Widow's Pique

by Marilyn Todd

  He clicked his heels and the horse set off at a trot.

  'I just hope you choose the right road this time,' he called over his shoulder.

  She threw the buns. Naturally. But he'd timed it so he'd be out of range.

  Two

  As the last of the seabirds flapped lazily homeward and crickets rasped out their age-old song, Zorya, Goddess of the Night, cast her dark mantle over the Histrian landscape, calming the ocean and cooling the rocks as she tempered the brilliance of the fertile orange soil to terracotta. Bats took to silent wing, moths sipped nectar from the blooms of myrtle and, as Juraj the Moon God rose to meet his gentle lover, soft breezes carried the scent of pine and cypress across the waters from the islands.

  In the bowl beside the young girl's pillow, sleep stones wafted their lavender fragrance into the warm night air, and the sound of water lapping against the shore made for a peaceful lullaby. Occasionally, a breath of wind would ruffle the fringes of the tasselled counterpane or lift the edges of the ribbons that hung over the back of the wicker chair beneath the window, ribbons that would tie up her long, black hair in the morning, but for now flittered like pennants from a ship's mast.

  Broda didn't know what woke her. A creak, perhaps? The tread of unfamiliar feet? Small ears strained in the darkness for other foreign sounds, but nothing came, and she almost believed that she'd been woken by a dream when she heard the grating noise. As though a table or a stool had been pushed aside.

  Swinging her little chubby legs off the bed, she pushed her long, black hair behind her ears and tiptoed across the cool, tiled floor. Pushing aside the curtain that hung across the door, she heard whispering - but who was whispering at this

  time of night? And why? She oughtn't go any closer (how many times had she been told that eavesdroppers grow ears like asses if they're caught?), but she couldn't help herself. She thought she'd heard her father's name and she was curious. Three tiptoed steps. Four. Five. Then a soft scrape told her that the whisperers had gone outside, closing the house door quietly behind them as they left. Pattering back to her bedroom, Broda climbed up on the wicker chair and was mindful not to catch her nightshift on the windowsill as she wriggled through.

  Outside, Juraj had bathed the landscape in his moonlight glow, turning the sea to rolling molten silver and causing everything, from the ancient gnarled olive trees to the little fishing boats lined up along the beach, to cast huge, black pools of shadow across a town which dreamed in silence beneath a million twinkling stars. Keeping close to the stone wall of the house, the child could see the dark line of the deep but narrow channel that separated this hilly island from the mainland and, in the Moon God's clear blue light, the ropes that worked the ferry glistened white, like elephants' tusks.

  For a moment, the little girl was tempted to forget about the whisperers and explore Rovin's deserted streets instead. Racing up and down the white stone steps in a way that was never possible in daytime, or skipping down to the water's edge, hoping (who knows?) for a glimpse of those elusive night spirits known as wander-lights, or maybe just lying on the pebbles, staring up at the Milky Way and listening to the croak of the frogs! Then she remembered that she'd heard mention of her father's name. Bare feet padded determinedly on.

  The whisperers were in no hurry, but Broda faced some serious distractions. A shiny brass coin on the wayside, which she bit with her back teeth - yes, it was real. An octopus crawling over the pavement - she'd heard they could 'walk' but hadn't ever seen it. A cat rubbing up against her leg. Finally, Broda turned the corner and the coin fell from her hand.

  Nosferatu!

  She could see the demon's long shadow. Saw his great, bald, lolling head and giant hands that ended in long curved claws black as night against the white stone wall—

  'O, Svarog!' she gabbled. 'O, Sun God who sees everything, I'll never be naughty again, never ever, and I'll go to bed when I'm told and I'll stay there, I promise!'

  Until now, Nosferatu was just something grown-ups threatened you with. And if you were naughty and didn't obey, then you knew the Shuffling One would come and get you . . .

  But Nosferatu was real. All Broda wanted now was to run back to her lavender-scented room and pull the counterpane over her head. But her little legs wouldn't move. She wanted to scream for help. But her jaw was locked solid. Quivering with terror, the child had no choice as the scene unfolded before her.

  In stark silhouette, she watched conversation turning to anger . . . Nosferatu's hands lashing out . . . claws grasping his victim's neck.

  With eyes bulging in horror, she watched the terrible bobbing backwards-forwards-backwards-forwards of that grotesque oversized head . . . giant fingers squeezing and squeezing.

  Broda closed her eyes, but there was hissing. Grunting. Gurgling. She opened them again and saw shadow arms flailing.

  Feet kicking in a dance that never ended . . .

  But eventually, as the talons gripped tighter, the struggles grew feebler, until the shadow finally fell limp at the demon's feet. Even then, Nosferatu did not lessen his grip. He kept squeezing and squeezing, and it was only when he'd dragged his lifeless victim out of sight that the little girl's legs finally moved. They buckled beneath her as she fainted.

  Three

  Under a cloudless cobalt sky and in waters so clear you could almost reach down and stroke the wings of the rays gliding through the turquoise Adriatic, the little galley that had brought Claudia from Rome brailed her red and white striped canvas sails, shipped her polished steering oars and let the tug guide her through the maze of larger merchantmen and warships that were anchored in the bay.

  Such was the demand for trade in this new and bustling port of Pula that no sooner had the crew dropped the anchor stones than a swarm of scribes and accountants began positioning their tables and tally stones on the quayside down below, and the poor old gangplank had hardly hit the wharf before the first of the harbour clerks was scampering up, scrolls and ledgers stuffed every which way beneath his arm.

  'Ladies first, if you don't mind,' Claudia told him, sweeping down.

  Twelve days was quite enough. She had no intention of waiting another second before stretching her legs, and besides . . . That fanfare of trumpets accompanying the long line of rugs being laid across the wharf was obviously in aid of some foreign dignitary's arrival. If she didn't make a break for it now, she'd be stuck aboard this vile floating bucket for another three hours, and dammit, she had an appointment ashore.

  'I'll thank you not to use such language in my presence, either,' she added, as the clerk's backwards shuffle consigned two wax tablets and four scrolls to Neptune.

  'Wait!' he called after her, manfully juggling the remainder of his scrolls. 'No one's allowed to disembark without registering—'

  But the young woman with dark, tousled ringlets had already been swallowed up by the crowd. With a shrug, the clerk tossed his redundant register into the sea and decided he might as well be sacked for a sheep as a lamb.

  Dear Diana, did I say stretch my legs?

  Between dodging butcher's poles hung with carcases and chased by every mongrel in the neighbourhood and negotiating hawsers, chains and mooring rings while mules brayed and great yellow cheeses were wheeled across the cobbles, it was touch and go whether Claudia's nose had room to run, much less her legs. Crossing Pula's wharf was like taking part in some Persian fire dance, leaping this way to avoid amphorae of olive oil and wine that were being rumbled on and off the ships, sidestepping that way to evade the tanks of live fish that thrashed and splashed her dress, and goodness, if that wasn't enough, progress was now blocked by an oak tree in shirt and pantaloons. With his long hair tied back in a leather thong at the nape, he had the air of a man for whom the term wildlife preservation meant pickling badgers in brine.

  'Excuse me,' she said.

  But when she moved to her right, the human oak stepped to his left and she caught a whiff of strong, leathery scent.

  'Gruzi vol.'

/>   It didn't matter that he couldn't speak Latin or that she didn't understand a word of his guttural tongue. When she moved to her left, all he had to do was stay put. Instead, he moved to his right. Deliberately.

  'Gruzi vol,' he insisted, and suddenly daylight dawned.

  'Frankly, I'd rather mate with a three-headed gorilla,' she snapped.

  Because what kind of ignoramus can't differentiate between dockside scrubbers and women of quality? Only the best, no doubt, only the best, but dammit, the next clod who propositioned her would get a kick on the shins for his trouble.

  Skirting bales of cotton billowing over the quayside as merchants in bejewelled turbans and bows on their slippers seduced buyers with their rainbow wares, Claudia hoped to blazes that this trip was worth it. It was a long shot, of course, but gambling (as Anpu's bill testified) ran in her blood and in any case, when you're the only female wine merchant in Rome and the Guild is determined to put you out of business, risk-taking becomes daily routine. Ducking sacks of grain and sidestepping a drunken sailor sprawled out on the cobbles, Claudia knew that if she secured this contract to supply the King with her wine, it would put so many feathers in her cap that it'd look like she was wearing the whole damned ostrich. After which, the Guild were equally welcome to stick their heads in the sand. Or anywhere else the sun didn't shine, for that matter.

  Of course, there had to be a catch - there always was -and instead of ostrich feathers, there was the distinct possibility that she'd return home smelling more of wild goose. The catch lay in the last paragraph of the King's letter.

  . . . requests that the Lady honour him with a visit to his Kingdom, in order that a certain contract might be drawn up between His Royal Highness and Herself, binding their two parties in mutual agreement.

  Not the bit about the certain contract, but those two other words, 'mutual agreement'. They suggested that the only reason the King had approached her in the first place was because she was the only female wine merchant in Rome. He'd know how tough it would be, a lone woman swimming among sharks, and unless she missed her guess, here was another one, looking to pick up vintage reserve at tavern-quality prices, sending an assortment of gifts to soften her up. What the old duffer couldn't possibly know, of course, was that Claudia Seferius was fighting for survival, not just money. Dammit, the only woman in Rome who'd started out with nothing and still had most of it left!

  Decisions, decisions. Suppose she came away from this trip empty-handed, because the old miser was too stingy to stump

  up for quality wine? She'd be the laughing stock of the industry, her credibility shredded finer than bedstraw. On the other hand, just how low was she prepared to go to secure the King's custom?

  If she'd had the funds to commission an agent to negotiate on her behalf, the problem would be solved, but she hadn't dared liquidate His Majesty's gifts immediately or Rome's rumour mill would have gone into overdrive. Juggling creditors whilst maintaining an air of prosperity was crucial to her commercial survival. If so much as one whiff of financial insecurity leaked, she'd be dropped like a hot brick by her clients.

  As it happened, the decision had been taken for her.

  'There's a foreign gentleman at the front entrance, madam,' her steward announced, 'with two donkeys loaded with fine linens. He requests an audience with you, ma'am. Says it's a follow-up to an earlier communication.'

  Front entrance? Foreigner? Follow-up? Bugger. It was that damned Egyptian come for his money and making his demand as public as possible! She'd scrabbled for the note which had arrived the day before, the one threatening seventeen kinds of retribution if his bill didn't get settled—

  'Tell him I'm out. Tell him I'm away for the whole of the summer,' she hissed. 'Tell him I'm doing business with the King of the Histri and won't be back until - ooh, tell him October at the earliest, and then, for heaven's sake, man, book me on the first available passage to Pula.'

  Of all her outstanding accounts, the linen merchant's was the smallest and a mental picture flashed up of the rest of her creditors forming a leisurely queue back to the Forum. At which point, it didn't matter that Claudia couldn't place Histria on a map or that she risked returning home with egg on her face. Suddenly, hacking this deal seemed a very attractive proposition indeed - although you'd think the King's envoy would at least be on time for the bloody appointment.

  Her musings were interrupted by a hesitant tug at her sleeve. 'Mistress Seferius?' Although heavily accented, the voice was little more than a whisper.

  'Who wants to know?' She had visions of the harbour clerk exacting revenge through a lengthy process of bureaucracy.

  'My name is Raspor and I am - atchoo—!'

  'The King's envoy?'

  Short and chubby, he didn't look much like a regal representative. In fact, in his short, baggy tunic and the ring of dark curls circling his shiny pate like a halo, he looked more like an overgrown cherub. But cherubs don't frown, and their little dark eyes don't keep flashing round as though on the lookout for something.

  'No, no, I serve temple of the Thunder God,' he whispered, and as he leaned closer, she noticed a gold chain round his neck hung with flint arrowheads. The odd thing was that he wore it inside his tunic. 'It is imperative that I - atchoo! -speak with you.'

  'I hate to state the obvious, Raspor, but you already are speaking with me.'

  'No, no, must please be private. Is too dangerous here. If I am seen - atchoo! - atchoo—!'

  The snowstorms of dust that were being kicked up from the constant winching ashore of great blocks of limestone were tickling everyone's nostrils, but they seemed to affect Raspor worst of all.

  'Let me check that I've got this right.' (Priest indeed.) 'I'm supposed to follow you to some quiet shed round the back of the docks, where my jewels and my virtue will be perfectly safe, since you're really my protector, my life being in terrible danger and all that?'

  If he was aware of the sarcasm, he hid it well. 'Not you,' he snuffled, honking into a fine linen handkerchief. 'The King.'

  'Oh. The King.'

  Bless him, he didn't look like a lunatic. Though in fairness, she hadn't met too many from whom to draw a comparison.

  'I must speak out.'

  The little cherub began wringing his hands.

  'Too many, how you say - innocents? - have died, and the King, he is too trusting. He - atchoo! - thinks only good of

  people, but there are bad people around him. Very bad. You must tell him, Mistress Seferius. You must warn him. You are outsider, please. You are impartial. He will listen. He must.'

  Claudia dragged him out of the path of a great tusk of ivory and only narrowly avoided being trampled herself by a string of Spanish racehorses that were proving extremely frisky after their long voyage. In a week or two, the new season's trade would be scenting these docks with spices from India, Arabian incense, pitch from Corsica and Damascan plums, but right now the resinous scent of lumber from the interior predominated, oak, pine, cypress and fir, bound for the shipbuilding yards.

  'It's not that I don't believe you, Raspor.' (Ha!) 'But I'm really not the right person—'

  'Meet me,' he urged, frantically scanning the crowd. 'Just say you meet, yes? Then I give you names of people who was killed and dates when these accidents-that-were-not-accidents happen. But not here. Not now. Is too open, too dangerous. I am dead man, if I am seen talking to you.'

  He was genuinely frightened, she'd give him that. Those beads of sweat out on his forehead weren't from excess heat (April here was pleasant but it was no heatwave) and you can't fake cheeks drained of colour and trembling lips, or the rigidity that comes only from fear. For one ridiculous moment, it crossed her mind that the cherub was serious - that there was indeed substance in his wild allegations - before she realized it was a severe case of wishful thinking. Of wanting to trade deep, dark conspiracies with the Security Police in exchange for getting that human leech, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, off her back. Fat chance! The authorities would laug
h themselves into a collective hernia that Histria could be bubbling this close to treason without so much as a hint of it coming to their ever-vigilant ears!

  Besides. She looked down at the overgrown cherub, his little plump hands clutched to his breast, and knew that Greek physicians had a word for his condition. Paranoia, they called it. Insanity characterized by feelings of acute persecution.

  'Please, you have King's ear, he will listen. When you give him details of murders, he have no choice but to listen, because Mazares, he will stop at nothing to - atchooooo—!'

  Recoiling from the mammoth sneeze, Claudia's knees connected with a crate full of peacocks, tipping her backwards. By the time she'd finished giving the delivery man a frank opinion of his navigational skills (a view, incidentally, shared by the peacocks), Raspor's little bald pate was bobbing deep into the crowd.

  'Hey!' she called after him. 'Who the hell's this Mazares?'

  'I am,' a deep velvety voice drawled in her ear. 'I the hell am this Mazares.'

  'Well, about bloody time,' she said, taking in the King's envoy's swirling moustache, the goatee beard that, rather irritatingly, only served to emphasize his strong jaw as his firm grip helped her up. 'I've been hanging around this dock for hours.'

  'At least you managed to take the weight off your feet while you were waiting.'

  A torque of solid gold hung round his neck, engraved with creatures she didn't recognize. In the Histrian sunshine, it glinted almost as much as the amusement in his lazy, catkin-green eyes.

  'However, I am here now, My Lady, at your service.'

  The glossy curls dipped in greeting.

  'May Rome and Histria find unity in your visit, and may peace and harmony be our guide. This way, please.'

  Every inch as tall as the ponytailed oaf who'd propositioned her earlier, Mazares was lean where the oak tree was broad, and his long, dark curls fell to his shoulders in a manner reminiscent of Apollo. On the wrong side of forty, only a smattering of grey at the temples and a deeper-than-usual imprint of crow's feet round his eyes betrayed his age, and his trousers were the tightest she'd ever seen. One careless stoop and he'd be showing more than just his solidarity, she decided.