Sour Grapes

Nineteen

You had to hand it to these patricians, Claudia thought as she made her way up the steep, cobbled alleyway. They take their obligations seriously.

On the one hand, you could argue that six sweet pancakes would test anyone's digestive system and it served him bloody well right, being sick in the fishpond. She turned left into Saturn Street then right at the fountain, where a bored-looking mule slurped noisily while its rider adjusted its pack. Unfortunately, there had been a pain in Orbilio's eyes that suggested throwing up hadn't been payback for greed, and there was only one explanation. Marcus Conscientious Orbilio had been so shaken by Rex's betrayal of his class that it had made him physically ill.

At the public ovens she paused to admire the gorgon's head that had been painted on the doors, with a curse underneath on any nosey parkers who felt like peering inside and ruining the rising process.

In fact, Orbilio had looked so utterly wretched that she'd been tempted to console him by reminding him that it was his idea to thwart Darius with remarriage, and hoping that by congratulating him on his cracking idea it would cheer Old Green Features up. However, it's not easy making polite conversation to a chap who's feeding six sweet pancakes to the carp, so she took another look at her betrothal ring (Terrence was no slouch on the gem front), gave it a rub for good luck and came straight up here to Mercurium. And oh, ho, ho, who's this, then, gawping at the goldsmith's intricate skill?

'You really shouldn't wear so much jewellery at any one time,' Claudia murmured in Candace's ear. 'One of these days, you're going to get robbed, and for that amount of gold the thieves'll mean business.'

'No one is going to murder me for my money,' she replied in her rich, velvety, dead-communing voice.

'You can see that in your crystal?'

'Any would-be thief is aware of my powers.' In the sunlight, her oiled skin shone like the ebony wood of her native Kush, her beauty enhanced by wine lees rubbed into her lips and cheeks, turning them tawny, while a blackcurrant pigment on her eyelids added to the stunning effect. 'They know that if they touch me, their skin will blister and their eyeballs will burn, they will die in torment as their bowels corrode and their livers explode, and my curse will follow them beyond the grave, where they will be consumed for eternity in hell fire.'

'But I'll bet it hurts, lugging so much metal around every day.'

'No more than a warrior going into battle.'

'Except warriors don't fight every day.'

Glittering eyes bored into her. 'Gold oozes out of the rocks of the Nile. Gold is my birthright, the symbol of Kush, and cursed is he who attacks my country.' Candace turned into the shop. 'I will walk the winds in pursuit of the blasphemer,' she hissed over her shoulder, 'and see his wickedness punished.'

Good for you, girl, good for you. You keep up the charade, but you're not fooling me.

Claudia checked her directions. First on the left past the shield-maker's shop and you can't miss it, the apothecary had said. It's the only inn on Juniper Square with vermilion lintels. At the time she'd thanked him for such clear directions, but what the apothecary had failed to mention was that every Etruscan tavern decked their lintels with greenery. She had to walk round the entire square, stretching her neck like a giraffe to determine paint colour until finally, under a welter of pine (for healthy lungs) she spotted a hint of vermilion.

'Milady?'

If the landlord was surprised to find a young unchaperoned wine merchant's widow strolling round his premises admiring walls decorated in bold, earthy colours depicting scenes of Fuflunic delights, he hid it well. But then, for a man whose cart's axle had broken, costing him not only its replacement but thirty gallons of wine after three amphorae had smashed — as well as his stocks turning to vinegar overnight — she suspected very little interested the poor man beyond financial survival. Which, looking around, seemed decidedly doubtful. Claudia was the only customer in the place and the flowers planted in pots outside the door only acted as a magnet for dogs.

'A large jug of your best vintage wine, and a hot pie if you have one.'

Ordinarily he was a big man, a jolly man, the life and soul of the place, she suspected. Today his eyes sat in black hollows and the skin hung slack round his jaw.

'Reckon I can do you the pie, ma'am. Wine went off again in the night.'

'All of it?'

He shook his head sadly. 'Fufluns has cursed me, that he has, milady. Don't rightly know why, but I sure do know how, and though I've hung prayer ribbons outside begging him to pass me over — '

And here was her, thinking they were there to add gaiety!

' — and made every offering you can think of to appease Fufluns' wrath, his curse descended upon me while I made revel last night, and Tarchis says if the gods decide vengeance, vengeance cannot be avoided.'

Good old Tarchis. Nothing like a dyed-in-the-wool zealot to lift flagging spirits.

'Then I'll have a jug of your best vintage water, landlord. And don't forget that hot pie!'

'You sure?' The tavern-keeper looked at her as though he'd been covered in spots and she'd catch a bout if she stayed another five seconds.

'Absolutely.'

Claudia pulled out a small, round stool from under one of the tables and sat down. Many of the wall paintings seemed so achingly familiar — satyrs chasing maenads, maenads chasing satyrs, all amid much cymbal clashing and upending of goblets — that she wondered whether Bacchus mightn't be another Etruscan trophy that had been off to Rome in triumph.

'I was going through my husband's old papers when I came across notes of a trial that took place several years ago, and… well, Gaius wrote about you in such glowing terms that I simply had to come and meet you myself

'Me?' For a big man, he turned ever so coy. 'Gaius Seferius wrote about me?'

As he rattled off to stoke the wood-fired oven in his kitchen, he was beaming from ear to ear and she knew then it was just a matter of time.

'Look what I found!' He returned with a flagon painted with garish purple grapes that he'd filled to the point of overflowing. 'It's white wine, milady, but I suddenly remembered squirrelling it away in the corner, even though there's not much call for white round these parts. But I've just broke the seal and tested the quality.' He winked. 'Reckon it's only red wine old Fufluns has a beef with.'

Divine providence? Or a saboteur also failing to notice that particular amphora tucked away in the dark reaches of the cellar?

'Pie'll be along shortly, and I've got herbed chicken legs fried in olive oil… well.' He grinned as his natural bonhomie bubbled back to the surface. 'Not me personal, like! My legs is more hairy!'

He pushed out a plate of relishes to go with the wine. Claudia pushed out a stool for him to join her.

'Gaius spoke very highly of your cheerfulness and wit.' Idly she wondered whether acting was in the blood. 'As he did about your honesty and integrity at Felix's trial.'

'Felix?' The landlord rolled his eyes. 'Now there's a name I never expected to hear again this side of the Styx.'

Claudia poured wine into her glass and filled one for him. 'Treason, the notes said.'

'Aye, though you'd never think it to look at him, ma'am. You'd have taken him for honest as the day was long, but there he was, embezzling funds from the Imperial Treasury, and between you and me, milady, he was lucky to get off with ten years.'

Hear that, Darius? Lucky to get off with ten years.

'Gaius was rather more specific,' she said. '"Guilty as hell" were his words.'

'No question of it, milady.' The landlord leaned his elbow on the table, rested his head on his hand and stretched out his legs to make himself comfortable as he related the story.

Felix, he explained, wasn't from around here. He came from Cosa, which Claudia happened to know well, being the Etruscan port where Seferius wine was still shipped from. The Gaius connection started to fall into place. According to the tavern-keeper, Felix didn't inherit his wealth. He came from a poor but freeborn family and started life as a daytime donkey (which she assumed to mean porter) on the quay down at Cosa, working his way up to become an oysterman, and eventually farming them for a living. Only two other men had ever tried farming oysters, he added, and though Felix's initial efforts off the coast here were none too successful, he discovered that the Bay of Naples was infinitely more conducive to the cultivation of his little molluscs.

Naples. Another cog clicked into place. Naples was the port where Darius shipped out his famous racehorses. No wonder he was so familiar with the south.

'Why would a man who was so successful want to embezzle funds from the Treasury?'

'Search me.' His big shoulders shrugged. 'Guess when you're born with no money, you can't never have enough.'

How very true. 'What I don't understand, though, is why a man born in Cosa and farming oysters in Naples would be tried for treason in Mercurium.'

'Oh, that'd be his marriage, milady.'

The tavern-keeper switched elbows and launched into a reminiscence of Felix's marital history. How he'd married the blacksmith's daughter when he was very young, for the simple reason she told him she was pregnant and he wanted to do the honourable thing by her.

'But she wasn't, I assume?'

No wonder Darius wasn't amused when Claudia cracked that joke about Larentia on market day. Too close to home for comfort, that one!

'False alarm, she said, but people who knew Felix back in them days said he knew straight off he'd been conned. Set out to trap him right from the start, she did, but them marriages never work out. It was a sham from the beginning; he never loved her, and that's why folk believe he worked such long hours. To take his mind off his loveless marriage, because there was never any question of his wife going to live with him in Naples.'

But then, the landlord said, after fifteen years, Felix visited Mercurium on business and here he met Mariana.

'Love at first sight for both of 'em. Soul mates, milady, no other word, and the very first thing Felix did was ride over to Cosa and divorce… cor, what was her name? Ophelia? Emilia? Aurelia! It's all coming back now. Felix divorced Aurelia before you could blink, bought a house here and hardly set foot in Naples again. No one said it was fair on the first wife, but I knew Mariana, milady. Lovely girl. Absolute angel. And a man can't help how he feels, can he? You only get the one life.'

Not if you're a Gaul. They were firm believers in scourging themselves to make it better for their incarnation. Live tough and live miserably, that was their motto. Because when you die you can do it again.

'How did Aurelia take to being usurped?'

'Not a peep out of her, and let's face it, she couldn't have been any happier in her heart than Felix, and you have to remember they was both young still. Pretty girl in her prime with a hefty divorce settlement? Probably the best thing that happened to her in the long run.'

While he broke off to fetch the pie, the hot crispy chicken legs and to refill the wine jug, Claudia wondered what had happened to turn Felix into a monster. Had he still been trapped in a disillusioned marriage, she could have understood bitterness gnawing away down the silver mines. But here he was, the archetypal working-boy-made-good, starting over with a girl who adored him. It didn't make sense. Felix was rich. Felix was happy. Felix was in love. Why risk everything by stealing from His Imperial Majesty's coffers? Burrow into a bank vault, steal your neighbour's money chest, break into a merchant's house and rob him of his valuables, by all means! You get caught, you make restitution, you compensate the victim for any distress, blah-blah-blah, then you spend two years on somewhere like Capri or in Athens in what is supposed to be exile. After which, you come back with a tan, a few new experiences, some good tales to tell, then — hey presto — it's business as usual.

So what inspired Felix to dip his fingers in Imperial funds? Of all people, he would have known that, if he was caught, the State always made an example of the thief — no exceptions — by seizing his assets and sentencing him to the very minimum of ten years' hard labour?

Which was all very interesting and certainly aroused Claudia's curiosity. But went absolutely nowhere towards proving Felix and Darius were one and the same!

'How did you come to be involved at the trial?' she asked, biting into a herb-encrusted drumstick and tasting garlic, parsley, oregano and thyme.

'Me?' The landlord wiped his hands on his canvas apron and rejoined her at the table. 'Saw him taking the money from the Treasury clerk and packing it in his saddlebag. Right under that silver birch there, matter of fact. With the lights from the tavern, they was lit up like a sunrise, them two, but then ifyou're open about your dealings, people tend not to take any notice. Didn't then, to be honest with you, ma'am. It was only later, when the soldiers came asking questions that I remembered seeing them there.'

The crime tumbled out. There was so much gold missing from the Treasury that it was noticed at once. The clerk was arrested before he'd even joined the main road to Rome, and instantly betrayed Felix as the mastermind. Indeed, the horse on which he made his escape was proven to come from Felix's stables and the bulk of the gold was still in Felix's saddlebags when the authorities conducted their search. The clerk also admitted to handing it over outside the tavern, believing, like the inn-keeper, Felix's attestation that the more open one is, the less one is noticed. Except in the end six citizens of unimpeachable character happened to be in the square at the time.

The inn-keeper saw them through his tavern window, no doubt the paper merchant had been returning home after a long day, the brick-maker out buying his wife a birthday present from the goldsmith's for instance, and so on, and so on, and so on…

Claudia cut into the rich partridge pie. 'I can't remember what Gaius wrote about how he recognized Felix. His lantern jaw, was it? His dimpled chin?'

Some other feature that was highly conspicuous to mark him out as separate from Darius?

'Felix? Bless you, ma'am, there wasn't nothing that stood out about him, though there was nothing weak about his face, either.'

Good.

'But he always rode the same sorrel mare, did our Felix, and I suppose, if I was honest, I'd have to say he was a bit of a dandy. Wore quality clothes in the manner of a man used to wearing 'em — '

Like Darius.

' — but wore a gold headband to keep his curls out of his eyes — '

Knew it!

' — and, of course, what did set him out from the crowd was that, unlike most freemen, Felix didn't favour white tunics. Bright blue was his colour. Wanted folk to see he'd risen up through the ranks, and though he'd been promoted to equestrian status like your late husband, Felix only tended to wear his purple-striped tunic on state occasions.'

So a man with a neat Caesar crop, wearing a crisp white linen tunic, dazzling white woollen toga and wearing high patrician boots wouldn't be lumped in the same social class as the johnny-come-lately dandified Felix. Especially if he adopted different mannerisms and gait.

Claudia polished off the partridge pie along with the relishes. Sabotaging the wine would have been easy for anyone committed enough to want to bother. Five earthenware dolia were set in the tavern's stone counters like gigantic toilet seats. Simple matter of dropping the contents of a phial into those during the night, then nipping into the cellar, removing the spigots from the casks, souring that wine, then re-plugging them without leaving a trace. But to plan this, Darius would have had to have been inside this tavern, and twelve years ago was too far back to rely on mere memory…

'In Rome, artisans tend to drink at their various guild houses,' she said. 'Is it the same here?'

'Oh, aye.' The landlord explained that his clientele fell into two types. Shopkeepers and residents of the apartments above them who ate here on a regular basis, and barflies who never left, at least when there was wine to be had! 'Not wishing to sound snobby, ma'am, but that type tend to comprise the lower orders, if you get my drift, or else those fallen from grace, who just drink themselves stupid.'

Damn.

He ambled off to the kitchens and returned with a steaming hot pumpkin tart that he set down with a bang on the table. 'Course, we do get gentry like yourself occasionally.' He sliced it with the same knife that had cut the partridge pie. 'Not often, but it happens.'

'Yes, now you mention it, I do believe Darius said he'd been in here a while back.'

Pine. It was the pine over the lintel that gave him away.

'Do believe you're right, milady.'The landlord nodded sagely. 'Not often, but like I says, it happens. Here, you sure you don't want a piece of this tart? The missus bakes 'em herself.'

'No.' Claudia was too excited to eat. 'No, I don't, but I'll tell you a secret,' she said. 'It's not something I share with everyone, but I've just had a vision.'

'A vision, ma'am?' His face twisted in the manner of a man worried that the partridge was off.

'A vision,' she said. 'And in my vision, I saw Fufluns, and do you know what? He was lifting his curse from your tavern.'

There'll be no more sour wine in this place, my friend. Felix has just met his match.

The first thing that struck Rosenna, returning from shopping, was the smell of freshly carved wood. She hooked her basket over her arm and thought, daft. This was a toy shop! She was used to the prickly sensation at the top of her nose. Well used to the dry, dusty air. All the same though… She swapped the basket to the other arm. The vividness of it caught her right off guard, reminding her of when Lichas sat hunched over his chisels, and she realized with a start that it had been eight days since she'd last inhaled that timbery smell. Three days during which she'd been out of her mind with worry. Five days during which she'd gone out of her mind with grief…

She ducked under the counter and thought, no. No, it wasn't like when Lichas was working. Her brother'd sit in the corner, rasping away, his tongue clenched between his teeth in concentration. Orson moved his stool right up to the street, often stopping to show the kiddies what he was working on, explaining how he was going to turn this offcut of cypress into a soldier, why fig was the best wood for making a hoop, and why grain oak was good for the crossbars of lyres. And when he wasn't surrounded by curious kids, he'd be humming away to himself. 'Whistle while you whittle, Rosie,' he'd laugh. And that was another thing: no one had ever called her Rosie before.

'Oi'd have thought it were the first thing that sprung to mind,' Orson said when she told him. 'What with name, your rosy round cheeks and hair that's the colour of rosehips in autumn.'

'Not my rosy nature, then?'

'Oh, that'll come back,' he'd assured her, fixing the hinges to Jemma's doll's house. 'Like a tide coming in on a steepshelving beach, you don't see it creep up, but it do. Pass them tacks over, would you?'

'I don't have a rosy nature to creep back,' she told him, steadying the miniature cottage as he tapped the nails home.

'No?' Broad hands satisfied themselves that the structure was rigid. 'Then who's responsible for painting them jugs in the kitchen? Who stencilled those floral swags on the walls?'

Jugs? Swags? Did he honestly think such things mattered? Rosenna returned his wave with a jauntiness she didn't feel and thought, justice is what counts. Not flowers. Not sodding paint. A life for a life, and with Tages' body being found late yesterday afternoon, it wasn't one murder she'd be avenging when the Brides of Fufluns danced for their god. She'd be doing old Etha a favour as well. Climbing the stairs with a heavy tread, she laid the contents of her shopping out over the table. Leeks, peas, beans, onions. A clutch of freshly laid eggs. And, thanks to those kiddie-sized flutes he carved out of that old leftover pine yesterday and got her to paint Pan faces on, she could throw a coney on the table as well, for they'd sold like hot cakes, them flutes. It weren't fair to punish Orson for the sins of the Romans. Oh, he were a Roman, she knew that, but he weren't the double-crossing, skin-saving kind of Roman — and hell, he deserved a decent meal at the end of the day for helping little orphaned Jemma and the crippled boy.

'No, no, you keep that, Rosie,' he'd said when she'd offered him a half share of the takings. 'Reckon they thinks Oi'm a goose that needs fattening for Saturnalia, Oi'm that well fed up at that villa.'

'Fancy titbits, aye. But do they feed you rabbit stew with lentils and leeks?'

A look of longing crossed his freckled face. 'Thick gravy?'

'So thick, you'll need a knife,' she promised, and Rosenna had never broken a promise in her life.

She proceeded to strip the skin off the coney and joint it. By the time she'd finished chopping the vegetables, the herbs and the spices, the blade she'd been using was blunt, and she resolved to sharpen it on the grindstone, but not until Orson packed up for the night. She didn't want anyone to overhear the spell she cast while she honed it. The spell that would carry it straight to the heart of three bastard patricians: Hadrian, Rex and the other one. Marcus.

She hefted the cauldron on to the stove. Aye, Marcus, they called him. Not one of your soft types like the coward who betrayed her brother, nor the bullying kind, like the father, which only left the other kind. The kind who tried to bribe you to keep your mouth shut. Oh, don't think she hadn't seen the way he followed her around last night! Trying to catch her attention, so he could stuff gold in her pockets — as though that would bring Lichas back! But she was glad now that she'd gone with Orson to the festivities. She hadn't wanted to go, but he insisted that, rather than dignifying the dead, too much mourning dishonoured them, and if Lichas was half the man she had claimed, he must've been a chap who'd taken life by the horns and she could do worse than follow her brother's example. Part shamed, part inspired, what had tipped the balance was that Orson had no one else to go with. Flavia was stuck at the temple, he said.

'Reckon it would give us both a treat, Rosie, for you and me to horse around for a couple of hours.'

And show those bastard patricians how to play featherball, she thought triumphantly. That'll teach 'em — and while she was up at Terrence's mansion, she'd got the chance to look all three of her enemies in the eye, too. Nits and lice, just like she'd said, and no one thinks twice about exterminating them.

'Dinner smells good,' Orson called up.

'Looks good, too,' she called down, giving the pot a hearty stir with the paddle and adjusting the seasonings.

That was one heck of a big stew, but he'd probably scoff the lot, would our Orson. Strapping fella with a wise head on broad shoulders, and a heart of gold on the inside. Why, look at the amount of time he'd spent on that contraption Lichas had been designing to help the crippled lad walk.

'Still ain't right though, is it?' he'd said in the end, but he weren't giving up. 'Leave it with me, Rosie, and Oi'll see what Oi can do. Reckon it needs three wheels, see. One at the back here, to steady the frame and stop it from tipping forward.'

As the light began to drain from the sky, Rosenna lit the oil lamps and resolved that, before the red-headed moon waxed to its full, she would will this workshop to Orson. She'd have to get a document that was drawn up all legal, like, to prove she'd given it to him before she'd killed them patricians. Because afterwards the State would crucify her for what she had done, but them Romans weren't getting their hands on this shop. No way.

But Orson now. Orson liked wood. It didn't matter a jot what happened to her, but this way Lichas's memory would live on through his wood. Orson would see to that.

'Supper's ready,' she called down the stairs. 'And don't forget that knife for your gravy!'