‘You’re supposed to be the god of healing,’ she bawled. ‘Why can’t you heal this?’
Vaguely Claudia thought the voice might be hers.
The rains had begun. She could hear the droplets drumming on the leather leaves, bouncing off the hard-baked soil. They were running down her cheeks. They were salty.
‘Orbilio, you idiot,’ she said softly. ‘What did you have to do this for?’
Anger began to well in her breast. The fool! How could he have been so reckless, so stupid, as to come here alone? Her fingers were digging into his shoulders as she shook his lifeless body. So bloody arrogant, you thought you could take on the world single-handed! Bright red drops of rain spurted into her face, her lap, her eyes. Selfish pig. Never a thought for anyone else- Wait a sec! Do dead bodies bleed…?
‘He’s alive,’ she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘Marcus is bloody alive!’
‘Not for much longer,’ a baritone said dryly, ‘if you continue to shake him like that.’
Through the tears which coursed down her face, Claudia watched his long, curling eyelashes flutter and part and saw the smile which tweaked at one side of his bloodless, pale lips.
For once in her life, she had no rejoinder.
XL
Rain was belting down in earnest, stippling the lake and bouncing off the octagonal slabs of the path as it filled the air with the smell of freshly turned soil and the perfume of a million and one flowers. Hands on hips, Claudia stood in the cleansing torrent, her hair and her bodice plastered to her skin, and jotted down a mental note to sacrifice a bull, when she returned to Rome, to flame-haired Apollo. Who might (just might) have been listening…
Orbilio’s story was simple. Suspecting Tarraco would go to ground on his own territory, he had come out here to confront him and instead had seen, walking along the colonnade, the ghost of the woman he’d fished out of the lake. Moreover, she was conferring with the very man who’d lent his strong arm to assist! While Orbilio’s mind was absorbing this new arrangement, the woman clicked her fingers to dismiss her moustachioed henchman and the scales had fallen from Marcus’ eyes. This was Lais, not a ghost, but in the flesh, who had obviously murdered her double! Which turned the whole issue on its head and it was Lais, he realized, not Tarraco, behind the racket. Behind the rash of premature deaths in Atlantis.
Arresting her was easy, he said, although Orbilio’s voice dropped to a muted mumble at the part where he was forced to admit that he’d misjudged his prisoner’s vicious streak. A knife had sprung out of nowhere and slashed at his neck. Only his height and his instinct had saved him. The one, because in straining upwards, Lais had inflicted nothing worse than a flesh wound. The other, because in jumping backwards, he slipped on a loose lump of rock (hence the skid marks) and knocked himself out on the bole of the tree. Believing she’d succeeded in slitting his throat, Lais had left him for dead.
‘It is too close to dawn,’ Tarraco pointed out, when Orbilio suggested they row back to fetch reinforcements. ‘Come daylight, they will be on their guard. I must act now, while I have the advantage.’
‘Count me in, then,’ he’d said, but the Spaniard refused to even help him to his feet.
‘You’ve lost too much blood,’ he sneered, propping him against the tree trunk instead. ‘You will be liability to me, not asset.’ Expertly, he ripped Orbilio’s tunic into bandages and wound them round his neck and head, his fingers none too gentle on the lump. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered, handing over his broad, hunting dagger. ‘Keep a lookout, and you,’ he barked at Claudia. ‘You stay with him.’
‘While you go fighting one against thirty?’ How bloody typical,
‘I have quiver and bow.’ Tarraco grinned. ‘And I have plan. You wait here.’
But he should have known he was wasting his breath. As he padded towards the villa, a flash of yellow appeared at his shoulder. ‘Just curious.’ She shrugged. ‘Wondering how you plan to take on the whole gang single-handed.’
‘Easy.’ He laughed. ‘You watch this.’ And hefting a large jug of olive oil on to his shoulder from where he’d hidden it behind a potted palm, he scurried along the far wall of the villa, pausing to pour oil under each door as he passed and leaving a trickle which joined them all up. ‘Is what we Spaniards call a diversion,’ he said, arching one eyebrow in jest.
Claudia’s heart was pounding. Any minute someone could walk out of the villa. Catch them…
‘What about the rain?’ she asked. Surely it would extinguish the flames?
Tarraco’s response was a snort of disgust at so juvenile a question, but a second thought had occurred to her. Sure, the wooden doors would catch fire, the drapes inside, the tapestries, the rugs, the upholstery. But so too- ‘Once this fire takes hold,’ she said, ‘the whole house will go up-’ she paused to make sure he was listening ‘-with every antique and treasure.’
The olive oil faltered mid-pour. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘I know.’ Then the flow continued at its old, steady rate, and despite the thunderclaps and the hammering of the rain, Claudia could hear her heart pounding louder.
‘So.’ He dribbled out the last few drops of oil and tossed his long mane back over his shoulders. ‘Are you ready?’
Will I ever be? Claudia drew a deep breath. ‘Naturally.’
‘Then stand back,’ Tarraco said. ‘It begins.’
*
Looking back, so many things happened at once that Claudia had trouble piecing them together. The rain didn’t help. Torrential, obscuring, drumming down on the paths and the roofs. Thunder, lightning, a dozen fires breaking out. From every door, screaming figures burst forth and, if they weren’t in a state of advanced hysteria as they came out, then the hail of arrows Tarraco loosed from his bow quickly hastened it.
‘The army,’ someone shouted. ‘They have us surrounded.’
‘Run for the boats!’
‘Too late, they’ve been holed!’
‘The north shore,’ someone else yelled. ‘Head for the north shore and swim.’
Like a swarm of angry bees, the servants scuttled up the hill, while behind them, the western wing of the villa crackled like the dry tinder that it was. Windows popped, fireballs ran through the corridors, fanned by the swirl of the storm. Tiles fell in, smashing, crashing, as flames licked along wooden floors and gobbled up dry timber rafters. The smell of burning oil mingled with the stench of peeling paint and plaster, of wool and cotton and hemp. In the kitchens, pots cracked in the heat, glass exploded, shelves collapsed as they burned through, dashing jars and crocks to the floor. The stink of burning pepper, leather and vinegar turned the night into acid.
His quiver empty, Tarraco hurled it into the flames. ‘Bastard,’ he spat. ‘Lais didn’t fall for it.’
Claudia followed his gaze. Whilst the flames swirled high into the air along the domestic quarters and storerooms, the atrium and the courtyard had halted their progress. Even fire couldn’t find a purchase on marble. And beyond the atrium, in the calm lee of the peristyle, the gangleaders toughed it out.
‘I suppose that was the end of the oil?’
In reply, Tarraco flung his bow into the furnace and kicked a flowerpot at his feet. ‘I should have risked being seen in the courtyard,’ he spat. ‘I should have poured the oil through that hidden door first.’
He was wrong, of course. Despite the lateness of the hour, such was the state of emergency on the island that few were asleep. Tarraco would have been dead the first time he set foot in the garden. But as he stormed up and down, chewing on his knuckles and swearing at himself under his breath, Claudia knew that to point this out would not quell his anger.
‘Here,’ she called.
With his face black from temper and smoke, Tarraco turned towards her. Just in time to catch the spear which came flying towards him. ‘What’s this for?’ he growled.
As the roof of the storehouse collapsed in on itself, Claudia jabbed a finger in the direction of Lais’ chamber. ‘I thought it was about time we hunted some bears,’ she said.