Sour Grapes

Nine

Dawn broke rosy and soft, bathing the vines in its warm rose-pink glow and turning the gnarled black stems to cochineal. Between the rows, hoopoes hopped, their black and white crests erect in courtship, while foxes slunk home and kestrels scythed the air in search of voles. High in the elms that supported the vines, dormice snuggled into a ball, while owls closed sleepy eyes beside their fluffy nestlings. Claudia envied the dormice their dreams. After the events of yesterday evening, she had not slept a wink and her shoulders were stiff from anxiety.

Bad luck begets back luck. (Larentia)

The forces of the supernatural surround each of us, my child. I am merely their instrument. (Candace)

Hard as she tried, Claudia had not been able to convince herself that the soft brush of a hand against her arm was imagination. Claudia, my dove. Or that gentle pat on her head. I've never left you, not for a minute.

Not only do the spirits hear in the dark. It would seem that they also can see…

Do you see weevils on any of these vines? Larentia had snapped. Has the bailiff reported any signs of rust or blight? All my spells work, Candace said.

Strolling beneath the dangling branches, Claudia ran her fingers over the sprouting leaves and was once again struck by how hard these vines had to work. They didn't generate leaf until May, and in the six months before the leaves fell they had to deal with two sessions of hard pruning, flowers, get themselves pollinated and absorb sufficient moisture and sun to swell the grapes into juicy ripe bunches that could be trodden into juicy ripe wine. Oh, yes, they were tough little soldiers. To ensure their roots retained adequate moisture, it wasn't unknown for them to burrow a good sixty feet down — it's a wonder they didn't tickle the heads of the inhabitants of Hades. And isn't it funny how everything keeps coming back to the dead?

Claudia lifted her eyes to the horizon, where the first warming rays of Apollo were painting the sky the same hue as a kingfisher's breast and dabbing it with puffs of white cotton.

'Looking round,' a baritone murmured, 'you see what inspired the vibrancy and colour in Etruscan art and made them such a happy people.'

Dammit, this was another reason she hadn't slept one bloody wink.

'Can't imagine what they had to be happy about, Orbilio. There's sod all for miles except hills, fields and trees and a girl can hardly hear herself think for the racket.'

'I think you might find there's a technical term for that racket.' He pursed his lips and nodded solemnly. 'In the trade, it's known as birdsong.'

Correction, she thought, it was called naked ambition. You could hear it screaming through the air, pulsing up from the ground, proclaiming itself from the treetops, or why else throw her list of crimes back in her face? The truth was, the law had finally caught up with her and since she had no armour against this handsome patrician — bribes were pointless and any little-girl-lost approach would be futile — she might as well succumb to the inevitable. Then bribe and sweet-talk her jailers to freedom!

'So what next? Do you want to clap manacles round my hands and feet here and now?'

Dammit, this was no laughing matter.

'I appreciate the offer,' he spluttered, 'and there's nothing I'd like more — but don't you think we should at least have dinner first? Get to know one another a little better?'

How many times did she have to keep telling herself? He uses urbanity and charm as his bait.

'So.' He cleared the laughter from his throat, but the light that danced in his eye was more stubborn. 'Was last night's marital reunion all you'd hoped it would be?'

'Funnily enough, thank you, it was.'

'Hm.'

He followed as she continued to check the sprouting vines, their leaves as bright as freshly dyed linen, and as the sun climbed, the warble of finches and robins rose with it, while on the ground mice and shrews rustled among the thousands of wild flowers that flourished in this cultivated paradise to form a kaleidoscope of orange marigolds, red pheasant's eye, purple alkanet and lilac campanula.

'Impressive performance last night,' he murmured.

The forces of the supernatural surround each of us, my child. I am merely their instrument.

'Unfortunately, Candace wasn't faking.'

'No indeed. That distinctive sound her body made as it dropped to the floor? You can't feign something like that.'

'The traditional dead weight. Yes, I know.' Claudia nodded glumly, because up until the moment the lights went out in the dining hall, she'd been convinced that Candace was a hen who clucked loudly but laid no eggs. However, since Candace had taken no part in last night's proceedings… 'Thalia may have overreacted when the lights came back on, but I'm not sure I blame her.'

'Me neither. You saw the depth of Candace's breathing, the beads of sweat on her brow, the time it took to bring her round.'

And that was the problem. No charlatan can fake that kind of thick speech, much less those rolling eyes. That faint had been genuine. As had the smooth skin on the inside of her forearm. Not so much as a scratch…

'Friends of yours?' Marcus asked, squinting across to the paddock to where donkeys chomped on the dew-laden grass, rabbits chased each other in circles and two silhouettes performed elegant gymnastics.

'Candace's groom and maidservant,' Claudia explained. 'According to Larentia, they're Hebrew twins called Judith and Ezekiel that Candace picked up on her travels, and frankly they make my flesh creep.'

'Handsome couple.'

'Exactly. Well into their twenties, so why aren't they married? And watch how they synchronize every movement, slowly, methodically repeating them until they're perfect.' Again, she was struck by how close their foreheads were when they stopped, and even at this distance she could almost hear their irritating whisper-whisper-whisper on the still morning air. 'They behave more like professional dancers than servants, and they don't mix with anyone else; they don't even talk to anyone else. Admit it, Marcus, that's odd.'

'Not necessarily.' He paused. Spiked his fingers through his thick mop of dark hair. 'Occasionally one hears about twins who grow exceptionally close, even inventing their own secret language. To you and me it's… well, unnatural I suppose is the word, but often this bonding comes about as the result of childhood trauma, and you have to remember that to them it's perfectly normal for two minds and bodies to act as one.'

'That's my point. If Judith and Ezekiel have two brains, two hearts, two sets of organs and limbs but only the one personality, imagine what that personality is capable of.'

'Now who's overreacting?'

She shrugged. 'Blame the… what did you call that thing?'

'Birdsong.'

'Yes, well, blame that if I'm overreacting, but I'm telling you I don't trust those two an inch.'

His shadow kept pace with hers as they reached the end of one line and turned down the next. 'Is Larentia really going to marry Darius?' he asked eventually.

'Apparently so.'

'What do you know about him?'

'Not a thing, but don't worry. That'll change soon enough.'

'It might change a bit faster with this.' He fished out a scroll from the depths of his patrician tunic. 'It arrived yesterday evening,' he said. 'One of the reasons why I was late, as a matter of fact, but there's no point in having a battery of informants and despatch riders at one's disposal without making use of them, and… well, since I was in the area, and what with your mother-in-law's relationship with Darius being quite a talking point locally and… er, because I happen to know you, I um, thought you might be interested in what we could dig up on our friend with the voice like a rusty horse razor.'

More fish stinking out the air, she thought. The Security Police had better things to dig for than a bit of hot gossip. Orbilio was up to something, the bastard.

Claudia took the scroll. 'How thoughtful.'

'I'm a thoughtful person.'

'Modest with it. '

'Modest Cornelius Orbilio was my nickname at school.'

'Thoughtful, modest, are there no end to your talents?'

'Wait till you see me at tiddlywinks.'

Claudia flipped open the scroll and read, then re-read and, just to make certain, read the report again, but the words on the page didn't alter. Blah, blah, blah, it boiled down to the bald fact that Darius Amarantus Tubero, patrician, forty-nine years of age, ex-this, ex-that, but currently a horse-breeder in Salernium, widowed twenty-two years but no heirs, was rolling in money.

'But he's exactly who he says he is!'

'You sound surprised.'

'In my experience, Orbilio, if something seems too good to be true, then it is.'

No breeder of racing flesh of his age, with reasonable looks and with gold pieces coming out of his ears, was so lost and so lonely that he couldn't find companionship with a more compatible partner, because Larentia's narrow existence and lack of education hardly made her an intellectual match and at twenty years his senior she wasn't going to fulfil him in bed, either.

'Maybe instead of worrying about Darius being who he claims to be,' Orbilio said as he followed the antics of a squirrel scampering between the overlapping branches, 'you might want to ask yourself how best to get round the problem of him assuming control of your estate once they tie the knot.'

'If there are any knots to be tied, it'll be a noose and I'll tie it, and quite honestly, Marcus, throttling Larentia will be an unqualified pleasure.'

His chuckle echoed round the valley. 'There you go again.

Inviting me to whisk out the imperial handcuffs when we barely know one another! Suppose we rectify that situation by having dinner tonight?'

'Splendid idea, Orbilio. I'll eat at my house and you can dine with Rex over at his.'

'I'll take that as a maybe, but with your wits that sharp, I can see you working out how Candace did it, what Darius's game is, what's behind the run of bad luck and why Lars married Eunice before the moon combs her lovely red hair. Oh, and I wouldn't put it past you to solve the political crisis in Mauritania while you're about it.'

'What political crisis in Mauritania?'

They walked on in silence, while, in the distance, the doves in the pigeon house flexed their collective wings over the villa, coils of blue wood smoke spiralled up from the forge, and steam rose like dragon's breath through the vents of the bath house. Slaves small as ants busied themselves with the morning tasks of laundry and food preparation, cows trotted out of the milking shed happy and mooing, and gardeners fetched pails to top up the troughs.

'So why aren't you in Gaul?' she asked, and it was interesting to see that he wasn't wearing a wedding band. Yet. The social pressures on such a post would be strong, and she wondered why it mattered that she was relieved. 'And don't give me any of that crap about being Rex's nephew, Orbilio, it won't wash.'

'Funnily enough I am, in a way. Rex was a close friend of my late father's, and I did used to call him Uncle on the few occasions I saw him when I was small. The thing is, Claudia…'

He stopped and leaned his weight against an elm. Tall and stately, it was one of several planted in perfect ranks and squares to take the supports for the heavy vines. Its military precision seemed appropriate for the subject in question.

'Hard to believe under all that bluster, but Rex was one of our finest generals. He led enormously successful campaigns in Galatia, Thrace and Iberia, and it was his masterful tactics that got the Fourteenth out of that mess on the Rhine, where they were surrounded by hostile tribes on all sides.'

'Dare I suggest that he shouldn't have got them into it in the first place?'

'Not his doing,' Orbilio said. 'The previous incumbent was ill. Dying of a tumour as it happens and doing the best that he could, but the bottom line was he led his men into an ambush and Rex got them out, with precious few casualties into the bargain. Over the course of his career, Rex won several crowns and he earned every last one.'

'But?'

'No buts. Here he is in Tuscany, with his olive groves and pastures, where he intended to grow old with his wife.'

'Except she died twenty years ago.' Claudia hadn't forgotten the lump in the old soldier's throat and the tenderness in his voice as her ghost spoke to him in the dining hall just last night.

'She did, and I suppose that it was because he was on campaign most of the time that Rex never married again.'

'I know it's expected of you aristocrats to keep remarrying every time you mislay a wife, but perhaps the founding of one dynasty was sufficient for Rex?'

Marcus chuckled. 'In some cases, perhaps, but not his. You see, his wife bore him five daughters but only one son, a boy called Hadrian, and trust me, Hadrian is not going to continue the ancestral line.'

'Is he ill?'

'Not exactly.' He folded his arms across his chest. 'Don't forget I've known Hadrian all my life. He's only three years younger than me, and whilst you'd never accuse us of being friends, I know him well enough, I think, to judge him incapable of killing Lichas.'

'The toy-maker?' Claudia goggled. 'The boy whose body was washed up on Terrence's land?'

'One and the same.'

'Why on earth would the son of a wealthy, respected general be the prime suspect in an impoverished wood-carver's murder?'

'Because they were lovers,' he said, 'and the same attitude to homosexuality that applies in Rome applies to the whole of the Empire.'

'We live in a world where men are men and women are drudges. Yes, thank you, I'm already aware of that.'

'If you're a drudge, then I'm a drury.' Not much of a pun, but the best he could manage this hour of the morning. He prised himself away from the elm tree and ambled slowly beneath the overhead vines. 'Right now, public opinion sides with Lichas's sister, Rosenna, who's convinced Hadrian murdered her brother. Quite honestly, it's only a matter of time before the local authorities move in to arrest him, and the only way I can prevent that from happening is to find out who really killed Lichas.'

'Nepotism obviously taking priority over the scores of conspiracies fermenting merrily away in south-west Gaul.' Claudia plucked a sprig of mint and rubbed it between her fingers.

'The importance of false accusations can never be underestimated,' he said sanctimoniously.

'Ooh, can you hear that, Marcus? That bellowing in the distance?'

'No,' he said, craning his neck to listen.

'Funny, but I could have sworn I heard bull. Carry on.'

Orbilio ran his hand round his jaw and wondered what the bloody hell he was supposed to say. Admit that he'd been missing her so bloody badly that he was prepared to risk his whole career just to see her? That during one of his regular trips to Rome, the news shot round the family like a fireball about Hadrian allegedly stabbing his lover and Marcus had snatched this as his chance to be close to her? That while he was here, it came to his ears about Larentia and her younger suitor and, worried Darius was a conman, investigated him on Claudia's behalf? He'd jump into a vat ofboiling oil first.

'According to Rosenna,' he said tetchily, 'Lichas was an honest, helpful, earnest young man without an enemy in the world, who was deeply in love with his patrician boyfriend.'

'Like I said, if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.'

'You can't blame a grief-stricken girl for idealizing her baby brother as he lies on his funeral bier. It's just ironic that the same pain that paints Lichas in such glorious colours also prompted her to blurt out that Hadrian, being so ashamed of the relationship that he only ever slipped away on the quiet, was planning to finish the affair, but when Lichas threatened public exposure, decided to silence his lover's mouth in the most decisive way possible.'

'Honest, helpful and earnest on one side of the coin. A blackmailing cad on the other.'

'People who have been hurt can often be both. We've all said and done things in the heat of the moment that we regret.'

'So why not Hadrian?'

'Claudia, you haven't met him or you wouldn't be suggesting it, but take it from me, that boy's so wet, you could wring him out with your bare hands. He has neither the guts or the strength to pierce a stomach wall with his dagger, then yank it out and drag a writhing, gurgling, terrified Lichas across the water meadows before pitching him into the river.' Marcus blew out his cheeks. 'The wound was undoubtedly fatal, but stomach wounds are messy, painful and slow. Lichas drowned in the end.'

A horrible, horrible way to die, and no wonder Rosenna was bitter.

'If there was a storm that night, wouldn't it have washed away any bloodstains? How do you know he wasn't killed by the river and simply fell in?'

'Imagine you were arranging to meet someone in that kind of weather. Wouldn't you choose a place where there's shelter? Exactly. And your trusty investigator found a pool of blood in the lee of a large yew below the hill in the bend in the river.'

No wonder they'd promoted him, Claudia thought. The man thinks of everything. Including forgery, tax evasion, fraud, theft…

'You know what strikes me as odd?' she said, picking up a handful of pebbles and tossing them one at a time at the wicker fence that enclosed the vineyard to prevent deer browsing on the tender new shoots. 'Everywhere you look at the moment, it's either toy boys, playboys, lady boys She paused in her aim. 'All boys, though, have you noticed? All boys.'

'Yes I have, and I'm thinking of one seventeen-year-old boy in particular,' he said grimly. 'One who is very much dead.'

'Really?' She hit the target with her very last pebble. 'Strangely enough, I was thinking of old Etha who went searching for her grandson the night of the storm. Tages was seventeen years old, as well.' Claudia turned her face to the hills. 'And that boy remains very much missing.'