‘Just after dawn, you said.’ The young Gaul helped his mistress to her feet. ‘First post house beyond the Collina Gate?’
‘You mean-’ Claudia looked round in amazement. Of all the ironies…!
And yet was it so surprising? She knew she’d been close to the Gate, of course a horse would head home. It’s his nature, you clumping daft tart.
Clouds of brown dust billowed from her skirts when she shook them. Dammit, she needed the baths to wash away the smell-the feel-the taste – of that slimeball who called himself Magic. Her hands, she saw, were still shaking. From the ride, she told herself. What else?
Come on, it was self-defence, that stabbing. What other option was there?
She wiped her hair from her eyes. After a long, slow massage with aromatic oils, you’ll be fine. Muscle fatigue fades, so do bruises. You can throw yourself into the Games, there’s five full days left, and today there’s a play on by Terence. Later, there’s a reading by torchlight. Ovid. Or was it Virgil? Afterwards there’ll be dancing and drinking and music, we’ll all wear garlands, and incense will burn on every street corner. I must have been mad to think of leaving the city!
‘Junius,’ she said, spitting out another large chunk of Comet’s mane. ‘Make sure it’s mares who pull the car to Arbil’s ranch.’
I’ve no wish to fly on Pegasus again.
XXV
The landscape opened up. There were shrines at crossroad junctions, picnickers by the roadside, and musicians on the move, making it easy not to think of Magic. Soon the hillsides would be swathed in drifts of blossoms from the blackthorn and the pear. Isn’t that this year’s first swallowtail, fluttering drunkenly across the clearing? Watch the baby bunnies scatter at the clip-clop of the wheels.
Forget the gush of blood upon the flagstones of the granary.
Forget the rancid stench of his clothing and his breath.
Forget his slithering pursuit. His filthy, ugly hands upon your flesh.
Let the warble of the skylark mask the screeching of his threats. Pray the sight of bounding deer smothers the obscene intimacy of his touch…
‘I think that’s it, there.’
Claudia was jolted out of her nightmare when Junius tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed to a narrow turning on the right. The rich brown soil had become thinner, she noticed, and less fertile, being mostly olive groves; and the incline had grown markedly sharper. About half a mile along they passed a sign.
THESE LANDS BELONG TO ARBIL. THEY ARE SUBJECT TO BABYLONIAN LAW.
A few minutes later they caught up with a cart, its axle low from charcoal and logs, fresh rushes and grass. Cabbages and parsnips bulged out of sacks, there were red beets and white, rhubarb and carrots. Coneys, pheasant and teal hung from rings around their broken necks and joggled with the bumps of the wheels. Then the wagon turned into a shed where a gang of youths dispensed pulses, dried fruit and grain. Each had a blue tattoo on his arm, and Claudia shivered. These then, were the Children of Arbil. The enormity of the complex was breathtaking. And the noise! Even prepared for Arbil raising kids as cash crops, Claudia hadn’t quite grasped the immensity of his task. The profusion of workers tilling, hoeing, irrigating and manuring the light, dry soil, called to one another as they worked. Oxen bent to the plough lowed mournfully. Chickens clucked, donkeys brayed, pigs, sheep and goats put in their own oars. Babies bawled, children squealed, there was singing, chanting, hammering and sawing from a constant throb of people. Hundreds of children live here, she thought, her eyes brimming with tears. Hundreds of children, for whom this was their only home, Arbil their only parent. Hundreds of them. Unwanted-and unloved.
Her car rumbled through an imposing marble gateway into a courtyard ringed with fountains and shaded with plane trees and shrubs. Statues of strange gods bearing even stranger symbols stood guard. Her eye caught an eight-point star beside one, bulls by another. And there was no mistaking that dragon! Waiting in the cool of a colonnade scented with pots of hothouse lilies, Claudia noticed movement behind the terracotta grid which bisected the garden and on the pretext of sniffing the oleanders which grew against the screen, put her eye to the diamond aperture. Three men huddled round the wicket gate, talking in tones too low to make out. One, she could see clearly. Dressed foppishly, with hair half-way down his shoulders, he bore the hook nose that betrayed his ancestry. That would be Sargon, the son, but there was something about him that seemed vaguely familiar. Where the devil had she seen him before? And what made her think of music? Of trumpets and drums?
The second of the trio was visible to her only in profile, but his distinctive Greekness stood out. Handsome, strong, he, too, had a sharp taste in dress-look at those fancy fringed boots. But…wasn’t he also familiar? For a moment she couldn’t place him, then, with a shudder, Claudia recognized the lush embroidery on his cuffs. Jupiter, Juno and Mars, this was one of the Midden Hunters who had passed her the night she found Jovi. The cultured one who’d been taking the bet.
Pushing the bush aside for a better view of the third man, Claudia’s heart skipped a beat. He wore a simple belted tunic and high riding boots, but unlike his companions, there were no rings on his fingers, no gold torque hung round his neck. He was nodding, this third man. Making his mane of hair unmistakable.
Now what, Claudia frowned, brings Kaeso out here?
‘Yes?’ The hostility of the voice could have cracked ice.
Claudia plucked a pink oleander and buried her nose in its perfume before answering. The questioner’s raven black hair was knotted loosely at the back, bracelets jangled from ankles and wrists and a turquoise robe set off her Indus beauty to perfection. Only two things marred the girl’s loveliness. Her cold, narrowed eyes and the bruise on the side of her face.
In explaining the reason for her visit, Claudia expected to encounter resistance, disbelief even. A woman in business? With a proposition for Arbil? Instead the stiffness in the girl’s shoulders lessened. ‘Come inside.’ The lips were no longer pursed.
Surreptitiously Claudia wiped the milky juice which oozed from the plant’s leathery leaves down the back of her gown. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to wait here. In the cool.’
Instantly the rancour was back. ‘As you wish.’ Malevolent eyes swivelled to the terracotta grid and back to Claudia. ‘But beware,’ she hissed. ‘The man’s a degenerate.’
Curious, Claudia watched her stomp away, the bangles jarring with every angry stride, then she pulled the oleander bush aside and put her eye to the grid. The gate was closed now. Sargon leaned with his hand on the hasp and laughed as the good looking Greek cracked a joke. Of Kaeso there wasn’t a sign.
Except, in the spot where he’d stood, a wolf with a streak of silver down its back lay panting in the sunshine.
And then she remembered. That’s where the trumpets and drums fitted in. The two dandies, arriving separately and late-at the Bull Dance.
The afternoon Zygia died…
Claudia-let’s be clear about this-did not believe in Shape Shifters. Like demons and vampires, these were creatures of legend, and that’s where they belonged. Not in modern day Rome. In broad daylight. Kaeso’s a natural hunter, she reminded herself. He wears camouflage colours. His movements by definition are lithe and athletic. But if Kaeso wasn’t a werewolf, she knew from experience that he was a highly theatrical animal. The magic tricks, the silent house, his standing in shadows, even Tucca the mute were all carefully choreographed. Props to disorientate. A means to control…
That he saw her arrive went without question.
That he crept up on her in the courtyard ought not have surprised her.
‘I did not expect to find you visiting Arbil,’ he remarked. Loosely tethered to a hook on the entrance arch stood a beautifully groomed horse, its chestnut hide glistening under the mid-morning sun.