He had already pushed the girl to one side. 'Fetch the physician,' he ordered.
A fine example of patrician tact, Claudia thought, racing behind. Anyone else would have called for the undertaker. Shamshi's soft, girlie voice floated somewhere above her.
Before the sun rises thrice more over our heads, a woman shall die.
Silvia lay on the bed, arms by her side, as though she was sleeping and had thrown back the covers in the night. She wore a nightshift of the palest buttermilk linen, so fine it was transparent, emphasizing the swell of her tiny breasts. Her head was turned sideways, facing the wall, and her honey-coloured hair streamed across the bolster, soft and shining and longer than one might imagine from seeing it curled. Around her throat, like some hideous necklace, hung a string of purple bruises.
'Pass me a mirror,' Marcus said, leaning over. 'Quickly.' Claudia grabbed a polished bronze mirror from Silvia's table and thrust it into his hand. She watched as he turned Silvia's head towards him and held the mirror close to her lips.
So young, she thought. Death had stripped ten years from the Ice Queen. Impossible to believe Silvia had borne three small children. Who, she wondered, would break the news that their mother was dead? Indeed, who would know where to find them?
Three murders on top of an uprising and piracy, Orbilio would have enough on his plate here. Right about now, the freighter would be weighing anchor, hoisting her red and white striped mainsail as she set off back for Rome, but no matter. There was still Plan B in reserve. Namely, Junius rowing his mistress across to the mainland just as quickly as she could give Supersnoop here the slip.
'Mother of Tarquin,' Marcus breathed. 'She's alive!'
The mirror clattered to the floor as he pressed his mouth to Silvia's, forcing life from his lips into hers. Claudia wondered why the sight of it should bring such a sharp pain to her chest. Five, six, seven times the needle jabbed before Silvia's eyelids fluttered open.
'M-Marcus!'
'Don't try to speak,' he said, trickling water a few drops at a time down Silvia's throat.
A colourless hand closed over his wrist. 'You — saved my life.'
'I can't take the credit for that,' he said gently. 'I merely speeded up the recovery process.' He pulled up the bedsheet to cover the transparent nightshift, smoothed the crumples on the counterpane, brushed a strand of hair from her eyes.
'Thank you.'
'Hey!' He wagged a finger in mock anger. 'Doctor Orbilio expressly ordered his patient not to talk, remember? And when she does, he confidently expects her first words to be the name of the man who did this.'
With trembling fingers, Silvia explored the bruising on her throat. 'Don't — know,' she rasped. 'Dark. I was asleep.' Tears filled her big blue eyes. 'Thought I was — going to — die.'
Orbilio said nothing, but then what could he say?
That was what her attacker had expected, too.
Twenty-Seven
The demon did not need to look in any polished bronze mirror to know that its reflection was perfect. In any case, it had transcended the physical plane, the body was merely a vessel. One to be cherished and admired, admittedly. But a vessel nonetheless. A receptacle for the knowledge which had been handed down through the centuries and which had travelled the world as Medea had travelled the world, and Circe's sons by Odysseus had travelled the world, spreading their seed across all the lands and the islands.
And now the knowledge had come home. Back to where it belonged, in Illyria, on this magnificent Island of the Dawn.
The demon sighed with contentment. Its ancestors had been two beautiful, clever, manipulative women whose power lay in their ability to make people trust them. Only too late did their victims realize Medea and her aunt were capable of treachery, betrayal, murder — and much worse.
The demon toasted their memory with wine.
Twenty-Eight
With thiss libation, I pray and beseech thee that thou mayest look propitiously upon thiss house.'
Dressed in flowing white robes, Llagos dribbled wine over the threshold to appease the gods who guarded the entrance. The whole estate staff, even the children, were congregated in the yard outside the atrium, but only Marcus, as chief mourner and next of kin, and Llagos stood on the portico.
'That thou preserveth those who enter here' — the priest sprinkled salt on the stone still darkly ingrained with Leo's blood — 'and those who leave.'
Claudia thought back to the moment when, in her haste and panic, she mistook Marcus for his cousin. Was it any wonder, seeing the place where Leo's life had oozed into oblivion, that she'd mistaken him for one of the Lemures? Those lost, lonely spirits left wandering the earth unable to comprehend their untimely deaths? Now, as the priest wafted incense over the cedar-wood doors, a rock lodged in the base of her throat. Was any death more untimely than Leo's? To die young is bad enough. To die alone and in unspeakable agony — she swallowed, but the rock would not budge. Such hate, she thought. Such unimaginable spite. Standing on the spot where he died, she could feel its malevolence. The hairs prickled on the back of her scalp. Gooseflesh covered her skin. She shuddered, but the cold hand of evil could not be shrugged off.
'Ye gods of the threshold, accept thee thiss sacrifice for the outrage that hass been committed.' Llagos beckoned forward one of the temple acolytes holding a white sheep by one of its gilded and beribboned horns. 'Take the life of thiss animal — ' he paused while the acolyte stunned it with a hammer '- let its strength be thy strength' — a sharp knife slit its comatose throat — 'and mayest thou receive the power from the sacrifice to protect thiss house once again.'
Without trumpets on hand to drive away evil spirits, Cressia's squint-eyed miller blew into a pair of pipes fashioned from ash wood, coaxing unearthly shrieks from a sheepskin bag as he pumped. A stranger could be forgiven for thinking the sheep wasn't dead and the miller was intent on strangling it slowly to death, but when it came to dispelling spirits, the bagpipes shred them to pieces. Good and bad.
As the screeching died away, the butchered joints were roasted upon the open fire in the courtyard. Shamshi had taken away the soft internal organs, muttering to himself in Persian as he pored over heart, lungs and liver while Saunio's BYMs hugged one another and wailed like cats in a mincer.
Claudia's gaze swivelled to her left. To Lydia and Silvia, standing together, one as fair and petite as the other was dark and tall. Neither had spoken. Neither had shed a tear. Silvia had pinned a scarf across her neck to hide the bruises and when, on the odd occasion, she glanced at her sister, it was to flash her a look straight from the Arctic. Watching the Ice Queen, fists clenched, shoulders rigid, one might almost think Silvia hated her sister.
Lydia's spine was equally determined, her fists equally tight, but not out of grief, and not out of animosity or spite either. Indeed, pride seemed to be the overriding impression. There was a bloom to her skin, a glow to her face and for a woman discarded by her husband, abandoned by her lover and then left widowed without a penny, Lydia looked pretty damn radiant.
'Let us eat,' Llagos said, descending the steps to hand round platters of crisp roasted lamb.
Leo's voice echoed back. You must try our local mutton. The salty grass and diet of wild herbs gives it a magnificent flavour. Maybe. But Claudia could not force a single mouthful of lamb past her lips.
'What's that?' she asked Llagos, pointing to a thick white slime on the doorpost. Already the salt was starting to bleach out the bloodstains on the white stone step below.
'Wolf's fat,' the priest said proudly. 'For Roman ways, iss used in marriages, yess? But on Cressia, iss protection against sorcery. We hef no wolfs left on the island so iss very precious commodity, but iss much needed right now.' in what way?'