Man Eater

‘The prognosis does not look good, I’m afraid.’ Orbilio was relieved the conversation had moved to more general topics. ‘He bypassed Rome and headed straight for his house in Campania. That tells you how serious it is.’

‘If I’d spent all winter freezing my bollocks off,’ Timoleon snapped, ‘I’d want to defrost them, too.’

‘Oh? Where he been, then?’ Taranis wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

Tulola ruffled his shaggy mophead. ‘That’s what I like about you, my little barbarian. You’re so blissfully, utterly ignorant.’

Taranis stiffened. ‘I am foreigner. I no understand Roman politics.’

‘Pannonia.’ Orbilio was too weary to sit through Tulola’s explanation and the indignation that would inevitably follow. ‘The Danube campaign’s not fully resolved, and-’

‘You don’t understand!’ Sergius thumped the table and the glassware rattled. ‘The Megalesian Games are without parallel.’

‘Give it a rest, old son,’ Barea interjected, but Sergius was unstoppable.

‘There’s a full week of spectacles I’ve missed, and two days after they wind up, the Ceres Games kick off. That’s another eight days I could be exhibiting.’

Corbulo assumed a mock-serious expression. ‘It takes time to-’

‘Bollocks! You’ve had six months and more to knock those beasts into shape.’

This time the trainer’s solemnity was not forced. ‘Your Syrian lions had been caged for three months by the time they reached me,’ he said, his eyes narrowing. ‘They weren’t very amenable to being asked to play parlour games. Not with half their fur rubbed off on the bars.’

‘I’ve told you it won’t happen again, but there’s no reason why the elephants and the leopards-’

‘-and the bears and the giraffe and the horses. What about them?’ When the Etruscan thumped the table, not only the glasses but the plates and the pots and the serving trays danced. ‘Or the camels, the warthogs and the rhino? And let’s not forget the ostriches and the seals and the monkeys, either. Janus, man, what do you think I do all bloody day? Play hoops and throw javelins?’

‘You’ve done well, Corbulo, but surely-’

The trainer hurled a silver platter across the room. ‘If you don’t fucking like what I’ve done, then fucking sack me!’

‘Sit down,’ pleaded Alis. ‘Sergius doesn’t mean it, he’s tired-’

‘He’s drunk.’ Pallas, as usual, took the shortcut. ‘So I suggest the rest of us catch up. All right by you, my friend?’

Corbulo shrugged irritably but settled back down on the couch nevertheless.

‘I’m not bloody drunk,’ Sergius protested.

‘Well, you look like shit,’ said Euphemia, ‘and if you’re going to throw up, you want to do it outside.’

‘Euphemia!’ Alis had about as much control over her sister as Salvian had over his prisoner.

‘I do feel groggy,’ Sergius admitted. ‘Maybe I’ll just-’ His knees buckled as he tried to stand.

‘Bedtime,’ Timoleon intoned musically, slinging his yellow-faced host over his shoulder as though he were a roll of cloth. ‘But no rumpy-pumpy for you tonight, Alis!’ He guffawed at the high spots of colour that appeared in her cheeks. ‘He’s too far gone.’

‘She doesn’t get it, no matter what state he’s in,’ Euphemia said spitefully. ‘What is it you practise, sister? The Emperor’s strategy?’ She turned to Orbilio. ‘You know what that is, don’t you?’

‘Well, um, Augustus has several strategies.’ Somehow he’d lost the thread here.

‘Sergius hates his darling wife to talk about it, but hadn’t you wondered about the lack of brats? He wants his precious circus first-’

‘Euphemia, please!’ Alis wailed.

‘Hence the Emperor’s strategy. Abstinence! Can you believe that?’

Frankly, no, thought Orbilio. Augustus might cart his wife with him round the provinces, but his infidelities were legendary. Who, he wondered, thought that one up?

‘You’ll have to excuse me.’ He yawned noisily. ‘Long day.’

He was enjoying the quiet of the garden, with the cicadas rasping and moths dicing with death round the torches, when the messenger arrived from Rome. The letter bore the seal of the heron and Orbilio swore under his breath. He tipped the rider, and made two full, slow circuits of the colonnade before he even thought about reading it.

His boss was an oily bastard, who’d weaselled his way to the top, surrounding himself with high-calibre officers whose consistent results compensated for his own shortcomings. When they did well, he did well. When they failed-huh-talk about a man with sloping shoulders! A foul-mouthed so-and-so at the best of times, Jupiter alone knows what he had to say to an officer who’d abandoned a complex fraud case in the middle of the night to investigate a murder that was not even in his jurisdiction.

Orbilio found a marble bench and broke open the seal.

As ever, his boss was to the point.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ the letter began. ‘The Emperor is shouting down my throat and I’ve had to transfer Metellus to your case-not because you’re arsing about in the country, but because a certain ex-tribune, an ex-prefect as well as an ex-consul claims you raped his wife.’

The bitch! Orbilio rubbed his forehead. The absolute bitch!