Virgin Territory (27 page)

She had taken so long in answering Linus that he was guiding his horse on a vociferous celebratory canter round the wagon, much to the driver’s annoyance. It was getting his mules’ rag up and, as we all know, when it comes to mules, rags don’t have very far to travel.

‘You’re talking about Utti, I presume?’

Linus seemed to have lost interest in Claudia and was asking Marcus whether he fancied coming to the pothouse tonight. Orbilio, she noticed, was trying to speak with his eyes to Claudia while answering with his mouth to Linus. Neither communication seemed to be getting through.

‘Giddy-up,’ she told the driver, squeezing herself between him and Junius, ‘let’s get these nags some hay.’ Linus was whistling, at least she presumed that’s what it was meant to be, as he wheeled his horse round. ‘Race you back, Marcus.’

Orbilio hadn’t moved. His gaze was directed straight at her now. Claudia felt a blast of cold, intuitive air. It wasn’t Utti at all. Holy Mars, they’d collared Diomedes! You bastard, she thought. You cold-blooded, calculating bastard. False imprisonment for a physician would ruin his career, he’d be begging on the streets within a year. Eugenius would turn him out, innocent or not, because mud sticks, even when you spread it yourself. And Supersnoop had let him do it. Correction, Supersnoop had actively encouraged it.

His gaze didn’t waver, neither did hers. An innocent man arrested for murder, because you see the doors of the Senate House opening in front of you. An innocent man ruined, because you can’t see beyond your own filthy ambitions.

As Linus galloped off, Claudia’s eyes ground into Orbilio’s. Well, if you can’t do your damned job, then I’ll bloody well do it for you. I’ll catch this pervert, Marcus Cornelius, and I’ll do it the only way I know how. I’ll set myself up as bait. I’ll have you looking so small, they’ll have to pick you up with tweezers. He inched his horse forward. ‘I’m sorry—’ he began.

By rights, ice should have formed on his eyelashes, snow should have fallen on his brow. Claudia’s glacial expression didn’t waver. This man didn’t know what sorry was. Yet!

His face was lined and drawn, his mouth pursed. The twinkle in his eye was reduced to a glint of pain. A stone mallet thudded into Claudia’s stomach. Oh no. Oh no, please, no…

‘What have you done to Diomedes?’ she asked stiffly.

His expression flickered. ‘Who?’

‘What?’ She was puzzled, too. ‘I’m asking what’s happened to Diomedes.’

Orbilio’s expression changed several times then hardened. He squared his shoulders before speaking. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in a voice generally reserved for superior officers and inferior lowlife. ‘I thought you were interested in Utti.’

‘Utti?’ Tanaquil darted over and placed a hand on his knee. There was, Claudia noticed, no tunic covering that particular area of knee. ‘What about him?’

Orbilio covered her hand with his own, and Claudia felt a pang of something she couldn’t identify.

‘They’ve arrested him, haven’t they?’ Tanaquil made to run off, but Orbilio leaned down from his horse and held her back.

‘It’s worse than that,’ he said gently. ‘I am so sorry, Tanaquil.’ His face was twisted with pain. ‘Collatinus has impaled him.’

XXVI

Claudia did not know where to direct her anger.

From a hundred miles away she heard Tanaquil ask, ‘When?’ and Orbilio reply, ‘Yesterday, at dusk,’ then the sickening reality set in.

Utti. Impaled on a stake. A big man, a tough man, a fighter. Utti, who for those very reasons would have taken hours and hours to die. She imagined the scene, scores of slaves crowding round.
Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet
? Utti, the wrestler, with his great ham fists and his flattened nose and his cauliflower ears. Utti, the children’s favourite. Utti, impaled on a stake, roaring like a wounded bear, crying like the baby he really was. Alone. Frightened. Unable to comprehend.

Orbilio had dismounted and was doing his best to comfort Tanaquil, who stood as stiff and motionless as a statue. Junius, Kleon, the driver—everyone was open-mouthed and silent.

Claudia leaned against the great wheel of the wagon and was quietly, tidily, efficiently sick. Then, when the shaking subsided, the anger began to grow, intensifying, magnifying, getting hotter and hotter with each passing second until the volcano could contain it no longer.

She wanted to slap Tanaquil, tell her this was
her
fault, her stupid scams, her stupid brother, couldn’t she see where it would lead?

She wanted to pound her fists into Orbilio, tell him this was
his
fault, if he’d done his job properly, Utti would be alive and well and so what if it meant living in poverty, at least he’d be alive.

She wanted to shake Eugenius until his eyes rattled, tell him this was
his
fault, he should have consulted the magistrates, followed proper legal procedures instead of jumping to half-baked conclusions.

She wanted to scream at Aulus, Fabius, Linus, Portius, tell them this was
their
fault, why didn’t they challenge the old man for once, stuff the law which demands a father’s orders be obeyed, even at the expense of an innocent man.

But most of all, Claudia wanted to claw her fingernails down her arms and draw blood, to watch it drip into the dusty soil and turn brown and harden. This was not her fault, yet she could not rid herself of the guilt.

Before she even realized it, she was slithering down the slope towards the villa. Somewhere in the area—maybe in Fintium, maybe in Sullium—lived a man. A man who killed defenceless women, raping them while they lay paralysed, their lungs unable to supply the air they needed to breathe. A slow, agonizing death. The same man who now thought he had got away with it.

Well, he hadn’t. Not by a long chalk.

There was only the porter at the front gate, and Cerberus who came loping up, wagging his tail, straining on his chain to greet her. Claudia paused to rub his ears and pat his neck. It was sufficient time for Junius to catch up.

‘I didn’t realize you’d gone, madam.’ The words came out stilted because he was out of breath. Sweat poured down his forehead.

Claudia couldn’t speak, even if she wanted to. She wondered whether her face was as pale and pinched as his.

‘May I make a suggestion?’ Junius? Making a suggestion? Well, why not? ‘That you wait a bit before tackling Master Eugenius?’

She gave him a look that told him it was none of his business, but the young Gaul stared so earnestly that it clicked her brain back into action. And Claudia Seferius knew better than most that to succeed in this life, you follow the head, not the heart. And that sometimes it was hard.

She laid her hand on his arm and squeezed gently and didn’t speak. He was right. She had to separate grief from outrage and, to be in any way effective, to channel her anger in the right direction. Towards the man responsible for murdering Acte and Sabina.

It did not occur to her to ask the boy how he knew she intended to confront Collatinus.

*

You’d think nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. Slaves with buckets scrubbed the floors, polished the statues, dusted the tables, chairs and couches. A smell of sprats and cabbage and poached plums filtered through from the kitchen, and someone was singing a song to which Claudia sang different words. Marius and Paulus lay flat on their stomachs, prodding a wooden boat back and forth across the pool. Vilbia sat, tongue between her teeth in concentration, playing with her favourite knitted doll.

Claudia crossed to the garden, alive with the crunch of sand against stone as paths were swept, laurels were clipped and plants were watered. Eugenius’s room was at the far end, but before she could reach it, a blond figure intercepted.

‘Claudia!’ He was slightly out of breath, his hands hidden in an unsightly lump beneath his pallium. ‘You look as ravishing as ever.’

It was true. Between them, Claudia’s make-up box and her natural instinct to hide her emotions had veiled every trace of the turmoil within.

‘I…’
The beguiling accent hesitated. ‘I have something for you. A gift.’

From his pallium he revealed his secret. Claudia blinked several times.

‘Why, um, thank you.’
A pigeon?
‘Diomedes, that
is…
Well, what I mean to say is…
’
She gave what she hoped was a light, silvery laugh as he pressed the fluttering bird into her hands. ‘You’ve no idea how much this means to me.’

‘Really?’ His cheeks flushed.

‘Oh yes. Really. I
shall…
treasure it. Always.’ Dammit, the bloody thing was already pecking her finger, but Diomedes looked so happy it seemed churlish to throw it back at him.

To her infinite relief he said, ‘I must go now,’ and his eyes, surprisingly, were moist.

Claudia’s smile was both practised and perfect, and the instant his back was turned, she stuffed the pigeon into the hands of the slave collecting the clippings. If it was going to poop, let it poop on someone else. She shook her stola, mint green and flattering, leaving a sprinkle of white feathers in her wake. She did not wait for Eugenius to reply to her knock.

‘Welcome back, my dear.’ The old man sat in his chair behind a desk, papers spread in front of him. Dexippus sat to his right, Fabius and Linus stood before him. ‘Enjoy the celebrations?’

For one absurd moment she thought he was referring to Utti, then remembered the festivities in Agrigentum in honour of some local deity whose name began with a K or an F or something, and which seemed years away, rather than hours.

‘Splendid.’ He hadn’t waited for an answer, the response was automatic.

A small shiver ran through Claudia as her senses sharpened and her brain clicked up a gear. She was about to witness the real Eugenius in action. Not the sanitized version he had allowed her to see up till now, the old-man-reminiscing version, the old-man-with-his-family version, which, whilst not actually exuding warmth and affection, was not cold or wooden either. No, the gloves were off and the self-same instincts that fired the inveterate gambler in Claudia were aroused. Her heart beat just that little bit faster, her eyes were just that little bit sharper, her mouth just that little bit drier.

Eugenius started laying into Linus, leaving Claudia with a sackful of mixed feelings. It was unquestionably satisfying, watching him wither and wilt under the onslaught, shrinking with each verbal missile, but Linus was not the type to let it rest. He would vent his anger and frustration later. On his wife.

‘How many times have I told you, you fathead, I don’t want cattle on my farm. I’m a sheep farmer, not a bloody cow man.’

‘But—’

‘Those brutes are neither use nor ornament. How much did you pay for them?’

‘About—’

‘You were ripped off. The buggers are too old to breed, and if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, good cattle have thick necks. Janus, I could wring one of those in my own puny fist!’

‘I wanted—’

‘Get out.’

Linus opened his mouth.

‘I said, get out!’

Linus’s face was dark with indignation, but Claudia noticed the door closed quietly on its hinges. Dexippus’s thick lips smirked openly as Eugenius turned his attentions to his favourite.

‘And you, boy, I expected better things from you.’ Fabius had drawn himself up to his full height, shoulders back, staring straight ahead, two decades of army training standing him in good stead.

‘Yessir.’

‘White rams, I said, and what do you bring me? White rams with—what, boy?’

‘Black tongues, sir.’

‘What did I tell you about black-tongued rams?’

‘They breed black-spotted lambs.’

‘And do I want black-spotted lambs?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then get rid of them.’

‘Yessir.’

That was Fabius for you. Nerves of steel and a brain to match. It was interesting, she thought, as he reached the door in three long strides, to see the sprig of bay clipped to his tunic. She had learned much from her father, the army orderly. Admittedly he wasn’t home very often, but you picked up a lot in the short time he was there. Like, for instance, how soldiers wore bay to sanctify them from the blood they had spilled…

Her mind was busy digesting this when Eugenius rounded on his secretary. ‘And you, you idle oaf, get off your fat arse and chase up that bitumen shipment. You know damned well I can’t dip my sheep until it arrives.’

‘I checked yesterday, Master.’

‘It should have been here yesterday, you dithering fool, now get out there and see what’s holding it up.’

The smirk on Dexippus’s face had given way to an expression dripping with obsequiousness. ‘I’ll see to it straight away, Master. You can rely on me, Master.’

He backed out of the door, and Eugenius swept the papers on his desk onto the floor with a backward flip of the hand.

‘Where’s Acte?’

The question startled her. ‘She’s er—’

‘Dammit, I don’t know what she’s up to lately, didn’t even bother to bring me my breakfast this morning. Have you signed that contract yet?’

Claudia felt she was walking on quicksand. ‘Contract?’ She was stalling and he knew it.

‘You know damn fine what I’m talking about, young lady, and I want to know when—’

He stopped, realizing that he was in danger of overstepping the mark. This was the very reason he hadn’t shown his true colours before, and he wouldn’t risk spoiling his chances now.