Wolf Whistle

The girl from the courtyard had been changing her gown. Her long hair hung unbound to her waist. Now most women, when a door opens on their ablutions, jump, though usually they’ll relax at the sight of another female. Again, these eyes blazed hatred. And instead of reaching for a sheet, the raven-haired beauty thrust her hands behind her back, as though it was more important to conceal what was in them than to cover her nudity. Even more intriguing was that, before the hostility kicked in, Claudia witnessed something else in those eyes. Fear. That was one hell of a bruise on her face. Was it her attacker she hated and feared? And what had the girl tried to hide? White flower trumpets? Why whisk them out of sight? Nothing about this exotic creature made sense. Claudia didn’t even know who she was.

Dino’s room was her next port of call, a mix of Rome and Babylon and strangely homely. Another man who liked his home comforts, it appeared, but not a man who overdosed the way his employers appeared to-Sargon especially. Claudia searched the hidden corners of the room and found nothing, but all men have their secrets. Where’s yours, Dinocrates? Where is yours? She stepped back and surveyed the room. I wonder. I just wonder…

It wasn’t the first time correspondence had been inserted in the empty tube of a moulded bronze lampstand. She read, then re-read the letters before slowly replacing them.

This is proving to be one heck of an interesting household.

Right, then. One room left, the one at the end. Unlike the others, though, this did not open at a gentle tug on the latch. Claudia put her shoulder to the door, but it still didn’t budge. Then she noticed the bolt at the top. Reaching up, she gasped when a man’s hand covered hers.

‘Looking for something?’ The voice could not have been colder had it blown straight from the Arctic.

She turned to find Sargon standing over her, and a shiver ran down her spine. Gone was the veneer of urbanity. Like the gargoyles in the atrium, his face was twisted, his eyes hard, and Claudia knew she was staring into undiluted hatred.

The hand over hers strengthened its grip.

XXVI

Surprise is the one emotion which cannot be wholly suppressed. He’d have heard her sharp intake of breath, felt the reflexive jump of her body, there was nothing Claudia could do about that. However, the very act of surprise, being so natural, in itself gives a person time to plan their next move. That the timespan might be a mere split-second didn’t matter. Claudia was a past master at disguising her emotions.

‘Didn’t you hear what my father said?’ Sargon growled, and she could smell his resinous unguent, felt the heat of his body close to hers. ‘Bath room is the second door on the right.’

Claudia tipped up her chin and looked him straight in the eye. ‘The only thing in that room, my friend, is some sawn-off barrel and a solid glob of fat.’

His own eyes held their ground for what seemed an eternity, then his lips stretched back and a bellow of a laugh rang round the corridor.

‘That’s good,’ he chortled. ‘That’s really good.’

Claudia was confused. Sargon was convulsing, clutching his stomach, tears squeezing out of his eyes, and still she did not see the joke.

‘Listen to this,’ he wheezed, repeating Claudia’s words in the atrium, and Arbil grinned, too. ‘That’s how we wash, we Babylonians. In bathtubs, with soap.’

Claudia’s nose wrinkled. Sit in a bowl of your own dirty water frothing fat over your skin? I don’t think so! But then the whole place was imbued with barbarism, as she found out when Arbil led her through to the dining hall. No reclining three to a couch here. One was expected to perch upright at a table on chairs made of rushes like a common workman, and even the food was inedible. Flat crispy discs, call that bread? And the meat, guess what it’s cooked in? More lumps of fat! Lard, Arbil called it, how disgusting, and no wine, either, only beer which swirls round your tummy and never stops gurgling.

For all she pushed her food around her plate, dinner was not dull. She’d seen enough of Sargon’s mood swings-quiet conspirator, detached professional, sinister threatener, teller of jokes-to understand that inside lay a deep and complex character, and the documents she’d found in his room told her this was a man without conscience. But the objective of trekking into the countryside was to find a link between four butchered women, not to pass judgement, so until she learned more about Silverstreak, far simpler to go with the flow.

‘What’s good in bed and winks?’ Sargon asked across the table.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she confessed.

To which he just winked, and even Claudia couldn’t help laughing along with the others.

Dinocrates she found herself liking. Intelligent, personable, dedicated and loyal, she remembered the letters hidden in his lampstand and wondered how far the Greek orphan would go to protect his secret…?