‘What’s there to lose?’ she asked, shrugging. ‘I go back to Atlantis and shout my head off and what happens? Either Kamar dopes me or your creature Cyrus declares me insane and whoosh, Claudia Seferius disappears for ever. On the other hand, you might just have one very valuable asset on your side. Win-win.’
Long seconds ticked past on the water clock, then eventually Lais smiled. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘I’m prepared to take a risk. The woman’s name is Phoebe. Her husband is sick of her philandering, she has become an embarrassment to him. Kill Phoebe and you will never want for funds again, I give you my word.’
Claudia’s face betrayed none of the emotions which tumbled within. Fear. Satisfaction. Anticipation. Relief. Soon, she thought, very soon, Lais and her cronies will be in irons, on their way to be tried for their crimes, and let’s see the faces of the families involved. Some guilty, standing alongside. Some innocent, horrified at what had befallen their relatives. The townsfolk of Spesium would find the trip to Rome well worth their while, jeering and spitting as they were hauled through the streets.
Claudia uncrossed her legs and stood up. ‘By morning,’ she assured Lais, ‘Phoebe will be history.’ Not too fast, not too fast. Casually she walked towards the door. ‘Thanks for the wine,’ she said.
‘My pleasure.’ Lais held up her goblet. ‘To a successful union.’
As Claudia turned, Lais’ voice changed to an echo. Shadows closed in. Her ankles could not bear her weight and now she was falling…Falling…And the room was growing dark. Dammit, the wine had been drugged! As though down a long tunnel, she heard a woman’s autocratic instructions weave in and out of her consciousness.
‘Dump her in the…(mumble, mumble)…should not pose a problem…(mumble, mumble)…natural causes…’
Bitch! Claudia flung out an arm. She’d kill her. She’d kill that bitch Lais for this! The room was swimming, but she had time. The wine was just making her dizzy. Disorientated. She could fight it. Win. Old Stonyface would regret doing this But before Claudia’s hand had a chance to close round her knife, a great rush of blackness swallowed her up.
XXXVI
She was dead. Lais’ doped wine had killed her. Claudia had crossed the Styx and here were the caves of the Underworld, the ghosts of her long-dead ancestors writhing in some grisly welcome ritual. Drums were throbbing. Claudia prised open her second eyelid and winced from the swelling which surrounded it, a sweet memento from Pul. Once more, she was lying face down, although here was no fancy mosaic, no opulent marble. It was dust, she could smell it. Taste it. Sour at the back of her throat. Great. Charon the Ferryman had dumped her without so much as a guide or a hint to direction.
Lifting her head was like lifting a hippo. All around, the ghosts-red ghosts, if you please-danced to the pulsating drumbeats with rigid, flickering movements. Wooden puppets jerking on strings. Oddly repellent. Far from comforting. Someone groaned when she tried to sit up. Claudia had a feeling it was her. No one put out a hand to assist.
The dancers reeled towards her, then receded. Forward and back, jerk and jolt. Forward and back, jerk… Slowly her vision cleared, and Claudia saw they were not phantoms-hell, they were not even real people. These were painted figures, lit by a flickering flame. Red? Yes, they were red. Etruscan red. Their bodies, their faces, their hands. And they danced round a wall to a drum which pounded inside her head.
Using a stone tabletop for support, Claudia hauled herself to her knees as a wisp of fear tugged at her gut. Why should these painted Etruscans dance around a stone slab? She brushed the wisp away and rose groggily to her feet. A cheetah came into view, its painted spots brilliantly preserved. Preserved where?
Rats with razor-sharp teeth began to gnaw at her insides. She was cold. Icy cold.
There was a dark patch on the floor. And something glinting in the flickering, stinking tallow light. An emerald. Don’t look. Block it out, block it out, for as long as you can…
‘The dark patch on the floor there, that’s blood,’ she tried to tell the yawning cheetah, except there was a pebble bunging up her voice box. Human blood, stale and dry, and the emerald clinched any doubt. It was set in an earring. The one which was absent from the body fished out of the lake… ‘I suppose you got to know Lais’ double quite well, while she was kept prisoner here.’ But the cheetah was bored, it kept yawning.
While a giant’s hand crushed her heart in his fist, Claudia forced herself to pick up the candle and hold it up to walls covered with these Etruscan paintings. Tomb paintings. The stone tabletops were sarcophagi. The giant squeezed tighter. All Etruscan burial sites were the same. Gouged underground out of the rock. Leading off from this central chamber would be other, narrower resting places. But one thing was certain.
There was only one entrance.
Sealed with a huge block of granite.
‘It’s all right,’ she added, trying for a smile. Not that the Etruscans cared whether she was grinning or not, ‘Tarraco said the graves had been robbed generations ago, probably during the time of the Great Battle up on the lakeshore.’
Hysteria rose in her breast.
One woman had been imprisoned in this ancient tomb of the kings, then killed on this spot. Was it Lais’ intention to make it a double? Would Pul heave back that granite door any minute, and place his large hands round her own neck? As though in a dream, two words barrelled through this ancient tomb. Natural causes. Lais had it all planned! She’d been humouring Claudia from the start, knowing how long the drug would take to work in the wine. With an aching wrench of self-pity, Claudia realized too late that to keep up the pretence of being a spy was the last thing she should have done. She should have tried to run, go down fighting. Instead she set herself up as a swooning, love-sick girl coming in search of the man she’d set free from the cells who seeks refuge from the storm, and where better than the old Etruscan tombs? But, oops, there’s an accident, look. Lightning fells a tree, traps her inside… In a couple of months, when Lais makes her miraculous reappearance, she discovers this fallen tree trunk. How tragic!
Natural bloody causes, all right.
Claudia was destined to die of thirst and starvation.
XXXVII
‘Sit down, Kamar, you’re making me dizzy.’
‘Sit down?’ The physician’s voice was shrill with panic. ‘After what that bitch did to me? This, this, this-’ he pointed to the weals on his legs ‘-and what about this, eh?’ A bony finger indicated his cheek. ‘The fucking bitch has scarred me for life. How am I supposed to explain that to my patients? To Pylades? Croesus, he’ll sack me the second he claps eyes on me.’
‘I’m sure you’ll think of something,’ Lais soothed. Inside her hidden room, lamplight shone brighter than a midsummer noon, bouncing off the gilded statues and solid silver figurines, although she had taken care to close the lids of the treasure chests when Kamar was announced. Pul she could trust. But Kamar? Too self-centred for unconditional allegiance.
To counteract the stench of white mandrake which still clung to the lanky physician, Lais dabbed her musky scent behind her ears, on all her pulse points, wrists and throat and ankles, and trickled a few drops down her cleavage. Ah, there were times when she missed Tarraco. Those expert hands, tender lips… She shivered at the delicious memory. There would be others, of course. Just as young and equally devoted, but she would take care never to marry again. She had been burned by the Spaniard’s betrayal. It would not happen again.
Shit! She hurled her glass against the wall, watched it shatter into a thousand shimmering pieces. What made him shag that kitchen wench? Wasn’t one woman enough for his overpowering ego? Lais recalled the twinge of remorse when, a few days after staging her dramatic disappearance, she’d sneaked out of this hidden chamber one night and found he’d left honeycombs on her bed. A tender thought, but one which unfortunately came too late. The damage had been done.