Playing up their, shall we say, hallucinogenic properties? Claudia deposited a carmine outline of her lips between the cat’s crossed eyes and, checking the hall was clear of aunts and monkeys, ran lightly down the stairs. I know you, Gaius Seferius. You’ll have far better ways of spending your afterlife than clumping around scaring your cousins. But all the same. It was no coincidence that the occupants of both rooms either side had heard noises. Best check it out.
‘Package for you, ma’am,’ called a bald Sarmatian slave, and handed across a small hide pouch sticky with mildew. ‘Left inside the vestibule.’
‘Inside?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He pointed to a mosaic fish. ‘Right there.’
Tentatively. Claudia opened the bag. Inside was a strip of peach-coloured linen, and a letter folded in four. Her stomach lurched at the familiar cramped writing…
‘ so you will know i’ve not abandoned you i send this blindfold and when we fuck i’ll – ’ The parchment trembled in her hands. By the gods, this man is sick! Where does he get these vicious, warped fantasies? She forced herself to read on, and the last line jarred her to the marrow, ‘and know i am watching you’.
Hugging her body, she scanned the busy street. Pack mules weighed down with panniers. Itinerant salt vendors. A young blade in his chariot. Early carousers heading for taverns. Nothing sinister. No one lurking in doorways. No suspicious characters loitering on corners. For the first time, Claudia wondered why he called himself Magic…
She ran up the stairs fishing Gaius’ key from the folds of her gown. Stupid, bloody thing. Wouldn’t stay still. Get in that lock, dammit. Now turn. Turn, I said! There was sweat on her forehead when she closed the door and leaned her weight against it.
The room had not changed since her husband had died here. Garish walls, loud textiles. Friezes where there ought to be frescoes, too much silver, too much marble, a leopardskin rug. To Gaius, these things spelled success, confirmation of his rise to equestrian status, but for now, the room was strangely comforting.
She gripped the bedrail for support. Her heart seemed to be playing kettledrums with her rib bones, and someone had stolen her lower limbs and filled the gap with aspic.
Why did he do this? Why did he write these reams of filth? What was he hoping to achieve? If it was a power trip this Magic character was on, he was out of luck. Any signs that he terrified her Claudia kept to herself, and if they were ‘genuine’ protestations of love, why didn’t he reveal himself? She did not have the answers, but one thing was certain. Magic was creeping closer and closer…
Claudia released the bedrail and wiped the dust off her hands down the pastel lilac linen. Her husband was nothing if not orderly, everything sat in its place. His desk, his inkwells, his basketweave chair. Even his symbol of rank, the equestrian sword, still hung in his sheath on the wall. A lump rose in her throat. Last August. She had walked in and found him slumped upon that very weapon. For a moment, she could still hear the flies and smell the blood…
‘Gaius, you silly daft sod.’
Picking up his clothes-brush, she ran the ox’s tail several times through her loosely clenched fist. That, too, he’d had dyed a typical vivid scarlet, because nothing Gaius ever did was subtle. She smiled. Including haunting, if that’s what he put his mind to. He wouldn’t have settled for a half-hearted clump across the timbers. Gaius Seferius would have done it in style, wailing like a banshee. They’d have heard him as far as the Capitol.
After the funeral, Claudia had insisted this room remain locked, on the pretext of preserving his memory. (Where else could she conceal the true company accounts?) Only Claudia had a key, and since she gave up housework once she heard it gave you warts, thick cobwebs had congregated on the gilt-encrusted rafters and you could have carted out dust by the bucketload.
So, no, it was not Gaius’ ghost who’d walked this room overnight. The hairs on the back of her neck curled and prickled.
Phantoms do not leave their footprints in the dust.
Phantoms do not leave their imprint on the bed.
XVIII
When you think about it, there are only two ways to deal with fear. Let it in, or kick it out. And since Claudia was not the type of woman to allow a canker-worm to eat away her character, she left her fear licking its wounds in a dark recess of her consciousness.
‘Why, Claudia, what on earth are you doing with that hammer?’
Trust Julia to be wandering round, when she ought to be in her room preparing for the banquet.
‘Um.’ High female laughter floated down into the atrium. ‘Fannia asked me to fetch one.’ She gave a silvery laugh herself. ‘You know how eccentric she is.’
Julia’s hooded eyes narrowed. ‘She was always odd, that woman. Told me once, she not only shared a bed with her husband, she actually enjoyed what he…you know. Did to her.’ Her mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Frankly, that hammer doesn’t surprise me.’
Stifling a laugh, Claudia returned to her room. ‘What’s the matter, poppet? Still hankering after the monkey?’ Watching Drusilla disappear into the night, Claudia wished she could follow. We’ll stay on until after the Megalesian Games, Larentia had said. Claudia pressed the heels of her hands against her eyeballs. Hell, that’s another ten days, I’ll be dead before then. She rubbed the back of her neck and looked out. Poor old Rome! Never allowed to settle down for the evening with a good book and its feet up, already it’ll be cracking its knuckles, primed for the work which lies ahead. Musclemen cranking open the huge city gates to let wheeled traffic through, dressmakers squinting through lamplight they cannot afford because the client’s changed her mind-and pity the poor fisherman, who cannot rely on tides coinciding with daylight.
Claudia slammed the shutters and wished that had been her mother-in-law’s face.
It would be hard, the next ten days, but provided no cracks appeared in her facade, Larentia shouldn’t catch so much as the faintest rattle of a closeted skeleton, no matter how keen her goddammed hearing. It was called keeping up appearances, and Claudia was an expert.
For Gaius, marriage had merely meant another gaudy trophy, a wife to be wheeled out at social occasions and as such their paths had rarely crossed. With Larentia stuck in Etruria, his daughter fostered on Julia (who in any case had few dealings with her brother), deception had been easy to orchestrate.
Until that desiccated old fossil took it upon herself to test Claudia to the limits.
She inhaled from braziers redolent with the scent of dried herbs-balm and borage, lavender and mint-and thought, you want hospitality? I’ll give you hospitality. So much so, you’ll be gagging on it, begging to go home to the country. And tonight’s off to a good start. I hadn’t envisaged this, you wizened old crow, but we’ve got acrobats and jugglers, fire eaters and dancers, flautists and tumblers. And just to show you how bloody rich I am, guess whose robe matches the exact colours of the banqueting hall? Claudia twirled round in her feast gown. Searching examination would quickly reveal an ancient nightshift coloured with cheap vegetable dyes, but the old bats were short-sighted and a range of glittery accessories, coupled with oodles of perfume and some second-hand flounces would What was that?
Claudia laid down her gold torque and listened. There it was again, a soft scuffle from the balcony. Then she saw it. A tongue of metal, so thin it could fit between closed shutters, which could only be the blade of a knife…
Bloody burglars! There’d been a real upsurge of these bastards since Agrippa died, taking advantage of people’s grief and confusion and growing fat on their thieving. She blew out the lantern. I’ll give you bloody burglary, mate.
The blade had found the latch and she could hear the tinny scratch of metal upon metal. Picking up a red upholstered footstool by its leg, she weighted it in her hands. Just the job. The latch was lifting as she skipped to the side of the window. Climb up my balcony, would you, chum? The first leaf of the shutter opened to admit a blast of damp air. Claudia could see an inky outline in the gloom.