‘Really? I wonder where she got that idea from.’
‘The same place she got the idea that you’re courting Flavia.’
‘In passing, I may have mentioned how charming I’d found the child.’
‘You only met her once and disliked her with a fervour, as I recall.’
‘She was suffering from an unfortunate bout of BO.’
‘Then, as her ardent suitor, you’ll be delighted to know that consistency is one of Flavia’s strong points. Stand downwind and even skun k s peg their noses.’
‘Is that a feather in your hair?’ he asked. ‘Because if so, there’s another on your shoulder and two more sticking to your skirt.’
‘I’ve been playing Daedalus and Icarus, learning how to fly. Why don’t you give it a whirl? It’s really simple. You just hold a feather in each hand and then jump out the window.’
‘Sounds too easy,’ he said. ‘I prefer something with a bit of a challenge.’
‘Then jump from the Tarpeian Rock, I’m not proud.’
There were enough bristles on his chin to engage a hedgehog’s mating instinct, Claudia noticed, and his eyes matched the pink of her gown. Julia may have got most ends of the oleiculturist stick wrong, but she was right when she said he looked ghastly.
‘Exactly what were you drinking last night, Marcus?’
‘Something the Gauls on the Helvetican border brew from fire, sulphur, acid and bleach. It’s actually rather good.’
A thought occurred to her. She drummed her fingers gently against the bedstead. ‘When did you last eat?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘Then I’ll send for something. Porridge, perhaps?’ Despite the paucity of light in the guest room, it was still possible to watch his face turn from ashen to a rather subtle shade of green. ‘Or would you prefer a nice dish of curds?’
‘I know you’re mad at me,’ Marcus began, urging his rising gorge to ignore pictures of lumpy white milk curds.
‘Me? Cross? Perish the thought.’
‘Then why are you bending over the bed with your teeth bared?’
‘You know my motto, Orbilio. Start every day with a smile,’ she breezed. ‘And get it over with.’
The noise from his throat was like water gurgling its way down a storm drain. It was the best laugh he could muster through the hangover.
‘Claudia, I’m serious. I apologize for the subterfuge, I really do, but I need to talk to you-’
‘I’m listening,’ she said, flinging wide the pinewood shutters.
Like salt on a slug, Orbilio recoiled at this sudden surge of light and by the time the black and orange zigzags had ceased to blind him, Claudia was already halfway down the street and humming.
The blind beggar on the corner could not believe his luck. Bronze? After all these years, the Widow Seferius, who normally snorted in derision when she passed, had actually dropped bronze in his begging bowl?
So amazing was the miracle, the beggar couldn’t help untying the bandages round his eyes to make sure.
Twenty-Two
One hundred and forty miles to the south, in the caverns beneath the fortified coastal town of Cumae in Campania, the High Priest unwrapped a package. Inside a soft cloth protected with oiled goatskins was a bowl. It had been fashioned from solid gold, engraved with horses and warriors, inlaid with silver, and weighed a bloody ton.
‘Let me see, let me see!’
Yanking off the wrinkled mask with one hand and reaching out for the bowl with the other, the Sibyl whooped with delight. Far from the old crone her clientele mistook her for, the Oracle was a handsome woman in her thirty-eighth year, who saw no reason why she and her brother shouldn’t keep this scam going for many more years before he retired to the estate he fancied in the country, she to a palace a long way from Campania, where she could retain a harem of girls well versed in the art of pleasing women.
‘Who’s it from?’ she asked, leaning back to maximize the light from the tall candelabra behind her throne as she studied the bowl.
‘Sextus Valerius Cotta, estate owner, senator, and gullible fool.’
How they fell for it, she’d never know. You’d think someone would twig that the ghosts they met were not floating on air, but on wooden platforms manipulated by black painted ropes. It never ceased to amaze her by what miracle these so-called Seekers of Destiny uniformly accepted that the faces of their loved ones had been rendered unrecognizable by death, not by a thick coating of chalk. Even more incredibly, no one had questioned the necessity of the heads of their ancestors being veiled in the Underworld. They didn’t think that maybe long, flowing robes and an abundance of thick, swirling mist might be to disguise physical dissimilarities between the originals and the facsimiles?
Of course, it wasn’t all smoke and mirrors and a cast of bad actors. To maintain her credibility, the Oracle needed to have her facts right, so she and her brother arranged for the Seekers of Destiny to be drugged, disorientated then left alone in a darkened antechamber to stew for a while. During this time they were able to compile a dossier on the Seeker’s nearest and dearest from the masses of files which were housed in these tunnels. Given that only the very, very, very, very, very, very rich could afford the exorbitant entrance fee to the theme park that was Hades, the Oracle and her brother could easily afford to have these files constantly updated by a whole team of scribes working round the clock on data gathered by a network of informants. It was from the secret libraries beneath Cumae that the scenes for the re-enactment were rehearsed and put together.
‘Is the Arch-Hawk planning a return trip?’ she asked hopefully. The work on this bowl was quite splendid.
‘He doesn’t say.’ The priest turned the note over. ‘Nope. It would appear this is simply a token of his gratitude.’
‘Pity others aren’t as grateful,’ the Oracle muttered.
‘We don’t do badly out of the deal, little sister.’
‘It’s an expensive business, the special effects, the informants, the huge number of staff, the elaborate costumes-’
‘Get away with you.’ The priest laughed. ‘We earn enough to give this bowl to the dogs to eat off.’
Ah, but they were good howlers, those hounds. Mournful buggers, whose baying travelled for miles through those underground echo chambers.
‘Buying silence doesn’t come cheap,’ the Sibyl reminded him tartly.
Only last year, the wife of a well-known politician became lost in the catacombs and fell down a shaft. Her pitiful wailing had only added to the atmosphere, but by the time the team had located her, she was so badly injured that she’d died before they could get her up to the surface. Then, and rather more recently, there was one of the Sibyl’s lovers, who, when discarded, had threatened to expose to the Emperor the hokum they practised, and unfortunately had had to be strangled.
‘Not so expensive,’ the priest corrected. ‘Remember, an awful lot don’t come out anyway.’
He’d lost track of the poor sods who were so keen to speak to their ancestors that they’d tried swimming what they thought was the Styx, only to drown as the underground river sucked them under before disappearing in swirls back into the rock. Or those who came here for the express purpose of joining their loved ones. Once they were convinced there really was life after death, they’d stab themselves, fall on their swords, slash their wrists-and in such quantities that each Seeker of Destiny was now searched for concealed weaponry.
Death, however, accounted for only a small percentage of mishaps. Far more visitors became so traumatized by the experience, succumbing to claustrophobia and worse, that they suffered a complete mental collapse. Many more fell victim to the effects of ingesting a cocktail of henbane, belladonna, hellebore and poppy seeds which was fed them. Consulting the Oracle was a dangerous business.
None of which, the priest reflected cheerfully, led to adverse publicity! Disappearances and breakdowns only added to Cumae’s mystique, corroborating the Sibyl’s power to summon the dead. After all, it wouldn’t do for Hades to become a place which was not to be feared.