Widow's Pique

Eleven

The treatment room turned out to be a converted cattle shed.

At one end, a panopoly of leaves, petals, roots and seeds were in varying stages of being decocted, infused, macerated or pulverized, while at the other end shelves were stacked shoulder to shoulder with jars, bottles, phials and pots, and beneath the shelves stood a table on which ointments and poultices were in the process of being mixed from recipes anchored down at the corners with stones.

It was to these tasks that the elfin Lora returned, pausing only to tickle the ears of a grey kitten snoozing on a pile of cypress or occasionally stroke the plump, black torn curled up on the stool. Indeed, she barely glanced at the bench on which a pale creature sat with her bloodied and swollen head bent, and where two small, frightened children clung to each side.

'Jarna, Jarna, Jarna,' Salome chided softly, kneeling at the woman's feet and taking both hands in her own. 'One of these days that bastard's going to do some serious damage, you know that.'

'As long as iss only me,' Jarna lisped through her cut lip. As long as he don't start in on me kids, I can cope.'

'Can you indeed,' Salome replied, tilting the woman's chin to examine the cuts and swellings. 'Show me your ribs, please.'

The children stared at their feet as their mother pulled down her tunic to reveal a torso with barely an inch of undamaged skin.

'He drinks,' Jarna told Claudia, as though that explained everything.

'He wouldn't be able to swallow, if I got hold of the bastard,' Claudia replied, as Salome laid on a compress of decocted dewcup leaves to reduce the inflammation. 'Why don't you leave him?'

The woman indicated the tots sitting white-lipped beside her. 'Where would we go?' she asked wearily.

'You can come here.' Salome rubbed in a cream made from balm of Gilead and calendula to relieve the pain. 'I've told you time and again, Jarna, any time, day or night, my doors are open.' She ruffled the youngest child's head. 'Look, you two. Why don't you go and collect some eggs for your mother?'

Two pale faces looked at each other, then nodded.

Salome called, 'Naim?' and immediately a jolly, big-busted girl with corkscrew curls poked her head round the door.

'That's me,' she quipped to Claudia, with a broad wink. 'A rose by any other Naim.'

The feathers in her hair proclaimed her as Amazonia's poultry queen, and she would have been as plain as a pudding had it not been for the broad smile on her face.

'Now, what can I be doing for you, me lovely?' she asked Salome.

'I was hoping you might help this pair of tots hunt down some eggs for their supper.'

'Sure, me darlings.' Naim scooped a child under each ample arm. 'Sure we can, but if you're wanting to hunt 'em, we'd best find you some bows and arrows first, hadn't we?'

She led her two chuckling charges into the yard.

'Or would you rather be attacking them eggs with a spear?'

Salome waited until the giggles were well clear of the treatment room.

'Right then, Jarna.' She wiped her hands down the side of her gown as though it was an old apron. 'Lora tells me you're pregnant.'

The tanner's wife gulped and stared at her hands.

Salome wasn't a girl to go beating round bushes. 'If you want to keep the baby, Jarna, you're going to have to leave that vicious husband of yours before he kills it with his fists.

Assuming she proceeded to prod Jarna's stomach with expert fingers — 'he hasn't done so already.'

'He hasn't, has he?' What little colour was left in Jarna's cheeks drained to white.

'No. No, thank Jehovah, he hasn't, but we both know he will. Lora, mix an infusion of cinnamon and ginger, will you, dear? That'll ease any morning sickness and Lora will also give you a supply of marsh-mallow poultices for the swellings.'

'Should I add a phial of hyssop oil for the bruises?' Lora asked over her shoulder.

'Good idea.' Salome helped Jarna back into her clothes. 'Now think about what I've said, my dear, and remember. My house is always open to you.'

'Thank you.' From her purse, Jarna pulled out her only coin.

'Save it,' Salome said, pushing it back. 'Buy some clothes for the children before he drinks it away.'

'You and the tanner have much in common,' Claudia observed after Jarna had gone.

'How so?' Salome didn't seem particularly rattled by the comparison.

'Neither of you pulls your punches,' she said. 'And I get your point about there being no money in medicine around here.'

'We do all right,' Salome assured her. As long as I make sufficient to cover my costs, I'm happy, really I am, but listen! That's the lunch horn. Please say you'll stay.'

Tempting…

'I can't,' Claudia told her.

'I quite understand.' Salome nodded. 'Mazares is waiting.'

Now why on earth would she think that? Claudia wondered, as she waited for the ferry to take her back to Rovin. That there was something between them was in little doubt, and she couldn't forget the intensity of the surge when they bumped into each other by accident. Both recovered quickly, but Claudia knew that if either Salome or Mazares had been prepared for such a meeting, their reactions would have been very different indeed.

As the ferryman pulled on the ropes, she stared into the dark, oily waters. The very depth of the channel made for currents that were as dangerous as they were unpredictable, and the undertow was deadly in every sense of the word. Next to the landing, a marble shrine, hung with dozens of red mourning ribbons, testified to the fate of those who'd attempted to swim the quarter mile out of folly, drunkenness, necessity or bravado, and a flame burned day and night in supplication to Vinja, the fire-breathing sea monster who protected the island but who also made his home in this channel, devouring any unfortunates who came his way.

A dread feeling in Claudia's stomach told her that Raspor was one of his victims.

How sad that the beauty of Rovin was disfigured by tragedy. Gazing across waters so clear that you could dress yourself in their reflection, to the evergreen archipelago that shimmered under an azure sky, it was hard to imagine heartbreak in this oasis of cypress and cedar. Claudia's eyes followed the necklace of long, curving beaches that encased coral lagoons swarming with turtles and shellfish, then turned her head towards the mainland, to the fertile paradise of vineyards and olive groves, pastures and meadows, which stretched away to serene rolling hills in the distance. Beyond those lay the mountains of Kotar, a region of dense forests and snow-covered peaks which was home to predators such as wolf, bear and lynx. An untamed wilderness of sparkling rivers, deep lakes and rushing cascades, where icy caverns led down to the bowels of the earth and the caves in the hills were patterned with the handprints of men long since dead.

A self-contained kingdom. Magical, beautiful, thick with secrets and primeval wisdom, where jackals prowled, chamois jumped and pinewoods marched down to the edge of the sea.

Right now, their resinous perfume mingled with myrtle and wild oleander, with the smells of fish from the boats, and from cooking, as the island women busily prepared their menfolk's dinners. There was no poverty here, Claudia reflected. In Rome there was poverty. It hit you on every street corner, but here, in this far-flung outpost, there was none. So who would want to undermine what the late King, Dol, and his successor had worked so hard to achieve? Did they believe they could do any better? Or were the motives, as she suspected, venal…?

'I saw him, too,' a small voice piped up alongside. 'I saw Nosferatu, and nobody believes me, either. Not even my mother.'

Her hair was as glossy and black as a raven's, and her face was as white as this island's stone.

'I'm Broda,' she said, 'and I'm eight summers old, and my uncle built that boat, and that one, and that one.'

'He must be a very clever man.' Claudia's heart lurched at the hollowed eyes of one so small, at the tunic that billowed around her skeletal frame.

'What about your father?' she asked. 'Is he clever, too?'

Shutters came down over her haunted eyes. 'I have to go now.'

'No, wait!'

Please don't go.

'Why don't we play hopscotch together?'

With a pebble, she scratched squares on the pavement, then numbered them. Troubled eyes widened in wonder.

'You've never played hopscotch, Broda? Then prepare to learn from an expert.'

Claudia threw the pebble and hopped.

'Your turn.'

An hour passed, by which time both of them were wheezing like rusty bellows, though there was colour in Broda's cheeks and a healthy sparkle in her hollow eyes.

'Do you know any other games?' she asked, panting.

'Knucklebones, dice, soldiers, twelve lines — I can show you them all, if you like.'

'I like, I like!'

Proof that you're never too young to pick up a gambling habit.

'Can I come back tomorrow?'

'Whenever you want, Broda. Whenever you want.'

She watched the child skip away, then continued along the shore until she reached the spot where the noose had lashed round Raspor's trusting neck. Knowing Mazares had killed him was one thing. Proving it, quite another. Especially in light of her testimony being dismissed as the unfortunate consequence of a hastily prepared asinine sedative!

Sitting down on the warm rocks, she rested her chin on her knees and concentrated on the azure horizon and the terns that swooped and dived in its translucent waters. A small cat, not dissimilar to the kitten Lora had been tickling this morning, chased its own tail then scampered off in search of meatier prey, and now it was the scent of cypress and juniper that drifted across on the breeze.

Why was it, she wondered, when Salome's heart was so obviously made of gold, that Claudia didn't trust her an inch?

Rising cramped and stiff, as much from the effects of the hopscotch as last night's fall, her eye was caught by a small object glinting in the sun. The glint was dull. Barely noticeable. But a souvenir of paradise was not to be sniffed at, she supposed.

Except…

Her stomach lurched. The object in her fingers was no jetsam, no shell, no oddly shaped pebble. It was the unmistakable shape of a flint arrowhead, and her mind flew back to Pula, to the necklace Raspor had worn under his tunic. She'd thought it odd at the time, dismissing it as another aspect of his paranoia, but today, having overheard her escort talking about Perun, the Thunder God, she understood its significance.

The embodiment of victory, justice and peace, Perun protected his people against witches and evil spirits by striking them dead with his spear. In the old days, when Histrian ploughs first started to turn up these flint arrowheads, they'd taken them to be proof of Perun's bolts, carrying these precious thunder stones home to lay under their doorsteps to ensure themselves of his divine protection.

Whatever motives had forced Raspor to abandon his priestly robes, he had not abandoned his god, keeping Perun's holy symbols next to his skin. Obviously dislodged in last night's struggle, this was the first, and possibly only, piece of evidence that Raspor had been attacked, crushing all hope that the little man might still be alive. If Mazares was clever enough to set a trap in which Raspor believed he would be meeting the girl who had the King's ear, and was audacious enough to pull on the noose while the alarm was being raised, then he would not have abandoned his task in the middle!

Oh, Raspor.

Too many, how you say — innocents? — have died and the King, he is too trusting. He thinks only good of people, but there are bad people around him. Very bad.

Another innocent caught up in the struggle, and she had failed him. He'd only wanted to meet her, pass on his information to someone impartial, and through arrogance she had failed him.

I am dead man, if I am seen talking to you.

Can you ever, ever forgive me?

Mazares, he will stop at nothing.

Raspor had been silenced to stop Claudia passing on to the King any details of murders that had been designed to look like accidents. But what killings? What accidents?

She wound her way back to the King's house, barely aware of the sumptuous carvings, the exquisite wall paintings, the elegant rugs on the floor. But once inside her bedroom, she took great care to lock the door and then heave a chest in front for added protection.

First — she ticked them off on her fingers — there was the late King, known as Dol the Just, who had, in Mazares's words, died 'suitably young'.

His successor and oldest son, Brac, was dead a mere three days before his twentieth birthday — but hold on, she owed it to herself and to others to be objective in her appraisal. Fever was no respecter of standing or status, though she made a mental note to find out what had killed Dol and also what exactly ailed the present incumbent of the Histrian throne.

Who else? Well, number three, the King's only son was killed in a hunting accident, and recently, too.

Also, the King was a widower.

Whose only other child, a daughter, drowned not so long ago, when she was twelve.

Then there was the matter of the royal physician. Would a man in such an elevated position really run off with a male lover? The same man, moreover, who was uncle to the child who claimed to have seen Nosferatu? Coincidence could not be ruled out, but there was a limit to how far it stretched, and when you take Dol, Brae, the King's son, the King's wife and his daughter, who had all died before their allotted span, the disappearance of a boat builder and the royal physician seemed highly suspicious. Especially in view of the boat builder's traumatized niece. Add on Raspor's death and, Croesus, we're already up to eight — and these are only the ones I know about!

Like an icy blast from the Arctic, the enormity of the situation slammed home.

No wonder Raspor was terrified. He'd uncovered a campaign to get rid, not just of the King, but to eliminate his entire bloodline.

A campaign so cunning, so stealthy, so utterly cold-blooded in its execution that the conspirators were prepared to wait years to achieve their target, because this way it would not come to Rome's ears.

Hugging her arms tight to her chest, Claudia wondered whether Mazares was in this alone or whether he had allies among the others? His dashing younger brother, for example, or the high priest? And what stand did Pavan take in this matter? Also, there was one more possibility. That they were all in it together. Every last one.

In which case…

She waited until darkness settled over the island, then dressed in the darkest garment she owned. A tunic of Tyrian purple. It was also the most expensive, but this was no time to worry about snagging or rips. Mazares might be keeping her alive as bait to lure the King, who's to say Pavan was of the same persuasion?

Scooping Drusilla under her arm, Claudia pulled her veil over her head and slipped silently out of the house. No door opened behind her. No footsteps rang out in the blackness. Still, she waited outside in the alley, but the only sounds to echo down Rovin's dark streets were an owl hooting from one of the pines and a snore from an open window above. Keeping to the shadows, she ducked this way then that as she worked her way down to the ferry. Between the gems in her pouch and the knife in her hand, Claudia had every confidence in persuading the ferryman to make an out-of-hours trip to the mainland, where this morning's expedition had revealed the location of Salome's stables.

By tomorrow morning, she would be in Pula.

By tomorrow night, the conspirators would be in irons!

Her heart was thumping louder than Perun's thunderbolts when she finally reached the ferry landing, but she need not have worried.

No one was following.

Nobody cared that she'd slipped out of the house.

The ferry's ropes had been cut.

With a contented smile, Nosferatu turned over in bed.