So, alas, did Orbilio’s. He cracked his knuckles in impatience. His boss’s reply would probably be on its way, though how much leave of absence he would grant him was another matter. And time, Orbilio felt sure, was running out.
‘Dorcan?’
He whistled, but no answering whistle returned, and although once or twice he thought he saw a figure flitting between the tombs, the burly giant it was not.
Folding his hands behind his head, Orbilio closed his eyes and felt that same warm glow roll over him as he considered a whole host of reasons why, despite all the obstacles in his way, he was still glad he’d hooked himself to Claudia Seferius’ wagon once again. He was definitely making headway in that direction! Another three hundred years and she might, yet, open her heart to him as already she had opened her mind…
The scream woke him, and although he didn’t think he’d been asleep, the haze had cleared and a thousand stars twinkled up above him, he could clearly make out the Great Bear, the Lyre and the Dragon. But the scream was not human and when the vixen called a second time, he shook his head and instantly regretted it. The wine had begun to take effect, the old bean was pounding like a pestle in a mortar. Groaning, he rubbed the stiffness back into his cramped muscles before shambling to his feet. His left leg had not so much gone to sleep as fallen into a possibly quite fatal coma, and he feared his head might shortly follow suit.
Through the open doors of the triple-arch gateway, fires burned low. No lamps burned in the windows, no torches lit up street corners. Every living soul but he was in bed and that, he concluded ruefully, included the charlatan.
Stepping over a drunkard in the Forum as he made his way back to his roach-ridden rented garret, Orbilio heard the snicker of a horse and exchanged a tight-lipped greeting with the fat man who was heaving himself into the saddle.
The fat man smelled of cardamom.
XXI
As the pitiless rays of dawn burrowed under eyelids rich and poor, groans rippled out like nibbling fish. Some were minnows, some were monsters-few were spared. Coots which yesterday emitted gentle, subdued honks had acquired trumpets in the night and the tree crickets preferred clashing cymbals to rasping their back legs together. In the town, in the villages, in farmsteads all around Lake Plasimene, faces ranging in colour from soapstone yellow to tundra grey squinted in unimagined agony as the light grew remorselessly brighter and spared not one repentant reveller. And boy, were they repentant. Never again, begged their churning stomachs. Never again, promised ermine-covered tongues.
‘Morning, Phoebe,’ Claudia trilled to the girl struggling into consciousness beneath a marble caryatid in the Athens Canal. By her side an empty goblet lay overturned, and a wine bowl bobbed among the swans in the water.
‘Please,’ Phoebe groaned. ‘Not so loud.’ Her hair was dishevelled, the kohl around her eyes smudged and her gown, where it wasn’t stretched to bursting point, revealed a plump but shapely thigh. ‘Oh lord, that late?’ she asked, squinting at the sun. ‘I must have passed out.’
‘Good night, then?’
The dark-eyed beauty giggled. ‘Hope so.’ She was swaying on her feet as she straightened her crumpled robe. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t remember much after that game of strip chequers in the Forum.’
Quite! Claudia had spent many hours last night wandering round Spesium, analysing the revels of the Agonalia. As the hours progressed, the merrymaking had grown ever more raucous, with behaviour bordering on the manic. Dorcan was wrong, way off course. Last night’s debauchery was not born out of fear of the plague. This level of intensity-as though every day must be lived as the last-went far deeper than that.
As Phoebe tottered off, Claudia explored the little domed loggia, whose recent occupants seemed to have left in such a hurry. A plate of still-warm buns wafted their tantalizing aroma across the open veranda, and a jug of what looked like sherbet hadn’t been touched. The reason, of course, might be connected with the cat curled up on one of the chairs.
‘Well done, Drusilla.’ Claudia sank her teeth into a spicy raisin bun. ‘I was in need of a quiet place to think.’ And where better? Thanks to huge leaps in technology, domes had become a part of modern architecture, and this dome, being small, required support from just eight stone piers. Each had been exquisitely painted to represent an Olympian deity-Jupiter, symbolized by his famous thunderbolt and acorns from his sacred oak, his consort, Juno, represented by birch and geese and marigolds. Claudia did not think the Queen of Light would object to taking her weight while she polished off a second bun.
Did the sky seem a different colour today, a hint of cloud, perhaps, on the horizon? Or was that purely wishful thinking? According to the archivists, this was the longest heatwave on record, and whilst several historians disputed the claim, citing at least five previous hot Mays, two within a hundred years, on one point everyone agreed. When the rains came, no one would be sorry! Irrigation of crops was proving a constant headache, requiring more and more field hands working longer and longer hours. Livestock, too, became restless in a heat which spawned worm and intestinal parasites, while for wine producers, like herself ‘Our bailiff’s a good man, Drusilla,’ Claudia told the dozing cat. ‘He manages the vineyard exceptionally well, only-’
‘Brrr?’
‘The problem is this.’ Claudia prised herself off Juno and flung an arm loosely round Venus. ‘Despite knowing everything there is to know about a vine,’ put simply, the man was a genius, ‘and despite having full managerial control over the estate, he never takes a decision without checking first with me.’ (As if she’d know!)
‘Mrrrrp.’
‘Fine for you to say don’t worry.’ Claudia traced a finger round one of Venus’ holy swans. ‘Suppose I were to tell you that if we don’t get a decent crop of grapes this year, the whole business goes under?’ She was hanging on by her fingernails as it was. ‘I’m afraid that unless this drought is handled properly, both you and I’ll be grovelling for fishheads in the gutter by September.’
‘Mrrr. Mrrr-mrrr.’
‘You think so?’ Claudia examined a painted garland of April flowers, symbolic of the month which came under Venus’ custody. ‘You really think the bailiff will take these decisions on his own?’ She had an idea he was supposed to raise dust storms to shade the roots from the relentless rays of the sun-but suppose he wasn’t whipping up great clouds of soil? Suppose he was sitting up at the estate, anxiously awaiting authorization from the mistress…?
I’m hanging round the wrong damned pillar, Claudia thought. I need Father Vulcan! For a horrid moment it occurred to her that there were twelve Olympian deities and only eight bloody pillars, but praise be to Jupiter, the patron of September, the protector of blacksmiths and the god who also happened to have the vine sacred to his holy personage wasn’t one of those who’d been left out! Claudia flung both arms around the fire god and planted a kiss on the pier, right between a bunch of green grapes and a bunch of red.
‘You won’t let me go bankrupt?’ she begged. ‘You’ll watch over my vineyard?’
But it was not like when, as a child, she flung herself around her father’s knees, to be swept in the air and twirled round and round as she nuzzled against his whiskery chin. Slowly, foolishly, Claudia drew away from the pillar. No enlightenment, no whispered words of reassurance, no spiritual comfort ever came from a pile of stupid stonework. Just the filthy taste of paint on your lips. She looked out across Plasimene, where the hills danced in a shimmering blue reflection, and realized it was not just the lake which was hazy today. There was something in her eye, making it water, and she had the sudden urge to travel far beyond those hills and to keep on travelling. Over the Apennines to the turquoise Aegean, where ships sailed for Dalmatia, Egypt, to Cyprus. Or she could take the road north, cross the Alps to Noricum, Raetia, Germanica, see for herself the lands of sparkling rivers and spectacular cascades… Oh shit! Whatever was in her eye started aggravating further.