Dark Horse

Fourteen

Violet-blue coral glimmered in the crystal-clear sea a hundred feet below and, when the sun caught a wave, its crest reflected the light like a mirror. Sea ravens croaked from precarious clifftop perches and, to the north, white-headed griffon vultures with wingspans greater than the height of a man soared over Cressia's peaks. The mid-morning heat turned the gravelly paths into a shimmering haze. Claudia had decided to take this walk on the basis that if at first you don't succeed, quit worrying. She'd done her damnedest to stop Leo setting off after a warship in a wooden hip bath. All she could do now was chew her nails and hope to glory that Jason's humiliating dance would lead the Medea away from the rocks and into open water where even Leo wouldn't be able to sink himself!

Strolling beneath the dappled grey canopy of the olive groves, her skirts released waves of fragrant pinewood scent as they brushed the yellow blooms of the pine-ajuga. Animal bells played a soft and melancholy tune as black-faced sheep and horned goats chomped noisily on the sparse clover patches. Bees droned round the tall spikes of the poisonous sea squills and explored the delphiniums, while crickets rasped in the coarse, dry grass.

Nowhere on the island had Claudia felt more isolated. More disconnected from civilization.

Settling down with her back against a gnarled trunk, she drew her knees up to her chest and stared across the sparkling Gulf, where the densely wooded slopes of the mainland slid like a wanton woman into the warm cobalt waters. Fishing boats like ink spots spattered the ocean, hauling home baskets teeming with lobster, crayfish and crab. How easy to picture the Argo out there…

Fifty oars. A hundred oarsmen. Rich men's sons for the most part. There were famous boxers, wrestlers, swimmers on the expedition, though a few brought rather less obvious skills. The bee-master, for instance. What use had he been? Never mind. Luckily for the crew, the ship carried a shape-shifter on board, two winged men (obviously), a seer and a poet (naturally), one virgin huntress (who wouldn't?) and, of course, for those little everyday emergencies, a transvestite.

Gazing up at the heavy clusters of green olives swelling beneath their leathery, silver-grey leaves, the past and the present fused.

Jason and the Argonauts.

Jason and the brigands.

It could, of course, be coincidence that Leo's ship was called the Medea, but coincidences were stacking up fast. First we have a pirate called Jason, then we have the Medea, and let's not forget Colchis is a Scythian trading post on the Black Sea. The past and the present. Coiling together like snakes.

But one thing at a time.

'Here's the deal,' Claudia told Neptune. Sure he had an enormous territory to patrol and couldn't hope to be everywhere at once, but it was high time he swept the cobwebs out of this particular corner of his watery domain. 'You sink that galley flying the red flag of your brother' — Mars wouldn't miss one skitchy little trouble-maker, would he? — 'plus you dispose of any ships bringing tall, dark, aristocratic members of the Security Police to these parts, and in return I'll give you a beautiful white bull as a sacrifice. Not a black hair on its body, I promise.'

'Who are you talking to?'

Claudia had heard of woodland nymphs, dryads they were called, and nut-nymphs, caryatids. But she'd never actually believed in them. Much less olive-grove nymphs!

'Neptune,' she said, leaning her palms on the thick drystone wall where, on the other side, a pair of eyes as big and as bright as a rabbit's peered out of a filthy little wedge-shaped face. 'I was asking him to protect Leo and the Medea.'

'Can Neptune hear you?' Somewhere beneath all those ingrained layers of grime was a girl of nine, maybe ten, on her scrawny knees pulling up roots.

'Why shouldn't he? You did.'

'Personally, I don't bother with that praying lark,' the girl said, with a sad shake of her matted curls. 'What's the point? The gods only answer the prayers of the grown-ups.'

Claudia was not about to disillusion her by disclosing that the gods don't always bother with that. 'Should you be out on your own?'

'I much prefer my own company,' the child said. 'It's so noisy at home.' She pulled up another plant and shook the soil off its roots. 'Kids,' she muttered. 'Who'd have 'em?'

Claudia blinked.

'If they're not squabbling, they're bossing each other around.' The girl clucked. 'Sometimes I don't know how I manage to cope.'

'Lots of you, are there?' Claudia sucked her cheeks in hard.

'Thirteen or fourteen, I suppose.' The girl shrugged. 'You lose count after a while.'

Maybe that explains the rabbit eyes, Claudia thought, debating whether perhaps the child was also concealing a powder-puff tail underneath her cheap cotton shift. 'What are you picking?' she asked. The stonework was searingly hot through her skin, and a green lizard darted into a gap in the wall near her foot.

'Alkanet.' Little hands tugged up another root and examined it carefully. 'Nanai’ wants to dye blankets for winter, only she won't let us pick them while they're in flower, she says it's a waste of a pretty blue life.' Her small dusty faced tipped to one side. 'We'll still be here, you know. In the winter.'

'Yes. I'm sure you will be.' And now it was becoming impossible for Claudia to stifle her laugh.

'No, I mean it. I heard Nanai tell Lydia. "He can't throw us to the wolves," she said. "It's not fair, turfing us off like we were ticks on a sheep", but Lydia said there was no contract, nothing in law, and Nanai said, "That doesn't matter because Leo swore on his oath".'

Ah, so that was it. The poor child's absurdly large family was a pawn in some tradesman's dispute. Connected no doubt to Leo's massive renovation programme, for reasons unknown (bad workmanship probably) Leo had served the family notice to quit. At her feet, the girl was still chirruping on in her world-weary voice as she stuffed more alkanet roots into her tightly clenched fist.

'Lydia told Nanai’ to be careful. Leo's word couldn't be trusted, she said, he was a bastard down to his core. But Nanai laughed, and said she was used to handling bastards.'

Claudia wondered what the odds were that other people had conversations with ten-year-old minnows who gossiped like fishwives? But then, moving house would be a subject very dear to little hearts. Stability is everything to children and by relating the conversation between Nanai and Lydia, this dusty bag of bones could convince herself that nothing was going to change in her tiny world. That they would all still be here, come the winter.

'Do you know what "having no leverage" means?' she asked Claudia, screwing her grubby face into a frown.

'You lose your bargaining power.'

The little face relaxed. 'Ah, so that's what Lydia meant when she told Nanai that if Leo tossed us out, she wouldn't have any leverage. Not that Nanai was worried. She told Lydia she had no intention of waiting until we got thrown out. In a few days, she said, there wouldn't be a problem, we'd be safe.'

Claudia felt a chill of alarm prickle her skin. Was that a threat she'd just heard repeated from those tiny lips? And if so, just how substantive was Nanai's warning? Then she looked at the bony-kneed scrap, burrowing around the dusty stone wall, and decided this was getting too fanciful. Her nerves were upside-down-inside-out thanks to the fire, the charred body, the scalp-mongering pirate — and (admit it) because she was scared stiff Leo would not come home. Rattled nerves do not make for rational thought!

'Does Lydia often visit your mother?' she asked, changing the subject.

'They've been friends for ever,' the little girl said. 'Only now Lydia comes more often because she hates that little white house Leo built for her on the point and she hates Leo and she hates having no money and hardly any servants, but I don't see what all the fuss is about. If Leo wants a baby so badly, he can have one of ours, we've got loads and Nanai won't miss one, I'm sure. Oh, and you've got it back to front about Nanai, but if you want to know more, I'm afraid you'll have to come home with me. You see, I haven't got time to hang about nattering. My bread's ready to come out of the oven.'