Man Eater

‘Drusilla’s out.’ Such exquisite pleasure, the minute and a half before she put him out of his misery. ‘Tried to pounce on a flock of pecking doves, but they cooed and flew off, so-’

‘-on the basis that if you can’t eat ’em, join ’em-’

‘-she was last seen scavenging in the kitchens. Exactly.’ What is it about Supersnoop? Every time you open a chest, you half expect him to come popping out. I’m wondering if he’s attached to my skirt hem by string.

‘Good.’ Orbilio flung himself lengthways on Claudia’s bed, bounced a few times then folded his hands behind his head. ‘Hey, this couch is comfortable.’

‘Make yourself at home,’ she muttered, tipping half a glass of wine down her throat. Dammit, I’ll be glad when you’re posted to that distant corner of the Narbonensis or wherever it is you have your beady eye on. ‘I’ve been thinking about your shortcut.’

Hope the barracks are swampy and the bedbugs have rabies. ‘Was this while you skinned rabbits as part of your undercover work?’

‘Which reminds me. Oughtn’t you to tip the waiter?’

‘Only off my bed.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t, it’s far comfier than mine.’ He prodded the bolster, pinched the mattress. ‘Who knew you were taking the old road? That’s what’s been bothering me.’

‘Couldn’t it have bothered you in your own room?’

‘It wasn’t luck, snatching part of a conversation from your overnight stop in Tarsulae. No, this took planning and you know what I think?’

‘You’re squashing my slipper.’

‘Not a lumpy mattress, then? Mine’s riddled with them.’ He pummelled the leather back into shape. ‘I reckon that at some stage in the dim and distant past, this route was suggested to you. Think back-maybe you were at dinner, in the baths, meeting with clients?’

Sore point, Orbilio. Dinner, perhaps. Baths, perhaps.

But the meetings with clients have been pitifully few and far between.

‘It’s possible,’ she admitted slowly. A faint bell was beginning to ring.

He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Generally encased in long patrician tunics, a girl doesn’t expect a sudden plethora of thighs all over her bedroom. Especially firm, bronzed, muscular ones. Not when there’s just one small light flickering in the darkness. And definitely not when the room you’re in seems to shrink and shrink to the size of a closet. Claudia drained her glass in one swallow.

‘You were wrong about Sergius.’ That should put Hotshot in his place. ‘He told me he gets these bouts from time to time- Are you listening to me?’

‘What do you know about Tulola’s husband?’

Obviously not. ‘Only that he walked out on her eons back and she still gets uppity.’ It would be truer to say that the merest mention of the subject and Tulola goes ape.

‘Do you know why?’

‘She was shaking her tail feathers beyond the confines of the nuptial couch, behaviour which apparently failed to coincide with her husband’s views on love, loyalty, marriage and fidelity.’

‘No, I meant do you know why she won’t have his name so much as mentioned?’

Tulola is not a girl who takes lightly to being dumped. ‘I can guess.’ She seeks revenge on all men.

‘I’d bet you a quail to a quadran you’d be wrong.’ He stood up and stretched his arms upwards towards the ceiling. ‘Suppose I tell you the husband comes home one night, discovers Tulola’s been playing around, they have an almighty row and he walks out?’

Claudia felt the tension pull in her neck and in her shoulders as she wondered where this was leading.

‘Then suppose I tell you that he’s never heard of again? That she takes his clothes, his books, his lyre, dumps them in a pile and makes a bonfire? What would you say to that?’

What indeed. ‘You’re suggesting it was an excuse for a funeral pyre?’

‘Not necessarily, I was merely canvassing your opinion, but it’s interesting how we both arrived at similar scenarios.’

He wandered across to the table, rattled the dice cup and tipped out the contents. ‘Full house,’ he chuckled. ‘Would you believe it?’

Claudia quickly scooped up the dice and tucked them into the folds of her pale blue gown. Of course they’d turn up a different face. They were weighted to!

‘Then there’s Pallas,’ he continued, pouring the thin, white wine into the gaming cup. ‘Where does he fit in?’

‘Not many of his tunics, that’s for sure.’

Orbilio refilled Claudia’s glass and passed it across. ‘By his own admission he’s been here two years, almost as long as the newlyweds. I trust there aren’t three on our honeymoon.’

I shall ignore that. ‘Four, actually. You’re forgetting Tulola.’

‘Five, then. We’re both forgetting Euphemia.’

For several moments they stood together by the open window watching the moon bleach the treetops and turn the clouds to silver, and the silence grew. It took on a life force all of its own. It began to condense, heat, pulsate. There was too much of him, she decided. The short tunic, the smell of sandalwood, that one bare shoulder with a little scar just to the left of…