‘I think,’ Claudia said slowly, ‘I’ve eaten enough for one meal.’
‘You do not like honeycomb?’ He was mortified. ‘I fetch candied fruits, yes? Maybe nuts.’
Damn right I am.
Claudia cast an appreciative eye over the bronze lamps guzzling up the finest olive oil, the painted stucco ceiling, the gaily patterned frescoes. On a tapestry which covered the far wall, Jason and his Argonauts searched for an embroidered golden fleece. So much, she thought, for breathing space…
Tarraco placed the flat of his hands together. ‘You think I take liberties, serving honey in my bed? That I move too fast?’ He strained a grin. ‘I–I thought-’
‘A bolt of blue cotton could buy me?’
‘No, no. Claudia, no. You and I…I thought… there was-’ The frown on his face was like pain. ‘Claudia, there is something between us.’
Claudia leaned close enough to catch the familiar scent of pine. ‘How right you are, Tarraco. It’s your ego.’
XIII
Around Atlantis, torches burned low and Claudia’s footsteps echoed down the wooden jetty. Three men, she thought, each with a single objective. One younger than her, full of fun, full of life, with his corn-coloured hair and his secrets, who believed he could cartwheel her into his bed. The second the same age as herself, a dark horse according to Dorcan, believing he could charm her into his bed with his gifts and his magical lyre. And a third, considerably older-and this one didn’t even imagine he’d have to work for results, the fact that he’d turned rock into gold quite sufficient.
Three men. One objective.
One dead.
The lights might be low, but they weren’t muted enough to conceal a figure flitting back into the shadows. Claudia frowned. Not Tarraco, he was already halfway back to his island and, since the gates were locked at dusk, this could be no common criminal creeping around. Orbilio, of course, would never give himself away, he’d learn to walk on water before he allowed a trace of himself to be seen, besides this shadow seemed taller, broader, of far greater bulk. So who, then? Who might wish to spy on her?
Silly bitch. Claudia swept up the steep, stone steps.
Imagine you’re the only one keeping late hours? They don’t all come here for Carya’s healing waters and to listen to the choirs. Your problem, she told herself, watching bats forage for insects on the wing, is an overactive imagination. Cal has been murdered, his killer walks free-and what’s driving you daft is that despite a list of curious characters lurking in the background, there’s no tangible suspect and not so much as a whiff of a motive.
I have a solution, squeaked a little horseshoe bat. You could enlist the help of Supersnoop. (Whatever his motives for fetching her here, he’d never turn away a chance to solve a killing.)
No way, piped a pipistrelle. His involvement would mean him tucking his feet under the table indefinitely.
Quite right, said a noctule, its mouth full of moth. She needs to get rid of Orbilio fast.
But since the bats could not come up with a strategy for disposing of this hotshot investigator, Claudia left them to their supper and slipped through the doors of the Great Hall. Hello, hello, hello. She paused on the threshold. What’s old Kamar up to, then, canoodling behind a statue? And him a married man with a disfigured wife, who everybody talks about, poor bitch. Claudia allowed the door to close silently behind her as Lavinia’s voice echoed down the corridor of her memory. ‘I’ll bet you’ve heard my daughter-in-law playing whisper-whisper-whisper with that sourpuss physician… ’
That could not, of course, be Lavinia’s daughter-in-law. Despite hair curled to within an inch of its life and a face pancaked with cosmetics, this woman would be close to the olive grower’s age. And now Claudia peered closer, she could see they weren’t actually canoodling, but all the same, Lavinia had Kamar to a T. Amongst his own sex it was hail-fellow-well-met, a man among men, whereas with women he employed subtler tactics, conspiring in secret to add a frisson of excitement to their phantom ailments. Watching a small phial pass between them, Claudia couldn’t decide which was worse: society women who gorged on pandering or physicians who were little more than gigolos, servicing their needs in exchange for a coin.
They broke off when they became aware of her presence, exchanged glances, and Claudia recognized the woman as the stony-faced old boiler she’d bumped into earlier, after her countdown with Orbilio. Worse, the harridan was bearing down like a trireme in full sail.
‘Forgive my impertinence.’ Stoneyface daren’t smile for fear of cracking the mask and the voice went with the eyes. ‘But that robe is simply sublime. Might I trouble you for the name of your seamstress?’
Her hair had been dyed with the juice of walnuts, her complexion was not holding up well, yet, despite rising to every cosmetic challenge with her plucked and painted eyebrows and the plethora of moleskin patches plastered over her liver spots, she still played up her little snub nose as though it were some girlish attribute by sticking it high in the air. Sad, really. Deluded cow thought she turned heads, but in practice it was stomachs she turned.
‘Oh, you know Atlantis,’ Claudia quipped, speeding up to escape the frightful creature. ‘Everything’s done for you round here.’
‘Off the peg?’ A variety of expressions skated across the plasterwork of her face, and hard eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Then I’d be obliged if you’d point out the shop.’
Behind her, Kamar was hopping from one foot to the other. Cramp? Or agitation?
‘First on the left past the basilica,’ Claudia invented. Anything to break free of this ghastly woman’s clutches. What a horror. In the corridor, her mind skipped back to Cal’s funeral, to the freckle-faced girl rolling the hoop. Would she, one day, become a hard-eyed ravaged harpy, hankering for her old salad days? Skulking round at night to consult a physician? Perish the thought! But the point was, that child should have the choice.
Within the dark seclusion of her bedroom, Claudia kicked off her sandals. First she must establish the motive for Cal’s murder. Only through that could she unmask the killer, and then maybe-just maybe-she’d have something to trade with Orbilio when it came (as it would) to discussing Sabbio Tullus…
Outside frogs croaked to one another and an owl hooted far across the lake as she collapsed on the bed. Somewhere, just before sleep and exhaustion overwhelmed her, she thought she heard a woman scream.
*
Dawn was casting silver shadows on the bath house’s limestone walls and a coil of blue woodsmoke writhed up from its vent as the agent of Sabbio Tullus pursed his lips and estimated that any time within the next half-hour his message would be arriving in Rome. Dispatch runners cared not a jot that they travelled through the night, money was money, and let me see, ten miles per runner, ten runners-yup, the last one should be arriving very soon. Very soon. Delving into his satchel, to deliver a sealed and secret letter to Rome. A letter which read: ‘The jewel that you are seeking, master, has been discovered in Atlantis.’
Now that, thought Tullus’ agent, rubbing his hands with satisfaction, should earn a fat reward.
One which would not, however, come from the treasure chests of Sabbio Tullus.
The letter was winging its way to the nephew.
*
Claudia was whistling when she waltzed into breakfast, though since the hour was late, only a few diehards remained at the trough. That loudmouthed general, for one, the chap whose paunch stuck out like a packmule, and the woman who walked like a camel, right now gulping down the general’s raisin troops the instant he’d positioned them on the flank. Lounging on a couch in the corner, a famous wrestler-a dapper dandy with the body of an ox-recounted exploits to a dull-eyed nymphet, who’d patently prefer just to go to his room and get it over with. It was a screw he was paying for, not a bore.