The knot inside tightened. She could not even pin this one on Flavia! True, the wretched girl had set the train in motion with her phoney kidnap and her demands, but it was Claudia who had given her bodyguard his orders. It was she who shouldered the blame. He was a slave, a Gaul, a foreigner, with no option but to do as he was commanded by his mistress. Claudia's eyes misted. She'd lost count of the times Junius's pained look of protest had returned to haunt her.
'Madam! I'm a slave! If I'm caught wearing the toga…' She remembered laying down that bowl of dates, fresh and sticky from their oasis homeland, and suggesting Junius consider the matter from a counter position.
'Not what might happen if you're caught. What I'll do to you if you don't.'
The threat had been issued light-heartedly and Junius, used to her ways, would have taken it as such.
Junius.
She would never nibble another date again! The very thought made her stomach heave.
How old was he? Twenty? Twenty-one? He'd hardly lived! He should be looking towards raising a family, to rafting his way through the white waters of life. He did not deserve to die because he'd been found draped in a piece of white wool. He did not deserve to die simply because some silly bitch told him to wear it.
Intense blue eyes swam before her, the sandy coloured hair, strong hands which hovered like hawks over his dagger. Oh, shit…
He's not going to die, stop thinking like that. You can save him. Find Flavia, get that oath sworn.
You can.
You can save him. There's still time… just.
Around her, the commune laughed and babbled and acted as though this was another normal day. Better than a normal day, in fact, because this was the first day of Ibis, a day for rejoicing. A holiday. Sacrifices, hymns, dancing and music, wrestling, feasting and fun. Bitterness rose in Claudia's throat. These people, jigging around in their festive wigs and blue scarab amulets, were not touched by tragedy, impending or otherwise. Misfortune was a thing of the past, because in this valley life was fresh and new and you didn't have to watch ageing parents die a painful, lingering death or worry about unfaithful spouses, wayward kids, politics, jobs, the threat of war. Moneylenders, debt collectors, robbers, muggers might as well belong to another world, strange and mythical creatures with horns, wings and claws — for Mentu's cult members had left their financial burdens behind at the gate.
Someone else had taken over their problems. Someone else was in control of their lives. Here existed only a simple pecking order, safe boundaries behind which they could hide. These people — these happy, clapping, dancing people — had relinquished reality along with their responsibilities. Nothing could shock them. Nothing could touch on a nerve. They had abdicated. Real life no longer happened.
But you can't leave behind your own shortcomings.
Look at them! Dressed up in their best bib and tucker, in thick plaited wigs which had been handed out for the occasion, every one identical, irrespective of the wearer's sex. Women gyrated, in sharply pleated shifts with straps which passed over their shoulders, garlands round their necks and kohl around their eyes, with men who wore white ankle-length kilts fastened with a broad sash round the waist. They couldn't give a toss whether their brothers or sisters were sick or miserable, how their pet rabbit was faring, whether Cousin Lucia had bowed to pressure from her family to marry that gap-toothed old widower, or found happiness with the man she loved.
And suddenly Claudia realised they were not harmless, gormless Pyramidiots buffered by the rigid conformity of commune life. These were hard, self-centred, selfish scum who'd absconded with the family silver and — like Flavia — had thought only of themselves, and to buggery with everyone else. They could not be touched, because they were incapable of making deep emotional attachments for the simple reason that they did not have the equipment in the first place. These miserable sons of bitches damned well deserved each other and Mentu — may the gods smile on him — was welcome to feast off their selfish inadequacies.
She hauled off the heavy, black wig, running the myriad plaits between her fingers. Reality would catch up with them soon enough, of course. They'd become ill. Some would die. They would tire of the brewing, the baking, the slogging in the fields, simply because they hailed from soft, middle-class families with soft, middle-class values. But in the meantime, this was the day of the Ibis and the day was all that they lived for! For them, there was no yesterday, not even any tomorrow. They certainly wouldn't lose sleep about nebulous concerns, such as the welfare of a few retainers: whether they were well, being schooled, actually receiving the bonuses they'd been promised. That was not their affair any more. Physical and moral welfare was someone else's responsibility, they'd left all that behind, and who cares whether one more poor sod ends being torn apart by a pack of ravenous dogs?
I care. Oh, Junius, I care…
Eight hours and counting.
Fat tears trickled in black, kohly streaks down her cheeks. I shouldn't have made him wear Gaius's toga. I should not have left him alone in the Camensis. I certainly should not have come on this wild goose chase! All I've done is waste valuable time.
A vice clamped round Claudia's throat. Play fast and loose with your own life, if you must — but don't balls up anyone else's! Tears of self-pity pricked in her eyes. Conceited bitch. Miss Know-it-all! You think you can handle this stuff on your own, when the stark reality is you're nothing but a rank amateur and a bloody poor one at that. You bungle the kidnap, you get a loyal bodyguard thrown in the dungeons, and you can't even find a fifteen-year-old girl in an enclosed valley.
What shall I do? Someone help me. Someone tell me what I should do.
But as usual, Claudia Seferius was on her own.
The valley began to swim around her as she twisted the plaits of her wig into knots. Should she cut her losses and go back to Rome? If there had been anything Claudia could have done to bail out her bodyguard, she would have taken that action in the first place and not come swanning out here!
Yet it had seemed so right at the time. Grab Flavia, and carry the troublesome bitch back to Rome where the oath had already been drafted.
Seven hours and counting.
As the vice tightened round her windpipe and an eagle clawed at her heart, she pictured the dungeons. Dank, dark, smelly at the finest of times, the heat and the deluge would have made them unbearable. The wardens were brutes — they had to be. She pictured the Gaul, one side of his face battered, swollen and raw. So vivid was the image, that she could see clearly the contusions and cuts, matted hair, one eye almost closed, his face filthy.
No. Not filthy, the dark colour was from bruising. His skin was actually quite clean…
Claudia blinked. She'd eaten little last night and nothing this morning, dehydration and heat had finally got to her. She began to laugh. The picture was so bloody realistic! The laughter became manic and high.
'Ouch!' The slap to her face stung like hell.
'I'm sorry, but you were getting hysterical.'
Hysterical? Me? When my delusions slap me and then apologise? Claudia reeled. So this is what it's like. Cracking up. Losing your mind…
'Did I hurt you?' The phantasm was shaking her now! 'Madam, are you all right?'
'All right?' What sort of insanity is it, that lures people into conversations with apparitions? 'When I'm talking to someone who's locked up seventy miles south in jail. Of course I'm all bloody right.'
'Actually, it's sixty-four miles and I'm not in jail,' Junius grinned. 'Didn't you know, you can't chain a Gaul for long.' He shrugged his broad shoulders. 'It's our nature,' he said, 'we get restless.'