Wolf Whistle

Perhaps, then, it was time to use brains and not footwear? A raw-boned mongrel, grey around the face, wandered up to the broken bed, cocked its leg then lolloped off. Dear Diana! Impossible to imagine that all roads lead from Rome, reaching even the darkest outpost of our mighty Empire, while these alleys criss-cross like the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

‘There! There she is!’

Dammit, they’d caught up. Claudia shot down the nearest passageway, then skidded to a halt. The mongrel was examining something dark and sticky on a rusty skillet. The inspection appeared to be in its early stages. Plenty of time for a girl to unclip her blue cotton wrap, rip it with the brooch pin and ram the poor mutt’s head through the hole before it even a had chance to snarl its disapproval. Stung in the rump by a shard of pottery, it shot off down the street, flapping oceans of blue cotton in its wake. Blue cotton heavily scented with Judaean perfume, no less.

As she flung open the nearest tenement door, Claudia realized her ploy had failed. The dogs wanted to follow the scent, but the handlers had sharp eyes. The gap was closing. Claudia flew up the dimly lit stairs two at a time. While they searched the lower floors, she could hide. She ran along the corridor, testing door after door until, finally, one surrendered.

‘Anyone home?’

A toothless crone sat on a stool supping porridge straight from the crock.

‘Can you hide me? I can pay.’ She pulled off a ring set with emeralds.

Watery gruel dribbled down the old woman’s chin. Sweet Janus, was she blind?

‘Please!’ A cupboard. Under the bed. There must be some way out of this mess. ‘Will you help me?’

‘Oi!’ Fists pounded the door. ‘Open up!’ The hinges were weak, they would not stand much rough treatment.

Rheumy eyes watched disinterestedly as the crone continued to slurp from the bowl. Bugger! Claudia ran to the window and looked down. The front door was bulging more and more with each shove from the moneylender’s thug.

‘No way out, luv,’ he crowed. ‘You’re trapped.’

Really? Ignoring the dizziness, Claudia climbed on to the sill. What about that balcony over the way? She took a deep breath.

Now eight feet is not very far. Measure it out and you’d be hard pressed to fit in, say, a decent bout of shadow-boxing or half a game of hopscotch, you couldn’t even rig up a funeral pyre. So, no, it’s not very far…on the ground. Heart pounding, mouth dry, Claudia launched herself into space.

Yes! As her hands connected with the balustrade, she felt a rush of such elation that she actually laughed aloud.

Then she heard the crack.

This wasn’t a rail. This was woodworm holding hands.

Her knuckles were white as she glanced down. Janus! It must be seventy feet at least. Waves of nausea washed over her as she struggled to swing her body on to the balcony before the rail gave way.

Too late. With a splintering sound, the balustrade began to bow inexorably downwards. Claudia closed her eyes. And wondered which great Olympian divinity owed her a favour.

*

It was true, then. At times like this, you do hallucinate. Claudia could have imagined glimpsing flashes of her past as she hung there, limp and helpless, like a festival banner on a wet and windless day. Maybe her mother, drunk as usual. Perhaps her father, despite his being absent most of the time. Or post-childhood scenes-say, that sea of leering faces as she danced, or coins changing hands and not necessarily for dancing. Definitely she’d have expected Gaius Seferius to pop up-he was the man she’d married after all. Ah, yes! Rich, shrewd, fat, old Gaius. Who had not loved her, but who had required a trophy wife. Maybe, even, she’d see the glinting piles of money that he’d left her when he died. Instead, as the wood cracked relentlessly, Claudia heard a voice.

‘Oh, oh, oh, oh!’

A voice, it would appear, in the final throes of ecstasy.

‘Oh, yes, Venus! O-oh, yes, yes!’

Her wits solidified with common sense. That was no hallucination, so where the devil was it coming from? Pinpointing the sound to the room one down, Claudia noticed that it, too, had a balcony. Could she make it? Did she have a choice?

‘Yes! Yes! Venus, yes!’

Actually, old chap, she thought, as the rail finally parted company with its mortice and tenons, we might shortly be giving a new dimension to the phrase coitus interruptus.

The wooden floor absorbed her tumbling weight and when Claudia eventually found the courage to unclamp her eyelids, it was to view a tiny apartment with one narrow pallet, one chair, one table laid with one cup, plate and knife. Curiously, its tenant was prostrate on the floor, mother-naked, mumbling what appeared to be abject apologies.

‘F-forgive me, blessed lady.’

Heavy footsteps rumbled on the stairs beyond, accompanied by a backdrop of yips and yelps. Damn. The handlers had raced across the road and were already searching this block.