Stone Cold

Five

Back in Santonum, surrounded by schoolchildren tunelessly reciting their numbers and vendors hawking their wares as merchants in togas strutted back and forth and barbers clipped hair on street corners, it was easy to imagine oneself back in Rome. Caulkers, furriers, locksmiths and chandlers laboured away in workshops down side streets lined by stone porticoes. Cobblers hammered hunchbacked over lasts beneath the shade of an awning, perfumers mixed exotic unguents and lyre-makers strummed on their finished instruments, an incitement for people to buy.

Except this wasn't Rome. This was the town where her father had come fifteen seasons before, and Claudia could only imagine the impact on the tribespeople as the army came tramping over a bridge wide enough for two legions to pass six abreast. At the head of this column, the eagle. This would be flanked by standard bearers dressed in animal skins, which, in her father's unit, were of the leopard. Behind the swell of legates, tribunes, prefects and bearers, legionaries in gleaming breastplates marched with such precision that their hobnailed approach could be heard a mile distant. And, finally, the baggage train brought up the rear. Mules and wagons protected by cavalry whose mounts boasted ornate leather masks studded with silvered bronze that blinded bystanders and enemy alike. When you added in the various veterinaries, physicians, secretaries and carpenters, the engineers, orderlies and blacksmiths, the whole thing would have taken hours to pass.

Santonum was a lot different back then, very much in its infancy. Her father would not have seen any of these six-storey apartment blocks, none of the fountains, statues or other fine monuments, and certainly not the aqueduct that brought fresh water into the city. A lot of the temples were still in the throes of construction even now, though the theatre had been finished in his time, being no more than a temporary arrangement made of wood. Had her father laughed at the comedies that were being performed there? Dried a tear or two for the tragedies…?

Settling herself on the steps of the basilica, Claudia waited for the lump in her throat to subside. It was inevitable, she supposed, that Vincentrix closed the subject before it had opened. She'd been clutching at straws with that visit, and she had no doubt that it was the Druid Guild that silenced the Gauls in the first place. But why? What could possibly have happened that both Rome and the Santons wanted hushed up? And why — after so much time had elapsed — was it still a thorn in their sides?

Watching lawyers dash in and out of the law courts, scrolls of parchment tucked under their arms, she knew that the sensible decision would be to cut her losses and leave. The tavern-keeper was right. If her father was dead, there was nothing Claudia could do. As a mere orderly, he wouldn't have rated a tomb, so she wouldn't even know where to lay flowers, and if he was alive then the letter he hadn't written to her mother told her that he did not want to be found.

'Let it go,' the woman had said.

Let it go.

There was another reason to heed the landlady's advice. Biting into a spicy sausage bought from a hot food vendor, Claudia reflected how Gaius Seferius had been nearly three times her age when they married. He was fat, he was coarse and his hair was receding, but, by Croesus, was he rich! And in return for the pretty, witty young trophy he could parade before his fellow wine merchants, he'd bestowed on her a social standing she'd never known. She'd concealed her past from him — obviously — but, in the end, Gaius probably wouldn't have cared. It was the sort of thing that would have amused him.

Unfortunately, his family were not from the same mould!

Forget the extenuating circumstances. When Gaius died, he'd flouted every convention going by bequeathing his entire estate to his wife. Bitter at not inheriting so much as one copper quadran, his relatives had been desperate to overturn the will ever since, and if they caught so much as a sniff of who Claudia was looking for out here she'd be back in the gutter before she could sneeze. Let it go, the woman had said. Let it go. And maybe, just maybe, Claudia would.

Had it not been for the Druid…

'There you are, madam!' His rich, fruity tones cut through the din of traffic and commerce. 'Hiding behind a pillar, you saucebox!'

'Hannibal.' It wasn't the sort of name you forget, and, besides, she was curious. 'So tell me. Did the landlady leave the side door unlocked last night?'

There was a wicked gleam in his eye as he sat down on the steps.

'The charm never fails, madam, only the stamina. Sadly, it takes me all night to do now what I used to do all night, but you will not hear the merry widow complain. I have just this moment removed myself from her bed, where she sleeps the sleep of the angels.'

'It's midday!'

'And your point?'

Claudia laughed. 'She got value for money, I'll give her that.'

'Not as much as I.' He chuckled back. 'Thirty gold pieces for that piece of horsemeat? I only paid twelve for the brute in the first place. However,' he laced his fingers together, 'forgive my poor manners, but I couldn't help overhearing in the tavern yesterday that you are in pursuit of a missing person.'

'Don't tell me you know what happened fifteen years ago?'

'Not a clue, madam. Not a clue. But since my current financial state renders me desirous of employment-'

'What about the thirty gold pieces you pocketed?'

'Take my advice, dear lady. Never borrow from a moneylender, especially a Cappadocian, they will follow you to the ends of the earth. Moreover,' he leaned sideways to whisper, 'they have no sense of finesse when it comes to repossessing the interest on their investment.'

'Let me guess. You borrowed twelve gold pieces to buy the horse, but it cost you thirty to repay the loan?'

'Thirty-five,' he grumbled, twiddling the bunch of feathers pinned into his cloakpin. 'Which brings us back to the issue in question. The little matter of gainful employment.'

'Hannibal, you're every bit as much a stranger to Aquitania as I am.'

'Impossible to deny, though you'll find me a quick learner, I assure you. A qualified surveyor of His Imperial Majesty's highways, I have lent my hand to all manner of trades over the years. Let me think! I've been a purveyor of pitch at the shipyards in Athens, a reciter of poetry for the sailors of Tyre and for a time I peddled aromatics round the Alexandrian nobility. I have worked as a skinner in Crete, a muleteer in Liguria and, albeit briefly, a tutor to two charming young boys in Helvetia. So you see, madam, there is nothing I cannot or will not turn my hand to, provided, of course, it is legal.'

'You have curiously high principles for a rover.'

'I wish 'twere so noble, but the truth, alas, is horribly base. You see, unfortunate though it is, unlawful activities run a disproportionately high risk of arrest, which invariably results in a stretch in the silver mines, anything from five to ten years. Now whilst I am not averse to hard labour, quite the reverse I might add, what you see before you is a man who cannot tie himself to any one person or place. Hence, a line must be drawn.'

Absolutely. Claudia had drawn one herself. First the Guild of Wine Merchants in Rome. Now the Druid Guild in Santonum.

Having married for money, she'd been all set to sell up when Gaius had died, because a girl can't buy new gowns with half a brickworks or smother herself in gold brooches in exchange for a few mouldy vines. Then she saw the account books, and suddenly an altogether more attractive proposition popped out of the woodwork. Far from having to marry another old duffer where she might not be so lucky and when the next one might insist on his conjugal rights, she would take over Gaius's role. I mean, how hard can it be when you have bailiffs to oversee the production process and a ready-made client list for the wine? It was that naivety that, of course, had been her undoing. A weakness, incidentally, which had been exploited by the Guild of Wine Merchants before her husband's pyre had stopped smouldering, and slowly, by fair means or foul, they had set about driving her out. Now the Druid Guild was set to do the same. Well, sod that.

All the same, though…

'I'm sorry, Hannibal, but on this occasion you're out of luck.'

Desperate she might be. Stupid she was certainly not.

'You think I am incapable of finding the man that you seek?' He was totally unperturbed by her refusal. 'I beseech you to reconsider your decision, madam. You are talking to the only man who talked his way out of a fine for driving his cart through Rome during the daytime.'

Despite herself, Claudia smiled. Wheeled traffic was strictly prohibited during daylight hours. The twisty, narrow backstreets were clogged enough as it was with handcarts and pedestrian traffic, so it was only at night, once the city gates were cranked open and torches lit on every street corner, that delivery carts were permitted to enter, to a cacophony of squeaking axles, braying mules and the crack of bullwhips. Rome might be the city that never slept, she reflected, but neither could its inhabitants.

'Now this is a tale I must hear,' she said.

The Administration took no prisoners when it came to contraventions. The fines were punitive in the extreme.

'I was under contract to deliver a consignment of lobsters,' Hannibal said, 'and if I didn't deliver that day then I wouldn't get paid, because no aristocrat in his right mind will serve crustaceans at his banquet when they're on the turn.' He cracked his knuckles. 'The only trouble was, I had been delayed in Ostia by the aforementioned moneylender, and, since I had already bribed the gatekeeper with the last of my savings, there was nothing left in my purse with which to persuade the approaching patrol to turn down a conveniently adjacent alley.'

The Administration notwithstanding, there were times when more soldiers went blind in that city than beggars.

'So, madam, I unhooked the mule.'

'And pretended it was an enormous handcart?'

'Nothing so vulgar,' Hannibal said. 'I simply tied the old moke to the back of the cart, put myself between the shafts and started hauling.

'"Oi, you!" He mimicked the coarse rasp of the patrol. '"Don't you know the penalty for bringing wheeled traffic into the city is eleven denarii?" Eleven denarii. I ask you! It would bankrupt Midas himself. "No use telling me," I called back. "You'll have to take it up with the driver." Madam, those boys fell about laughing so much, I was round the corner before they'd noticed I'd gone.'

'Impressive,' Claudia conceded, wiping her own eyes. But was a silver tongue wedged firmly in its own cheek the answer to her conundrum? What she needed on the case was a professional investigator. Someone who searched secrets out for a living. Knew which stones to overturn, and where.

Only one man fitted such a bill. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio. As the only patrician attached to the Security Police, Orbilio was more than familiar with society's underbelly, regardless of which particular society that might be, since the driving principles of crime are universal. He would certainly know where to ferret out the answers to her questions! The only trouble was, the reason Claudia knew exactly how efficient he was was because he was always one step behind her…

Of course, you could put that another way and argue that she was always one step ahead of the law, but, in his case, the law wasn't just tall, dark and handsome, it also took bloody long strides that were headed straight for the Senate.

She supposed that, for an ambitious young investigator with blue blood in his veins, Claudia Seferius was the perfect vessel to attach to. With the sharks circling before Gaius's body was cold, she'd lost track of the counter-tactics she'd had to resort to, although most of them, if she remembered correctly, involved forgery, fraud, tax evasion and what was that other little thing, now? Oh, yes, embezzlement. Was it any wonder Orbilio had attached himself like a barnacle to the hull of her business affairs? Except, just like birth, death and summer colds, one thing was certain. Claudia Seferius would not be his stepping stone to the Senate. Penniless exile was not in her plans.

'So I take it, madam, that I'm hired?' Hannibal murmured.

'You take no such thing,' she retorted, 'and, besides, what about the landlady?'

'Ah.' His mouth twisted sideways. 'I fear we are talking about the sort of woman who if a man pats her bottom will endeavour to turn it into a marriage contract, and I regret to say that orange blossom makes my nose run something wicked. You will be doing both my liberty and sinuses a favour if you tell me we have an agreement.'

'Very well.' In for a quadran, in for the whole damn money chest! 'On three conditions.'

'Name them.'

'Firstly, the pay is one sestertius per day, although I will provide bed and board.' Or rather Marcia will.

'That, if I may say so, madam, is a particularly dubious rate.'

'And you, if I may say so, sir, are a particularly dubious guide.'

He grunted. 'Your second condition?'

'You stop addressing me as though I'm running a brothel.'

'And the third?'

'You dispense with the dead canary.'

'This?' In a theatrical gesture of mock protection his hand covered the feathers clamped in his cloakpin. I'll have you know, madam, this is the same good-luck charm worn by the youngest tribune in the Roman army to lead a successful assault against Armenian rebels without a single loss to his men.'

'Really?' She peered closer. 'What happened to this illustrious hero?'

'Nothing, although he thanks you for asking.' Hannibal dipped his head politely. 'And whilst he accepts condition one regarding the abysmal pay, the dead canary stays and, since he is an officer and a gentleman, you will understand that it is beneath both of us to call you by a lesser title. Madam."

Just like the traffic patrol in Rome, he was round the corner before she'd stopped laughing.