hide, when…’
Louisa: ‘What happened, Claudia?’
Claudia: ‘… a soldier grabbed me. I didn’t see him. He came up behind me and put his arm around my throat. I thought I was going to choke to death. I’m sure I would have if it hadn’t been for the other woman. She was very brave. Very quick.’
Louisa: ‘What did she do?’
Claudia: ‘She hit him. She had to. She hit him with a big stone. Hard. Hard on the back of his head. It made a sound like a dropped melon. She kept hitting him and he fell. Then… then she picked up his sword and plunged it into his stomach. It was horrible. His blood was everywhere. All over him – all over my face and my clothes. I was terrified.’
Louisa: ‘Are you all right?’
Claudia: ‘I can still see his eyes. Staring at us. She pulled out the sword and stabbed him again and again to make him be quiet.’
Louisa: ‘It’s okay. It’s all over. We don’t need to talk about this any more, Claudia.’
Claudia: ‘We hid his body. We hid it beneath a place where they launched boats to the island. Just piled boulders, wet with plants of the river, on top of his corpse and left him. The woman said she hoped that Mars, the soldier’s god, would forgive such an inglorious death.’
Louisa: ‘This other woman – what was her name?’
Verdetti stops the tape.
She looks towards Tom and Valentina. ‘She didn’t answer. I asked her several times but it just became incredibly distressing for her.’ She points to her desk. ‘She was so emotionally exhausted and so frightened she crawled right under my desk and fell asleep. I couldn’t move her. It was almost as if she was in a coma.’
Valentina wishes she had time to sympathise.
But knows she doesn’t.
She looks down at some notes she’s made and tries to ask her questions as gently as possible. ‘Louisa, I have to confess my ignorance. I’m not from Rome. Are there significant things in what she said? Things that have special Roman meanings.’
The doctor nods. ‘The place Claudia is describing – the spot where she said her friend killed the soldier is on the edge of Campus Martius, The Field of Mars. I know exactly the area that she’s describing. It’s the Ponte Fabricio, what I think is the oldest surviving bridge in Rome – maybe in the world – and a link to Tiber Island. She mentioned seeing Romans on the hillsides across the water – that would be right as well. I think she would be looking towards the Quirinal Hill.’
‘What’s that?’ asks Tom.
‘An area of Rome, like the Aventine, but originally it was essentially a shrine to Quirinus, the Sabines’ equivalent of Mars.’
Valentina takes a deep breath. She knows she shouldn’t ask what she’s about to, but she’s going to anyway. ‘Louisa, this may sound strange, but would you take us there?’
Verdetti frowns. ‘Now?’
‘I know,’ says Valentina, ‘It’s dark, cold and ridiculously late. But I’m running out of time. Will you? Please.’
36
Tom folds himself into the back of the Punto and they trundle towards the Field of Mars.
It’s a near-impossible fit.
Certainly a feat worthy of a Guinness World Record for the biggest ex-priest carried in the smallest ever space.
Tom remembers just a few days ago standing on top of the Eiffel Tower with his friend Jean-Paul, looking down at the Parisian park by the same name.
Coincidence?
He certainly hopes so.
There must be dozens of military parade grounds throughout the world dedicated to the god of war. The only nagging doubt is that while looking out across the great darkness, he felt the overwhelming conviction that he would not be returning to France. Since then, he has increasingly felt that Rome is where his own god wants him to be, the place where a very specific type of modern battle is about to be fought.
His type.
Louisa coaches Valentina on the route. ‘You’ll have to cross the river twice because of our stupid roads. Go west at the Popolo, south down the Lungotevere, all the way past the Ospedale Santo Spirito and keep on until I tell you.’
‘Frankly, I’m struggling with all this,’ says Valentina. ‘Not the roads, the case. I thought I was making sense of the Cassandra Complex, then phew, straight out of the blue, another alter breezes in and turns everything upside down.’
Louisa smiles. ‘I know. I find it difficult too. There is a pattern, though.’
‘There is?’
‘Our patient is fixating on special women and events. Cassandra is the name of a goddess.’
‘And Claudia?’
‘Almost as special. The Claudii were among the most powerful and respected clans of ancient times. Just as the Cassandra alter was caught up in the history of the Bocca della Verita, Claudia is caught up in the epic chapter depicting the Rape of the Sabines.’
‘Not rape as we generally refer to it,’ adds Tom from the back seat.
‘No, that’s right. It wasn’t enforced intercourse. Well, at least not initially. We’re way back in history, probably the days of Romulus, when Rome was mainly male and there was a shortage of wives. The incident she was living out was when Roman soldiers crossed into Sabine, the area we now call Lazio, Umbria and Abruzzo, and carried off the women. They brought them back to the Seven Hills to raise families.’
The thought makes Tom shudder. ‘Horrendous.’
‘Well, actually, after the kidnapping, the women were treated very well. Most became dutiful wives and mothers. They probably wouldn’t have returned even if they’d been able to.’
Valentina thinks she understands. ‘An early form of Stockholm Syndrome?’
‘Something like that.’ Louisa points through the wind-screen. ‘That’s Tiber Island, the Insula Inter-Duos- Pontes.’ She half turns to Tom. ‘It means the island between two bridges. We’re on the wrong side of it. Claudia would have been on the eastern side, so you need to take the road to your left.’
Valentina turns the wheel and takes them across the Ponte Garibaldi, a fast modern carriageway that speeds traffic both ways across the Tiber.
For the next half-hour or so they loop back and forth over this causeway and the Ponte Cestio, a bridge that runs to Tiber Island from the south side of the river, leading to the Ponte Fabricio, which in turn connects the island to the eastern bank. During the day it’s a walkway teeming with musicians, artists, hustlers and pickpockets.
Now it’s deserted.
They park up and walk back and forth along the bridge and both embankments.
Just after midnight, a cruel winter wind begins to swirl off the Tiber and hits their faces like a million skimmed stones.
Tom insists Valentina and Louisa go back to the Fiat to get warm while he does a final search on the walkways running north and south of the old bridge.
They don’t argue.
Tom isn’t exactly sure what he’s looking for.
A sign, he supposes.
Some strange clue, like the one he and Valentina found in the Sacro Cuore del Suffragio.
Anything that links the harsh, cold reality of this winter’s night to the ramblings of some mentally ill woman
