Claudia phrased her next question carefully. ‘How long since Lais left you?’ she asked, with almost indecent politeness.
‘Wednesday. Why? You imagine I take you to my bed, while the marriage still stands?’
No. I am just remembering that Cal was killed the following afternoon…
‘You did not take me to your bed,’ she reminded him. ‘And I’d be intrigued to hear what happened on Wednesday.’
Tarraco threw his hands in the air in what Claudia had, until then, assumed to be a purely Gallic gesture. ‘We have row, she walk out. End of marriage, end of story. Claudia, this took place before you arrived.’ He crouched at her feet, one knee bent, the other touching the ground, the way he’d knelt before the dead bear. ‘I swear this is not adultery, I am not after money, you must believe this.’ He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. ‘On the island, when I see the bear chasing you, I knew-’ He broke off and stood up, and as so many times in the past, let his hair hide his face. ‘You saw it,’ he said thickly. ‘When I lifted you up, you saw how I felt. There was nothing I could do, neither,’ he added slowly, ‘did I wish to fight what I have never before felt in my life. Claudia.’
He turned round to face her, his face twisted in pain.
‘I must know,’ he rasped. ‘Do you believe me?’
Claudia stood up and there were white water rapids coursing her veins. ‘Not one single word.’
He was a liar, a cheat, but worse, here was a very dangerous man.
‘And this,’ she hurled the contents of her glass in his face, ‘is for presuming a soiled frock would get me into your bed.’
*
Down by the jetty, Marcus Cornelius watched the dandified Spaniard bound down the steps from Atlantis. By his reckoning, the sun had moved fifteen degrees in the sky, and that, in his opinion, was a bloody long time to pass in a lady’s bedroom simply playing chequers.
A lion clawed his stomach from the inside, and the pain was the worst that he’d known.
Then he noticed, as the Spaniard drew closer, that a scowl disfigured his face almost as badly as the stain which disfigured his shirt. As Tarraco approached the jetty, there was a distinct spring in Orbilio’s step as he reached over to untie the rope to Tarraco’s boat.
‘Allow me,’ he said cheerfully.
The Spaniard accepted the favour with a grunt and, as he did so, Marcus leaned over and sniffed.
‘Let me guess.’ He sniffed again. ‘Vintage-eight, possibly nine years old. Fine, rich bouquet, with a hint of wild blackberries-’ (sniff) ‘-ripe figs-’ (sniff) ‘-and, yes, I do believe oak.’ He straightened up and passed the rope across. ‘At a stab, I’d say that’s an amusing little Campanian soaking into the cotton.’
‘Actually, it’s Falernian,’ the Spaniard growled, snatching at the oars.
‘Well, whatever,’ Marcus acknowledged. ‘It’s still amusing.’
XVIII
With more riveting entertainments offered by the Agonalia, Claudia had the bath house to herself. Well, almost. The plumes of steam coiling their way up the columns to fill the arches didn’t count, neither did the squad of yawning female attendants perched on their high stools, filing their nails as they waited.
‘This beauty treatment will make you feel a million sesterces,’ the supervisor promised in a lilting Sarmatian accent.
‘Uh-uh.’ Claudia indicated her chin with the flat of her hand. ‘I’ve had it up to here with millionaires.’ Greeks, Spaniards, patricians-they think they can buy anyone!
‘Yes, yes,’ the supervisor nodded, pointing to her own chin. ‘The mud comes right up to here. Wonderful therapy, based on a marvellous Scythian preparation.’ She eased Claudia out of her clothes and secured the voluminous towel with a pin. ‘Your skin will remain glossy and fragrant for a fortnight or more.’
‘A fortnight?’
‘Minimum.’
I ask you, who could resist? Across the empty exercise yard and through a high vaulted archway Claudia entered an area divided into sections by heavy tapestry drapes and here the homely Sarmatian supervisor pulled aside a blue curtain to reveal a cubicle containing one marble slab and a dozen buckets of mud, before handing her over to a slave girl with an aureole of bright red curls and the broadest smile this side of the Caucasus. Unfortunately, even the camphor burning in a brazier couldn’t mask the ghastly pong of the sludge, but this, the redhead assured her, emptying the first bucket over the slab, was every bit as beneficial as the treatment itself.
Unconvinced, Claudia watched as a second followed by a third bucket was upended, the girl spreading the black slime into a nice even layer before helping Claudia on to the squidge.
‘You’ll feel a whole new woman after this,’ she trilled, slapping another bucket over Claudia’s thighs, her torso, her arms. ‘The mud dries on you like an Egyptian sarcophagus, but oh! once I crack it off and the impurities in your skin come away with it, your skin will feel like liquid gold all over.’ She plumped the pillow under Claudia’s head. ‘Comfy?’ she asked, not waiting for an answer before drawing the curtain and clip-clopping over the tiles like a filly in a stable yard.
Then came nothing but silence.
Maybe a distant knock in the hypocaust, a hiss of steam from the bellows. A few muffled words from the attendants as they passed the pillared arch. But mostly nothing.
Twenty feet above, the paintings on the ceiling appeared and dissolved in the swirling vapour and gradually, as the mud began to harden, the smell of camphor gained the upper hand and Claudia felt the tension in her bones begin to dissipate. At last, she thought. At last, a place to unwind and think things through.
And plan.
To her left, the tapestry curtain proclaimed grand Homeric scenes, red and vivid like the blood which had been shed so freely on those windy plains of Troy, whilst to her right, greens predominated, with Arcadian scenes so lifelike, you could almost hear Pan’s pipes whistle round the woodlands and the goats bleat on the hills.
Inside her mud coffin, Claudia let out her breath.
It was as though those two curtains summed up her dilemma. Her life, even. Red for passion, for feet-first hotheadedness. Grey-green for logic, for stepping back and listening to good, old-fashioned reason.
All right, then. Let’s see where this takes us. Focusing on the green tapestry, Claudia laid out her thoughts one by one and set Logic upon them.
Cal first. She had barely known him and perhaps it was time she questioned her motives for wanting to find his killer. Could it (dare she admit) be to divert attention from her own predicament? To neutralize her fears and troubles by transferring them on to a disinterested party? Suppose it had truly been an accident? Cal has one affair too many. The husband confronts him. Cal laughs it off as another casual conquest. The husband is incensed. He lunges. They fight. And suddenly, unintentionally, Cal falls dead. What now? The husband panics. He smashes Cal’s face against the rock and arranges the body to look like a fall.
Claudia stared beyond the green-embroidered woodlands to a voluble trial by jurists. Who would benefit? It couldn’t bring Cal back. Would cause further unhappiness to his family. Would punish a man already facing a lifetime of guilt, and what if there were children involved? Who was Claudia to tear apart a family?
Her eyes traced a flock of sheep and their shepherd, and she almost smelled the thyme which covered those same Arcadian hills which abutted Pylades’ homeland, Laconia. Ah, Pylades. He visits Plasimene and in no time Atlantis rises out of the rock, a glamorous palace of fun, and with the plague ushering those who could afford it out of Rome, what was so wrong with Pylades bitching about the smooth running of his business? Agreed such remarks at a funeral were callous and crass, but when all’s said and done, Cal was a fee-paying customer who, from Pylades’ point of view, had left a precious vacancy to fill.