Man Eater

Grey eyes searched hers. ‘I could, if I wanted, but you know how I yearn for Etruria. What do you say I work your land with you when my contract’s up?’

‘Corbulo!’ Just how silvery can a laugh get? She hoped it carried. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Steaming,’ he admitted, taking a tighter grip. ‘How else do you think I’d pluck up the courage to ask?’

Across the hall Orbilio had stopped eating. ‘Do you know how to pinch vines?’ she asked. There was no way Smartypants could make out the words, though.

‘Well, no-’

‘Or which cycle of the moon is right for racking?’ From that distance it’s body language that counts, and accordingly Claudia covered the trainer’s callused hand with her own. To one side, a group of musicians filed in and began to play.

‘You know full well I don’t, but,’ he beckoned the slave to top up his goblet, ‘you’re extending, aren’t you? Sergius has made me a rich, rich man, Claudia. Together, you and I, we could afford both plots, not just the one. What say we raise cattle?’

Shit! She stared into her glass for several seconds, pretending to listen to the music. He wasn’t the first man to want to follow Claudia Seferius to the ends of the earth, washing her feet with his sweat, but… Shit, shit, shit.

‘Keep training the beasts, Corbulo.’ Gently she removed her hands from his and stood up. ‘You have a natural affinity with animals, the land would stifle you.’

‘There’s good profit margin in hides and beef-’

A furtive glance showed a man opposite, propped nonchalantly on one elbow. Dammit, hasn’t he got anything better to do than watch me?

‘Not as high as with wine,’ she explained softly, ‘and I can’t afford to diversify.’

‘You can. We can! It decreases any risk of losing the vintage because a late storm rots the grapes where they hang-’

‘I will not have cows on my land.’ She concentrated on the click of the castanets.

‘Cabbages, then. Or bees and wheat. Claudia, we could keep chickens and goats-’

‘And what? Train them to pull carts reined by monkeys? Corbulo, I’m a wine merchant,’ she said, searching with her toe for her second sandal. ‘Vines are my business and as much as I appreciate the offer-and believe me I do-I need to work alone.’

An ochred hand closed over her wrist and pulled her gently towards him. ‘You want to talk about needs?’ he asked huskily.

Claudia felt the tingle of citron and woodsmoke in her nostrils, red dust on her skin.

‘Corbulo, Corbulo,’ she said, tugging softly at the loops of his hair. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was sideways on now. She remembered his profile lit first by moonlight, then by lamplight. She tasted sandalwood and juniper in her mouth. ‘I can’t alter my plans.’

Citron versus sandalwood. Grey eyes versus charcoal. Braided loops versus wavy mop. Prince and pauper, pauper and prince. She heard cymbals and drums banging inside her head, as though the musicians themselves had moved in.

Then, suddenly, it stopped and everything fell into place.

‘Leastways,’ she added quietly, ‘not in the way that you mean.’

For in that instant, in the fraction of a second between the end of the music and the applause starting up, Claudia Seferius had made a decision.

XXV

Milk, it has to be said, does not fan the flames of passion quite like a good, old-fashioned Falernian wine. In fact, it gets to a point when the very thought of another mouthful makes a man not so much rampant as downright bilious. After an energetic bout of hoop trundling, Orbilio felt a pounding in his head and a shaking in his hands that owed nothing to his camel ride.

‘Try this, sweetie.’ Tulola thrust a goblet of fragrant, pink liquid under his nose. ‘It’s my special-recipe sherbet.’ She pushed the milk aside and pulled a face. ‘That’s fit only for pigswill,’ she said.

Orbilio sniffed the frothy concoction. ‘What’s in it?’ he asked. They drank it in the Orient and they drank it in Arabia, but he’d never considered it a Man’s Drink exactly. Wine, definitely. Beer? Well, the Egyptians survived on it, but it would never catch on, and as for those foul, fermented brews-no wonder the men who drank it were barbarians!

‘Pomegranates, catmint, saffron and carob pods,’ she laughed. ‘Satisfied?’ She leaned low to whisper in his ear. ‘Because if not, I can arrange that, too.’

She clapped her hands and two girls in transparent tunics began to dance to their own lyre strains as figs, sorbs and medlars were passed round. ‘You can have either of those girls. Both, if you wish.’

‘Another time, perhaps.’ She knew damned well he wasn’t interested. ‘Great sherbet, though.’

‘Great party, too, don’t you think?’