The hairs on her neck bristled. The way he said ‘Claudia’… As though he knew her…
‘I don’t know how they thought they could keep us apart,’ he was saying, and she doubted whether he’d noticed her heel hammering against his shinbone. ‘True love will always conquer.’
‘Get your filthy hands off me,’ she spat, gouging her fingernails deep in his flesh.
True love will always conquer. Where had she heard that before?
‘You’re on fire for it.’ He thrust his tongue inside her ear.
She sank her teeth deep in his forearm. Tasted blood.
‘Oh, how you long for it.’
She bit harder.
‘Feel me, Claudia. Feel me against you.’ He tore off her cloak in one wrench. ‘Say you want it. Say how you want me.’
Her heart was pounding. She felt faint. Sick. About to pass out.
‘Go to hell!’ Was that mouse squeak really hers?
The hand in her tunic squeezed hard on her breast. ‘Don’t lie to me, Claudia. Never lie to me. Not to me, understand?’
‘Please,’ she begged, tears clouding her eyes both from pain and from fear. ‘Please let me go.’
‘Don’t be shy.’ The hand round her waist slid past her stomach. ‘Let me feel you. Oh, yes. Oh, that’s nice.’
‘Please! You’re hurting me-’
Her flailing arms could find no target, and tears coursed down her cheeks. Tears of shame, tears of fear, tears of guilt. How stupid could she be, sending Junius ahead? Talk about arrogance! Even if he had set off now to look, he’d never find her. Please, she prayed. Someone help me…
‘That’s really nice, Claudia.’ His breath was fast and ragged.
Her frantic kicks and her struggles only spurred him on. ‘Bitch on heat,’ he rasped. ‘You’re a fucking bitch on heat.’ The obscenities increased. Vulgar. Repetitive. An ugly, unstoppable chant. Just like Magic wrote in his tirades of filth.
Oh no! Sweet Jupiter, no! Claudia’s blood turned to ice and her head swam. Please, no. Not that unstable lunatic! Not here!
‘Magic?’ she squeaked.
Now she could see the ink blots on his clothing, his hands stained black from it. It was all that he did, writing. It was obvious. He ate only to stop himself from starving. Cared nothing for personal hygiene. And now it was no longer a question of rape. This man was a monster, his fantasies warped…
‘I knew you’d replied to my letters.’ He wrenched her skirts up. ‘Only someone was stealing them, did you know that? I’ll find him, this thief. I’ll bring you his balls as a present. Or maybe his heart? Would you like that? You could eat it.’
As his hand slithered across her naked thigh, his stinking breath threw out another tirade of cruelty. Claudia clawed at thin air. He was strong. Demented. She couldn’t break free, she couldn’t fight back. Or now could she?
Silly bitch, why didn’t you think of it before! If only she could reach that knife she’d strapped to her ankle…
Magic threw her headlong into the sacking and lifted his tunic to expose himself fully. ‘Want it?’ he breathed.
Claudia screwed up her courage. ‘Yes,’ she croaked.
As he launched himself upon her, she spun sideways. Felt the blade in her hand.
‘Whore,’ he yelled, then total surprise washed over his face. ‘But… But…’
As Claudia struggled free of the slippery sacks, he knelt staring at the knife in his side. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Claudia, why?’ His eyes were those of a whipped puppydog, a portrait of utter betrayal.
‘Why did you kill me?’ he asked. ‘Magic loves you! Magic’d never hurt you. Not ever.’
Claudia stood riveted on the cold, stone floor. Physical disease she could deal with. Jaundice, dropsy, pneumonia, no problem. But confronted with mental illness, she froze. She watched, mesmerized, as Magic staggered to his feet. Magic swayed. Magic pulled out the knife. Magic roared. Not with pain, but with anger, and any compassion Claudia felt, any confusion, vanished on the spot. Blood spurted from the wound in his side, gushing on to the flagstones, and suddenly he was lumbering towards her, stabbing with the knife. Her knife!
Terrified, Claudia ran into the street as Magic, hands red with blood, stumbled after her.
‘Bitch! You treacherous bitch! Come back here!’
Even in the next alley, she could hear him.
‘I’ll kill you, you fucking treacherous bitch! Do you hear me? I’ll fucking KILL YOU!’
Swamped by nausea, every limb shaking and her teeth clashing like castanets, Claudia fell against a wall for support. Where was everybody? Janus, she’d been dragged off the streets, almost raped and these people were still sleeping? Lumbering steps echoed in the grey dawn light. Holy shit, run!
And run she did. Past the mills which, at any other season, were beehives full of millers and sackmen, porters and donkeymen, the dry air alive with clipped orders, where flour would tickle your nose, make you cough. It would never echo like it did now. Claudia could hear her own light footsteps, and a heavier, dragging tread from behind… Rounding a corner, she collided with a solid mass of horseflesh.
‘Move aside, you’re blocking the road!’
The boy who sat perched upon the animal looked down his snooty, freckled nose. ‘My father hired this horse for me to try out. It’s my birthday.’
‘Out the way!’
‘He’s magnificent, isn’t he? I might ask Father to buy him.’
Perhaps the horse might pay more attention. ‘Shift,’ Claudia told it, ‘or prepare for the gluepot.’
Any second now Magic will come stumbling round the corner…
The boy was stroking the animal’s mane. ‘He’s called Comet, he’s so fast.’
‘Is he?’ Claudia licked her lips. ‘Then it’s about time he showed us.’ She yanked the kid off and jumped into the saddle.
‘Hey!’
It was one hell of a way up. And having never sat astride a monster like this, bloody uncomfortable, too. ‘Gee up.’ That’s what they say, isn’t it. ‘Gee up’?
‘That’s stealing.’ The boy scrambled to his feet.
‘Damn right.’ Comet? It hadn’t budged a hoof.
The boy was frantic. ‘Gerroff, you!’
Claudia leaned into the animal’s ear. ‘Ssssssss.’
‘He’s mine, give him back!’ the boy cried, pulling at Claudia’s ankle.
She tried again. ‘Ssssssss.’
Then there was no question of how Comet came by his name. Houses, shops and streets flew past in a blur as Claudia clung to his shiny black neck. People screamed, cursed and yelled as the horse cut right through them, his hooves clattering and slithering over the cobbles. In the Circus Maximus, they do seven laps then they’re whacked. Kid’s stuff to this beast.
‘Whooa, boy. Whooa.’ But the horse wasn’t stupid. It knew a cobra when it heard one, and concentrated on putting more distance between them. Claudia began to feel dizzy. Then seasick. Finally, when vital organs started to shake hands with each other, she screwed up her eyes and clung like a barnacle. She thought of her mission to Arbil’s. Dammit, Marcus Cornelius, you’ll have to find another mug to play sodding detective. I’m paralysed.
Mercifully, gallop slowed to canter, canter to stop. Claudia prised her eyelids apart. Where the hell was she? Comet seemed happy, clip-clopping his way across this stable yard to bury his big, black nose in the manger. His breath steamed white on the cool morning air. As did Claudia’s.
An elderly groom came limping over. ‘Comet, old boy, what are you doing back so soon? I thought you’d been hired for the day?’
He seemed not to notice the rider, who landed in a boneless heap on the flagstones. Never mind asteroids, she thought. More like haemorrhoids. The horse snickered with pleasure and chomped noisily on the sweet-smelling hay.
‘Madam?’ A familiar face thrust itself in front of Claudia’s.
‘Junius?’ The horse has thrown me, I’m concussed. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Doing where? What was this? Was she dead? Were Claudia and Comet about to meet Gaius in the afterlife?