Free Virgin Territory by Marilyn Todd

sky. Her heart sank. When it came to party-poopers, this woman was in a league of her own.
    Diomedes checked his pace. He glanced at her, then began to run. Her heart firmly in her mouth, Claudia raced after him.
    Sabina was lying down all right, but she was neither daydreaming nor sunbathing. Her hands and arms anchored her tunic, which had been arranged neatly on top of her naked body. Her eyes stared skywards not in a dream-world, but in death. A pool of blood had seeped into the parched yellow grass, staining it scarlet, but when Diomedes turned the body over, it was clear Sabina Collatinus had not died from this wound.
    Sabina Collatinus had had her spinal cord severed at the base of the neck, which had caused paralysis and ultimately death from asphyxiation.
    Worse, from the dark bruises and wheals on her body and the stickiness on the inside of her thighs, it was evident the poor cow had been raped as she lay dying and helpless.
    Beside her, smashed into a dozen fragments, lay the tiny blue flagon which Sabina Collatinus believed had contained her soul.

VIII
    Damn, damn, and double damn. So much for keeping a low profile. Claudia reached for the jug of wine at her bedside. As breakfasts go, it wasn’t ideal, bread or pancakes would have been more sensible, but who on earth wants to be sensible?
    ‘Cypassis, is that you?’
    Good grief, where was she? Sleeping late, lazy hussy. Probably with some callow household slave. How that child has the energy is beyond me. Work her to the bone and she still finds time to seduce pimply youths. Claudia swallowed half a glass of wine in one gulp. Jealousy, my girl. Just because you can’t remember what an orgasm is, no need to deny Cypassis her own pleasures.
    Certainly anyone who’d noticed a muscular young Gaul slipping into Claudia’s room in the early hours would have jumped to the wrong conclusion. Since the bizarre manner of Sabina’s death was likely to generate gossip right across the island, the chances of the name Seferius not cropping up were parchment thin. So much for ‘early days’ and ‘no hurry’. Now she had to eliminate the threat and skedaddle. Fast.
    Not that she wasn’t shocked and sorry about Sabina, she was. Goddammit, she was. But from the moment she’d realized the woman was an imposter, Claudia had been expecting trouble. In fact, she had covered every contingency…bar one.
    Life was a bitch and, as irritating as she was, Sabina didn’t deserve this. Wherever she went, she had clutched that stupid, empty flagon, slept with it, even, reminding Claudia of a child with her favourite doll.
    Yesterday there had been a tang of salt and cypress in the air, pines and wild celery, that made you forget winter was sneaking up on the backroads. The blue of the sea spoke of summer picnics and sleeveless tunics, the suck of waves against sand whispered peace and tranquillity. Neither of them so much as hinted at bloodshed.
    Had it been a hot killing, like for instance gladiatorial combats which were bloody in the extreme, that would have put a different complexion on it. Or a crime of passion, where one man drives a knife into another in a fit of jealousy or revenge…
    And yet passion there was.
    Of a sort.
    Except the cold brutality of the act was chilling. As was the dangerous and calculating mind behind it.
    It was creepy, too, the reaction of the poor woman’s family, the callous manner they totally disregarded the violence of the crime yet threw themselves vigorously into the funeral arrangements. In a way it reinforced Claudia’s impression that they, too, had believed this strange, ethereal creature could not be one of them and had found a convenient way of covering it up. But why? Why not speak out? Were they all party to the conspiracy? Or was it just one of them, sowing seeds of doubt amongst the others? Questions, questions, questions. Claudia had barely slept for questions.
    A gentle scratching at the door received a peremptory ‘Come in,’