Read Online Virgin Territory by Marilyn Todd - Free Book Online

However, from receipt of his letter to arrival at the Villa Collatinus, she felt she’d built a good mental image of Eugenius—an image shattered the instant she met him.
    Yes, he was old. Old and thin (indeed who in the household, apart from Fabius, wasn’t verging on the emaciated?), but wiry rather than weak. Yes, you could see the blue veins stand out on his hands, hands which if you held the light behind them might well show you their bones if you asked nicely, but any concession to age ended there.
    ‘Well?’ Black eyes had glittered like obsidian glass.
    No greetings, no words of introduction, no platitudes for the grieving widow. There was nothing bland about Eugenius Collatinus.
    Claudia had responded in kind, silently scrutinizing walls which were crammed floor to ceiling with life-size figures jostling for shoulder space. Tempted to grin, she forced herself not to, well aware that wasn’t the reaction he either wanted or expected. Hers was not the blushing maidenly gasp followed by downcast and averted eyes. Hers was the shrewd eye of the former courtesan who had seen, if not performed, every act on this jam-packed, pornographic frieze. The only difference was in the men. Instead of portraying muscular heroes, these were a ragged collection of hunchbacks and dwarves, lepers and cripples, their ugly faces further distorted by leers. Or maybe contorted by virtue of their gigantic and presumably excruciatingly painful erections.
    ‘Well?’ The voice was as sharp as the eyes. ‘What do you think?’
    Part of a hand, she thought it might be a knuckle, followed the rounded contour of her bottom. Claudia swatted it away.
    ‘What I think,’ she said slowly, ‘is that Sullium frieze painters are braggarts and liars with a very inflated opinion of themselves.’
    The old man chuckled. ‘Every other woman who’s seen this room has been shocked into silence.’
    They were interrupted by the arrival of his thick-lipped secretary, Dexippus, with several letters under his arm, followed by Acte, carrying a steaming bowl of something which resembled cabbage water and smelled worse. Claudia quickly excused herself, but the ice had been broken and she felt an affinity with Eugenius which had not been possible with the rest of the bums and stiffs in his family.
    The sun had moved round, throwing the water trough into shade. As Claudia shook the folds in her tunic and adjusted her stola, her attention was caught by a young woman darting furtively along the colonnade across the street. Her hair was dark and wild, her cheeks flushed as she flitted from pillar to pillar in short rapid steps. One-two-three, stop. One-two-three, stop. Not surprising, Claudia thought. The family’s barking, why not the locals. And this was a local woman, you could tell by her costume, torn and disarrayed as it was. As Claudia headed back towards the mercer’s, the woman rushed over to her.
    ‘Have you got kids?’
    Claudia rolled her eyes to heaven and moved on, but the woman followed.
    ‘I’ve got to know!’
    Although her eyes were glistening feverishly, underneath there seemed a genuine concern, so much so that for a fleeting moment Claudia thought about mentioning her own fictional brood, invented to hook Gaius. But since they were also fictionally dead, there was no point.
    ‘No.’ She brushed the woman’s hand off her arm.
    The woman darted in front of her, blocking her way outside the harness maker’s, and one breast fell out of her torn tunic, staring at Claudia like a malevolent eye.
    ‘You’ve got to keep a close watch on ’em. My little girl was stole away, no kid’s safe.’
    Claudia felt a rush of sympathy for the pathetic creature, obviously mad with grief at the death of her child, and pressed two brass sesterces into her hand. To her amazement the woman, poor as she was, refused them.
    ‘You think she’s dead, don’t you, I can see it in yer eyes.’
    ‘Um—’
    ‘She’s not dead. Not my little Kyana. He stole