Sour Grapes

Seventeen

There you are, you poor thing.' A sandy mop tutted sympathetically over the top of the topiary. 'Lars said he'd spotted you entering the maze by yourself, but that was simply ages ago. Come, my dear.' Terrence offered his arm. 'I'll show you a sneaky way out.'

Claudia was about to point out that she wasn't actually lost, when he reached down and suddenly one of the neatly clipped laurels turned a ninety-degree right-angle to reveal a gap in the hedge for them to pass through.

'This particular tree stands in a tub that I've buried,' he laughed, 'but sssh! Let's keep this between you and me, because I would hate word getting round that I cheat.'

T rather got the impression you cheat on a lot of things. Loopholes in the law, I believe you called it.'

Tuscany's favourite playboy twizzled the pot back into position and brushed the dirt from his hands with a carefree gesture. 'The State decrees each citizen must pay their taxes, Claudia. They don't stipulate that they have to be fleeced in the process. A clever accountant finds ways and means, just as you and I circumvent the law when it comes to maintaining our freedom. Or am I being too blunt?'

'Not at all.' Claudia was comfortable with straight-talking men. Especially thirty-eight-year-old bachelors who owned half of Italy and knew how to throw a good party.

'Do you… er… fancy a game of featherball?' he asked, his large green eyes narrowing in shrewdness.

She followed his glance to where teams were being picked and saw that, innocuous though the game was, it was scheduled to take place between the piggy-back jousting and a boxing contest, both of which were high-profile crowd pullers.

'Perhaps you could set aside a little time to talk privately?' he'd suggested, when they bumped into each other at the market. 'There's a little business matter I would like to discuss.' With a gentle clink, the coin dropped, and if Claudia could have purred like a cat, then she would have.

'Opposite sides?' she said.

'But of course.'

'Then you might as well congratulate me now, Terrence. I've never lost at featherball yet.'

A lie, but a psychological advantage never hurt, and when asked which team she wanted to join, red or blue, there was no contest. She'd take the fit townsfolk any day over roundshouldered lawyers, but even then her team was still short.

'Two more,' Terrence yelled. 'Any volunteers?'

'Oi'll join.'

Orson lumbered over from where he'd been watching the boxing and Claudia breathed a sigh of relief. Thank Jupiter he'd found better things to do with his hands than carve toys in Lichas's workshop!

'What about you, Rosenna?' he called. 'You in?'

Was Claudia going deaf? 'Did you say Rosenna?'

'Aye. It weren't easy, marm, getting her to come here tonight,' Orson admitted, limbering up for the game. 'But there's a time to grieve, Oi told her, and a time to mourn, and melancholy dishonours the dead. Come along, Rosie.' Grabbing the wrist of a po-faced redhead, he dragged her into the middle. 'Let's show them Blue Bloods what stuffing us poor folks is made of.'

Something changed in Rosenna's eyes as she weighed up the opposing team. A sharpness took over, banishing the indifference. 'Them and us,' she murmured to no one in particular, kilting up her fringed skirt to the knee. 'Och, we'll bloody show them, Orson. We'll show them bastards right enough.'

'You were right,' Terrence wheezed half an hour later. 'Claudia Seferius, I do indeed congratulate you. Blue were well and truly trounced by the finish.'

'We had a secret weapon,' she puffed back, watching Rosenna merge back into the crowd, wiping the sweat from her face.

'Yes, who was that redhead?' he asked. 'I've never seen such passion in a ball game, especially from a woman! She went for every damned shot whether she had a hope of reaching it or not… I say, wine?'

'I doubt I could whimper,' Claudia quipped back, refreshing herself with a glass of cool dry white whilst wondering how that spangled Arab over there managed to swallow a whole sword and not give himself indigestion. As her eyes ranged over the dark hills all around, she remembered just how much land Terrence owned. 'You do a lot for the locals, don't you?'

'Philanthropy is all part of the aristocratic process,' he said, fanning air down his sweat-sodden tunic. 'When one inherits land, one inherits obligations, and it strikes me that change is moving across the Empire at such a pace that it's in danger of overstretching itself. Like most other cultures, the Etruscans embrace change, but evolution needs its own tempo, Claudia. As long as Rome and Tuscany have opportunities to mingle at functions like this, the ties of friendship remain strong.'

'And Fufluns?'

'Same thing. Providing people see that they haven't had to give up everything, they're happy to adapt to those things they're required to.'

'Lars thinks they'll be calling their wine god Bacchus before long.'

'Not while I'm in charge,' Terrence said firmly. 'People talk about the temple being on my land, but more accurately it's the access to the temple that's mine. And if I continue to allow them to use the road, what they do inside is their own business, not Rome's. Lars and I work very closely on joint Etruscan issues. It's something we both feel strongly about and… Ah, Claudia, I'd very much like you to meet-'

'Sorry, old chap, can't stop.' A small round man with a small round face kept on jogging. 'I'm in the Cheese Merchants' Relay.' He wagged a jaunty baton to prove it. 'Catch you later!'

'That is — or rather was,' Terrence corrected with a chuckle, 'the fellow I've earmarked as Thalia's husband. Decent fellow. Doesn't womanize, doesn't gamble, doesn't take drugs, what more can a girl ask?'

'Choice in the matter?'

His chuckle deepened to laughter. 'Not every woman is like you, Claudia. Believe me, my sister couldn't choose between two identical buns, and I know you think I bully her, and I do, but Thalia needs a steady hand on the tiller.'

'Her seas do seem a little choppy.'

'Choppy? The silly bitch is even convinced she murdered her husband, which is absolute bollocks; he suffered a massive apoplexy at the hot springs and it served him bloody well right. Doctors told him to lose weight, drink less and exercise more, but he didn't take a blind bit of notice.'

The hot springs, the hot springs, always the hot springs.

'So why is Thalia so certain that she killed him?'

'Because they were always arguing, those two, and I know you must find it hard to believe when she appears scatterbrained and simpering now, but my little sister's extremely highly strung.'

'Is that why you give her pills?'

'There's a poppy that grows wild in Sumeria. I'm told you extract the latex from the unripe capsules and it calms the nerves.'

'Whilst turning her into a gibbering idiot.'

'Better an irritating fool than a self-confessed murderess,' Terrence snapped. 'I've worked hard to establish a rapport with the people of this town.' His voice softened to a chuckle. 'I told you once that I have enough glory to last me a lifetime, but no man can be too popular, Claudia. All joking apart, though, Thalia's claims are bullshit, but they're the very sort of wild declarations that attract scandal, and shit sticks. I will not have my sister undermine the trust I've established with these people. Like Caesar's wife, she too must be above reproach. Now, unless I miss my guess, that's the three-legged race about to kick off He shot Claudia a warm grin. 'How about you and I tying our legs together and cementing our business arrangement?'

'My left to your right good enough?'

'Perfect,' he said with a wink. ft ft ft

As dawn broke through the bright new leaves of the chestnuts and the grove filled with the song of the birds, Etha knelt on the bare soil behind her stone hut staring into the east. Through the trees, on the far side of the valley, rheumy eyes could just about make out the first of Cautha's fiery rays lighting Master Terrence's enormous white villa. All through the night, she had watched with empty eyes the flicker of torchlights burning around it and, as she'd sat staring out into the blackness of the valley, she'd pictured the folk of Mercurium laughing and drinking, dicing and feasting. Aye, he laid on a good spread, did Master Terrence. But the townspeople's happiness was like a vice round her chest, crushing hope from her heart until every last drop drained away.

She had spent the past week praying to the gods of the sunrise, but the gods of the sunrise were powerful gods. They'd be too busy answering the prayers of rich men and priests to bother with an old woman like her. So she'd turned to the deities of good fortune to the north, for fortune is notoriously capricious and rash, and who knows what games the gods might be playing this time on mortals? But as the old woman waited, she'd received no signs from the north wind. What little breeze there was blew warm from the south, and Etha took that as an omen. With tears dribbling down her wrinkled cheeks, she lifted shaking hands to the sky.

'O wolf-headed Aita, who makes thy home at the edge of the Universe and presideth over the Dead, I offer this wreath of myrtle.' Myrtle was the death tree. Aita would understand. 'But before I open my heart and let Deathmist enter, I beg thee to speak to the gods of the south, that they might be persuaded to give up my grandson.'

If he's dead, let the earth no longer conceal his body. Let Horta, Fufluns and the rest of the gods who dwell therein surrender his corpse that Etha might send Tages to the Afterlife with the proper rites, and though it weren't in the Order of the Cosmos for the old to bury the young, it weren't right, neither, that his soul be denied entry to the Hall of Purification. Despite the pain in her arthritic bones, Etha bent low to the damp soil and kissed it.

'If my boy's dead, as I accept he must be, at least grant him a resting place where the Guardians of the Graves can watch over his immortal soul,' she begged the earth. 'I ask this for Tages, thou understands. Not myself. But I beseech thee, with all my heart I beseech thee, don't deny the poor lad.'

The earth gods were good gods. Even as she was reaching for her stout laurel stick to straighten up, she heard footsteps on the path. The footsteps were heavy. Etha turned and saw Philo, her neighbour, and though his face told his story, it was not at his face that Etha was staring. It was at the blanket-covered bundle he held in his arms.

The heavy rains of the night before had washed away the earth from the boy's shallow grave.

The Guardians had a place to stand watch, after all.