Virgin Territory (6 page)

The admittance of wheeled traffic into the city from sunset onwards meant he had to avoid the main thoroughfares in order to make any kind of progress, but the sidestreets presented hazards of their own. Once, as he passed the tenements, he only just managed to dodge a torrent of filth which came flying through an upstairs window and in the Forum, at the foot of the steps to Venus’s temple, an ugly brawl was in progress and Orbilio counted himself lucky not to be sucked into it. Almost everywhere beggars huddled in doorways, waiting for daybreak when they would clamour for position at the city gates, with their fake sores and sham bandages, to cry for alms.

It was late when he arrived at those all-too-familiar double doors, rapping so hard, tiny slivers of cedarwood lodged in his knuckles.

‘Fetch Leonides!’

He pushed his way past the porter who, knowing authority when he saw it, obeyed instantly.

The beanpole of a Macedonian appeared almost by magic, still hastily belting his tunic. When he recognized the officer responsible for investigating that series of gruesome murders six weeks ago, the colour drained from his face.

‘Master Orbilio! Has something happened?’

‘I was rather hoping you’d tell me. Mistress Seferius has gone to Sicily, I understand.’

‘She’s escorting the retiring Vestal Virgin home, yes.’

As the steward filled in the details concerning Sabina, Orbilio began to feel foolish. Here he was, dragging Leonides out of bed in the middle of the night, simply because he’d overreacted. He suddenly felt very conscious of his beard growth, of the smell of horse which still clung to him. Come on, Marcus, she’s a woman who drives a man to overreact, he thought, in an attempt to justify his actions, but found the explanation wanting in every department. He scratched irritably at his stubble.

Inexplicably he found himself asking, ‘Whereabouts in Sicily?’ and wasn’t entirely surprised to hear the steward reply that he was very sorry, he wasn’t privy to the address. It was that sort of a day. When lemons piled up by the bucketload.

Orbilio was on the point of saying, ‘No matter,’ when he remembered something. Part of Tingi’s report. Croesus, what was it? At the time, when every bone in his body was still jarring from the ride and his eyes had joggled up and down so often he still couldn’t focus, his brain discarded everything that wasn’t a priority.

He tapped his finger against his lips in the age-old gesture of recollection, his mind racing over the list his manservant had called out to him and, click! He remembered.
The recent retirement ceremony of the senior Vestal.
As a member of the Security Police, the Vestal Virgins came under his jurisdiction, he was briefed on their movements as a matter of course.

‘…after which,’ Tingi had read, ‘Fulvia Papinianus returns to her family in Graviscae, where marriage to Senator Lucius Livius Cocidius will take place.’

Fulvia Papinianus. He remembered her now. Came from a good patrician family, had tight round cheeks and one of the most winsome smiles this side of the Alps. The last time he saw her was the day he left for Ostia. It was up on the Capitol, he had just made a sacrifice to Jupiter, she was leading her little troupe of sisters and a po-faced priest up the steps of the Temple of Plenty.

Fulvia Papinianus. Not Sabina Collatinus. And Graviscae was north of Rome, on the coast.

Orbilio looked round the house.
Her
house. Burning braziers lit the walls, the friezes and frescoes dancing to life under the flickering flames. He was by no means surprised Claudia had gone off without doing her homework properly. An impressive network of spies kept him abreast of her gambling activities, which might explain her desire to let Rome cool down somewhat before tackling her mounting debts. And Orbilio’s own experiences told him how prone she was to jumping in feet first without thought of testing the waters beforehand.

‘Leonides, my friend,’ he said slowly, crooking his finger to beckon the steward across. ‘I think you and I ought to have a little chat.’

There could be a whole host of reasons why a wealthy young widow might be lured away to distant Sicily, but at the moment Orbilio could think of only one.

One which put the life of Claudia Seferius in considerable danger.

VI

Perched on the bluff, high above the bay, Claudia conceded this had to be one of the loveliest views she had ever seen. To her left, Pharos Point stretched out to sea, crowned by the stubby lighthouse from which it took its name. On the far side of the headland, where the terrain changed dramatically to dry scrub and sparse vegetation, lay the shacks and shanties that comprised the poor and insignificant fishing village of Fintium where she’d landed, demonstrating clearly how the island’s geography contributed to its fluctuating fortunes.

Now when was it she’d put ashore? So much travel, so much change of scenery, it was confusing. She totted it up on her fingers. Today is Monday, which makes it, let me see, the ninth day of October. That’s right, because we arrived in Syracuse last Monday, which was the second, had that run-in down by the docks, sailed on Tuesday and put ashore in shabby Fintium three days ago, on Friday.

Had nothing gone according to plan on this trip? Claudia gazed at the tableau laid out in front of her.

The tightly packed pines below, into which the blue flash of a jay disappeared.

The sweep of white sand, deserted as always, which would take every bit of an hour to cover, headland to headland, on foot.

The flat white rock a half-mile westwards upon which Eugenius Collatinus had chosen to site his villa.

Further on, where the outcrop dropped away and therefore out of sight, ran the river from which, at exorbitant cost, Eugenius had his water pumped up.

Behind her, barren hills rose almost vertical except for a plateau to the west. A mile north the grey, hilltop town of Sullium nestled between two peaks.

Claudia let her eyes rest on the gentle bob of the African Sea.

In Rome, travellers talked of how you could see the very walls of Carthage from here. The product of a nimble memory, of course, but to a certain extent that could be forgiven and Claudia had a feeling her own recollections might follow the same route themselves. Africa might not actually be visible, but it was not so very far across these sparkling waters and much of this island’s produce—the wine and the olives—ended up in Carthaginian stomachs now that the wars were forgotten. At least until next time.

Thanks to an offshore breeze, the heat of the afternoon sun was much mitigated. High in the sky a buzzard mewed and a yellowbird butterfly set a fluttering course for Tunis. Such beauty, she thought. Such tranquillity. Such cleanliness.

So much, it’s positively unwholesome!

Where’s the graffiti you see at home? She didn’t know, until she saw it painted on the wall outside the caulker’s, that that stuck-up senator, Longimus, was a bigamist.

And who’d have guessed Vindex the mule doctor was a eunuch?

The hurly-burly of Rome came flooding back, its streets thronging day and night and with entertainment on practically every corner. After just two weeks, Claudia was pining for the gruff shouts of the wagon drivers, the shrill laughs of the whores, the squabbling of the lawyers. It was decidedly odd, not being on guard against a poke in the eye from a porter’s pole, not coughing from the dust of the stonemasons’ mallets, not sidestepping a sudden swish of dirty water down the gutters. All this scenery—good life in Illyria, she exclaimed to herself, it just wasn’t natural.

But what was natural around here? Not the Collatinuses, that was for sure. Barking mad, the lot of them. In fact, the only one who wasn’t barking was Cerberus, their soppy, sloppy guard dog, and even Claudia, who knew precious little about canine behaviour, could have told Fabius that a kick in the ribs wasn’t the answer.

Nor was theirs a high-spirited madness—good heavens, if only! They were simply unpleasant. There was no other word for it.

Claudia had long forgiven Sabina for her part (or, rather, lack of) in that dockside fiasco last Monday. It was not, she supposed, Sabina’s fault she had a cog missing—but her mother… Holy Mars, Matidia was enough to make a physician break his seal of secrecy! If that woman possessed any brain cells whatsoever, they had to be evenly distributed round her body. Squashed together and concentrated between her ears they might at least have served a useful purpose, but instead Matidia’s thoughts were as sparse and as colourless as her hair, which she hid beneath a succession of elaborate—if perfectly hideous—wigs.

Funnily enough, this very airy-fairyness was the strongest evidence yet to corroborate Sabina’s claim to Collatinus blood, although even her mother didn’t connect the chubby child who left home with the willowy creature who came back.

‘I thought your eyes were grey, darling,’ Matidia said mournfully on greeting her long-lost daughter and Claudia’s ears had pricked up.

Aha! Was the imposter about to be denounced at last?

‘Or do I mean blue?’

No wonder her husband, Aulus, dissolved his frustrations in the wine goblet. Since his own father, Eugenius, was something of a tyrant, running both business and household with an iron fist in spite of an accident which left him bedridden, Aulus, at the age of fifty-eight, could perhaps have been forgiven the odd indulgence—had he been less of a bigot and a bully, and uncommonly proud of both qualities. His patronizing air bounced right off Claudia, but probably went a long way towards explaining why the good folk of Sullium rarely accepted his social invitations and dished them out even less.

Of course, in Aulus’s case, Claudia thought cheerfully, it was easy to look down one’s nose at people. When you’ve got a hooter that long, what other option is there?

Aulus had sired two other children—sons, both as tall and gaunt as their parents. Portius, a mere eighteen with kohl-rimmed eyes and bejewelled fingers, was probably a mistake in his conception and everything had gone downhill since. He was, Matidia enthused, a genius, a prodigy. He had had the Call, she said. He worshipped his Muse with unstinting devotion, she said. Why, you could catch Portius night and day kneeling to Euterpe, she said, laying offerings at her feet and listening to the notes of her flute that gave him the rhythm to his poetry, notes which we mortals were denied unless we, too, had had the Call. She said.

Then there was Linus. What could you say about Linus? Thirty-one, with his high forehead and receding, gingerish hair, he looked at you the way most people look at cowpats stuck on the sole of their sandals. In true Collatinus tradition he had taken himself a tall, bony wife with a short neck and stooped shoulders and there were, no doubt, many ways of describing Corinna. Mousy, bland and nondescript dashed to the fore. Unfortunately, there were precious few ways of remembering her. She came, and then she went. Finish. No conversation, no animation, no impact.

A far cry from their offspring, four ghastly, unruly brats. Well, let’s be charitable and say three, because Vilbia was still toddling. Just give her time.

Add to that a wide range of secretaries, scribes, servants, tutors and slaves. Mix well. Stir in an extra helping of jealousy, vanity, squabbling, back-biting and miserliness, top with a tartar—and a visitor quickly begins to get the picture.

There’s Dexippus, Claudia reflected, Eugenius’s secretary, with his thick lips and strange, brooding stare. There was Piso the tutor, bald on top apart from a little tuft of wispy dark hair right at the front, with a penchant for the cane. And there was Senbi, their hard-boiled household steward, who, along with his son, Antefa, kept the slaves in line and whose word was law, whose justice was rough.

The guest bedrooms, being at the front of the house and thus well distanced from those of the family which flanked the garden, gave Claudia some degree of protection, but was it enough? Would Rome be far enough from this bunch of callous, self-absorbed individuals?

‘And to think I was in a hurry to get away from Syracuse.’ Claudia addressed her remark to a pair of swallows describing frantic parabolas overhead.

‘Tsee!’ Selfish creatures. Totally disinterested in other people’s problems. ‘Tsee!’ They swooped and soared and flew on.

Tuesday, the morning after the alleyway incident, Claudia made the rounds to see who might be sailing west and secured eight passages on the
Pomona,
a merchant galley prepared to drop them off at Fintium. With Syracuse bursting at the seams with army veterans, Fabius had been as happy as a pig in a ditch and she’d had to prize him away in the end.

‘I thought you wanted to mark time,’ he’d said petulantly, trying to fathom out why his belongings were sitting in a heap at the bottom of a gangplank.

‘What on earth for?’ The mast was being stepped, it wasn’t long now.

‘Why didn’t you wait for their eyes to open?’

Another good sign, the oarsmen were boarding.

‘Fabius, they’re animals. One doesn’t “mark time” for animals. Do have a care!’ A stream of indignant feathers flew from the bars in the crate his toe had stubbed. ‘Those are our chickens.’

What
have
I let myself in for? she wondered. Dammit, they didn’t even feed you on these poky little coastal tubs, you had to provide for yourself!

Fabius nursed his injured toe. ‘Yesterday you said…’