‘Kyana’s mother?’ Claudia was shocked.
‘Yep.’
The urchin crammed in so much bread, its mouth couldn’t close properly. To avoid a close-up in mastication, Claudia stared down the street. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Topped herself.’
‘How?’
No answer, and when she turned round the child had gone, along with the rest of the honey bread and a gold brooch set with carnelians. It was left to a passing crone with three dark hairs sprouting from a mole on her chin to explain that Hecamede could finally take no more. On the anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance, she cut her wrists and bled to death.
Claudia pictured her last hours. Lost and lonely, inconsolable in her grief. Did she think of Aristaeus? Or were her last thoughts focused solely on little Kyana, five years old and full of mischief? Little Kyana, who disappeared the day Aristaeus went to collect spiders’ webs.
Claudia raced after the funeral procession, intercepting the undertaker at the second block of tenements. When he reached the pyre, she said, he must do it properly. He must deliver the funeral oration personally, extolling Hecamede’s virtues as a mother and then afterwards ensure a sow was sacrificed to Ceres with all the pomp and ceremony he would bestow upon a wealthier patron. Pop-eyed, the undertaker agreed, mentally noting that the ring he had been given in payment would look particularly nice on his mistress’s finger.
It was only later, approaching the villa, that Claudia remembered seeing something that was important, if only she could remember what it was. Damn! So many people milling around, so many sounds and smells compounded by the mental confusion and shock surrounding Hecamede’s suicide, was it any wonder?
Doubtless, though, it would come back to her at some stage.
Providing it wasn’t too late.
*
Marcus Cornelius Orbilio had spent much of his morning listening. Listening and following.
It intrigued him to watch little Pacquia, dark-skinned and thin as a billhook, weaving back and forth between the villa and the clipshed via an extremely convoluted route which took in the dyesheds, the bleaching yards and the orchard. Sometimes she carried water in a bowl, sometimes cloths, sometimes objects hidden by cloths, but each time she was whistling, as though her errand was of no importance.
What on earth, he wondered, running an ivory comb through his hair, was Claudia up to this time?
His spirits unexpectedly fell when he realized he was mistaken. One of the shepherds had fallen sick and Pacquia was running errands for Diomedes, which possibly explained the tortuous route. For here was the shepherd convalescing in the clipshed, probably because he had something contagious which the Greek didn’t want bandied about.
Leaving the man tossing fitfully in his sleep, Orbilio went to check on Tanaquil. Eugenius had been completely closed to reason when he spoke to him yesterday evening. The girl had stolen a horse, Collatinus said, and theft was a civil matter which, as Orbilio knew, was tried in the magistrate’s court.
For magistrate, read Ennius, Marcus thought irritably. He’d find her guilty and order her to make restitution. She might argue that she had returned the horse, which was only borrowed in the first place, but Ennius would be deaf to her appeals and insist she sell herself into slavery to cover the debt. No prizes for guessing who’d snap her up.
‘Don’t look so bloody sanctimonious, man,’ Eugenius had snapped. ‘Haven’t you ever hankered for a fullbreasted redhead to warm your toes once in a while? Spirited little filly, I like ’em like that.’ He swirled wine round inside his mouth. ‘Don’t you?’
Arguing with a bigot was like arguing with stone and Orbilio gave up. Collatinus appeared to have forgotten Acte pretty damned fast, and for a girl who’d given sixteen years of her life pandering to the old sod, it was bloody unfair. When he’d heard the old man had been taken ill in the early hours, he was actually rather glad.
Tanaquil had been locked in a shed which at present was empty, but which would shortly be filled with bracken for the sheep’s winter litter. Orbilio felt he owed it to the girl to tell her her fate before she found out from anyone else, and to tell her also that he intended to outbid Eugenius. Not that he expected to win. Ennius would see to that. But by Janus, he’d bloody well try.
The presence of four guards was unnecessary. Tanaquil couldn’t hope to escape, the shed was stone built-and how could she hope to reach the thatch without a ladder? But Eugenius was going to make as much capital as he could out of this, and so the guard was for show more than anything else. Approaching from the clipshed, it was the voices which stopped him in his tracks. Low-pitched, they were embroiled in heated argument, although he was unable to make out the words. When he turned the corner, the last person he expected to see with his lips to the crack in the stonework was Fabius.
‘Holy Mars, you gave me a fright!’
‘So I see.’ He’d jumped like the proverbial scalded cat.
Orbilio waited, but Fabius said nothing, either to him or to Tanaquil through the gap. He simply nodded and strode off, his face suffused with anger.
A single green eye blazed its fury through the crack. ‘I’ll kill him. When I get out, so help me, I’ll kill him.’
‘Fabius?’
‘Eugenius,’ she spat.
Orbilio rattled off a few platitudes to calm her down before finally breaking the news about the impending trial. She didn’t enquire as to his motives for outbidding Collatinus, neither did she thank him for his efforts.
‘I’ll have his guts for my girdle,’ she hissed. ‘He had no right to murder Utti.’
‘You didn’t tell me Utti had bloodstains on his tunic.’
‘Well, of course he did,’ she snapped. ‘He came running when I screamed and helped me turn Acte on to her back again. Whose side are you on, anyway?’
‘Tanaquil, why were you in the birch grove on Wednesday?’
‘I told you, I went for a walk.’ It sounded petulant.
‘What was Utti doing there?’
There was a long pause and a longer sigh. ‘He was following me,’ she said. ‘Only I didn’t say, because I didn’t want to incriminate him.’
‘By lying, it appeared you were covering up for him, you realize that?’ Of course she realizes that, you stupid oaf. The knowledge is eating her alive. He quickly moved on. ‘Why was Utti following you? Was he worried something might happen to you, a woman alone?’
‘Yes.’ She said it too quickly, as though she was pouncing on the idea. ‘Yes, that’s it, he wanted to protect me.’ She began to cry. ‘What’s going to happen to me, Marcus? Suppose they kill me, too?’
‘They’re not going to kill you, Tanaquil.’ Not in the sense you mean.
Injustice seethed within him and he decided to have one more go at Collatinus. Instead, the gigolo blocked the doorway, stressing how ill the old man was, how frail. ‘Bit sudden, isn’t it?’
‘He’s eluded Death for sixteen years,’ Diomedes said. ‘But now Death’s picked up the spoor, he’s not going to let go.’
‘How long?’
Diomedes shrugged insolently. ‘Who knows?’ he said, in a manner which made it clear to both of them that he did know and wasn’t telling. Orbilio resisted the urge to smash his fist right between those blond-lashed eyes.
But that was this morning. Since lunch…
Since lunch, he wasn’t feeling so well. He was cold, so cold he was wearing his toga on top of his tunic and was still shivering. An open charcoal brazier burned in the corner. Beside his couch, a portable water heater stood on its tripod. He lay down and pulled the bedcovers up to his chin, using the cold as an excuse for knees which weren’t functioning properly. He was certain there was a draught in the room, but he’d closed the windows and drawn the hangings. There was a noise, too. It was, he decided later, the sound of his own teeth chattering, an unwelcome accompaniment to the constant drumming inside his cranium.