Man Eater

‘Not to open my mouth between here and the Capitol or you’d have my guts for gargoyles.’

‘Then do as you’re told or prepare to walk back to Rome.’

The rig was entering the Mausoleum Gate, where the grass was cropped by wild goats and robber jackdaws sought nest sites in the masonry. The face of an unnaturally mutilated blind girl lit up as she heard silver clatter into her begging bowl, and Claudia sent up a silent prayer. Merciful Apollo, please don’t let her mother drink it away. The gate itself, a splendid lofty triple arch, bore an inscription that testified how the original span had been extended to honour Augustus in his victory at Actium nineteen years earlier. Graffiti qualified how, four years later, the augur who had pronounced favourable the auspices for this glorious extension had been stoned out of town, his house sacked.

Like an ageing mistress, Tarsulae seemed resigned to the inevitable and yet there was dignity in her surrender. Shutters down side streets might rot on their hinges, but the balconies that lined the main thoroughfare were dotted with pot plants and the aired bed linen that hung over the railings reflected the townswomen’s rabid tournament for spotlessness.

The Villa Pictor was not the only estate isolated by the rugged contours of the Umbrian landscape, far from it, and whereas even at the best of times it would have been a lonely existence, with the trade route diverted round the mountains, the jewels within Tarsulae became more and more precious for her dwindling populace. A caller outside the Temple of Vulcan broadcast the evening procession of trumpets, a notice painted on the wall of the wheelwright reminded people of the race between schoolboys on Sunday morning. Big deal.

‘Not long now, poppet,’ Claudia addressed the cage in the back. ‘We change animals at Tarsulae, stock up on provisions and hey-nonny-no, it’s Narni by nightfall.’

And Rome, the fire that stokes the Empire’s furnace, where the Tiber runs yellow with sand and mud, where the streets are so narrow you can shake your neighbour’s hand from the balconies, yes, Rome will be ours by Sunday. No tame foot races there, I can tell you. Yesterday, Salian Priests in scarlet striped tunics and sacred shields would have made their elaborate leaps round the city centre and tomorrow, what a pity I’m missing it, the spring equinox will be greeted like a soldier back from the wars, with singing and dancing and feasting long into the night…

At the smell of water, the mules snorted, tossed their dejected heads and made a beeline for the trough, despite Junius’ pull on the reins. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Imbecile. Fancy starting a fire to create a diversion! Claudia would have clipped him round his Gaulish ear, had it not been for the fact that the rig was juggling her bones and she needed a firm grip on the buckboard, but she had told him in no uncertain terms that short of finding another dead body on the wrong end of a hilt, the very last thing she needed was a second charge of arson thrown against her.

‘I made it look like an accident,’ he had argued as the car sped away from the villa. ‘A loose coal, dry straw-happens every day in the city. I made sure it was one of the new sheds being built, no harm done, but there’ll be enough smoke to agitate the animals and cause a bit of panic for a three-hour start at least.’

Those were the last words he’d been allowed to speak, because, Claudia said, if he so much as opened his mouth to cough, she would choke him with his own chitterlings. However, as the mules slurped at the lichen-covered trough and a tawny comma butterfly flitted back and forth, she grudgingly admitted that Junius’ getaway plan, while flawed in places, was pretty sound when you looked at it as a whole.

Checking Drusilla’s cage, she accepted the groom’s offer of assistance and jumped down. ‘You!’

She snatched her hand back as though it was scalded, and Marcus Cornelius Orbilio bowed gracefully. ‘Your servant, ma’am,’ he smiled.

‘Junius, why didn’t you tell me this barnacle was here?’

‘You told me not to say another-’

‘Oh, be quiet.’ She screwed her palla into a roll, stuffed it under the seat and glanced at the mules. Impatiently tossing their manes, their ears pricked forward, she decided to give them a wide berth. You could never trust mules. Irritable buggers at the best of times, this pair looked like cannibals.

‘I had a feeling you’d pull a stunt like this,’ Orbilio said, matching her frantic pace up the high street.

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ she replied, snatching a bun in each hand as she swept past the pastrycook’s.