Nemesis passed to her other hand, and she began to work on the butterflies on Claudia’s right shoulder.
‘Unfortunately, there are casualties in every war. I watch your pain as you watch Claudia’s, and then when you are dead yourself, Daphne can be told-then let’s see how strong these patrician bitches really are.’
Well, we know how strong you are. Claudia remembered (how trivial it seemed) when Annia dropped a ring up in the bedroom. How she’d pulled the heavy chest away from the wall, shouldering it back in place without a puff. The same strength that had been used to drag five women backwards From the hall came the frantic scrape of metal against marble as Orbilio fought to free his hands. He looks so white, she thought. It makes his hair look as though it belongs to someone else. Or dyed. Blood was pooling on the floor from where the manacles had bitten. Her own wrists, she knew, were in little better shape.
‘There.’ Annia released the final butterfly and the remainder of Claudia’s tunic slipped to her waist. With difficulty, she suppressed a shudder. So long as Annia talked, it bought more time.
‘Why me, Annia? I don’t have a blue tattoo.’
‘Killing Severina was revenge on an entirely different level.’ She checked the binding on Claudia’s wrists and tutted. ‘Don’t fight it, Claudia. Don’t run to meet your pain.’
She planted a kiss between her squirming victim’s shoulderblades, then Claudia felt a wet tongue run down her backbone. This time, she dare not look at Marcus. The tongue moved round to lick her upper arm.
‘If you bore Marduk’s sign upon your perfect, unflawed flesh, it would be here.’ Annia’s teeth nipped and broke the skin. ‘Which would make things very different between us, Claudia, because then I would have to remind you of the way you treated me at Arbil’s place.’ She straightened up and smiled. ‘Instead we can be friends, you and I, because you didn’t treat me as a dog, fetch this, go for that, pick-up-this-I-dropped-it-under-my-chair, even though you’d be sitting in it at the time.’
‘The whistle,’ Claudia exclaimed, more to Marcus than to Annia.
‘Exactly.’ Annia put her pretty lips together. Whit-whit-whit. ‘It’s how they summoned me, can you believe that? And can you imagine how if felt, knowing you’re patrician through and through, yet still you’re whistled like a dog?’
Lots of girls get bullied, Annia. They don’t all slice up their tormentors for revenge. Then, as though the sun had broken through a fog, Claudia understood.
Wasn’t ‘touched’ the word Daphne had used to describe Penelope? Claudia glanced at Annia, and something revolved in her stomach as she wished now she’d paid more attention to Marcus’ story. Who better placed, she realized, than a mother to recognize the disturbance inside her own child? Small boys being unable to differentiate between ages, Marcus would have seen nothing odd in a girl singing and dancing and playing with dolls-that’s what girls did-but the duped husband knew straightaway. Small wonder he volunteered for active service, he wanted as much distance between himself and his batty wife as possible, and too late Claudia understood that Penelope’s promiscuity was not about grief. His death merely upped the dangerous stakes-and Daphne Lovernius understood, too. Understood, and repressed it, and Claudia felt a sharp pang of compassion for the old dame. She bit deep into her lower lip. If she’d only listened to the story objectively, and not through the grieving eyes of a seven-year-old. Then she would have seen that any mother worth her salt would have defied Daphne and retrieved the infant Annia straight away. But such was the disturbance inside her head Penelope had gone to Old Man Tiber, instead of Arbil. A tough and proud old bird, what torment must Daphne have suffered all these years, from the moment her daughter came home heavy with child? She would have known, as Claudia knew, how mental illness was often hereditary and now, sweet Jupiter, her worst nightmare had become terrifying reality.
Claudia looked at Marcus, momentarily silenced from his struggles, and saw that he was-at long last-grieving. Not for Annia, not even for Penelope. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was grieving for himself and for eighteen wasted years. Years in which cover-ups and silence caused untold harm and damaged everyone who came within their sphere. When, she wondered, would families ever learn? You only have to see how Arbil handled the situation with Shannu to see how problems perpetuate.
Claudia was jerked out of her reverie when-incredibly-Annia laid Nemesis flat upon the desk. His cornelians glinted proudly in the sunshine, like the fresh dark drops of blood which would soon run over them. In the atrium, Orbilio’s tunic was soaked through with sweat, his wrists raw from the unyielding iron handcuffs. Do something, Claudia. You have to do something! You can’t just let her slice you to ribbons! Marcus, too, had seen the change in Annia.
Perhaps if she could get inside her mind. Show how she truly sympathized when, aware of the circumstances of her birth and in a place where every other child had known rejection, the girls had shown no mercy in their torment, she might reach a part of Annia that was human and compassionate?
Assuming such a place existed.
Stepping back, Annia stripped off her tunic.
‘Why twenty-seven cuts?’ Nemesis was just an arm’s length out of reach…
Flushed and breathless, Annia crossed the floor. Truly, she was beautiful. Straight-backed, sinuous and graceful, her pale body shimmered as she moved, her tight, young breasts untouched by time or childbirth.
‘That was Nemesis’ decision, I’m afraid, not mine.’ Shit. She picked up the knife and kissed the deadly blade. ‘I wanted those sadistic bitches to feel my vengeance through a thousand gaping wounds. Unfortunately.’ She ran the cold, blue blade across her thigh. ‘There was no room for more than twenty-seven on the first, so we retained that number for them all. It will be the same for you, Claudia, where do you suggest we start?’
Claudia dared not take her eye off Nemesis. Her mouth was dry, her heart thumping like a thunderclap against her ribs. Behind the chair, her fingernails dug deep into her palms. From the hall, she heard a strangled cry and silently commended Orbilio’s steely self-control about not speaking unless Annia commanded it. Neither he or Claudia doubted she would carry out her threat.
It happened without warning.
She saw the sunlight on the steel and for maybe one whole second Claudia did not realize the knife had actually made contact. Like the earlier nick, she had not felt it break her skin. Wide-eyed, she watched hot scarlet droplets form splash patterns on the pale peach cotton tunic in her lap. And then she knew.
The ordeal had begun.
XXXV
‘Do you know what power is?’
Annia cocked her head on one side to admire her handiwork. The slash, being purely superficial, had been intended as a shock. A taster of what was yet to come. When muscles would be disabled, tendons cut. She watched the river she’d created find its course.
‘Power is the ability to bring an empire to its knees and I have done that, Claudia. Imagine! Little Annia brings down the might of Rome.’
Claudia knew there was no blood left in her cheeks. It was gushing down her breast into her lap.
‘Picture it as a building, a tall six-storey tenement. On the top floor, there’s Agrippa, taken by the great god Marduk to create a smokescreen under which Nemesis and I could operate in peace. Next floor down, we have the Holy Catamite no less, the great and mighty Augustus about to be toppled from his perch by uprisings and seditions.’
Annia paused to stretch out a finger and dip it in Claudia’s blood. She examined the fingertip for several seconds, before licking it clean as though it was a drip of honey or a dab of parsley sauce.