Sour Grapes

Four

As the cart clip-clopped through the arched stone gateway, Claudia was aware of something different that she just couldn't put her finger on about the villa. At first, she assumed it was the mid-May sunshine bouncing off the walls, making them somehow lighter, brighter, full of radiance. But that was nonsense. The sun was in the wrong direction. Any enhancement to the redness of the roof tiles would come later in the day. So what, then?

Dismounting amid a flurry of slaves rushing out with everything from goblets of elderflower tea to slake her thirst to ox-hair brushes to sweep the dust off her robe, she wondered if it was a trick of the memory. After all, she wasn't the most regular of visitors… but no. The north wing still comprised the slave and estate workers' quarters, the forge still belched out coils of smoke, and the windows of the little bath house still diffused light through their panes of green glass. Claudia picked up the cage containing a growling, howling, hackle-backed demon and marched off round the peristyle to the only room she'd ever shared with her husband. 'Hrrroww www.'

'Yes, I know, poppet.' She flipped the latch on the cage and Drusilla, her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat, shot out as though someone had set fire to her tail. 'I don't want to be here, either.' Nothing but hills, trees and vines; Hades offered better prospects for light entertainment. 'But with this Candace creature charging the most exorbitant prices to convince my mother-in-law that it's perfectly normal to commune with her dead son, what option do we have?' 'RrrrrrowwL'

Unconvinced, Drusilla took consolation in the plate of ham and cold chicken laid out for her mistress. Claudia waited until the cat had finished, then plumped down on the only couch she'd ever shared with Gaius — and how well she remembered clinging to her own side of the mattress.

'Yes, that's another thing. This mattress.' She gave it a good hard prod and lost her finger. It's not only new;, unless I miss my guess it's swansdown.'

'Brrrp?'

Drusilla's ears pricked forward. Swansdown? The indignity of travel instantly forgotten, she jumped on to the bed, nestled into the centre by the pillows and began washing her whiskers.

'Good grief!' Claudia jumped up. 'That's it!'

No wonder the place gleamed and looked so different! Everything had been renovated top to bottom, inside as well as out.

'You're not allowed in here, you know.' A small face peered round the door to the peristyle. It was pale and freckled, and framed by a cap of gold hair. 'I'm Amanda, and this room's out of bounds, and if you don't leave at once, Indigo and me will tell.'

'Very well, Amanda.' She watched a small gleam of triumph light up tiny blue eyes. 'You and… um, Indigo go tell.'

The freckles merged into one humungous brown blob when she frowned. 'But we don't like telling tales, do we, Indigo?' She cupped her hands and whispered into thin air. 'Anyway, Indigo says you're supposed to go when you're told. Can we come in?' She didn't wait to be asked, but ushered her imaginary companion in first. 'Ooh, is this your cat?'

'ReeeowF

'Not very friendly, is she?'

'Not very,' but the child hadn't backed off and Claudia decided Amanda was probably used to being snarled at.

'I say, is this your luggage?' The girl knelt down and unhooked the clip on one of the chests. 'I suppose you're a guest, then, so you won't have to leave, only you must be a pretty important one, if they've given you this room.' Tiny fingers prodded about in the clothes. 'But you want to be careful,' she warned in a wide-eyed whisper. 'Mummy says this is the old witch's room.'

'Oh, Mummy said that, did she? Well, I would really like to meet your Mummy, Amanda.'

'No, you wouldn't.' The girl dragged a scarlet tunic shot with gold out of the chest and held it under her chin. 'Nobody likes Mummy, that's why me and Indigo have to keep moving on. What do you think? Too bright?'

'No, I-'

'Indigo says it's too bright.' She tossed it on to a chair. 'What about this one?'

'Peacock blue matches your eyes.'

'That's exactly what Indigo says.' Amanda pulled the robe over her head and belted it with a silver hair ribbon she picked out of the trunk. 'How do I look?'

'Ravishing.'

'Really?' Tiny eyes turned into dinner plates.

'If you don't believe me, look!' Claudia held up a mirror, in which the child twirled excitedly.

Bored with this girlie stuff, Drusilla wandered off in search of mice to torment, because time might have passed, but she hadn't forgotten where they'd made their holes.

'Indigo wants to know how long you're staying,' Amanda said, rummaging for a pair of emerald-green sandals.

'Tell Indigo she's very nosey.'

'Oh, she knows that, and she's rude and has terrible manners as well. Last night, she ate a whole plate of almond cakes all by herself and then she burped, but guess what? It was me that got a spank. Is this too much rouge?'

'You mean I still have some left in the pot?'

'I'm going to be a hairdresser when I grow up. What about you?'

'I am grown up.'

'No, silly, I meant what do you do? Or are you too important to do anything? Mummy said the witch — that's whose room you'll be sleeping in — Mummy says she's a golddigging cow, but I don't see how, do you? Cows have horns, but you never see them digging with them.' She smeared a wonky red line over her lips. 'I suppose that's why she's a witch, though. When you're a witch, you can do anything you like, even dig for gold with your horns, although I'd have thought a spade would be better.'

'Where is your Mummy, Amanda?'

'I don't know,' she sighed, 'but you can bet that next time I'm in trouble, she'll be right behind me. Come along, Indigo.'

Amanda beckoned her invisible friend to join her, scooped the long robe over her arms then slopped off into the peristyle, tossing her little fair head like the princess she was.

Waving goodbye to Her Highness, her friend and her peacock-blue tunic, Claudia set off to make an inspection of the renovations. Was there no end to the work? Newly whitewashed walls. New tiles on the roof. The wall from the dining hall had been knocked out and replaced with folding doors that opened on to — you've guessed — a newly paved terrace that overlooked the whole estate. Nor was that the end of the list. The old well in the courtyard had been turned into an open pool complete with fountain. Brightly coloured friezes lined the walls of the portico in place of hazy geometries. The gardens were unrecognizable beneath a new planting of plane trees, cypress, peach and cherry, oleander, box and myrtle.

'Your mother-in-law has made many improvements,' murmured a voice in Claudia's ear.

The voice was deep, rich and warm. Like melted honey drizzled on fig cakes. The sort of voice, no doubt, the dead enjoy communing with.

'I am Candace. But then — ' she smiled an equally deep, rich, warm smile which somehow never quite made the journey to her eyes '- I suspect you guessed that.'

So this was what sorceresses looked like? Taller than the average male, with dark, watchful eyes and legs that came up to her armpits, this woman had 'feline' written all over her. Her skin was as smooth and shiny as the ebony that covered her homelands and every bit as black (not Mummy, then), and to highlight her beauty, she'd chosen a gown of fuchsia pink edged with silver and purple. But it wasn't her height, nor her skin, nor even the bold colours of her robe that made Claudia's eyes pop. Black and springy, her hair was cropped short like a soldier's, its scandalous style emphasized by Candace's swan neck, yet there was nothing masculine about this woman. Nothing mannish at all.

'She intends to install a sundial surrounded by roses,' the sorceress continued, 'and add a fishpond down by the paddock.'

'I'm surprised you haven't talked her into putting in a boating lake.'

'Your mother-in-law does not strike me as the type of woman one could talk into anything… '

How true, but that was in the old days. Before dementia kicked at her shins.

'And in any case, it is neither my interest nor concern what renovations she does or does not make. Larentia employs me to cast spells, not act as her decorator.'

Technically, since Larentia had no monies of her own, it was Claudia who was employing her, but she let the point pass. 'Are they working?' she asked innocently.

'All my spells work.'

The edge to Candace's voice was unexpected and Claudia resisted the urge to smile. So then, not quite the confident little cat she made out? Adopting a hopeful expression and wringing her hands as though embarrassed at asking, she hesitantly enquired whether Candace could help her some time… you know, when it was convenient. Her husband, she murmured. Larentia had spoken with him at length, as had Flavia…

'Of course, my dear, but of course,' the sorceress purred, because no self-respecting con artist is going to let an opportunity like that slip by them in a hurry. 'Suppose we say tonight, after dinner?'

'Won't it be too dark?'

When Candace smiled her slow, feline smile, Claudia's skin started to crawl. 'The dead live in the darkness, my dear. They will not come when it's light.' Black hands covered white in a well-rehearsed act of sympathy. 'How you must miss your soul mate, my child.'

Child? The woman could not have been more than thirty herself.

'Candace, you have no idea,' Claudia replied sadly, remembering Gaius's fat, shiny body and foul-smelling breath. 'I am just grateful to be blessed with so many wonderful memories.'

Most of them glittering merrily away in his moneybox, as she recalled.

'Tonight, then,' Candace crooned. 'Tonight husband and wife will be reunited, you have my promise on that.'

Claudia tilted her head in a gesture of coyness. 'I think you are more than a sorceress who casts protective spells,' she said with a simper. 'Look what you've done for Larentia and Darius.'

'Your mother-in-law did not ask me to cast spells for her heart. It is the winged spirits who brought them together on the winds of freedom and fate. The triumph is not mine to take credit for.' Candace leaned forward and transfixed her with her eyes. 'The forces of the supernatural surround each of us, my child. I am merely their instrument.'

As she turned away, the scent of her lingered for a long time in the open portico. Incense. Arabian incense, to be precise. Which struck Claudia as an odd sort of choice. And as she stood with her back to one of the columns, she noticed a young couple down by the wood store. Both dark and hawk-like, with deep olive skins, they performed backward stretches and made bridges of their spines in perfectly synchronized movements. From time to time, they broke off from their gymnastics to converse with foreheads almost touching. Lovers, so close that they mirrored one another's actions? She did not think so. Their noses, their jaw lines, the kinks in their hair. These things were too similar…

'Knew you'd be up here sooner or later, poking your nose where it doesn't belong.'

'Ah, Larentia! Lovely to see you again, too.'

And what a surprise it turned out to be. Far from the modest country woman Claudia remembered, her mother-inlaw's hair had been skilfully dyed, with fine golden fillets woven right through it, a task that would have taken quite literally hours. Her gown was fashionably pleated and flattering, and dear me, was that rouge on her lips?

'If it's the money you're worried about, don't be. Darius has covered the cost of every single item, right down to new bread ovens in the kitchen.'

A tingle of alarm ran down Claudia's spine. 'He's moving in?'

That would explain his buttering up of the mother of a wealthy wine merchant, his generous acts of renovation, his worming his way into her heart. No doubt the old boy saw Larentia as the perfect inheritance for his children and grandchildren, and she couldn't wait to see his reaction when it was pointed out to him that, actually old chap, your bride-to-be owns nothing, not even the clothes she stands up in.

'Move in here?' Larentia snorted. 'Certainly not! Darius is a horse-breeder from the south, with a stud farm ten times the size of this place, and that's where he's taking me once we're wed. And since he's had nothing but coughs since he arrived, he insists the climate will be better for my health, as well.'

Claudia chewed her lip. Horse-breeders live and breathe pedigrees, which meant Doddering Darius would already be apprised of Larentia's financial status, and he seemed more concerned with prolonging her life than shortening it. Claudia's thoughts turned to Orson and Flavia. The way they'd gripped each other's fat, lumpy hands all the way up here from Rome, gazing deep into one other's eyes, regardless of the cart's jolts and jostles. Could it be that Larentia, a woman who could melt glass with one glare and slept upside down in a cave, wasn't senile at all, but had genuinely found love in her twilight years? At sixty-eight, though, she'd be keenly aware of her mortality, at the speed with which time slips away. Could that explain why she'd brought in this Candace? To give her an emotional cushion?

'There's nothing wrong with your health,' she pointed out. In fact, her mother-in-law was radiant and blooming, and looked a full decade younger.

'Then I'll live even longer.' Larentia twisted up her mouth in resignation. 'Suppose you'd better come in.'

Very generous, considering it wasn't her house. But then, much as one would like to, one can't go tossing unwanted mothers-in-law into the middens. Even the most venomous ones.

'No doubt you'll be wanting to give my fiance the onceover.' Larentia sniffed. 'Might as well get that over and done with, too.'

'Dodd- Darius is here now?'

'The sooner I get his feet under my table,' Larentia cackled, 'the sooner I get 'em under my mattress! Oh, for heaven's sake, girl, snap your jaw shut. You look just like Flavia did when I said the same thing to her.'

And to think Claudia had castigated the girl!

'What?' Larentia scowled. 'Don't you think old people get consumed by the same urges as you youngsters? Course we do, and when you see my Darius, you'll understand why. Quite the stud, if you pardon the pun.'

Claudia sucked in her cheeks as she followed Larentia towards the atrium. So far the week had been one shock on top of another, but the idea of two wizened bodies writhing in ecstasy in the afternoon sunlight, their toothless gums clacking together like castanets, a sound matched only by the creak of their knee joints, was just too hilarious to contemplate. Good luck to you, Larentia, you poisonous old bat. And power to Darius's doddering elbow!

'You wait here.' Larentia stopped abruptly in the doorway. 'Not another step, understood? I need this threshold purified first.'

Claudia looked round, but the command was for her, not some slave she'd imagined, but by the time she'd turned back to protest, Larentia was speeding down the corridor on feet that were moving twice as fast as someone half her age. Claudia stuck her tongue out at the retreating figure. Heaven knows what gods Larentia imagined her to be offending by stepping over them, but she gave the threshold a bloody good kick anyway. A male voice chuckled as it stepped out from behind a marble pillar.

'I fear Larentia's been taken prisoner by local superstition,' he said, and his voice had enough gravel in it to pave the Forum. 'However, I won't tell, if you won't.'

Claudia studied him as he bowed. Early fifties and whilst not exactly a sculptor's dream with his pepper-and-salt hair cut Caesar-style to cover his baldness, he wasn't gargoyle material either. Lean and tanned, with corded muscles that bulged out the long sleeves of his tunic, his eyes were as hard as granite, and instantly Claudia relaxed. Perfect. Another family member suspicious of their parent's motives! Presumably the eldest son concerned about his inheritance, but either way, someone she could do business with.

'Superstition be damned,' she replied. 'The old trout has never forgiven me for marrying her son at an age when he should have known better. I'm Claudia,' she added. 'Larentia's favourite person in the whole wide world.'

'I know,' he said, with a slight cough. 'I'm Darius.'