Irritable drivers untied themselves from their chariots, the man from the Blue faction shoving the man from the Red in the back. He retaliated with a high-flying kick, and when the man from the White faction moved in to break up the fight, blood spurted from his nose at Blue’s wild punch and he in turn laid into the man from the Green, who had merely been patting his stallion. The crowd loved it, cheering, whooping, baying, booing, because if the priests intended to spend the next half hour playing with their silver censers and pouring new libations to the gods, they needed some form of entertainment. Bookmakers started taking bets on the charioteers instead of the chariots.
Claudia couldn’t concentrate on the fisticuffs. How could she? She crossed, then uncrossed, then re-crossed her legs. How could anyone concentrate, knowing a crazed killer might call at their house any day?
Down on the racetrack, the priests had finished wafting incense and chanting entreaties to the gods in order to make the omens for the first race favourable. The bookmakers stiffened. The crowd craned forward. The race marshals shuffled. In the ensuing silence, the augur stepped forward, his head covered, and held wide his arms. For three minutes he spoke on the pattern of cloud cover, the shadows cast on the great obelisk of Rameses which sat on the central spine of the Circus. Yes, yes, but is the race on? Then he turned to face West and solemnly intoned the significance of each of the twelve starting gates representing a sign of the zodiac. We know that already. Will the race go ahead? In his opinion, the augur droned, the Circus Maximus is representative of the entire universe, being symbolic of ‘Boooo!’
His words were drowned by the crowd, who wanted an answer. Were they wasting their time here or not?
‘Leonides said I’d find you beside the statue of Victory.’ A young patrician plumped down on the seat next to Claudia, even though it was taken. The affronted occupant moved huffily up. ‘Who’s your money on for the first race?’
‘The augur,’ Claudia replied. ‘If he hangs in there long enough, there won’t be time for one horse race, let alone twelve and he seems very taken with that number, does our augur.’
‘Lip-reading,’ Orbilio said, squinting, ‘he appears to be down to the number seven and its connection between the drivers’ seven laps of the circuit, the seven planets and the seven days of the week. How’s Jovi?’
‘Confused. In his mind, his mother doesn’t love him, whereas complete strangers do.’
‘And the monkey?’
‘Boooooo!’
‘Still decimating my house.’
‘Actually, I was referring to Porsenna.’
Claudia turned so fast in her seat, her cushion spun off. ‘Porsenna makes an excellent companion,’ she said stiffly. ‘Attentive. Generous. Informed.’ You won’t believe what I’ve learned about dormice this week. ‘What can you possibly hold against him?’
‘Other than the fact he’s a complete and utter jerk?’
A hush settled over the Circus. Apparently the race could go ahead, providing the chariots moved to different stalls, the augur said. The crowd harrumphed, and supposed that would do.
Claudia picked up her cushion and punched it back into shape. ‘Porsenna’s a damn sight more fun than that horse-faced trollop you unwrapped from the tomb to take to the Bull Dance. Down the baths they call her the Hostess-With-The-Mostest-And-Most-Of-It-Contagious.’
‘Camilla?’
‘That’s her. Camilla the Bedfiller, that’s how she’s known in the Forum. Knows every stuccoed ceiling in the city.’
His eyebrows quivered a bit, but they never actually lifted off their launchpads. ‘You must be confusing my sister with somebody else.’
Did he say sis- His sister? Why is it, that at the time you most need a change of subject matter, not a word can squeeze past your tonsils? The awkwardness hangs there, like a badly roped suspension bridge, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it, because your brain’s been turned into frogspawn. Claudia bit deep into her bottom lip, and failed to observe the back of Orbilio’s hand covering his mouth or that his shoulders appeared to be shaking.
Down in the sand, four bruised and battered charioteers piloted their horses into their newly allotted stalls. The inside mares on Red’s chariot snorted and tossed their heads impatiently, and one of Green’s stallions started to kick. The dust made the race marshals cough. A rope was stretched across the front of the starting boxes and the trumpeter lifted his instrument in readiness.
‘Since we seem to keep missing each other,’ Orbilio said, as the magistrate dropped his handkerchief to signal the start of the race, ‘after my dashing off to examine Zygia’s body, I thought I’d treat you to an update.’
The horses burst free of their boxes. The Red faction, out of the Capricorn stall, lost his advantage in the confusion caused by the trumpeter’s delay. And Claudia’s feather fan seemed hopelessly inefficient.
