Her toe tapped furiously against the tessellated floor. Bastard. Sneaking off to liaise with some common slave, and expecting to get away with his little indiscretion. Got a bit above your station, didn’t you? Thought you owned this bloody place, strutting round like one of your peacocks, when it was me, me, who put the gold thread in your robes and introduced you to the subtle pleasures of antiques and art. Lais grabbed a mirror. By the gods, she was still a fine-looking woman, what did he need that little scrubber for? Sex? Wasn’t he getting enough here? With his wife? Lais hurled the mirror across the floor, oblivious to Kamar jumping out of its path. Bastard. She had chosen him, for gods’ sake, not the other way around. She had been the one to dispose of that braying donkey Virginia, and how had he repaid her?
‘He loved me once, you know.’
‘Huh?’ Kamar had been preoccupied with matters of his own.
‘Nothing.’ But it was true. She might have made the initial overtures, but from that one spark, Tarraco had fallen for her, courting her, fetching gifts, playing on his magic lyre. She remembered the night he first seduced her, softly, tenderly, arousing every passion, and Lais knew it could not be for her fortune. Virginia had (thanks to her) left everything to him. No, no. Tarraco had loved her for herself, and whilst Lais had not loved him in return, she had felt a certain tenderness for her little bit of Spanish rough.
Not enough to let him live with her, of course. He was a consort, not a partner. His quarters were on the far wing, over there, far from her hidden chamber and her secrets, but all the same. There were times of late when she missed his whispered words of love, and the way his lips nibbled the back of her neck. The kitchen wench had been disposed of, naturally. A bauble stolen from a guest and planted in her room. Instant dismissal. But that was only half the story.
The other half was on his way to bloody Spain, when by rights he should be facing down a half-starved tiger in public execution for that monstrous act of betrayal.
Still. A queen does not necessarily need a consort. Her strength to stand alone would be inspiration to her people, another cause for them to revere her. How long, Lais wondered idly, before Pylades bowed to the pressure…?
‘I don’t like it.’ Kamar’s thin lips had all but disappeared. ‘I don’t like it at all. Suppose someone raises the alarm?’
‘What are you gabbling on about now?’
‘That Seferius bitch,’ Kamar said. ‘Suppose someone goes looking for her?’
‘Who?’ Lais sneered. ‘She’s a wild one, that girl. Unpredictable. Some skivvy will quietly pack up her things, people will assume she went back to Rome.’ And if anyone down there asks questions, then they won’t find many answers.
‘No,’ Kamar said, wringing his hands. ‘I mean, suppose someone comes looking for her out here? ’
‘Then they’ll go back empty-handed, won’t they? She’s a hundred yards under the ground, sealed in by a great slab of rock. No one heard that other poor cow screaming her head off, now did they? Well, they won’t hear Claudia yell, either.’
‘She’s in cahoots with some Security chap. I don’t think he’ll take no for an answer.’
‘Marcus Cornelius?’ Lais licked her finger and ran it lightly over her eyebrow. ‘I shouldn’t worry about him.’
‘None of the soldiers other than Cyrus is in on the scam.’ If anything, Kamar seemed even more agitated. ‘Suppose he brings the rest of the legion out to the island and turns this place over?’
‘I imagine that highly unlikely.’
‘Why not? This is the obvious start point.’
‘Too true,’ Lais said, rubbing in wine lees to redden her cheeks. ‘But power is nothing without responsibility, Kamar. I suggest you remember that. You see, I haven’t reached this exalted position without covering every single angle and making plans accordingly. It was to be expected, Orbilio coming here. I simply took counter measures.’
‘Which were?’ In spite of his predicament, Kamar was impressed.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Lais reached for the kohl to highlight her eyes. ‘I disposed of him, too.’ A vision flashed through her mind of the blood, pumping out of his body to soak into his white linen tunic. The same warm blood dripping off the end of her knife. ‘I slit clean through his tanned patrician throat.’
Dead men can’t cause trouble.
XXXVIII
There is no such thing as total silence. Indeed, a hundred paces deep in the rock face, where even the wrath of Jupiter’s storm failed to penetrate, certain sounds still crept in to fill the void.
The throbbing heat of the night.
The blood, thundering past Claudia’s ears.
The frantic flaps of her heart, as it tried to burst free of her breast.
But they were flimsy, whimsy, personal sounds and, like snowflakes gliding down in midwinter, they did not ruffle the dreams of the dead. Secure in their solid sarcophagi, the Etruscan nobility reposed for eternity, surrounded by their painted friends and relatives, their servants, their pets, their boats, their painted jewels and banquets.
Claudia was not prepared to wait for eternity.
Alabaster images of these ancient peoples, which once reclined upon the coffin tops, now lay smashed and scattered far across the tamped earth floor, swept aside in the grave robbers’ impatience, and whilst the sarcophagi had been ransacked-every gold torque, every ring, every last ivory ornament gone, even the bones tossed aside-it was the thieves’ very haste which gave Claudia inspiration as she scratched among the shattered shards for some means of escape.
In a corner of a chamber where the walls were covered with twirling dancers and musicians blowing on traditional double flutes, underneath the piles of debris, she had found a scrap of azure fabric. The colour was so vivid, so dazzling in the flickering candlelight, that it had given her an idea…
From the outset, Claudia knew she’d need a lever to dislodge that rock across the entrance, and not only was nothing remotely suitable inside this maze of chambers, with the tunnel heading downhill at such a sharp angle, how would she ever get leverage? That, therefore, was out of the question.
But suppose she inched the slab up? Just a fraction? And wedged a strip of her tunic in the slot?
Such was human nature that it would be unnatural for Pul not to be curious. Along he’d come, down this twisting stone path towards the tomb. He’d cast a professional glance at this circular, earth-covered mushroom, would check the granite slab as a matter of course. Then his slanted, almond eye would alight on the scrap of torn cotton. He would recognize the startling shade of yellow. Know it was Claudia’s gown and that it was not there, definitely not there, when he rolled the rock into place. Her? Escape? No way. Not possible. Of course not. But the professional in him would force him to check.
As the bobbing flame of the tallow moved inexorably south, Claudia swung herself up on to the lintel of the principal chamber. There was a niche here, large enough, if she curled into a ball.
All she had to do was to wait. To one side of her, wine was poured at a banquet. On the other, painted cheeses, grapes, sardines and pears were being guzzled at this family feast. Her skin was grazed and bleeding from shouldering the massive lump of rock, and it had been the tenth exhausting uphill push before she’d finally succeeded in holding that quarter-inch of space open long enough to push her skirt through the gap with the blade of her knife. Miraculously, the knife hadn’t snapped. Claudia’s lips were dry, her back raw as she contemplated Pul heaving aside the granite slab. So narrow, so low was the passageway in this subterranean world, he would be forced to hunch over as he made his way down, ducking further to avoid this low-hanging lintel.