Stone Cold

Nine

Fresh from the bath house, her skin softened with elder-flowers and rose oil and her hair shining from a vinegar rinse, Claudia slipped into a gown of midnight blue secured at the shoulders with brooches of gold. Though a fool and his money are easily partying, she mused, fastening the owl pendant round her neck, that wasn't an accusation one could level at Marcia. For a start, humour didn't feature in the woman's constitution, reducing the odds of her throwing herself into any festivities with abandon to that of the Trojan Horse winning the derby. And, secondly, Marcia didn't do one damn thing without good reason, and pleasure for its own sake didn't count.

Claudia screwed in her ear studs and reached for her rings. As much as the woman claimed that a succession of virile young studs kept her young, even the most cursory glance in the mirror once her make-up was removed must prove otherwise. How old was she? Forty? Possibly not even that, yet she could pass for ten years older in a bad light, and heaven knows there was enough of that here in Gaul. So if tonight's bash wasn't for pleasure, what was her motive?

'You need to meet local businessmen,' she'd told Claudia. 'Not Gauls, I'm talking about Roman entrepreneurs — men with money, vision and style — because you'll need contacts, if you're to expand your commercial empire into Aquitaine.'

Altruism wasn't in her character, either! Clipping on a spiral bracelet set with amethysts, Claudia began to smell a rat running around Marcia's villa, and it wasn't the one her blueeyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat had just dragged in.

'Out!' she ordered. 'You get that thing out of my room right this minute!'

'Hrrrow,' Drusilla growled, biting the head off.

Ugh. Claudia dropped a shawl over the grisly remains.

'Next time I'll leave you in Rome,' she warned, but Drusilla knew better and jumped on to the couch, where she proceeded to wash her bloodied whiskers with languorous grace.

Claudia returned to her own ablutions. The trouble with telling so many lies is that one has to remember the bloody things! She applied kohl round her eyes, softening its effect with the tip of her finger. Since most vineyards in Gaul tended to restrict themselves to the southern coasts, she'd felt pretty confident at telling people that she was here to make a study of the soil types with a view to growing grapes for wine. Then Marcia goes and springs an evening like this!

'Wine merchants are popping up like horsetails in Santonum. You need to meet them, if you intend to venture into distribution yourself.' Marcia had tapped the side of her nose knowingly. 'One must always keep abreast of the opposition, it's what makes competition so good for trade.'

Hearing chariots and gigs clip-clopping into the courtyard, Claudia mused that yes, you really do need to be behind someone before you can stab them in the back.

I'll be expected to quote chapter and verse on vineyard practices,' she moaned to Drusilla.

'Brrrp.' The cat began to wash her ears.

'My sentiments exactly.' Stick to one angle of the business and baffle the buggers with science. 'December is the most crucial month for vines, because it lays the foundation for the forthcoming vintage.'

She rehearsed her lines aloud.

'The soil needs just the right amount of manure, the… the.. '

Dammit, what else? She fished in her trunk for the scrappy piece of parchment on which she'd scribbled her notes. Here we go. Pruning. Clearing out old irrigation ditches; digging new ones. Sharpening the stakes. Mending the fences. Weaving new- Dear Diana! Claudia turned the paper over. The list went on for ever!

'Hrrrr.'

'I know, poppet.'

She'd have to memorize it better than that, if she was to impress the wealthy merchants on whom she wanted to offload her future vintage. Because she might not be checking out the soil's friability or whatever the hell they called it, but she had no intention of letting a commercial opportunity like this evening go to waste!

'Right then.' She ticked them off on her fingers. 'Manuring, pruning, ditches, snaring, branding livestock, sowing-'

The assault from the past was so sudden, so strong, that the shock of it sent her reeling. Out of nowhere, time sucked her backwards and suddenly, as though it were last week, she was reaching up to kiss her father goodbye. She felt the rasp of his stubble against his cheeks, heard the rich chuckle in his throat as he laughed. Just as quickly, the image faded, and it was her mother standing in front of her. Claudia could see the wine from the jug dribbling down her chin and seeping in to her tunic…

'Go away!' She screwed up her eyes and covered her ears with her hands. 'Go back to the hell where you came from!'

But, oh, this was Gaul. Home of Druids and magic, human sacrifice and sorcery, where the dead could walk and evil spirits lurked in the shadows. They turned back the clock to the time when Claudia cowered under the bed as insults and crockery rained all round her. Then the spirits in the shadows shifted and time spiralled forwards. Now it was the waiting, the waiting, the endless bloody waiting. The watching, the watching, the endless bloody watching. And suddenly, with the cruellest of clarity, she realized what had triggered this nightmare.

A splintered table rose out of the darkness. There was no dinner on the table, because a loud-mouthed drunk had tipped the housekeeping money down her throat — so there were no breakfasts, no lunches and no suppers on it, either. Day by day the wine got cheaper and her mother grew dirtier, and the demons in the shadows cackled when Claudia pushed open the door of their cramped tenement and came face to face with her mother's corpse, cold and grey, beside an empty jug and a pair of slashed wrists.

At least, she thought, Stella would be able to tell her kids that the bastard was sorry.

Claudia had had nothing.

Her father simply marched out of her life, leaving her mother to fill the emptiness with whatever she could until her pain reached the point where she could take no more. Neither had left so much as a note to say 'sorry', 'goodbye' or even 'I love you'.

Too numb to weep, too deadened to hate, Claudia drizzled perfume into the dips of her collarbones and set off to join the dinner guests.

If His Majesty wanted more mushrooms, then more mushrooms it was, and never mind the poor sod who had to drop what he was doing and go tramping round these woods to collect 'em. The kitchen slave despatched at such short notice jabbed two fingers in the air at Marcia's chef and, having satisfied himself that his boss couldn't see round corners, over hills, through thickets and past trees, repeated the gesture again and again.

'Ceps, I need more ceps,' His Majesty had roared. 'You know what ceps look like, don't you, boy?'

'Course I do,' the lad had wanted to snap. 'I've collected the fonking things for you often enough.'

Instead, he'd dipped his head and said yes, sir.

'Then bring more chanterelles while you're about it, and if you find a couple of Jew's ears, I'll have them, too, and for heaven's sake, don't just stand there, I need them NOW.'

'Well, you should have bloody well planned things better,' the slave sneered. But only to the beech trees, the oaks and the birches.

As two more yellow chanterelles joined the collection in the trug, he thought that it weren't like he minded collecting mushrooms. Truth be told, he enjoyed being outdoors in the open, away from the steam and getting his ribs poked with a careless ladle or a strainer dropped on his toe. And it made a pleasant change from His Majesty pinching his ear all the fonking time, too.

Finding a clump of ceps hiding behind a sapling, he fell upon them and thought, that's another thing. Being able to tell his parasols from his panther caps, 'cause the one you could eat and the other could kill you, and he liked being entrusted to go out alone, 'cause not everyone were allowed to do that. Milers, the boss called 'em, meaning give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile, being gone all afternoon if they wasn't supervised proper. Well, he were no miler. He worked hard and weren't that the truth, and the boss valued that, that's why he gave him the responsibility of getting the mushrooms in now. Knowing he'd fill his trug and wouldn't dawdle.

It were just the way he yelled at him, that were all. Made him feel small in front of the kitchens. Not that most of 'em was listening, and it weren't like he never yelled at them, either. His Majesty bellowed for Gaul. But that little Spanish girl. The new one with the hair that shone like a mirror and a laugh like a springtime cascade. He didn't want her to think he was meek or stupid or nothing, but how the fonk was she going to think well of him when the boss kept talking down to him?

Gathering more velvety chanterelles that smelled of ripe apricots, he tried to think of ways to impress her. He couldn't carve, felt too embarrassed to bring her a garland of flowers, and in the kitchens she had her run of fancy foods to nibble. Yeah, but what if he wrestled a couple of the boiler room boys? He had muscles, she'd see what he were made of then, and know that he were just being polite to the boss. Respectful like. Not gutless. The boy rubbed his grubby hands on his tunic. That were it. Strength of body, strength of character. He'd fonking well gone and cracked it with that!

The sound of a twig cracking interrupted his train. From the corner of his eye, he just caught the fleeting outline of a figure before it disappeared behind a tree trunk. Immediately, it was followed by a frantic flutter of wings as birds flew out of the canopy.

Some said the Scarecrow was the presager of death.

Others believed him to be Death himself.

The boy was taking no chances. Abandoning his ceps and chanterelles, he legged it back to the villa as fast as he could.

Vines were all very well, but sooner or later someone was bound to catch on that Claudia's understanding of viticulture extended little further than twiggy bits that had to be pruned, twiddly bits that had to be tied and late summer squalls that were perfectly capable of rendering bunches of big, juicy grapes a rotting mass fit only for vinegar. Given that Marcia intended parading her collection of artisans to the local luminaries tonight, Claudia decided to play safe — and no subject was safer than that of her hostess's tomb! Marcia could talk for hours about Paris's exquisite marble nymphs, Hor's intense artistry and Semir's fastidious landscaping, so Claudia decided to explore the menagerie before the supply of superlatives ran dry.

Following the mournful mew of a peacock, she wound her way down the hill, past ancient walnut trees and stately oaks, to the sheltered valley that opened out at the bottom. So this was where the water from the diverted stream had ended up. Expecting Roman-style fountains and Grecian grottos, her eyes popped. It was as though a prism had exploded. Pink plumage from the flamingoes, grey from the cranes and white sacred ibis reflected in the pool, yellow baboons picked at their lice, lovebirds and finches preened in the aviary.

Give the woman her due. She said she wanted to stage an exhibition and stage an exhibition she had! Mongooses, bears and porcupines snuffled around in their pens. White-ruffed monkeys chattered as they swung from the bars of their cage, their babies clinging on to their backs for dear life, gazelle grazed serenely in the pastures across the way, while, at the far end of the pens, a cheetah snarled.

'Good evening, Mistress Seferius,' drawled a voice from behind. 'May I have the pleasure of escorting milady to dinner?'

That voice — there was something familiar about its deep baritone. Claudia spun round, but even before he'd stepped out of the shadows, she'd picked up the smell of sandalwood. Unmistakably, the scent of the predator. Only this one wasn't caged in.

'Orbilio?' The Security Police in Santonum? This had to be another hallucination. 'Please, Jupiter, tell me I'm dreaming.'

'Would it help if I kissed you? It's what dashing heroes do in folk tales, you know. Kiss the maidens to wake them up.'

'You're right. It's not a dream, it's a nightmare.'

'And it's lovely to see you again, too.'

That was the trouble. Hallucinations don't laugh, they don't have dark eyes that twinkle, or crisp black hairs on the backs of their hands that disappear up their sleeve and- 'Orbilio, what the hell are you doing here?'

'Me?' He affected a look of boyish innocence. 'Well, you know how it is. Warm summer's evening. Birds singing. Butterflies on the wing. So I thought, Marcus old chap, why not stretch your legs before dinner?'

'Aren't you worried that they're too long already?'

'Would you care to take a peek?'

'I'd sooner drink bleach while rolling naked in a hornet's nest and whipping myself with a handful of nettles.'

I'll take that as a yes, then.' He held out his arm. 'Dinner, my lady?'

'Marcus! Darling!' Marcia scooped up the proffered arm with the kind of smile that would have given the cheetah an inferiority complex, had it been watching. 'How's your case coming along?' she purred, and it was interesting to note that she was completely alone. No big Basc bodyguard at her shoulder. No flurry of flunkies to bring up the rear.

'Handsomely, thank you.' Orbilio shot an amused glance at Claudia. 'The evidence is mounting nicely'

'Really?' Marcia's eyes travelled over the strong lines of his face as though searching for something, but Claudia decided that this was not, repeat not, an appropriate time to be discussing Orbilio's prospects for the Senate.

Croesus, something had to have gone badly wrong if he'd trailed her right the way out here. It wasn't tax. Heaven knows, the dodging of contributions to the imperial coffers was a serious enough offence and yes, she'd built up quite a backlog one way and another. But the outstanding balance wasn't so large as to warrant such a heavy-handed approach, and, besides, he was an investigator, not a debt collector. Snooping was what he did best.

'Tell me, Marcia.' She linked her arm with her hostess's and thought it had to be that little sneak Burto. Dammit, she should have known better than to get involved with that bastard. A few probing questions and Burto squealed like the pig that he was, dropping her in it to save his own skin, and fraud was a serious enough offence to bring the long arm of the law here to Gaul! She looked at it, draped with Marcia's scarlet linen sleeve, and wondered how much evidence it had collected and how much was bluff. 'Are those Egyptian water lilies you're growing in the pond over there,' she gushed, 'or are they the fragrant variety? And you really must tell me how you get such wonderful blooms on your heliotrope. Mine produce such weedy specimens.'

Along the line, she thought she heard a deep male laugh, but she must have been mistaken, because when she glanced behind Marcia's shoulder Orbilio was coughing into his white linen handkerchief.

'And those monkeys,' she said. 'Such darling things. Are they any use as pets, do you think?'

'Hm.' Marcia rolled her tongue under her lip. 'Qeb. Qeb, are you there?'

'Ma'am?'

Wearing a pleated linen kilt like his brother, the Egyptian stepped out from behind the ostrich pen, making everyone jump. It was impossible to tell how long he'd been there, and Claudia felt the flesh creep right the way down her backbone at Qeb's downcast expression, the slouch of his shoulders, the shine on his immaculately shaven head.

'These monkeys,' Marcia said. 'Do they make good pets?'

'No.'

That was it? No explanation, such as 'they bite', 'they pine', 'they turn blue if you keep them indoors'?

'No matter, Qeb will find you something to play with, won't you, Qeb?'

'Indeed.'

Hardly the chatty type, then.

'That's settled,' Marcia declared. 'Come. I must return to the festivities or my guests will think I've deserted them.'

'I'll catch you up,' Claudia murmured. 'I just want to… take another look at your tomb. It's so… so… '

Sadly, the store of superlatives had run dry.

'It's so perfect,' Marcia finished for her, 'and that's why you should always surround yourself with purists, darling. Excellence is these men's stock in trade. Personal pride means they will settle for nothing less than perfection. It is a rule I follow myself, in everything from business transactions to my health regime to couture.' She shook her expensively cut sleeve to prove the point. 'Compromise cannot be a virtue,' she sniffed. 'Relinquishing half what one wants is weakness and I can never respect such inadequacy. Now, Marcus, about this case of yours. Is there anyone I can put you in contact with, who might be of help to your investigation?'

Claudia watched them go. Marcia was wearing scarlet tonight, and the woman was no fool. Had she chosen that robe in the belief that red was the colour of allure? Possibly, given the way she was pressing it against Orbilio's long patrician tunic, and red has the advantage of giving its wearer maximum impact, especially in a crowd like tonight. But red is the universal warning of danger and, as the spotted toadstool and humble ladybird will testify, it's a colour designed to repulse. Once again, Claudia reflected on the absence of bodyguard and slaves and mused that red also makes for a conspicuous target…

Why had Marcia invited her to stay at the villa? What was the purpose behind tonight's banquet? And, more importantly, where did the Security Police figure in Marcia's plans?

Keeping a safe distance between them, she followed Orbilio and his hostess back to the house. But instead of continuing on into the banqueting hall after them she remained in the portico, listening to the music fluting into the warm summer air, the murmur of relaxed conversation, the laughter of gentry enjoying themselves. After several minutes, Claudia picked up her skirts and quietly turned the other way.

Behind the villa, no one noticed a flock of greenfinches twitter out of the bushes. The slaves were too busy washing and perfuming the feet of their guests, fetching wine, fetching sweetmeats, topping up goblets, running errands, and, for their part, the visitors were too busy greeting friends, snubbing enemies and cutting deals to fret about a small feathered flurry. The musicians, bless them, were already lost in their instruments, clowns and buffoons far too engrossed in entertaining their audience for the outside world to impinge, and hired acrobats practised their routines in the yard with knitted-brow concentration.

So when a blackbird then came screeching out from the undergrowth, no one was even remotely concerned.