Virgin Territory

I

It wasn’t his fault. Captain Herrenius hardly knew her. How could he possibly predict that, despite keening winds and raging seas, no amount of persuasion would winkle this beautiful young creature from her niche in the prow?

‘It’s for your own safety,’ he urged, and the lack of response threw him. He was sure his voice had carried above the clamour of his crew, the crash of the waves. ‘You’ll be more comfortable in your cabin.’

He couldn’t mean that dingy mop-hole where she slept? Bilge rats had better bunks. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ When there were problems to be faced, there was only one way Claudia Seferius tackled them. Head on. Besides, storm or no storm, she had no intention of being bundled out of the way like a redundant artifact.

But her words had been carried into the churning Ionian, and all Herrenius could make out was a quivering mass of dark curls as she drew her cloak even tighter. Scared, was she?

‘Don’t worry, m’dear, I’ll look after you,’ he said-only this time he found himself on the receiving end of a glare capable of cracking walnuts at fifty paces. Checking that the water cask was secure, he wondered whether, given time, he would ever understand women.

As the ship rolled to starboard, Claudia’s cloak went skimming down her back to form a black heap on the boards. For one ghastly heart-stopping moment, she could see nothing but the liquid marble of the water, then the ship righted itself. She snatched up her wayward garment. It was made of goat’s hair, favoured for its resistance to salt water, and as she shook the dirt off this old workhorse, she had a feeling it was about to be put through its paces. Spume was being whipped up like egg white.

Noting the set of her chin and never one to admit defeat, the Furrina’s captain inched closer. Young girl alone on the seas, needed looking after, what? He cleared his throat. Charming filly and no mistake. Needed a man, though. A strong, capable man to help her weather the storm. A man with-what was the word? — experience, that was it.

Inching closer, he caught the heavy scent of her perfume and felt a stirring in his loins as he remembered her at the stern rail yesterday, the breeze ruffling her hair and flattening her tunic against the outline of her body. Fully aroused at the memory of those taut, high breasts, the points of her nipples, the curve of her belly, the sweep of her thighs, Herrenius nevertheless waited until the ship gave another violent lurch before making his move.

‘Take your paws off me, you odious little greaseball!’

To his credit, the captain’s expression didn’t alter as his fingers unlaced themselves from her waist. Stuck-up bitch, he thought, but it was with immense care that his hands remained firmly clasped behind his back as he made his way aft as nonchalantly as he was able.

‘Come by the boat!’ he snapped, and the bosun looked up sharply. The jolly had been hoisted aboard this half-hour past. But he knew that mood, and to avoid being put on a charge, tossed another anchor over the side. That still left three, didn’t it?

Claudia snapped her fingers and the limp form of Junius, the head of her personal bodyguard, made a manful effort to straighten up from where it was hanging over the rail. Interesting colour formation, she thought. White for the main part, tinged with a spot of green here and a spot of grey there, and a teensy bit of purple round the eyes.

‘Junius, if you ever let that scumbag Herrenius within one pace of me again, I’ll have you dangled from the masthead by your toes. Understood?’

The look he gave her was that of a whipped and starving puppy who’d just learned he was about to become the ball in a game of Countrymen, but it was wasted on Claudia. The storm had all her attention.

The sky, staggering under its watery burden, bent lower and lower over the foaming waters, dragging the horizon closer by the minute. Cedarwood timbers groaned so loudly even the roar of the wind couldn’t compete. With each roll of the sea, each sickening lurch, the rope ladder slapped against the protesting mainmast. Someone ought to secure it, she thought. But they were too busy.

More and more men were put to control the two monstrous steering oars, but work was impeded by the presence of both deckhouse and sternpost. The extra men were only getting in one another’s way. The gale lifted a clay tile from the galley roof and sent it crashing into red shards on the deck below. Claudia glanced at the cliffs looming towards her and assured herself everything was in hand, Herrenius knew what he was doing. She repeated it three times before she began to believe it, but you had to have faith in someone on this little tub. The foresail was in and the big squaresail nearly brailed up now, and she had to hand it to these boys. Every time the vessel heaved, over they swung, fifty feet up and thirty feet out with only a loin cloth for protection. One missed footing and they were, to use their own expression, monster bait.

Claptrap, of course. Hadn’t she seen with her own eyes the spot where, if the whirlpool Charybdis didn’t suck down ships, six-headed Scylla thrashed them into splinters? Perfectly ordinary waters! All right, maybe the current was a little fast, but nowhere near sufficient to make the prospect of navigating one small stretch of choppy water turn strong men into mumbling wrecks. All that chanting and anti-evil-eye stuff! Pathetic.

They blamed Claudia for this easterly. Not in so many words (they wouldn’t dare) but in September these straits were blessed with westerlies, calm and pleasant and a veritable joy to sail. This, she had been assured time and again, was fact. So why, then, had the Tempestates been unleashed by the gods to wreak mayhem and havoc?

Drusilla, it transpired, was the key.

Suddenly the keel was thrown high out of the water, sending Claudia crashing against the side of the ship. She clung desperately to a ratline as the freighter wavered, as though skewered on Neptune’s trident, before pitching forward with a spine-jarring shudder. Another check at the cliffs. This is not a good place for a shipwreck, she thought. Definitely not.

She licked the ropeburns on her palms and thought of Drusilla. It was a rough ride, she hoped she was coping. Poor Drusilla. She didn’t deserve the crew’s hostility but, for some obscure reason, the presence on board of one small Egyptian cat with blue eyes and a wedge-shaped face had turned the entire contingent into gibbering, superstitious shadows of themselves. It had now reached the stage where two of her bodyguard-big, black Nubians, the toughest she could find-were permanently stationed outside the cabin door.

A mischievous gleam twinkled in Claudia’s eyes as she wondered how the crew would react to the announcement that, as of this morning, there was still one small Egyptian cat with blue eyes and a wedge-shaped face…but with the addition of four tiny replicas.

The impending storm and the prejudice of the men had not, it seemed, deterred Drusilla from the practicalities of motherhood.

The long-threatened rain began to lash Claudia’s cheek and, gripping the rail with one hand, she tucked flyaway curls under her collar with the other. That letter, she thought, was a godsend. An absolute godsend.

It had seemed the answer to her prayers when, five weeks ago to the day, she inherited from fat, old Gaius his entire fortune. Now Roman law might not insist a man divide his estate among his natural children in preference to his third wife, but it was pretty well accepted practice. Fortunately her husband, may he rest in peace, had swallowed every baited hook-and the whole lot had come straight to his twenty-four-year-old widow rather than to his daughter, Flavia. Every single copper quadran. Except…

How on earth was Claudia supposed to know Gaius’s fortune was tied up in property? Did he discuss his business? Did he confide in her? Did he ever so much as mention money to her? Did he hell! Instead of inheriting a shining pile of gold pieces there for the spending, Claudia was lumbered with a bloody great house in Rome, a vineyard and villa in the middle of nowhere and a wine merchant’s business that she knew bog-all about and cared even less for. It simply wasn’t fair. You marry a man for his money and he leaves you with this to sort out!

What Claudia Seferius knew about viniculture could be written on the back of…well, a vine leaf. I mean, what was there to know? Vines have thick, twisty stems, they throw out dark green leaves and lots of twiddly bits and at some stage they produce bunches of grapes to be picked by slaves who then trample them around in some buckety thing. Frankly, what happened between that and the filling of her glass was of no interest whatsoever. Yet within days of her husband’s funeral, Claudia had been swamped. Buyers to meet, contracts to honour, shipping to arrange-there was no end to it. Pricing, irrigation, pruning, manuring, it was enough to make a girl’s head spin and there was only one solution, really there was. The races.

There was a cry from the shrouds and a collective howl rose up from the men. Claudia spun round. A black rock rose high and jagged. White water seethed round it, breakers crashed into it. Over it. In the pellucid flash of Jupiter’s thunderbolt, each menacing spike showed clear, beckoning, beckoning…

‘Heave!’ the captain cried.

Every man threw his weight against the tiller.

‘Heave, men, heave!’

The little freighter plunged helplessly on, tossed by the wind and the force of the waves. Up she went. Teeter. And crash. Up and teeter and crash. Claudia’s nails gouged deep into the woodwork. They stood no chance! They were going to hit it! They were really going to hit it!

Then, with a sudden merciful lurch, Neptune relented and the ship, spinning in the current, missed that rock by the smallest whisker on earth. Claudia didn’t hear the cheers. She was too busy promising white bulls. To Jupiter the Storm Maker. To Neptune, lord of the sea. To the Tempestates, whose shrine stood just outside the Capena Gate. Anything they wanted was theirs. She was rich now. She could afford to be generous.

In fact the very first thing she’d determined was that Gaius had left in his moneybox a float of 23 gold pieces, 1 silver denarius, 835 sesterces, 6 asses and 12 quadrans. Hardly a fortune, but ample funds to finance the odd flutter. Her mouth twisted down at the corners. She ought to stop. Hadn’t she been taught a lesson once already?

Except the old excitement had taken hold, more and more with each wager-which in turn became heavier and heavier, wilder and wilder. The addiction was back. With a vengeance.

‘Boredom,’ she told herself.

And so rather than face up to the fact that the weight of her inheritance was too great and she simply couldn’t cope, Claudia immersed herself in the thrill of the chariot race, the combat of the gladiators. Here it was easy to ignore pressing commercial problems and decisions up at the farm. Here you could escape in-laws clamouring for a decent settlement. With breathtaking alacrity that liquid float turned itself into a paper deficit of over 700 sesterces, the equivalent of a labourer’s annual wage. Claudia sighed. It was true, the old saying. The best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one… Therefore that letter from Sicily, coming out of the blue, had been nothing short of a godsend.

One Eugenius Collatinus, an old friend of her husband, sends condolences to the grieving widow and invites her to stay with him and his family for as long as she needs. If, however, she does decide to visit, would she mind chaperoning his granddaughter, Sabina, returning home after thirty years’ service as a Vestal Virgin?

He lived just outside Sullium, he said, not far from Agrigentum. Claudia, who barely knew where Sicily was, much less Sullium, rooted out an ageing map etched on ox hide, blew the dust off and unrolled it. Triangular in shape and large enough to be a continent in itself, Sicily was plonked right in the middle of the Mediterranean and it wasn’t so much a bridge between warring nations as a breakwater. It was easy, now, to see how the province had become Rome’s first conquest. Where are we? Ah yes, there’s Agrigentum, on the south coast. So where’s, what’s it called, Sullium? Claudia’s finger trailed along the cracked surface of the hide until she found it. West of Agrigentum. Oh good. Right by the sea.

After that, the hard work had begun in earnest, but a thorough-and she meant thorough-search of Gaius’s business papers for transactions involving this Collatinus chappie came up empty-handed. There was nothing in his personal correspondence either.

But she did find something else.

Something very, very important.

Something which put her whole future in jeopardy…

Claudia lost no time winging off a reply along the lines of how she desperately needed to get away from Rome. Each street, each sound, each sight reminded her of poor, dear Gaius, taken before his time, she could not bear to stay here any longer.

As to chaperoning Sabina, she’d be delighted-and that, at least, was partly the truth. It was a damned prestigious role, Vesta’s priestess. Conspicuous in bridal dress, celibate and serene, these six women took prominent roles in many festivals and, like everyone else, Claudia was aware of the system. Every five years, after a thirty-year stint, the senior Vestal retires and the next oldest steps up to take her place. At the same time, a little novice, a specially invited initiate aged between six and ten, slips in at the bottom and the rota continues. Representing the daughters of an ancient king, they tend the hearth of Rome itself-and legend says should the sacred fire ever go out, the city will be destroyed for ever. Was it surprising they were held in such reverence?

Or, to put it bluntly, Eugenius Collatinus needed considerable clout to have got a granddaughter ordained and Claudia, for one, had no intention of letting a chance like that pass by.

She did everything that was necessary. She’d avoided her in-laws, evaded her debt collectors and commissioned a special cage for Drusilla, until finally the whole kit and caboodle had arrived at Ostia’s wharf last Tuesday by which time the captain’s ulcer was twitching badly. Another hour and the wind wouldn’t have been strong enough, he’d have had to set sail without her. After a smile that did more to neutralize his ulcer than half the limeflower infusions he guzzled down, she was ushered towards Sabina’s cabin with the respect and veneration associated everywhere with the Vestals.

‘How do you do?’ Sabina, smiling coyly, rose to meet her chaperone as the ship weighed anchor and began to bob gently on the waves.

Claudia stared hard. Tall, willowy and dressed in an elegant dove-grey tunic, the woman was a picture to behold. Her eyes seemed a little distant, as though she was staring through Claudia rather than at her, and she was clutching what appeared to be an empty blue flagon to her bosom. A apart from those two anomalies, this was one of the most handsome specimens Claudia had ever seen.

Pity the woman was a total stranger. Because whatever else this creature might have done with her thirty-six years, she hadn’t spent the last three decades serving Vesta.

In fact, two weeks hadn’t passed since she came face to face with the Holy Sister at the Feast of Jupiter-and unless that girl had taken extensively to drink in the meantime, this was not the same woman.

As the ship cleaved its way through the seething white water, rain bouncing off the heavy goat’s-hair cloak, Claudia groaned.

What am I doing here?

In debt. In a storm. With an imposter. In a little wooden bucket. Bound for a place I’ve never heard of. To stay with someone I don’t know. While my whole future hangs in the balance and the crew want to chuck my cat overboard…

Hell, on top of that-look, I’ve broken my bloody nail.