Widow's Pique

Ten

The first thing that struck Claudia about Amazonia wasn't the imbalance of women, hoeing, irrigating and manuring in tunics kilted to mid-calf — which some might say was for ease of working, others flaunting their assets, like the strumpets they were. The first thing that struck Claudia about Amazonia was the colour.

It was as though a rainbow had burst upon the land and hadn't summoned up the energy to move. Sky-blue flax beside white onion flowers, purple lavender adjacent to bright green ears of wheat. Grey geese with orange bills paddled in the margins of a pool fringed with yellow iris, white arabis and blue aubretia, while black donkeys trampled yellow buttercups beneath pale pink apple blossoms, and white goats browsed among the fields of yellow lupins grown for fodder. Every last bit of it exploding out of a bright reddish-orange soil.

The second thing to hit her was the scent. Musky ajuga mingled with spicy basil, understated rosemary competed with blowsy wallflowers, while heliotropes and pinks vied for perfumed attention.

'Welcome, my dear.'

Mazares had arranged for an armed escort to accompany Claudia across the Rovin Channel to Salome's farm, but if the Syrian girl was surprised by the visit, it didn't show as she swept her guest into the house and who knows — maybe every visitor arrived here under armed guard?

'Wild strawberry and rosehips,' she said, handing her visitor a goblet of pale pink liquid. 'You won't find a better tonic, anywhere.'

'News travels fast.'

The drink was sweet, scented and utterly delicious.

'News?'

Salome's puzzled frown was genuine.

'That I didn't sleep a wink last night,' Claudia said quickly. 'Personally, I blame the pillows. I swear they've been stuffed with bricks and old horseshoes.'

'No wonder my geese were eyeing you so warily,' Salome retorted. 'Poor things, they feared themselves featherless. How are you finding Mazares?'

She didn't even break stride and maybe it was the sunlight, but Claudia thought she caught a mischievous twinkle in those cat-like green eyes.

'Which came first,' she asked artlessly, totally ignoring the question, 'the farmer or the healer?'

'My mother, my grandmother and her mother before that were all healers,' Salome replied, smiling. 'With each generation that passes, our skills become richer, each of us adding something from her own bank of knowledge, be it culled from Egyptian, Greek, Indian or Roman medicines.'

How about local, Claudia wondered, thinking about the King's mysterious illness. On a fast horse, Gora was a day's ride from here..

'But not richer in the financial sense,' she said aloud, noting the plain whitewashed walls and simple flagged floor.

'No.'

Salome's laugh was as elegant as the woman herself.

'There's no profit in medicine around here, the folk are too poor. Now that Pula's expanding, though, we're gaining quite a reputation for our cosmetic aids and I'm hoping those will generate income.'

'Selling eternal youth to women with more money than sense?'

'There are plenty of those around Pula,' Salome chuckled, 'and every tide washes in a few more.'

Washing in more resentment among the locals, too, Claudia mused.

'You're a fine advertisement for your products,' she said, again struck by the young widow's height and angular beauty.

In her thirtieth summer Mazares had said, yet despite so much time spent out of doors, Salome's skin had the bloom of a girl half her age, and the simplicity of her gown only emphasized her foxy red mane and the loveliness of her figure.

A becoming blush suffused the tan. 'Thank you, but it's not only cosmetics we're a dab hand at. With so many talents coming in to our collective pool, we prepare everything from laxatives to love potions to furniture polish that — ' she rapped a gleaming door jamb with her knuckles — 'keeps its shine for a year. Did Mazares send you?'

Mazares, Mazares, always Mazares.

'A whole year?' Claudia said, examining the woodwork.

A not uncomfortable silence settled over the room, as Salome laid out a dish of olives and cheese. It gave Claudia a breathing space to assemble her thoughts.

Soldiers weren't allowed to marry until they retired from the army and it was obvious that little had changed in the ten years since Salome's husband built this house for his bride. Constructed of white stone, like everything else around here, it conformed to the standard Roman practice of four wings round a central courtyard, but the accommodation block was small, just three bedrooms and the atrium, which were all sparsely furnished and lacking in the decorative arts that were such a feature of Roman homes. In fact, the only personal artefacts that Claudia could see were a bust of a rather bullnecked individual, presumably the late husband, and an exquisite ivory carving of two racing greyhounds. But there was something else missing from Salome's house. Something Claudia couldn't quite put her finger on…

'I can see you love this place,' she said, sweeping her arm round the kitchens, shed, dormitories and workshops that comprised the other three wings and where every craft from weaving wool to weaving chaplets, baking bricks to baking bread was in varying stages of progress.

'Very much.' Salome draped herself over a couch with unassumed grace. 'Histria is so beautiful, so fertile, so full of giving, that you can't help but fall in love with the country.'

Claudia pictured the unforgiving deserts of Salome's Syrian homeland.

'My husband was one of the first to be given a farm here, you know. It's the Emperor's aim to apportion a third of this peninsula to retiring soldiers, although less than half that target has been achieved so far.'

As she spoke, Claudia realized what was so odd about Amazonia. Children! Right across her Etruscan vineyards, the valleys echoed with the shrieks of workers' offspring, so much so, she often wondered the slaves didn't stuff their ears with felt to block out the racket as the little buggers chased one another round vats, played hide and seek in the treading house and hopscotched round the cellars.

'You and your husband weren't blessed with babies?'

'Goodness, is that old lesbian rumour doing the rounds again?'

Salome untied the green ribbon at her nape and combed her long hair with her hands.

'How that starts, I'll never know,' she said, re-tying it. 'Everybody knows I was devastated when Stephanus died.'

Not devastated enough that you didn't free his slaves the very next day.

'But your workers,' Claudia persisted. 'Don't you take on women with children?'

The muscles round Salome's mouth stiffened. 'Most of the girls come alone.'

And most of them were exceptionally young, she might have added. Sixteen, seventeen, Claudia could see how misunderstandings might start to arise, prompting her to take a closer interest in the nubile young Amazons as they bustled about, milking goats, churning cheeses, dyeing cottons and hanging laundry on large circular wooden frames to dry.

In theory, paying hired labourers was not much different from paying slaves. Foreigners had this ludicrous notion that Roman slaves were on a level with dogs — fed, watered, but that's about all. How ridiculous! How could you possibly coax good work from a browbeaten, downtrodden drone? All slaves, regardless of status, received a salary on top of their board and lodgings, a remuneration which naturally varied according to skill. Foreign nobles were always amazed to discover that everyone in Augustus's court, from book-keepers to clerks, was enslaved. That slaves also owned slaves themselves. And that a good many invested their salaries in business, often running a profitable little sideline in barbering or tavernkeeping.

'What was Rome's reaction, when they found out you'd freed all of your husband's slaves?' Claudia asked.

'Since I haven't told them,' Salome said lightly, 'that delight's still in store.'

'They don't know?'

She tried not to think of the administration's reaction when it came to their ears that a Syrian widow had undermined one of the driving principles of Roman economy.

'How long ago since you let them go?'

'Six years last autumn.'

Croesus. The Senate would explode.

'I have done nothing wrong,' Salome said steadily. 'When I inherited those people, they were mine to do what I liked with and it just so happened that it pleased me to give them their freedom.'

Technically, perhaps. A master was entitled to free any slave that he chose, and slaves were also entitled to purchase their freedom, providing they had sufficient funds and permission. But to release them all, and at the same time, was to fly in the face of imperial principles — and if there wasn't a law against what Salome had done, there bloody well would be when someone found out. Which they would! As more Histrian soil was claimed by Roman soldiers… as Pula expanded… as trade and traffic increased…

'Salome, it's not too late to own up.'

She was no fool. She must know her actions could not remain secret for ever, why not get in before she found herself arrested for treason — when losing her farm would be the least of her problems! Or had she just been out of the loop for so long that she'd forgotten Rome's attitude towards reprisal?

'What I do with my land and who I employ is my business, not some busybody's in a city, who has never set foot on this peninsula.'

Salome leaned forward and fixed her visitor with her penetrating green eyes.

'I inherited this farm legally, I retain legal title, I pay my taxes, I worship Roman gods and I have a bust of the Emperor on display.'

That? Claudia glanced at the ugly bull-necked image, about as far removed from the handsome, lean, athletic Augustus as a man could get, and thought, hell, he'd have her thrown to the lions just for the insult.

'How did you meet your husband?' she asked, changing the subject.

'Stephanus?'

Something inside Salome seemed to melt.

'Well, the first thing you have to remember is that I was only sixteen at the time and the second thing you need to know is that we Syrian girls aren't anywhere near as worldly as you Romans.'

Her gaze fixed on a point on the wall and many years back in the past.

'Anyway, this particular day, a soldier knocked, wanting to see my mother about a wound he'd sustained on the training ground that hadn't healed. This wasn't unusual. No disrespect, my dear, but your army surgeons can set bones, remove arrowheads and stitch flesh to perfection, but they don't know spit about herbs. However, this day my mother was out delivering a baby, so I offered to lance his festering wound.'

She giggled like a schoolgirl.

'But Stephanus, he starts to back off. Tells me no, no, he'll call back and get my mother to fix it, but in his clumsiness he turns and walks wham! into a table. Claudia, I have never heard a yell like it! "So, the wound's high on the front of the thigh," I say, and of course he's squirming with embarrassment — I mean, a fully grown man yelping like an infant and in front of a woman as well! — and it doesn't help that I'm laughing. "Oh, come here," I say. "Don't be such a cissy." So I whisk up his tunic, and then it's my turn to turn purple. "Well, it's hot in the desert," Stephanus says lamely. "Wearing a loincloth just makes it worse.'"

Salome wiped the tears from her eyes.

'Stephanus always told people how I saw his potential long before I saw his face.'

She blinked rapidly.

'He was a good man, my Stephanus. A good man.'

Who'd have been — what? — thirty-seven when they first met. How would that twenty-year age gap and wide cultural differences affect their relationship, Claudia wondered. And Salome had said a good man. Not, I loved him so much, or, I miss him, or, what a tragedy he'd died so young. A good man…

'Talking of men,' Claudia said sweetly. 'How come you employ so few?'

On a farm this size there'd be hundreds of tasks that brute strength would sort out in a jiffy, but would tie up two, possibly three women for half a day minimum.

'Sad to say, Claudia, I've found there are very few men who can cope with equality. Even those who claim they have no problem feel intimidated once they confront it.'

Salome sighed.

'Men seem to have this constant need to prove themselves. Bragging. Swaggering. Demonstrating their physical superiority first by chopping wood then by making advances to girls who aren't interested. I don't turn men away, Claudia, but frankly I'm not sorry to see them leave.'

Her voice softened as she glanced out across the rainbow of Amazonia.

'Those who do stay, though, are real treasures. Tobias, for instance, coaxes flowers out of thin air, which means that, when we take our stuff to Pula market to sell, we can offer a much wider range of wreaths and chaplets than our competitors.'

Claudia had noticed the commercial flower beds on the way in. Violet delphiniums beside pale pink gladiolus, deep pink hollyhocks next to pure white lilies, plus a whole painter's palette of roses. She'd noticed, too, the scowling individual who tended them and decided that, rather than coax the plants into producing their magnificent blooms, he most likely threatened the flowers.

'Tobias has a secret weapon,' Salome said, handing over a goblet of golden liquor that was denser than wine, fragrant and sweet, warm on the tongue, hot on the stomach, and which slithered down as smooth as cough syrup.

'He makes it from honey and calls it hydromel, and I'll only blush if I tell you how much we sell that for in Pula.'

However much it sold for, it was worth double and if this wasn't the nectar that the gods sipped, then the gods were being short-changed on Olympus.

'You probably saw Silas on your way in,' Salome continued. 'Old man with a white beard? He introduced the art of espaliering to the farm, so now we have apricots, plums, pears and peaches to sell at market, as well.'

Claudia dragged her pleasure zones away from the heavenly nectar and remembered the worker clipping away at the fans trained against a row of trellises, his hands stained orange-red from the soil, and remembered thinking that he looked more like a kindly philosopher than a cross-pollination expert, and that was another odd thing. Unlike the women, who were uniformly young, the men covered all age groups.

But then everything in this country came with two faces.

The sea, sometimes blue, sometimes green, looks serene but has deadly undercurrents.

Politics, in which one side is desperate to get into bed with Rome and the other plots to revolt.

The coastal dwellers who lived off the sea, the hunters and farmers of the hilly interior.

Then there was Mazares. Debonair on the outside, yet devious and cunning as a wolf on the inside…

And now Salome. Who portrays herself as the grieving widow doing her patriotic duty and digging for Rome — but where are the statues of the gods she claims to worship? Where are the portraits of her late husband? And why, if she wants to hang on to this farm, doesn't she give the land a legal heir?

As Claudia knew only too well, one of the consequences of a slave population that outnumbered its citizens four to one is that no widow of childbearing age was allowed to remain unmarried for more than two years after her husband's death. For herself, she'd lost count of the tricks she'd had to resort to, to thwart this imperial order, but the law was the law, and even though Rome might not know about Salome's freed slaves, there would be a record of Stephanus's death. Which meant that someone, somewhere, would have followed this up… and would keep following it up until Salome remarried.

'Sorry to interrupt.'

An elfin face framed by a cascade of waist-length walnut waves poked itself round the door.

'But the tanner's wife is back.'

'Jarna?' Salome's face dropped. 'Don't tell me he's been beating her again!'

The elf nodded grimly. 'Only this time she's pregnant.'

'Lora assists me in the treatment room,' Salome explained. 'Lora, this is Claudia, who's come all the way from Rome to consider the King's proposal of marriage.'

An unspoken message flashed between the two women before Salome turned to Claudia and tutted over the beaten wife's plight.

'And the Histri still cling to the theory that if a woman has a husband, she's made!'

For someone who believed in equality and freedom herself, there was nothing Claudia could say. Especially since she needed to maintain the pretence of weighing up the King's proposal.

'I'm going to have to see to this poor woman,' Salome said, rising from the couch, 'but you're welcome to come along, if you like.'

Claudia could not have been any closer behind her, had she been Salome's shadow.