Man Eater

Lacing his boot, he recalled the last time he saw her, the wind whipping her curls about as she stood on the deck in Sicily. Wherever she walked, that woman, trouble walked beside her, and that day had been no exception. Barely one hour before she had escaped death by a cat’s whisker, yet to see her in the prow of that freighter, proud eyes flashing, her back as straight as any arrowshaft, it was almost impossible to believe the evidence. A man thought only of the liquid swish of her skirts, the molten folds of cotton over her breasts.

Scheduled to sail with her, Orbilio had instead been called away at the last moment on the Governor’s orders. What had happened during that voyage from Sicily? What had caused her to return his letters? Dammit, the air sizzled whenever they were in the same room together, what had ‘Dammit, you! Up!’ Harshly he pulled the bedclothes off the slumbering form. The chill night air would wake her more surely than his voice.

The woman in his bed began to groan like an ungreased axle, clawing at the bedclothes, but his grip was the stronger. ‘You’re out of here,’ he snapped, ‘and I mean now!’

He shook bronze into his hand. ‘Ten sesterces should see you right.’

The moaning stopped. ‘Did you say…ten sesterces?’

Orbilio rolled his eyes. There was no time to argue. ‘Twenty, then, you money-grabbing bitch.’

More coins showered the bed.

‘But get one thing straight. Don’t sniff round me again, because no one rips Marcus Cornelius off twice. Besides,’ he got hold of the bed frame and tilted, ‘you’re a bloody poor lay.’

The woman tumbled out with an ignominious bump as the bedframe clattered back down.

‘Any whore worth her salt leaves a man with a memory of his night gymnastics, but you-’

He stopped abruptly. Sitting bolt upright on the tessellated floor, outrage bulging her forty-year-old eyes, was the heavy-hipped wife of the ex-tribune, ex-prefect, ex-consul.

Orbilio produced his most disarming grin while his mind turned somersaults.

Quite how he’d ended up with his patron’s wife in his bed remained a total blank. Bu t it was fairly certain that by calling her a whore and a money-grabbing bitch, his prospects weren’t as hot as he’d hoped.

Especially when she seemed intent on spitting obscenities at him, interspersed with ‘don’t-you-think-you-can-treat-me-like-this-and-get-away-with-it’ and ‘you-haven’t-heard-the-last-of-me-not-by-a-long-chalk’.

Shit.

He thought he caught other threats, including one that seemed to imply that those ivory-inlaid doors would be slammed in his face assuming he was ever foolish enough to contemplate such a move, but on the whole her tirade was drowned by his feeble (but insistent) protestations.

‘Joke, you say?’

The vindictive bitch was deaf to his excuses as she snapped on her sandals.

‘Well, if you fancy a joke, Marcus Cornelius Gigolo, how about the one that goes: You’ll pay so dearly for what you called me, you scheming bastard, you won’t have those twenty sesterces left to rub together by the time I’ve finished with you!’

With that, she slammed the door and he could hear her clip-clopping over the tiles like some old billy goat, which-having seen her by lamplight, chins sagging and her make-up streaked-she more than closely resembled.

His hands were shaking as he gathered together the rest of his possessions, grateful more than words could express for the long ride ahead. Bacchus, old boy, you are out of my life. Forever. Henceforth it’s milk for Marcus. Goat’s milk, cow’s milk, camel’s milk, dandelion bloody milk, just keep me away from the wine. He adjusted his belt and pulled tight his cloak just as Tingi knocked at the door.

Yet it was not via the door that Marcus Cornelius Orbilio finally made his exit.

It was through the open window, with Tingi’s words still ringing in his ears as he legged it towards the stables.

‘There’s a Master Gisco in the atrium. Shall I show him in?’

Marilyn Todd

Man Eater

V

Prefect Macer might not have been the highest star in the military firmament, but, by Jupiter, he was the brightest. From the elaborate embroidery on his scarlet tunic to the eye-watering shine on his hammered breastplate, the good soldier eliminated any doubts the good citizens of Umbria might harbour as to their place in society once he had entered the scene.

It was clear he also felt his star was in the ascendant.

For the short term, his bearing announced, I might be posted to the back of beyond, but don’t get used to my face.

Basking in this new-found importance, he’d mustered the entire Pictor household in the banqueting hall first thing after breakfast and was now intent on establishing identities. Barea came from Lusitania, did he? Whereabouts? Which tribe did you say you belong to, Taranis? The Atrebates? Never heard of ’em. Negotiating for bears, eh? Is it true Caledonian beasts fight better? Well, I never-Scrap Iron, isn’t it? What an honour. I must have seen you fight a dozen times…