‘Excuse me?’ Claudia rubbed at her temple. She must have drunk too much wine. ‘I don’t-’
‘Think I haven’t seen the two of you together?’ Lavinia shot her a shrewd look. ‘Noticed the way those dark eyes follow you around? Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with the hem of your robe?’
‘Lavinia,’ Claudia said carefully, ‘are we talking about Tarraco, by any chance?’
‘Married or not, that boy is keen on you, and I’m-’
‘Whoa.’ Claudia tried to hang on to Lavinia’s thread. ‘You did say married?’
Lavinia’s chuckle bordered on evil. ‘Forgot to mention his wife, eh? Well, Lais isn’t the first middle-aged woman he married, only let’s hope this doesn’t end in tragedy like his previous union.’
Lais?
Tarraco?
Suddenly it made sense. The slave who rose to riches…
‘Don’t tell me,’ Claudia said slowly. ‘Tuder bought a Spanish slave at auction, Lais was smitten-?’ She rose unsteadily to her feet and began to pace the colonnade. Wrong. Lais wasn’t smitten. Lais had been seduced in a cold and calculating campaign. Then when Tuder died, Tarraco had made his move- and now look who’s master of the island.
Hang on. ‘Did you say second wife? What do you mean, the first marriage ended in tragedy?’
But the effort of so much gossip on top of too much wine had exhausted the old woman. Slumped on her daybed, Lavinia snored softly beneath her coiffured wig, her wrinkled face turned up towards the sun and with an indigestible ball inside her stomach (the dates, what else?) Claudia retreated indoors.
No wonder Tarraco knew so much about women. Their sizes, their tastes, what gifts would make the most impact. Tarraco was not an artist at all.
Tarraco was a bloody gigolo.
His first wife was dead, Tuder was dead, and considerable wealth was involved. She recalled him strutting round the island. Marble come from high Pyrenees, cedar only from Lebanon. This bust? Pff, is nothing, wait till you see the colossus. What she had taken as pride in his possessions was nothing more than pompous boasting and the ball of dates (what else?) solidified further. In her bedchamber, Claudia jerked off the harebell gown and hurled it into a corner.
‘Bastard!’
He hadn’t got the robe made up, the bloody thing belonged to Lais. It wasn’t even clean, there were spots around the hem.
‘Dirty, double-dealing dago.’
With a fruit knife, Claudia hacked at the cotton until it hung in shreds, the sweat pouring down her forehead and leaving dark drips on the pale harebell blue. No wonder he’d dismissed the servants. With him still married to the master’s wife, he daren’t risk the scandal of adultery.
‘Bastard, bastard, bastard!’
Wait. Claudia leaned back on her knees and tapped her finger against her lower lip. Where exactly was Lais while all this was going on? With the plague in Rome, she’d hardly have headed for the capital. Claudia straightened up and stared across the shimmering lake, her face puckered in thought. For the question of Lais had raised another, more deadly, issue.
Because, if Claudia had rowed the Spaniard’s boat out to the island, Tarraco must have been ashore in Atlantis.
The afternoon Cal had been killed.
XV
Ankles puffed up in heat as merciless as it was unrelenting, bones felt like lead and hair hung in damp ropes. In Rome, the chaos was worsening as more and more roads became clogged with locked spokes or carts tipping over in the rush to exit the capital. The military were working round the clock, but as verges piled higher and higher with everything from crockpots to copper, saltfish to spoons, the smell of oxen and asses attracted bluebottles by the billion, and the dispirited legionaries likened their task to that of Hercules tackling the Augean stables. They ferried in water, beans and bread, they dug makeshift latrines and erected temporary awnings for the trapped stew of humanity, but, when a man’s livelihood rots by the roadside and his children are in danger from dirt and disease, the soldiers were on a hiding to nowhere.
Morale hit rock bottom.
And while the army battled with the congestion, a dark shape formed in the void, and the name of the dark shape was Anarchy.
For safety, pedestrian travellers either postponed their trips or journeyed in groups. Empty houses were looted, horses stolen; women feared for their lives. At nightfall, shutters were bolted, doors locked and then barred-for who was left to patrol the streets and keep them safe?
Gradually a million people became trapped in their homes, scared to go out for fear of bandits. Maggots infested the foodstuffs. Rats multiplied too fast to keep count.
The death toll was rising.
And not all the symptoms tallied with plague.
*
‘ Ouch! ’
Marcus Cornelius flinched when the wooden bear bounced off the crown of his head, although it was with no mean deftness that he caught the second carving before further damage was inflicted. Gingerly his fingers explored the tender swelling and, despite the pain, he grinned. Since his conversation with Dorcan, he’d been wandering aimlessly with just his thoughts and suspicions for company, yet of the fifty or so bedchambers in Atlantis, he was not so disorientated that he couldn’t work out whose open window ejected such a treasure trove of goodies.
‘We’re making progress, then?’ he called up. ‘When you shower me with gifts.’
‘Orbilio?’ A head thrust itself through the gap, and he couldn’t fail to notice that several elegant curls had slipped their leash. Or that they rested on perfect, naked shoulders. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, prowling underneath my bedroom window, you filthy pervert, you?’
‘Flattery, as well as gifts. Now I know you love me.’
‘I’d love a suppurating sore more than I’d love you.’
Oh yes, he sighed. He was definitely making progress. ‘Claudia,’ he said, ‘we do need to talk.’
‘Talk?’ A finely tooled sandal came winging through the air. Green. ‘You call yourself a criminal investigator and all you want to do is talk? I don’t suppose it occurred to you to consider earning your crust for a change?’
‘My business with you is official,’ he answered mildly, lobbing back the shoe.
There was a long silence, which he savoured.
Followed by a longer silence, which he did not.
Finally, when he craned his neck upwards again, he saw that the shutters had been snapped shut and to salvage the remains of his dignity, Orbilio stuffed his thumbs in his belt and sauntered on down the path praying that his tiddly-om-pom whistle was as jaunty as he hoped. Round the promontory his footsteps took him, beneath the domed loggia and past a thicket of alders. He glanced up at the sun porch and thought he caught a movement halfway up the cliff face. Surely not…? But there it was again. A shadow on-or rather inside-the rock. Frowning, he stared at the impenetrable grey wall, at the straggly shrubs which clung to the rock, at the strange shadows they threw. Then a sapphire-blue dragonfly whizzed, breaking the spell, and Marcus continued his stroll.
At the foot of the zigzag steps which led up to the walnut grove surrounding Carya’s shrine, a man with shoulder-length hair and a sharp taste in dress was being approached by a small boy with a package under his arm. Marcus melted into the shadow of the cliff. The boy, nut-brown and naked, proceeded to hand over the parcel. The Spaniard unwrapped the sacking and Orbilio watched a thousand ribbons scatter over the path. Tarraco fired off a succession of questions, the boy pointed up to Atlantis and, in his private hiding place, Orbilio grinned to himself. The shreds were the unmistakable hue of summer harebells…