'Where the hell are the builders?' he roared. This dry weather won't hold for ever, I've got rafters, tiles, wooden panels piled up round my garden, where have the lazy sods sloped off to?
'I sent them away,' Tingi said, 'because, look!' He led the way over the rubble in the storeroom and pointed to the far wall.
That shouldn't still be standing, for a start! Orbilio fumed. What are the silly buggers playing at? Then he followed the ashen glance of his steward. 'Shit!' He clambered over the rubble, skinning his knuckles and shins as he slipped on the stones. 'Holy bloody shit.' With his bare hands, he pulled at the plaster, enlarging the gap begun by the demolition men.
'As soon as I realised, I ordered work to stop,' Tingi was saying, but Marcus didn't hear. His head was spinning.
He had wanted a reason to abandon the Roll of Honour, hadn't he? Well, he'd certainly got one now! Wiping his mouth, he peered again into the cavity.
At the human skeleton walled up inside his plaster.
Chapter Seven
The old hag and her granddaughter pushed their way through the crowd. 'Alms,' the old woman croaked. 'Alms for a poor starving widow.'
'Sod off,' said the fishmonger.
'Get lost,' snapped the basket weaver.
'We don't want your sort round here,' growled the moneychangers, goldsmiths and bards.
Bent-backed and with her moth-eaten shawl low over her face, the old crone shuffled on down the street, her stick clacking over the cobblestones. 'Alms,' she cried. 'Alms for a blind, starving widow.'
'Piss off,' the shopkeepers jeered.
And so the poor old dame was bulldozed further and further down the hill, every man, woman and child repelled as much by the sewn-down eye socket as the rags which hung limp on her body.
'Get out of here, you old hag!'
'You're putting my customers off, move along!'
Finally there was nowhere else to go. No one left to turn to. Exhausted by the heat and the jostling, the constant hammering of wheelwrights and the whirr of carpenters' drills, the sorry pair turned into the wooded grove protected by the sprites of the spring.
'I don't see why you had to lug me along!'
'Want doesn't come into it,' Claudia snapped. 'You owe me some answers, and you can start by giving your name.' 'They call me Flea.'
Don't ask, Claudia. Just don't ask.
'Dunno why you had to throw me in the bloody bath first, either.' Flea sniffed. 'Scrubbed up, I look like a bleeding girl.'
'I hate to be the one who breaks the bad news,' Claudia replied, 'but Flea, you are a girl.' Already, the shackles keeping them together were beginning to chafe. And that damned eye patch was itching like hell!
'Yeah, well I live on the streets, remember? As long as they believe I'm another bloke, I'm safe.'
'Really?' The old woman jerked her granddaughter against a sycamore trunk. 'Next time you're nabbed, you imagine it'll be another woman who accidentally exposes your breasts down some dark, lonely lane?'
'I can handle trouble.'
Claudia thought of the knife, and wondered whether Flea was deluding herself or whether this was merely bluster. 'All right. This man, whose purse-strings you've just cut. You think he'll let you go with a stern word of caution once your bountiful secrets are in the open? Grow up, Flea! We're talking rape!' A foul, degrading, painful violation, which will leave you scarred inside and out — trust me, girl, I know. 'Or do you imagine boys have bouncy bits on their chests, too?'
'I bandage 'em flat,' Flea retorted. 'I ain't bloody stupid.'
'Anyone who steals for a living is stupid — and spare me the hard-done-by expression, please. Mine wasn't the first bangle you purloined.'
'Ain't nothing wrong with thieving. I don't take from those what can't afford it, and it beats whoring any day.'
'There are alternative professions.'
'Not where I come from.' Flea sneered. 'You see 'em every day — pimps, ponces — prowling round the gutters in search of fresh brothelmeat to hawk. Well, you won't catch me selling me body to some greasy Sarmatian or letting some filthy pervert use me as his experiment!'
'And pretty boys are of no interest to these pimps?'
Flea's eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'You been there, have yer?' Her jaw dropped. The ghetto leave traces for those who know where to look. 'You have! You bloody have, an' all!'
'Me?' Claudia stuck out her tongue. 'My dear child, the imprint's still visible from the good old silver spoon.'
Flea's reply was nothing if not succinct.
The Camensis was quiet in the postprandial heat, only the odd sunbather, two slaves walking their masters' dogs, a blacksmith snatching a late lunch. Down by the spring, children watched by a laughing nursemaid squealed and splashed naked in the water margins, throwing bulrush javelins, while a middle-aged caulker, still in his pitch-covered apron, sobbed his heart out against the side wall of the shrine. A dearth, however, of young bucks cavorting with strumpets.
'You just leave me alone, will ya.' Flea wriggled and squirmed, but the manacles refused to slide past her wrist. 'Mind yer own bleeding business for a change.'
'Very well.' The old woman pointed a shaky stick to the shade of an oak. 'Let's sit there and talk about my business. One. You delivered the ransom note to Julia's house. Two-'
'I explained that, right? Some geezer slipped me twenty-five sesterces-'
'A chap you'd never seen before. Yes, you said. And when Junius ran you to ground, how strange you didn't have them on you, or stashed away in that rat-hole you call home.'
Flea side-stepped a pile of steaming horse manure. 'I told you that, as well. I'd spent 'em.'
'On what? Fancy clothes and fripperies? An alabaster lamp? A feather mattress?' The girl was lying through her pretty straight white teeth. 'Then, of course, you ran away.' Not just scampered down the street, either. This wretch flew off as though her heels were on fire!
'So? The bloke who paid me said, hand over that note and scarper. So I scarpered.'
'Olympic athletes rarely find that pace.'
'Hey,' Flea whined. 'I'd have told you if I knew the geezer — honest. Same as I don't know nothing about no kidnap, either.'
Ah, but you do, my parasitic friend. You know much more than you're letting on. What remains to be established, however, is just how much you're aware of, because it's possible someone is using you without you realising it. Unfortunately, the trouble with streetwise kids like Flea is that their trust can't be hurried. Like hunting tigers in the jungle, it requires patience, bait and cunning before you can to lure them into an admission. Interrogating Flea would not be simple. Or quick!
'Suppose the bloke what paid me comes to collect the ransom and sees me sitting here?' Flea tipped her head on one side. 'He'll think I'm a nark, my life won't be worth shit.'
Sorry, love. You haven't got the hang of manipulating people, have you? Keep trying, though. You're learning every day.
'Since you didn't recognise your own reflection after the bath,' Claudia said pointedly, 'it's doubtful your benefactor would.'
Amazing what a drop or two of water can achieve. Matted straw had been converted into burnished tawny tresses, ingrained grime had given way to clear, soft skin — although Flea's reaction had been blunt to say the least. She'd hurled a marble bust into the mirror!
Dammit, what was Junius playing at? Bent over her walking stick and dragging an unwilling Flea alongside, Claudia began to criss-cross the Camensis in a systematic sweep. That old man snoring open-mouthed under a poplar. Could that be one of the gang in disguise? A dribble of spittle oozing down his beard quickly ruled him out. What about those two scribes, comparing notes on the steps of the shrine?