‘Shut up!’
Mighty Mars, help me. Help me now. ‘Fabius, please-’
‘I said, shut up.’
Lions snarl. Wolves snarl. Claudia had never before seen a man snarl-and what little strength was left in her legs blew away like the spoors of the puffball.
‘Got shot of two husbands and thought to make me the third, did you? You and that loony imposter.’
‘No!’ In panic, she cast around for a means of escape, but the steel was wavering, glinting, a mere hand span from her ribcage. One false move… ‘She was your sister, Fabius.’
‘Are you trying to be funny? There’s no insanity in my family.’ He shot her an odd look. ‘Claudia, seriously. Do we strike you as barmy?’
‘No.’ Titter, titter. ‘Of course not.’ The forced laughter was in danger of becoming hysterical.
‘Damn right. You’ll never convince me that woman was anything but an imposter.’
Claudia felt her strength seeping back. ‘Oh, but I can,’ she said evenly, wrenching her gaze from flashing blade to flashing eyes. ‘That woman really was Sabina Collatinus.’ A chill wind passed between them as, unhurriedly, she gave her reason.
She’d expected her revelation to unsettle him, disconcert him so she could run. But he stared at her. Just stared at her. Even then, there was the possibility he might relax-step aside-let her go…
His arm came up. ‘No!’ He buried the blade in the smooth, grey bark. ‘No-o-o-o-o!’ It was a howl of pain and anguish, of hopelessness and despair.
Claudia tried to dart forward.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ His hand, closing round her neck, flung her back against the tree. ‘Why didn’t you fucking tell me?’
In his fierce volcanic anger he was oblivious to her struggles, the kicks to his shins, the punches to his chest.
‘She’s not my sister,’ he raged, pinning her tight to the bark. ‘She’s not my fucking sister!’
Over and over he repeated it and with every roar, his grip tightened until her struggles became pitiful, reduced to the flutterings of a wounded bird. She heard a rasping sound, a rattle, and realized it came from her own throat.
There was a darkness, a fuzziness round the periphery of her vision, then suddenly her head was falling forward and the noise in her throat had stopped. Choking, she tried to make sense of what her eyes were telling her: Kleon and Fabius rolling in a cloud of dust and leaf litter, arms and legs flailing-and, lumbering down the embankment, the limp but recognizable figure of Marcus Cornelius Orbilio. She weighed up the protagonists. Fabius was fighting (appropriately enough) like a madman, thrashing and roaring and kicking, his workouts and route marches standing him in excellent stead. Orbilio, hollow-eyed and distinctly grey around the gills, didn’t look as though he had the strength to wrestle a fieldmouse, much less a seasoned campaigner. And as manful as Kleon’s effort was, this had every appearance of being Fabius’s game.
Orbilio paused to examine the bruising round her neck. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Are you?’ she croaked. He looked ghastly. Purple hollows under his eyes, deep crevices in his face. His breathing was shallow, his pallor grim.
He held up one hand, palm outstretched, which could have meant anything from yes to don’t ask, and shuffled across to pitch in. And in that instant, Claudia instinctively knew she was wrong. Diomedes had visited Supersnoop. Except the minute dose of poison he normally administered had been a tad stronger than usual…
The rock that came crashing down on Fabius’s skull was intended for a blond Greek, but the soldier crumpled and lay still.
Orbilio gave a twisted smile. ‘Thanks,’ he said, sinking on to a tree root.
‘My pleasure.’ Truly it was.
The Cilician, still on his knees and badly winded, was wiping blood from his mouth and Claudia tried to ignore the jagged thorns that seemed to be tearing at her stomach. Dammit, why should she feel guilty? Looked at from her point of view, he was new to the staff and within weeks two women lay dead. What was a girl supposed to think?
‘Kleon, where the bloody hell have you been?’ She felt a lot better for snapping at him.
Five-year-old eyes looked out of a twenty-five-year-old face. ‘I…’
Orbilio struggled to his feet. ‘He was acting on my orders,’ he explained. ‘At first I thought I’d contracted a chill, then food poisoning and then I finally realized-’
‘Diomedes was a fully paid-up member of the Hemlock Society.’ Claudia finished it for him.
‘You know?’ He was making a valiant effort not to sway, she noticed. ‘Well, it occurred to me that it was just possible, after what I’d told Lover Boy about me and your inheritance, that he might have fancied a spot of revenge, hence my asking Kleon here to follow him, confident-’ he shot her a sardonic grin-‘Junius was guarding you.’
He untied his belt and offered it to the Cilician, who used it to bind tight the makeshift bandage he’d torn out of Fabius’s tunic.
‘When Kleon reported back to say our doctor friend had hitched a ride aboard a northbound wagon this morning, I came to tell you. Instead I walked into a raging argument between Junius and Cypassis, each blaming the other for your disappearance.’
Fabius’s blood began to seep through the white linen. His face was grey and the bodyguard’s attempts to slap him back to consciousness failed abysmally.
‘How did you find me?’
‘Melinno saw you from his sickbed. That blue stola stood out on the plateau and that was our starting point. It was only when Fabius began bellowing we knew exactly where to aim for.’ He gave his chest a rueful pat. ‘Only Kleon is that bit fitter than me.’
As though to prove the point, Kleon slung the limp form of Eugenius’s favourite grandson over his shoulders as though it was a sack of cabbages and took off in the direction of the villa. He didn’t need to be told Fabius needed medical attention-and quickly.
When they were alone, Orbilio asked, ‘Care to tell me why our friendly centurion chose to use your head as a hammer?’
Claudia crossed her arms as though she was cold. ‘He’d added two with two and made seven.’ She still sounded like a frog with tonsillitis. ‘But I think it goes deeper than that. I think he killed them.’
The policeman’s eyes popped. ‘Sabina and Acte? Croesus, I hadn’t had him pegged for that!’
Me neither, thought Claudia.
Orbilio ran his finger slowly over the hilt of the knife embedded in the beech. ‘Raped his own sister.’ The incredulity in his voice had a slight catch in it.
‘In his defence, he thought she was an imposter.’
Orbilio’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Who didn’t?’ he said, more to himself than to Claudia. There was a long pause, in which you couldn’t fail to notice the pallor of his face, the deeply etched lines, the purple shadows under his eyes.
It came almost as a surprise to hear him ask, ‘How were you planning to get back to Rome?’
‘Syracuse.’ There were always ships in and out of the capital.
‘Fancy a freighter from Fintium? It docks in about-’ his eyes turned up to scan for the sun-‘three hours.’ Damn you, Orbilio. Sometimes a girl could forget you were a policeman with contacts, an aristocrat with connections.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said stiffly.
He laughed. ‘You do that. By the way, I was right about Melinno’s wife. She died of lockjaw. Trouble was, Diomedes guaranteed a cure and Melinno handed over all his savings for what was effectively snakeoil.’
‘Poor chap.’
‘Save your sympathy for the Greek. Melinno’s already itching to follow him.’
She looked him square in the face. ‘I daresay someone mentioned the northbound wagon?’
‘I daresay.’
‘And slipped him enough funds to see him through?’ He grinned. ‘Quite possibly. Listen, I want to be around when Soldier Boy wakes up, hear his side of the story. Coming?’