Read Online Jail Bait by Marilyn Todd - Free Book Online

on the eastern rim of the lake.
    Then a visitor from Greece discovered a mineral spring on the cliff-like projectory, and the augurs said, ‘This is a miracle’
    And it was. Not only Atlantis, with its shining opulence and hedonistic splendour, rose from obscurity. Attracted by the influx of visitors, a whole host of shops, houses and businesses sprang up, and in the five years since Pylades arrived, a whole town had evolved, with its central Forum and its main street and its taverns and brickworks and lawcourts. There were blacksmiths, dentists, barbers, potters, barrelmakers, herbalists—you name it, they were here in their droves—and they called their town Spesium, ‘Place of Hope’.
    To the sounds of trumpets, horns and cymbals loud enough to scare every spirit, not just the bad ones, the funeral procession rumbled past leadbeaters and coppersmiths, bakers and glassblowers, apprentices and matrons. For a moment, Claudia thought she glimpsed a familiar face in the crowd, someone from Rome, but maybe she was wrong, because when she lifted her mourning veil for a better view, there was no one she recognized after all. Bugger.
    Finally, on the far side of the newly constructed triple-arch gateway, the parade ground to a halt, silver censers blinding in the sunlight. With professional ease, Cal’s final wooden bed was hefted on to the pyre and Claudia noticed that the immense Oriental she’d seen yesterday on her arrival had also latched on to the party. His posture was identical—feet squarely apart, arms crossed—and he still wore that tight leather vest and strange kilt. Today, though, the long tuft of hair was tied in a thong like a mare’s tail on parade day. Somehow it looked like a weapon, as deadly as the curved blade at his hip. Despite the heat, Claudia shivered.
    Then the bruiser slid from her mind as Pylades stepped forward to deliver the oration, and to hear him list the achievements of a young man he probably never knew to a crowd of people who’d never heard of him, you had to admire the professionalism of this stocky hillsman, so glowing were the tributes, so touching the anecdotes. As a young acolyte swung a censer with clumsy abandon, a priest in long flowing robes sprinkled the bier with wine. These two, Claudia deduced, must be Leon and Mosul. Spluttering from incense overdose, the priest snapped for Leon to withdraw, and as his little black eyes met with Kamar’s, so he shrugged in a mixture of irritation and despair. This, then, was the perfectionist who tended the shrine of the water nymph all by himself? A tub of a man with the eyes of a mole.
    As Pylades began to quote a few lines of Virgil, appropriate to the occasion, Claudia noticed the hint of fluff on Leon’s upper lip and sympathized with Mosul. Already the lad’s concentration had veered towards a shapely ankle protruding from the long, white tunic of a flautist, although from this angle, Claudia could not tell w nether the joint belonged to a youth or a girl.
    Mosul completed his purification procedure and resumed his place next to Kamar. Pylades, keen to give Cal a good send-off, was now quoting Sappho and Claudia glanced round the crowd. Strange. Not a military uniform in sight. Not that she minded, of course! The greater the distance between the army and Mistress Seferius the better at the moment, but all the same, it struck her as odd, no official attendance at a funeral. The Oriental, she noticed, had melted away as invisibly as he had appeared, but right at the back, Lavinia’s tall field hand had appeared, his ebony skin shining in the sunlight. At his shoulder, the young Jewish girl appeared to be pleading with him, and Lalo spread his weathered outdoor hands in silent pacification, as though to say ‘not now’, and Claudia made a mental note to find out how long Ruth had been with Lavinia and where she had come from before. Her Latin was perfect, barely a hint of a Judaean accent, but it was strange she hadn’t