Etruscan Blood by AM Kirkby

  ***

  “This is dangerous,” Tanaquil said.

  “Of course it's dangerous. One of the men got killed.” He was pacing the length of the room. He looked across to her, sitting poised on her couch, still as a cat.

  “That's not what I meant.” She looked at him with that look she had, a mixture of impatience with his slowness and resignation. He felt like a child which had disappointed its teacher. “It isn't an accident, and it couldn't be an accident.”

  He looked down. “I know that.” He was losing his temper, and dug the nails of one hand into his palm to try to keep it under control. “Of course it's not an accident. The rope was cut. How could that be an accident?”

  “It's the fact that it couldn't be an accident that's important.”

  He turned back towards her. “What's that got to do with it?”

  “Everything before could have been an accident. Or might have been sabotage. But if it was sabotage, whoever was carrying it out was careful to leave the possibility of accident. Until now.”

  “So, this time he came out in the open.”

  “He doesn't care if you know.” She paused, nodded as if agreeing with herself, then went on. “Perhaps he even wants you to know.”

  Ah, he thought, that made sense.

  “He can't ruin what I've already built,” he said, holding the thought to him like a drowning man holding on to a piece of wood.

  “He doesn't need to.”

  She was right, damn her. Making him late would be enough. Whoever the saboteur was, he was clever. Not as clever as Tanaquil, not quite, but smarter than Lucius had been. And then he realised.

  “He wants the men to know, doesn't he? They've been as skittish as a bunch of rats for the last twelve days, and now they're frightened enough to walk off the job.”

  “No workers to finish the bridge.”

  “Given time, I could get more. But of course, time is what I haven't got.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “No?” Cool as she always was. He wished she would ever lose her control; even in bed, he felt, she kept some reserve, didn't show him her whole self.

  “I told Ancus Marcius it would be ready by the Kalends of next month.”

  Her face tensed, like a cat's when it sees prey. “You told Marcius. Who else?”

  “What's it matter?”

  “Who else? The men? The ox-teams?”

  “No. Only Marcius, and; who was with him?” He struggled to remember that day when they'd placed the first beams. “Manius. And Faustus.”

  She smiled. “Oh, so Faustus is involved. How interesting. So only those three men know that the bridge has to be finished by the Kalends.”

  “Well, the ox team could probably guess from the delivery schedule. And the men could work it out from the progress we're making. One span every two days. It's not beyond their intelligence.”

  “That's not the point.” She was abrupt this time; her patience is running out, he thought. Am I that stupid? Has the accident smashed my brains as effectively as it crushed that man's head? “They might be able to guess when it will be finished. But only those three men know that you've committed to it.”

  “Unless one of them has told anyone else.”

  Her face fell. For a moment he felt savagely satisfied; you didn't think of that, did you? Shame followed quickly. “Still, Faustus is a good bet. It's the kind of thing he would do.” It was the nearest he could come to a peace offering.

  “The violence?” she asked, “That's what makes you think it's him?”

  “Not so much the violence of this attempt. No, it's more the covert nature of the earlier attempts.”

  “If they were attempts at all, and not accidents.”

  “Indeed.”

  “It might be Ancus Marcius. But he has no reason to ruin you.”

  “Or it might be Manius. Damn, I don't want it to be Manius; I like him.”

  “But it could be.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he'd have a reason?”

  “Every reason. He's Marcius's lieutenant. If my star rises, his declines. He was there when Marcius offered me another job, on the saltworks.” Too late he realised he hadn't mentioned it to Tanaquil at the time. She was suspiciously quiet; but he was sure she would remember his lack of confidence in her.

  “So; either Manius or Faustus.”

  “One or the other. But they don't know one thing that I know.”

  She looked at him, her head slightly tilted to one side. She said nothing. He wondered sometimes why they played these games. Her silence said; I know the game you're playing, and I'm not playing it. He'd invited her to ask him the question, and now she refused to answer it. He'd have to answer it himself; and as he did so, he realised she'd been playing the game after all, and she'd won it.

  “I added two weeks to the time I needed.”

  She smiled then, not an I-know-something-you-don't smile, not the patronising smile he resented, but that almost childish, gentle turning up of her mouth that made him remember the girl she had been so recently; a smile that was for him and him only.