Man Eater

To his new tenants he leased the apartment block for 20,000 sesterces. Claudia had simply applied for tenancy herself and was now subletting the block for 35,000. (Come on, where did he think she got the money from to buy that land in Campania?)

But that wasn’t the point. The point was, sales were tailing off and this was solely on account of her gender.

She looked up at the reeling satyr. The bias was unlikely to change once word got round that the Seferius’ widow was charged with murder. As it would. In Rome, rumours spread faster than floodwater, no matter how half-baked Macer’s reasoning might be.

Like a carcass being tornapart by jackals, her husband was being laid open to the bone, but, and here is the difference, she thought, the quarry isn’t dead, not by a long chalk. These arrogant merchants might have the smell of blood, but the hunt is a long way from over-and, as every huntsman knows, many a stag outwits the archer.

For, contrary to popular opinion, the archer is not as good as his arrow, he is only ever as good as his aim.

*

It was the sound of snoring, audible above the trumpeting of the elephants and the honking of the seals, that interrupted Claudia’s train of thought. Sprawled on his back on a marble seat beside the fishpond, his mouth wide open, Pallas dreamed of self-shelling lobsters and an eighteenth way to cook sucking-pig. Beneath the bench, a column of ants and a cluster of flies competed for the remnants of his lunch, but the wine seemed to have been spared and it seemed a pity to let it go to waste. She was on to her second glass before the inevitable fit of coughing woke him up.

‘Darling girl, what a pleasant surprise.’ Pallas gulped gratefully at the glass thrust in front of him.

‘Me or the wine?’

‘Both,’ he said chivalrously, heaving himself upright and straightening his tunic. ‘Although I feel slightly disadvantaged, caught in so undignified a posture. Are you recovered from last night’s shenanigans? That looks nasty.’ He pointed to the marks on her throat.

‘I’m still sore,’ she admitted, ‘but the lividity is misleading. Don’t tell Macer, though. I might need to trade on his sympathy.’

‘Now there, oh yes, there’s a man who’s sharper than he looks.’ Pallas shot her a cryptic look.

‘Sharp? If that imbecile has his way, I shall be standing before a judge in six days’ time.’

‘Ah, but have you considered the possibility our Prefect might be using you as bait? That by focusing attention on you, it leaves him free to investigate the real killer?’

Holy shit, no, it had not occurred to her. Well, well, well. But before Claudia could draw breath to follow up, the big man had launched forth again.

‘I’m just pleased our man in the crocodile pond wasn’t another of his long-lost troops. I had visions of a whole host of his ex-employees turning stiff on our doorstep, one after the other.’

‘It’s weird, don’t you think, two dead strangers in three days?’

‘This is Umbria, darling. Anything can happen around here, you only have to look at Timoleon to see that. What the f-?’

The screeching was inhuman, and it came from the far end of the courtyard.

‘Jupiter, Juno and Mars!’ Claudia blinked hard. Hands up to protect himself, feet slipping wildly, Taranis had nowhere to go, his back was already to the house wall and strong as he was, he was no match for the wild creature attacking him.

‘Bastard!’

Tulola was pummelling the Celt’s chest and shoulders with her fists, screaming like a demon, the skin on her face so tight with anger that her exposed teeth looked huge and obscene.

‘Bas-tard!’

Taranis could offer no resistance. He cringed lower and lower under the demented assault, his forearms fending most of the blows.

‘That’ll teach him to try and sneak off,’ Pallas whispered, linking his arm into Claudia’s and leading her back down the path. ‘Although, under the circumstances, one can hardly blame even that pig-ignorant hippopotamus.’

‘It tallies with my theory. Tulola likes not only to control her men, she needs to be seen to be doing it.’

Could you call that ferocious onslaught being in control? It seemed to Claudia that Tulola had fooled herself into believing she could bewitch any man she wanted and keep him in her thrall for as long as she, not he, desired, until occasionally a Taranis appeared to show her the reality. And Tulola, to judge from that little tantrum, was patently allergic to reality.

More painful still must be the realization that when you’re knocking thirty, it’s a very fine cloth that separates the uninhibited dominatrix from a rancid old slag.

‘Her husband was the first to rebel, you know.’

‘Oh?’

Pallas resumed his seat by the fishpond. ‘I’m going back six, maybe seven years, though you need the whole picture to understand. You see, their parents may have fixed the marriage, but for the young couple it was every bit a love match. Puppy love, of course. Tulola was only fourteen, but the stars were in their eyes and that was enough for them.’