Dark Horse

Thirty-Two

Hop in, gel.' A wizened face peered round the damascene curtains of the litter. 'Need to talk to you.'

The litter bearers exchanged glances. Halfway up the precarious cliff face wasn't their first choice for unbalancing the load and it damn well wouldn't be Claudia's, either. One slip, and she and Volcar would end up as fish bait. Not such a disaster at his age, but personally, she was rather looking forward to fifty more glorious years.

She was on her way back from the stocks. Junius had done a good job on the Medea. Several planks had to be cut out and replaced and the shipwrights wouldn't even be able to start caulking for another two days. Oh, yes, a wonderful job. Thanks to his mistress, hundreds of people were now stranded on Cressia at the mercy of Azan's thugs until reinforcements arrived from the garrison at Pula, two maybe three days down the line. Claudia hoped the dolphin was grateful.

'Whatever you want to discuss, old man, it doesn't need your hand resting there when you say it.'

'Sorry.'

'Or there.'

Volcar let out a wheezy chuckle. 'Can't blame a fellow for wanting to recapture his youth.'

'Tell me when and where he escaped, and I'll send out a search party for you.' Claudia wedged three large cushions between herself and him, and sat back to enjoy the ride. She had a feeling it was going to be bumpy in more ways than one. 'What did you want to talk about?' she asked.

'The will, of course.' He smacked his gums in derision. 'Only two things matter when you get to my age, gel, health and the future. Well, I'm as robust as I was when I was fifty, but I need to know what's going to happen to me now Leo's dead.'

'If it's your fortune you're wanting told, try asking Shamshi.'

Volcar snorted. 'Don't trust that smarmy git any further than I trust that other bunch of poofs. Something rum about the lot of them, if you ask me, but that ain't the point. You have the ear of that young whippersnapper from Rome. What's he found in Leo's will?'

'Let me see if I've got this right? Your nephew was discovered less than six hours ago skewered like a scallop on the atrium door.. and all you're worried about is what he's left you?'

'Who said he was my nephew?'

'Silly me. I assumed that when he called you "uncle", it was because you were his uncle.'

'Clan breeds like swamp flies,' the old man retorted. 'Find me an aristocrat who isn't related to another and I'll find you laughter in Hades. Leo? I think I was his great-uncle by a second marriage or something, but the boy had no blood of mine, I assure you.' He spat out the side of the litter. 'None of my kin would swindle an old man out of his life savings.'

Janus, Croesus, Leo. How many other people have you 'borrowed' from in your obsession for heirs? And what the hell did it matter whether the atrium had pillars of marble — or stone?

'Leo would have paid you back,' she told Volcar.

Damn you, Jason, damn you to hell, for leaving so much business unfinished.

'Bollocks,' Volcar said. 'D'you really think that with just a few paltry sacks of olives and a couple of barrels of rough wine, this was enough to repay Lydia, Silvia, me, everyone else he'd diddled out of whatever money he could?'

'You're forgetting the rose-grower's dowry.' But niggles were starting to multiply.

'Still don't get it, do you, gel?' Volcar said, scratching at the parchment-thin skin of his cheek. 'Unless Leo made provision for me, which I doubt, I have nowhere to go and no money to pay my way if I did. The bastard's thrown me to the wolves and now you know why I don't give a bugger about him or how he died. I have my own future to look to.'

Malice twisted the air inside the drapes. So much bitterness from such a small, shrivelled shell, so much venom and self-centred spite. Or was it? For a man like Volcar, for whom life is no less precious despite his advanced age, fear for the future could easily become magnified out of proportion.

Besides, Leo wasn't the type to coolly swindle an old man out of his last days of comfort, any more than he intended to cheat his sister-in-law and Claudia was certain that he'd been equally determined to do right by Lydia, too. I'm not quite the bastard you think. Magnus isn't the man for my wife, he's out of her class and in more ways than one. I'm taking no chances, Qus, post six men round my wife's house. Did that sound like a man who threw old men and ex-wives to the wolves?

He'd made no bones that if Lydia had given him a child, divorce would not have entered his mind. The house he'd built for her out on the point, small and stone-built, had an air of impermanence about it, suggesting that the instant funds were in Lydia's dowry she would be repaid, allowing her to return to Rome where, still a handsome woman in her thirties, she would have no trouble hooking a second husband for herself. Wasn't it more likely that Leo had brought Volcar to the Villa Arcadia so that the old boy could wallow in luxury until he was able to repay the debt?

Which was when?

And with what?

Hot-headed as he was, Leo wasn't stupid. He knew damn well he'd been living beyond his means, fully understood the implications that his estate income was insufficient to repay his creditors.

'You're talking to the wrong woman,' Claudia said, tapping on the frame for the bearers to set the litter down. 'It's Silvia whose cosy with your young whippersnapper from Rome, not me.'

Rheumy eyes shot her a sharp glance. 'Think that's a love match, d'you, gel?'

'Volcar, their fate is written in the stars.'

He's Scorpio. She's desperate.

'Y'know, I like having you around. You liven things up, make me feel young again.'

'That wasn't young, you randy old sod, that was my thigh.'

Volcar roared with laughter until his thin chest was wracked with coughs. 'Can't blame the old boy for trying,' he puffed.

'No one is more trying than you, you randy old bugger.'

Claudia alighted from the litter and shook her skirts. 'Don't worry about the future, Volcar. Everyone knows you'll die at the age of a hundred and twenty in bed. Run through by a jealous lover.'

Claudia was just debating whether to get Junius to include one or two of the smaller items of Leo's silver plate in her luggage as well, when a tall shadow fell over the grass where she was sitting. Bugger. She'd rather hoped to have seen the last of the Security Police on this particular island.

'Come with me to the bath house,' the shadow said.

'What kind of a girl do you take me for?' she asked. 'I always insist on at least dinner first.'

'I'll make a note of that,' the shadow said, grinning. 'But for now, perhaps you'd just humour me?'

'Why? Isn't it funny enough, suckering me into coming out here?'

'Mildly,' he said. 'But I knew you'd forgive me once you arrived.'

'Sorry to disappoint you, Orbilio, but Cressia's far too quiet for my exotic tastes. Nothing ever happens — or hadn't you noticed?'

'You could always try doping a donkey to liven things

'Up.'

Claudia had almost forgotten. The more urbane, the more dangerous …

'I'd only make an ass of myself,' she said. 'What's so special about this place, anyway?'

Outside the domed bath house, its white stucco walls blinding in the sunshine and the heat shimmering its red-tiled roof, Orbilio began pacing back and forth. One-two-three-four-five paces back, one-two-three-four-five paces forward, repeat. It took a moment before Claudia realized he wasn't hallucinating on the fresh paint. He was working out where Jason had been standing when he threw his spears. So he knew about them as well, did he? Even in grief, he functioned on a different level that man.

Excepting the bits in his loin cloth.

'In itself, there's nothing remarkable about the bath house ' he said, passing into the vestibule. 'Like the rest of the villa it's been built to the highest of standards.'

A steam room, a hot pool, a plunge pool, dressing rooms plus a room to house the hot and cold water cisterns had been built around an open-air gymnasium which, on any other day, would be filled with slaves playing handball in their break, wrestling, boxing, or working out with the dumb-bells. Inside, soaring arches were covered in opulent frescoes. Statues of the gods, twice the height of a man, stood in niches. The mosaics boasted some of the most complex designs Claudia had ever seen.

'I've always maintained that men are like floors,' she said, tapping her toe on Cupid's mosaic arrow. 'Lay 'em right and you can walk all over them.' She smiled sweetly up at Orbilio. 'But of course, you'd know that, wouldn't you, having spent the afternoon in Silvia's bedroom.'

His neck coloured. 'Don't start,' he growled. 'Just don't start, all right. What you heard back there-'

'Wasn't remotely of interest, Orbilio. I don't give a toss who you marry.'

'Mother of Tarquin! You heard that, too?'

Indigestion. That wretched lamb had given her indigestion. Claudia rubbed at the pain in her chest, but obstinately the pain wouldn't budge.

Orbilio exhaled slowly. 'Look, I'm really sorry — '

You will be, stuck with that icy bitch.

'- that you found out this way.'

They say eavesdroppers never hear anything to their own good.

'I ought to have told you right from the beginning-'

'Sorry, Orbilio, but you're mistaking me for someone who's interested.'

Marching back across the paved yard, Claudia rubbed harder at the pain in her chest and thought, strange. She hadn't touched the sacrificial roast. Pleurisy, then, not indigestion.

'Claudia, please.' Strong hands closed round her wrists, she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. As she inhaled, it tasted of mint on the back of her tongue. 'We've known each other a long time, shared so many adventures.' His voice was barely a rasp. 'I'm not a fool, Claudia; neither are you. Don't insult either of us by pretending there's nothing between us, because there is. God knows there is.'

Someone had squeezed the breath from her body. Taken the bones from her legs. Pleurisy, right?

'You're right, Marcus, I can't deny it.' Was that pathetic croak hers? 'There is something between us.' Shaking her wrists free, she saw that his pupils were black and that a pulse beat at the side of his temple.

'Say it,' he whispered.

The earth seemed to spin, suck her down, she wanted to cry, to laugh, to be somewhere — anywhere — else. She wanted to die. Die in a sandalwood heaven.

'For gods' sake, Claudia, say it.'

'Very well.' She closed her eyes. Dredged up every ounce of her strength. 'I'll tell you exactly what's between us, Marcus. It's.. '

'Yes?'

Claudia swallowed. 'It's a dumb-bell. Someone left it behind after they'd worked out in this yard, and now if you'll excuse me.' She stepped over the weight. 'I have some vineyards to visit.'