The shaking in her limbs was replaced by the stiffness of truth, and something primordial slithered in her stomach. The youth had not ushered her to the back entrance by mistake. There never had been an informant waiting. No misunderstanding in which the two parties waited in different parts of the building, unaware of the other's presence.
This was a carefully planned attempt at murder.
The idea was so simple, she had to admire it. Leave your victim kicking her heels in the shade, so that by the time her name was eventually called, she would be well and truly dazzled by the sunshine out front. Temporarily blinded, she would, of course, fail to spot the plank that had been so carefully laid across her path, causing her to trip in the very place where the block was designed to drop. 'X' marks the spot, as it were.
And it had nearly — so nearly — succeeded.
Leaning over the workman's fountain to wash her face, Claudia half expected to see the Grim Reaper peering over her shoulder. But Saturn clearly had an appointment elsewhere, and the only thing that stared back was a pale creature with distended pupils and white hair cascading around her shoulders. It came as a shock to realize that the reflection was hers.
Hastily brushing the limestone dust from her hair, Claudia pinned her wayward curls into place, smoothed the pleats of her robe, pinched the colour back into her cheeks, and by the time she found her way back to the Forum she had not only removed every last trace of her close call with death, she'd also controlled the jumping at every creaking wagon that passed, the flinching at each brush of a hand.
Squeezing past pack mules and porters, there was no outward suggestion that many nights would pass in which she would be kept awake by a continuous replay of half a ton of limestone smashing to the ground within inches of her.
But at least Claudia Seferius would have the satisfaction of knowing that the bastard who planned this wouldn't sleep, either.
Thirteen
Orbilio opened one eye, felt a stab of white pain bounce off the back of his skull and quickly closed it again. So, then. Not dead. As far as he knew there was no sunshine in Hades — and he didn't imagine it was filled with pretty girls with apple cheeks and liquid black eyes pressing their young, firm breasts against his arm as they mopped his brow, either!
'Where am I?'
The first time he awoke, he truly believed himself to be in the Halls of the Dead. Through misty vision and great waves of nausea, monsters and giants closed in on him. Dwarves and serpents gurned in the flickering torchlight. The second time he awoke, he realized they were painted plaques. Grotesque, but harmless, in fact the very opposite of harmless, but it hadn't been the most auspicious moment to be introduced to the Gaulish custom of sticking gargoyles on the wall to scare off any evil spirits who tried to enter the house.
'Sssh,' his ministering angel cooed. 'Lie still and rest, my lord. You're all right now.'
She could have fooled him. His head pounded, his brain was on fire and every tooth in his jawbone was screaming. 'Someone hit me,' he said.
'Yes, me.'
She laid a cold compress over his forehead, drenched with healing comfrey and witch hazel, and at the same time contrived to press another warm breast against his shoulder. The feeling was not altogether unpleasant, even allowing for the pain in his head.
'Would it be too much of an imposition to ask why?' Vaguely he remembered the stakeout in the boatyard. Witnessing the senseless murder of the nightwatchman and a child being smuggled ashore. After that, though, things started to get a bit hazy.
'Well, if I hadn't clobbered you with that lump of wood, my lord,' she said matter-of-factly, 'they'd have killed you like they did Rintox.'
'Rintox being the nightwatchman?'
Even the simplest deduction sent daggers into his brain, slicing it into a thousand pieces.
'He was a lazy git and no mistake,' the girl said, wringing out the cloth for another compress that she placed behind his ear. 'That's why my stepfather hired him, and it's why he wouldn't have no dog in the yard, neither. Said if you had the right guard dog, you could never turn your back on the bugger, and if you had one you could turn your back on, then it weren't worth the trouble of keeping. But no one deserves to die like Rintox did, do they? Can you try to sit up, my lord? I've got a potion here what'll put paid to the queasiness.'
As she plumped the cushions behind his back, he smelled the same scent he'd smelled last night in the boatyard, and now he remembered where he'd inhaled it before.
'You're the boatbuilder's daughter.'
Like everyone else in the yard, he'd been too distracted by bouncing breasts, swaying hips and the flash of her shapely calves to notice the girl's face, and he felt his cheeks burn with the shame.
'Stepdaughter, my lord.' She held the mug to his lips. 'You won't get me calling that bastard Dad — now look, this stuff ain't nice, but do drink it all if you can.'
The shattered mush that was his brain slowly reassembled itself. 'The anonymous note in my room? That was you?'
'Certainly was. Come on, you can do better than that, my lord. That's the ticket.'
'Mother of Tarquin!' His eyes were streaming from the vile brew. 'What is this stuff?'
'Told you it weren't very nice, and frankly you don't wanna know what it is. Now then,' She sat on the bed and leaned earnestly towards him, 'what are we going to do about them child-peddling bastards, my lord?'
'We,' he groaned, 'aren't going to do anything.'
He stared at the grimacing monsters covering the walls, felt the bitter aftertaste of her concoction strip the taste buds from his tongue and gingerly explored the swelling behind his left ear. Right now, he wasn't sure Rintox hadn't got off rather lightly and was immediately ashamed of his thoughts. Rintox's death was no joking matter. He might have been lazy, as Black Eyes here said, but sloth is no motive for murder. Rintox didn't deserve to die in terror and pain, any more than his family deserved to have their lives ruined, either.
'You are going stay here and carry on as usual,' he told her firmly. 7 am going to take this up with the authorities.'
'Oh, no.'
Black Eyes folded militant arms over her breasts.
'Oh, no, you bloody don't, my lord. For one thing, I ain't staying a minute longer under the same roof as that fleshpeddling creep, and while me Mam won't hear a word said against the dirty bugger she'll find out soon enough what he's like, so I won't lose no sleep over that. And for a second '
She paused only to plunge the cloth into a bowl of cold water redolent with hyssop and comfrey and wring it out as though it were a chicken's neck.
'For a second,' she said, slapping it on to his forehead, 'I'd be very careful who I told about this, if I was you. I mean, it ain't poor folk who can afford tender young flesh, if you gets my drift, and I'm pretty sure, from the odd bits I've overheard, that there's some powerful people involved here.'
'Like who?'
'Well, if I knew that, I'd have told you in me note, wouldn't I!'
Orbilio was plunged back to his childhood, to the times when he'd been stuck in bed with mumps or the itching pox. The family nurse hadn't had much use for meekness, either.