Dream Boat

by Marilyn Todd

  Claudia poured herself another glass of wine and drummed her fingers lightly on the table.

  Except that was only half the story. Dammit, every time they met, his palm would contrive to alight on some curvaceous part of her anatomy and despite swatting him off like a gadfly, that sticky imprint seemed to linger for hours! Marcellus, you lecherous warthog, you can bloody whistle for your money and, Croesus, it would need a sturdier abacus than the one on her desk to reckon up the number of times Julia had cut her in the Forum or slandered her reputation!

  And Flavia was turning into a right little chip off the sour old block.

  Little? Claudia picked up a quill and ran the feather lightly down her cheek. Ho, ho, did I say, little? In the five years since Claudia had married into this family of misfits, Flavia had evolved from an awkward, lumpy, difficult child into an awkward, lumpy, difficult teenager. The only girl with less sex appeal than a plucked goose! Numerous attempts to get her married off had fallen flat, thanks to Flavia's outrageous sullenness, until it had almost reached the stage where they'd run out of decent families to approach. What prospects then? Unless the silly cow came to her senses, and quickly dammit, she'd be stuck for life with some dim-witted dolt of a husband - or worse, with an ageing roue who'd view her as nothing more than his personal prostitute to use how and when he

  wanted! Young women, as Claudia knew to her cost, were not in a position where they could pick and choose.

  'That's it, then?' Julia blinked down her long, skinny nose. 'We're on our own in this, Marcellus and I?'

  As the last trace of light faded from the room, Claudia traced a circle with her finger round the rim of the goblet. A smarmy spendthrift brother-in-law. A stepdaughter who's moody, rude and ungrateful. The sister-in-law from hell. I'd rather roll naked in a bed of stinging nettles before lending these deadbeats a hand!

  Julia's narrow jaw was rigid. 'You're leaving us to cope alone?'

  'Definitely -' Claudia tossed back the last of her wine -'not. Count me in.'

  Chapter Two

  I don't believe this.' Claudia paced her bedroom like a leopard in a cage. 'I don't believe I could be so bloody stupid!'

  'Mix?' Drusilla, draped lengthways over her mistress's pillow, twizzled one ear around.

  'I need a doctor. I'm ill.'

  She felt her forehead. It did not feel like a forehead sickening for a fever, but what else could explain the aberration?

  'Hrr.'

  'Oh, fine for you to say, my girl! You haven't landed yourself the job of tracking down a gang of kidnappers for a family you can't stand and who, in turn, hate your very guts.' She poked around in search of tell-tale swellings in her throat. 'I ask you, what do I know about criminal behaviour?' 'Brrp-brrp.'

  'Other than my own, I meant.' Claudia stuck out her tongue and studied it by lamplight in the mirror. 'I ought to send for a physician,' she told the reflection. 'I have a terminal disease.'

  What other explanation could there be, for not only shouldering the role of gumshoe, but - and this is what hurt - agreeing to settle the bloody ransom? Was she absolutely barking loony?

  'You do realise, don't you,' she addressed the cat accusingly, 'that the coins in my coffers are gasping like fish in a drained pool?' She checked her skin for signs of plague or jaundice. 'The family don't know, of course,' nor did anybody else, 'but Claudia Seferius is broke. Skint. Borassic. Cleaned out. Bust, and on her uppers.'

  Good grief, why else would she have been stuck inside her dreary office yesterday when she could have been out dancing, hurling dice or eyeing up the hunky gladiators as they trained? Someone had to stretch those stubborn bills!

  'Bloody merchants.' She prodded her appendix. 'This is their fault.'

  It's all very well having your husband pop off when he did, him in late middle age and the widow not yet twenty-five when she inherited his thriving enterprise, but what provisions were there for fellow merchants refusing to deal with a woman? Claudia pulled down her eyelids and checked the colour of her eyeballs. Poor old Gaius. Not such a bad old duffer, really. She thought of his bronze bust, dulling in the cellar and his ashes which lay crumbling beneath a marble tomb along the Appian Way. She supposed she ought to visit it some time.

  She held out both hands to test for tremors and thought, if she didn't have the shakes before, the merest mention of her fellow guildsmen should surely bring them on! Her husband's ashes were still warm when the rotten sods had banded together in an effort to freeze the young widow out of trade. Their aim? To have her assets stripped from under her, her business torn apart, the proceeds divvied up among themselves. Well. Claudia Seferius, as they would find out eventually, was not the type of girl who could be bullied out of business. In the meantime, however, survival demanded drastic steps be taken: hefty bribes, for one thing; selling her dry, fruity red wine at a loss for another. And temporary though these measures were, right now her piggybank was emaciated to the point of collapse.

  Claudia explored for tumours, listened for the first manifestations of pleurisy, pneumonia, bronchitis and wondered, what were the symptoms of dropsy?

  'Dammit, Drusilla, the Games of Apollo start in two days!' Festivals and frolics, feasting and tomfoolery. Chariot races, processions, athletic events, theatres. Oh, and did I mention processions? So how does Claudia Seferius choose to spend her time? Playing 'tag' with a gang of kidnappers!

  She hurled the mirror out of the window. Useless bloody thing. Doesn't even show up deadly rashes.

  'Of course, I'd have a better chance at catching them, if they followed up with the ransom note they threatened.' Await further instructions, the original letter said. But for how long?

  Is Flavia alive?

  Resting her elbows on her red-painted balcony rail, the heatwave - what else? - pressed like an anchorstone upon her chest. Claudia let her gaze fall on the seething tide below. Dogs, oxen, wagons, carts and barrows surged and staggered, cranked and rumbled their way along the street by the light of dimly flickering torches mounted on the walls. Since Caesar's time, wheeled traffic had been banned during daylight hours (the streets were clogged enough), leaving only night-time free for deliveries too cumbersome to be transported in simple panniers on the backs of donkeys and mules. But short nights squeezed tempers as well as consignment times.

  'Oi, you!' Red in the face, a wagoner transporting slimnecked amphorae of olive oil cracked his bullwhip. He was late, as usual, and the delay was always someone else's fault and never his. 'You're blocking half the bloody road, move over.'

  'Sorry, mate, this here's my drop-off point.' The carter, his arms full of new roofing tiles for the house three doors down, staggered under the weight. 'You'll have to back up and go round the block.'

  'The hell I will! Now you move that cart or I'll bloody move it for you!'

  Traffic began to jam in both directions, and when the sweaty wagoner took it upon himself to lead the carter's mule down the nearest side street, sending a score of terracotta tiles crashing into splinters as they slid off the open back end, punches needed no encouragement. Gradually more and more drivers became embroiled in the brawl, pitching in with either verbal or physical abuse, until the rumpus had attracted half the population of the city, or so it seemed. Swarms of beggars

  gushed from the twisting narrow alleys. Pie sellers, cutpurses, whores, wine vendors - out they came, ever hopeful of cashing in on the occasion, and suddenly everybody was shouting over everybody else in an effort to be heard. No wonder they called Rome the city which never sleeps!

  'Mrrr!'

  'No one's locking you in,' Claudia told Drusilla, 'but I can't hear myself think with that racket.' Heatwave or not, she slammed the shutters and instantly the tumult dimmed to a throb. In her bedroom, a single lamp burned with aromatic lavender oil.

  Where are you, Flavia ?

  'Frrr.' Drusilla uncoiled herself from Claudia's pillow and scratched at her ear.

  'Yes, poppet, I know she's a horrid little beast and we'll all be
glad to see the back of her.' Claudia considered her supper tray and selected a fat, pink prawn for the cat. 'But that doesn't make kidnapping right.'

  Have they hurt you? Mistreated you? Are you frightened, crying and alone?

  She picked up a still-warm roll, inhaling the smell of garlic, thyme and rosemary and found the aromas made her stomach heave.

  Have they treated you civilly?

  Pictures formed and dissolved in Claudia's mind and she squeezed her eyes shut. The possibility of Flavia being snuffed out like an old tallow candle sent a vicious pain through her head. She's too young, she thought. Too naive. She'll be terrified.

  When Flavia's mother died giving life to the girl, she left behind a daughter who Gaius didn't want and three sons who he did, with the result that Gaius used his famous bullyboy tactics to dump Flavia with his youngest sister, taking care to oil the path, however, with sufficient funds to silence any squawks of protest. No one could ever say for sure whether Flavia was miserable by constitution or whether being unwanted had rubbed off on her somehow, but by all accounts, she'd

  adopted an unlovable nature with uncharacteristic alacrity -scowling when she should have chortled, sulking when it came to playing games - so that when Claudia entered the scene, a scant five years back, the pattern was set like cement.

  Flavia was miserable. This made Marcellus miserable. Which in turn made Julia even more miserable than she already had been.

  Oh, Flavia, couldn't you have just tried? Met them, if not in the middle, then at least one third of the way? Recently, Claudia thought she'd actually seen a chink in the girl's armour. Admittedly, the visit had not been a social one -Flavia had come to whinge about her allowance being severed - but, like most teenage girls, she had become obsessed with her appearance of late and in one candid moment blurted out, 'I hate the way I look!'

  'Did I tell her to stop looking? Drusilla, I did not.' Neither did Claudia tell the girl that the only person who could help her appearance was herself. 'With commendable patience, I pointed out that spots clear naturally, excess weight can be shed and that a good seamstress could work miracles on those rounded shoulders.'

  However, before she'd even broached the miracles of cosmetics, Flavia had snorted, 'You just don't understand!' and flounced out, slamming the door in her wake.

  'Mrrow.'

  'Some of her behaviour is understandable, I grant you.' Claudia stripped the flesh off a quail for the cat. 'Gaius never made a secret of his irritation with his daughter.' Which would leave deep scars on even the hardest little nut! 'But you'd have thought Julia and Marcellus, being childless, might have been more receptive to the love of a toddler.'

  Instead, Flavia had been given free rein to hone the only skill she possessed, namely being as perverse as she was able, and dear lord, was that girl able! Julia had grown more sour and more frigid with every year that passed, the family's only salvation lay in marrying Flavia off. Only here she had proved her claim to title of The Most Contrary Little

  Madam in the Universe. She had categorically refused all suitors!

  'No, let's be fair, poppet. More often than not, she repelled them.' Which wasn't the same thing at all!

  For a brief, glorious moment, standing in the stillness of her shuttered bedroom, Claudia pictured the final denouement in the kidnappers' plan. That exquisite moment when the gang collected the ransom. They would gather round and slowly lift the lid of the money box. Shock! In place of a pile of shiny gold coins, they'd see only air. And at the bottom, a note which read 'Keep the bitch. We've had enough.'

  Ah, well. A girl can dream . . .

  Since the altercation in the street had now been resolved, dispersing with it the hucksters, whores and pickpockets, Claudia flung open the shutters again and stepped out on to her balcony. Shit. In the half hour since she'd retreated, a breeze had sprung up from the coast, thick and gummy, the sort which carries with it flies and biting insects, malaria and plague. Terrific! Any more surprises?

  Below, black-clad undertakers moving, for delicacy's sake, under cover of darkness carried away a corpse on a stretcher. In the flickering light of the torch-bearers, she recognised the baker's mother, who must have been ninety if she was a day, and from her balcony Claudia saluted a final farewell. That's the way to go, she thought. Strong of body, clear of mind and knocking on a hundred. Not fifteen, trussed up like a chicken to be bought and sold as cheaply as a sack of sorrel leaves.

  Long after the undertakers had wound their way down the hill, Claudia stared after them, and when the herald called out the hour, she could not be sure whether it was two or three that he called. Maybe both.

  What greedy, twisted mind was so callous that it would put a young girl through torment? Why target Flavia? Heaven knows, Marcellus wasn't wealthy! Why not pick on the daughter of a rich merchant or (better still) an aristocrat?

  The word aristocrat made something prick inside and -quite unbidden - a tall, familiar figure towered over Claudia's

  subconscious. Clad in trademark long patrician tunic and high boots, he speared his fingers through the thick, dark waves of hair which fell carelessly across his forehead and, with a twinkle in his eye, proceeded to reply to her question by reminding Claudia that the higher one's financial status rose, the more protected one becomes. Which, by his reckoning, left her as vulnerable as a new-born fawn.

  'Sod off,' she told the laughing vision, but goddammit, the vision wouldn't budge. Tartly she reminded it that it was Marcellus who had been targeted, not her, she was only helping out here as a favour. She thought she heard the vision laugh and say, 'Like hell you are,' before it faded.

  Damn you, Orbilio. Damn you to hell. She scrubbed her eyes with her knuckles. Wherever I go you're dogging my footsteps, intruding into my thoughts. She sighed. Any other man, of course, and she'd suspect he fancied her. Not Supersnoop. He was too damned businesslike for that! That aristocratic ferret knew trouble was attracted to Claudia like fleas were to a mongrel - he simply saw her as his personal stepping stone to the Senate. Fine. She didn't give a hoot for broad, bronzed shoulders and strong white even teeth. Who cared that he smelt of sandalwood, with just a faint hint of the rosemary over which his clothes were aired? And it didn't matter to her the way dark hairs curled over the back of his wrist, or whether a little pulse throbbed at the base of his throat.

  Nevertheless, something tingled deep inside her. Indigestion, probably. She'd had nothing to eat since lunchtime.

  All right, she thought, kicking her mind back on track. We've established that the gang targeted Marcellus because he's an easy hit and gives the impression (who doesn't) of being moderately well off. Does it therefore follow that he knows the kidnappers? Could this be personal? A grudge? It would explain the run-around, the wait, the deliberate drawing out of tension.

  How much will the kidnappers ask for? How much is Flavia worth?

  A faint greyness began to show in the sky over the

  Esquiline Hill and, far in the distance, the first trumpet sounded, reminding delivery men that the gates would close shortly. Claudia rubbed at gritty eyes.

  'Call in the army and the girl dies.' The note was explicit. She could not afford to risk it.

  She would have to - her nails made gouges in the woodwork of the rail - she would have to go it alone and trust to heaven her skills were adequate. Or else the next bier being carried by the undertakers would be Flavia's . . .

  Empty at last, the street reeked of horse manure and pitch, stale sweat and axle grease, the air cloudy with dust churned up by hooves. A latecomer clattered over the cobbles, racing for the exit with two dogs yapping at the cartwheels. Apprentices skulked back to their garrets, blowing kisses on the sticky air to lovers; there was just time for a quick wash and change before setting off for work. From the bakery, yeasty smells began to filter out, a harsh reminder that, despite death in the family, the wheels of commerce must still turn.

  Why don't they come? Claudia wondered. Why doesn't the gang follow up
on their note? Why this ghastly, interminable wait?

  'Mrrrp.' Drusilla jumped down from the bed, arched her back in a sinuous stretch then poured herself through the balcony rail.

  Goddammit, why don't they just get in touch!

  Silent as a ghost, four paws landed on the porch roof below, padding softly over the tiles before being devoured by the shadows.

  Merciful Minerva, Drusilla had given her the answer! The kidnappers were toying with the girl's family the way a cat toys with a vole. They want Julia and Marcellus to know who's running the show. They need to show them who's in charge!

  Well, well, well. This put a different slant on things. 'To win the game,' she told her invisible opponents, 'one has to be pitted against a weaker rival. You're just to be pitied.' With one happy puff, Claudia extinguished the lamp and let the sticky

  breeze carry the lavender vapours into the night. 'Make no mistake, suckers! Your scalps are mine!'

  Nevertheless, despite her upturn in mood, there was no denying who had the upper hand right now! They knew damn well they could pull Julia and Marcellus about like marionettes on a string and that, with a fifteen-year-old's life at stake, the pair were powerless to protest. Flavia was not the only victim here! The bastards intended that Julia and Marcellus should suffer too, until eventually they became weak and vulnerable, their spirit sucked dry by the kidnappers' vampire-like need to dominate and control.

  What the gang hadn't reckoned on, however, was a third party becoming involved.

  Blackmail Claudia Seferius? I don't think so.

  She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. You need to show who's in charge? Be my guest. If the need to dominate's so strong, it means Flavia's alive, otherwise you'd have nothing to bargain with.

  Oh, Flavia. Where are they holding you?

  Was she tied up in some dingy attic, gagged and blindfolded? Locked in a windowless shepherd's hut high in the hills? Was she too scared to cry? Or had she tried to call for help and been whipped for her pains? Was she sobbing into a dirty pillow, or convulsing with fear on a floor of tamped earth? Was she bloodied, bruised and beaten? Had the bastards raped her? She could be imprisoned in a ghetto on the Aventine, where one more scream passes without comment. Or held in a disused warehouse across the Tiber, where screams go quite unheard . . .