She didn’t see the blade until it was too late.
There was no pain. No time to cry out. No chance to struggle. In an instant she’d lost control. Could feel nothing. Could move nothing.
She knew from the angle of the trees that she’d been caught as she fell. Knew she was laid on a limestone slab. She saw him toss her tunic aside. Then her breast band. Then her thong.
She knew, because his mouth was moving, that he was shouting at her, calling her names. Filthy names. Undeserved names. But she couldn’t hear him. Her ears were filled with a fearful hammering.
The sheer helplessness of it overwhelmed her. Never again would she feel the warmth of the sunshine, the bite of the frost-the softness of the babies she would undoubtedly have birthed from a second marriage.
Panic cut in. She was dying. She was being murdered. There was nothing she could do. Couldn’t fight, couldn’t scream, couldn’t leave clues. He was killing her, and he was getting away with it.
She tried to pray, but couldn’t.
She knew, from the way he was pounding, pumping, ramming, that he was inside her. That at last, and in the most foul manner imaginable, she was losing her precious virginity.
She saw him laughing.
But it was the last thing Acte did see, before a red mist flooded her eyes.
She heard a roar, an explosion.
Before the silence.
XXIII
‘For gods’ sake, man, I could have harnessed snails to this bloody car and got more speed up.’
The driver negotiated a tight turn before replying. There was sweat on his brow and on his upper lip. ‘This is a built-up area, milady. Someone might get hurt.’
‘You, unless you crack that bloody whip.’
‘We practically overturned back there, when you jerked on the reins.’ He was wondering how his wife would take to widowhood and decided she’d probably love it, the hypocritical old cow. ‘To go fast, we’d have to leave the city.’
‘Which is the nearest gate?’
The driver grinned. He had a feeling the day might not turn out so badly after all. ‘Gela.’
Claudia unpinned her hair. ‘Then let’s put a bit of froth round this nag’s mouth.’
An hour at full pelt was quite sufficient for Claudia’s head to clear. Whatever was she thinking of, letting scum like Varius needle her? Claudia Seferius wasn’t going to be displaced. No way. And certainly not by that verminous object.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked the driver.
‘Theocles, milady.’
‘Well, Theocles, I’ve got what I came for. Let’s head for the coast. And for heavens’ sake, drop that milady business, it makes me sound like an arthritic old matron.’ Unfortunately it was such a grubby, scrubby coastline that Claudia had no desire to linger. What next? The mule was too tired to gallop, and in any case she’d done that once. It was time to find fresh flowers to pick. Theocles was apologetic. He was used to driving men, he had no idea what to suggest to a lady seeking excitement. A man, now…
‘Where would you take him?’
‘For a wager, you mean?’ He still only half-believed her. ‘The fight, I suppose.’
Even as they drew up outside the village, he hadn’t really expected her to dismount, but Claudia bounded down and elbowed her way through the crowd towards a clearing sprinkled with sand. It was purely a local bout, nothing on the scale of the matches staged in Agrigentum, but Claudia’s experienced eye weighed the men up and realized immediately that this was a grudge match.
‘Put ten sesterces on him,’ she instructed Theocles. ‘The one with his hands on his hips.’
‘Alypius? I’d go for the other one, me. Look at his face, you can see how many battles he’s won.’
Yes, Meno’s face was pitted from studmarks, his nose squashed to a pulp and both ears had bits missing and yes, he made Utti look positively handsome-but the other man, this Alypius, looked dangerous. Whereas his opponent had worked himself into a blazing temper, puce in the face as he stomped up and down shouting abuse and shaking his fist, Alypius stood stock still, his mouth a thin white line. The clincher, for Claudia, was the red puckered scar which ran from ear to mouth. It was that disfigurement which had probably given him his temperament-and men who contain their anger are men to be reckoned with.
‘It’s three to one against,’ advised Theocles. Who could miss the high spots of colour on her cheeks or the way her tongue flickered nervously round her lips? She was squeezing her hands as though in grief and he felt responsible, milady losing ten sesterces, seeing as how this was his suggestion and all.
‘Is it indeed?’ Her eyes glistened as she delved into her purse. ‘Then you’d better make it thirty.’
It was a deflated and defeated Theocles who finally placed the bet as the bout started. It was to the death, the umpire announced, bringing down his rod of office to signal the start. Let honour be triumphant.
Claudia had no idea what score these two men had to settle, but from the first it was bloody. Alypius waited for his opponent to lunge, stepped smartly aside then jerked at his ear. Blood spurted into the front row of the crowd. With a roar, Meno brought up his foot and, with a vicious kick to the knee, sent Alypius flying off balance. Squaring up, they charged again, Meno bellowing like a mad bull, and Claudia nodded. She was right to bet on Alypius. Only amateurs yelled.
For a good ten minutes she sat, knuckles white, lips pursed as they slugged it out, their bodies slippery with blood as they bit and gouged and tore at each other. Then to her disgust, Alypius threw a wild and clumsy punch at Meno’s ribs, which any fool, never mind a professional like Meno, could see coming and Alypius’s knuckles crunched on to the metal studs in his opponent’s belt, impaling themselves in the process. It was the only garment either man wore and the crowd groaned in unison when Alypius’s other fist closed round Meno’s testicles and twisted. A sweet shock of realization shuddered through Claudia and her heart began to pound. Alypius had deliberately sacrificed his hand for the greater good, because while Meno was distracted by the excruciating pain, Alypius wedged his knee into his opponent’s back and looped his damaged arm round Meno’s neck. Quick as a flash, he released Meno’s testicles and locked both wrists together.
The crack that rang out as Meno’s neck snapped sent a momentary hush over the crowd, then cheering and clapping and whistling broke out which was probably heard in Libya. Claudia tossed a denarius in the air and Theocles caught it.
‘I can’t take that, milady.’ It was a whole day’s pay. ‘The repairs to the tilt will only cost an ass or two.’
‘What are you babbling about? What tilt? Just fetch me a mug of beer-yes, beer, man, are you deaf? — and let’s get going before it’s too dark to see the damned road.’ The grand house of the city prefect still echoed with drunken laughter and girlish squeals as Theocles pulled up, and Claudia groaned. Deal me out, she thought, and marched straight past the two bronze pillars flanking the front entrance towards the slaves’ door round the corner. It was pure misfortune that the first person she bumped into was that ferreting investigator emerging from the kitchen with a plate piled high with chicken, eggs, celery and onions and a long crusty loaf tucked underneath his arm.
‘Good evening,’ he said pleasantly, licking the grease off his fingers.
‘Drop dead.’
Orbilio ignored the invitation and matched his pace with hers. ‘How’s the new stepson?’
Claudia turned sharp right into the Cretan-style labyrinth and gained two paces. Of all the people she wanted to avoid, this man topped the list. By Jupiter, the gods must have had a field day when they watched Varius drop his little bombshell in front of Orbilio. Good life in Illyria, hadn’t the whole point of this wretched exercise in Sicily been to neutralize the threat against her inheritance-discreetly?
Back in Rome, rummaging around for dealings with Collatinus, she’d unearthed a letter from some bawd by the name of Livia Maximus who was in Agrigentum and who claimed she’d given birth to Gaius’s bastard. At the time of writing, the boy was fifteen and if Gaius wanted him to have a good marriage, etc., etc., etc.… The letter was clearly a bid to get him to part with money, but there was no record of his reply, which was unusual. Gaius kept meticulous records. Thus Claudia had used Eugenius’s offer of a holiday as a cover for finding out once and for all whether this Livia creature really did have a son by Gaius. She’d sent Junius on exhaustive missions and it had cost her an absolute fortune in bribes to well-placed civil servants and other lowlife to establish that the answer was a resounding negative.