Widow's Pique (12 page)

'Sorry to interrupt.'

An elfin face framed by a cascade of waist-length walnut waves poked itself round the door.

'But the tanner's wife is back.'

'Jarna?' Salome's face dropped. 'Don't tell me he's been beating her again!'

The elf nodded grimly. 'Only this time she's pregnant.'

'Lora assists me in the treatment room,' Salome explained. 'Lora, this is Claudia, who's come all the way from Rome to consider the King's proposal of marriage.'

An unspoken message flashed between the two women before Salome turned to Claudia and tutted over the beaten wife's plight.

'And the Histri still cling to the theory that if a woman has a husband, she's made!'

For someone who believed in equality and freedom herself, there was nothing Claudia could say. Especially since she

needed to maintain the pretence of weighing up the King's proposal.

'I'm going to have to see to this poor woman,' Salome said, rising from the couch, 'but you're welcome to come along, if you like.'

Claudia could not have been any closer behind her, had she been Salome's shadow.

The treatment room turned out to be a converted cattle shed.

At one end, a panopoly of leaves, petals, roots and seeds were in varying stages of being decocted, infused, macerated or pulverized, while at the other end shelves were stacked shoulder to shoulder with jars, bottles, phials and pots, and beneath the shelves stood a table on which ointments and poultices were in the process of being mixed from recipes anchored down at the corners with stones.

It was to these tasks that the elfin Lora returned, pausing only to tickle the ears of a grey kitten snoozing on a pile of cypress or occasionally stroke the plump, black torn curled up on the stool. Indeed, she barely glanced at the bench on which a pale creature sat with her bloodied and swollen head bent, and where two small, frightened children clung to each side.

'Jarna, Jarna, Jarna,' Salome chided softly, kneeling at the woman's feet and taking both hands in her own. 'One of these days that bastard's going to do some serious damage, you know that.'

'As long as iss only me,' Jarna lisped through her cut lip. As long as he don't start in on me kids, I can cope.'

'Can you indeed,' Salome replied, tilting the woman's chin to examine the cuts and swellings. 'Show me your ribs, please.'

The children stared at their feet as their mother pulled down her tunic to reveal a torso with barely an inch of undamaged skin.

'He drinks,' Jarna told Claudia, as though that explained everything.

'He wouldn't be able to swallow, if I got hold of the bastard,' Claudia replied, as Salome laid on a compress of decocted dewcup leaves to reduce the inflammation. 'Why don't you leave him?'

The woman indicated the tots sitting white-lipped beside her. 'Where would we go?' she asked wearily.

'You can come here.' Salome rubbed in a cream made from balm of Gilead and calendula to relieve the pain. 'I've told you time and again, Jarna, any time, day or night, my doors are open.' She ruffled the youngest child's head. 'Look, you two. Why don't you go and collect some eggs for your mother?'

Two pale faces looked at each other, then nodded.

Salome called, 'Naim?' and immediately a jolly, big-busted girl with corkscrew curls poked her head round the door.

'That's me,' she quipped to Claudia, with a broad wink. 'A rose by any other Naim.'

The feathers in her hair proclaimed her as Amazonia's poultry queen, and she would have been as plain as a pudding had it not been for the broad smile on her face.

'Now, what can I be doing for you, me lovely?' she asked Salome.

'I was hoping you might help this pair of tots hunt down some eggs for their supper.'

'Sure, me darlings.' Naim scooped a child under each ample arm. 'Sure we can, but if you're wanting to hunt 'em, we'd best find you some bows and arrows first, hadn't we?'

She led her two chuckling charges into the yard.

'Or would you rather be attacking them eggs with a spear?'

Salome waited until the giggles were well clear of the treatment room.

'Right then, Jarna.' She wiped her hands down the side of her gown as though it was an old apron. 'Lora tells me you're pregnant.'

The tanner's wife gulped and stared at her hands.

Salome wasn't a girl to go beating round bushes. 'If you want to keep the baby, Jarna, you're going to have to leave that vicious husband of yours before he kills it with his fists.

Assuming she proceeded to prod Jarna's stomach with expert fingers - 'he hasn't done so already.'

'He hasn't, has he?' What little colour was left in Jarna's cheeks drained to white.

'No. No, thank Jehovah, he hasn't, but we both know he will. Lora, mix an infusion of cinnamon and ginger, will you, dear? That'll ease any morning sickness and Lora will also give you a supply of marsh-mallow poultices for the swellings.'

'Should I add a phial of hyssop oil for the bruises?' Lora asked over her shoulder.

'Good idea.' Salome helped Jarna back into her clothes. 'Now think about what I've said, my dear, and remember. My house is always open to you.'

'Thank you.' From her purse, Jarna pulled out her only coin.

'Save it,' Salome said, pushing it back. 'Buy some clothes for the children before he drinks it away.'

'You and the tanner have much in common,' Claudia observed after Jarna had gone.

'How so?' Salome didn't seem particularly rattled by the comparison.

'Neither of you pulls your punches,' she said. 'And I get your point about there being no money in medicine around here.'

'We do all right,' Salome assured her. As long as I make sufficient to cover my costs, I'm happy, really I am, but listen! That's the lunch horn. Please say you'll stay.'

Tempting . . .

'I can't,' Claudia told her.

'I quite understand.' Salome nodded. 'Mazares is waiting.'

Now why on earth would she think that? Claudia wondered, as she waited for the ferry to take her back to Rovin. That there was something between them was in little doubt, and she couldn't forget the intensity of the surge when they bumped into each other by accident. Both recovered quickly, but Claudia knew that if either Salome or Mazares had been prepared for such a meeting, their reactions would have been very different indeed.

As the ferryman pulled on the ropes, she stared into the dark, oily waters. The very depth of the channel made for currents that were as dangerous as they were unpredictable, and the undertow was deadly in every sense of the word. Next to the landing, a marble shrine, hung with dozens of red mourning ribbons, testified to the fate of those who'd attempted to swim the quarter mile out of folly, drunkenness, necessity or bravado, and a flame burned day and night in supplication to Vinja, the fire-breathing sea monster who protected the island but who also made his home in this channel, devouring any unfortunates who came his way.

A dread feeling in Claudia's stomach told her that Raspor was one of his victims.

How sad that the beauty of Rovin was disfigured by tragedy. Gazing across waters so clear that you could dress yourself in their reflection, to the evergreen archipelago that shimmered under an azure sky, it was hard to imagine heartbreak in this oasis of cypress and cedar. Claudia's eyes followed the necklace of long, curving beaches that encased coral lagoons swarming with turtles and shellfish, then turned her head towards the mainland, to the fertile paradise of vineyards and olive groves, pastures and meadows, which stretched away to serene rolling hills in the distance. Beyond those lay the mountains of Kotar, a region of dense forests and snow-covered peaks which was home to predators such as wolf, bear and lynx. An untamed wilderness of sparkling rivers, deep lakes and rushing cascades, where icy caverns led down to the bowels of the earth and the caves in the hills were patterned with the handprints of men long since dead.

A self-contained kingdom. Magical, beautiful, thick with secrets and primeval wisdom, where jackals prowled, chamois jumped and pinewoods marched down to the edge of the sea.

Right now, their resinous perfume mingled with myrtle and wild oleander, with the smells of fish from the boats, and from cooking, as the island women busily prepared their menfolk's dinners. There was no poverty here, Claudia

reflected. In Rome there was poverty. It hit you on every street corner, but here, in this far-flung outpost, there was none. So who would want to undermine what the late King, Dol, and his successor had worked so hard to achieve? Did they believe they could do any better? Or were the motives, as she suspected, venal . . . ?

'I saw him, too,' a small voice piped up alongside. 'I saw Nosferatu, and nobody believes
me,
either. Not even my mother.'

Her hair was as glossy and black as a raven's, and her face was as white as this island's stone.

'I'm Broda,' she said, 'and I'm eight summers old, and my uncle built that boat, and that one, and that one.'

'He must be a very clever man.' Claudia's heart lurched at the hollowed eyes of one so small, at the tunic that billowed around her skeletal frame.

'What about your father?' she asked. 'Is he clever, too?'

Shutters came down over her haunted eyes. 'I have to go now.'

'No, wait!'

Please don't go.

'Why don't we play hopscotch together?'

With a pebble, she scratched squares on the pavement, then numbered them. Troubled eyes widened in wonder.

'You've never played hopscotch, Broda? Then prepare to learn from an expert.'

Claudia threw the pebble and hopped.

'Your turn.'

An hour passed, by which time both of them were wheezing like rusty bellows, though there was colour in Broda's cheeks and a healthy sparkle in her hollow eyes.

'Do you know any other games?' she asked, panting.

'Knucklebones, dice, soldiers, twelve lines - I can show you them all, if you like.'

'I like, I like!'

Proof that you're never too young to pick up a gambling habit.

'Can I come back tomorrow?'

'Whenever you want, Broda. Whenever you want.'

She watched the child skip away, then continued along the shore until she reached the spot where the noose had lashed round Raspor's trusting neck. Knowing Mazares had killed him was one thing. Proving it, quite another. Especially in light of her testimony being dismissed as the unfortunate consequence of a hastily prepared asinine sedative!

Sitting down on the warm rocks, she rested her chin on her knees and concentrated on the azure horizon and the terns that swooped and dived in its translucent waters. A small cat, not dissimilar to the kitten Lora had been tickling this morning, chased its own tail then scampered off in search of meatier prey, and now it was the scent of cypress and juniper that drifted across on the breeze.

Why was it, she wondered, when Salome's heart was so obviously made of gold, that Claudia didn't trust her an inch?

Rising cramped and stiff, as much from the effects of the hopscotch as last night's fall, her eye was caught by a small object glinting in the sun. The glint was dull. Barely noticeable. But a souvenir of paradise was not to be sniffed at, she supposed.

Except . . .

Her stomach lurched. The object in her fingers was no jetsam, no shell, no oddly shaped pebble. It was the unmistakable shape of a flint arrowhead, and her mind flew back to Pula, to the necklace Raspor had worn under his tunic. She'd thought it odd at the time, dismissing it as another aspect of his paranoia, but today, having overheard her escort talking about Perun, the Thunder God, she understood its significance.

The embodiment of victory, justice and peace, Perun protected his people against witches and evil spirits by striking them dead with his spear. In the old days, when Histrian ploughs first started to turn up these flint arrowheads, they'd taken them to be proof of Perun's bolts, carrying these precious thunder stones home to lay under their doorsteps to ensure themselves of his divine protection.

Whatever motives had forced Raspor to abandon his priestly robes, he had not abandoned his god, keeping Perun's holy symbols next to his skin. Obviously dislodged in last night's struggle, this was the first, and possibly only, piece of evidence that Raspor had been attacked, crushing all hope that the little man might still be alive. If Mazares was clever enough to set a trap in which Raspor believed he would be meeting the girl who had the King's ear, and was audacious enough to pull on the noose while the alarm was being raised, then he would not have abandoned his task in the middle!

Oh, Raspor.

Too many, how you say - innocents? - have died and the King, he is too trusting. He thinks only good of people, but there are bad people around him. Very bad.

Another innocent caught up in the struggle, and she had failed him. He'd only wanted to meet her, pass on his information to someone impartial, and through arrogance she had failed him.

I am dead man, if I am seen talking to you.