Man Eater

Orbilio tapped his finger against his chin. ‘You know, I have a feeling that if we can just crack open the shell of this case, the whole nut will come tumbling out.’ That, thought Claudia, is the crunch, isn’t it? Knowing where to begin.

And praying that, before the killer is unveiled, more souls won’t be ferried across the river Styx.

XX

Outside the tavern, Claudia ground her heel into a weed growing up through the flagstones and wished it was Orbilio’s nose.

‘I suppose you’ll be sticking to me like a tick from now on?’ she had asked ten minutes earlier, smoothing out the creases in her scarlet gown as he sorted the bill and thinking, now that will have set me up for the journey.

‘Front or back, which would you prefer?’

The look she gave him could have turned grapes to raisins, but Marcus Cornelius seemed to be adjusting the purse on his wrist with immense detail.

‘I was referring to the element of trust. You see, when it comes to me, yours appears filigree thin.’ That’s it, shame him into leaving you alone, that way you can slip away while his back’s turned.

‘I can’t imagine where you got that idea from.’ Orbilio was nonchalantly tossing a key in the air.

Claudia looked round in mock agitation.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘I’m looking for the rat I can smell.’ Not for nothing had that key materialized out of nowhere.

‘You’ll thank me in the end,’ he said, taking care to keep his eye on the metal object flipping into his hand. ‘I’ve been doing you a favour.’

Like hell. ‘Like what?’

‘Like…keeping Drusilla out of the midday sun.’ The key had disappeared deep into the folds of his tunic. ‘Like…knowing how frightened she’d be without Junius to keep her company-’

His voice trailed off into the gutter where it belonged, and much to Claudia’s disappointment, this aristocratic prig did not break out in the mass of suppurating sores that she prayed so violently for. He simply winked and strode off.

Now, as Claudia ground another weed into juice, there was a bubbling sound in her ears as her blood reached boiling point. Godsdamnit, Orbilio, this is not your manor. You can’t go locking up people’s cats willy-nilly, or banging up their bodyguards whenever the whim is upon you.

But no matter how intense her fury, no matter how numerous the curses she visited upon him and his family, his house, his job, indeed anyone who’d ever spoken to him in their entire lives, the fact remained.

Claudia Seferius was grounded.

So just what does a girl do when she’s stuck in this dead-end town for the rest of the afternoon? She digs out the grubs who ran her off the road, that’s what. Before she takes the skin off their backs to hang on her walls for her to paint pictures on.

Across the street a young mother, a child at her hip and another clinging to her skirts, helped her one-legged husband up the steps of the public baths. An old man, as thin as Barea, hobbled to the barber’s for a long overdue shave and outside the fuller’s yard a frizzy-haired washerwoman made sheep’s eyes at the temple warden when any fool could see she was wasting her time, it was boys he was interested in. A random slice of Tarsulae life, Claudia thought, which succinctly sums up this town. It shows the two very separate divisions, those who have little option but to stay on, to eke a living where otherwise they could find none and whose only alternative was the Emperor’s dole. And those who make a living from these proud, possibly stubborn, survivors.

She clapped her hands to cleave a path through a gaggle of pecking hens and feared not only for the future of the townspeople, but for the soul of the town itself. Tarsulae was degenerating fast. And as she began her search for the yobs, she pondered which of the two categories Fronto had fitted into.

‘How old yer say?’ The hunchback clipping his donkey with a pair of iron shears shook his head. ‘Nah! No young men left nowadays, they’ve all found work in Hispellum or Narni.’ Which is rather what Claudia had concluded, but it didn’t hurt to double check.

‘Don’t know of no one with a birthmark like that.’ Ankle deep in sawdust, the wizened carpenter worked on smoothing a yoke. ‘Couldn’t have made a mistake, could you, lass?’

After a while, Claudia began to think well, yes, maybe she had. Maybe that ginger thatch had been dyed, maybe that birthmark was no more than paint. Then she remembered the third boy.

‘Eyes like a frog?’ The bone-worker shook his head. ‘Not from round here. Fancy them dice, do you? All four for a brass sesterce?’