Not in front. Not behind.
Alongside.
As equals. The thought of her made his gut lurch. Janus, he really needed that drink.
For all that the sun was beginning to rise, the hour was still early and Orbilio’s house was in darkness as he let himself in. A whiff of proving bread escaped from the kitchens, but his stomach recoiled at the prospect of food. Sleep! He needed sleep. Urgent, replenishing sleep. And then…
Love or lust, who gives a damn? Like a drug, he was addicted to the woman. Try as he might, he could not live without her.
Marcus staggered across the atrium like a drunkard. The bedroom, too, was in darkness. He unbuckled his belt and it clattered as it fell to the floor. Sleep, yes, but surely a drink? To settle the flutters Claudia invariably brought on. By touch he fumbled for the jug beside his bed and without reaching for a goblet drank straight from the jar. The wine hit his stomach like a punch and too late he realized he should have sipped rather than gulped, but the damage was done and in this stifling heat, what difference did one more hangover make?
He was wiping a damp cloth over his face when the crack of a whip made him jump. What the hell…?
Again, the snap of rawhide rang out in his room, accompanied by rich, female laughter. Croesus, what was in that bloody jug?
‘I thought you were never coming home.’ She laughed, and he realized this was no hallucination. This was whatsername. Thingy. Barbia. That’s right. And Barbia, he remembered, had a penchant for whips. And for manacles. And chains…
‘I-’
The wine made his brain fuzzy, he couldn’t think straight. How did she end up here? In his bed? He’d flirted with her in the Palatine Gardens. She’d been a real laugh, earthy and vibrant, and they’d passed two jubilant hours rustling the laurels. But here?
‘I… can’t stop,’ he muttered. ‘Just called in to change my tunicyouch! ’ The whip stung his flesh. Mother of Tarquin, she thought he was larking about.
‘Not playing hard to get, are we?’ Her breathing was heavy and scented with wine. ‘Or else Barbie will have to get rough.’
‘No!’ It came out more terrified yelp than manly denial, but in any case it came out too late. Metal clamped round his right ankle and a second click fastened it firm to the bed. Orbilio let out a shaky laugh. ‘Barbia, look-’
Before he could clarify the misunderstanding that he’d given his address as a joke, a loud rip cut through the air and, whoosh, his tunic was gone. Thanks to glimmers of sunlight beginning to penetrate the cracks in the shutters, he could make out Barbia’s figure. It seemed to be encased in some form of harness…
In the blackness, he heard the jangle of handcuffs and lunged at where he thought they would be. But Barbia had been teasing. A diversion for the chainlink which snapped round his wrist and, shit. He was spreadeagled on his own couch, right ankle, left wrist, and there was not a damned thing he could do.
Orbilio considered the one thin sheet of inadequate linen which concealed his sad lack of enthusiasm and knew that if his boss walked in right now, he’d strangle the oily bastard with this bloody chain, purely for exposing him to the siren from hell!. As Barbia whisked a knife through his loincloth, Orbilio prayed to Priapus to help him in this, his hour of need Somehow the misty shores of Lake Plasimene belonged to a different incarnation, and instead of the quacking of ducks and the croaking of frogs in the bulrushes, he was stuck with Barbia’s fruity laughter and the acid smell of her leather gear. In fact, as the bullwhip stung his thigh, Orbilio’s final thought, as Barbia pressed her ample breasts into his face, was that, sleep or no sleep, by Croesus, he’d be on the first horse out of town the instant this harpy untied him.
Assuming, of course, he survived.
IX
Tradition demanded Cal’s body lie in state, his feet facing the door, for several days.
The heat, alas, decreed otherwise.
With oak leaves wreathed around his shattered skull and less than eighteen hours after he had met his violent end, Cal set off from Atlantis on this, his ultimate journey. In deference to his youth, flute players rather than trumpeters led the procession as eight bearers shouldered the funeral bed on poles of sacred oak. With his face washed clean and his hair combed low, Calvus resembled more a dashing blade knocked out cold in a drunken brawl and it seemed to Claudia quite impossible that he wouldn’t bounce up any second, yelling, ‘Which of you bastards wants more?’
But he wouldn’t.
Those beech-leaf eyes would never sparkle in fun. Battered lips could never again beg kisses in exchange for a secret.
This was not a practical joke.
Swinging censers of smoking cinnamon accompanied the bier, barely masking the sulphurous stench of the torches which purified its four corners. Cal had no relatives in Atlantis, no close friends, so the mourners were hired, wailing women, beating ash-covered breasts and howling with such conviction, few would suspect it was not their own son or brother they were burning today.
Slowly, the cortege made its way down the slope of the promontory, the black-clad undertakers setting the pace as the sun beat down on a landscape which, until Pylades arrived, had remained untouched for eight generations. Usually two centuries is time enough to regroup and rebuild after battle, but the fighting left behind a sinister legacy. ‘The Place of Blood’. ‘The Place of Bones’. Graphic names which not only immortalized the twenty thousand men killed in that fateful Battle of the Lake, but which had served to deter settlers, wary of the restless ghosts of the warriors. Only fishermen doggedly continued to ply their trade, their base a small village unsullied by the ferocious spilling of blood on the eastern rim of the lake.
Then a visitor from Greece discovered a mineral spring on the cliff-like projectory, and the augurs said, ‘This is a miracle’
And it was. Not only Atlantis, with its shining opulence and hedonistic splendour, rose from obscurity. Attracted by the influx of visitors, a whole host of shops, houses and businesses sprang up, and in the five years since Pylades arrived, a whole town had evolved, with its central Forum and its main street and its taverns and brickworks and lawcourts. There were blacksmiths, dentists, barbers, potters, barrelmakers, herbalists-you name it, they were here in their droves-and they called their town Spesium, ‘Place of Hope’.
To the sounds of trumpets, horns and cymbals loud enough to scare every spirit, not just the bad ones, the funeral procession rumbled past leadbeaters and coppersmiths, bakers and glassblowers, apprentices and matrons. For a moment, Claudia thought she glimpsed a familiar face in the crowd, someone from Rome, but maybe she was wrong, because when she lifted her mourning veil for a better view, there was no one she recognized after all. Bugger.
Finally, on the far side of the newly constructed triple-arch gateway, the parade ground to a halt, silver censers blinding in the sunlight. With professional ease, Cal’s final wooden bed was hefted on to the pyre and Claudia noticed that the immense Oriental she’d seen yesterday on her arrival had also latched on to the party. His posture was identical-feet squarely apart, arms crossed-and he still wore that tight leather vest and strange kilt. Today, though, the long tuft of hair was tied in a thong like a mare’s tail on parade day. Somehow it looked like a weapon, as deadly as the curved blade at his hip. Despite the heat, Claudia shivered.
Then the bruiser slid from her mind as Pylades stepped forward to deliver the oration, and to hear him list the achievements of a young man he probably never knew to a crowd of people who’d never heard of him, you had to admire the professionalism of this stocky hillsman, so glowing were the tributes, so touching the anecdotes. As a young acolyte swung a censer with clumsy abandon, a priest in long flowing robes sprinkled the bier with wine. These two, Claudia deduced, must be Leon and Mosul. Spluttering from incense overdose, the priest snapped for Leon to withdraw, and as his little black eyes met with Kamar’s, so he shrugged in a mixture of irritation and despair. This, then, was the perfectionist who tended the shrine of the water nymph all by himself? A tub of a man with the eyes of a mole.