Black Salamander (18 page)

But Libo had also carried excellent credentials. It was only when he was seen in whispered conversation with a centurion (not any old soldier, a centurion!) that the agent’s curiosity had been aroused, and when Libo handed over a sealed report, that was the clincher. He had to go.

In an ideal world, thought Libo’s killer, that would have been a necessary elimination, no more deaths. Other than the obvious complications of finding an opportunity to sneak away unseen, robbing the perfumer had taken very little planning and had had the desired effect that without the prospect of payment at the other end, the lad had no reason to continue. Most satisfactory. Then there was the lyre-maker. Oh, the music that man could conjure up! Truly, the agent would not have deprived the world of talent such as his, had not the man turned and seen the hand inside his trunk. The explanation had not been believed, and it had been relatively easy to toss him unseen into the river.

But if that sounds lucky, think again. Senator-Soon-To-Be-Dictator-Galba had not chosen his instrument without care. Aware of the consequences of being caught red-handed by the lyre-maker, the agent had picked the spot carefully beside the boiling waters of Alpine snow-melts, thundering over rocks, foaming, white and furious. Bodies are rarely recovered from torrents like that, which was really just as well.

Few victims of an accidental slip land on a knife whose blade is pointing upwards!

Nestor, of course, had been a doddle. Galba had arranged the rock fall right on schedule (that man was nothing if not thorough.), Nestor hadn’t see the blow coming. Quick, painless, no witnesses. The agent was well satisfied with events to date.

Apart from the patrician.

Who
could
be what he claimed to be. There was nothing to read into his air of smooth authority, breeding always throws up leaders, irritating though it be.

Then again, he could be another undercover man, like
Libo. But surely, if the Security Police were suspicious, they wouldn’t rely on just one man? Unless, perhaps, it was only the circumstances of Libo’s death they were concerned with?

Or (a sour taste filled the agent’s mouth) Orbilio could be Galba’s creature. A double agent, as it were. To check up on the
first…

Neither of those last two scenarios was acceptable, thought the killer, which left no option but for Marcus to follow Libo through the dark paths of the underworld.

Without emotion, the agent watched him select a clean tunic from his pack and slip it over his shoulders. Muscular and tanned, he walked with an easy grace, strong in mind and body, and to eliminate that particular threat would need some careful thought. Especially since he was familiar with one of the couriers! The agent’s eyes swivelled automatically towards Claudia and their hardness softened. Reluctant to kill her, several options had been mulled over and discounted, mostly, the agent was forced to admit, because she was constantly surrounded by that moonstruck bodyguard and her wretched cross-eyed cat. Orbilio’s arrival on the scene complicated matters even further but, during the course of the next two days, the agent
had
to separate the woman from her section of the map. It was imperative that the pieces the mercenaries ended up with were too obscure to pinpoint the treasure, hers was a pivotal portion. As, indeed, was one other’s.

‘Why don’t you send a fabricated map?’ the agent had enquired of Galba, and the fat man had stared back as though his brain could not translate the message from his ears.

‘What, and scupper the whole bloody scheme?’ The senator had snorted like a wild boar. ‘What do you suppose would happen once our tribal friends got wind this map wasn’t genuine? Keep the information to themselves, would they? Smouldering quietly at the unfairness of a double-cross? Or would they sell us out, d’you think?’

‘If all goes according to plan, they’d never know,’ the agent had protested.

‘Wouldn’t they?’ Galba’s laugh had echoed across the empty warehouse where they’d arranged to meet. ‘You think the Helvetii don’t have spies among us? You leave the planning to me,’ he’d said. ‘Concentrate on doing your job well and in a few weeks’ from now, you’ll be—’ He’d clicked his fat fingers with impatience. ‘Remind me again what you want out of the Republic?’

Furious and humiliated that Galba didn’t care enough about those prepared to carry out his dirty work to even remember their ambitions, the agent had simply mumbled something trite. But it had sown a little seed of doubt which had just this moment germinated. So much was at stake here, that maybe Galba, cold-blooded bastard that he was, had sent his own man to do away with the agent. The fewer who know, the better, or simply one less debt to be settled…

The agent smiled. Well, wouldn’t he be in for a surprise? For several happy moments, the agent savoured visions of this arrogant patrician being toppled from his perch. Orbilio’s pleas for mercy perhaps. Or that exquisite moment when the smug smirk was replaced with an expression of utter surprise—

But that, whichever way the agent decided to play it, was a treat for the future. Right now, it was back to the
Don’t-Let-The-Mask-Slip theatrical performance.

‘Is there,’ the agent called out, ‘any chance of an egg with my breakfast?’

*

The party was in excellent high spirits. Their problems were over at last, they could relax, for the first time in days, their thoughts were forward-looking. Someone mentioned the bath house in Vesontio, and talk turned instantly to the enticing prospect of hot steam baths and massage, scented oils and beauty treatments for the ladies, while others considered the accommodation which awaited, swansdown mattresses, wine and proper food, or rich contracts ripe for the making. Laughter danced in the air like fireflies and since bickering had been rendered superfluous now there were so few anxieties left to niggle them, the travellers were content to drink in the birdsong of the morning and wash their rested bodies in the peacock-blue pool.

In short, Claudia thought, their guards are down.

The hide across the porch had been drawn back, the oak door flung open to reveal the reason for the incredible height of the roundhouse. A central circular hearth, piled high with fragrant fir ash, smouldered gently to smoke a multitude of hams, tongues and sausages strung from a crossbeam. Under the eaves of this single-roomed, windowless building, a ewe with long arching horns and two lambs dozed happily, as though gatherings on this scale happened every day, while two doves strutted and cooed on the thatch.

‘I don’t
believe
it!’ The bubbly blonde giggled, head to head with the slipper-maker’s wife. ‘She said
that
?’

Gossip. A sure sign everything’s on track.

Whistling under his breath, the tubby priest set up an altar to the Lares, pouring them a libation of spring water and beer in thanks for their protection of the travellers, and just to make sure they got the message, Clemens scattered meadow rue and scabious, honesty and orchids across the altar stone.

Iliona was belting out a bright little number, her ankle bracelets and bangles a jaunty backing group, as she followed the path through the birches, watched by Titus whose smile, for once, didn’t seem ambiguous, just proud.

‘Talk about opposites.’ Somewhere along the line Orbilio had sidled up.

‘Titus and Iliona? Nonsense.’ They complement one another wonderfully, each finding in the other a matchless counterpart. ‘It works,’ Claudia told him (men! Fancy needing to have this explained to them!), ‘because she is of the sea and he the land. She is light and bright and sunny, a product of broad skies and barren hills, of rolling endless seas, whereas Titus hails from dark, wooded landscapes, which are reflected in his repressed and cautious attitudes.’

‘In fact, a perfect merchant in the making.’

‘A perfect partnership.’ Claudia corrected him, waving a cautionary finger. ‘I’ll bet you a quernstone to a quadran that if purchasers are not swayed by Titus’s logic, Iliona’s charms tip the balance.’

‘But Titus is so moral.’ Orbilio laughed. ‘Is any man more prudent, more provident that he?’

Claudia found herself laughing, too. ‘Exactly my point, Hotshot. He may be
provident,
but our Cretan lovely will look to Provid
ence
for taking care of the future. I defy you to tell me there’s a more potent combination?’

‘I shall,’ he said, tapping the tip of his forefinger on the tip of her nose, ‘hold you to that on our wedding day. But in the meantime, I have an Empire to save. Do excuse me.’

Claudia laughed, watching him lope off along the track in the direction of the village. Sometimes, Marcus Cornelius, sometimes I can almost believe that I like you.

Volso was huddled over his charts, muttering about suns in this, moons in that, cusps all over the place, trying to determine whether the calculations were on target for when the Dog Star starts to rise. Apparently this made a difference, if only Claudia suspected, to his income.

‘Drusilla? Where are you, poppet?’ Overcome with the joys of freedom, neither of them had come ‘home’ to the roundhouse, and the last time she had seen the cat, it had been with a thin, hairless tail hanging out the side of her mouth. Well, catching them is one thing. Leaving mangled mice on a girl’s bedding is another. ‘Drusilla?’

‘Hrrrrow.’

Good grief, what was she doing on the roof? Then Claudia noticed the cat, cross-eyed to start with, was experiencing considerable problems in deciding which of the two doves to chase. Both eyes seemed fixed on both birds.

Laughing, as she craned her neck to watch the antics on the thatch, her heel caught and suddenly Claudia was tumbling backwards over someone else’s belongings. Whoops! The heap of armour went sprawling, but no one seemed to notice, and certainly Theo wasn’t around to apologize to. In fact, she thought she’d seen him take his towel towards the spring just a few minutes previously.

What a mess! With downturned mouth, she leaned down to re-stack the heap—and then it happened.

Memories leapt in.

Her father, his features after so many years reduced to
a haze, she suddenly caught the smell of him, warm and nutmeggy, and felt the bristles of his beard against her cheek. She swallowed at the unexpectedness, tried to fight this fierce tidal wave of emotion. He, too, had been attached to the army, a lowly orderly admittedly, but she’d learned so much about military campaigns from him and now absurd, inconsequential items skipped along the tunnel of her memory. His mimicking of the trumpeter who’d sound the call ‘Strike Camp!’ The way he showed her how to route march, the pair of them left-righting down the stinking slumland alleys, one little soldier in the shadow of the real one, dwarfed by crumbling tenements which stank of raw sewage and boiled turnips and which relied for their water on one erratic standpipe or a surly water carrier. A lump rose in her throat. So many times she’d seen Theo in full uniform, why now? Why did it all flood back at this moment? Eyes misted, hot and salty, as she ran a loving hand over the gleaming helmet, the iron-shod boots, the heavy cloak Theo used for a pillow, the yellow deerskin pouch he kept under it…

Her father, his mannerisms, even the stinking slums vanished like a pricked bubble. Gone. Fast. Without trace. And try as she might, by screwing up her fists and eyes, Claudia could not re-capture those golden, precious, carefree moments. The uniform, the weaponry, the armour had become inanimate again. Objects. Detached. Without soul, without life, without meaning. Just objects. Mother of Mars, she hated them for that, but more, she hated the little yellow eye which peeked out from the red woollen cloak, because it had taken her father away from her.

Claudia kicked back the corner she’d disturbed and spun away.

XVIII

In Rome, military dispatches were flooding in, the message in each one identical in flavour, if not in actual content. Dissidents were wreaking havoc with their guerrilla raids along the border. East of Trier, a stable block had been burned to the ground, the horses perishing inside. Fires had been lit under two separate garrison gates, and attempts had been made to burn crossings on the Rhine, Danube and Moselle. Sentries were being picked off with splendid regularity, supply wagons ran the gauntlet of ambush and in some cases the rivers which supplied the troops were poisoned upstream, overloading the military hospitals.

‘Bloody backshooters,’ a retired legate cried. ‘Why don’t they fight like men, the bloody cowards!’

But outraged as he was, he understood the tactics and, worse, could see they were successful. Random strikes, fast and unpredictable, meant no soldier dare let up his vigil, the Roman army was becoming tired and dispirited. They could not be everywhere at once. They could not see their enemy. They did not know who he was.

Civilian suppliers grew fearful of their safety. Patrols were increased, spreading troops ever thinner. Legions were divided first into cohorts, then cohorts into centuries. Intelligence netted next to nothing. Petty chieftains were marched in for questioning, which only undermined the diplomatic efforts so assiduously laid earlier, with the unhappy result that the tribes, far from assisting their Roman administrators, now prevaricated, content to watch the outcome from the sidelines. They, too, were not sure who was orchestrating the raids, but in them they saw the glimmer of regaining a long-lost independence.