Virgin Territory (34 page)

Orbilio gave a twisted smile. ‘Thanks,’ he said, sinking on to a tree root.

‘My pleasure.’ Truly it was.

The Cilician, still on his knees and badly winded, was wiping blood from his mouth and Claudia tried to ignore the jagged thorns that seemed to be tearing at her stomach. Dammit, why should she feel guilty? Looked at from her point of view, he was new to the staff and within weeks two women lay dead. What was a girl supposed to think?

‘Kleon, where the bloody hell have you been?’ She felt a lot better for snapping at him.

Five-year-old eyes looked out of a twenty-five-year-old face.
‘I…’

Orbilio struggled to his feet. ‘He was acting on my orders,’ he explained. ‘At first I thought I’d contracted a chill, then food poisoning and then I finally realized—’

‘Diomedes was a fully paid-up member of the Hemlock Society.’ Claudia finished it for him.

‘You know?’ He was making a valiant effort not to sway, she noticed. ‘Well, it occurred to me that it was just possible, after what I’d told Lover Boy about me and your inheritance, that he might have fancied a spot of revenge, hence my asking Kleon here to follow him, confident—’ he shot her a sardonic grin—‘Junius was guarding you.’

He untied his belt and offered it to the Cilician, who used it to bind tight the makeshift bandage he’d torn out of Fabius’s tunic.

‘When Kleon reported back to say our doctor friend had hitched a ride aboard a northbound wagon this morning, I came to tell you. Instead I walked into a raging argument between Junius and Cypassis, each blaming the other for your disappearance.’

Fabius’s blood began to seep through the white linen. His face was grey and the bodyguard’s attempts to slap him back to consciousness failed abysmally.

‘How did you find me?’

‘Melinno saw you from his sickbed. That blue stola stood out on the plateau and that was our starting point. It was only when Fabius began bellowing we knew exactly where to aim for.’ He gave his chest a rueful pat. ‘Only Kleon is that bit fitter than me.’

As though to prove the point, Kleon slung the limp form of Eugenius’s favourite grandson over his shoulders as though it was a sack of cabbages and took off in the direction of the villa. He didn’t need to be told Fabius needed medical attention—and quickly.

When they were alone, Orbilio asked, ‘Care to tell me why our friendly centurion chose to use your head as a hammer?’

Claudia crossed her arms as though she was cold. ‘He’d added two with two and made seven.’ She still sounded like a frog with tonsillitis. ‘But I think it goes deeper than that. I think he killed them.’

The policeman’s eyes popped. ‘Sabina and Acte? Croesus, I hadn’t had him pegged for that!’

Me neither, thought Claudia.

Orbilio ran his finger slowly over the hilt of the knife embedded in the beech. ‘Raped his own sister.’ The incredulity in his voice had a slight catch in it.

‘In his defence, he thought she was an imposter.’

Orbilio’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Who didn’t?’ he said, more to himself than to Claudia. There was a long pause, in which you couldn’t fail to notice the pallor of his face, the deeply etched lines, the purple shadows under his eyes.

It came almost as a surprise to hear him ask, ‘How were you planning to get back to Rome?’

‘Syracuse.’ There were always ships in and out of the capital.

‘Fancy a freighter from Fintium? It docks in about—’ his eyes turned up to scan for the sun—‘three hours.’ Damn you, Orbilio. Sometimes a girl could forget you were a policeman with contacts, an aristocrat with connections.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said stiffly.

He laughed. ‘You do that. By the way, I was right about Melinno’s wife. She died of lockjaw. Trouble was, Diomedes guaranteed a cure and Melinno handed over all his savings for what was effectively snakeoil.’

‘Poor chap.’

‘Save your sympathy for the Greek. Melinno’s already itching to follow him.’

She looked him square in the face. ‘I daresay someone mentioned the northbound wagon?’

‘I daresay.’

‘And slipped him enough funds to see him through?’ He grinned. ‘Quite possibly. Listen, I want to be around when Soldier Boy wakes up, hear his side of the story. Coming?’

‘Not yet.’ Claudia tentatively probed the bruises at her throat. ‘There’s someone I want to see first.’

‘Up here?’

‘Up here.’

They stood listening to the sounds of the woodland.

The warbler was still warbling, possibly its very last warble before it moved on to its winter quarters. Or perhaps it was recounting recent events to other birds in the area, the tits and wrens and tree-creepers.

‘Don’t worry about Varius,’ he said eventually, pushing his hair back from his face.

Claudia stiffened. ‘Who’s worried?’

‘Gaius made a will, didn’t he?’

‘You should know, you busted your ballistas in an effort to quash the bloody thing.’ What was so damned funny about that?

‘Exactly.’ His patrician tunic hung even longer without the belt.

‘Am I missing something?’

‘Look around you, Claudia. The beech trees are so densely packed, you can’t see there’s oak and birch and pine in the woodland.’

She made a great show of tucking a runaway curl into place. Dammit, she really was a silly cow! If Flavia couldn’t get her hands on
it…
And suddenly it was obvious. The money was Claudia’s, whether Varius’s claim about being Gaius’s son was true or not. (Which it wasn’t. Her husband’s tastes ran in an entirely different direction.)

‘Write him a nice, polite letter,’ Orbilio was saying. ‘Remind him of your legal rights and I very much doubt he’ll trouble you in the future.’

Varius, you bloodsucking leech, touch me for money again and I’ll chop you into pieces and personally feed them back to you.

Was that polite enough for Supersnoop? She watched his slow and obviously painful progress up the embankment, and it was only when Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was over the rise and out of sight that she whispered, ‘Thank you,’ under her breath.

She looked round the cavernous beechwood. There was nothing left of the magic. No Palace of Midas, no touch of gold, no fantasies, no illusions. Only a knife buried to its hilt and a handful of small, shiny, black, egg-shaped berries scattered underneath.

Claudia bent down to examine them.

And frowned.

XXXI

It was still there, the hut in the hillside. Built of stone and as wide as it was high as it was deep, this dwelling wouldn’t crumble from wind or rockfall or even fire. The surprise came from its being there at all. So strange had been her previous encounter with the huntsman Aristaeus that sometimes Claudia wondered whether she’d dreamed the whole affair, and half of her expected the clearing to be a figment of her imagination, along with the hut and the dogs and the wooden statue of Diana.

Smoke coiled from the hole in the roof. Chieftain and Druid heard her approach and lifted themselves, reluctantly, from their slumbers and dry, sleepy snouts were pressed into her hand. If they caught boar, she mused, it must be because they charmed the miserable buggers to death. She leaned her hand against the door and it swung open, not on a hinge but on a primitive pivot. Claudia accepted the tacit invitation and walked in.

There were two of everything. Two wooden platters, two goblets, two knives set out on the table, two carved chairs drawn up. The fire, a permanent necessity for any isolated, humble dwelling, glowed faintly and gave off very little heat. The chest on the far wall was made of oak, plain and functional. Moreover, it was unlocked.

‘I knew you’d be back.’

The lid crashed down, echoing monstrously in the tiny hut.

‘Oh.’ It seemed woefully inadequate, but it was difficult to know what to say when your hands were full of that person’s shirt.

The heavy frame of the huntsman filled the doorway. The hounds’ wagging tails, their snuffled greetings, belied the silent menace.

And then he grinned. ‘Find anything of interest?’

‘No.’ It was too late for politeness, so she gave him the truth. ‘I didn’t have time.’

The grin creased his face into thick, leathery lines. He shrugged off the quiver of arrows and laid his bow against the wall by the door. Either he’d been unsuccessful or his quarry was too large to bring in. Of course, anything larger than a pheasant probably wouldn’t fit.

‘Sit down.’ It was gruff but well-meaning. He wiped his hands down the sides of his leather leggings and poured beer into the goblets. ‘Hungry?’

‘Famished.’

It was one of life’s revelations. You stare death in the eye and, incredibly, it sharpens the appetite.

‘Do you know what these are?’ She dropped four shiny black berries on to the table.

He gave them barely a glance. ‘Baneberries.’

Not much of a conversationalist, was he? ‘What can you tell me about them?’

‘They smells foul and they’re poisonous.’ He’d drained one goblet and was now dividing his time between sinking a second and cracking eggs, hundreds of them, into a bowl. ‘Drop one down that pretty blue tunic of yours and you’ll never get the stain off.’

‘A black dye, in other words?’

‘Yep.’ He was adding honey and almonds and oil and milk to the eggs.

‘And your spiders’ webs. They don’t all go to Syracuse, do they?’

‘Nope.’

He lifted the pan off the fire and threw in the egg mixture, agitating it with his hunting knife. Funny how, when you don’t have many possessions, the ones you do own become multi-purpose. Claudia laid down her beer and delved into the folds of her gown.

‘Recognize this?’ She laid a garnet ring on the table.

‘Nope.’

‘What about this?’ The second item stopped him in his tracks, but only momentarily.

‘What about it?’ He stirred the eggs.

Claudia tapped her fingernail on the blue glass. ‘Sabina kept her soul in a flagon identical to this.’

You could hear his breathing above the scrape of steel on iron. ‘Where did you get the ring?’ He still didn’t look at her.

‘Syracuse. She gave it to Minerva for safe conduct from Rome.’

Aristaeus laughed, a rich, brown laugh that matched his rich, brown features. ‘Wrong,’ he said. ‘She gave it to Minerva because I told her to.’

Two plates of sweet, scented eggs materialized on the table. Claudia blew on hers to cool it, but Aristaeus shovelled his straight in, confirming his insides were as weatherbeaten as the exterior.

‘How—’

‘Eat your eggs,’ he said. She did, and they were delicious.

Finally, when the plates had been polished by the dogs and the goblets refilled, Aristaeus leaned back in his chair. He was not, she realized now, a day over thirty-five, it was the grey at the temples which made him seem older. That, and the dark brown, outdoor skin.

‘Knew you’d be back,’ he said slowly. ‘I kept the table ready.’

‘This was for me? You couldn’t be certain.’

‘You knows my secret. That’s what brought you up here in the first place, and you ain’t the type to let things rest.’

I knows your secret. Claudia settled her spine against the back of the chair. Do I, Aristaeus? Do I really? She sipped her beer, watching him over the rim of the goblet. ‘I know you taught Sabina to dye her hair with walnut juice.’

His eyebrows arched in surprise, but he merely said, ‘My mother used it.’

It was the day of Sabina’s funeral, when Claudia was in the atrium smoothing the orange bridal veil, that she noticed the roots were a different colour to the rest of her hair. It was virtually all grey, which made her Matidia’s daughter all right. No question of it.

‘And you intercepted the letters.’

‘I bribed the messenger, if that’s what you mean. Gave him meat, which he couldn’t otherwise afford.’

Claudia picked up the ring and examined it. Aristaeus had instructed Sabina to give it to Minerva. Why? And why pick Syracuse? Why not Rome? Then, slowly, the pieces fell into place.

Sabina hadn’t been to Rome.

Yes, she was on the
Furrina,
but now Claudia realized Sabina had been shipped there and, just like cargo, transferred from one boat to another before being ferried back to Syracuse. Lest someone recognize her, she had been under orders not to disembark until the very last moment. Which posed something of a problem. How could she make her offering to Minerva? Hence she had slipped away and had, quite simply, got lost. There was nothing sinister about two wagons converging on a narrow street and the sailors were just sailors, drunk and soft and not really meaning any harm. It was a lark, a prank, which spun out of control.

‘Sabina Collatinus lived with you, didn’t she?’

Aristaeus blinked rapidly. ‘I thought that was why you were here?’

‘One of the reasons,’ she said carefully. ‘Care to tell me how it came about?’

The story was astonishing. Wilder than any theories she’d tried stringing together herself, yet coming from this rough, tough mountain man, it seemed as normal as clipping your toenails or putting the cat out. The sort of thing any decent chap would do, placed in the same position.

Thirty years ago, said Aristaeus, a man called Faustulus was hired by Eugenius Collatinus to escort his six-year-old daughter to Rome where she was to be ordained as a Vestal Virgin. At the time, Collatinus was a prosperous wheat farmer working lands to the east and Faustulus a hunter in the hills above, renowned for his integrity and dependability.