Dark Horse

by Marilyn Todd

  'Here's what I want you to do,' she told Junius. 'I want you to go and pick a fight with Leo.'

  'You . . . you aren't serious, madam?'

  'Any pretext you can think of. Only make sure you knock him out cold, there's a good boy.'

  'You're asking me, a slave, to knock out a patrician?' The young Gaul had received many outrageous instructions since being promoted to the head of Claudia's bodyguard, but this, surely, took the honey cake. 'Madam, with respect, he'll have me fed to the lions a limb at a time.'

  'Junius, you were asked to pick a fight with Leo, not with me. Now I don't wish to remind you that I could have been chargrilled in my bed last night because you were negligent in your duties—'

  'Negligent? But it was you who insisted I spend the night in town to find out what I could about—'

  'Spare me the grovelling apologies, Junius. The Medea sails in less than five minutes.'

  'And I'm supposed to stop him?' The young Gaul's Adam's apple was working overtime. 'Would you mind telling me how exactly?'

  'With a strong right hook, you dumb ox. '

  Funny chap, that Gaul. Tall, tanned and muscular, his most attractive trait as far as Claudia was concerned was his ability to keep his eyes wide open and his lips tight

  shut. Oh, yes, and the fact that he always did what he was told. Eventually.

  Claudia moved across to the steep-sided rock face to see how her bodyguard would handle this particular task. Although she had no idea what was going on concerning those messages impaled on the spears, she had a strong gut feeling about Jason. Like a cat, he enjoyed taunting his prey. Had he wanted to kill Leo outright, wouldn't he have set fire to the house? Done his dirty deeds at night and by stealth, the same way he'd delivered his notes? No, no. That slow bow said it all. The sick bastard was milking the situation for all it was worth, inciting Leo to give chase by taunting him with a warship that wasn't even primed to take flight. Leo has something Jason wants and so, in another turn of the psychological screw, Jason intends to humiliate him in the most public way possible.

  Now, if Claudia could see this as plain as the nose on her face, then surely so could a highly educated scion of society like Leo. Yet he was walking straight into the trap, and why? Because Leo, the arrogant sonofabitch, thought he could win.

  The scrubland on the cliff where she was standing had been laid to flagstones, affording a perfect view. Down on the jetty, a preposterously small and ill-armed boat was being made ready for sail. Leo, who had changed out of his patrician robes into serviceable boots and a short green working tunic, was galvanizing the Medea's crew into action. Further out, on the warship whose oars still remained firmly shipped, Jason mimed a slow sarcastic handclap.

  Since taking over the Imperial reins, Augustus had waged war on every bandit, footpad, robber and pirate in the Empire. It was his belief that, day or night, winter or summer, every traveller on any main road or shipping highway had the right to make his journey in safety. Note the key words there. Main road. Shipping highway. With the best will in the world, no army could patrol every square mile of an Empire which stretched from Iberia in the west to Syria in the east, and from Egypt to the North Sea. What hope a stretch of coastland so indented, so wooded, there were hidey-holes everywhere and islands too numerous to count? None! The only hope of

  making these waters safe was to set a trap and bait it, and then for someone to inform Rome of the situation in order for reinforcements to be sent. A policy Leo was staunchly set against, suggesting only one explanation: Leo wanted the glory! Why else would he keep quiet about Jason's speared messages? If word spread that Jason wasn't half the threat he appeared to be, then his heroics would be seriously diluted, his authority undermined. Can't have that. In any case, he probably saw this as the perfect solution. Eliminate Jason, eliminate problem. Talk about tunnel vision!

  Ah! There, at last, was Junius, trotting along the jetty. Claudia couldn't hear the actual exchanges from the clifftop, but judging by the hopping up and down and flailing arms and wild gesticulations down below, that was some row he had instigated. Leo might well be older than his cousin by a decade. But you wouldn't know it from the acrobatics.

  Concerned that his verbal assault wasn't having the desired effect, Junius raised the stakes by jabbing Leo firmly in the chest with his index finger. In response, Leo leaned forward and snarled something nasty back. Junius bunched his fists. Terrific. Claudia clapped her hands in relief. I knew I could rely on that boy! All we need now is one good punch to lay him out - and that's precisely what happened.

  Right on cue.

  Wallop.

  Unfortunately, it was Leo who swung it.

  Fourteen

  Violet-blue coral glimmered in the crystal-clear sea a hundred feet below and, when the sun caught a wave, its crest reflected the light like a mirror. Sea ravens croaked from precarious clifftop perches and, to the north, white-headed griffon vultures with wingspans greater than the height of a man soared over Cressia's peaks. The mid-morning heat turned the gravelly paths into a shimmering haze. Claudia had decided to take this walk on the basis that if at first you don't succeed, quit worrying. She'd done her damnedest to stop Leo setting off after a warship in a wooden hip bath. All she could do now was chew her nails and hope to glory that Jason's humiliating dance would lead the Medea away from the rocks and into open water where even Leo wouldn't be able to sink himself!

  Strolling beneath the dappled grey canopy of the olive groves, her skirts released waves of fragrant pinewood scent as they brushed the yellow blooms of the pine-ajuga. Animal bells played a soft and melancholy tune as black-faced sheep and horned goats chomped noisily on the sparse clover patches. Bees droned round the tall spikes of the poisonous sea squills and explored the delphiniums, while crickets rasped in the coarse, dry grass.

  Nowhere on the island had Claudia felt more isolated. More disconnected from civilization.

  Settling down with her back against a gnarled trunk, she drew her knees up to her chest and stared across the sparkling Gulf, where the densely wooded slopes of the mainland slid like a wanton woman into the warm cobalt waters. Fishing boats like ink spots spattered the ocean, hauling home baskets teeming with lobster, crayfish and crab. How easy to picture the Argo out there . . .

  Fifty oars. A hundred oarsmen. Rich men's sons for the most part. There were famous boxers, wrestlers, swimmers on the expedition, though a few brought rather less obvious skills. The bee-master, for instance. What use had he been? Never mind. Luckily for the crew, the ship carried a shape-shifter on board, two winged men (obviously), a seer and a poet (naturally), one virgin huntress (who wouldn't?) and, of course, for those little everyday emergencies, a transvestite.

  Gazing up at the heavy clusters of green olives swelling beneath their leathery, silver-grey leaves, the past and the present fused.

  Jason and the Argonauts.

  Jason and the brigands.

  It could, of course, be coincidence that Leo's ship was called the Medea, but coincidences were stacking up fast. First we have a pirate called Jason, then we have the Medea, and let's not forget Colchis is a Scythian trading post on the Black Sea. The past and the present. Coiling together like snakes.

  But one thing at a time.

  'Here's the deal,' Claudia told Neptune. Sure he had an enormous territory to patrol and couldn't hope to be everywhere at once, but it was high time he swept the cobwebs out of this particular corner of his watery domain. 'You sink that galley flying the red flag of your brother' - Mars wouldn't miss one skitchy little trouble-maker, would he? - 'plus you dispose of any ships bringing tall, dark, aristocratic members of the Security Police to these parts, and in return I'll give you a beautiful white bull as a sacrifice. Not a black hair on its body, I promise.'

  'Who are you talking to?'

  Claudia had heard of woodland nymphs, dryads they were called, and nut-nymphs, caryatids. But she'd never actually believed in them. Much less olive-grove nymphs!

 
; 'Neptune,' she said, leaning her palms on the thick drystone wall where, on the other side, a pair of eyes as big and as bright as a rabbit's peered out of a filthy little wedge-shaped face. 'I was asking him to protect Leo and the Medea.'

  'Can Neptune hear you?' Somewhere beneath all those ingrained layers of grime was a girl of nine, maybe ten, on her scrawny knees pulling up roots.

  'Why shouldn't he? You did.'

  'Personally, I don't bother with that praying lark,' the girl said, with a sad shake of her matted curls. 'What's the point? The gods only answer the prayers of the grown-ups.'

  Claudia was not about to disillusion her by disclosing that the gods don't always bother with that. 'Should you be out on your own?'

  'I much prefer my own company,' the child said. 'It's so noisy at home.' She pulled up another plant and shook the soil off its roots. 'Kids,' she muttered. 'Who'd have 'em?'

  Claudia blinked.

  'If they're not squabbling, they're bossing each other around.' The girl clucked. 'Sometimes I don't know how I manage to cope.'

  'Lots of you, are there?' Claudia sucked her cheeks in hard.

  'Thirteen or fourteen, I suppose.' The girl shrugged. 'You lose count after a while.'

  Maybe that explains the rabbit eyes, Claudia thought, debating whether perhaps the child was also concealing a powder-puff tail underneath her cheap cotton shift. 'What are you picking?' she asked. The stonework was searingly hot through her skin, and a green lizard darted into a gap in the wall near her foot.

  'Alkanet.' Little hands tugged up another root and examined it carefully. 'Nanai’ wants to dye blankets for winter, only she won't let us pick them while they're in flower, she says it's a waste of a pretty blue life.' Her small dusty faced tipped to one side. 'We'll still be here, you know. In the winter.'

  'Yes. I'm sure you will be.' And now it was becoming impossible for Claudia to stifle her laugh.

  'No, I mean it. I heard Nanai tell Lydia. "He can't throw us to the wolves," she said. "It's not fair, turfing us off like we were ticks on a sheep", but Lydia said there was no contract, nothing in law, and Nanai said, "That doesn't matter because Leo swore on his oath".'

  Ah, so that was it. The poor child's absurdly large family was a pawn in some tradesman's dispute. Connected no doubt to Leo's massive renovation programme, for reasons unknown (bad workmanship probably) Leo had served the family notice to quit. At her feet, the girl was still chirruping on in her

  world-weary voice as she stuffed more alkanet roots into her tightly clenched fist.

  'Lydia told Nanai’ to be careful. Leo's word couldn't be trusted, she said, he was a bastard down to his core. But Nanai laughed, and said she was used to handling bastards.'

  Claudia wondered what the odds were that other people had conversations with ten-year-old minnows who gossiped like fishwives? But then, moving house would be a subject very dear to little hearts. Stability is everything to children and by relating the conversation between Nanai and Lydia, this dusty bag of bones could convince herself that nothing was going to change in her tiny world. That they would all still be here, come the winter.

  'Do you know what "having no leverage" means?' she asked Claudia, screwing her grubby face into a frown.

  'You lose your bargaining power.'

  The little face relaxed. 'Ah, so that's what Lydia meant when she told Nanai that if Leo tossed us out, she wouldn't have any leverage. Not that Nanai was worried. She told Lydia she had no intention of waiting until we got thrown out. In a few days, she said, there wouldn't be a problem, we'd be safe.'

  Claudia felt a chill of alarm prickle her skin. Was that a threat she'd just heard repeated from those tiny lips? And if so, just how substantive was Nanai's warning? Then she looked at the bony-kneed scrap, burrowing around the dusty stone wall, and decided this was getting too fanciful. Her nerves were upside-down-inside-out thanks to the fire, the charred body, the scalp-mongering pirate - and (admit it) because she was scared stiff Leo would not come home. Rattled nerves do not make for rational thought!

  'Does Lydia often visit your mother?' she asked, changing the subject.

  'They've been friends for ever,' the little girl said. 'Only now Lydia comes more often because she hates that little white house Leo built for her on the point and she hates Leo and she hates having no money and hardly any servants, but I don't see what all the fuss is about. If Leo wants a baby so badly, he can have one of ours, we've got loads and Nanai won't miss one, I'm sure. Oh, and you've got it back to front about Nanai, but if you want to know more, I'm afraid you'll have to come home with me. You see, I haven't got time to hang about nattering. My bread's ready to come out of the oven.'

  Fifteen

  The tavern was a typical harbourside tavern, filled with fishermen, BO, tall stories and splinters. Orbilio, in a knee-length linen tunic tied with a woollen belt, had to raise his voice for his call for a second jug of wine to be heard. The wine was coarse, like the people who drank it, but at least in these rough drinking dens where he searched out information, the darkly lit bearpits, the rowdy bordellos, people were honest about who and what they were. He spiked his hands through his fringe. It was more than he could say for himself.

  Croesus, what made him take Margarita like that? A pain shot through his body, violent and searing. The cheap truth of it was, he had made love to her (if that was the term) because the woman he wanted was out of his reach and, in one rash moment, he had consumed his yearnings in animal lust. He shuddered with the shame of the memory. Mother of Tarquin, what devils had possessed him to take a woman who was shallow, uncaring and whose looks had all but faded simply to assuage a different hunger?

  'Ooh, darling,' Margarita had purred afterwards. 'I shall settle for nothing less than sex spelled with four Fs from now on. Frequent, fast, frivolous and frenetic! You tiger, you!'

  What terrible depths had he sunk to?

  Around him, men talking in the local cadence laughed, threw darts or moved bone counters over an oakwood table marked into squares. Heavy-set wenches swapped badinage and gossip while they served food on square wooden trenchers and the landlord, the florid-faced husband of a small, prune-faced shrew, turned a blind eye to a flea-bitten tomcat stealing a pilchard. Through the doorway, Orbilio watched a weary black

  donkey grinding wheat on a treadmill as fishermen stropped the points of their harpoons.

  Margarita had seen nothing sordid in that bleak exchange of body fluids. What had once been a succession of dazzling affairs for her had congealed into casual sex as a substitute for affection, and as much as he would like to attribute her depressing transformation to remarriage to the Senator, that was wishful thinking. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio had been as instrumental in her downward slide as Margarita had been herself. As a wife and mother, she'd represented fun without judgement, sex without commitment when he'd been at a low ebb. He'd simply accepted the affair as it came, on a plate, without considering how it might affect Margarita, being loved then discarded as a matter of course. Today, she was one step short of becoming an old bag. An old bag whom he'd laid in a rabid desire for somebody else!

  Still. He drowned another goblet of wine. The school of hard knocks had taught him yet one more bitter lesson in this sorry episode. At least he knew this craving he had for Claudia Seferius wasn't love. If nothing else, yesterday's sordid session had shown him how to recognize lust when he saw it. That pain, that tearing passion, that burning need for fulfilment which ripped him apart might have many names, he reflected bitterly. But love wasn't one of them.

  Croesus almighty, though. Doping thoroughbred racehorses! He knew why she was doing it. She'd climbed out of the gutter, inveigled herself into marriage with a rich wine merchant who'd then died and left the young widow the lot. Clearly, if a girl was to continue living in the manner to which she's grown accustomed, then adjustments had to be made - and since she wasn't able to offload the business assets, it stood to reason that, with Claudia, not all of those adjustments would be leg
al. Typical of the woman to mix business with pleasure. She never could resist a gamble! Even though betting was against the law. At least in theory.

  Augustus was a wise old owl when it came to his people. Although most of Rome's wealthier citizens had absconded to the hills or (like the Senator and Margarita) to their seaside villas to escape the torrid summer, nearly a million souls had

  not. Worse, while they were effectively incarcerated in the city, irritable from the heat and bored to the nines, their incomes had plummeted from loss of trade.

  'A people that yawns is ripe for revolt,' the Emperor had been heard to murmur on more than one occasion.

  He had decreed that it might not hurt if the controls on gambling were eased during the hot summer months. Augustus, bless his campaign boots, understood that the poorer the individual, the more money they bet, simply because they had the most to gain. So he introduced the idea of bronze raffle tickets with food prizes for the winners. What pittance they earned might disappear on liquid pleasures or a horse's hoof, but a shoulder of mutton and a brace of hare stops them from crossing the line into stealing.

  Orbilio tuned in to the local chatter in the tavern. Already he had picked up a good deal, either from conversation or from eavesdropping, information he would never have acquired in patrician garb. Across the room, he nodded acknowledgement to a man in his mid to late forties, greying at the temples, a fish out of water if ever there was one in this flyblown harbourside dive. Fish out of water always made his instincts twitch. The fellow wasn't high born, but he wasn't poor, either, and one of the first things Orbilio had noticed were the long, spatulate fingers. The type of fingers which could tell gold from gold plating and recognize fine works of art in rich men's houses when they felt them.

  The man smiled, a warm and uncomplicated smile, his eyes meeting Orbilio's full on before he turned into the town square where children sang and played hopscotch and dogs dozed in the shade. Hmm. The stolen items had been carefully targeted. Jewellery, silverware, carved ivory statuettes. And with none of the fences buckling under the strain of a sudden influx of precious goods, Marcus had a suspicion that, instead of being sold, the ivory was sent for recarving, the metals melted down for recasting, the gems prised out of their settings and recut. This wasn't a simple case of smash and grab and pocket the loot. A lot of money would be changing hands in a sophisticated organization planned like a military campaign