Widow's Pique (18 page)

Harbouring the King's widowed daughter-in-law would

certainly account for the frisson that rippled between Mazares and Salome the night they bumped into each other. But there was something else. Something deeper. Darker. Of words unspoken, of secrets not told . . .

Back on the terrace, Claudia stared out at the glittering Adriatic.

Take one clear, calm sea bordered by golden beaches and rocky coves. Add an island of white stone standing sentry over an evergreen archipelago. Mix in one or two blue lagoons, a smattering of coral, a handful of dolphins, and bake under a cloudless sky. Finally, top with two handsome people, who are both charismatic and kind, and you have the recipe for perfection.

Set on the west coast of the Histrian peninsula, by rights this ought to be the Garden of the Hesperides, peopled by gentle, hard-working folk and protected by the invisible walls of imperial rule. Yet Claudia had never felt so alone and so vulnerable.

Or felt the breath of danger so close on her neck.

Orbilio stared at the parchments laid out before him on the inlaid writing desk, each scroll anchored top and bottom with a weighted wooden rod. To the left of the reports was heaped a pile of statistics compiled assiduously by His Imperial Majesty's bean counters and scribes, and, on the right, a stack of wax tablets containing Orbilio's own calculations, which, for once, didn't differ greatly from official figures.

Damn.

His stylus beat a lethargic tattoo on the desk as he stretched his long legs out beneath the table and leaned back in his chair. He had volunteered for this assignment. He had convinced his superiors that to act on evidence that consisted of little more than tittle-tattle, innuendo, jealousy and spite might well lay the Security Police open to charges of incompetence (or worse) if the charges eventually proved false.

His boss, oily little bastard that he was, saw credit either

way in taking his advice and holding back, and Orbilio glanced at the report lying uppermost on the pile, a copy of the original sent to none other than the Emperor himself. Whether Augustus had time to read it, given the amount of guff that came his way, was moot, but the point is, the charge had been raised in sufficiently high places that, if proven, it would shower laurels upon the Head of the Security Police and if not, would still be interpreted as another fine example of his conscientiousness. Naturally, it went without saying that Orbilio's name wasn't mentioned: there's no room for two in the stratosphere of glory. Straightening out the parchment, he read the report through again, his eyes automatically picking out the parts that mattered.

Allegations have come to my attention concerning a serious and concerted attempt to destabilize the Empire . . . fraud on a totally unacceptable scale . . . undermines the fundamental principles of . . . which, if true, will overturn every value dear to . . . ultimately challenging the whole economy . . .

Unfortunately, his boss was not exaggerating. The numbers didn't lie, and if this case did come to court, it would attract the highest profile of any seen before in Rome. Such would be the passions raised that civil unrest would be unleashed, sweeping through the city, the suburbs, the whole bloody Empire, with unimaginable - and unpredictable - consequences.

It was absolutely right that the matter be drawn to the Emperor's personal attention, just as it was necessary to be absolutely certain before charging in head first, and he was right to volunteer for the job of gathering the evidence. Even his boss agreed, albeit reluctantly, that his patrician blood made him the best man to do it.

But Orbilio had a bad feeling about this case.

A very, very bad feeling about this case.

* * *

The body of the royal physician had been carried back to Gora with as much pomp and ceremony as was possible with a corpse that was missing seven fingers, one left foot and half its thigh bone. Despite the ravages of foxes, lynx and crows, identification was made possible by the distinctive gold amulet still wrapped around his arm, and also by the scattering of medical instruments and personal possessions recovered later from the ravine by the army, the operation overseen by a tribune from Rome in his first year of overseas service.

The tribune might have been young, but he was conscientious. He made a thorough inspection of the valley, of the slope, of the slippery scree at the top of the hill, examined the breaks and fractures of the dead man's bones and then made his report.

It was obvious, he concluded, that, while on his way to Rovin, the royal physician had lost his footing, either in the dark or in the rain, and had tumbled down the forested hillside, sustaining injuries that, if they didn't kill him outright, would have rendered it impossible for him to crawl back up for help. Without access to his own medications and without appropriate clothing (the tribune made a special note of the drop in temperature at night in the interior this time of year), the royal physician's death was ruled a tragic accident.

The tribune also took the opportunity to emphasize in a postscript the dangers of people travelling alone.

And that would have been that, had it not been for an equally young, equally conscientious member of the royal physician's team. He, too, concluded that the bone breaks were consistent with a fall down a hillside, and that such injuries could cause coma and death, assuming exposure hadn't claimed the victim first. But the young doctor had a keen eye. He noticed that the distinctive little bone in the throat called the hyoid was broken. There was no reason to suggest this hadn't happened during the physician's tumble. A root or branch slamming into his adam's apple. Equally, though, this

injury was consistent with strangulation, and a far more likely scenario, in the young doctor's opinion.

The question is, who could he tell?

Nosferatu couldn't give a stuff.

'Are you sure about wearing a simple tunic, my dear?'

Claudia dismissed Salome's concern with a wave of her hand. 'This is fine, really it is.' More accurately, it was perfect!

'Maybe your own robe will be dry in time for the feast?' Though the clouds of concern in her green eyes and the flatness of her tone suggested otherwise.

'Don't worry, Salome.' Claudia gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. 'It was my own fault, falling in the pigsty like that, and you said yourself, these tunics are awfully comfy.' Question: Where's the best place to hide a pebble? Answer: On the beach.

Therefore, in order to become one more anonymous Amazon, Claudia needed to ditch her expensive robe for rough work clothes without arousing suspicion, and there was a comforting irony in using her jailer to open the doors of her prison. Unfortunately, Mazares would never know he was the instrument of his own downfall; that it was his pig, his payment for the baskets of flowers, that allowed Claudia to weave her plan. But it had to be the pigsty she 'fell' in, because, yes, a rinsed robe might dry in time for the feast, draped over the circular drying frame. But those stains, bless their hearts, would never come out. My, my, she couldn't sit down to dinner like
that.

As a tiny freckle-faced creature scrubbed the mucky marks with sage leaves, the sun slowly dipped below the far horizon and the Nymphs of the West trekked home from the fields, their skirts kilted up to their knees, their rakes and bill hooks

over their shoulders. Back in Rome, the advent of May was celebrated with gladiatorial games, the bouts interspersed with salacious stripteases performed by state prostitutes in affirmation of the old life-and-death cliche, with the whole event culminating in a torch-lit procession. From the totem dances of the northern tribes, in which they bound winter to a tree with ribbons as they danced to the festival of Zeltane, in which Summer triumphed over Winter, day over night, life over death, such rites were universal. In Amazonia, the only thing that marked the passing of one season to another was that the feast was held at night, rather than during the daytime.

The lovely Salome could protest all she liked, but these were not normal customs. This was not a normal farm.

'You haven't met Mo, have you?'

The soldier's widow wriggled up to allow the little frecklefaced laundress to join the group.

'Her name is Modestina,' she added. 'Mo for short.'

'It is very sorry,' the newcomer told Claudia earnestly, 'but without bleachy it is no rubbing of those stains out.'

She smiled. The last thing she needed was someone to keep plugging away at the stains. Dammit, the whole idea was to persuade some gullible young Amazon to parade round in her Roman robe when it was dry, so that by the time her armed escort realized that it
wasn't
the Lady Claudia they were keeping their eye on, she'd have gone to ground. But no one, not even a girl who'd never felt cotton next to her skin, much less a lavish gown, would want to try on a soggy cold frock!

'Never mind the bleachy,' she told Mo. 'I'll have the robe unpicked and made into a nightshift.'

Mo's freckles warmed to this suggestion, since her laundry expertise lay in eliminating stains from fabrics such as woollens, felt and coarse linens. She haves no experience with them liddle pleaty things, Claudia added to herself, frills and flounces patently a black art to her, and the thought of tangling with the ironing-out of embroidery ruckled by soapy water too dire to even contemplate.

'Yes, yes, is wondergood idea,' Mo said. 'My bleachy only make green dye to run and lovely dress end up even biggy mess.'

'You mean
piggy
mess,' Silas chortled.

Equality had broken down all barriers between gender, age and class, with the result that everyone sat where and with whom they liked, though most of the Amazons spoke little or poor Latin and tended, therefore, to cluster in knots of their own native language speakers. The group seated round Salome's table was different. Silas, the elderly expert in fruit production, had a pronounced Athenian twang. Mo's accent placed her from somewhere in southern Gaul. Scowling Tobias had a rolling Macedonian brogue, Nairn she put north of Galatia and Lora's soft Illyrian burr was unmistakable. And now there was another one joining the league of nations round the Syrian's table!

'Sorry I'm late, everyone.'

This Amazon's hair was so fair that it was almost white, her skin as pale and translucent as alabaster. Which probably explained why the black stains on her fingers stood out so clearly.

'Only, that last one was a bugger. I thought I'd
never
get the handwriting—'

'My dear, this is Barribonea,' Salome said, cutting the girl short. 'Except we call her Bonni, and with very good reason, don't you think, Claudia?'

It was the same when she introduced her to Lora. A message, a warning - this time with the stressing of Claudia's name.

'What I wouldn't give to have a waist like yours as slender as the neck of an amphora,' Claudia replied, noting that Bonni's hands, interestingly enough, had already disappeared under the table.

'I know what I wanted to ask you,' Salome said. Attagirl, change the subject. 'How's the restoration of the Marcian aqueduct coming along?'

Claudia brought her up to date, as dishes of mullet in mustard sauce appeared on the table alongside shrimps swimming in

garlic, asparagus spears, lobster rissoles with chives and a selection of spicy, smoked sausages.

'I often wonder if that old Nubian sword swallower's still fooling the crowd outside the basilica.' Silas's gnarled but nimble fingers prised a mussel out of its shell. 'By Gannymede, that old fraud must have made a fortune.'

'Tell you who else made a mint, me lovely,' Nairn said, and if Silas minded her large breasts pressing against him, he manfully refrained from pointing it out. 'That line walker on the Field of Mars.'

When she pushed her corkscrew curls out of her face, two feathers fluttered gently to the floor.

'Every morning he'd
dance,
I tell you, across a tightrope stretched between two trees, and he'd be there all day, from when the sun rose until it set. Is he still there, me darling?' she asked Claudia.

'Oh yes,' she lied, and she'd been in Rome for eight years and had never seen such a performer. 'Sometimes he dances with a small dog in his arms, as well.'

What colours were in fashion, Bonni wondered, her wide blue eyes drinking in with disbelief their guest's serviceable plain tunic. What hairstyles were in vogue, what style of gowns? Even Tobias stopped glowering long enough to ask whether the old fortune-teller on the corners of Fig and Pepper Street was still going strong, lord alive, she must be eighty-five if she's a day.

So many questions about Rome! Why the sudden interest, she wondered, because most of their queries were distorted by memory or else several years out of date, though the questions suggested they knew the city well. Could it really be that simple? That Rome was the common denominator on this farm? As she brought the group up to date on the latest exotic animals to find their way to the navel of the Empire, creatures like black and white striped horses and fuzzy beasts with two humps on their back and the obnoxious tendency to spit, Claudia was not getting the impression that these were simply reunited friends sitting round a table.

'D'you intend to marry the King, then?' Silas didn't even look up from the chunk of herb bread he was pulling apart.