Claudia passed her faltering step as a trip over a paving slab. ‘The driver’s hired help, I’m afraid.’
‘Not that ugly lug, I’m talking about your Gaul.’
I know.
‘Forty gold pieces? He’s very handsome and, ooh, those muscles.’
Bumble-bees searched the last of the pale pink blossoms, and a kitchen slave with a baby on her hip gathered basil and purslane and mint.
‘I’m afraid’, Claudia spoke in a confidential whisper, ‘I can’t sell him.’
‘Aha! The stallion services your own stables.’
‘No, no. I can’t sell him. He’s-how can I put this?’ she glanced up at the unfurling leaves for inspiration ‘-incomplete, poor boy.’
Tulola’s arm recoiled like a striking snake. ‘A eunuch? That’s no bloody use.’
Claudia nodded sympathetically. ‘Tragic, isn’t it?’
As they climbed the steps of the terrace, she calculated that it would cost her two gold pieces to keep his trap shut, possibly three since pride was involved. Men! They get het up over such trifles, don’t they? Not that it was Junius who concerned Claudia at this moment.
‘Earlier, down by the fishpond, your baby sister showed me one of her charming little keepsakes.’
‘I don’t have a sister-oh, do you mean Euphemia?’
‘The sort who causes more ructions than a dozen earthquakes?’
Tulola laughed. ‘That’s her and she belongs to Alis, not me.’
Um. ‘Belongs?’
‘Euphemia’s her sister.’
Good life in Illyria, what a turn-up for the books. Where Alis was pale, Euphemia was dusky. Where Alis was high-breasted, Euphemia was voluptuous, and where Alis was respectability personified, Euphemia had temptress written all over her.
‘Half-sister, really,’ Tulola explained, steering her guest through the labyrinth of pens and sheds, barns and outhouses. ‘Alis’ father divorced her mother on grounds of adultery. Apparently it was only a matter of days from the mother marrying her lover that Euphemia was spared the stigma of bastardy.’
I’m not sure the moody baggage entirely escaped, thought Claudia, with the pungent smell of animals and ordure hitting her full blast as they turned the corner into an open yard. Say what you like about Timoleon, he had a fair point. Dainty leather sandals with open toes would not have been Claudia’s first choice of footwear.
‘Whatever she said, sweetie, just ignore the silly cow, she’s-’
‘Ladies!’ The ancestry of the man who greeted them with an extravagant flourish of his hands was beyond question. Only a true Etruscan stood that tall, moved with such grace but, like most Etruscans, his looks were marred by the distinctive double bump on the bridge of his nose.
‘Our trainer, Corbulo,’ purred Tulola. ‘Scrumptious, isn’t he?’
No, but unlike the other two there was at least an intriguing quality about him, enhanced by the contrast between high cheekbones, which would sit well on a prince, and the horny hands of what was unquestionably a son of the soil. Because for all the splendour of his spangled costume, when he performed that theatrical gesture, the calluses were plain for all to see.
‘You are here to witness the performance to end all performances, is that it?’ Appreciative grey eyes twinkled at Claudia.
‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ Miss Euphemia Sulkyboots would have to wait.
‘This way, then.’
They followed him past a penned rhinoceros, two caged lions and an enclosure packed with beady-eyed ostriches, their sharp beaks barely out of pecking range. Corbulo fell into step with Claudia and grinned.
‘Not afraid of those Mauritanian chickens, are you?’
‘Let’s say the prospect of them being turned into fans perks me up no end.’
They were passing a particularly ugly warthog when Tulola stopped abruptly. ‘Hey! Barea!’ On the far side of the ostrich compound, a skinny individual in a yellow tunic and slicked-back hair was leading a black stallion in a circle by a rope. ‘Come and watch!’
The horse-breaker signalled acknowledgement, handed the rope to a bald man and cleared the fence like a trained athlete. Oh, for gods’ sake, thought Claudia. How many of them are there? What goes through Barea’s head when he smells Timoleon’s unguent on his lover, or are his brains as sparse as his flesh? Does he care? Or was the way she drapes a proprietorial arm around his neck reward enough? Corbulo, busily inspecting a line between two sets of blocks, seemed oblivious. To his left and below them, a palisade enclosed a group of snoozing crocodiles and to his right a curious giraffe poked its head through a special opening in the roof.
‘Hello, lover, who’s your friend?’ Claudia placed the accent as coming from the Iberian peninsular, but couldn’t pin it closer than that.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know,’ admonished Tulola, playfully biting the young man’s ear. ‘You were there this morning when Claudia had that dreadful encounter with the dead man. You heard the screams.’
Barea’s eyes glistened with curiosity and, like the Celt before him, he seemed to find the prospect of violence exciting. His hands began to caress Tulola’s hips. ‘I trust the experience hasn’t scarred you?’ he asked, not waiting for an answer before his tongue danced with Tulola’s. Sweet Janus. I thought I was disturbing Tulola in the dining room earlier, but clearly it’s Tulola who’s disturbed. In the valley below, gazelle bounded gracefully and smoke from a charcoal kiln rose high into the air. Maybe a cross-eyed cat was also skulking along the wayside?.
‘Feeling better, now?’ Sergius emerged from one of the sheds and made his way down the steps to join Claudia as a gang of labourers lugged an oversized couch into the yard.
‘No.’
‘That’s the spirit.’ The grin he gave was sincerity itself and, despite her circumstances, Claudia laughed inwardly. Smile at the nice lady and she won’t stick a knife in you. Oh, Sergius, Sergius. I wonder what your face will look like once I’ve slapped out my lawsuit.
Tulola jemmied herself free of the horse-breaker and sauntered over to join her brother and his guest. ‘Barea can’t stay. Some trouble with the gelding.’
Claudia glanced over her shoulder. Trouble was an understatement. The rope had caught and the bald man was being pulled round the ring on his stomach as the black stallion reared and bucked in a cloud of dust. Poor sod. If he didn’t get trampled, he’d probably choke to death.
The couch was set down in the middle of the courtyard and a table placed beside it. When this had been piled high with fruit and cakes, Sergius brought his arm down as a signal to start. Ears flapping, a brightly costumed elephant lumbered towards the line Corbulo had been inspecting, which, to Claudia’s astonishment, was no drawing after all, but an enormously sturdy rope. When the trainer swished his baton-up, across and back-Claudia drew in her breath. She was, she realized with a tingle of excitement, about to witness something far in excess of ordinary.
Slowly, very slowly, with the gems on his coat glittering in the afternoon sun, the elephant obeyed Corbulo’s commands. Clambering up the blocks and without so much as changing pace, he marched across the tightrope, down the blocks the other side and made for the table. Then, like the good Roman that he was, he rolled on to the couch and proceeded to help himself from the goodies spread before him. Stunned by the performance, Claudia nevertheless drew the line at petting the wrinkly lump, which Tulola and her brother had rushed to do, until gradually she became conscious of the grey eyes of the trainer concentrated upon her.
‘Impressed by my Abyssinian cow?’
Who wouldn’t be? ‘Your team is riding into history, my friend.’
‘My-? Oh, the labourers were just drafted in to help with the exhibition.’ He tossed his baton into the air and caught it as it fell. ‘I always work alone.’ The elephant was revelling in the praise, his button eyes twinkling as he demolished bun after bun. ‘Can’t stand interruptions, it interferes with the training, the concentration, mucks everything up.’