Worse still, she didn’t need him cluttering up her life. He was like some noxious disease, cropping up once and just when she thought herself cured, up pops a second bout. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he took her raw emotions and swirled them around in a colander so they came out in tiny droplets, a jigsaw puzzle which took forever to piece together again and left you bruised and bleeding without cause. That was on top of everything else.
Still, her young Gaul should have all the answers by Friday. He was a good boy, Junius. Trustworthy and discreet. And if what he turned up was the worst news possible, plans would have been laid to deal with the situation once and for all.
Which, if she’d had an ounce of common sense, she’d have done in the first place. From Rome.
Goddammit, Sicily had been a mistake. It had turned into a right bloody mess and the more distance she put between herself and this godforsaken island the better, because just now the last thing Claudia wanted was her own name trawled through this. For gods’ sake, the whole idea was to sneak in and sneak out. Would nothing go according to plan?
‘Are you all right, madam?’
Claudia and her skin parted company and the armlet bounced off the stones. ‘Kleon! For gods’ sake, what do you think you’re playing at, creeping up on people?’
‘I wasn’t creeping, madam, it’s the grass, it dulls the-’
‘It dulls your bloody senses. Pip off.’
The Cilician looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m your bodyguard-’
‘Then obey orders. Get lost.’
‘There’s a murderer on the loose.’
‘I know that, Kleon, I found the body. Now run away like a good little Assyrian.’
‘Cilician.’
‘Assyrian, Cilician, Sicilian, I don’t bloody care. Just vamoose!’
‘But it’s getting dark and Master Orbilio told me-’
The pitch of her voice dropped several octaves. ‘Kleon, unless you want to end up as fishbait, I strongly suggest you do as I tell you. Go away!’
She watched the twilight swallow him up.
‘Kaak.’ A hooded crow alighted on a boulder nearby, and cocked its head on one side. ‘Kaak, kaak.’
Claudia stared it straight in its yellow eye. ‘And you can sod off, too.’
Where was that damned armlet? Claudia bent forward to retrieve it. It was gold, in the shape of a snake which coiled itself four times round your upper arm. She carefully polished the green jewelled eyes with her hem, then continued to twirl it round her finger.
Who the bloody hell does he think he is, she thought, giving orders to my bodyguard? Let me tell you, Master Smartarse Orbilio, if I choose to sit out here and get myself butchered by marauding maniacs, I’ll bloody well do it, do you hear me? And just what are you playing at? Coming all the way out here, swaggering around and pretending to solve murders? You’ve no idea who did it. When I called your bluff this morning, you probably smelled your own goose charring. Remind me what you said so smugly. Ah, yes. I know who killed her.
So what happens when I ask, ‘Who?’ It all changes, doesn’t it? Nothing but bluster and blubber.
‘I need proof,’ you said.
‘You’re the Security Police, I thought you beat the proof out of the poor sods?’ I said, then a blond head popped itself round the door and saved your miserable skin.
‘Claudia, the ceremony’s about to begin in the garden- Oh, sorry!’ Realizing it was interrupting, the head promptly withdrew.
Orbilio’s eyebrows arched slowly. ‘Who’s the gigolo?’
Claudia had felt her colour rising and turned away, ostensibly to pat her bun into place. ‘That young man,’ she’d said loftily, ‘is Diomedes, the family physician. Now if you’ll excuse me, the Meditrinalia is about to begin. What a shame you weren’t invited.’
With a toss of her head, she flounced out of the room in the direction of the garden, wondering why it felt uncomfortable, Diomedes seeing her in such close proximity to this oily patrician weasel.
For obvious reasons, the annual toast for health could hardly take place in the atrium. Not in the presence of Sabina’s stiff and mutilated body. Now in Rome they made a real event of this, with the priest of Mars heading a flamboyant and boisterous occasion. In the Collatinus household it had every appearance of turning into something solemn and dreary-even allowing for the recent death.
Which, apart from the inconvenience of cluttering up the atrium, seemed to affect no one in the slightest.
And again Claudia wondered where Sabina could have been these past thirty years. Thirty years! It was hell of a long time. Was there somebody (a man?) pining for her, as yet unaware what the Fates had in store…?
The family was beginning to gather in earnest now, their black mourning clothes and gaunt faces making them look more like vultures than human beings. Two strong slaves arrived, carrying Eugenius towards his special Head of Household chair, beautifully carved and inlaid with ivory, and shaded by a bay tree. The accident, a riding accident by all accounts when he fell off his horse and broke his back, had left him paralysed from the waist down, but he’d at least retained full mobility of his arms. The blatant stare he bestowed on Claudia’s breasts belied his seventy-seven years. As did the twinkle in his eye when it met hers.
Immediately he was settled, Acte moved into action, pulling a blanket over his knees and tucking it round, knotting a light woollen scarf round his neck and smoothing the wisps of hair on his head as an aged claw slid up her thigh. Claudia wondered what would happen to Acte, should anything happen to Eugenius. The family clearly resented the fact that the old man consulted with slaves on matters about which he didn’t even consult them, and twice now Claudia had seen Acte resisting Aulus’s advances. Really, she thought, the best Acte could hope for was that Eugenius lived for another twenty years.
Eugenius was patently enjoying the fuss being made of him. Aulus shot a look of blatant disgust down his long nose.
‘Get on with it, man!’ he ordered, but Diomedes, with barely a glance at Eugenius, reminded him politely they were still waiting for Master Fabius. Claudia wondered whether the old man had caught the drunken slur in his son’s voice.
As sandals were shuffled, sighs let loose and yawns stifled but with still no sign of Fabius, Claudia’s thoughts returned to Sabina. She was definitely not one of Vesta’s priestesses, yet she’d timed her return carefully, ensuring it coincided with the retirement of the real senior Vestal. Which meant-assuming she was a Collatinus-she had deliberately deceived her family, one and all, into believing she had been in service for those last thirty years. Why?
‘I’ll tell you this much, you’ll not catch me wearing one of those nancy-boy tunics.’ Fabius’s voice preceded him into the garden.
‘Isn’t it customary for patricians, the longer tunic?’ The second voice was light and high, which made it Marius, Linus’s younger son. Hero worship was written on his face. Linus’s other son, Paulus, was dragging his feet behind them.
‘Customary, my arse. Poofs, if you ask me, wearing skirts almost as long as a woman’s.’
Good old Fabius. Spent twenty years in the army where they wore their tunics high above the knee and obviously he still enjoyed the air whistling up his thighs, bless him. Claudia thought she ought to be able to draw a conclusion from that, but for the life of her she couldn’t think what it might be.
‘Bit late,’ he said by way of apology. ‘We’ve been practising our drilling, the boys and me. Got carried away by the time.’
Ungrateful lad, that Paulus. Didn’t look at all like one who’d been carried away by the time. More like one who’d been counting off the minutes…
The ceremony got under way with Diomedes filling glasses from the jug on the left and passing them round.
‘From the old wine we drink,’ he intoned solemnly in that thick, delicious accent, ‘and from the old illnesses may we be cured.’