Dream Boat

'So the plan — this kidnap — that was your idea?'

'Reckon it was,' Flea admitted in a tiny voice. 'Will I… will I still be put to the torture?'

Doodlebug began to tug at her skirt, growling and skidding on the polished mosaic.

'Flea.' Claudia felt rotten pressing on. 'A man's life is at stake, I need to find Flavia and I can't believe you don't know where to find her.'

'Well, I don't.' Tough and streetwise, Flea hated the tears which began to fill up her eyes. 'Flavia said she'd come to me, so I told her where I lived, and… well, she'd visit, I suppose you'd call it. See, we got on, Flavia and me.' Her long lashes turned downwards. 'Can't understand that, can yer? Us being friends.'

Oh, but I can. Two lonely misfits and, for one, a burgeoning sexual awakening. 'Did she know you were a girl?' Finding no satisfaction with a lump of old cloth, the puppy turned his attentions to Claudia's sandal.

'Course not!' Flea was horrified. 'But that didn't have nothing to do with it. We just clicked as pals, that's all.'

Maybe to you, but I'll bet my bottom denarius Flavia fancied you something rotten. 'This talk about the brothers of whores-'

'Uh-uh. She didn't talk about them at all. Clammed up tight, she did — mind, once she mentioned something about Westerners. I remember that. Westerners.'

'You mean, people living on the west of the city? The Palatine Hill?'

'I dunno.'

'Did she mean over the river? Come on, Flea, think! Did she talk about Ostia?' That's west of Rome. 'Try to think, please. This is very important.'

'I know it is,' Flea said weakly, 'but she said it was her secret, and I didn't push. Look,' she shifted to stare Claudia squarely in the eye, 'I'm sorry about Junius, I mean that. And I'm sorry I gave Flavia the plan and I'm sorry I delivered the notes and I'm sorry I didn't press her about where she was staying while all this was going on. But you ain't seriously gonna put me to the torture, are you?'

'Actually,' Claudia said, disentangling sharp puppy teeth from her shoe, 'we never were. That was simply a ruse to make you confess!'

And with that she made a fast, strategic exit, leaving the soldier in the vestibule to take the brunt of Flea's foulmouthed curses.

'So?' Orbilio asked, and she could smell his sandalwood. 'Do you have Flavia's address? I've written the letter to the Dungeon Master, all she has to do is swear an oath and — oh. Your expression tells me Flea doesn't know Flavia's whereabouts.'

'This might seem difficult to believe, Marcus Cornelius, but for all her streetwise ways, that girl has been kippered as efficiently as we were.'

Call us a horrible family would you, Flavia, my sweet? Well, brace yourself, kiddo, you ain't seen nothing yet.

To the east, the first faint tinge of pink began to glow in the sky. Hollow-eyed, Orbilio stared up as though mesmerised. 'The army is coming this morning,' he said, and his voice was little more than a rasp. 'Trench-digger types accustomed to siege engines and catapults rather than the delicate task of removing skeletons. They'll destroy any evidence.'

As well as all trace of his innocence.

A blackbird began to let loose its warbling trill, and almost immediately a dozen other birds weighed in with tunes of their own.

Claudia plucked a sprig of lavender and held it up to her nose. 'Then perhaps,' she said, with a sly smile, 'we had better put into practice that old hunting technique of felling two deer with a single spear.'

A quizzical eyebrow rose lazily upwards. 'And how, pray, do you propose to do that?'

'Praying doesn't come into it.' She laughed. 'You can't effect Junius's release, because you're under suspicion of murder, and you will stay under suspicion for as long as the murder remains unsolved. The only solution is to solve the murder ourselves.'

'In three days?'

'Why not?' she asked, kilting up her skirt and marching down the peristyle. 'If we don't want the Catapult Kids trampling the evidence, the only way to preserve it is by tackling the job ourselves. Here!' She tossed him a chisel. 'We've only a few hours to get this wall down.'

'You,' he grinned, chipping away at the cavity, 'are wasted in the wine trade! You're a builder through and through, I've never seen anyone so instantly at home with a hammer.'

'Then you'd better not cross me.' She grinned back. Plaster dust was flying everywhere, and she thought, so this is what he'll look like when he's grey.

'But what about Flavia?' He coughed. 'Shouldn't you at least try to trace her?'

'Later.' Claudia stepped back as the claw on her hammer pulled a large section of wall tumbling into the storeroom. 'After all,' she added cheerfully, 'it's not as though she's in any danger, now is it?'

Chapter Fourteen

Once the High Priest had held up a golden facsimile of the Sacred Feather of Truth and blessed the Boat of the Morning, the worshippers drifted back to their quarters. There they would change into their working clothes, in preparation for the day ahead: some would filter off into the fields, to harvest the beans and the barley. Others would make their way to the threshing floor, the bakery, the brewery, the kitchens. Goats and cows had to be milked, cheese turned, geese fed with grain.

For the man who called himself Seth, it was a simple enough matter to slip away. To climb to his secret cavern in the hill.

Beside the heart-shaped stone, he divested himself of his Egyptian clothing and allowed Ra to rest his warming rays upon his nakedness. Dawn had been sweet this morning, he reflected. Very, very sweet.

He pushed aside the scrambling fig, to where Berenice writhed and thrashed in her high-backed rush seat, straining against knots which tightened with every squirm and wriggle. He had made a good choice in Berenice. Plump and rewarding, oh yes. A good choice. That's why he'd come back a second time this morning. Berenice was the best so far.

Donata (he believed that was the last one's name, he couldn't quite remember), but Donata had been, frankly, disappointing in comparison. She had been a virgin and as such hadn't quite known what to expect from a man. Berenice had. She certainly had, and Seth liked that.

'Oh, Hathor. How well you have served your master.'

He picked up the replica mask from the table at which his servants sat and replaced the cow's head over Donata's bulging, bloodshot eyes rolled up in death. I have chosen well, he thought, because all five of my disciples have chosen what was right. They have walked the True Path of their own accord, and their hearts and mine will weigh light in the Balance.

'I shall stand before Ra with no killing on my hands, no death on my conscience,' he told Berenice. 'The choice is theirs, as it will be yours, my child, now you have my holy seed implanted in your womb. Do you wish to live and face eternal desolation? Or be reborn, a servant of the Dark Destroyer?'

'Mmm, mmmm, mm-mmm!'

Berenice was trying to communicate through her gag. He wondered what she wanted to say. He ran his hands, his magic hands, over her heavy, milk-laden breasts and realised that Berenice was special.

'You have killed your child to serve the Sorcerer,' he whispered, letting his hands work their holy magic on her body. 'Such sacrifice will not be forgotten in the afterlife. You shall be Seth's favourite for all eternity.'

He took her again, harder than before, and as he washed himself afterwards, he counted the places at the Table of the Ten True Gods. The ibis and the falcon, the cat and the cow now waited patiently for eternal resurrection, as well as Isis, who had been the first to take her seat. Which mask should he place on Berenice while she deliberated on her future?