Man Eater

Ripe for selling, trilled the agents. Ripe for commission, thought Quintilian. Few were beyond a spot of doctoring-transplanting olive trees, piling the outhouses with grain and vegetables and jars of wine-when in reality the olives would be dead by the time you arrived, the borrowed stores returned to their rightful owners. A good surveyor-correction, an experienced and honest surveyor-could name his own price in cases like this, and this is where the Seferius chit came in.

Quintilian turned down a side street, then turned left again to where the buildings closed in.

Claudia had hired such a man to assess the two sites and make an expert recommendation. To the senator’s astonishment and admiration, she had done so with great secrecy, and it was only because of his spy that he found out.

The door that he stopped at abutted the aqueduct and was bolted.

‘Who is it?’ The voice was a boy’s in the process of breaking.

‘Ung.’

‘Eh? Oh, it’s you.’

Quintilian sidled through the small gap that appeared and followed the lad up the wooden steps to an attic stinking of tallow, cabbages and cat pee. In a corner, a short, squat cove with dirty fingernails and chapped lips prised himself off his pallet. Quintilian thought he saw something black scuttle under the bolster and turned his head.

‘Ung!’

An imperial flick of the fingers dismissed the boy and he waited until his footsteps had rattled down the stairs.

‘Nasty swelling you have there, master.’

Quintilian made an impatient gesture and pointed towards a pile of scrolls on a chest beside the doorway. ‘Ung-ung?’

‘No, master. No problems at all. My lad here, he slipped in while our friend was asleep, as we agreed he would, then sneaked back before our friend woke.’ He gave an unctuous smile. ‘Although I will have to charge you extra for the seal.’

The price agreed had been all-inclusive, but this odious individual had him by the balls and the longer he hung around this cesspit, the stronger his chances of the wound infecting.

‘One extra denarius, master, if you please.’

Quintilian pointedly counted six pieces of silver from his purse and flipped them on the chest.

‘Seven, didn’t we agree?’ The man’s eyes glinted horribly. ‘One for the boy, no?’ Realizing he’d pushed too far, he began an oily apology. ‘Quite, quite, I am thinking of another client.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘Always a pleasure to do business with-’

But his visitor, along with the sixth denarius, had vanished.

Later, in the comfort of his own home, tucked up in bed with a poppy draught inside him and a turnip poultice warm against his cheek, Quintilian chuckled quietly. You should not play with the boys, Claudia. I warned you once before you were out of your depth.

Slowly, Quintilian drifted off to sleep, imagining himself moulding Claudia’s firm breasts between his fingers and teaching her, as he turned her on to all fours, that there are dozens of suitable positions for women. And none of ’em in trade.

VIII

One hundred and twenty miles away, with the sun painting the villa walls a deep clover pink and the stench of ordure oppressive in the narrow valley, a young man followed his shadow between the peach trees and the pears towards the seal enclosure. The half-dozen or so show animals whose domain this was had been fed and were settling down for the night, grunting, shuffling, twitching their whiskers and scratching. A late heron flapped silently overhead, and a frog croaked in the reeds. Yet it wasn’t the seals that held Orbilio’s attention, but the back of a young woman resting her elbows on the gate, the sunset turning her hair to molten copper, gold and bronze. Hardly surprising that since her husband had died, proposals of marriage had come flooding in.

The sun had all but disappeared before he stepped forward. ‘I have some good news,’ he said quietly.

Claudia spun round. If that was good news, heaven help doom. ‘You always did excel at creeping.’

‘I’ve perfected the art of silent approach, as well.’ He swept his arm in the direction of the pool. ‘Now, before I come any closer, will you promise not to throw me in?’

I don’t want you any closer, Orbilio. I can smell the wine on your breath, the rosemary on your tunic, sandalwood oil on your skin. I can see your eyes dark with longing and your fists clenched with tension, and there’s a pulse that beats in your neck. Oh, no, Orbilio. I don’t want you to come any closer.

‘Promises are for schoolgirls, but if it sets your mind at rest, I’m saving my strength.’

‘For tomorrow’s trip to the sulphur pools?’

Some hope. ‘I presume you’ve spoken to that imbecile Prefect?’ Distance. That’s what she needed. Distance. ‘Since he appears to have slithered silently back into the hole he crawled out from.’

‘That’s what I came to talk to you about.’