‘Not just dogs.’ Otho ran his finger down Claudia’s cheek again. ‘Naughty bitches, too,’ he whispered. ‘So no forget, Claudia. Three hundred-by the weekend.’
He finally released her hair.
‘Always a pleasure, Claudia.’ When he planted a kiss on her cheek, she nearly threw up. He stood in the doorway and grinned. ‘Nice tits.’
One of the thugs leaned down over Junius, who was groaning quietly, balled his fist and slammed it into the boy’s mouth. There was a series of crashes from the workshop, as they wrecked it on their way out, their laughter carried away on the breeze.
For a moment Claudia couldn’t move. Breath had left her body, her knees could barely support her and she was shaking from head to foot.
‘Junius, I am so sorry.’ Tears were running down her face as she spoke. ‘I am so, so sorry.’
Gingerly she removed the pole and used her palla to wipe the blood from his mouth and stem the bleeding from his nose. The silence seemed more terrifying than the noise and with every second that passed she flinched, half-expecting to see Otho in the doorway.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she said shakily. ‘Can you walk?’
He nodded, but when she tried to lift him to his feet, the effort proved too much for both of them.
‘Hey, you!’ she called.
But the coppersmith had had enough for one day, the workshop was deserted. At the end of the alley the crowd had dispersed, leaving her male slaves, battered and bruised and looking utterly bewildered as they tried to comfort the sobbing women. Damn you, Lucan. Damn you to hell! Claudia wasn’t naive, she knew what she was tangling with, borrowing money from scum like that, and she’d been waiting for some sort of warning. But she’d never in a million years imagined he might engineer a whole bloody riot and send in his heavies. You can’t keep the likes of Lucan waiting for long, but the raw violence, the sheer brutality of this very first warning, was terrifying. All for two thousand sesterces. Plus four hundred in interest. Juno, the gambling had really got out of hand.
Trembling, Claudia despatched two slaves for Junius. He’d have to share the litter. She couldn’t go on to the baths now, there would be too much talk, and even allowing for the riot, it didn’t go halfway to explaining the state she was in. Thank goodness Gaius was away!
At the house Junius was helped into one of the guest bedrooms. It was the least she could do, give him a decent bed until his broken ribs had healed.
‘Junius, I don’t want you to say a word about what you saw or what you heard, do you understand?’
She’d had to wait until his wounds had been tended and he was alone before she could slip in.
The young Gaul opened his only good eye. ‘I won’t.’
‘I’ll reward you for this, Junius. Give you your freedom. I’ll tell Gaius you saved my life or something. But only if you promise not to tell.’
‘Promise.’ He winced. ‘Are you all right?’
No. That was a bloody hard crack she’d received on the back of the head, not to mention the scare Otho had given her. She was still trembling.
‘I’m fine.’
His ribs had been bound, his face was already swollen like a melon and his torso was more purple than anything else. Almost as an afterthought she wondered whether he had a concubine who ought to be notified. He was a handsome enough boy, and she was pretty certain he wasn’t fooling around with any of the Seferius slaves.
‘Do you have a mistress, Junius?’
The eye widened in puzzlement.
‘I mean, are you in love with anyone?’
The head moved slowly up and down.
‘Shall I send word to tell her you’re hurt?’
The head moved slowly from side to side and the eye misted with what might have been a tear.
‘She already knows,’ he said thickly. ‘But thank you for asking.’
X
The wonderful thing about the baths, thought Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, as an attendant slowly scraped his back with a strigil, was the sheer hedonistic pleasure you got in the name of personal hygiene. What other fundamental consideration dares draw such wicked self-indulgence and then presumes to pass itself off as a necessity? And it wasn’t merely the physical rewards, great though they were. A whole cross-section of the human character passed through these portals, it was an education to watch. Or in Orbilio’s case listen, because an ambitious investigator could learn an awful lot from a bit of circumspect eavesdropping.
Most of it was politics-useful for pursuit of a later career albeit of little relevance to his current cases-or else it was horse-trading. A lot of that went on here. In fact, he thought, wiping a trickle of perspiration from his eyes, more important deals were struck in this very sweat room than in the Senate itself.
‘Lie down and I’ll do your chest next.’
Orbilio allowed himself to be laid out like meat on a slab, closing his eyes as the attendant scraped the oil off his body. There was a saying going around, something along the lines of ‘Baths, wine and sex ruins your body.’ Probably started by some of the moralists trying to impress Augustus, he thought, but without baths, wine and sex, what use was a good body? Moralists don’t live longer than the rest of us, he reflected sadly. It just seems that way.
The shrill voice of the hair-plucker broke through his thoughts.
‘Like your armpits plucked, sir?’
Orbilio shook his head. His eyes were still watering from the last time he’d let that little bastard loose on his body. Either the man’s tweezers were misaligned or his sight was failing, but all Orbilio could remember was that it was bloody painful. Besides, he’d prefer a girl to do it. Somehow it added to the feeling of wicked indulgence.
‘On your left side, if you don’t mind.’
The attendant flipped him over and continued his scraping. It was a wonderful sensation, feeling the bronze blade slide over your skin. Down. And down. And down. A man was at his most vulnerable here. Deaf, dumb and blind. He was sleepy from lying so the hot, damp air could open his pores, his body was oiled and the steam itself swirled so thickly it was impossible to see the man next to you, you only caught snippets of his conversation. Occasionally it was possible to put a name to one of the talkers, but the atmosphere in the room affected your lungs and few people could produce little more than hoarse whispers.
Which may or may not have been coincidental.
‘And now your right side.’
Orbilio rolled over. Baths, wine and sex. What a wonderful combination. If only he could incorporate all three at the same time it would be heaven on earth. And if Claudia Seferius was with him…Cupid’s darts, if he died on the spot afterwards he’d die a happy man. If, if, if. There were too many ifs in that particular scenario. As rather tended to be the case where she was concerned…
He tipped the attendant two asses from the bronze purse round his wrist, yawned, stretched, then decided to go the whole hog today and have a massage. He owed himself that, after the long hours he’d been putting in on those bloody murders. Not to mention the fact that the Sardinian fish-seller had left Rome, taking Vera with him, and Petronella refused to talk to him nowadays. Mother of Tarquin, a man needed something to redress the balance, and he was damned if he’d resort to common whores. So. He ran his hands through his hair. A massage it is.
The pattern on the mosaic guided him out of the stifling steam room and he took several deep breaths in the doorway to focus his senses. Stone chambers echoed with laughter, whistling, conversation and the piercing cries of vendors thronging the passageways and hawking everything from cakes to honeyed wine. Orbilio made his way between two flaxen-haired beauties lounging against the tiled walls. One raised her eyebrows in invitation, but he gave a swift shake of the head and passed on. The hot air was making him perspire again and he paused, wondering whether to take a cold plunge. Later, he decided. After the massage.