by Marilyn Todd
The relief she felt at leaving the slums and its secrets behind her could not be put into words. Why is it, she asked herself, some folk sail through life with not a hint of trouble, whereas it haunts me like a lovesick ghost? No matter, she thought, turning her aching feet towards the Argiletum, apart from the fact that Gaius’ mother and daughter and a squad of his aunts were set to descend for the Festival of Fortune, life was pretty much plain sailing. She knew why the old trouts were coming, of course. Festival be damned. Money is relative, they say, and how true. Indeed, the more the money, the greater the number of relatives.
If these old cats hoped to disinherit Claudia Seferius, they had another thing coming.
Thank heavens, the Argiletum was deserted. During the daytime, this thoroughfare was thronged with merchants, porters and a veritable army of rich, idle wives flanked by their slaves and retainers as they checked out the latest footwear, fingering the leather and admiring the stamping. The air vibrated with hammering from the lasts, but now it was merely heavy with the tang of their hides. Upmarket booksellers also congregated along this street, their wares ranging from rare volumes to—
Claudia was wrong. The street was not quite deserted. A small boy sat in the gutter, elbows on knees, fists balled into his cheeks. His face was puffy from crying, the tears had left runnels in the grime.
‘Hello, soldier.’
Melancholy eyes rolled up to look at her. Words did not come.
Hmm. That was not a head of hair you could ruffle. Not unless you had a stomach for beetly things. But you couldn’t just pass on. Not while his little lower lip still trembled.
Claudia plumped herself down and mirrored his pose. ‘Want to talk about it?’ she asked softly.
Small shoulders shrugged. Bewildered, dejected, he was determined not to give in.
Claudia studied him as closely as she could by what paltry light was cast from an upstairs window. Maybe five years old, his clothes had been stitched and stitched again, and his bare feet were clearly strangers to leather.
‘Lost, are you?’ Too well she knew what it felt like for a grown-up—the terror and the claustrophobia—what must it be like for a tiddler?
A small chin jutted out defiantly before he nodded. ‘I want me ma.’
Will I never get a hot bath?
‘I asked that lady to take me home, but she wouldn’t help me.’ A grimy finger pointed towards a shuttered bookshop. There was, of course, no one there.
‘No?’ Claudia stood up and shook the folds of her tunic. ‘Well, I’m here now. Come along.’
‘She’s asleep.’
‘Who is? Your ma?’
‘That lady there.’
Poor kid. ‘What’s your name, soldier?’
A half-smile flitted across his tear-stained face. ‘Jovi.’
‘And where do you live, Master Jovi?’ Merciful heavens, please don’t say back where I’ve come from!
‘Dunno.’
Dumbfounded, Claudia leaned down to look him in the eye. ‘Say that again.’
He gripped one thumb in his fist and stared at his little blackened feet. ‘I’ve never bin away before.’
He was making such tremendous efforts not to cry that, in spite of herself, she ruffled his matted hair. ‘You’d better fall in line then, soldier, because tonight you’re on escort duty.’
Jovi stood up and cocked his head on one side. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. You can deputize as my bodyguard and walk me home, and as a reward, you shall receive a hot pie and a bowl of honeyed apricots, and after breakfast I will take you home to your ma. How does that sound?’
‘Promise?’
‘Upon my oath, young man. First thing in the morning, we’ll have you washed and scrubbed so clean your mother will think she’s got two sons called Jovi.’
‘You won’t forget you said apricots, will you?’
As a small, dry hand slipped into hers, Claudia had a feeling they were not entirely alone on the Argiletum. It could be the lamps flickering from the upper storeys. It could be the dark, damp, starless sky. But she had the strangest feeling that wretched lovesick ghost was back to haunt her.
The one whose name was Trouble…
II
Less than a mile away, in the smart town house of the pepper merchant, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio killed time by admiring the exquisite decor. Sweeping pastoral frescoes, so perfect you could almost hear the goats bleat. Hanging lamps with six or seven wicks lit the room brighter than a midsummer noon. A bronze dog was curled in the corner and rare aromatics filled the air. He glanced at the water clock. It was not like his informant to be late, but these were difficult times. Less than a fortnight before, the Empire had been rocked to its core when Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa—at once the Emperor’s closest friend, finest general, son-in-law and Regent—had returned from campaign and promptly died. The shock waves could not have been greater had the earth itself trembled, because if the Fates could cut this man’s thread at fifty-two, what chance for Augustus who was the same age?
Orbilio slid open one of the doors to the garden, where torchlight breathed life into the marble statuary and made gems of the whispering fountains. But cloying wallflowers did not understand sophisticated room scents and he closed it again. What chance for Augustus, indeed? There was many a fellow who, in his youth, had been Julius Caesar’s man and had been outraged when Augustus ingratiated himself to become the Great Man’s heir. Although more rational men blamed Caesar for setting his catamite above his natural-born son, any waverers had their doubts dispelled after Caesar’s murder, when the catamite showed the people precisely why he’d paid such a high price for adoption.
First he dealt with Brutus, then he dealt with Cassius and, finally, he dealt with Mark Anthony. Orbilio was only six at the time, yet still he remembered the tremendous ripple of excitement which spread through Rome when Augustus promised an end, once and for all, to three generations of civil war. After that, he went from strength to strength—annexing Egypt, Galatia, Spain, all the Alpine territories, Liguria, Illyria and Germany, as far as the Danube. He eliminated piracy, set up a network of trade hitherto unimagined and certainly unparalleled and finally, with his promise fulfilled, he disbanded the army’s part-time peasant farmers in exchange for a hard core of professionals, releasing the land for full-time farming. Small wonder his people took an ever swelling pride in their new roads, their sewers, the aqueducts which carried sweet water from the springs in the hills. The Emperor Augustus had given them twenty years of ineffable stability, their bellies and the Treasury were full. The spoils of war had turned their temples into marble masterpieces, bronze heroes galloped across the Forum, public baths, libraries, theatres and gardens were springing up pretty well everywhere.
Who, now, remembers that, to be on the safe side, Augustus had felt obliged to murder Caesar’s natural-born son?
Who, now, cares?
No one. But then sedition doesn’t always hinge on history and past grudges. Money is a factor. And let’s never forget the lure of power for its own sake. The Empire was poised on the brink of disaster.
The heat from the braziers had reached unbearable proportions, and Orbilio shrugged off that symbol of his birthright, the toga. That was a real perk of being attached to the Security Police, dispensing with the toga. Heavy and unwieldy, it restricted a man’s movements, although gentlemanly attire was a necessary evil when mingling with the wealthy and the noble (and naturally he’d worn the black toga throughout the public mourning for Agrippa). However, life must move on, and nine days at standstill takes a heavy toll on commerce and industry, there was much catching up to be done.
‘Marcus!’ A young woman, pink and immaculate, swept into the room. ‘Am I terribly late?’
Who said informants were restricted to the dross of society, or that they should be exclusively male?
‘I’m early,’ he lied, drinking in Mevia’s full breasts and rounded hips as she turned the key in the lock.
‘It
’s this silly market day that causes so much chaos,’ she pouted. ‘You’d think we hadn’t had one for ten weeks, much less ten days.’
‘When you hold them every eight days, people become dependent upon the routine.’ Disrupt that routine and you disrupt the structure of their lives. Praise be to Jupiter, we’re right back on schedule. ‘So, Mevia. What have you got for me?’
‘Just myself,’ she purred, slipping off her sandals. ‘But you won’t be disappointed.’
Damn right, he thought, watching her girdle slide to the floor. The greatest threat to the Emperor came not from the army, but from wealthy merchants banding together and for that reason, he’d made contact with Mevia. The hem of her tunic rose with tantalizing slowness to reveal first a pair of finely turned ankles, then her shapely calves. Halting half-way up her thighs, Mevia turned slowly round, watching him over her shoulder as she teased the pale pink linen up over her bottom, then her back and then finally drew it over her head. Sometimes she had information about the activities of her pepper-merchant husband and sometimes he drew a blank. Well, it was his duty, in the interests of the Empire, to pursue every angle, was it not?
Mevia, still in the shape of a letter Y, draped herself lengthwise on the couch. Not a hair out of place, not a smudge to her make-up, he noticed.
‘I like,’ she said, parting her lips to trace the line of her teeth with her tongue, ‘watching the muscles of big, tall men ripple in the lamplight.’
‘Is that a fact?’ he asked, unfastening his loin cloth and tracing his eye over the curve of her breast. There was a time, and not so long ago, when, so long as she was eager, he didn’t give a damn whether his bedmate was wealthy or poor, brainy or dim, giggly or ardent. But increasingly these days he was not so much making love as going through the motions. The seduction was mechanical, an assembly line of flattery and platitudes, with an end product which satisfied the customer if not the manufacturer. And it was not that he was lazy, lax or incapable. It was simply that another woman’s face would float in front of him, a face with proud, flashing eyes framed by tumbling dark curls, and he would yearn to reach out and touch a waist so slender a man’s hands could almost meet around it…not that he’d ever tried, you understand. There are certain parts of a chap’s anatomy that he prefers to remain attached to him, so one does not take liberties with Claudia Seferius.
Absently his mouth closed over Mevia’s nipple, but it was an ache for the girl who threw back her head when she laughed that made Orbilio groan. Whenever they breathed the same air, he and Claudia, it was like a storm before the rain. White lightning crackled between them—electrifying, frightening, exhilarating. A man never knew where the next strike would come, but one thing was for certain. With Mistress Seferius, it was never the same place twice.
As Mevia arched and wriggled beneath him, cooing his name through artificial red lips, a sound, small and insubstantial, cut into his awareness.
‘I can’t help feeling,’ Orbilio rolled off the bed, ‘that before long there’ll be a return to the old custom of husbands running their wives’ lovers through with a sword.’
Mevia surveyed him through half-lowered lids as she propped herself up on her elbows. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because’—to her astonishment, Marcus pulled on his tunic—‘I can hear his horse in the yard.’
‘Darling? I’m home!’
‘Run,’ Mevia squealed. ‘He’ll come in the back way.’ She pointed to a door, which was opening even as she spoke.
‘What’—the pepper merchant strode into the perfumed boudoir to find a handsome, tousled stranger standing over a bed in which his red-faced wife lay stark naked—‘the bloody hell’s going on here?’ His hand had drawn his dagger before he’d finished the sentence.
‘For gods’ sake,’ snapped Orbilio. ‘Can’t you see I’m a doctor?’
‘Eh? Oh.’ The dagger sank back in its scabbard. ‘I thought…is it serious?’
‘Tick fever,’ replied Orbilio, clearing his throat. ‘Fatal, I’m afraid, unless we treat it straight away. I…I’ve been bleeding her with leeches.’ He hastily pulled up the covers. ‘But you could help by fetching a mix of alum and mandrake, three to one. Only for gods’ sake, man—hurry!’
Three minutes later and striding in the opposite direction to the apothecary’s, Marcus chuckled to himself. He’d had closer shaves in the past (the auctioneer, for instance, who’d caught him licking honey off his young bride’s back), but there was nothing like the old physician trick to pull a chap out the mire. Worked every bloody time. Orbilio rubbed his hands together and looked up. The clouds were low but not threatening, and he decided to grab a bite to eat from Galen’s tavern before sauntering down to the wharves to see what gems his other, less attractive informants had garnered during the course of the day. He pushed open the door where the steam, the heat, the laughter, the smell of wine and cooking nearly knocked him back into the street. Being market day, he’d expected the place to be busy, but this was ridiculous.
‘This way, sir. I’ll clear a table,’ Galen said, jostling his way through the crowd, but Orbilio put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
‘I’ll be fine here,’ he replied, resting his weight against the wall. ‘Just bring me a pie when you’re able—venison if you have it, otherwise rabbit.’
He had no desire to see a group of hungry stevedores turfed out simply to make room for the aristocracy, it was not his style, and in any case, standing might strengthen the weakness that the arrival of a jealous husband had brought to his kneebones.
The noise in the tavern almost made the walls bulge out. Tonight men and women from every walk of life were carousing in earnest, pushing to the back of their minds the uncertainty which had gripped Rome following the death of their Regent. The fact was that the Empire was now without an heir because, despite being married to Augustus’s only child, Agrippa had died without issue. There was no one with royal blood to claim the line, which meant that should anything happen to Augustus, the field was wide open…
Still savouring the rich venison gravy and the ribald jokes of the revellers, Orbilio called for a second cup of wine and a dish of black pudding, because when it came to black pudding, there was no place to match it. Galen added onions and leeks and pine kernels, he seasoned with pepper and garlic and caraway, but there was something else—that indefinable something—which made this sausage so special. Was it the crunchy bite? The fact that they smoked it, but only slightly? Or that they cooked it over scented charcoals, possibly rosemary?
That, thought Marcus Cornelius, is what sets man apart from the beasts. Whereas animals rely on certainties in their daily existence, man thrives on the elusive. The thirst for knowledge, despite what the philosophers argue, is by no means sufficient. The piquancy of life comes from not knowing, from not fully understanding.
Which is why, perhaps, his thoughts habitually returned to Claudia Seferius. Orbilio knocked back the last of his wine and combed his hair with his hands. Mother of Tarquin, talk about spirited! The last time they’d crossed swords she’d pushed him in the pool and hurled missiles at him. Oh yes. His mouth twisted into a one sided grin. She was a hazard to health and no mistake.
Not least because she had burned her way into his soul…
He had no doubt that their paths would cross again—living as she did on the edge—but in the meantime, with the scent of sedition heavy in the air, it was time to recoup some of the money shelled out to his narks, and if Mevia had not been able to help, the next best place to start was with a lowlife aptly nicknamed Weasel.
Entrusting his toga to Galen for safekeeping, Orbilio observed one of the drinkers from the corner of his eye. A cube of a man, thickset, with a limb on each corner, it was the man’s attitude that caught his attention. Head down, eyes averted, it was the stance of one who wishes not to be noticed. Yet here he was, in a thronging tavern. Holding, yet not drinking, his wine. Orbilio thought he vaguely recognized that surly square face, perh
aps that accounted for the fellow’s shifty appearance, but this was no time to re-open old cases. His priorities lay in protecting his Emperor, because now all that lay between the might of Rome and a downward spiral back into civil war was the life of just one middle-aged man.
There was no time to lose.
After the fierce heat of the tavern, the outside air felt chill and damp as mist rose from the Tiber and swirled between the lofty warehouses. It was up to the praetorian guard to sniff out uprisings in the military (and Remus, there were enough ambitious generals to keep tabs on!), but Orbilio sensed that the cornerstone to any coup would, this time, be money. While few patricians would be prepared to risk an uprising, he knew of many a rich merchant who’d throw their cap in the ring. Hence his visit to the wharves and the warehouses, to see just how many eaves had been dropped Weasel’s way. He turned the corner by one of the spice stores, its towering windowless walls exuding pungent aromas despite the sour smells of the river and the encroaching, suffocating damp. The crowds had thinned, congregating in taverns and restaurants and well-lit streets, away from the gloomy, twisting alleys where they were forced to earn their living. There was just himself and two others now. Almost in sight of the Tiber, he turned left towards a nondescript building where the boys inside were soft enough and pretty enough to pass as girls. When two men appeared in the street in front of him, Marcus Cornelius paid scant attention. There were any number of reasons why men visited this particular quarter of the Aventine, and the house ahead was just one of them. Then, with a chill, he recognized the square-faced cube from Galen’s tavern.