‘The minion is eminently trustworthy,’ he murmured, fixing his chubby visitor with his cold, fish eyes. ‘The question, my friend, isare you?’
XII
So soon, thought Claudia. She hadn’t expected Orbilio to pop up so soon. Ordinarily, of course, she’d have mapped out a strategy for dealing with him, but too many events had intruded-Cal, the bear, that wretched funeral-in too little time, with too many sidetracks. And now he was here. The thief-taker, goddammit, was here.
In the Great Hall, she cannoned into a middle-aged woman with a snub nose and hard eyes and the pair of them went tumbling. Stony-faced cow didn’t even apologize, thought Claudia, stepping over the woman’s tangled legs and blind to the venomous glare.
You should have anticipated his arrival, she told herself. You should not have assumed he’d turn up at some unspecified time in the future. You should have thought this through-dear Diana, you’ve encountered him often enough. For a start, there was the investigation into your husband’s death. Then Sicily. Umbria. Plus he was around that time-Jupiter, Juno and Mars, what is this? Some kind of maths test? Who cares how many times their paths had crossed, who gives a damn the way his hair falls across his forehead when he’s tired, and come off it, she’d hardly noticed that little scar underneath his collarbone as he lay sprawled on the couch!
Outdoors, the air pulsated, the crickets rasped as she skipped down the steps towards the shoreline, where two red dogs chased and tumbled in the long rough grass. Across the marshes, cranes trumpeted to one another and smells of roasting goose wafted down from the kitchens. A horse whinnied far in the distance.
Official business, he said…
Arbutes, tree spurge and straggly capers clung to the rock which thrust its way out of the water. Atlantis. Perched on top of this cliff. Atlantis. A triumph of marble and porphyry and cool colonnades. Where a glass of cloudy water can cure anything from gout to an ingrowing toenail. Where fortunes change hands for the privilege of being pummelled with oils and lolling in tubs of foul-smelling mud.
A miracle, the augurs pronounced, when Pylades discovered Carya’s sweet spring. Really? Claudia watched a lazy heron flap across the lake. Was Atlantis truly a place of miracles? Or mirages?
Of high standards? Or just double standards?
As a lone curlew let free its bubbling call, her mind considered the anomalies. The cave, the tunnel, Mosul the priest-as incongruous as they were linked. Because why should Pylades go to the substantial expense of gouging out an underpass and not show off this feat of civil engineering? Why not allow guests direct access to the spring? Surely not to keep sick pilgrims at a distance? That was unheard of! And yet Pylades had certainly segregated the classes here. Members of the aristocracy, alternating between their vast country estates and this spa. Merchants, flaunting their wealth as they indulged in long mudbaths and canoodled with women who in no way resembled their wives. Rich hypochondriacs, attracted to the waters for their chest/kidney/liver problems, oh yes, the wily Greek had separated the wine from the vinegar all right! Of course, there were always the artisans, gambling on wheedling noteworthy commissions from the relaxed holidaymakers, but by and large his clientele were the very cream of society.
Except for Lavinia.
See what I mean? Claudia paused to watch a two-tailed pasha flutter round the arbutes, to be joined by a second butterfly, this time an early grayling. Every time I turn my mind to Supersnoop and his wretched official business, another diversion leads me astray!
Without realizing where her steps had been leading, Claudia found herself down on the point where, perched on the jetty with one foot swinging free and his hair still tied back in a fillet, Tarraco whittled away at his woodcarving, undeterred by heat which could have fried oysters to a crisp.
‘I knew you would come.’ He did not look up.
‘Actually-’ She’d never even considered keeping the appointment.
‘Here.’ He blew the sawdust off the carving and tossed it across with a lopsided grin. ‘The only bear you encounter today.’ He turned to unhook the rowboat Claudia was so familiar with.
‘Sorry-’ she began, and then thought, what the hell? I’ve had it up to here with is-it-murder-is-it-not, of suspecting everyone I meet, of being petrified the army will clap me in irons any minute. At least there’s one place which offers a refuge outside the messy muddle of my life. One man who is not involved or under suspicion.
As Tarraco began to turn the boat around in the water, her eye was drawn to a figure watching from the sun porch and despite the searing heat, she shivered. Coincidence? That that just happened to be the spot from which Cal was supposed to have fallen?
Fluttering her fingers in a wave, Claudia smiled a cheesy smile at the man who leaned his weight against a glistening, gilded column.
Marcus Cornelius did not wave back.
*
The dispatch rider felt sure he must have put Pegasus to shame, the speed with which he covered the distance from Rome. The seal of the heron was sufficient to appease the most officious of post-station bureaucrats, and in the one instance where it was not and some pompous little twit had demanded to check the documents in full, the rider had ignored the silly sod and simply helped himself to a fresh horse. Let others set him right regarding the seal of the Security Police!
‘Will there be an answer, sir?’
He had delivered the letter, personally as instructed, to the tall patrician standing in the scorching heat of the sun porch, and the recipient had merely grunted his thanks as he maintained a tight-lipped watch on a rowboat cleaving a path across the silvery lake. Considering the contents were so urgent they’d brought the sparks flying from the hoofs of his horses and had jammed every joint of his backbone, the least he could do, the rider felt, was open the bloody thing!
Orbilio tapped the scroll against the gilded pillar. ‘Why don’t you get something to eat?’ he suggested, leaving the exhausted rider to make what he could of the answer.
Marcus stared at the shingle beach fifty feet below, then squinted towards the boat, practically swallowed by the heat haze. He exhaled slowly and with a shrug of resignation, finally broke the heron seal. Even before he started reading, he tasted bile in his mouth.
‘The choice,’ wrote his boss, ‘is simple. Either you ride back to Rome this instant, or you don’t come back at all.’
Shit. He knew his boss would go ballistic, but he didn’t expect to be sacked. Orbilio took three deep breaths as he stared across the hazy blue hills, then read on. There was only another line.
‘You aren’t the only one who doesn’t like the plague.’
Bastard! Orbilio’s knuckles were white where he gripped the golden rail. The dirty rotten little bastard! His teeth clamped together in white-hot anger as he visualized the scene in an office stuffed with lackeys hanging on to every word the master dictated-and his boss would be sure to have dictated this loving missive in his very loudest voice. Let no man miss the fact that Marcus Cornelius Orbilio is a coward. That whilst patricians have blue blood in their veins, it’s the yellow streak down their backbone folk should be wary of.
At that moment, had Orbilio dipped his finger in a bowl of ice, steam would have risen from the surface, he was so damned mad. Him. A man who only ever sought for justice, being accused of cowardice. The stinking, oily little bastard.
For another quarter hour Marcus let the anger flow, releasing every pent-up gripe he held against the worm who he reported to. The same worm who had not worked for his position, but had bought it. The very creep who had no idea what was involved in catching murderers and fraudsters, yet basked in the reflected glory like a lizard in the sun… Finally, when he’d luxuriated in his rage for long enough, Orbilio took himself off to the bath house, where the scraping and the pummelling, the oiling and the unguents drained the remaining tension in his flesh. Cracking his knuckles in cheerful anticipation, he then called for a scribe.