Arbil. ‘Queen of all heaven, mother of life, goddess of love and of war. Ishtar is both morning and evening star, she protects us one and all. Come.’ He took her elbow and introduced her to some of the other barbarian divinities. Shamash, deliverer of justice. Gira the fire god. Adad the storm god, Nabu the scribal god and Nergal, king of the underworld.
‘Also there’s Ea,’ he said thickly. ‘One never sees Ea, one only feels him.’ He blew softly down Claudia’s neck. ‘Ea’s the South wind. Ouch!’
‘Just blocking up the draught,’ she said sweetly, as Arbil rubbed his cheek where her hand had slapped it. ‘Now are you interested in my prospectus, or shall I take it elsewhere?’
‘Of course I’m interested.’ Arbil’s face
coloured from a rush of blood which far exceeded the area Claudia had slapped. ‘I—’ He frowned, as though his thoughts were elsewhere. He blinked twice, then he forced a smile. ‘I shall have to think it over rather more carefully, you understand, but—’ Again his mind wandered, and she didn’t think it was because he’d been rebuffed or offended. ‘But the, er, fundamentals seem sound. How much did you say you’d be prepared to invest?’