by Mike Ashley
That Nodjmet had murdered Wosret in the manner I deduced there can be no doubt. For it fulfilled the oracle of Amun’s prophecy, as I had seen when the mud fell away from my eyes, leaving the image of the glassmaker’s fiery oven.
The oracle of Amun had told Wosret his fate would be to die in a way involving something that was transparent but yet cast a shadow.
He and the priest Ti had both wrongly deduced the meaning of this statement. For does not glass fit the god’s pronouncement, and did he not die by means of the rod used to form the beautiful and fragile gifts with which he hoped to win back the love of Nodjmet?
Cupid’s Arrow
Marilyn Todd
From ancient Egypt to ancient Rome and the unmistakeable world of that mischievous minx, Claudia Seferius. The young and very eligible widow, Claudia, lived during the reign of the first Emperor, Augustus, and her adventures were first recounted in I, Claudia (1995). Ten further books have followed with the latest, Stone Cold (2005).
“Let me see if I’ve got this right.”
Claudia stopped pacing and ticked the points off on her fingers.
“In six days’ time, we, as producers and merchants of fine wines, celebrate the Vinalia, when no lesser light than the priest of Jupiter himself will pronounce the auspices for the forthcoming vintage?”
“Correct, madam.”
“Except.” She turned to face her steward. “We have no grapes to lay on his altar on the Capitol as offerings?”
“Correct.”
“Because some clod on my estate came down with a sniffle and the bailiff took it upon himself to quarantine the entire workforce?”
“To be fair, madam, the clod in question was the bailiff himself. He did not feel he could jeopardise the harvest by exposing –”
“Yes or no to the grapes?”
“Yes. No. I mean yes, we have no –”
“So in effect, I’m asking the King of the Immortals, God of Justice, God of Honour, God of Faith, who shakes his black goatskin cloak to marshal up the storm clouds and who controls the weather, good and bad, to very kindly not drop a thunderbolt over my Etruscan vineyards, even though I haven’t bothered to propitiate him this year?”
The steward’s adam’s apple jiggled up and down as his long, thin face crumpled like a piece of used papyrus. “That does appear to pretty much sum up the current situation, madam.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Claudia resumed her pacing of the atrium, wafting her fan so hard that a couple of the feathers sprang loose from their clip. Dear Diana, it was hot. Small wonder that half of Rome had taken itself off to the cool of the country or else to the seaside for the month of August. She thought of the refreshing coastal breezes. A dip in the warm, translucent ocean. The sound of cooling waves, crashing against rocks . . . “Well, let me tell you something, Leonides. That doesn’t sum up even half the current situation.”
According to the astrologers and soothsayers in the Forum – at least those diehards who hadn’t fled this vile, stinking heat – terrible storms were in the offing, unless almighty Jupiter could be appeased. For everyone else in the Empire, storms would be a relief from this torpid, enervating swelter. Sweat soaked workmen’s tunics and plastered their hair to their foreheads. Meat turned within the day and fish was best avoided unless it was flapping. Even Old Man Tiber couldn’t escape. His waters ran yellow and sluggish, stinking to high heaven from refuse, sewage and the carcases of rotting sheep. But for farmers with grapes still ripening out on the vine, storms on the scale that were being predicted provoked only fear. A single hailstorm could wipe out their entire vintage.
“Prayers and libations aren’t enough,” Claudia said, as two more feathers flew out of the fan, “and I can hardly buy grapes from the market and palm them off to Jupiter as my own.”
It was enough that that bitch Fortune happened to be unwavering when it came to divine retribution at the moment. Claudia didn’t want it spreading round Mount Olympus like a plague.
“And you’re forgetting, Leonides, that I can’t despatch a slave to Etruria to cut bunches until tomorrow at the earliest, because today, dammit, is the Festival of Diana – which just happens to be a holiday for slaves!”
“Oh, I hadn’t forgotten,” Leonides replied mournfully.
Claudia blew a feather off the end of her nose and thought at this rate the wretched fan would be bald by nightfall, and why the devil can’t people make things to last any more, surely that isn’t too much to ask. She stopped. Turned. Stared at her steward.
“Very well, Leonides, you may go.”
He was the only one left, anyway, apart from her Gaulish bodyguard, and it would take an earthquake, followed by a tidal wave, followed by every demon charging out of Hades before Junius relinquished his post. She glanced across to where he was standing, feet apart, arms folded across his iron chest in the doorway to the vestibule, and couldn’t for the life of her imagine why he wasn’t out there lavishing his hard-earned sesterces on garlands, girls and gaming tables like the rest of the men in her household.
The girls, of course, had better things to do. Dating back to some archaic ritual of washing hair, presumably in the days before fresh water had been piped into the city by a network of aqueducts, the Festival of Diana was now just a wonderful excuse for slave women to gather in the precinct of the goddess’s temple on the Aventine. There, continuing the theme of this ancient tradition, they would spend the day pinning one other’s hair in elaborate curls and experimenting with pins and coloured ribbons. Any other time and Claudia would have been down there, too, watching dextrous fingers knotting, twisting, coiling, plaiting, because at least half a dozen innovative styles came out of this feast day on the Ides of August, and all too fast the shadows on the sun dial on the temple wall would pass.
But not today. Today she had received the news that her bailiff was covered in spots and that, rather than risk the harvest by having the workforce fall sick, he had put them in quarantine to the point where no-one was even available to pick a dozen clusters of grapes. There was a grinding sound coming from somewhere. After a while, she realised it was her teeth.
“Junius?”
Before she’d even finished calling his name, he’d crossed the hall in three long strides. Was any bodyguard more dedicated, she wondered? Sometimes, catching sight of his piercing blue gaze trained upon her, she found his devotion to duty somewhat puzzling. Any other chap and you’d think he carried a torch for her, but hell, he was only twenty-one, while she was twenty-five, a widow at that, and tell me, what young stallion goes lusting after mares, when he can have his pick of fillies?
Widow. Yes.
With all the excitement, she’d almost forgotten poor Gaius. Yet the whole point of marrying someone older, fatter and in the terminal stages of halitosis was for these vineyards, wasn’t it? Well, not the vineyards exactly. She had married Gaius for what they’d been worth, although the bargain wasn’t one-sided. Gaius Seferius had had what he wanted, as well – a beautiful, witty trophy wife, and one who was less than half his age at that. Both sides had been content with the arrangement, knowing that by the time he finally broke through the ribbon of life’s finishing line, Gaius would be leaving his lovely widow in a very comfortable position. In practice, it worked out better than Claudia had hoped.
Maybe not for Gaius, who had been summoned across the River Styx a tad earlier than he’d expected, and certainly before he would have wished.
And maybe not for his family, either, who were written out of his will.
But for Claudia, who’d inherited everything from the spread of Etruscan vineyards to numerous investments in commercial enterprises, from this fabulous house with its wealth of marbles and mosaics, right down to the contents of his bursting treasure chests, life could not have turned out sweeter, if she’d planned it. So why, then, hadn’t she simply sold up and walked away? It was how she’d envisaged her future after Gaius. No responsibilities. Draw a line. Start again. Instead, she had
n’t just hung on to the wine business, she’d taken an active, some might say principal, role. And as for his grasping, two-faced family, goodness knows why she continued to support them! Something to do with not wanting them to root around in her past, she supposed, but that was not the point.
The point was, she must remember to lay some flowers beside her husband’s tomb some time. And maybe she’d have his bust re-painted this year, too. After all, it couldn’t exactly be improving down there in the cellar.
“Junius, I want you to run down to the Forum and hire a messenger. The ones by the basilica are usually reliable, but if there’s no-one left today, and I’ll be very surprised if there are, given that it’s a holiday for slaves, try the place behind the Record Office.”
“Me?” The Gaul was shocked. “B-but I can’t possibly leave you here alone, madam.”
“I promise that if a gang of murdering marauders come barging in, I’ll ask them to wait until you’re back to protect my honour, and that way we can both get killed. How’s that?”
“With respect.” His freckled face had darkened to a worried purple. “I don’t consider danger a joking matter. These are the dog days of summer. Men are driven mad by the appalling heat, madam, and by the sickness and disease that grips the city. With rich folk decamped to the country, only criminals and undertakers flourish in Rome at the moment.”
Claudia nodded. “Very eloquently put, Junius. You are, of course, absolutely correct and if you don’t hurry, there won’t be any messengers at the place behind the Record Office, either.”
“But madam –”
“It’s a straight choice, Junius. Either you hire a courier to gallop like the wind to my estate, pick a dozen bunches of the ripest grapes then ride straight back, where we might – just might – make it in the five days we have left and therefore save the day. Or I turn you into cash at the slave auction in the Forum in the morning.”
The young Gaul drew himself up to his full height, squared his impressive shoulders and clicked his heels together. “In that case, madam.” This time he didn’t look at her, but stared straight ahead. “In that case, I see I have no alternative.”
“Excellent. Using the full services of the post houses and changing stations, the messenger –”
“You will have to sell me in the morning.”
What? The remaining feathers sprayed out of the fan as Claudia crushed it in her fist. “This is not a debatable issue, Junius. You will –”
“I am not leaving you alone and that’s final.”
Jupiter, Juno and Mars, that’s all I need. The only slave left on the entire premises turns out to be as stubborn as a stable full of mules! She looked at the rigid line to his mouth, the square set to his chin and resisted the urge to punch him on it. Remind me of the position again?
A storm threatens to wipe out this year’s harvest.
The offering to propitiate the god who threatens that storm isn’t coming.
There’s no-one available to go and fetch it.
And the only person who could help is throwing tantrums.
In short, if she wanted a courier, Claudia would have to trek out in this ghastly, fly-blown, disease-ridden heat and hire one herself, a role her bodyguard would be very happy for her to undertake, because at least he could be on hand when robbers, thieves and rapists set upon them.
Was there, she wondered, anything else which that bitch Fortune could throw in her path today?
The goddess’s reply came almost at once.
She delivered it in the form of a bloodcurdling scream.
Which came from Claudia’s very own garden.
With its stately marble statues and rearing bronze horses, Claudia’s garden was a testament to her late husband’s wealth and social status. A red-tiled portico provided shade and offered shelter from the rain, the water from its terracotta gutters collected in oak butts to irrigate the vast array of herbs and flowers, whose scent in turn fragranced the air throughout the year. Paved paths criss-crossed through clipped lavender and rosemary, while topiaried laurels and standard bay trees gave the garden depth and height. In the centre, a pool half-covered by the thick, white, waxy blooms of water lilies reflected sunshine, clouds or stars according to the weather. And all around, fountains splashed and chattered, making prisms as they danced, as well as an attractive proposition for birds in need of something more refreshing than a dust bath.
That such a place of beauty and tranquillity could be shattered by such a scream was nothing short of outrage.
The instant they had heard it, Claudia and her bodyguard went flying down the atrium. From then, it was as though the sequence of events had been frozen. Time slowed. She might have been watching them unfold by following their progress on a carved relief.
The screech came from a young man scrambling down the fig tree which grew against the wall. Unlike her villa in the country – indeed unlike everybody’s villa in the country – this house didn’t have the room to follow the traditional pattern of four single-storey wings around a central courtyard. For a start, it had two upper galleries for bedchambers and linen storage, each accessed by separate staircases, and a cellar which was accessed by steps outside the kitchens. The only possible site for a garden was behind the house and adjacent to its neighbour’s. With one million people crammed into the city, space was at a premium and houses, even those of the wealthy, invariably butted up against each other. Claudia’s was no exception. To the right she adjoined with the house of a Syrian glass merchant, while her garden at the rear adjoined with a general’s. Paulus Salvius Volso, to be precise. Admittedly a loud-mouthed, drunken bully of a man, but all the same it was from his premises that the youth was making his rather hurried exit.
What he’d been up to in the general’s house was clear from the array of golden goblets and silver platters which bulged out of the sack slung over his left shoulder. The contents nearly blinded her when the sunlight caught them. He was halfway down the fig when he let loose a second shriek.
It took a moment before Claudia realised that they were not screams of alarm, but squeals of wild abandon. The grin on his face as he jumped down was as wide as a barn.
“Hey!” Junius called out. “Hey, you! Stop right there!”
The boy spun round in surprise, but didn’t falter as he belted towards the wicker gate on the far side of the garden.
“Stop!” This was a different voice. A soldier’s bark. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”
Junius was already racing down the path to try and cut the thief off, so he didn’t bother looking round to see who was shouting from the top of her neighbour’s wall. Claudia did. It was Labeo, one of the general’s henchmen and a retired captain of archers. The thief had used a ladder to make good his escape. His mistake lay in not kicking it away. Labeo had shinned up it like a monkey.
The boy shot a quick glance at the bodyguard charging down the path towards him. Halfway to the gate, he knew he could outsprint him. Claudia knew it, too, and so did Labeo. On a public holiday, the street outside would be heaving. One more thief lost in a crowd.
“Last chance,” Labeo boomed. “Or I’ll fire.”
Claudia saw the grin drop from the boy’s face. Realised that he hadn’t actually seen Labeo until now. Thought it was a bluff being called by someone from inside Claudia’s house, not from the top of the wall.
He turned. Saw the archer. Dropped the sack.
“All right, all right,” he yelled. “Have it!”
Gold, bronze, copper and silver spilled over the pinks and the lilies. Ivory figurines knocked the heads off the roses.
What happened next would stay with Claudia for the rest of her life.
Watching the cascade of precious artefacts, she first saw its reflection in the pool. An arc of white, flying left to right.
Heard a soft hiss.
Looked up.
The arrow hit the boy in the centre of his back. She heard the splinter of bone. The soft yelp that sprang from his lips.
For three paces he didn’t stop running. Then his arms splayed. His legs buckled. Red froth burst from his mouth. Still he kept going. It was only when he reached the gate and tried to unbar it, that he realised he couldn’t make it. Junius had caught up by now. Was cradling the boy in his lap. Claudia could hear him whispering words of comfort as she flew to his side.
“Sssh, lad.” Junius wiped the fringe from the boy’s face and patted his cheek. “It’s all right. There’s a physician on his way now.”
His expression was haunted as it met Claudia’s unvoiced question.
“You d-don’t understand.” The boy’s head rolled wildly and his breath bubbled red. “N-not s-supposed to b-be like this.” Terrified eyes bored into Claudia’s. She could see that they were brown. Brown as an otter. “I’m n-not going to d-die, am I?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she said, only there was something wrong with her eyes, because her vision was misty. “It’s just a wound, like Junius says.” Her voice was cracked, too. “You’ll be back on your feet in a week.”
But that wasn’t quite true.
The otter was already swimming the Styx.
For his part, Labeo had no sympathy for what he termed a dead piece of scum. Indeed, he would have pulled the arrow out of the boy’s back to see how the head had compacted upon impact, had he not been prevented by Mistress Snooty from next door here, slapping his hand away. What a bitch, he thought. Shooting me glares which would pole-axe a lesser man. What did she expect me to do? Let the thieving toe rag go?
“The general’s instructions was to shoot all intruders, whether they be on the premises or in the process of escaping,” he informed her. “And it don’t matter to me whether this piece of filth were carrying a dagger or not,” he added coldly, when taken to task about killing an unarmed, defenceless fifteen-year-old boy. “He were guilty and the proof, if it’s necessary, lies all over your flowerbeds. Ma’am.”