The Claudia Seferius Mysteries Bundle #3

By Marilyn Todd

Books six through eight of the Claudia Seferius mysteries are now available in one volume! BLACK SALAMANDER: If we're going to make a new order for Rome, a better order, I might add—sacrifices have to be made. We have set the assassination date for the Ides of July ... What better opportunity for a beautiful young widow than to join a prestigious trade delegation bound for Gaul? There was the fanfare as the procession left Rome, the breathtaking journey through lush Alpine meadows. And let's not forget the promise of riches for delivering a certain pouch, sealed with the sign of the black salamander. Except things are never that simple when Claudia Seferius is involved. There's a rockfall, for a start, which leaves the party stranded, as well as five men dead—and one death is not accidental. All Claudia wants to do now is to get out of the valley they are trapped in and hand over the pouch. But there are those who will go to any lengths to stop her. And suddenly Claudia finds herself plunged into a deadly game of high treason, in a land where warriors still hunt human heads and where wicker-man sacrifices are far from rare... DREAM BOAT: Claudia Seferius is broke. Skint. Borassic. Cleaned out. Bust, and on her uppers. So when her teenage stepdaughter Flavia is abducted, Claudia can't just throw money at the problem. The cash simply isn't there—since her husband died, his fellow businessmen have banded together to freeze her out of trade. And the frustratingly delectable Orbilio can't help—he's been placed under strict house arrest after a skeleton was found walled up in the house that's been in his family for three generations. Now, with the Games of Apollo—a series of festivals and frolics, feasting and tomfoolery—due to start in two days, Claudia has saddled herself with the job of playing tag with the kidnapper. Meanwhile, a mysterious Egyptian cult, the Brothers of Horus, is growing in popularity with Roman citizens. But several of its young female members are beginning to experience strange disturbances.... DARK HORSE: The demon stirred. Its sleep had been long, but in its sleep it grew restless. It had smelled the blood of its past in its dreams. Now it wanted to taste it. When Claudia is caught doping racehorses, an island in the Adriatic seems the perfect refuge. Shaded by figs and pomegranates, Leo’s villa is surrounded by plunging cliffs, sandy coves and hillsides scented by carpets of wild herbs. Then a pirate ship anchors in the bay, and almost immediately a fire breaks out, an apprentice is murdered, and sinister messages are delivered on the point of a spear. Too late, Claudia discovers that three hundred miles isn’t far enough from Rome to escape the law. Or a bloodlust that goes way beyond evil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Untreed Reads
• Release date: Nov 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781611878905

Book preview

Todd

Black Salamander

For the Irrepressible Scamps

I

Don’t you just hate it when that happens? Claudia pulled her wrap tight to her shoulders, gritting her teeth as the trap bounced over yet another rut in the road. She’d been given this once-in-a-lifetime chance to join a prestigious trade delegation to Gaul (expenses paid, of course) at a time of year when Alpine meadows were at their very lushest. Yet here you are, twelve days into the trip and they hadn’t seen a single Alp. Not one, thanks to weather which was turning out more January than June. She grimaced. It was cold, it was wet, it was windy, and that isn’t the half of it.

She poked her head through the flap of the canvas. ‘Are we clear of the danger zone yet?’ The question was directed at the driver.

‘Dunno, miss.’ The driver shrugged. ‘Hope so.’

Not exactly reassuring. Claudia glanced round. Protected by the pines this mountainous terrain was perfect for a guerrilla attack, the delegation a sitting target as they skirted this deep-sided gorge. She shuddered. Wooded slopes fell two hundred feet to white waters swirling over jagged, black rocks. High above their granite-topped tips were obscured by the low, heavy clouds. Would a hostile clan attack an escorted convoy in broad daylight? One could never tell with the Helvetii.

For a hundred years, they’d been a thorn in Rome’s side and it was only last year, remember, that Augustus had finally persuaded them that resisting the might of the Roman Empire may not be entirely to their advantage—and even then his charm hadn’t been universally appreciated. A burned village here, a town sold into slavery there, his tactics hadn’t won all the Helvetians over and certainly Libo, the tile-maker travelling with the delegation, had paid a heavy enough price for their dissension.

A taciturn (some might say secretive) individual, Libo had done nothing more than wander off the path to relieve himself in the bushes.

The tile-maker had been found where he’d squatted. A stab wound straight to the heart…

A fat raindrop trickled cold down the back of her neck and Claudia withdrew to the shelter of the rig as rain began to hammer against the stretched canvas. Dammit, everything had started out so well, too.

She pictured the Forum. Banners and garlands draped over every temple, arch and statue. The smell of holy incense floating away on the breeze. With the sun glinting off the gold and bronze and marble and making a shimmering haze over red-tiled roofs, and with pavements lined with cheering, whooping, whistling crowds, the whole city had seemed to float upon air. To a fanfare of trumpets, the delegation set off across the Forum. Augurs in flowing white robes held up their hands to show that the auspices had been favourable, and dogs stood on their hind legs, barking at the commotion. Pickpockets sliced through purses and toddlers were hefted on to shoulders to watch the cavalcade pass by. Goldsmiths, sculptors, brick-makers, oculists, bookbinders, perfumers and wine merchants—

Ah, yes. Wine merchants! Claudia huddled down onto the seat and chewed at her nail. You’d think widowhood would come with a set of guidelines, wouldn’t you? A few decent instructions on how a girl’s supposed to manage when her fat, old buzzard of a husband pops off and she, at the tender age of twenty-four, discovers he’s nowhere near as rich as she imagined him to be. Actually. Claudia crossed one long leg over the other. To be fair, Gaius had died a very wealthy man—on paper. Unfortunately, you can’t buy gowns with the deed to a tenement or pay for your pleasures with a confectioner’s shop on the Via Latina.

Claudia’s fist punched a dent in her swan-feather cushion. The easy option would be to sell up, but goddammit, Gaius had worked all his life to put Seferius wine on the map—that reputation was part of her legacy. And besides. Claudia might baulk to admit it, but in truth she was attached to the company. The heady challenge of staying afloat. The cut and the thrust of negotiation and contract. The shipments, the payments, the management, and not simply on the trading side, there was also her Etruscan villa and the vineyard to oversee—and if a girl can’t live life on the edge, what’s the point? However, hanging on to her inheritance had been tough. Every hustler in town had been after a cheap deal and she’d been bombarded with offers to sell up, offers she’d knocked flat every time until suddenly the commercial flow had turned like a rip-tide.

Bastards! The cushion cut a swathe through the air, narrowly missing the crate in which her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat was curled, trying to sleep. ‘Hrrrrow.’

‘Sorry, poppet.’ Claudia slipped her hand between the bars and stroked the hump which Drusilla would otherwise get. ‘But it just makes me so damned angry.’

Month after month, avaricious merchants had vied and fought with one another to get their hands on the young widow’s business, wheedling, coercing, bullying her to sell, but the instant they realized she was serious, what happened? The lowlife weasels banded together, the lot of them, to drive Claudia out of the trade—and it was so easy, that’s what made her blood boil. So goddamned easy, and she hadn’t even seen it coming.

With Greek being the language of commerce, they simply stopped communicating with her in Latin. No more concessions, they said, and while Claudia was picking up Greek from a tutor, she was nowhere near fluent enough to hold her own in wheelings and dealings on that scale, even through an interpreter—who in any case the merchants refused to accept on the grounds it meant dealing with minions.

Like it or not, Claudia had been forced to acknowledge that Seferius wine was commencing its death throes.

‘Hello, gorgeous.’ A shiny wet face poked its head under the awning. ‘Hard to credit yesterday was the midsummer solstice.’ He shook himself like a dog. ‘Thought you might be feeling the jitters, what with the road barely wide enough for a wagon. Ha!’ His eyes rolled upwards. ‘Did I say road? Not like Rome, eh? Anyway, I’ve brought a skin of wine to take your mind off the lumps and the bumps and the bruises.’

Without waiting for encouragement (which was probably as well, because the wait would have been lengthy indeed), Nestor leaped into the moving rig, securing the canvas behind him. ‘According to Clemens,’ he said, referring to the stumpy little priest who seemed to know everything, ‘this is the border between Helvetia and the land of the Sequani.’

Thank heavens! A Gaulish tribe, friends of the Empire! It was to their capital, Vesontio, the delegation was headed. So they’d arrive in what? Three days from now?

‘That river down there marks the boundary.’ Nestor edged a fraction closer as he unstoppered the wineskin and Claudia reminded herself of the promise she’d made yesterday. Namely that if this stocky little architect touched her up just one more time, she’d rip out his gizzard and feed it to the wolves she’d heard howling in the night.

Not that Nestor was poor company. Far from it. Relentlessly chirpy and a fount of tall tales garnered from travels that had taken him the length and breadth of the Empire, hours which would have otherwise dragged on this wet, miserable journey had spun past. When it came to spooky legends, Nestor had no match. He talked of Helvetian bear cults, of deep, sacred caves guarded by the skulls of seven bears arranged in a ring, and chilled the blood with tales of Druids, making human sacrifice by burning their victims alive in effigies made of wicker…

Nevertheless, it was quite astonishing the number of times he’d ‘accidentally’ brushed against her breasts, how often his hand had come to rest against her thigh, the regularity with which she’d felt his breath on the back of her neck. Take him to task, of course, and Nestor was quick to blame circumstances. The jolt of the wheels. A judicious pothole. But Claudia had given him clear warning yesterday. Keep your distance, or there’ll be a wolf out there licking its chops.

‘You’ve never been to Vesontio, have you?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘You’ll love it. Prettiest city in the whole of Gaul in my humble estimation. And commanding as it does a broad loop of the river and with a mountain rising behind, it’s not only beautiful and a natural citadel, it is quite impregnable. And you know how impregnable translates to an architect, don’t you?’ He chuckled knowingly. ‘Prosperous. That’s why I love Vesontio so much!’

Funny how his hand needed to clasp her wrist every time he made a point.

‘That city’s crying out for a delegation like ours,’ Nestor continued. ‘Oh yes.’ As a self-made man, he’d never quite lost his barrow-boy accent. ‘This’ll make us all rich, mark my words.’ He squinted out through the gap in the canvas, using the bump of the rig to annex Claudia’s elbow.

‘Practising the latest philosophy, are we?’ She wrenched her arm away and wedged the wineskin firmly between his hip and hers. ‘That a man’s only as old as the woman he feels?’

‘Pity you never got a chance to see the Alps as we passed through,’ Nestor said, oblivious to the rebuff.

Tell me about it. She’d been up them, she’d been down them, she’d been joggled to her very core on their steep slopes and on bends made perilous by landslides, but not once had Claudia so much as glimpsed one of the majestic peaks which remained snow-covered all the year round and which, Nestor assured her, were quite undeserving of the gloomy, doom-laden names bestowed on them by the Helvetii. Peak of Gloom. Peak of Evil. The Pass of Bones… Somewhere in the distance came a low rumble, like thunder.

‘Better luck on the return trip, eh?’ he said, patting her knee.

‘Nestor, which part of the word no are you having trouble with?’ she asked, but so engrossed was Claudia in recalling the real objective behind making this journey that there was no sting in her rebuke.

Sure, the delegation would cover her expenses, raise her commercial wine-growing profile and provide her with numerous contacts for trade—unfortunately those were long-range proposals. When you’ve been blackballed and cash flow is tight, to hell with pretty views and a travelogue. The immediate objective is cash. Cold, gold, glittery coins which Claudia could trickle through her fingers and replenish gasping coffers with. Her eyes darted to a satchel swinging from a hook above Drusilla’s cage. She pictured the soft yellow deerskin pouch tucked inside. The one sealed with a golden blob of wax imprinted with the sign of the black salamander.

‘Nestor!’ Somehow he’d managed to combine the task of unstoppering the wineskin with a fingertip alighting on Claudia’s nipple. ‘I told you yesterday, no more funny business, but you didn’t take a blind bit of notice!. She had to raise her voice to drown the rumbling sound from outside. ‘The fact that you have no respect for me, that hurts. But you know what hurts most?’

‘What?’

‘This.’ Claudia squeezed his testicles as hard as she could and his eyes streamed with water. ‘Touch me again, you odious wart, and I’ll geld you.’

‘LANDSLIDE.’ The powerful voice of a legionary boomed the length of the line. ‘Move! Fast as you can—run for it. NOW!’

Claudia’s stomach flipped somersaults. After all this, the danger after all came not from hostile Helvetii.

The danger came from a rock fall.

II

Imagine thunder. Imagine a stampede of wild Camargue stallions. Imagine earthquakes and a volcanic eruption. Now put them together. The very ground shook beneath the wheels as the driver cracked his whip. The mares bolted forward, and as her nails dug deep into the grain of her maplewood seat Claudia thanked Jupiter for the skill of her driver.

With the stone trackway potholed and scarred and treacherously steep, coated with an ooze of wet mud that had turned it into an oil slick, only the driver’s expertise kept this light trap on its course. Twice the wheels skidded. Drusilla’s cage slid to the left, it slid to the right. The axle caught on a rut. Rocks crashed behind them, clattering, splintering, bouncing down the ravine. Horses screamed on the perilous bend and Claudia clung to the rig as the wheels bounced high off the ground and crashed down again. We’ll turn over, she thought. A wheel will spin off. How far now down the gorge? A hundred feet to the bottom?

Boulders the size of a stable block thundered past, ripping up sixty-foot pines, oak trees and beech. Fragments broke off, thumping, thudding, wrecking their way to the riverbed.

‘Gee up! Gee up there!’

The mares needed no encouragement. Their eyes wild with terror, foam flecking their cheeks, they galloped ever closer to the wagon in front. Claudia’s clenched knuckles were white, she daren’t breathe. One slip from a rig up ahead and the whole column would go down like gates in a gale, plummeting into the void…

Sweet Juno, could they truly outrun it?

Nestor had gone. At the first yell of the soldier, he was off, faster than a bullet from an Iberian sling, his eyes still watering, his face as red as a turkey-cock’s wattle. Idly she wondered whether things like this had happened before on his travels, whether rock falls were a regular occurrence?

‘Madam.’ The canvas was jerked open, rain began driving into the cart. ‘You have to get out.’

‘About bloody time, I must say.’ Claudia stared at the bleached face of her bodyguard, hurling himself into the jostling rig. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Backtracking up the road like you told me,’ Junius puffed, grabbing the handle of Claudia’s trunk. ‘Come on. Quick!’

‘Brilliant. When that creep Nestor started pawing me, where were you? Sightseeing!’ At her feet, Drusilla howled like a banshee. ‘What’s the point of having a bodyguard, if he’s not around to protect your body?’

‘Sightseeing?’ His left hand closed over the strap round the cat’s cage. ‘You gave me specific orders to— Oh, the hell with it, just jump, will you?’

Claudia stared at the young Gaul. ‘Has your mind been possessed by a lunatic’s?’ With mares at full pelt, wagons racing behind and boulders bouncing down the hillside like inflated pigs’ bladders, Junius tells her to jump? ‘I’ll be pulped like an olive for oil.’

‘This whole mountain is going!’

Shit. Slinging her precious satchel over her shoulder, Claudia scrabbled on to the footboard. Rain and dust slammed into her face.

‘You what?’ the driver said when she told him. ‘Bleedin’ ’ell, are you sure?’ But Junius’s pinched face answered for him. ‘Then forget jumping, we must stop the column. Pull up!’ he yelled, standing upright as he hauled on the reins. ‘Stop your carts!’ The authority in his voice caught their attention. ‘Stop your carts!’

Junius wasn’t the only one who’d seen what was about to take place. A horseman surged his way up the path, past quivering mules and women wailing in fright, ignoring the confused shouts of the drivers. ‘Get out,’ he yelled. ‘Everyone out!’ There was more than a tinge of panic to his voice. ‘Huddle close as you can to the rock.’

From deep inside the mountain came a low menacing growl. Claudia glanced up. Typical of the countryside, massive overhangs of granite jutted out, the softer limestone below having eroded away. Above, some of the fissures were gaping wider and wider, and it was this Junius and the others had spotted.

Suddenly, June or not, she was shivering.

‘Croesus,’ somebody cried. ‘The mountain’s coming right at us!’

Claudia found herself slammed flat against the rock face, a man’s body pressed against hers. Not Nestor. There was no flab on this man. And it was for protection, rather than lust.

With just one warning rumble, the whole hillside started to tremble and then, as though a giant hand sliced it through with a sword, the outcrop began to slip its moorings. Slowly at first. As though reluctant to leave home. But then it found freedom—and flight.

Day became night as great crashing boulders roared past. Horses shrieked, soldiers bellowed out instructions, men were shouting as their womenfolk wailed. Whole trees were uprooted, gouging out the mountain road and sending down mudslides in great slimy torrents.

For what seemed an eternity, stones hurtled down, branches, tree roots, great chunks of soil, until the only sound left was the rain, spitter-spattering down on the wreckage. Low moans and groans rippled along the stunned line of travellers, muted sobbing broke out, the occasional whimper. Even the panic-stricken horses had been numbed into pitiful snickering. Claudia clung to the rock like a limpet as the pitchy air slowly cleared, leaving an incongruously pleasant smell of freshly turned earth in its wake.

‘Thank you, Junius.’ She spat out a mouthful of rock dust and pine needles. ‘You can move away any time you feel like it.’

‘Oh. Right. Yes.’ The young Gaul gave an embarrassed cough as he took a pace backwards.

Claudia wedged a finger between her teeth to stop them chattering and gave a tight-lipped nod of thanks to the man who had just saved her life. Ever attentive, always on hand, Junius’s eyes never seemed to leave his mistress, not once and on occasions (this was one of them) Claudia was given to wondering whether his feelings were perhaps more than professional… Then she remembered, and laughed. Hell, she was three, maybe four years older than him, and with muscles like iron and his Gaulish good looks, he’d have his pick of young women. His obedience, his obsessive reliability, simply reflected a pride in his work.

The dust settled quickly in the downpour and Claudia finally prised herself away from the security of the rock face to confront the chaos which surrounded her. A string of pack mules had taken the full force of the blast, cascading to their deaths in the chasm below. Five rigs had also crashed down, hers included, and forty paces of mountain road had—or were about to—give way. A red-haired young groom gingerly tried to unhook some of the horses, but before the first two were free of the reins, another section of road collapsed, tossing carts, mules and groom down the ravine like carved wooden toys. Their screams rang harrowingly in Claudia’s ear, and she had to steady herself not to pass out.

With jelly-like legs, Claudia made her way back up the line where, miraculously, Drusilla was fine and where Junius and the driver were both being hailed as heroes. Quite right, too. Clemens, a little, round, list-maker of a priest, was conducting a head count and Theodoras, representing the army, took stock of the damage. Glancing over the precipitous edge, Claudia grimaced at the tangle of trees and smashed rocks which blocked the narrow valley, and at the twitching bodies of mules, their blood staining the canvas ripped from mangled rigs. One wheel spun slowly, as though turned by an invisible hand.

She shuddered.

The road behind was impassable—hell, it was not even there—and the party had neither equipment nor manpower to shift the blockage below.

They were trapped.

In the background Clemens’ voice was reassuring shell-shocked journeyers that fatalities were lower than feared. One muleteer, he said, plus one of the drivers and two soldiers had died trying to usher the civilians to safety. We must all give thanks, he said. Make sacrifice, now, to the Lares, for protecting us on these perilous roads—

She blocked off his trumpery. Give thanks? For being trapped in this canyon? The sides were too steep for horseback, they’d have to scramble on foot, and in any case, where the hell were they? That’s why she had sent Junius to backtrack on the route. Already she had her suspicions…

As the drone of the little priest continued, Claudia found her legs could no longer support her, and she stumbled to the nearest wagon. At the front, the horses, still skittish, shifted from hoof to hoof as they whinnied and shied, and she wanted to tell them, put a sock in it, show some gratitude, can’t you see half of your cousins are dead? Wearily, her hair and her tunic plastered to her body with rain which had finally begun to ease up, Claudia slumped against the brake pole.

What have you got yourself into this time?

Without bothering to sweep the soggy canvas aside, uncannily intact apart from a layer of mud, she leaned into the rig. A drink. Whoever it belonged to, they had to have wine on board. Shaking fingers fumbled over the luggage in the dark interior. An overturned trunk. A shoe. What’s that? Oh, a writing tablet. That’s no bloody use. A carved wooden goblet. A comb. A foot. A razor. Did I say foot? Claudia yanked back the awning. Holy shit, it was a foot. Cold, clammy, a very dead foot. Swallowing hard, she followed it upwards. She knew that leg, surely? The short, stocky body…?

Salty tears filled her eyes. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been gasping for breath, his face as pink as a ripe pomegranate. She gagged at the lump in her throat. Now he was cold. Icy cold. And there was no breath left in his lungs.

Oh, Nestor. You of all people! Surely a seasoned traveller had the sense to get out of the way? And then she realized that here he was, lying flat on his face in a cart, suggesting that his heart had given way. Poor old sod. Who’d have thought he’d have been so terrified of a rock fall?

Something lurched in her gut.

Janus, Croesus, he’d been in agony the last time she saw him, and then came the landslide. Independently, they’d have had no impact on his health, but together? Together they’d buggered his heart. Inadvertently, Claudia had helped kill him.

She scrubbed the tears from her eyes. This had really turned into a nightmare.

‘I’m so sorry.’ She gulped. ‘Oh, Nestor, I am so very sorry.’

Truly, he’d been nothing more than a troublesome pest, a lonely man in search of cheap thrills. He’d meant no harm with his touching—some chaps couldn’t help it. Like sniffing hemp seeds, or drinking too much, they were simply hooked on the act. Had she known the architect had a weak heart…

Accustomed now to the gloom inside the cart, Claudia frowned. Hold on. She scrambled closer, towards the top section of his waxy, lifeless body. Holy shit! Nestor hadn’t succumbed to a dodgy heart at all.

The entire back of his head was caved in.

*

Claudia wriggled out of the cart, pulled down the flap and signalled Junius away from a sacrifice to gods in which, as a Gaul, he didn’t believe.

‘Tell me what you found when you backtracked,’ she demanded, dragging him behind a rig, where they couldn’t be seen.

His handsome face puckered up and she noticed he took care to speak in a low undertone, darting a glance now and then to make sure no one had noticed their absence.

‘Your suspicions were justified,’ he said grimly. ‘I rode back as far as the last town we stayed in, checked with the servants, the townsfolk, the soldiers patrolling the streets, and the story’s identical. Two days had elapsed since the first part of the delegation passed through ahead of us.’ He paused, darting a glance over her shoulder. ‘Will you…tell the others?

‘Tell them what?’ Claudia shrugged. ‘That this little group has somehow become separated from the main body of the convoy? So what, they’ll say. Our samples and supplies are plodding behind in a column of ox-carts, they’re already a week in arrears. They’ll blame the rain and the mudslides and, for all I know, Junius, that might be all there is to it.’

She had to believe that. She had to.

Indeed, so illustrious was the cavalcade, so vital this celebration of a half-century of mutual co-operation between Roman and Gaul since Caesar’s invasion, that soldiers had been sent ahead to clear the convoy’s passage. How else could they have made such tremendous progress with fresh horses on standby at every post station and the army quickly disposing of overturned carts or wagons with locked spokes that might impede their advancement? Concord and unity comes first, was the message. But the weather, oh, the weather. That had cost them ten, maybe fifteen miles every day and the journey had been fraught from the start. Heading north, across the Lepontine Alps, a lyre-maker of great skill and even greater musical ability had been swept away by the river, his body never sighted again.

‘I don’t think so.’ The young Gaul chewed at his lower lip. ‘I’ve been thinking back over this expedition. We were definitely together at the Finster Pass, remember the celebrations when the guide pointed out we’d reached the highest point of the journey, and someone timed just how long it took for the delegation to file past?’

‘I do. The whole cavalcade took an hour.’

‘Right. Well, after that we swung north-east again, to follow the southern shores of the Twin Lakes, but—’

‘—when we stopped at the City-Between-the-Lakes overnight,’ Claudia’s heartbeat had picked up in speed, ‘there was some trouble in accommodating us all.’

‘Exactly.’ Junius looked grim. Much older than his twenty-two years. ‘And don’t you think it odd, in retrospect, that it was the patrician classes—the rich oil merchants, the goldsmiths, the silversmiths—who kept moving? The ones with the great entourages, their hairdressers, masseurs and stewards? Why not push the artisans on? Or lodge them with smallholders overnight?’

‘None of us questioned the road conditions which kept us kicking our heels for another half-day in the town,’ she continued, ‘and by the time we’d reached Bern we were so relieved to be out of the rain, we never gave a thought to the vanguard.’

‘Who had already moved on,’ Junius said. ‘Ushered through by the army, but where were the soldiers yesterday? Did you count any legionaries lining the route?’

‘Sweet Jupiter.’ Claudia’s stomach flipped over. ‘Two of today’s casualties were soldiers!’ She stared at her whey-faced bodyguard, his hair still damp and spiky from the rain, and wondered whether she had the courage to voice her worst fears. She drew a deep breath. ‘Junius, you’re familiar with this type of terrain.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Is it possible,’ she asked shakily, ‘that this landslide was no accident?’

‘Sabotage?’ There was a shocked pause. ‘I don’t honestly know,’ he admitted at length. ‘Maybe…I suppose by driving a wedge into the right fissure, you could weaken a whole section—but why? Robbery?’

‘Hardly.’ Claudia hugged her upper arms tight to her body. ‘The valuable stuff’s in the ox-carts.’

‘Would bandits know that?’

‘I’ve no idea what the saboteurs might know or might not, but one thing’s for sure. There’s no way back through this gorge, the road’s gone, and down there the whole valley is blocked.’ She felt cold, she felt dizzy. ‘And that’s not the worst part,’ she said flatly.

Sure a rock fall could cave a man’s head in. Easily, like cracking an egg. But not while he’s protected under a heavy layer of canvas.

Claudia looked her bodyguard squarely in the eye. ‘You see, Junius, we appear to have another little problem on our hands.’

One of our group is a killer.

III

With the gods duly propitiated with honey cakes and wine and a good old gust of incense, the assemblage finally began to disperse. Duty done, it was time now, they figured, to reassess, regroup and then get out of this hellhole. The rain had eased to a soft Caledonian mist, and with the air warm again after the deluge, the canyon was turning into a giant steam room. Somewhere close at hand a chaffinch warbled high in the canopy and flies began to pester the horses.

‘We’ll make for the bridge first,’ said Theodorus, ‘then sort out a burial detail.’ And such was the confident tone of the legionary’s voice that no one demurred.

Claudia studied him, as he wiped grime off a face which, no matter how hard he tried, remained stubbornly, boyishly handsome. With his armour covered in dust and his legs streaked with mud, he looked a decade younger than his twenty-six years and that would be a perpetual problem for Theo. Despite a frame built for combat, his face provoked altogether different emotions. Women, fellow soldiers (who knows, perhaps even his enemies?), would be drawn by his apparent vulnerability and maybe it was the freckles, then again, perhaps it was his wide-set blue eyes, but even Claudia couldn’t imagine Theo clubbing a man in cold blood.

And that’s what it was. In cold blood. Any doubts she may have had about a murderer among the group vanished the instant Nestor’s body was discovered by the roadside. An overlooked casualty was the general consensus, but Claudia knew, as his killer knew, that dead men don’t jump out of carts. It was pure bad luck that the very rig he’d been dumped in had stopped in the lee of an overhang, a mistake which had quickly been rectified.

So, then. The lyre-maker, swept to his death in the river. Libo, stabbed in the bushes. And now Nestor, bludgeoned to death. Three deaths passed off as tragic accidents. My, my, the perils of travel!

‘Claudia.’ The scent of oregano wafted under Claudia’s nostrils. ‘Claudia, I’ve just heard.’ With her familiar jangle, Iliona appeared at her side. ‘Your rig’s gone, hasn’t it? Well, don’t worry, ours is fine, you must travel with us. And if you need clothes or anything, you just have to ask and it’s yours.’

Claudia sucked in her cheeks. I’m-Cretan-and-don’t-you-forget-it was all but tattooed on Iliona’s forehead, her heritage blasting out from all directions, be it from her glossy dark hair, folded and knotted at the nape of her neck, from the oiled curls which hung over her ears, from the heavy copper belt which kept her waist unnaturally small, or from the wide baggy pants she wore under a laced and beaded bodice! Claudia smoothed the elegant pleats of her high-busted linen tunic and swallowed a laugh. ‘That’s very kind of you, Iliona,’ she said soberly. ‘But my trunk has survived, thank you.’

‘Well, I repeat, everything I have is at your disposal for as long as you want it.’ Iliona let out a giggle. ‘Except Titus, of course.’ Still laughing, she sashayed away, and Claudia couldn’t imagine the lovely Cretan lass pounding Nestor’s skull to a pulp either. Iliona was born for beauty, to enrich every scene she appeared in.

But her spice-merchant husband?

From the corner of her eye, she watched Titus tightening the leather straps on his baggage. The way his hair fell over one eye gave the impression of a sharp and shifty individual, yet his broad (if tight-lipped) smile contrived to imply the very opposite. To achieve such ambiguity, Claudia decided, Titus must have practised extremely hard in front of his mirror.

Dear Diana, this is madness! You can’t go around suspecting everyone who’s trapped in this wretched gorge, there must be twenty or thirty of us. Get a grip! She stared round as torn canvas was yanked off the carts, rocks heaved out, damaged rigs tossed down the hillside, wheels replaced. In itself, the industry was comforting and the answer, she told herself, was simply to remain on her guard. Watch, look, listen. All the time. Vigilance wasn’t an option. It had become a matter of life or death.

‘That’s it, stand on my foot, why don’t you!’ Hanno’s dirty wheeze of a chuckle carried over the hammering. ‘That’s all I need now, to be crippled!’

Everyone laughed along with this whiskery old muleteer, whose teeth had long since said goodbye to his lined, leathery face, and Theo—to his chagrin—blushed as deeply as nature (but not he) intended, mumbling something about narrow passing places and his hobnails not being able to grip properly in this slippery mud. Hanno continued to hop up and down on one leg, clutching his foot, but his heaving shoulders betrayed him. In fact, his whole wizened body shook when he laughed, and you’d hardly believe the redheaded groom who’d died trying to save some of the horses had been his grandson…

‘Psst.’ Junius signalled his mistress away from the party. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s no going back, that outcrop made a right mess of the hillside, but with my help, you should be able to scramble up to the summit.’ His eyes indicated upwards. ‘I know it’s steep, but with Drusilla on a leash, we ought to make it, then we can zigzag back down again, to pick up the road over there.’ He pointed along the gorge to the path hidden by trees. ‘We might even, if we start soon enough, make that little town we stayed in last night before it gets dark.’

Turn around? ‘No.’

The young Gaul’s jaw dropped in amazement. ‘But madam—’

‘Butts are for Billy goats, Junius, and my decision is final. We are not going back.’

He fumbled to find adequate words. ‘You said yourself, there’s a killer on the loose. We’ve been split from the main body of the trade delegation, deliberately by the looks of it, the route has been sabotaged and I’m far from convinced this is the same road the original convoy would have taken.’

Me too. That’s what first made me suspicious.

‘We’re going on,’ Claudia said. ‘Correction, I’m going on. You, of course, can turn back any time you wish.’

His face drained. ‘Madam! You know I’d never leave you! Not out here—’

‘Then that’s settled. Now be a good boy and lend a hand with the labouring, will you?’ She shooed him away with the back of her hand. ‘There’s a considerable amount of repair work outstanding.’

Dazed, the bodyguard stumbled off and only when she was satisfied that not even a gnat was close enough to see what she was doing did Claudia delve deep down into the satchel which she’d slung round her neck when Junius first told her to jump from the trap. Thoughtfully she weighed the small deerskin pouch in her hand and felt something, as she had felt it many times before, chink softly in the cloth. Gemstones, she presumed.What else? Stolen, in all probability, but that wasn’t her concern. All that mattered was that a man whom she’d never seen before had approached her in her own house and, on behalf of his master, had offered her a place in this prized delegation to Gaul. Then, without so much as a change in voice tone, had calmly added that if Claudia Seferius felt she could convey this package along with her on the journey, the man he worked for would be prepared to purchase last year’s vintage in its entirety.

In its entirety.

Claudia re-buried the pouch in her satchel, her fingertip dancing over the embossed salamander. Such a sum would tide her over for another year, allowing her to become fluent in Greek, learn more about the trade, develop connections, make contacts, who knows, maybe even expand? She had not hesitated, and the following day ten per cent of the promised payment had arrived via a messenger.

However, every enquiry she’d made, discreet as they were, had met with a blank—a dead end every time—leaving her unable to trace this utterly distinctive seal and therefore put a name to the man who was so generous when it came to smuggling. And more than once during the past twelve days, Claudia had wondered why, if these were gemstones in the pouch, the Salamander had covered their cost twice over in his proffered payment to her?

Who cared? Curious it might be, but it was absolutely none of her business. And in spite of the very real dangers which threatened by tagging along with this little group, what spurred Claudia on was the knowledge that, waiting for her in Vesontio, would be another agent.

With the remaining ninety yummy per cent!

IV

Had the crow sufficient stamina, it would discover that by flapping its black shiny wings from Rome to Vesontio it would cover the best part of five hundred miles. Which possibly explained why it preferred to stay at home, preening itself on the rooftop of a modest, white-fronted townhouse on the Esquiline Hill instead.

Its perch overlooked a bedroom whose double doorway faced on to a courtyard, where the scent of white roses mingled with the pinks growing beneath them, where sparrows took mudbaths in the shade of clipped laurels and a gleaming bronze fountain splattered and chattered to a long line of white marble ancestors, their noses turned snootily upwards.

‘We can try again later, if you like.’ The girl swung her long, naked leg over the coverlet and propped herself up on one elbow.

Marcus Cornelius Orbilio smiled wanly.

‘Don’t feel bad about it,’ she breathed, tracing a finger over the solid musculature of his chest. ‘Most men suffer the droops eventually.’

Eventually? For gods’ sake, he was twenty-five!

‘Pressures of work,’ he mumbled, closing his eyes and imagining she was that skinny blonde from the cookshop.

From outside he heard the mocking caw of a carrion crow, and imagination deserted him.

‘Perhaps if I—’ The girl’s fingernails slid down his armour-hard stomach.

‘No.’ It was kinder she attributed his lack of ardour to stress, but even as he forced his cheeks to bunch into a smile at the voluptuous creature lying beside him, dark hair cascading over her shoulders, pink nipples taut and erect, he felt a distinct ripple of guilt as he pushed her hand away. ‘Why don’t you—er, pour us some wine?’

There was no way he could tell her the truth. That he’d chosen her because she was the spitting image of another, with her dark tumbling curls and the flounce in her walk, for the way she threw back her head when she laughed. But the resemblance was purely superficial and in the harsh afternoon sun, Orbilio found he had no physical desire whatsoever for this mediocre substitute. There was none of the electrical surge he felt when Claudia Seferius entered the scene. No white lightning crackled around this girl the way it did around the beautiful widow. Her rosewater perfume lacked the spiciness of Claudia’s heady, Judaen scent and no matter how hard he searched, he could find no hint of molten-metal tints in those tumbling tresses, no dying sunsets, no flaming autumn hillsides.

It had been a mistake to bring this pale imitation to his bed, for the agony had been compounded, rather than eased, and a talon inside ripped at his liver as he thought about the wildcat who, if the schedule was on target, was ensconced in Vesontio right at this moment. He wondered vaguely which poor bugger was on the receiving end of Claudia’s tongue now.

Quite how she’d wangled a place on that prestigious trade delegation, Orbilio wasn’t sure, but he smiled at the bittersweet memory of the release of a thousand white doves as a signal for the delegation to set off to Gaul. Her flaming orange gown had stood out like a beacon among the rigs and traps assembled in the Forum, and once he’d watched her out of sight, Orbilio had raced up to the Capitol and remained there until the procession was just so many specks of grey dust. Twelve aching days had passed since then, and without her the city lacked vitality and life. Twelve whole days. Twelve long nights. How long before she’d be home? How long before he would see her again? Inhale the balsam from her hair? Watch that little pulse dance at her throat? Feel the heat of her firebrand temper?

He groaned, and when his bedmate tutted sympathetically, Marcus did not bother to correct her. He gulped down a goblet of chilled Thracian wine, shuddering at the shards of ice washed down with it, which slammed into his stomach like a punch. How come thoughts of Claudia half the world away could light his loins, while this girl who so closely resembled her could not? Why could he not imagine these were Claudia’s shoulders he nuzzled? Her breasts he cupped—

‘Sorry to disturb you, sir.’ Orbilio’s steward tapped at the door. ‘There’s a messenger outside, says it’s urgent—’

‘No problem.’ Marcus was out of bed and reaching for his loincloth long before the steward’s knuckles had fallen away. ‘Tell him I’m coming.’

‘That’s a joke,’ snapped the girl on the bed, but Orbilio, pulling on his long, patrician tunic, didn’t hear and by the time he’d laced up his high boots, he’d forgotten all about her, including her name.

In the city centre, public notices were being hammered up, speeches delivered from tribunals, from platforms, from the steps of the Rostra. Marcus was forced to weave his way through the hoarse-throated beggars and skirt porters wiping sweat from their brow as they pushed heavy, wheeled barrows. Around Vulcan’s sacred lotus tree, chickens clucked inside barred wooden crates, baby goats bleated and urchins snatched a spilled melon here, a dropped sea perch there. This being market day, none of the charioteers whose wheels clattered so noisily over the travertine slabs gave a thought as to what might lie beneath them, and the astrologers looked to the stars to draw up their charts, not the bowels of the earth. Yet it was here, right under the Forum, that Marcus Cornelius made his descent.

‘Talk about a different world,’ he muttered, raising his torch above his head for a better view of this subterranean warren.

The air was noticeably stale, for one thing. Certainly none of the tempting aromas from the bakery—the pastries, the buns and the sweetmeats—found their way underground, there was not even a hint of stale wine from the taverns. Just the acid stench of pitch, spluttering and hissing as it burned from the torches, sending out clouds of dark, swirling mist and—he sniffed—something else. Something indefinable in the air. He sniffed again, but still couldn’t identify it. Unless, maybe, it was the smell of utter despair…

He paused and glanced back. Four, five, yes, six galleries behind him. That’s right. Two to go. He counted again to make sure—it was a veritable honeycomb down here.

Lights in sconces flickered and sizzled in the narrow stone corridor, casting sinister shadows over the arches and confusing spatial perception. In the distance he heard the well-drilled clomp of military boots. Long before they reached him, they had turned off into another part of the maze to become nothing more than an echo. Orbilio swerved off to his right, passed two enclosed chambers, then took the first gallery left. A man was waiting.

‘You found it all right, then?’ He grinned, looping his thumbs into the waistband below the great overhang of his belly. A monster of a buckle glinted in the flickering light.

Orbilio grunted. Finding the wretched place was one thing, getting out again might be another. These cramped corridors, from which other galleries led off, and then others, each with their own series of subterranean chambers, resembled more the minotaur’s labyrinth than Rome.

‘Augustus is converting this site into a holding place for wild animals, in order to put on beast shows up in the Forum,’ said Big Buckle. ‘Windlasses are being installed, winches, the lot.’ In the smoky gloom, Orbilio saw him wink. ‘But the Security Police will still keep a section, don’t worry.’

Orbilio didn’t. ‘What have you got that’s so urgent?’ he asked, hitching his torch into the bracket which hung on the wall in the hope it would hide the low expectations etched on his face.

‘Would you believe’—Big Buckle lowered his voice to an excited whisper—‘a plot to bring down the Empire?’

Orbilio swallowed his disappointment. It was as he had feared. Every third informant these days seemed to have wind of a plot to assassinate Augustus, the majority using the shield of these troubled times to settle a few unresolved grudges and scores of their own. He sighed. In virtually every street, it seemed, there was nothing quite like a spot of vilification to make a chap feel better, whether it was retaliation against an overlooked promotion, a whispered slur about an uppity neighbour or a slave’s hit-back against his master’s brutality.

‘The last time you dragged me down here,’ Marcus pointed out, ‘it turned out to be nothing more than a man slandering the fellow his wife had run off with.’

Big Buckle spread his wide, ugly hands. ‘What can I do?’ He shrugged. ‘We have to follow up every suggestion of treason. Can I help it, if that’s the fashion?’

Dislike him he might, but Marcus felt obliged to acknowledge the point. Few things were as satisfying, it would appear, as tarnishing one’s enemies with a thin coat of treachery, and the political field lay wide open to embrace any number of wild allegations.

Barely ten weeks ago, the Emperor’s right-hand man, Agrippa, had died suddenly—suspiciously even—leaving Rome bereft of her regent. Considering the sole remaining heir—Agrippa’s son, who was also the Emperor’s grandson—happened to be just eight years of age, you can begin to imagine the problem! Banners. Who’d fill the vacuum left by Agrippa? In the end, Augustus had appointed his stepson Tiberius as regent, but the nomination hadn’t pleased everyone. The Senate alone was in uproar. Tiberius is no blood relation, they cried. Neither to Augustus, nor to Augustus’s grandson. It’s a scandal.

Some even called ‘Bring back the Republic!’

It was like setting a torch to dry kindling.

Worse, it was on account of this damned political unrest that Marcus Cornelius had been unable to leave Rome to accompany the trade delegation to Gaul.

Deep in this hollow, subterranean maze, a hammer echoed in the distance and closer to hand unseen footsteps rang with ghostly reverberation across the stone flags, clip-clopping into the smoky, Stygian gloom.

‘This one has an altogether different slant,’ said Big Buckle, briskly rubbing his hands. ‘If you read the confession, you’ll see this is right up your street.’ Clearly the word ‘sir’ was not in his vocabulary. ‘North Gallic tribes getting restless—that’s what you’re working on, isn’t it?’

Hmm. By the flickering lamplight of the dingy office chamber, Orbilio’s eyes skimmed the text, confirming nothing he didn’t know already. Dissent among the Treveri in Trier. Helvetii chieftains meeting up frequently, and in secret. Both tribes holding clandestine summits. Could any significance be attached to these rumblings? His boss didn’t think so, and Orbilio’s mind drifted back to their recent conversation.

‘This has only come about since Augustus moved troops up and over the Rhine,’ his boss had said, dismissing the notion with a wave of his small, pudgy hand. ‘And anyway, the Treveri getting it together with the Helvetii? Jupiter would swear an oath of chastity before that day dawns.’

‘I can’t agree, sir,’ Orbilio had countered. ‘Both tribes are persistent troublemakers with a reputation for war, and that argument about them being bitter enemies doesn’t stand up. History shows they change allegiances the way you and I change our tunics, I’m sure the tribes are taking advantage of our Germanic campaign.’ There was definitely something afoot in that part of Gaul. With troops committed to the push into Germany, it had been necessary to despatch one legion from Aquitania and another from the south coast to shore up the line, but Orbilio felt it went deeper than merely a few diehards shaking their fists in the air. Suppose it was Rome they had in their sights? Maybe the Emperor himself…?

‘Bollocks!’ His boss had sneered when Marcus voiced his anxiety aloud. ‘For any serious assault, you’d need the Germans banding together with the Helvetii, and even then they’d need the help of the Sequani who stand in between them, and the Sequani are our staunchest allies in the whole of Western Gaul. Or are you the only man on the earth not to have heard about that delegation to Vesontio to celebrate fifty years of harmony between our two nations?’

‘Of course, sir—’

‘Fifty years, Orbilio. Fifty years, in which they’ve grown fat on the land, working their vast tracts of forest in peace, churning out fruit presses and canoes instead of spears and javelins, and look at the quality of the stock they breed nowadays. Men will part with a small fortune to get their hands on a good Gaulish mule—’

‘Yes, sir, I’m aware of that—’

‘Are you?’ his boss snapped. ‘Their king, Oxi— Axi— oh shit, I can never get my tongue round those bloody Sequani names, but the point is, their king’s been afforded the title ‘Brother of the People’ by the Senate. The Senate, Orbilio. This is not a title either party takes lightly, and the Sequani are grateful—bloody grateful, I might add—that their cemeteries are filling up with the sick and the old, not young men butchered in inter-tribal skirmishes.’

‘I’m not suggesting King Axo— Ixo—’ (Orbilio couldn’t pronounce the names either) ‘is mounting an insurrection, but you know yourself, sir, what these petty chieftains are like. Ruthless and ambitious, keen to prove themselves. Suppose—’

‘Suppose, my arse, Orbilio! The whole idea of the tribes banding together and marching on Rome is preposterous, they’d be torn to pieces by our legions before they’d crossed into Italy, and in any case the Sequani are our buffer against such a contingency. One whiff of an uprising and King Ixi— Izi— Sodhisbloodyname will be selling them out as fast as he can. Trust me, the Emperor’s as safe as a Vestal Virgin’s virtue. Now get out of here and stop wasting my time.’

With that, Orbilio had been bawled out of the room, his misgivings stronger than ever. Looking at it objectively, he could see why his boss, even as head of the Security Police, had imagined him right off his rocker. A few power-hungry princes from a few branches of a few northern tribes marching on Rome? Put like that, it did sound preposterous. However, whenever he’d received wind of these secret alliances, will-o’-the-wisps as they were, the core of each rumour was identical—that any time soon, Augustus would be just a name in the history books.

There was only one logical conclusion, which turned Orbilio’s blood into ice.

The uprising was being masterminded from inside Rome. Someone here—someone high-ranking and influential—was plotting to kill the Emperor, quietly whipping up the northern tribes to act as the military muscle he’d need for his coup to succeed. Because not only would Augustus need to be eliminated, loyal generals, senators and magistrates would have to be taken out as well…

This someone had to be close to Augustus, a trusted friend, a senator, a general…the head of the Security Police? Orbilio knew he could not confide in anyone. Not if he wanted to live.

Meanwhile, in this subterranean rabbit warren, Big Buckle had almost nodded off. ‘This confession,’ Orbilio said, jerking him awake, ‘reads more like an official report.’

‘Well, you know what they’re like, these interrogations.’ Big Buckle yawned and rubbed his great belly. ‘Half lies, half gibberish, I simply tidy it up.’

‘In other words, this is nothing more than your interpretation of what was said?’

‘Exactly.’ The sarcasm scuttled right past him, and his chest puffed up like a cockerel’s at dawn. ‘Typical example in your hand there.’ He even crowed like the damned cockerel. ‘Here we are, trying to extract information about sedition and assassination, and all we get are ramblings about some sodding treasure map.’

The scroll tumbled out of Orbilio’s hand. ‘Treasure map?’ It was a credit to his upbringing, he thought, that he managed to keep the excitement out of his voice.

‘See what I mean?’ Big Buckle laughed. ‘They do it every damned time. Think they’re clever, they do, feeding us lines, setting us off on false trails in order to buy themselves time, but I’m wise to these scum. Trust me, we get to the truth in the end.’

‘Perhaps,’ Orbilio said mildly, ‘it would be a good idea if I interviewed the prisoner myself?’

Mother of Tarquin, this was the break he was waiting for! The tribes might want a share in the new order—but for the Treveri, historical enemies of the Helvetii, to unite, both sides would have to be bought, and the sum would not be small. (What price this new Republic?)

‘As you wish.’ It was no skin off Big Buckle’s nose whether the written confession was sufficient or not. His job was purely to make it available. ‘This way.’

Following him down the smoky corridor, Orbilio was uncomfortably aware of what his father would have made of a high-born patrician mixing with what he’d undoubtedly call lowlife and scum. The old man had taken as fixed that his sons would follow law as their route to the Senate, and Marcus knew he’d have reacted none too kindly to the news that one of his boys had taken up with the Security Police instead of the judiciary. An emptiness washed over him, the same as it always did when he thought of his father and the broad gulf between them, a chasm which could never be bridged, thanks to his father’s premature death.

So many issues unresolved. To explain, for instance, that by weeding out fraudsters, killers, assassins and thieves, Marcus was making the world safer, more stable. His mouth twitched at one corner. Never. the old man would have boomed. Prestige is what counts, lad. Prestige! And instead of letting him unburden himself by talking through his cases, he’d have questioned him about…well, the dinner to which Orbilio had been invited to tonight, for instance.

Oh, his father would have approved of that! Dining with Senator Galba, the chap who’d organized that illustrious delegation to Gaul? Word’s finally got out about your successes, he’d have said approvingly. Play your dice right, lad, and your career will be taking off big time! Galba’s a serious player in the political arena, keep him sweet, because with the senator in your corner…

Perhaps it was as well the old man had gone early. Another flaming argument would have erupted, Marcus pitting ethics against self-interest, and the galling thing was, both father and son had the same ultimate goal. They both wanted Marcus to take his seat in the Senate—which would only have led to another contentious issue, of course. Marriage. His father citing Orbilio’s failure as a husband by letting his wife abscond with an impecunious sea captain to bring the shame of divorce on the family…instantly forgiven, of course, providing he married so-and-so, and off he’d go, the old man, trying to force his son into a second miserable alliance and riding, as always, roughshod over human emotions.

The next time he took a wife, Orbilio resolved, it would be no business merger. And there was only one possible candidate.

Yet no matter how many times their paths crossed, no matter how many adventures they shared, Claudia, goddammit, always pushed him away.

He spiked his fingers through his hair. For all her abrasive temperament, her confident exterior, one thing that woman was scared of—maybe the only thing—was love. She avoided it like a whale avoids fresh water, and Marcus knew the reason.

She’d been burned. An army orderly of a father, who walked out one morning and never came home. Death? Desertion? Only the father knew the truth, but the consequence was that the child who’d adored him had been left to care for a reckless, feckless, selfish mother who in turn had deserted her daughter in an alcoholic haze. What transpired between Claudia leaving her southern slums and her arrival in Rome five years later, polished and svelte, Orbilio, through the course of his investigations, had caught only glimpses. What he’d seen though were horrors enough—and as a result of her experiences, Claudia had turned herself into an island.

But islands, by the gods, can be reached. By boat, by bridge, by swimming underwater, and while it would take time—years in all probability—Orbilio was resigned to waiting. Not necessarily happily, but resigned nevertheless.

He cracked his knuckles. One thing, though, waiting didn’t mean celibacy. Next time, he’d go for a blonde!

The tunnels seemed to grow darker as he followed Big Buckle through the tortuous maze, the resinous pitch sour in back of his mouth. Disembodied voices echoed down the hollow corridors and he closed his mind to what tales these catacombs might be able to tell…

‘Prisoner’s in here,’ Big Buckle said, throwing open a door to a narrow chamber lit by two oil lamps and a cresset light on the wall.

Orbilio shielded his eyes against the unexpected brightness, and saw a thickset man wiping his hands on a towel. The towel was a mass of reddish brown stains, and the man wore a leather apron to cover his tunic. Orbilio could see why.

He’d reached for his dagger and was cutting the prisoner’s bonds before the warder realized what was happening. ‘Oi!’

‘Was this really necessary?’ Orbilio growled. Red splashes stood out stark on the grey stone of the wall, and the floor was oily with blood.

‘It works,’ the warder snarled back. ‘And the rules is straightforward. If the prisoner ain’t a Roman citizen, we torture the barbarians to get at the truth. This sure ain’t one of us.’

Us. Orbilio shivered.

‘Get out,’ he ordered the warder.

With fingerbones broken, lash marks to the torso and a face mashed to pulp, the prisoner was not going anywhere.

V

In the end, it was not so much the savagery of the beatings which sickened Marcus, man’s inhumanity to man and all that. He’d served in the army for two years, and seen plenty there to stamp out idealism. Rather, on this occasion, it was that such sustained brutality could be inflicted upon a girl of less than nineteen.

In the corner, appositely positioned beneath the rows of metal rods and pliers, the whips, the chains, the iron bars, sat a barrel of water with drips running down the ladle which hung on the side. Pools on the stone flags where the girl had been bound to the wall bore testimony to the fact that the water had been used not to succour, but to bring her round, and surprisingly the water was fresh. Cool even. Orbilio trickled a few drops over her swollen, battered lips.

To apologize would have been wholly inadequate.

Using his wetted handkerchief, he dabbed at her face as she lay slumped on the floor and wiped away the bubble of blood at the side of her mouth.

‘Can I go now?’ she mumbled.

Since no words could pass the lump in his throat, Orbilio smashed the frame of the wax tablet upon which the warder had scratched his notes and made splints for her fingers instead. She was Treveri and he didn’t need any so-called confessions to know that. The fringed plaid tunic, the chain-link belt, the braids in her fiery hair screamed her heritage and he dared not begin to imagine how scared she felt, alone and so far from home.

‘Your name’s Remi, I gather.’

‘What about it?’

He was beginning to see why the warder and Big Buckle had had such trouble and a smile tweaked at the side of his mouth.

‘I once spent a month in

Reviews for The Claudia Seferius Mysteries Bundle #3

[soniaandree_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Claudia Seferius is, quite literally, a Roman super-bitch and a wannabe sleuth too. She married for money with an old winemaker, and she is not about to let anybody interfere with her plans. But murders and investigations threaten her way of life - the good-looking sleuth, Marcus Orbilio, is sure not to leave her indifferent to his charms. Highly entertaining and an easy read for those quiet evenings, she is sure to entertain the reader, even if it is 2,000 years later!

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Maybe a bit too modern in the heroine's outlook and some of the language but it's a romp of a book. Claudia is married to a wealthy merchant but has a horrible gambling habit. In order to pay for her losses she provides "services" for some other wealthy Romans. However her clients are dying and she isn't sure who's doing it.