Glancing about, Froggy satisfied himself the other revellers weren’t listening. Right now their attention was fixed on a couple of newcomers making passes at the serving girls, and the innkeeper, who was having none of that, was pointing out a brothel over the way if they wanted, and of course they did. This was Narni. The Via Flaminia passed through it, so did the river Nera, and so did a constant procession of soldiers, bargees, porters and stevedores. The wealthier types-the merchants and their agents-lodged in more salubrious establishments, but there remained a whole host of clerks and labourers left to fend for themselves until their masters’ business was done. The whores of Narni, like those of many a staging town, offered a bright spot of comfort in an otherwise bleak and ragged existence.
Froggy turned back to his friends. ‘You know that job we did recently?’
‘The burglary up by the-’
‘The other one,’ he said, brushing his hair as a spider-or worse-fell from the rafters. Whatever the creature, he crushed it under his fist on the table. ‘Sunday morning.’ He wiped the remains of the insect down the seam of his tunic. ‘When we ran that rig off the road.’
Easy money, that. He paused as plates piled high with boiled bacon and lentils were plumped in front of them, another part of the market-day ritual. A dish of grits completed the feast.
‘What about it?’ asked Ginger, blowing on his spoon. ‘Something go wrong?’
‘Not exactly.’ Froggy was idly twirling his knife round his plate. ‘But that’s what made me late. Apparently some widow was on board, and now she’s been charged with murder.’
Restio whistled. ‘What a psycho!’
‘Not half,’ echoed Pansa. ‘Count ourselves lucky she didn’t do for one of us, eh, lads?’
A drunk bumbled over, a bargee-Froggy could tell by the smell of oxen which clung to him no matter how clean the poor sod’s clothes. ‘Piss-house is that way, mate,’ he said, jerking his thumb towards the far corner. The drunk belched gratefully and lumbered towards the door.
‘The trial’, he continued, taking care not to raise his voice beyond the reach of the table, ‘takes place here, in Narni, on Wednesday. You know what that means, don’t you?’
‘Narni?’ asked Ginger, through a mouthful of vegetables. ‘Why not Tarsulae?’
‘Where’, Froggy scoffed, ‘could they scrape up fourscore jurists in that shithole? No, the show’s coming here, so you see the significance? Everyone, and I mean everyone at the Villa Pictor will be called as a witness.’
‘Wow!’ said Restio, because although he hadn’t a clue what Froggy was driving at, he sensed it was important enough to warrant reverence.
Froggy leaned forward. ‘It seems to me, lads, that here’s our chance to make a bit of dosh-’
‘We got paid well for that,’ Pansa put in, but Froggy ploughed on.
‘As I see it, we have two choices. According to my contact at the courts, this old bag’s supposed to have arranged to meet with the bloke who got killed-’
‘But she couldn’t have,’ Restio protested. ‘Because we run her off the road and, according to that innkeeper in Tarsulae, she was headed north.’
‘Thank you, witness for the defence, you may step down now,’ said Froggy, topping up his wooden goblet. ‘Now if you’ll let me get on, as I said, we have two choices. Either we approach the widow’s lawyer, tell him what we know-oh, we can say it was an accident, didn’t realize anyone had been hurt, how sorry we were-only there’s no mileage in that.’
In all probability the widow was old, and she certainly wasn’t well off or she’d have been travelling the main road with a retinue of slaves and baggage. Frankly Froggy couldn’t see the old girl heaping rewards upon his head for coming forward-not on the scale he fancied, anyhow.
‘Which leaves us with our second option. You see, boys, I don’t think our client will want it bandied about that we were paid to run that rig off the road, do you? In fact, I think we’re on to a nice little earner with this one.’
XIII
‘Is going to rain.’
Good, thought Claudia, taking half a step back from the Celt. You might be tempted to stand out in it.
‘And Sergius, he not look so good.’ Taranis fell into step along the colonnade, his long hair flicking up at the ends as he walked. A stranger to the strigil, it was difficult to see what Tulola saw in him. Ruff-tuff hairy types Pallas had said, and from that aspect Taranis certainly fitted the bill. Self-respecting Romans shave their body hair…they don’t have whopping great tufts of it sticking out the neck of their tunics and the hems of their sleeves like horsehair stuffing from an old couch. Idly she wondered how Tulola came by so many oddballs.
‘You visit west wing later, heh? We play fours, you go with Barea and I do Tulola?’
‘I’d sooner drink hemlock.’
‘Ah!’ Two paws latched over her breasts. ‘You want Taranis to yourself-eeeeeeeeh.’
Claudia squeezed his testicles tighter. ‘Listen to me, lizardbreath. Lay so much as one black fingernail on me again, and I shall twist these right off and stuff them up your nostrils. Do I make myself plain?’
She took the tears in his eyes as affirmative and stalked off to her bedroom for a wrap. Drusilla, her ancestry bestowing magnanimity despite the string of indignities, was balanced on the windowsill studiously washing behind her ears. So the barbarian was right? It was going to rain.
‘Brrp.’ The cat bounded down. ‘Brrip, brrip.’
‘I know, poppet, but it won’t be for much longer.’ She raked her fingers along Drusilla’s arched spine. ‘Only we have a slight problem here.’
‘Mrra.’ The cat stretched up on tippytoes, her eyes squeezed tight in ecstasy.
‘The Prefect, you see, is a moron.’ Although he had yet to appreciate that particular aspect of his character.
‘Mrrap, mrrap.’ Drusilla’s stiffened tail received the fingernail treatment right up to its tip.
‘Are you getting dandruff? Oh no, it’s only flaky plaster. Anyway, what I was saying was, to avoid the idiocy of a trial, it is up to us to show Macer the error of his ways, is it not?’
‘Prrr.’
‘Prrrcisely. And in order to do this we must unveil the killer ourselves.’ One murder is undesirable. Two murders smacks of self-indulgence. ‘Do you have any suggestions where to begin?’
‘Brrrp.’
‘Neither do I.’
Drusilla lifted her wedge-shaped head. ‘Mrrow.’
‘Me? Framed? You’re getting as bad as Supersnoop.’ The wrong place at the wrong time, Orbilio. You’ll see. ‘But we have a nose for sniffing out murderers, don’t we, poppet? We’ll get him-or her, it could be a her, I suppose-and that’ll put paid to this ridiculous talk about exile. Ah! I have a treat for you.’
A cold partridge plopped on to the mosaic and the cat sniffed it carefully from all angles. You might call flabby poultry a treat, her manner seemed to imply, but you forget, my lady, that I’m used to dining on food I’ve hunted myself. Even as we speak, there’s a fresh mouse outside with my name on it. Catch you later.
With a smile at her lips, Claudia covered her shoulders with her palla.
‘I wouldn’t venture far, if I were you.’ The voice of the trainer in the courtyard made her jump. She’d forgotten how light he was on his feet.
‘Oh?’ Was this a warning?
The Etruscan quickly closed the distance between them. ‘There’s a storm brewing.’
Claudia’s breath came out in a hiss from where she’d been holding it. ‘I need the fresh air.’ Fresh? With that number of wild beasts? ‘What about you? Do you always work this late?’
He held the gate open for her. ‘Work? Oh, you’re thinking about that scene back there with Sergius.’