*
The curse was more successful than she could have predicted.
Not a day passed when the Digger didn’t regret swinging that shovel. The more she bonded with the Spectaculars, and the more they accepted her without question, the more accute the pain.
And then there was Skyles She should have listened to that little voice inside her head, the one which told her to give in, stop fighting, let go. But she’d fought back and survived to dance solo among the butterflies in the woods, and now there was only one solution to ending the torment that locked her in eternal autumn.
Once Saturnalia was over and she had discharged her obligations to perform, there would be one final spilling of blood.
Erinna’s own.
Thirty-Six
Despite her head pounding like thunder and the bitter cold chilling her bones, Claudia picked up most of the situation. What Erinna glossed over, Cotta filled in, and frankly she wondered why he bothered. He didn’t seem a particularly vain man, who enjoyed speaking just to hear the sound of his own cultured voice. Then she realized.
He was explaining for the same reason that he hadn’t just let her go.
You could forgive his heavies for snatching both women back in that alley. In the dark, in a hurry, in a crowd, time was not on their side. They could decide later which of the women was which. So why hadn’t the Arch-Hawk let Claudia go? If he’d had Erinna followed, then he obviously kn ew who Claudia was, and it would have been a simple matter to have his ‘boys’ dump her somewhere while she was still unconscious. She would never have known then who had taken Erinna, much less where or, more importantly, why. Instead, he was dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, briefing his captive in true military style. He had even explained to Claudia how he came to locate the last missing piece of his puzzle.
‘Jupiter alone knows how hard my men tried to find her,’ he said. ‘It was as though Erinna had disappeared from the face of the earth.’
He had expected to trace her through the stolen objects, he added, but inexplicably none of the missing objects turned up. She had simply vanished into thin air, taking with her his plans for the expansion of Rome.
‘How,’ he asked, smiling, ‘could I hope to blow up the Senate House now? With a plentiful supply of the Poseidon Powder, I could have experimented to my heart’s content, but one pouch?’
Claudia didn’t understand. Blow up the Senate? What was he talking about? Blitzing one building would hardly change the course of the Empire. With a rush of freezing ice to her veins, she knew there was only one way history could be altered with one blast. Sweet Janus! Three hundred men would be packed inside, debating, laughing, jeering. With no idea they had minutes to live- No, wait. Cotta would want more. He would be wanting three hundred and one. History could not be changed without changing the Emperor.
She thought of his own history. General to Senator to Emperor in three simple steps.
‘You’re crazy,’ she said, but even as she spoke the words, she knew it wasn’t true. Sextus Valerius Cotta was sane. Excruciatingly sane, in fact. He merely saw the Senate as a dam to be breached. An obstacle to be erased in the name of progress.
‘Then a letter arrived from Frascati,’ Cotta said, as though accusations of psychosis were hurled at him three times a day. ‘A woodsman reported that he’d found the body of my runaway slave and he thought I should know.’
Tactics was one key to winning a battle. Thoroughness another, he added.
‘I had no reason to doubt the woodsman’s account, but felt it sensible to send my steward to verify the discovery. Confirm once and for all that the corpse was Erinna’s.’
Once again, the Arch-Hawk’s celebrated attention to detail had paid off.
‘You can see how the woodsman was mistaken. The body in the grave had long hair, but it was black. Jet black.’ Cotta prised himself away from the soft, bulging sacks and strolled nonchalantly over towards the two women. Wooden boards reverberated dully under his tread, but Claudia could not hear for the drumming inside her head. ‘Erinna’s hair, as you can see,’ he said, stroking it, ‘is pure chestnut.’
Erinna did not flinch when he touched her. She just continued to stare at him, her white face quite without expression. Cotta, on the other hand, looked faintly amused. It took a couple of seconds for Claudia to realize that his overriding emotion was satisfaction. Immense satisfaction. Like his father before him, he was on the point of realizing his dream. And Claudia, goddammit, was the catalyst.
‘I recognized you from the Temple of Janus,’ he told Erinna, lifting her chin with his finger. ‘Oh, not at the time. Unfortunately.’
He’d been minding his own business, dutifully attending the Festival of the Lambs, he explained, when boredom was suddenly alleviated by a group of strolling players launching into an impromptu performance. Fortune had smiled on the Arch-Hawk that day. Had he not attended (and let’s be frank, he only went because the ceremony was less boring than his dear wife), but had he not attended, he would not have been able to put the pieces together.
‘It was, in fact, this magnificent cloak of chestnut hair that triggered my memory. The way you always eschewed fashion in favour of coiling it into a bun.’
Even though the girl outside the Temple of Janus had been veiled, when her tunic came away in Ion’s hands, Cotta had glimpsed the bun. At the time, it hadn’t registered as significant, but his memory was trained to recall details. Reading the result of his steward’s investigation, another snippet of gossip came back. About the troupe of strolling players who had been hiring in Frascati last October. At which point, everything fell into place.
‘Caspar’s Spectaculars,’ he said silkily. ‘Sponsored by one Claudia Seferius.’
‘Let her go,’ Erinna pleaded. ‘Please, Senator. Let her go.’
Claudia swallowed. ‘He can’t,’ she said thickly. Why the hell did Erinna think he was telling Claudia this?
‘She doesn’t know anything about the experiments,’ Erinna continued. ‘I’m the only one who knows the secret.’
Claudia’s teeth began to chatter, and not from the cold. Erinna still didn’t get it, did she? Sextus Valerius Cotta, that handsome Arch-Hawk of the Senate, had tried every trick in the book to make her disclose the formula that would blow the Senate House into three thousand pieces. In his storeroom back in Frascati, he’d tried bribing her, he’d made threats, and although he hadn’t tortured her, he had little hope that she would actually impart the knowledge he so desperately sought.
But there was a way. There was always a way. The solution was in front of him now.
From the depths of his toga he drew out a candle, lit the wick from the solitary oil lamp. Oh, god. Panic filled Claudia’s veins. Not burns. Oh, please. Anything but that. Please. Not burns.
Slowly, with the flame flickering like a yellow demonic tongue, Cotta advanced towards her. She tried to wriggle out of his range, just as Erinna, seeing what was about to happen, squirmed backwards as fast as she could. Cotta didn’t bother with his ex-slave girl. A strong hand reached out and grabbed Claudia’s hair, jerked her spine so hard against his thigh that she cried out. With his prisoner bound hand and foot, Cotta was still taking no chances. The boot pressing down on her calves was implacable.
Like a hare petrified into immobility by a night torch, Erinna stared open-mouthed at the tableau of horror. ‘D-don’t. I beg you, Senator. Don’t do this.’
He had, at last, found her weak point. Out of stubbornness, honour, who kn ows what, Erinna might hold out against whatever he threw at her. But few people can stand by while an innocent third party is tortured.
Cotta ripped away the cloth from Claudia’s shoulder.
‘Master, please. I beg you.’ Tears coursed down Erinna’s cheek. ‘She’s done nothing, let her go.’