Dream Boat (14 page)

'You mean, people living on the west of the city? The Palatine Hill?'

'I dunno.'

'Did she mean over the river? Come on, Flea, think! Did she talk about Ostia?' That's west of Rome. 'Try to think, please. This is very important.'

'I know it is,' Flea said weakly, 'but she said it was her secret, and I didn't push. Look,' she shifted to stare Claudia squarely in the eye, 'I'm sorry about Junius, I mean that. And I'm sorry I gave Flavia the plan and I'm sorry I delivered the notes and I'm sorry I didn't press her about where she was staying while all this was going on. But you ain't seriously gonna put me to the torture, are you?'

'Actually,' Claudia said, disentangling sharp puppy teeth from her shoe, 'we never were. That was simply a ruse to make you confess!'

And with that she made a fast, strategic exit, leaving the soldier in the vestibule to take the brunt of Flea's foulmouthed curses.

'So?' Orbilio asked, and she could smell his sandalwood. 'Do you have Flavia's address? I've written the letter to the Dungeon Master, all she has to do is swear an oath and -oh. Your expression tells me Flea doesn't know Flavia's whereabouts.'

'This might seem difficult to believe, Marcus Cornelius,

but for all her streetwise ways, that girl has been kippered as efficiently as we were.'

Call us a horrible family would you, Flavia, my sweet? Well, brace yourself, kiddo,
you ain't seen nothing yet.

To the east, the first faint tinge of pink began to glow in the sky. Hollow-eyed, Orbilio stared up as though mesmerised. 'The army is coming this morning,' he said, and his voice was little more than a rasp. 'Trench-digger types accustomed to siege engines and catapults rather than the delicate task of removing skeletons. They'll destroy any evidence.'

As well as all trace of his innocence.

A blackbird began to let loose its warbling trill, and almost immediately a dozen other birds weighed in with tunes of their own.

Claudia plucked a sprig of lavender and held it up to her nose. 'Then perhaps,' she said, with a sly smile, 'we had better put into practice that old hunting technique of felling two deer with a single spear.'

A quizzical eyebrow rose lazily upwards. 'And how, pray, do you propose to do that?'

'Praying doesn't come into it.' She laughed. 'You can't effect Junius's release, because you're under suspicion of murder, and you will stay under suspicion for as long as the murder remains unsolved. The only solution is to solve the murder ourselves.'

'In three days?'

'Why not?' she asked, kilting up her skirt and marching down the peristyle. 'If we don't want the Catapult Kids trampling the evidence, the only way to preserve it is by tackling the job ourselves. Here!' She tossed him a chisel. 'We've only a few hours to get this wall down.'

'You,' he grinned, chipping away at the cavity, 'are wasted in the wine trade! You're a builder through and through, I've never seen anyone so instantly at home with a hammer.'

'Then you'd better not cross me.' She grinned back. Plaster dust was flying everywhere, and she thought, so this is what he'll look like when he's grey.

'But what about Flavia?' He coughed. 'Shouldn't you at least try to trace her?'

'Later.' Claudia stepped back as the claw on her hammer pulled a large section of wall tumbling into the storeroom. 'After all,' she added cheerfully, 'it's not as though she's in any danger, now is it?'

Once the High Priest had held up a golden facsimile of the Sacred Feather of Truth and blessed the Boat of the Morning, the worshippers drifted back to their quarters. There they would change into their working clothes, in preparation for the day ahead: some would filter off into the fields, to harvest the beans and the barley. Others would make their way to the threshing floor, the bakery, the brewery, the kitchens. Goats and cows had to be milked, cheese turned, geese fed with grain.

For the man who called himself Seth, it was a simple enough matter to slip away. To climb to his secret cavern in the hill.

Beside the heart-shaped stone, he divested himself of his Egyptian clothing and allowed Ra to rest his warming rays upon his nakedness. Dawn had been sweet this morning, he reflected. Very, very sweet.

He pushed aside the scrambling fig, to where Berenice writhed and thrashed in her high-backed rush seat, straining against knots which tightened with every squirm and wriggle. He had made a good choice in Berenice. Plump and rewarding, oh yes. A good choice. That's why he'd come back a second time this morning. Berenice was the best so far.

Donata (he believed that was the last one's name, he couldn't quite remember), but Donata had been, frankly, disappointing in comparison. She had been a virgin and as such hadn't quite known what to expect from a man. Berenice had. She certainly had, and Seth liked that.

'Oh, Hathor. How well you have served your master.'

He picked up the replica mask from the table at which

his servants sat and replaced the cow's head over Donata's bulging, bloodshot eyes rolled up in death. I have chosen well, he thought, because all five of my disciples have chosen what was right. They have walked the True Path of their own accord, and their hearts and mine will weigh light in the Balance.

'I shall stand before Ra with no killing on my hands, no death on my conscience,' he told Berenice. 'The choice is theirs, as it will be yours, my child, now you have my holy seed implanted in your womb. Do you wish to live and face eternal desolation? Or be reborn, a servant of the Dark Destroyer?'

'Mmm, mmmm, mm-mmm!'

Berenice was trying to communicate through her gag. He wondered what she wanted to say. He ran his hands, his magic hands, over her heavy, milk-laden breasts and realised that Berenice was special.

'You have killed your child to serve the Sorcerer,' he whispered, letting his hands work their holy magic on her body. 'Such sacrifice will not be forgotten in the afterlife. You shall be Seth's favourite for all eternity.'

He took her again, harder than before, and as he washed himself afterwards, he counted the places at the Table of the Ten True Gods. The ibis and the falcon, the cat and the cow now waited patiently for eternal resurrection, as well as Isis, who had been the first to take her seat. Which mask should he place on Berenice while she deliberated on her future?

Seth walked along the table, ruffling the feathers of the vulture, drumming on the solid scales of the crocodile. Because Berenice was special, he could not sit the jackal's head on her, the jackal was a scavenger. Perhaps the striking cobra? He looked at his chosen one, his favourite, the blood seeping from where her leather bonds dug in. This was proving a difficult decision, and Seth would have liked more time to make his final choice.

'Mmmmm!'

Of course! Berenice was right, he didn't need to decide now! He could think on the matter and when he came back after nightfall to embalm Donata, he'd be able to take Berenice

again. That would be nice. And then he could tie his special knot and leave her to contemplate her future overnight. Perfect!

He anointed his holy body with the commune unguent which rendered the Master of Darkness invisible among his people and pulled on his neatly folded clothing. Tonight he would have something special to look forward to, but meanwhile, there was work to be done. Seth, in mortal guise, had a position to uphold. He must not neglect his duties, lest someone began to suspect.

Also, he remembered, there was a new arrival to greet this morning. A fifteen-year-old girl, contributing two thousand gold pieces to the Solar Fund.

Seth liked them young.

Installing an indoors bath room, complete with piped water and underfloor heating, had depleted Claudia's inheritance considerably but never once had she regretted it. At times like this (and lord knows, times like this came thick and fast of late!), a long, hot soak in lemon-scented waters, listening to the strumming of a harpist followed by a hired masseuse trouncing the last few knots of stress was all it needed to restore equilibrium. Except today! Claudia waved the musician away, her throat too constricted for words to squeeze past.

Today, time was running out for Junius, the slave boy. Cypassis, her broad feet encased in wooden sandals to prevent them burning on the hot mosaic, clopped around with towels, strigils, scented oils and tweezers, picking up discarded laundry, sweeping up curls which had been snipped by the hairdresser and left where they had fallen, her face puffed and blotchy from crying.

'They'll split us up, madam, I—'

'Cypassis, no one is going to split my household.' Over my dead body! 'How many times do I have to tell you, there's no question of the army carting you away to test your loyalty to the Emperor with hot irons!'

Like dye in water, the idea that they'd be viewed as accomplices to Junius passing himself off as a Roman had spread around the staff, until suddenly the entire contingent expected be dragged off to the arena on Saturday! Even level-headed individuals, such as this big-boned Thessallian maid, had worked themselves up to such a frenzy that the very
least
they expected was a flogging at the post before

being despatched to some new and cruel owner in the darkest corner of the Empire!

'This is the work of the gods,' Cypassis muttered. 'We mortals are being punished—'

'Spare me the superstitious claptrap and fetch my tortoiseshell comb!'

Cypassis made the sign to avert the evil eye before scuttling away, noisily blowing her nose. Divine retribution, indeed! Claudia squeezed her eyes shut and sank below the water line. All because the kitchen hands and gardeners who'd stood watch in the Camensis swore on the lives of their mothers that the ransom chest had been spirited away! Claudia blew bubbles under the water. Did these men not have one brain cell between them? Up she came, spluttering. Even Leonides, her lanky steward, could find no explanation for its disappearance.

'The shrine in the Camensis is circular,' she'd reminded him sharply.

Returning home from the Esquiline, white with Orbilio's plaster dust and covered with nicks from flying chippings, what Claudia had needed most was sleep not a discourse on divine intervention! Her head ached, her eyes pricked, someone had filleted every bone from her body.

'The shrine is open to the elements, apart from a waist-high criss-cross fence, and is approached by six stone steps, which means the far side, where it drops away, stands so high.' She'd indicated her own neck. 'Of the three statues on the podium, we were instructed to leave the chest behind the right-hand figure, and I suppose it did not occur to you to check the far side of the podium?'

'Madam?'

'I'll wager there's a deep impression in the grass where a heavy chest has landed.'

It was a human being, real live flesh and bones, who had visited the wood nymphs' shrine yesterday, not some invisible deity, and who, concealed by the bronze statuary, had hoisted the box over the side. They would have returned under cover of darkness to collect it by sneaking up from the back.

'You were in the Camensis, Leonides. Tell me what you saw.'

'That's the whole point, madam. I saw nothing! No one went near the shrine, only an Egyptian noblewoman and I can personally vouch that hers was a sightseeing trip— Oh. Oh. Oh, I see. That was Flavia, wasn't it?' His face turned ashen and waxy as he saw the auction block beckon and, sensible chap that he was, scurried off to see to madam's bath!

But the soak hadn't helped. Claudia was dizzy now from exhaustion, weak from lack of sleep, but she must press on. Time was trickling away. Too precious to waste. Must keep going.

Cypassis returned with the comb, knocking over a small phial of oil, which shattered on the tessellated floor to release a concoction of seaweedy smells into the steamy atmosphere. Claudia didn't notice. Her mind was reliving the ransom drop in the Camensis. The
bitch!
The scheming, cold-blooded, cold-hearted little bitch. Claudia saw it clearly, as though she'd been there herself: Flavia, disguised as an Egyptian noblewoman; recognising Junius, of course, at once; so greedy to get her claws on two thousand gold pieces, she throws him to the wolves. Time passes. The commotion dies down. Secure in her disguise, Flavia saunters through the Camensis. Up the steps. One-two-three heave. Over the side and thud.

Fancy yourself as an Egyptian, do you? Claudia would be the first to pickle her in natron and inter her mummified remains in a sarcophagus!

She climbed out of the sunken tiled bath. The voluminous linen towel was soft and fragrant, smelling of clove pinks and lavender, but the scent caught in her throat. Already, it was approaching noon. The Games of Apollo were well into their stride and with the morning parade faded to memory, the sacrifice to Apollo would be in full swing. Soon, hundreds of post-processional parties would spring up, discussing how encouraging the auspices had been, how succulent the sacrificial roast and, oh my, did you see that black eye on the senator's wife? Don't tell me she got that shiner tripping over!

The gossip would range from I hear peach blight's pushed up the prices to did you know you can reach Cadiz in under a week these days? Any other time and Claudia would be taking her place at the feasts. With her eagle-eyed bodyguard stationed behind her.