Sour Grapes

by Marilyn Todd

  *

  One floor below, Rex patted the concubine on her bare rump and tipped her an extra sesterce. Always felt better when he came to this spa place. Must be the air or something, but he never felt liverish here, and he was glad now he’d brought his son along. Do him good to get out and about. Bloody shock to see Marcus when they drove in, mind, but that was his own bloody fault. Shouldn’t have told Eunice he was bringing the boy. Woman never keeps a damn thing to herself. Can’t blame her, of course. Have to feel sorry for a respectable widow being taken advantage of by a lounge lizard like Lars. Scandalous. Absolute bloody disgrace. Rogue’s only after her money, any fool can see that, though as it turned out, there was no harm done by her blabbing. Hadrian didn’t tell Marcus anything he hadn’t told him before, though god knows what the lad’s father would say, may he rest in peace, having his son poking his nose in business he’s no right to be poking in. Hardly a chip off the old block, young Marcus. Still. That’s a millstone we all have to bear, what. Rex snapped his fingers and called the whore back. Perhaps she could do that last thing again? Pretty sure he was up to it this time.

  *

  Across the hallway, Hadrian sobbed into his pillow and the same word echoed round in his head. No, no, no, no. If only he could undo the things he had done. Unsay the things he had said. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t, and because of him Lichas was dead, and there was nothing he could do to bring him back. Not one bloody, damn thing. Hadrian turned his pillow over and proceeded to flood the underside.

  *

  Down in the cramped cubby-holes that passed for the slave quarters, a girl with dark olive skin and a nose like a hawk’s, and a man with the same olive skin and the same sharp nose, went through their paces in silence. Their stretches were graceful, feline, lithe and athletic, Judith’s movements in perfect harmony with Ezekiel’s. The only odd thing about it was that the couple were two floors apart.

  *

  In her small stone hut in a grove of sweet chestnuts, old Etha stared at the bowl of soup on the table. She had to eat. Aye, she must keep her strength up, for already Deathmist hovered outside the door, waiting for her to bid him enter. She would not. So long as hope for Tages burned in her breast, Etha would not let him in. A spoonful at a time she sipped the broth. He was a smart boy, her Tages. Too smart to have got himself killed, and if he’d slipped in the storm they’d have found his body. Aye. They’d have found his body by now. Wouldn’t they? In the pen, his sheep bleated pitifully. She’d milked those ewes that didn’t have lambs the best she could, but her joints were stiff and her heart was aching, and one of them needed a thorn pulling out and two of the lambs had ticks. Etha was waiting for Tages to come home and fix that. It needed nimbler fingers than hers, and he’d come home. Sure he’d come home. He was a good boy. A smart boy… Old Etha pushed the bowl away, laid down the spoon and rocked herself in the chair. Outside the door, Deathmist inched a little bit closer.

  *

  Alone in the workshop where her brother carved toys, Rosenna sharpened a small stabbing dagger. She had no qualms. She’d played it through many times in her mind, and besides, the omens were good. Blood was red. Her hair was red. She would strike on the night of the red-headed moon. Three reds, for three was an auspicious number. It was the number of gods in the triumvirate: Uni, Tins and Menvra. It was the number of favourable auguries in the sky: north, south and east. And, when the Brides of Fufluns danced in the firelight and all eyes were upon them, three was the number of lives Rosenna would take in retribution: Hadrian, Rex and the patrician. With deadpan indifference, she kept the edge to the grindstone.

  *

  ‘Mrrrow?’

  Drusilla wove herself in a figure of eight between Claudia’s ankles, but for once no stroke was forthcoming. In one liquid leap, she was up on the table, head butting her mistress’s chin.

  ‘Mrrrrrow!’

  ‘Damn right, poppet.’ Claudia ruffled the cat’s ears with her free hand as she traced Tarchis’ gridlines with her finger. ‘It’s extremely irritating, but no, I haven’t found the connection between Lichas and the six witnesses at Felix’s trial.’

  Nor, for that matter, any connection to Tages and Vorda.

  ‘But I will.’

  Just give me time, and I’ll have Felix connected to them so tight he won’t be able to move, but in the meantime let’s consolidate what we already have. Five decent, honest, hardworking freemen, who were ridiculously easy prey in this superstitious religious climate.

  ‘Whereas Gaius was the odd one out.’

  As a producer and merchant of fine wines, not to mention a pragmatic Roman of equestrian status, Gaius Seferius was no soft target for Felix’s revenge. You couldn’t ruin his livelihood by simply poisoning a well! On an estate of this magnitude and with this number of slaves, you couldn’t set fire to his vineyards or sabotage his vintage and hope to get away with it, either.

  ‘And friend Felix certainly intends to get away with it.’

  If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be so subtle. Revenge would be reward in itself and he wouldn’t give a toss what happened to him.

  ‘Prrrrrr.’ Drusilla clambered up on to Claudia’s shoulders and wrapped herself round like a fur collar.

  ‘Yes, poppet, I do realize that nothing horrible has actually befallen Gaius’s nearest and dearest. Yet,’ she added softly.

  Because it was highly unlikely that, simply because Gaius was dead, Felix had decided to abandon his campaign against the sixth witness. Not when Candace turned up out of the blue, casting spells to avert an epidemic of bad luck. Not when Darius appeared on the scene, wanting to marry a woman old enough to be his mother.

  ‘There’s only one conclusion, I’m afraid.’ Claudia stared into Drusilla’s crossed blue eyes. ‘Felix and Darius are one and the same.’

  In assuming the identity of a bona fide horse-breeder (and had anyone actually checked on the real Darius’s whereabouts?), Felix installed Candace to frighten Larentia and make the poor old trout dependent on him.

  ‘Brrrp?’

  ‘You mean those remarks of his at the market?’

  ‘Candace is the main reason I’m pushing Ren to fix a date for the wedding. More and more, your mother-in-law is becoming dependent on that woman’s visions and spells, and I’m not convinced that’s a healthy development.’

  ‘Weasel words, poppet.’

  Trying to make out he was against Candace, when in reality it was the opposite.

  ‘Can’t find out one damn thing about her. Other than the fact that she’s Kushite by birth, our lovely sorceress remains a mystery, and mysteries, my dear Claudia, trouble me greatly.’

  The hell they did. By shedding suspicion on Candace, he’s effectively clearing himself, adding to his own credibility by intimating that there’s no point in anyone else checking her out, because if a wealthy horse-breeder can’t uncover her past, then who can? And all the while the pressure increases on Larentia to marry him quickly.

  ‘We have Gaius cheering his mother on from the Underworld. Her late husband giving the wedding his seal of approval. Even Darius’s cough is supposed to make her feel guilty about keeping him away from his good southern health.’

  Claudia’s instincts had been right from the outset. The bastard was after taking control, but not purely from the financial angle. Yes, running Gaius’s business would be the ultimate in revenge. But once he assumes control, it is total—and imagine the satisfaction of being in a position to marry off his enemy’s widow to a three-legged dwarf if it pleased him, or contract Gaius’s unworldly daughter to an elderly lecher. As he’d calmly destroyed the brick-maker, the paper merchant, the tavern-keeper’s families, so he can sit back and ruin Gaius’s impoverished sister and her weak and vacillating husband, pulling his strings on the puppets they were, and watching them dance to his tune. With the most lavish portion reserved especially for his enemy’s mother.

  ‘You callous bastard,’ she whispered into the night.

  Leading a
vulnerable old widow on, purely to set her up for rejection and humiliation. A man might divorce his wife for infidelity and cruelty, but thanks to Rome’s entrenched chauvinism, it was virtually impossible the other way round. Having married Larentia, he could treat her like a dog and she’d have no choice but to endure, and suddenly Claudia recalled the locked gazes between Darius and Candace the night the spirits were summoned. Hard and assessing on both sides.

  ‘Unless I miss my guess,’ she told Drusilla, ‘this puts the happy pair in partnership.’

  How cruel does a heart need to be in order to plan installing the mistress before he’s even married the wife? How evil? His voice hadn’t just trod the path to Hell, she reflected. The bastard had dragged Hell back up with him.

  ‘Mrp.’ Drusilla disengaged herself from Claudia’s neck and settled down on the desk with her front paws folded in front of her.

  ‘Make the most of it,’ Claudia warned. ‘It’s only a matter of time before Felix-stroke-Darius tosses you down the nearest well, too.’

  ‘Hrrrrrowl.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ She flattened the cat’s rising hackles and kissed her firmly between the ears. ‘It won’t come to that.’

  There were many places where hemlock grew wild around here, though Claudia sincerely hoped it would not come to that.

  Colchicum was much more painful.

  *

  In the dank, dark subterranean caverns where no daylight penetrated and the sighs of the hopeless twittered like moths, Veive fitted three more gold tips on his arrowheads.

  Beside him, the winged avenger dipped them in poison.

  Sixteen

  When Eunice said Terrence threw the most lavish bashes anyone could ever hope to attend, she wasn’t kidding. To celebrate the Festival of the Lambs, he’d not only invited the entire town, but he’d filled fountains with wine for their benefit, created wine lakes connected by wine channels in which miniature warships bobbed merrily, and since one ox wasn’t enough for this number of guests, he’d slaughtered at least half the world’s ox population to turn on the spits. In addition, he’d built a miniature house out of nuts and sweetmeats for the children, and created a magnificent edible Trojan horse in which a snail had been stuffed inside a dormouse, which in turn had been stuffed inside a quail, which had also been stuffed inside something larger, until finally a horse comprising different layers of meats stood proud with a mane of…wait for it…sorrel.

  The witticisms didn’t end there. He’d hired musicians, clowns, acrobats, fire eaters, jugglers and mimes to entertain the masses. Gladiators fought in a makeshift arena, wrestlers and boxers competed for honours, buffoons dressed in motleys ran riot—and the most amazing part of it all was that the events didn’t just run simultaneously, they ran continuously too.

  ‘I thought the Lamb Festival went rather well, didn’t you?’ Thalia asked, wringing skeletal white hands that didn’t look as though they could kill two birds with one stone, much less a seasoned banker. But then Eunice never suggested Thalia had strangled her husband. His heart gave out at the hot springs, she’d said. Old age, Claudia wondered? Over-exertion? A combination of both? And yet even the weakest of hands can drip poison into a glass. It was time to delve deeper into Thalia’s mind—a journey, she suspected, that wouldn’t take long. There weren’t exactly great depths to plumb.

  ‘I thought it went exceptionally well,’ she replied, linking her arm with her new best friend’s.

  ‘The children looked adorable wrapped in their tiny fleeces,’ Thalia said wistfully. ‘Though I do believe Lars needed to snarl a bit more in his wolfskin when he chased them, and Terrence perhaps a teeny bit less. Not that there was anything wrong with what he did,’ she added quickly. ‘No, no, it was only that one little boy who burst into tears. And a couple of the toddlers. Of course, though I expect they were over-tired by then… Sorry.’ She shot Claudia a tight smile. ‘I do ramble on, don’t I, and Terrence gets so cross with me—’

  ‘You’re doing fine, Thalia.’

  ‘You think so?’ The smile that flashed across her face lit up her enormous green eyes. ‘Oh, good, because I wanted to say that I thought Marcus got the balance just right, chasing the babies, and my word, Claudia, isn’t he handsome?’

  ‘That’s the word they use to describe the Emperor, and he’s bow-legged.’

  Thalia giggled. ‘You are wicked, but I don’t think he’s bow-legged. Marcus, I mean.’ The smile dropped from her face and her expression became haunted again. ‘Do you see him? The man talking to Terrence right now?’

  Claudia couldn’t see anyone for Terrence’s sandy mop, but said yes anyway. Agreeing is what best friends do.

  ‘Terrence invited him here as a prospective husband for me, but I’m not going to marry this one, and I don’t care what he says. Terrence, I mean. Not the bridegroom. Well, yes, I don’t care what he says, either… Oh, there I go again. Sorry. Verbal diarrhoea, Terrence calls it, which I think is terribly vulgar, and I keep meaning to ask him to refrain from phrases like that, but then he gives me these little brown pills and then I can’t think straight… Am I boring you?’

  ‘Quite the reverse.’

  Claudia patted Thalia’s arm in the way best friends always pat and led her away from children raucously racing toy chariots and playing tag to the rose arbour, where it was quiet. Several early varieties were already in bud, she noticed, and beneath them pinks and cerastium ran riot.

  ‘You were telling me about Terrence and the pills?’

  ‘Was I? I get so confused, you know, but that’s why he says I should take them. After my husband died…’ Thalia glanced round over both shoulders to make sure no one could hear. ‘Claudia, I’ve done a terrible thing. To my husband, I mean. Well, when I say did, I didn’t do it myself, but I killed him all the same.’

  Thank Jupiter! Claudia held one of the fragrant pinks to her nose while her best friend unburdened herself.

  ‘Terrence says it’s nonsense. He says I couldn’t possibly have murdered him just by willing him dead, but it’s true. I wished my husband dead and—pft!—he died the next day, and Tarchis says that if one invokes the Dark Gods, they always answer the call… Oh, Claudia, do you hate me very much? For what I did to my husband, I mean, not the blathering. Although you probably hate me for that, as well… Ooh, look, look! Do you see the magistrate’s wife?’ Thalia peered through the twining branches. ‘She’s wearing a grey robe, and I swear it’s the same colour as the one Terrence forbade me from wearing because he said it clashed with my hair and made me look pasty.’

  ‘Sadly, Thalia, I think your brother was right.’

  ‘But who cares whether something’s suitable or not? Why can’t I do something I want for a change, without constantly having to worry about what other people might think? I like grey.’

  ‘So do I, but getting back to your husband…’

  ‘Exactly. He wouldn’t let me wear that shade, either, and I’m going to tell Terrence that the magistrate’s wife is wearing it and…and…well, I don’t know what else I’m going to tell him, but I think he ought to know!’

  And off she swept, leaving Claudia wishing that Terrence would give her a handful of sedatives. God knows five minutes with Thalia was enough to drive anyone crazy. No wonder the banker was grouchy.

  As the sun sank, torches and cressets blazed to turn night into day round the villa. This was the cue for the water-wrestling to begin, in which naked, oiled athletes were required to hold their opponents under for a mere count of twelve, which was proving harder than it sounded, since they were constantly slipping out of each other’s grasp. On the far side of the terrace, a man clad in a bearskin danced with a live bear, another paraded monkeys dressed in military tunics, while masked actors performed a satire on marriage and a girl wearing a horned helmet twirled a bull-roarer with both hands that drowned out the musician entertaining a crowd with his pan-pipes.

  Too much, too much. With all that had gone on since talking to Tarchis yeste
rday, Claudia’s mind hadn’t stopped whirling. She needed somewhere to think. Somewhere quiet. And Terrence’s maze offered the perfect retreat.

  Especially since every dead end resulted in a forfeit of wine!

  She collected four goblets, then took them to one of the marble benches that had been placed at regular intervals for weary exit-hunters and thought that that was the trouble with the aristocracy. When you’re born in the slums, a sense of direction becomes second nature, every bit as keen as touch, hearing and smell. Terrence’s soft-living guests would need every seat he’d laid out.

  The throb-throb-throb of a drumbeat pulsed out across the immaculately clipped topiary, and she could almost picture the dancers swirling and twirling to their hypnotic rhythm. Downing the first goblet, she wondered how Flavia was getting on. Timi, the instructress at the Temple of Fufluns, could not have been a day under seventy, yet she was as supple as she was graceful—but best of all, she was strict.