Man Eater

‘That you can, my luv, and I expect you’ll be wanting a rub over with it, too. Let me give you a hand with them buskins-’

‘No rub today, Cinna. Why don’t you go and check the plunge pool?’

‘I’m not half finished with my first darling, yet.’

‘I told you, Cinna, you check the plunge pool.’ She laid one stiffened finger on Claudia’s bare shoulder and began to trace a pattern. ‘I’ll finish the massage.’

Claudia slithered off the bench. ‘Don’t trouble yourself, I’m off to soak in the hot room.’

She knew Tulola would follow, but at least you could see where you were and pre-empt the strike. ‘How’s your brother?’ she asked, easing herself into the water. ‘Fully recovered from last night’s little episode?’

‘Funny you should ask,’ Tulola replied, a frown furrowing her usually unlined forehead. ‘I’m rather worried about him, as a matter of fact.’

The change in Tulola startled her. ‘Why?’

‘He’s such a ghastly yellow, and he feels bilious all the time.’

Claudia, who knew nothing about nursing, suggested that if he was too ill to ride into Tarsulae, why not let the horse doctor take a look at him?

‘I suggested that,’ Tulola said earnestly, ‘but he wouldn’t have it. Insists there’s nothing wrong, apart from a spot of food poisoning.’

‘He could be right, you know.’

‘Nonsense, sweetie. He’d have been as sick as a dog if it was something he ate.’

‘What does Alis think?’

Tulola snorted. ‘Alis! If my brother told her blue was yellow and she was a grasshopper, she’d believe him. “Anything my husband says goes” is all you get from that pompous little cow.’ She kicked violently at the water.

‘Sergius is a grown man, I dare say he knows what he’s doing.’ Claudia bobbed right under to wash the caked mud out of her hair.

‘That’s what that sulky bitch Euphemia said.’ Tulola began to chew her nail. ‘No one seems bothered about him except me. Even Scrap Iron thinks it’ll pass, and he’s well used to death and injury.’

‘But not illness, remember. Look, it was a long day yesterday, one way and another, perhaps the others are right. Maybe you’re worrying unduly? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m finished here.’

There was an argument raging in the atrium, she could hear it from outside. Timoleon, who had taken to fighting with words in lieu of net and trident, had this time picked on the Celt. Claudia positioned herself behind a pillar.

‘Who you call coward, you dirty motherfucker? I leave because there are too many dead men.’

‘Frightened of ghosts, Taranis?’

‘Who knows who is next to have knife in his back, heh?’

‘The killer’s dead, you saw him-or at least what was left of him.’ Timoleon’s taunts were having little effect, so he moved up a gear. ‘Unless you set him up and you’re the murderer?’

‘You crazy, you know that? Killer need motive, I have no motive.’

Timoleon picked up the Celt’s ragged pack, upended the contents over the tiles and sneered. ‘Psychopaths kill for pleasure.’

‘Like you, yes? Like you kill in the arena? Well, maybe you kill this Fronto? Maybe you kill me when my back is turned?’

‘You’d call me a backstabber? You little turd, I’ll-’ Pity. Just when it gets interesting, Macer makes his entrance.

‘What’s going on?’ He held out an imperious foot for a slave to clean his boot. ‘More trouble?’

For all his faults, he had a perfect sense of balance, did the heavily armoured Prefect. Not so much as a wobble as the servant scraped off the mud.

‘No trouble, Macer,’ Timoleon replied, deliberately crushing one of Taranis’ cloakpins underfoot. ‘One big, happy family, us.’

And I’m a Vestal Virgin, thought Claudia from behind the column.

Glimpsing his buckled brooch, the barbarian turned puce. ‘You bastard!’

‘Did you hear that, Salvian? One big, happy family.’ Macer held out his other foot. ‘Yet I don’t recall your father and I throttling each other as boys. Separate them, will you, lad?’

That was another thing. Normally you had to be eighteen to qualify as a junior tribune, and the days of favoured sons being given soft commissions went out with Augustus’ shake-up. Interesting.

Salvian, however, wasn’t as daft as he looked. Rank might hold in the forces, you could see him thinking, but it wouldn’t separate two strong civilians. Whereas a bucket of water from the atrium pool would.

‘Now we have that sorted out,’ Macer unstrapped his helmet and brushed the red plumes into shape, ‘perhaps someone can brief me on the events of last-and just where might you be going, sir?’

Taranis, his grimy face streaked with the water, hefted his pack on his shoulders. ‘I…I go to homeland, to Atrebates. Is not safe here.’

‘I think you’ll be perfectly safe here, sir, while my officers and I are stationed on the premises. So until I get to the root of this nasty business, no one leaves, and I mean no one. Is that clear?’

A low grumble emanated from the Celt’s throat, which could have been construed either way.

‘In fact, until I say to the contrary-’ not only a good sense of balance, Macer, he had a nice way with words, too-‘you don’t even fart without my permission. Pass the word round.’