‘Young man, I’m not sure this is a joking matter.’ Maria’s finger jabbed her rebuke every bit as sharply as her voice. ‘Our lives depend on this decision-oh, will you listen to the Blubber Family back there? Can’t you lot put a sock in it?’
Her scorn only served to fuel the sobs of Gemma and her parents, neither of whom had adapted at all well to life since leaving the body of the convoy. Far from adventure being the making of the man, the brick-maker had become a gibbering wreck, barely able to speak without quivering, and his agitation was reflected in the behaviour of his wife, who clung to her daughter, weeping noisily, leaving Gemma to gulp back her own sobs.
‘Right then.’ A tightly packed quiver on his back, his bow in hand, Arcas pulled his oak door shut and secured the cattle hide over the porch. A long sword hung from his belt in an ornate scabbard. ‘What’s it to be?’ He cast a judgmental eye over the jug, where only a thin trickle remained.
‘The woods,’ Theo said.
Arcas grunted as if to say of-course-it-is, then strode towards the nursing ewe, dozing with her lazy arching horns resting against the low wall of the roundhouse. Claudia’s eyes widened. She froze. Oh, no! She could see before any of the others what he was about to do…the drawing of the dagger, the separation of the first lamb, the moving of the second, the lifting of the mother’s trusting chin…
Blood spurted in all directions. Quickly, cleanly, Arcas slit the throats of the two baby lambs and left them where they lay.
Gemma said, ‘I’m going to be sick,’ and didn’t disappoint her audience.
Maria hissed, ‘Barbarian!’
Most simply stared.
Blood still pumped from the lifeless body of the ewe, seeping into the fluffy fleeces of her newborn lambs. Claudia swallowed hard and looked away.
‘I don’t know what you’re gawking at,’ Arcas growled. ‘They’re my sheep, not yours.’ His eyes caught Claudia’s and held them. ‘I’ve been shunned,’ he muttered, and she saw that explanations were a stranger to him. ‘What was I supposed to do, leave them to starve to death?’
He glanced back at the limp and bloodied corpses, at the roundhouse, at the sharp point of the thatch, and Claudia knew he was looking at this place in farewell. Goosepimples crept up her arms. The holiday spirit, she reflected, hadn’t lasted long.
‘Now in the name of Father Dis, will you get going?’ Arcas barked, snapping free the tether of his horse. ‘And for gods’ sake, keep close together. You.’ His gimlet gaze singled out Orbilio. ‘You had better bring up the rear. Make sure they stay in line.’
‘I’ll do that.’ Theo shouldered his way to the front of the group. ‘I have the training and experience.’
Arcas secured his rolled-up cloak over the pommel and swung into his saddle. ‘That’s another thing,’ he said. ‘There are too many of you to deal with individually. From now on, I deal only with the man in charge. Him.’ His eyes fell on Marcus.
Theo erupted like a volcano. ‘Now listen to me,’ he began.
‘I told you,’ Arcas said, swinging his horse away. ‘I listen to him.’
‘Not me,’ Marcus said amiably. ‘I design mosaic floors.’
‘Then the rearguard might provide inspiration for your work.’
‘Now you just wait a second.’ Theo was as puce as a plum. He snapped on his helmet to add weight to his argument. ‘I’m Rome’s representative here-’
‘Take your hand off me, soldier boy.’ Arcas’s tone was mild. The warning came from the eyes. The set jaw.
‘How dare you! How dare you humiliate me in public, you bastard? Theo shouted, and this time it was Volso who was forced to calm him down.
‘Croesus, lad, you told me not to antagonize the Silver Fox, look at you, you moron.’
‘Theo, it really doesn’t matter who brings up the rear,’ Titus reassured him, ‘so long as we reach Vesontio alive.’ He shrugged at Iliona, who shrugged back. They couldn’t see the problem. But Claudia could.
The Silver Fox was enjoying himself.
*
An hour’s ride from the roundhouse, the forest opened out to reveal glimpses through the trees of the tall grey sentinels of rock which towered over them, but here, Jupiter be praised, there was open space between the soaring, wooded cliffs for pasture. Wide acres for short-horned cattle to graze-small, rangy black beasts which resembled goats more than cows-chomping away on the lush water-meadows beside the silvery brook which cut through this valley. Not that Arcas led the group across the flower-filled meadows. Hugging close to the woods, he circled round.
‘I don’t trust that man,’ Maria confided to Claudia. ‘I feel sure that any minute now he plans to rob and butcher us.’
‘Wouldn’t he have had more of an advantage on home territory?’ Claudia murmured.
‘Hmmm.’ That was Maria’s way of saying she had a point. ‘But I don’t go for that tripe about spiders coming out of their webs. I mean, how would he know?’
‘Possibly,’ Claudia suggested sweetly, ‘because he’s Sequani.’ Shunning, after all, did not entail being rendered deaf and dumb. Each village, under its petty chieftain, would have its jungle drums.
Ahead of them, Dexter was telling Gemma to keep an eye out for asphodel, it always worked for him when he’d been sick, and Claudia thought he might just as well tell her to wash her feet and drink the water for all the benefit she’d get.
She glanced at Maria, glowering at her husband’s back. Too often one had to remind oneself that the bookbinder’s wife was only thirty, she seemed every inch the matron, yet she was not an unattractive woman. Straight of shoulder, straight of talk, her complexion was good, heaven knows her face was handsome enough. Of course, if she kept at it the way she was now, in twenty years’ time her mouth would be a downward arch supported on pillars of deep lines, her eyes hard instead of comely. And what of Dexter? Hair which was floppy and brown in his early thirties would probably have receded into baldness, no doubt he’d be rubbing his head with wolf’s fat mixed with bitumen or something, and still moaning about non-existent ulcers, warts and coughs. Every day would be born another ailment, and still Maria would despise him Claudia wondered when they’d last had sex.
They weren’t a bad-looking couple, she thought. They weren’t even bad. Just mismatched. Grown apart. Neither finding support from the other and filling the vacuum the best they could. She with her snobbery, he with his hypochondria.
‘I wish he’d spend less time with that wretched human fountain,’ Maria sniffed, right on cue, ‘and cultivate the company of a merchant like Titus instead. He looks to have his wits about him.’
More than that, he looked to have his hand on Iliona’s bottom!
‘Gemma’s parents have let her down badly,’ Claudia said. The brick-maker kept mumbling over and over that he couldn’t go on, he wanted to die, those lambs were the very last straw. ‘They’ve all but gone to pieces, Gemma’s simply looking for a father figure.’
Maria cast a critical eye over the girl’s lumpy frame. ‘She’s already got one,’ she said.
Claudia’s head was throbbing, and not from the ride. Vigilance, she thought, is taking its toll, I am on my guard all the time. Could Was Dexter the traitor? Maria? Titus? Iliona?? You cannot rule out one half of a couple, because while the killer’s success hinged on working alone, a spouse gave an excellent alibi. Not, she felt, that the other party would be aware they were married to a murderer. Both Titus and Iliona would be doing this for the other, while in the case of Maria and Dexter, separate ambitions would carry them forward. As to those travel ling alone, well, there was Volso-what price being acknowledged the Dictator’s astrologer? Oh, the fame! The accolades! Clemens’ target was the most influential post in the priesthood. Hanno could expect to run the commercial stabling side of the new Republic in return. Theo’s military training could have him heading the Praetorian Guard, promoted to general, maybe even given a province to run.
Then there was the glass-blower, the slipper-maker, the drivers to consider, the other tradesmen and their women travelling with them. Cliques had formed, even in a group as small as this, Claudia couldn’t befriend them all… She rubbed her aching head and wished she’d never seen that wretched salamander seal.