Erinna did the only thing she could think of. She ran.
They caught her, of course. Just outside Frascati, and she knew the Senator would execute her for murder, because the old man had most certainly not died from natural causes. She had screamed her bloody head off, kicked and screeched and called for help, because with the old man’s death she was officially a freewoman now, she was entitled to trial by jury. But the townspeople decided this was none of their business. They viewed her desperate fight only in terms of light entertainment. The bastards had actually laughed.
To her surprise-no, to her astonishment-the Senator didn’t charge her with murder when they dragged her back. Instead he shut her in a storeroom and asked her, very politely, what formula the old man had used. And in that moment, Erinna understood everything. She saw that, in the explosion, the Arch-Hawk had seen a fast track to his expansion plans Terrified now, truly terrified, she prevaricated. Told him she didn’t know the precise formula, that the master wouldn’t disclose his secrets to a mere slave, but the Senator wasn’t fooled. They both knew she had been his instrument.
Three days passed. Cotta tried every trick in the book and it didn’t matter to him that she was free now. He needed the formula and Erinna was the only person who possessed it. How much saltpetre to sulphur, what ratio of honey to realgar, and so on. As she continued to bluff it out, he offered riches and made threats in return. But Erinna wasn’t stupid. His patience would not last for ever and he would turn to other methods to extract the information he needed. Hand twisting or the bastinado. In any case, Erinna was dead. He would not, could not, afford to let her live now. Whatever he promised.
Her only chance lay in escape.
Strangely, it wasn’t that hard. Like most sensible interrogators, Cotta employed violence as a last resort. More results were obtained by keeping the questioning friendly, and for that reason Erinna was allowed a certain privacy for her ablutions. Foolish. Very foolish. Claiming an urgent need for the latrines, she knocked her jailer unconscious with a block of wood and picked up a couple of small, but precious objects from the atrium as she fled. Cotta owed her that much, she thought. With that gold statuette and the ivory carving, she could get to Alexandria and disappear.
As dawn turned to daylight, birdsong filled the woods. Erinna had no plan. She didn’t know which direction she was headed, only that she must get away. Hitch a lift on a cart, anything, to put distance between this terrible place and herself. Juno be praised, there was only one other person on the road this early. A young woman with a cloak of dark hair and shabby clothes, whose face was a picture of burning resentment. The girl stopped when she saw Erinna.
‘What’s wrong, love?’ she asked, and Erinna hadn’t realized she’d been crying until the woman pointed it out.
Even now, she didn’t know what possessed her to go babbling off to a stranger. Stress, she supposed. The desperate need to confide after the horrendous few days. Oh, she didn’t let on about Cotta’s secret, of course, that would go with her to the grave. But Erinna couldn’t halt the sudden outpouring of emotion, and it all came gushing out. How urgently she needed to reach the coast. Book a passage on a ship. Any ship. To Athens, Massilia, anywhere.
At what point had the stranger’s concern twisted into something darker? It was only afterwards that Erinna remembered the scowl, the expression of burning resentment that had been on her face when she first saw her walking towards her on the road. Compassion, she discovered later, had been instinctive-but fleeting.
‘How will you pay for your passage?’ the stranger had asked, and there had been a shrewd look in her eye. Again, something Erinna paid no heed to at the time. Vulnerable and afraid, the desire to trust and be trusted was overwhelming. She showed the woman the gold statuette and the carving under her cloak.
‘Then I think I can help you,’ the dark-haired woman said, brightening. ‘Come with me.’
Taking Erinna’s arm in sisterly solidarity, she had led her up past the post house, and Erinna barely noticed the spade leaning against the wall at the time. She had heard only the snicker of horses, reminding her that any minute, Cotta’s men would come charging through the dawn mist towards her. She felt sick to her stomach, yet safe. Safe in the hands of this woman, this sister who understood and who cared.
When she looked back over her shoulder to check on possible pursuers, she did notice that the spade had gone, although there was still no sign of the ostler.
‘I’m an actress,’ the stranger explained. ‘With a few tricks of the trade and the aid of cosmetics, I can change your appearance to the point where your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.’ And as she led Erinna down into the woods, where this miraculous transformation would take place, she explained how the group of strolling players she had been with had split up. The very bitterness and venom in her voice should have alerted Erinna, but she was too bound up in her own sorrows. Still grieving for her dead master, for herself, for the predicament for which-hallelujah! — she had found a solution, but heavy with the knowledge that Cotta would stop at nothing to find her. Down the hill, near a stream, her companion paused. Set down her bundle and covered it carefully with her cloak. Erinna caught the clang of something metallic, but yet again paid no attention. To give yourself up to someone else’s ministrations was a luxury she’d never experienced before.
‘Look at those beautiful butterflies,’ the actress gasped, using both hands to point to the profusion of painted ladies heading south through the canopy. ‘Don’t they take your breath away, the way they dance through the trees?’ Erinna looked up and saw hope dancing among the profusion of painted ladies. ‘They’re beautif-’
Her breath was cut off. Two hands clasped round her neck and began squeezing, and suddenly the dance of the butterflies had turned into a macabre dance of death. Even as they fought, Erinna knew she was losing the battle. The actress had the advantage of surprise and her hands, strong from hauling scenery, pressed deeper into Erinna’s throat. She fell to her knees, heard a hideous gurgling sound and knew it was her last breath.
Why fight? Give in, you’re dead anyway, a little voice said. Let go, Erinna.
But the need to survive was stronger than the voice in her head. Erinna desperately wanted to live and, as she twisted and writhed, a red mist closing over her eyes, she saw the spade. The cloak, which had been kicked aside in the struggle, exposed its shiny, deadly metallic blade. In that second, that single split second, Erinna turned into a killer.
A transformation, she realized belatedly, that was far worse than death at the hands of a stranger.
*
And the body in the grave screamed, ‘You bitch! You killed me, you bitch, caved my bloody head in. Don’t you see that with that statuette and the carving, I could have done so well for myself! I could have bought fine clothes and jewels and secured myself the protection of a man who would demand only my body in payment-and what did you do? You wasted those treasures! Instead of selling them and making a comfortable life for yourself, you climbed into my old threadbare clothes, put my pack on your back and hooked up with a troupe of losers! Caspar threw me out, did you know that? Said the company was fed up with my carping, that it undermined their morale, and even the splinter group wouldn’t take me. Bitch. With that gold, I could have been happy. Really happy. I hope you rot in hell for what you’ve done!’