Fabius shone, quite literally, in his uniform so that whenever the sun caught it, anyone looking his way was positively blinded. Even Claudia had to admit he cut a dashing figure with his broad chest and gleaming bronze armour. The red crest on his helmet, running side to side to reflect his centurion status, ruffled in the breeze in the most stately and dignified fashion, drawing the attention of many a maiden along the route, yet even as she recalled the procession, she could think only of another man, a patrician, in the scarlet tunic and hammered breastplate of the tribune. Not that his would need to be beaten out to exaggerate the muscular development of the professional athlete…
Dammit, that man gets on my whiskers!
Claudia pushed thoughts of Orbilio’s torso to a dim and distant recess of her mind and concentrated on the funeral cortege as it filed slowly through the streets. As they were entering the Forum, the wailing women almost drowning out the trumpeters, she spotted Utti in the crowd, his ugly mug practically obliterated by the bodies of two small children, one perched on each shoulder for a better view. Before Claudia had had a chance to identify Tanaquil, another familiar form had sidled up.
‘You’ll help me find her, won’t you?’ The rings under Hecamede’s eyes were darker, the hollows in her cheeks deeper. ‘Only you promised.’
‘I did no such thing.’ Praise be to Juno, both breasts were tucked up safely!
‘You did, you give me your word.’
Two of the Collatinus slaves pulled her roughly away and frogmarched the pitiful figure out of sight. Diomedes moved up beside Claudia.
‘What was that about?’
‘Oh, nothing, really. The woman’s touched. Thinks someone’s stolen her child and tried to point him out to me, but there was nothing there except some bloody great spider. She said he-whoever he might be-was collecting them at the time.’
‘Aristaeus, you mean?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Aristaeus. The man who collects spiders’ webs.’ Claudia faltered, nearly tripping over her hem. ‘Say that again. You mean there really is a man who goes around collecting spiders’ webs?’
‘Of course. Didn’t you know?’
Failing to see how anybody could possibly make a profession out of something like that, Claudia shook her head.
‘Strange man,’ Diomedes continued. ‘Lives up in the hills. A-what’s the Latin word? — recluse.’
Child molesters would be, wouldn’t they?
As she began to follow the white line of the path along the peninsula, Claudia’s mind pictured this seedy individual, this raptor of little girls. Middle-aged, potbellied, probably more hairs coming out of his nostrils than left on his head. No doubt he stank like a drain, too. She thought of Hecamede, driven out of her wits because this sordid specimen had run off with her little Kyana and no one giving a damn, simply because they were dirt poor. It touched a raw nerve and she felt her breath catch in her throat.
Claudia knew what poor was like.
Claudia grew up poor.
Claudia knew that poor didn’t count for shit.
And she knew something else, too. She knew she’d never be poor again. Ever.
More overpowering than the smell of cinnamon and myrrh as Sabina’s pyre burned was that earlier image of Hecamede-one breast lolling out of her tunic as she wept in the filthy gutter. Now, as the night noises from the mountains began to fill the air, the cry of a screech owl, the bark of a fox, she resolved that Aristaeus wasn’t going to get away with his filthy practices any longer.
‘Claudia Seferius is on your case, my lad,’ she said aloud. ‘Make no mistake, your time’s up.’
It would take her mind off the Agrigentum business. A means of passing the time until Friday, when she had that boat to catch.
Even if the voyage did entail being cooped up with that smarmy investigator for a whole week or more.
XI
The man Melinno threw down his pack and leaned forward, hands on his knees, until his breath came back. He’d thought that climb up Mount Tauros was tough-by Janus, this bugger made Tauros look like a pimple. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and took a swig from his canteen.
Strictly speaking, it weren’t his canteen, mind. He’d swiped it from a legionary who’d passed out cold back in Zankle. It had been full of that cheap sour wine them footsloggers seemed so fond of, but Melinno had flushed out the field flask and filled it with sweet, fresh mountain water. He shook it and replaced the bung. Getting low, but he’d passed enough streams, there’d be another one shortly. Wouldn’t there?
Defiantly he shook some into his cupped hand and sluiced his face. Howay, man, there’s bound to be water up here. Stands to reason. Mountains? Water? Why, aye.
Melinno hefted his pack on to his shoulders and resumed his trudge along the narrow path. It were only a goat track, slippy and slidy, and he’d only another hour of daylight at best. Frustrating for a man who needed to cover ground, but that was the price you paid for October. There was more hours of dark than day, and it were worse up here, because for much of the afternoon the sun had been blotted out by the Great Burning Mountain on his left. It were doused at the moment, this forge of the fire god, but a bloke could never tell. Word was, nineteen summers back and just before sunrise, some old shepherd actually saw with his own eyes the mighty Vulcan hobble up to his forge and start fanning the flames. The whole mountain had burst into fire, rivers of living red hell burning everything in their path. Aye. Well. Melinno didn’t want none of that. The quicker he did his business and left, the better, as far as he was concerned.
As the light began to fade, his footsteps became more urgent, his eyes more vigilant. He wanted to make his shelter down there, in the valley, where there were trees and where there’d be water. Water and safety. Turning the corner, he heard himself gasp. Right in front of him was this huge cave. He dodged back. It could be, you know. It were big enough.
Mouth dry, he peered round the corner, but as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he realized that what he had mistaken for a cave was nothing more sinister than the shadow of an overhang. It was the way these rocks was up here, you’d think a bloke would’ve gotten used to them by now, wouldn’t you? Nevertheless, his heart was pounding as he passed underneath. And he didn’t feel daft, neither. Cyclops lived in caves up here, them giant one-eyed cannibals what kept sheep, and Melinno knew they were close, he could hear bleating.
A bush of yellow broom blocked his way and he had to tread warily not to slip over the precipice. Aye, he were a fool to come this way, thinking he knew best.
‘Take my advice, lovey,’ the fuller’s wife had told him, running plump hands invitingly over her hips, ‘follow the coast to Katane, then cut across. It’s safer.’
His eyes had lingered on her tits, which seemed fit to burst from her tunic. Big, ripe, floppy tits, more than a man could hold in one hand.
‘If I go round the Great Burning Mountain,’ he swallowed the build-up of saliva forming in his mouth, ‘it’ll save time.’
She laughed in the back of her throat. ‘Ooh, I like a man in a hurry,’ she said, handing him the string of her girdle. ‘But you’ll make good time on the coast road.’
‘Talking of good times…’ he’d said thickly, with a sharp tug on the string.
She charged eight asses, but he’d given her ten on account of the way she pouted her lips. Aye, that were a mistake, because she were older than she made out and her tits weren’t so much floppy as sagging like half-empty flour sacks-and he’d forgotten, till he mounted her, that the way fullers cleaned clothes was by treading them in vats of stale piss.
The memory of the way that old whore stank was as good a reason as any to do the opposite of what she said, but Melinno thought he knew best and could save time cross-country. Then he found himself in the Lands of the Cyclops…