Dark Horse

Fifteen

The tavern was a typical harbourside tavern, filled with fishermen, BO, tall stories and splinters. Orbilio, in a knee-length linen tunic tied with a woollen belt, had to raise his voice for his call for a second jug of wine to be heard. The wine was coarse, like the people who drank it, but at least in these rough drinking dens where he searched out information, the darkly lit bearpits, the rowdy bordellos, people were honest about who and what they were. He spiked his hands through his fringe. It was more than he could say for himself.

Croesus, what made him take Margarita like that? A pain shot through his body, violent and searing. The cheap truth of it was, he had made love to her (if that was the term) because the woman he wanted was out of his reach and, in one rash moment, he had consumed his yearnings in animal lust. He shuddered with the shame of the memory. Mother of Tarquin, what devils had possessed him to take a woman who was shallow, uncaring and whose looks had all but faded simply to assuage a different hunger?

'Ooh, darling,' Margarita had purred afterwards. 'I shall settle for nothing less than sex spelled with four Fs from now on. Frequent, fast, frivolous and frenetic! You tiger, you!'

What terrible depths had he sunk to?

Around him, men talking in the local cadence laughed, threw darts or moved bone counters over an oakwood table marked into squares. Heavy-set wenches swapped badinage and gossip while they served food on square wooden trenchers and the landlord, the florid-faced husband of a small, prune-faced shrew, turned a blind eye to a flea-bitten tomcat stealing a pilchard. Through the doorway, Orbilio watched a weary black donkey grinding wheat on a treadmill as fishermen stropped the points of their harpoons.

Margarita had seen nothing sordid in that bleak exchange of body fluids. What had once been a succession of dazzling affairs for her had congealed into casual sex as a substitute for affection, and as much as he would like to attribute her depressing transformation to remarriage to the Senator, that was wishful thinking. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio had been as instrumental in her downward slide as Margarita had been herself. As a wife and mother, she'd represented fun without judgement, sex without commitment when he'd been at a low ebb. He'd simply accepted the affair as it came, on a plate, without considering how it might affect Margarita, being loved then discarded as a matter of course. Today, she was one step short of becoming an old bag. An old bag whom he'd laid in a rabid desire for somebody else!

Still. He drowned another goblet of wine. The school of hard knocks had taught him yet one more bitter lesson in this sorry episode. At least he knew this craving he had for Claudia Seferius wasn't love. If nothing else, yesterday's sordid session had shown him how to recognize lust when he saw it. That pain, that tearing passion, that burning need for fulfilment which ripped him apart might have many names, he reflected bitterly. But love wasn't one of them.

Croesus almighty, though. Doping thoroughbred racehorses! He knew why she was doing it. She'd climbed out of the gutter, inveigled herself into marriage with a rich wine merchant who'd then died and left the young widow the lot. Clearly, if a girl was to continue living in the manner to which she's grown accustomed, then adjustments had to be made — and since she wasn't able to offload the business assets, it stood to reason that, with Claudia, not all of those adjustments would be legal. Typical of the woman to mix business with pleasure. She never could resist a gamble! Even though betting was against the law. At least in theory.

Augustus was a wise old owl when it came to his people. Although most of Rome's wealthier citizens had absconded to the hills or (like the Senator and Margarita) to their seaside villas to escape the torrid summer, nearly a million souls had not. Worse, while they were effectively incarcerated in the city, irritable from the heat and bored to the nines, their incomes had plummeted from loss of trade.

'A people that yawns is ripe for revolt,' the Emperor had been heard to murmur on more than one occasion.

He had decreed that it might not hurt if the controls on gambling were eased during the hot summer months. Augustus, bless his campaign boots, understood that the poorer the individual, the more money they bet, simply because they had the most to gain. So he introduced the idea of bronze raffle tickets with food prizes for the winners. What pittance they earned might disappear on liquid pleasures or a horse's hoof, but a shoulder of mutton and a brace of hare stops them from crossing the line into stealing.

Orbilio tuned in to the local chatter in the tavern. Already he had picked up a good deal, either from conversation or from eavesdropping, information he would never have acquired in patrician garb. Across the room, he nodded acknowledgement to a man in his mid to late forties, greying at the temples, a fish out of water if ever there was one in this flyblown harbourside dive. Fish out of water always made his instincts twitch. The fellow wasn't high born, but he wasn't poor, either, and one of the first things Orbilio had noticed were the long, spatulate fingers. The type of fingers which could tell gold from gold plating and recognize fine works of art in rich men's houses when they felt them.

The man smiled, a warm and uncomplicated smile, his eyes meeting Orbilio's full on before he turned into the town square where children sang and played hopscotch and dogs dozed in the shade. Hmm. The stolen items had been carefully targeted. Jewellery, silverware, carved ivory statuettes. And with none of the fences buckling under the strain of a sudden influx of precious goods, Marcus had a suspicion that, instead of being sold, the ivory was sent for recarving, the metals melted down for recasting, the gems prised out of their settings and recut. This wasn't a simple case of smash and grab and pocket the loot. A lot of money would be changing hands in a sophisticated organization planned like a military campaign involving people who wouldn't blink twice at eliminating nosy investigators.

Perhaps Margarita had the right idea after all, he thought wearily. Toe the family line. Settle down, practise law, sire sons. Not wait for a knife to slip between his ribs in some dreary back alley.

Marcus gulped down the last of his wine, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slipped out of the tavern's side entrance which, as it happened, opened into one such dreary back alley. He spiked his hands through his fringe. Croesus, what a choice. Running down cut-throats, thieves and assassins in the stinking stews and the ghettos; or making policy and laws in the Senate? He squinted along the dark passage, straining for sounds in the shadows.

No contest, old chap.

No contest at all.