Stone Cold

Two

'Make way! Make way for the Governor!'

It was a testament to the soldier's vocal chords, Claudia decided, that he was able to make himself heard above the jangle of breastplates and the tramp of hobnail boots crunching over the bridge.

'Come on, you lot!' he shouted. 'Move aside, move aside!' An old peasant foolish enough not to have learned Latin in his own country suddenly found himself in the gutter as the chariot trotted past, a triumph in imperial purple and gold, the heads of the pure white horses held appropriately high as their braided tails bobbed and their hooves clip-clopped in perfect harmony over the cobblestones. No sooner had the Governor and his escort passed, however, than the gap was immediately filled again with riders, carters, donkeys and pack mules vying for space amid the swarms of pedestrians entering and exiting the city.

Standing in the middle of the bridge, resting her arms on the warm stonework as she leaned over the side, Claudia watched the bob of traffic in the slow-moving waters of the Carent. As was to be expected, most were Gauls, the women clad in jaunty fringed skirts that fell to mid-calf, their menfolk with long hair whitened with lime and sporting such luxuriant moustaches that they overhung their top lips like the willows that lined this twisting river. But not all the traffic on the bridge was local, nor was Santon the only tongue spoken. Claudia cast her eyes across to the skyline reflected in the shimmering current and drummed her fingers.

Nestling beneath the high wide skies that were so typical of this part of Gaul and surrounded by gentle rolling hills and wooded river valleys, lush water meadows and forests rich in game, Santonum should have been the answer to Claudia's prayers. She watched trout swimming lazily in the shadows of the bridge's pillars and swallows dipping and diving on the water, and thought that, dammit, this is the capital of Aquitania. The authorities should have turned somersaults to help one of their own who'd trekked halfway across the bloody Empire just for this. Instead, what did she get?

'Terribly sorry, milady. The files were destroyed in a fire.'

'Our records were shipped back to Rome.'

'There was a flood…'

'… mould…'

'… mice…'

She'd tried the barracks, the State Records Office, the temples, the tribunals. She'd done the full tour of scribes, secretaries, lawyers and civil servants. She'd bribed and gossiped her way round the basilicas and bath houses that were springing up in this new town like weeds and yet — what a coincidence — every person she spoke to would really have liked to have helped, were it not for the Fates conspiring against them. You wouldn't credit so many natural disasters could have befallen one city, but it seemed there was no limit to the excuses she'd encountered, much less the inventiveness of the excusers. Quite why these people hadn't taken up careers as playwrights she had no idea, but if Officialdom was hoping Claudia Seferius would give up and go home, it might as well wait for the moon to drop out of the sky.

'Stay here,' she instructed her bodyguard.

'But-'

'Butts are for archers, Junius, and whilst they might equally apply to jokes and billygoats, they are not, however, for you.'

The young Gaul's mouth opened and closed as he fumbled for a suitable response, but by the time he'd come up with one, it was too late. He was being skewered by a glare that would make a cheesemaker proud, since it could separate curds from whey in less than ten seconds.

'Here,' she insisted.

There were many reasons why a wealthy young widow might need a bodyguard — protection from bandits, rapists and thieves to name but a few — but there are certain aspects of one's private life that a girl is obliged to keep private and, on those occasions, compromises to safety must be weighed up.

'Jupiter, Juno and Mars! Are you deaf, man?'

She'd barely reached the end of the bridge and he was behind her.

'I cannot leave you unaccompanied, my lady. Who knows what danger might-'

'Junius,' she hissed, 'if you move so much as one inch from this spot, I'll guzzle your gizzards with gravy.'

You couldn't fault him as a bodyguard, she supposed, sweeping beyond the elegant limestone buildings fronted by shops that sold everything from potions to padlocks to peas into an unstructured tumble of thatched roundhouses and wooden shacks along the river. The boy had muscles of steel, was a dab hand with the sword and his knowledge of this guttural tongue was proving invaluable on this trip. It was just that Claudia's own shadow rarely stuck that close, and every time she turned his gaze was clinging tighter than limpets to a rock in a storm. At the corner, where a coppersmith in red check pantaloons was attempting to hammer flat a large sheet of twisted metal, Claudia glanced over her shoulder. Good. Junius might be fidgeting with his dagger and looking for all the world like he'd swallowed a wasp, but it was more than his life was worth to move from that bridge. Turning away from the river, she ducked down an alley fragrant with cooking smells. Here, women sang lilting songs as they draped laundry over wickerwork frames while others chopped herbs with their babies strapped to their backs.

'Ze lady would take a leetle 'oney cake, yes?'

'Certainly,' she told the vendor, whisking it out of his hand.

Vaguely, she was aware of someone being cursed loudly in the Gaulish language and thought she heard the words 'theeving beetch' shouted in her direction, but the honey cake was warm and distracting, and, besides, there were more pressing things on Claudia's mind.

Her father, for one.

Wiping the soft yellow crumbs from her mouth, her mind travelled back to the last time she'd seen him. Even though she was just ten years old the memory was vivid, and, although his features had blurred with the passage of time, she could, when she closed her eyes at night, still feel his whiskery cheeks against hers, and smell the masculine scent of his clothes.

Each year it was the same. At the start of the campaign season, he'd march off behind the legions with the rest of the camp followers, and she would wave and wave until her little arms ached and the army was reduced to a dusty dot on the horizon. Then, in October, he'd trudge home again, tired and weary, but not so exhausted that he and her mother wouldn't spend the whole winter fighting, before he packed his bags again the following spring.

Every year, except the year when Claudia turned ten. That March, her father set off — to Aquitania, as it happened — only this time he never came home.

Perhaps it was plunging from sunshine to shade in the wooded enclave that was the leatherworkers' quarter, but suddenly her step faltered and the honey cake turned to ash on her tongue. Darker memories flooded back. Of her mother, drunk as usual, reeling from one office in Rome to another, trying to find out why her man hadn't returned with the legion and what compensation they were going to pay her. The soldiers' jeers echoed for years in Claudia's head and, young as she was then, the implication had been obvious.

But had her father really had it to here with the nagging, the insults and the flying crockery and opted for a fresh start in the newly created town of Santonum? He hadn't been killed in combat, that's for sure, because Claudia remembered with humiliating clarity her mother's slurred screeching outside the tribune's office about how her man's name had still been on the lists for rations until the legion moved out, so why the eff couldn't the effing bureaucrats keep track of their own effing people?

Sadly, she realized, he could have gone missing for any number of reasons. He might have died from injuries that, as he was a lowly orderly, would not have been recorded in military logs. He could have caught a fever, picked up dysentery, fallen victim to snakebite, even sustained something like a head injury from a fall which had blanked out his memory. It happens. But for Claudia the itch of uncertainty needed a scratch that was long overdue. She had to know whether he was alive or dead to fill in the missing gaps of her childhood — except the past was proving hard to dig, and for reasons she could not have imagined.

Mice, mould, floods indeed! Rome, dammit, was covering something up, but it only needed a quick skim through the history books to remember that Rome had erected a stone wall once before! On that particular occasion, they walled off the entire toe of Italy in an attempt to starve Spartacus and his rebel slaves into submission. Unfortunately, in doing so, they'd overlooked the little matter of Spartacus being a gladiator whose very training encouraged him to think laterally and play dirty, rather than a soldier who employed the more traditional rules of combat. As Spartacus had marched his rebel army north in triumph, Rome had been left with an awful lot of egg on its face.

All Claudia needed to do was visit the chicken house while the hens were still laying…!

At midday, the tavern was bursting with men clad in plaid pantaloons tucked into soft ankle boots knocking back goblets of ale that spilled over with foam and wolfing down bowls of steaming dark stew that reflected the bountiful forests which encircled this town. To their welcoming grins, she slipped into a seat by the door, while in the corner a boy whistled a tune on a cheap wooden flute and his friend beat time on a coney skin stretched over a hoop. But even as Claudia's toe began to tap to the jig, she was aware that whilst the majority of Santons had adapted to life under the eagle with cheerful enthusiasm there were plenty about who had not.

Old memories die hard.

Grudges linger from one generation to the next.

Today the tribes might be allies, indebted to the troops who patrolled their borders and kept the roads and waterways free of bandits, and delighted that another army was daft enough to fight their wars for them, leaving foreign sons, not their own, mourned. But, forty years earlier, these same people had resisted invasion with a ferocity that Rome had not envisaged. First they slaughtered the men sent to conquer them — a whole army including their legate — then they routed the legionaries sent by Julius Caesar to avenge them. Oh, yes. The Santons were a force to be reckoned with.

But times change. Leaders change. Politics invariably follow.

One of the first acts instigated by the young Augustus after being crowned Emperor was to expand the trade links between Lyons and the town of Burdigala, on the Jirond estuary. Being expert potters, stonemasons and metalworkers in their own right, the Santons suddenly found huge markets opening up — and at profits they'd never dreamed of. Loyalties switched in a flash, and when the Emperor finally declared Santonum the capital of the new Province of Aquitania, the resulting rash of aqueducts, theatres, bath houses and temples bestowed on them such a sense of superiority over their fellow Aquitans that they actually saw this as liberty rather than conquest.

On the other hand, there are always those who relish the taste of sour grapes. Maybe someone who begrudged the ten per cent tax he was forced to pay Rome (and never mind that he recouped more than that in his profits). Or the bigot who felt Gauls oughtn't to trade with outsiders and were diluting the pedigree by intermarriage. But before Claudia had a chance to identify a suitably embittered tribesman among the tavern's patrons, the proprietor came bustling in.

Of a certain age, well-rounded and with merry green eyes, she had a bosom that could balance a tray of sweetmeats without spillage, and she was followed inside by a man whose purple striped tunic proclaimed him a Roman of equestrian rank. Right now, the Roman was attempting to sell her his horse.

'Twenty gold pieces?' His rich, fruity tones assumed an air of mock outrage. 'I can assure you, dear lady, this beast is good for another ten years, possibly, dare I suggest, even twelve.'

The landlady's laugh was flirtatious, but genuine. 'Are we talking about you or the horse, Hannibal?'

'Both, may your gods and mine will it.' Tall, tanned and leathery, he was the same age as his adversary and had the same playful glint in his eye. 'The only difference, dear lady, is that you will find my worth higher than this poor brute's.' He leaned rakishly towards her, and Claudia thought, dear me, ships could be sunk in that cleavage. 'So what do you say, then? Forty?'

Dancing eyes assessed the snickering horse tied to the post. It was no Arab stallion, but even Claudia, whose knowledge of horseflesh extended no further than the bookies' tables, could see it was a fine, solid mount.

'I'll give you twenty-five, Hannibal, and no more.'

One eyebrow rose slowly. 'Surely you can stretch a bit further for such a, ahem, strong, handsome creature?'

The landlady chuckled. 'Well, I suppose I could manage thirty, if you press me.' She winked. 'Which I can see you're dying to.'

'You would not be wrong,' he drawled back, stroking the bunch of feathers pinned into his cloakpin. 'Suppose we say midnight, and you leave the side door unlocked?'

'Rogue,' she laughed, shaking her head. 'Now sit down, will you, before I forget I'm a grandmother. I'll bring you your money when I've finished serving this lady.'

Hannibal bowed. 'It is a pleasure doing business with you on all, er, fronts, and as for the little matter of age, I say again. Midnight! And be sure to leave the door ajar, dear lady. I have no desire to waken the whole district with my knocking, for it is my intention to inflame you, not your neighbours.'

'Men,' she tutted to Claudia, although it was obvious from the shine in her eyes and the bloom on her cheeks that the landlady was not altogether unimpressed with the horse-seller's attentions.

'Now then.' She glanced across to where Hannibal was in the process of hooking a stool from under a table with one leisurely foot and it seemed her breath grew that little bit shorter. 'What can I get you, my lovely?'

'Information,' Claudia replied, laying a kidskin pouch on the table, which chinked when the contents settled.

'Indeed.' The merry green eyes were suddenly serious as the tavern-keeper settled herself at the table and leaned forward. 'And what kind of information might a lady of quality like yourself be after, exactly?'

'Not that kind,' Claudia told her, although she was willing to bet that if she'd wanted a backstreet abortion, the woman would recommend a physician oozing compassion and skill. 'I'm trying to trace a man who disappeared from here fifteen years ago and-'

The landlady couldn't have jumped higher if she'd been stuck with a pin. Her face turned as white as birch bark.

'F-fifteen?' Her laugh was unconvincing. 'My, my, that's an awful long time to be going back.'

On the contrary. Judging from her reaction, it could have been yesterday they were talking about. The hairs on Claudia's scalp started to prickle.

'Why?' she asked bluntly. 'What happened fifteen years ago?' '

'Nothing!'

But the answer came too fast for Claudia's liking, and the woman's blinking was too rapid.

'Nothing happened. Why should it? No, it's… it was, well… why, that was the year I married my second husband, so it was. The memory caught me by surprise, that was all.'

Claudia nudged the purse across the table. 'You're an awful liar, do you know that?'

'Aye.' The tavern-keeper nodded glumly. 'Reckon I do, but I will say this. You won't find anyone around these parts willing to talk to about what happened back then, not a soul, so my advice is don't waste your time trying.' She pushed the purse back across the table with a gesture of finality and stood up. 'I'm sorry for you, honest I am, because you wouldn't have come all this way if it wasn't important to you, but there are some things that are best left in the past and that's one of them.'

First Rome, now the locals…

'Look, I'm not interested in politics,' Claudia assured her. 'It's just one man-'

'No, it isn't. It's never just one man,' the woman retorted. 'It's always somebody's father and somebody's son, a brother, a lover, a friend. Let it go.' She drew a deep breath, and the next time she spoke it was gently. 'Because the way I see it, love, if the man you're looking for's dead, then he's dead, and if he's alive — well, I reckon he don't want to be found. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to see a man about a horse.'

The twinkle returned to her eye as though nothing had passed between them.

'Might slip him a plate of food while I'm at it.' She adjusted a finely dyed curl, then patted her awesome embonpoint. 'Many a good man's been lost to my veal and ham pies — and a few bad 'uns, as well.'

The speed with which she bounced back left goose pimples crawling over Claudia's skin. The woman hadn't been faking. Her reaction had been a hundred per cent genuine, which meant something was going on in Santonum — something dating back to the time of her father's disappearance — and if one thing was guaranteed, it was that the smell of fish in the air wasn't rising up from the river.

Let it go, she had said.

Let it go…? This was only the beginning, goddammit, not the end! Claudia hadn't come all this way to give up now, and the woman was right. It was somebody's father they were talking about. Hers! And whilst she had no idea whether he was involved in whatever funny business both sides were determined to paint over, she had no intention of leaving without knowing the truth.

The only question was, if Rome wasn't talking and neither were the Gauls, how on earth was she going to find out what happened?