Man Eater (26 page)

‘Be charitable,’ Orbilio whispered. ‘The old man who owns it sees plenty of life in those rags yet.’

‘I know,’ she hissed back. ‘I just saw one jump.’

Balbilla’s father had the sweet breath of the terminally ill, although one didn’t need to get that close to see how it was with him. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ was all he managed to get out before their voices brought an overweight, spotty creature in ill-fitting mourning clothes clambering down the rickety steps from the garret.

‘What is it you’re looking for?’ The lump wiped her tear-swollen face and began to pick over the rags.

She obviously thought nothing of two well-heeled strangers standing at the dilapidated counter. But then you rather got the impression she didn’t have the necessary equipment to think with.

‘Balbilla?’ Claudia hoped her blank look passed unnoticed, because whatever she had expected, it wasn’t this.

Something about the visitors seemed to click. ‘Are you here about Fronto?’ She sniffed noisily. ‘They say he were in bed with some rich bitch and she stabbed him, but it’s not true,’ she gulped. ‘He adored me and them babies, did Fronto. He’d never do nothing like that.’

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t,’ Orbilio said smoothly, as Claudia intently examined some blue cloth that wasn’t even fit for dusters.

‘There’ll be better men than him along for our Bill,’ the old man put in, his palsied hand patting hers. ‘She’ll find one, you’ll see.’

Balbilla, as you’d expect of the recently bereaved, did not share her father’s opinions and expounded at such length on her husband’s generosity, his devotion to work, to his family, to his Emperor that Claudia doubted she had the faintest inkling of how Fronto earned his living.

‘I had such important news for him, and all,’ she wailed, repeating it over and over as she rocked back and forth. ‘Dead important, it were.’

Claudia’s pulse leapt.

‘Can you tell us?’ Orbilio urged.

‘Now he’ll never know.’

‘Know what?’

‘She’s expecting again,’ her father explained, his grey face contorting with pain, and then his features softened slightly and he managed a smile. ‘When the leaves begin to fall, I’ll be holding another grandchild.’

A shiver ran down Claudia’s arms. Before the leaves began even to turn, Balbilla would have watched another pyre burn…

With nothing to be gained from prolonging the meeting, Claudia and Orbilio walked silently back along the main street. They were just passing the baths when a horseman came hurtling through the Julian Gate, his mount steaming, foam streaking its flanks. Curiosity had ceased to be a characteristic of the Tarsulani, but it had not dimmed in Claudia. Without appearing to hurry unduly, she followed the rider to the back of the law courts, her stride outstripped by a certain policeman.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked. Something was seriously amiss, you could tell by the horseman’s pinched expression.

‘No idea,’ Orbilio replied, taking her elbow and leading her round the corner. ‘But we should be able to find out from here.’

His police training had done him proud. On the other side of the wall, she could hear the rider as clearly as if he was addressing them personally.

‘Agrippa’s dead! Marcus Vispanius Agrippa is dead!’

Wide-eyed, Claudia and Orbilio stared at each other. Agrippa was the Emperor’s right-hand man, they were closer even than brothers. Sweet Jupiter, you couldn’t count the years they’d been together, the gentle aristocrat and the low-born man of action, the battles they’d fought, the victories they’d won, and the peace that was proving even harder to keep.

‘Now what?’ she said.

Despite being the same age, Agrippa was also the Emperor’s son-in-law, Augustus having married his friend to his silly, capricious daughter to tie up the loose ends of his complex administration. By adopting the result of their union as his heir and effectively making Agrippa Regent, Augustus thought he’d succeeded. But now, with his general dead and his grandson barely eight years old, what would happen if Augustus died?

More than at any time since the end of the Republic, the Empire had been plunged into a state of crisis.

Anything could happen.

Anything at all.

XXI

‘You sure this is the right place?’

Pansa took a step backwards and grimaced at the ramshackle building, its door bowed, its fallen shutters overtaken by fungi and woodlice. This was an old patrician hut, one of the lodging stops for those too rich and fastidious to pass their nights in taverns with the commoners. They preferred their own private domiciles, wooden affairs of sufficient dimensions to afford a modicum of comfort during the nomadic course of their aristocratic duties. But fifteen years of neglect, of merciless summer suns, pitiless winter rains and a relentless stream of pillaging had taken a heavy toll on these rudimentary constructions. Several had collapsed, many more lolled drunkenly, needing only the next spring gale to finish the job.

‘Yep.’ Confidently Froggy screwed up the parchment detailing directions to the cabin and tossed it into a bed of wild liquorice. Startled, a black-eyed rat scurried away. ‘Oi, Ginge! Still having problems back there?’

‘Just about cracked it.’ A mop of red hair poked round the back of the hut. ‘Two more minutes should see me right.’

‘Good.’ Froggy nodded wisely, because the instructions were clear. The sum of money requested would be paid, but on the strict understanding it was to be a one-off remittance and that it should be made in absolute secrecy. To that end, the Client (as Froggy insisted all marks should be called from now on) had chosen the time and the venue.

As Ginger returned to the tricky business of hiding the horses from view now that the stables had disintegrated and as Pansa tested his weight on the second step leading to the shack, the first already fallen to woodworm, Froggy looked at the lengthening shadows and rubbed his hands with satisfaction. The sum he’d requested was high, though not beyond the Client’s reach
and should the old widow be found guilty of murder, he was equally certain the Client, regardless of what was written in that note, would not be averse to handing over similar sums in the future to ensure their silence on this rather ticklish subject.

‘What’s it like inside?’ he asked Pansa, squinting up the highway. Once, this was nose to tail with wagons and riders, the air filled with the exotic scents of the Orient, the din of livestock, of crated peacocks, hazel hens, squealing sucking pigs. Nowadays the same smells, the same sounds headed eastwards from Narni, and the only movement on this stretch of road was likely to come from the Client.

‘About what you’d expect,’ Pansa called back. ‘Damp. Gaping great holes in the roof, floorboards rotten. No furniture left except one cruddy table and a couple of stools.’ Which looked in surprisingly good nick.

‘How about the back door?’

‘No problem.’ It was Ginger who answered his question. ‘The way I’ve fixed it, hitching the horses to the back wall, anyone coming in that way will have to push his way through the animals. No chance of sneaking up.’

‘Besides,’ the muffled voice of Pansa added from deep inside the cabin, ‘the back door’s jammed.’ Looks like someone nailed it up at some stage. Funny, though. You’d have thought those nails would have gone rusty .

‘Then we’re in business,’ said Froggy.

He wasn’t stupid. He understood enough of human nature to know that people don’t always mean what they say and that if they can slit a throat to avoid a payment, it doesn’t always hang heavy on their conscience. Which is why he’d brought Ginger and Pansa along. As backup. You don’t tangle with three armed, able-bodied men. If the Client tried any funny business, he, Froggy, was ready for it.

‘Bang on time,’ he said, observing a lone figure on horseback appearing over the brow of the hill. ‘You know what to do, don’t you, lads?’

Pansa, swiping the cobwebs off his sleeve, nodded vigorously. Ginger, following Froggy up the steps, also gave a resounding ‘Yes!’ because they’d rehearsed it twenty times by now, although his eyes had caught two large bolts on the outside of the door.

‘What do you reckon those are for, Froggy?’

The young man with the protuberant eyes paid no heed. ‘If questioned, it’s not that we don’t trust the Client. We’re brothers, see? You two came for the ride. Now, inside, lads. Let’s look relaxed about the whole thing. Pansa, pull up them stools. Ginger—that crate over there, sit on that. Casual, like.’ The coolness that he believed he projected was betrayed by the tumbling of his words.

‘Daggers on the table. Don’t clutch them, we’re not threatening, just make sure they’re handy—’

A shadow in the doorway made them look round. Ginger and Pansa exchanged glances. Froggy had told them about the Client, but they were still taken aback. Outside, a horse snickered.

‘I wish to make it quite clear, if it is not already so,’ the Client swung straight in to take the initiative, ‘that this’, a heavy leather sack plonked on the table top, ‘is purely a one-off payment to ensure you boys will not be in Narni, or indeed anywhere near it, next Wednesday.’

‘No problem,’ Froggy said confidently.

‘Miles away,’ echoed Pansa.

‘Good, because I take a dim view of blackmailers. This matter between me and the widow, call it a joke if you like, a practical joke, there is nothing—shall we say, sinister—behind it.’ The Client leaned forward. ‘For that reason, you have my assurance that should you approach me again for money, I shall not hesitate in laying the matter before the judiciary.’

Froggy bit his bottom lip to stop it curling into a grin. Nothing sinister? Some poor cow’s up for murder, you want us well shot of the city—and then you expect us to believe that bullshit about the judiciary?

‘And you have my word,’ he said solemnly, ‘plus that of my brothers here, that you won’t hear from us ever again after today.’

His gaze fell on one of the bright shafts of sunlight which penetrated the gloom. Well, not until the next time, eh?

‘I’m greatly relieved to hear you say that.’ The Client, seeming to relax, drew a drawstring bag from the sack, which chinked comfortingly. ‘Count it, if you will.’ Froggy teased open the string and saw his friends’ eyes bulge at the coins twinkling inside. ‘I trust you,’ he said amiably. Growing up in a busy tavern, he was more than familiar with the weight of silver.

The Client made to leave, then paused. ‘I would just like to say, before we go our separate ways, that I was very impressed with the job you did last Sunday. It was timed to perfection and quite without overkill.’

‘Well, we—’ Froggy didn’t know what to say. Praise had not visited him often in his eighteen years. ‘I—’

‘And considering we all have a long ride home, what say you we share this before setting off?’ A flagon of wine appeared from the copious depths of the leather sack.

The boys licked their lips. It
was
a long ride back to Narni…

Three cheap cups also materialized and the Client filled each to the brim. ‘Since we are a mug short, you will perhaps pardon my manners if I sip from the jug. Do you wish to propose a toast?’

Froggy could smell the wine. It was good stuff, Campanian, or maybe even Falernian. ‘Why drink to anything special?’ he said, eager to sample that which had previously been beyond the scope of his pockets. ‘Straight down the hatch, that’s what I say!’

He did not notice the Client’s slanting smile. ‘I could not agree more. Straight down the hatch!’

As their heads tilted back, the boys were only vaguely aware of the Client lowering the jug and backing towards the door.

‘
What the fuck?’
Froggy’s hand flew first to his throat, then to his dagger, but he was too slow. The coins had gone, the door was closed, he could hear two heavy bolts being shot.

‘I told you—’ began Ginger, and then the pain hit him. The searing, burning, tearing pain as the acid reached his stomach. Writhing and hissing, he gouged at the decaying wood.

‘The back way!’ cried Froggy. His eyes were on fire, and his mouth, his belly. When he gasped for breath, a stream of dark vomit shot across the room.

Pansa, convulsing violently, began to make hideous screeching noises.

Froggy thought he heard ‘Nails’, but it made no sense to him.

And looking upwards through the hole in the roof, he wondered why the sky had suddenly turned red.

XXII

After a long day in Tarsulae, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio knew how Atlas must have felt when, having lost the argument with Perseus, the gorgon-slayer turned his grisly trophy upon the giant. His bones solidified, his shoulder blades turned to granite as the weight of the heavens was thrust upon him for all eternity.

The loss of Agrippa was every bit as personal to Orbilio as the death of an uncle or a boyhood friend, and his only consolation came in the satisfaction that the great man’s works—the aqueducts, the Pantheon, even the Tiber’s anti-flood defences—would stand the test of time so that for centuries to come, Romans would know that here lived a man of vision whose love for his people showed in the bridges he built for them, the basilicas, the warehouses, the porticoes, the museums.

That Orbilio had been able to confide his sentiments to Claudia had been of great comfort to him, and had little to do with Agrippa’s death. Inside she was nowhere near as brittle as she liked to make out, and intimate moments such as this allowed him a glimpse of the small, frightened child locked in the labyrinth of this complex woman’s emotions—and they aroused every masculine trait, from the instinct of challenge to the instinct to protect. She had listened in silence while he talked (rambled?) about his personal encounters with Agrippa, asked intelligent questions as to the impact of his death. Would Augustus not have to make Tiberius his heir now? How could he, he’d countered. The young man who’d shown his military and administrative qualities in the provinces and who’d proved himself a respected and, above all, loyal general, was no blood relation. Ah, but neither was Augustus to the Divine Julius, she reminded him, and look how that turned out. Couldn’t he just put the adoption of his wife’s son to the Senate and see how they vote? The complication there, Orbilio had explained, was that Tiberius was married to Agrippa’s daughter, who just happened to be several months pregnant. No matter how strong the Emperor’s feelings, the Roman people won’t countenance lack of purple blood. Interesting, she mused, because had Tiberius been free to marry Agrippa’s flibbertigibbet widow, the Empire would be in very safe hands indeed…