'As I thought, Berenice, the problem is your milk.' With each caress, the cow's breathing became heavier, turning into fast, rasping snorts. 'Give this,' Hathor said eventually, 'to your baby.' A small phial appeared from the folds of the loose metallic gown and was placed softly on the table. 'When he falls asleep, take him to the gates of the temple and leave him in his cradle.'
Berenice wanted to cry in gratitude, but no tears, no words would come.
'Providing you do as I say, Berenice, your son shall live.'
The girl closed her eyes as the healing hands of Hathor squeezed the poison from her breasts.
'When Ra brings the Kiss of Dawn to the valley, so shall he breathe the Kiss of Recovery on your son, but only — only Berenice! — if you lay this sacred amulet on the heart-shaped stone at the precise moment he turns his light upon your child. Will you do this, Berenice?'
I will, she said inside her head, gazing with adoration at the pebble which, when one came to look carefully, looked just like any other little pebble. Who would imagine it held such strong healing powers? Silently, she repeated the directions. Twisted chestnut, blah-blah-blah, heart-shaped stone. I've got it. The directions are etched in my brain. Hathor swirled away into the night and Berenice, naked and cleansed, sighed contentedly. Oh, praise be to Ra! Surely I shall worship him all the days of my life!
Chapter Thirteen
Claudia sat on the pile of rubble in Orbilio's half-demolished storeroom and rubbed at the pain which throbbed in her temples. Like an invisible demon, the breeze from the marshes picked up splutters of sulphur from the torch, added to them the dry dust of cement and stirred the whole lot around to make a sticky, foul, unbreathable porridge called air.
Face facts, Claudia. You're staring defeat in the whites of its eyes.
In a few, very short hours, eight days of Games to honour Apollo will kick off with a procession from the Capitol, with people lining the streets, dancing, singing, everyone wearing floral garlands. The parade will then end at the Circus Maximus under the Palatine and, to a hymn accompanied by sacred flutes, an ox, a cow and two white goats will lay down their lives to Apollo, their horns gilded and beribboned, while banners hang from every balcony and roof. Claudia had organised kingfisher blue for hers, hundreds of them, streaming from the window sills and gutterspouts, draped around the thresholds front and back, and Junius, goddammit, would not live to see one of them!
'I don't understand,' she said, as the pain in her forehead intensified. 'How can Flavia be innocent in law, when there's no question that she set up this abduction?'
Orbilio perched on the pile of bricks beside her. 'People can't kidnap themselves,' he said wryly. 'The most she could face is conspiracy to defraud, but you said yourself, there were only rocks in the box and, before you say anything you might regret, Mistress Seferius, don't forget the goldsmith's a witness. No modifications to your testimony acceptable!' He shifted uncomfortably on the rubble. 'Therefore, since no monies have passed hands, no crime has been committed.'
Bitch! Claudia chewed her lower lip. Of course, if Flavia hadn't actually collected the ransom, there was still time for a switch… oh, don't be stupid! The chances of Flavia leaving two thousand gold pieces lying untouched in the Camensis was about as likely as this skeleton dancing off into the dawn!
'It's bloody unfair!' she said, spiking her hair. She knew that, at that moment, she would not have trusted herself with Flavia, fifteen years old or not. 'She walks away scot-free, while Junius gets to face a starving leopard.'
And the only man who is in a position to flex both family and official muscles to secure the young Gaul's release is under house arrest for a crime he didn't commit!
Despair shuffled that bit closer. She could smell its foetid breath.
Orbilio rubbed his jaw and began to pace the room. 'There might be a way round this,' he said slowly. 'Were Flavia, for instance, to swear to the Dungeon Master — on Jupiter's oath, naturally — that Junius was no slave but her ex-lover, the son of a Parisian horse breeder, say, who'd jilted her and that she'd sought revenge, and providing I sent a letter backing this up, it won't matter whether the Dungeon Master believes it or not. An oath is an oath, he'll be forced to act on it.'
Claudia felt the room spin. No food and no sleep on top of this cloying heat, what else could it be? Surely not a reaction, because he — Mister Honest and Upright himself — was prepared to compromise his position by lying?
'When I get my hands on that girl,' she said, 'I'm going to skin her alive and make books of her hide, then I'm going boil her flesh in vinegar and pickle her miserable bones in brine.' Claudia bounced up off the demolition heap and kicked the plaster wall. 'After she's sworn her oath, though, so Junius can help with the pickling.' By the gaping cavity, she paused. 'There is a stumbling block to your master plan.'
Life is never a straight road, is it? More crazy paving, and worse, you have to lay it yourself!
'We have no idea where the scheming bitch is holing up.' By all that is holy, Flavia, you will pay for this.
'I presume you've questioned the parasite?'
'Flea?' Claudia snorted derisorily. 'That girl is tighter than a clam!'
'Then,' he grinned, 'perhaps you need a bigger hammer to crack that tough nut's shell. Walk this way, madam, if you please.'
In the atrium, Flea lay fast asleep on the floor, her manacled hand hanging limp from the wrought-iron bench leg, her face looking cherubic and heart-wrenchingly young. Across her lap, Doodlebug lay sprawled, his four paws facing different directions with Flea's free hand supporting his head. Something constricted in Claudia's stomach as she watched their ribcages rise and fall in unison.
'Leave this to me,' Orbilio whispered. 'I'll join you in the garden in fifteen minutes.'
Fifteen minutes? Fifteen years and you still won't reach the truth, she thought, but the garden was peaceful and the honeysuckle was sweet… and the legionary almost invisible.
The quarter hour had not passed before Orbilio came bouncing out to join her. 'Faced with being put to the torture by men who have never clapped eyes on a virgin not previously made of marble, Flea has miraculously turned into a linnet,' he said. 'Why don't you go and hear the birdie sing?'
Claudia looked up at the night sky, to where stars were hidden by a blanket of fug, and wondered how the Security Police would ever hope to manage without him.
Indoors, a very different scene greeted her eyes. Doodlebug had woken up, full of beans and in the sure knowledge that he was everyone's friend and that they wanted to play with him. Flea still looked hauntingly young, but hers was no longer the peaceful, pretty face of a few minutes before. Oh, sweet Janus, what's in your past? What horrors have you lived through?
'All right, this is the truth, I swear it!' and if Flea, that moment, had claimed she was the mother of Helen of Troy, Claudia would have believed her. This girl's emotions were pared to the bone. 'I met her a week ago, right? Flavia was sitting on the steps of the Temple of Luna and sobbing her little heart out and, I dunno why, but I just felt sorry for the poor cow.'
I can tell you why. You're nowhere near as tough as you like to make out, my girl!
'Flavia, see, was going on about how unhappy she was, how she'd seen a chance to break free from her horrible family — ' Flea flicked an apologetic glance at Claudia, then grinned to see that no offence was taken. 'Anyway, the gist of it was, she couldn't leave. Not without money, any road.' Absently, she tickled Doodlebug's floppy, daft ears. 'Gold was the actual word,' Flea said. 'She needed gold, she said, for the brothers of whores.'
'For what? Flea, if you're winding me up-'
'I ain't, honest I ain't. The brothers of whores,' she insisted, and her luminous green eyes shone with the truth. 'I swear I dunno what she meant by that, it weren't my business to ask and I didn't much care, but I told her, I'll give you a plan to raise the money you need and then, if it works, you give me ten of them gold pieces and she said, it's a deal.'