Widow's Pique

by Marilyn Todd

  'Don't you think you're imagining this, me darling?' Naim was saying.

  'No, I bloody don't,' she heard Tobias growl. 'That bitch is a spy.'

  Spy? Claudia stepped two paces back into the shadows. Bitch . . . ?

  'Surely she's far too high-status to be a spy?' Bonni countered.

  'And that's the beauty of it,' Tobias snapped. 'They think we couldn't possibly suspect the King's would-be bride.'

  'Like the Divine Julius's wife, she'd be above reproach, you mean?'

  'Exactly, Bonni.'

  'Sounds a bit far-fetched, lad.' Silas added his voice of reason to the argument. 'If they wanted to send a spy, they'd have put a girl in undercover.'

  'They've already tried that once, me lovely.' Naim rested a plump hand on the old man's arm and patted gently. 'Remember that little Cretan girl, the one with the squint?'

  Silas buried his head in his hands and groaned. 'We shouldn't have let our guard down there,' he said. 'We should have sent her back.'

  The hairs on Claudia's neck started to prickle. There was a cold chill down her spine.

  'Well, we didn't and that's one spy they won't be seeing again,' Tobias said with disturbing finality.

  'What is you suggesting for Claudia, Tobi?' The little laundress was close to tears.

  'What do you bloody think?' Lora snapped back. 'We keep on being nice to her, show her anything and everything the nosy bitch wants to see, and let the blushing bride think we're stupid. And then . . .'

  When she snapped her fingers, Claudia's knees turned to aspic. If only she'd had a phial of the sedative she'd slipped the little woodpecker the other night, she'd use it now to drug the guards and make good her escape. Her head began to pound. Croesus, why hadn't she done that in the first place? Why complicate the issue by playing bluff and doublebluff? But this was no time for recriminations. Right now she needed to—

  'My dear, I haven't thanked you for the good work you've done helping Broda to recover from the trauma of seeing Nosferatu.'

  How long had Salome been standing there, she wondered. And why hadn't she realized before that the Syrian girl was missing from the group around the table?

  'It's only jacks and hopscotch,' she said, delighted there was not a hint of quiver in her reply.

  'Yes, I know, but her mother tells me that Broda's so exhausted these days, she falls asleep almost at once.' Salome's

  smile was as ingenuous as they come. 'I can see I'll have to give up dispensing medicines and open a gymnasium instead.'

  'You'd still need your remedies,' Claudia retorted. 'Probably more so, after all those wrenched joints and torn muscles.'

  'Then we'll have to go into business together. You mix 'em, I'll fix 'em - great Marduk, what's that?'

  Her smile had frozen into a death rictus. Claudia followed her horrified gaze, just as screams filled the courtyard.

  'It's burning,' someone cried.

  'The whole farm's on fire!'

  'The bastards!' Salome hissed. 'The absolute bastards. This time they're out to destroy me!'

  But even as she spoke, she was racing off to organize chains of leather buckets to douse the flames, issuing orders for the release of the livestock from pens, telling her Amazons to forget the crops in the fields, look to drenching the hives, to protecting the grain store, to making sure they covered their hands to avoid burns, to putting damp cloths over their noses and mouths.

  Now was the time. While the Histrian chauvinists told Salome what they thought of her practices once and for all by destroying everything on the farm in one sweep, this was the time to sneak out.

  Claudia had already established her hideaway.

  The earliest inhabitants of the Histrian peninsula were hunter-gatherers, who'd braved the preponderance of bears, lynx and wolves to make their homes in the hundreds of caverns that pitted the richly forested limestone hills. These caves afforded more than adequate protection from predators and the elements, penetrating the rock by anything from a hundred feet to as much as a mile, where dripping stalactites made strange shapes and the cavernous halls still echoed with the moans of their ghosts.

  But as the hunter-gatherers became farmers, so the caves were abandoned as dwellings and used as animal pens or for storage. Over time, the magnificent paintings on the walls

  faded, pelts over the entrances shredded and fell, bones crumbled to dust, to be blown away on the wind.

  But the farmers did not entirely forsake the past. The new homes they built for themselves in the valleys retained many of the hallmarks of their previous existence. They still used stone to protect themselves from the weather and carnivorous marauders. Great flat slabs of stone, laid in small, defensive circles which gradually narrowed as the walls grew until they ended up with a sturdy grey cone with a hole in the roof to let the light in and to let out the smoke from their hearth.

  It was in one of these ancient, long-abandoned beehives that Claudia had desposited a basket of food, a couple of thick blankets and one very grumpy cat in a cage. This had necessitated a series of furtive manoeuvres because she'd needed to completely hoodwink her escort, but praise be to Juno, the fires wouldn't touch Drusilla out there.

  Amazonia was in chaos. The whole farm had turned into a choking mass of swirling smoke, the flames leaping and dancing in joyful abandon as they crackled and spat and hitchhiked on the breeze, spreading new fires to new fields, new incendiaries to new buildings. Screams rang into the night, but worse still were the laughter and taunts in the Histrian tongue. Dark figures flitted about with torches, setting fire to whatever they could - goose grass, fodder stores, farm implements. Everything burned.

  Amazonia has stirred up a lot of trouble round here, Mazares had said, the night he bumped into Salome. If she doesn't change her ways soon, something terrible is going to happen. I know it.

  Claudia remembered the anguish behind his velvety eyes, and knew that the anguish was genuine. Bile rose in her throat. Suspicious of Salome and her farm, someone (the King? Pavan?) had sent a young slave girl undercover to learn what went on here. That girl had never returned. The anguish in Mazares's eyes had been genuine, sure - but only for his fellow conspirators. Claudia felt nothing but contempt for them all. Long may Amazonia burn.

  She was halfway across the meadow when she noticed the pigsty. No longer fat, calm and contentedly pregnant, the spotted sow was squealing in terror as the thatch on her roof crackled and spat. The pig was new. The Amazons had dealt with situations like this before, although never on such a vicious and co-ordinated scale, and they were attacking the blazes the best that they could. But the pig was a recent arrival. No one, goddammit, had given a thought to the new sty . . . 'Shit!'

  Changing tack, Claudia raced across to the smouldering building, the screams of the trapped sow tearing talons into her heart. She could hear her crashing into the walls to escape flames that licked higher and higher, and knew that each collision meant a dead piglet. Terrified of not reaching her in time, Claudia's skin fused with the searing hot metal bolt that fastened the gate. She recoiled in pain and anger, and the pig charged past, shrieking in panic, her snout bloody and raw.

  'Ey!'

  From nowhere, a hand clamped round Claudia's waist. It smelled of cheap wine and stale sweat, tinged with arousal and smoke.

  'Ja bim mir un Amazoni!'

  'Get off me, you fat bastard!'

  Too late she remembered Mazares's other complaint. That they were sick of burning rapists round here . . .

  'Let go of me, you oaf!'

  She thought she could shake him off. She honestly thought that, between her slum heritage and her dancer's training, she could shake her attacker off. Maybe she could. But he was calling out in his thick, guttural tongue words that she remembered from the crew on the galley. Some were what one might call basic. Another was the crew's term for Drusilla. Vildkatz. Wildcat. A second figure emerged from the swirling smoke. His laughter was deep as his arms lashed around her, forcing her to her knees.
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  'Dal Dom het un vildkatz heer, alfid!'

  His erection pressed into her spine when the first monster

  ripped her tunic away with both hands. Squirming, kicking, writhing, twisting, the more Claudia struggled, the more the bulge on her spine jolted in arousal, but she was not giving up. They were not going to take her like this. Never!

  'Ayiee!'

  A head butt in the first monster's groin sent him retching on his knees into the ditch, but her spunk only fired the second man's hunger.

  'Dom vetta spiel, vildkatzi?'

  You want to play, little wildcat?

  Gripping her neck in his elbow, he squeezed.

  Hetta spiel!'

  Then let's play.

  He knew exactly how hard to press. Not hard enough that his victim passed out, there was no pleasure in that. He pressed on her windpipe with exactly the right amount of pressure, while he roared with laughter at her helpless flailing. Around her, screams and shouts filled the bitter night air, and the roof of the pigsty collapsed with a crash. With tears of frustration spurting down her cheeks, she felt him unbuckling his pantaloons. Gagged as his naked erection pressed against her. Smelled the stench of his sweat.

  'You'll pay for this, you bastard,' she gurgled.

  His reply was to hitch up her skirt.

  'I'll find you. I'll hunt you down if it's the last thing I do, and you'll die screaming for mercy.'

  'Da! Spiel, spiel, mir pritti vildkatz!'

  Mighty Mars, Sacker of Cities, hear me! Make him writhe in the Pit of Eternal Fire for this. Make sure he never sails to the Lands of the Blessed to walk with his ancestors in the Elysian Fields. Let the Waters of Forgetfulness never be his to drink.

  'Merr, merr, mir pritti vildkatz!'

  His breath was hot in her ear as his hand yanked at her loin-cloth. Then . . .

  'Dom vetta spiel, huh?'

  Deep and low, the question came through a mouth full of

  gravel, and suddenly sweat was overwhelmed by a strong smell of leather.

  'Dom vetta spiel, du bastardo?'

  With a crunch, the grip round her neck loosened as her assailant let out an unearthly yell. As he stumbled past her, she saw his arm hanging at an unnatural angle, with what looked like bone sticking out of his shirt.

  'Dom steel vetta spiel?'

  A punch thudded into his open jaw, spinning him sideways on to the ground, where he landed with a thud on his broken arm. A boot connected to his screaming ribs. The boot was the size of a tree trunk. An oak tree, to be precise.

  'I think we'd best get ye home, eh?' Pavan growled, throwing his shirt round Claudia's shoulders.

  The war knot had gone, the ponytail was back, and his grey eyes were unreadable as a huge thumb wiped the hair out of her eyes. But there was nothing he could do to stem the sudden flood of tears as he hefted her into his arms.

  'Wait,' she blubbed. 'Wait, we need to go into the hills first. I can't leave Drusilla up there alone.'

  'Hmm.' The rumble came from deep in the general's throat. 'Ye run round in work clothes, ye risk your life for a pig, ye damn near was raped and now ye want to go looking for cats.'

  He nodded thoughtfully as he tucked the shirt tight round her neck.

  'I'd say the man who marries ye is gonna have his work cut out, that's for sure.'

  Way down in the Ionian Sea, mighty Neptune struck his trident in the seabed and conjured up a tempest. The seas rose obediently, sending great waves to lash the cliffs of the Peloponnese and swamp the coasts as far north as the Gulf of Corinth, but Neptune's rage was short. Having rapped the knuckles of the Greeks for not making sufficient propitiation - who knows, perhaps the bull wasn't black enough? - he banished the winds back to their caves and gave orders for the heaving seas to subside.

  Typical of equinox storms, it was over in a matter of hours and could have been far worse. A preposterously clear, calm dawn revealed that only two ships had been dashed against the black rocks in the night, though both had foundered with the loss of all hands on board, and by the time Apollo's golden chariot had begun its slow climb above the horizon, his anger was already being appeased with prayers and offerings in the form of sacrifice, libations and garlands. The ethos of fear and revere was strong in Neptune's book.

  Such surges, though, always have repercussions. On the tiny island of Kithira, where Helen of Troy had consummated her adulterous relationship with Paris and sparked off the mother of all wars, a weak roof collapsed, killing the priest who sanctified oaths. Taken as a sign of Neptune's displeasure with a character which, although it appeared on the surface to be completely impeccable, was obviously far from the case. You can fool humanity, the islanders reasoned, but you can't fool the gods. Recent affidavits were instantly rendered null and void, and wailing women prayed for the dead man's wicked soul.

  Higher up the coast, another reputation was being tarnished by the storm. A blacksmith in his thirty-seventh year had collapsed from simple heart failure as he fought to batten down the shutters on his forge, but because he was young, strong and supremely fit, none of the villagers could accept death from natural causes. It was obvious to them that he'd been punished by the Furies, those frightful dog-headed creatures with hair like snakes and bat-like wings instead of arms, who hound the consciences of the guilty with relentless passion. His widow ought to count herself lucky she'd found out in time!

  The undercurrent left by Neptune's tantrum surged inexorably northwards. It travelled slowly, tempered by the various streams and currents that it met along the way, but it travelled onwards just the same. Eventually it would hit the little peninsula at the very top of the Adriatic, and only a handful of fishermen would grasp the significance of the exceptionally large catch they would be hauling in.

  Finally, the swell would impact on the narrow channel separating Rovin from the mainland. Distance, time and nature would have dissipated virtually every ounce of power, but the channel would act as a funnel to the dying surge, swirling up the eddies that comprised the dark and oily realm of the firebreathing monster, Vinja.

  Vinja didn't know it yet, but when that swell hit Rovin, he would be forced to give up several of his grisly secrets, and the corpses of a boat builder and a little priest would be among them.

  But, for now, the swell was still gurgling its leisurely way up the Dalmatian coast.

  Nosferatu wouldn't have to re-think any plans just yet.

  Eighteen

  After the exuberance of Zeltane, the mood on Rovin couldn't have been starker. Children still chanted their Latin alphabet under awnings stretched between the streets and parroted their counting, like children everywhere across the Roman Empire, but children are nothing if not little sponges. Rovin children had picked up on the depression that hung over the island, and their recitation was weak. Fishwives, usually so garrulous and bawdy, now filleted the catch in silence, and the expressions of the traders in the plaza where the Zeltane Fire had burned were grim. None of the islanders had been involved in last night's fracas, but they were Histri, and the perpetrators' shame hung around their necks like grinding stones.

  Caught off guard by the presence of soldiers at Salome's farm, the attackers had been quickly rounded up, a task made easier by the vigilance of a man with a swirling moustache and hair that fell to his shoulders in a manner reminiscent of Apollo, who'd noticed fires burning on the mainland and knew Salome well enough to realize that these weren't down to any May Day celebrations. It was also thanks to Mazares that much of her livestock, most of the buildings and quite a lot of the crops had been saved, while the prisoners had only their own bloodlust to blame for being caught. If they'd settled for torching the farm and then fleeing, they'd have probably got clean away. Instead, thirteen now awaited His Majesty's justice, five of whom faced execution for rape, including Claudia's attackers.

  Attempted rape normally carried the lesser penalty of scorching, whereby a cart was filled with willow sticks over which the gagged prisoner was bound, then th
e sticks set to smoulder as the oxen plodded slowly round the perpetrator's village, the prisoner's pain and humiliation plain for all to see. But one of Salome's little Amazons had met this pair before - only the Commander of the King's Bodyguard wasn't around to prevent her ordeal. The cart carrying this pair of charmers would be filled with sticks that burned properly, and the Amazon had permission to light the fire herself.

  'Ever since you arrived, I seem to greet you with the words "How are you feeling?"'

  Mazares's expression was grave. Exactly what you'd expect after another predator had tried to muscle in on his tethered goat.

  'But how are you feeling this morning?'

  He'd run her to ground on Rovin's pine-clad tip, where she was looking out across the blue lagoons to the surrounding archipelago, while a white-tailed sea eagle skimmed the water with its talons, eventually flapping off towards an islet, a silver fish writhing in its yellow claws.

  The bait shot Mazares her most radiant smile.

  'Didn't they warn you that I collect bruises like some men collect art and little boys collect caterpillars?' She didn't miss a beat as she added, 'Have you reconsidered your decision concerning my armed escort?'

  Last night, he'd been anxiety personified when Pavan carried her back. But it hadn't stopped him from punishing the escort for dereliction of duty.

  His gaze didn't waver. 'No.'

  'You don't feel that flogging's too harsh?'

  'No.'

  'Even though it wasn't their fault?'

  She'd tried telling him that it was she who'd insisted they remain at the gate, fearing they'd cast a shadow over Salome's feast. That the men weren't to know she'd fallen into a pigsty and changed her frock. That, when the trouble started, they

  couldn't possibly have predicted how she'd panic and head for the hills. But Mazares had folded his arms over his broad, stubborn chest, just like he was doing now.

  'Their job was to guard you, My Lady. They failed.'

  'Only on my instructions.'

  'They take their instructions from me.'