Wolf Whistle

From the moment he received the news of his Regent’s death, the Emperor Augustus had remained virtually closeted inside his basilica on the Palatine, digesting reports, wading through correspondence, thrashing out the endless possibilities and despairing at the crackpot theories which surfaced with greater frequency and more frantic desperation as time wore on. Sedition, my lord? Round up the troublemakers, that’s what I’d do, make examples of the bastards. No heir? No problem. Let the herald proclaim your wife pregnant, declare public holiday, throw Games in her honour. All feasible. All dismissed. Certainly it was not beyond the realms of possibility that, even after fourteen barren years, her imperial majesty might fall pregnant-but how long before the populace saw that they’d been conned? Quick-fix solutions were no use, Augustus needed to gather the facts, sift them carefully, then see what nuggets were left.

In the end, perhaps, the difference between Marcus Cornelius Orbilio and the Emperor was not so great after all.

Market day had come and gone, scaffolding had been dismantled, monies banked, barges moored up for the night and as the city braced itself for yet another round of whoring and deliveries, roistering and burglary, weary street sweepers pushed spinach stalks and eggshells, donkey dung and pot shards in an ever swelling tidal wave of debris. Orbilio watched it all from the steep escarpment on the Palatine and remained unsure how, now the rioters had settled down and tempers had cooled, a security policeman kicking his heels outside the basilica helped any.

‘Why?’ he asked his boss, and the answer was revealing.

‘It’s not enough we do the work,’ his boss had replied. ‘Above all, we must be seen to be active.’

Active? Watching laurels being clipped in the Palatine Gardens when he could be moving quietly amongst his network of informants, mixing with the merchants, separating loyalists from traitors? What his boss hoped, of course, was that by sucking up to Augustus during the crisis, he’d land the post of Toady Supreme and as Orbilio stamped his feet in an effort to resuscitate his circulation, he could think of no better candidate. Across the way, priests illuminated Luna’s shrine as they did every night, and from the Temple of Apollo, Orbilio caught the last whiff of incense before the censers were locked away for the night. Incredible that, for two whole years, Penelope’s child had been a cog in the temple’s machinery, while he’d never even suspected her existence. At least this year, he thought, when I drop poppies in the Tiber, I can tell Penelope that she can walk the Elysian Fields in peace.

Initially he’d been hard put to see anything deeper than a physical resemblance between Annia and her mother, until he realized that neither woman felt bound by labels. Penelope behaved like no ordinary aristocrat, Annia like no orthodox slave. Marcus shook his head. How many times during his innumerable trips to the palace had he passed the time of day with the young temple warden? Sent a present, too, when the young man married, last July wasn’t it? A silver salver with a dome-shaped lid, if Marcus remembered correctly. And how often had he nodded in acquaintance to his new wife, without noticing Annia at her side? Strange, the quirks of life.

Yet wasn’t it the quirks he thrived on? Unpredictability is the drug of youth, they say, and if that was so, Orbilio was hooked. His drug wore strong Judaean perfume and had a smelting pot of metals in its hair. It possessed a deep and throaty laugh, a dancing step, and kept a man awake throughout the night with an aching in his loins and in his heart.

But the drug did not come home last night…

Bugger this, he thought, bounding down the Palatine ramp. This isn’t serving my country!

At the bottom, a crowd had gathered in the aid of an elderly statesman whose horse had thrown him awkwardly, Jews congregated on the Aurelian steps as they had for centuries and a male prostitute posed against a seated bronze hero and pouted.

Why hadn’t Claudia come home last night? Where had she been? And with whom?

Marcus quickly discounted any possibility of danger-that Gaulish bodyguard would protect her with his life. Unfortunately, though, he could not discard the young Gaul. What was the relationship between them? Junius’ eyes followed her every waking movement, and his step faltered as his mind pictured them, entwined. Or was it Porsenna she found so attractive? Him with his blond hair and vacuous charm-and pots of money stashed away? Orbilio swallowed. Mother of Tarquin, this is madness. The same thing happens every bloody time. The closer I get to Claudia Seferius, the more jealous I become and why? Because with each fraction I move closer, the more frightened I become that I might lose her. And thereby lies the sting.

She isn’t mine to lose.