Widow's Pique

Seventeen

'Are you sure about wearing a simple tunic, my dear?'

Claudia dismissed Salome's concern with a wave of her hand. 'This is fine, really it is.' More accurately, it was perfect!

'Maybe your own robe will be dry in time for the feast?' Though the clouds of concern in her green eyes and the flatness of her tone suggested otherwise.

'Don't worry, Salome.' Claudia gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. 'It was my own fault, falling in the pigsty like that, and you said yourself, these tunics are awfully comfy.' Question: Where's the best place to hide a pebble? Answer: On the beach.

Therefore, in order to become one more anonymous Amazon, Claudia needed to ditch her expensive robe for rough work clothes without arousing suspicion, and there was a comforting irony in using her jailer to open the doors of her prison. Unfortunately, Mazares would never know he was the instrument of his own downfall; that it was his pig, his payment for the baskets of flowers, that allowed Claudia to weave her plan. But it had to be the pigsty she 'fell' in, because, yes, a rinsed robe might dry in time for the feast, draped over the circular drying frame. But those stains, bless their hearts, would never come out. My, my, she couldn't sit down to dinner like that.

As a tiny freckle-faced creature scrubbed the mucky marks with sage leaves, the sun slowly dipped below the far horizon and the Nymphs of the West trekked home from the fields, their skirts kilted up to their knees, their rakes and bill hooks over their shoulders. Back in Rome, the advent of May was celebrated with gladiatorial games, the bouts interspersed with salacious stripteases performed by state prostitutes in affirmation of the old life-and-death cliche, with the whole event culminating in a torch-lit procession. From the totem dances of the northern tribes, in which they bound winter to a tree with ribbons as they danced to the festival of Zeltane, in which Summer triumphed over Winter, day over night, life over death, such rites were universal. In Amazonia, the only thing that marked the passing of one season to another was that the feast was held at night, rather than during the daytime.

The lovely Salome could protest all she liked, but these were not normal customs. This was not a normal farm.

'You haven't met Mo, have you?'

The soldier's widow wriggled up to allow the little frecklefaced laundress to join the group.

'Her name is Modestina,' she added. 'Mo for short.'

'It is very sorry,' the newcomer told Claudia earnestly, 'but without bleachy it is no rubbing of those stains out.'

She smiled. The last thing she needed was someone to keep plugging away at the stains. Dammit, the whole idea was to persuade some gullible young Amazon to parade round in her Roman robe when it was dry, so that by the time her armed escort realized that it wasn't the Lady Claudia they were keeping their eye on, she'd have gone to ground. But no one, not even a girl who'd never felt cotton next to her skin, much less a lavish gown, would want to try on a soggy cold frock!

'Never mind the bleachy,' she told Mo. 'I'll have the robe unpicked and made into a nightshift.'

Mo's freckles warmed to this suggestion, since her laundry expertise lay in eliminating stains from fabrics such as woollens, felt and coarse linens. She haves no experience with them liddle pleaty things, Claudia added to herself, frills and flounces patently a black art to her, and the thought of tangling with the ironing-out of embroidery ruckled by soapy water too dire to even contemplate.

'Yes, yes, is wondergood idea,' Mo said. 'My bleachy only make green dye to run and lovely dress end up even biggy mess.'

'You mean piggy mess,' Silas chortled.

Equality had broken down all barriers between gender, age and class, with the result that everyone sat where and with whom they liked, though most of the Amazons spoke little or poor Latin and tended, therefore, to cluster in knots of their own native language speakers. The group seated round Salome's table was different. Silas, the elderly expert in fruit production, had a pronounced Athenian twang. Mo's accent placed her from somewhere in southern Gaul. Scowling Tobias had a rolling Macedonian brogue, Nairn she put north of Galatia and Lora's soft Illyrian burr was unmistakable. And now there was another one joining the league of nations round the Syrian's table!

'Sorry I'm late, everyone.'

This Amazon's hair was so fair that it was almost white, her skin as pale and translucent as alabaster. Which probably explained why the black stains on her fingers stood out so clearly.

'Only, that last one was a bugger. I thought I'd never get the handwriting-'

'My dear, this is Barribonea,' Salome said, cutting the girl short. 'Except we call her Bonni, and with very good reason, don't you think, Claudia?'

It was the same when she introduced her to Lora. A message, a warning — this time with the stressing of Claudia's name.

'What I wouldn't give to have a waist like yours as slender as the neck of an amphora,' Claudia replied, noting that Bonni's hands, interestingly enough, had already disappeared under the table.

'I know what I wanted to ask you,' Salome said. Attagirl, change the subject. 'How's the restoration of the Marcian aqueduct coming along?'

Claudia brought her up to date, as dishes of mullet in mustard sauce appeared on the table alongside shrimps swimming in garlic, asparagus spears, lobster rissoles with chives and a selection of spicy, smoked sausages.

'I often wonder if that old Nubian sword swallower's still fooling the crowd outside the basilica.' Silas's gnarled but nimble fingers prised a mussel out of its shell. 'By Gannymede, that old fraud must have made a fortune.'

'Tell you who else made a mint, me lovely,' Nairn said, and if Silas minded her large breasts pressing against him, he manfully refrained from pointing it out. 'That line walker on the Field of Mars.'

When she pushed her corkscrew curls out of her face, two feathers fluttered gently to the floor.

'Every morning he'd dance, I tell you, across a tightrope stretched between two trees, and he'd be there all day, from when the sun rose until it set. Is he still there, me darling?' she asked Claudia.

'Oh yes,' she lied, and she'd been in Rome for eight years and had never seen such a performer. 'Sometimes he dances with a small dog in his arms, as well.'

What colours were in fashion, Bonni wondered, her wide blue eyes drinking in with disbelief their guest's serviceable plain tunic. What hairstyles were in vogue, what style of gowns? Even Tobias stopped glowering long enough to ask whether the old fortune-teller on the corners of Fig and Pepper Street was still going strong, lord alive, she must be eighty-five if she's a day.

So many questions about Rome! Why the sudden interest, she wondered, because most of their queries were distorted by memory or else several years out of date, though the questions suggested they knew the city well. Could it really be that simple? That Rome was the common denominator on this farm? As she brought the group up to date on the latest exotic animals to find their way to the navel of the Empire, creatures like black and white striped horses and fuzzy beasts with two humps on their back and the obnoxious tendency to spit, Claudia was not getting the impression that these were simply reunited friends sitting round a table.

'D'you intend to marry the King, then?' Silas didn't even look up from the chunk of herb bread he was pulling apart.

The sudden switch in conversation caught her completely off her guard, and she wiped an invisible dribble of sauce from her mouth to buy time.

'Much depends on what happens when I meet him, I suppose.'

'Really?' The old man glanced at Salome and frowned. 'I thought it was all cut and dried-'

'More wine, Silas?' Salome asked, silencing him with a smile.

Claudia pretended not to notice. Instead, she rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward.

'What do you make of the King, Silas?'

'Don't have an opinion either way, love.' But the old man refused to meet her gaze. 'I'm too old to concern myself with politics. My job's pruning apple trees and fanning out the peaches, making sure the apricots don't catch the blight.'

'Now, I find that surprising,' she said, spearing a prawn floating in rich garlic sauce. 'Because if the King gets his way and does stamp out Salome's reforms, your job, as indeed everyone else's on this farm, will go. Doesn't that bother you, Silas?' She beamed a sunny smile round the entire group. 'Doesn't it bother any of you?'

'It bothers me.'

'Lora, please don't start on that again,' Salome said firmly. 'How many times do I have to tell you, your father-in-law has no jurisdiction over me or my land. My husband was given this farm by the Emperor. I'm a Roman citizen, I inherited it legally, I retain legal title, I pay my taxes, I worship Roman gods, and, dear me, it's no one else's business what I get up to on my own property. Am I correct, Claudia?'

And you have a bust of the Emperor on display,' she said sweetly.

Salome must be slipping: she'd missed Augustus off the list — or rather, script. Well prepared and well rehearsed, the widow's mistake was to quote it verbatim, which draws more attention, not less. However, the most interesting point was that, last time, she used the same script about Rome!

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.

Now she'd turned it on its head to use it against the Histrian King, and suddenly Claudia realized there was another death to add to her list. Stephanus, Salome's soldier husband, who would have been — what? — just forty-four when he died.

'Excuse me.'

She'd just noticed a creature little more than a child fingering the edge of one of her richly embroidered flounces. The overlap for the girdle would look ridiculous when worn in high society, the girl being at least a handspan shorter than Claudia, but her hair was thick, dark and wavy, and once tied up Roman-style with a few silver brooches to reflect the torchlight, who among the escorts, eating and drinking away happily at the gate, would notice the difference? The girl proved not only a willing accomplice, she was the envy of her young Spanish peers and, seated at the margin of the May Feast, no one at Salome's table had the least interest in what happened to a bit of washing draped over a drying frame, not even frecklefaced Mo. Thus, invisible in her working tunic, Claudia worked her way back to the table.

'Don't you think you're imagining this, me darling?' Naim was saying.

'No, I bloody don't,' she heard Tobias growl. 'That bitch is a spy.'

Spy? Claudia stepped two paces back into the shadows. Bitch…?

'Surely she's far too high-status to be a spy?' Bonni countered.

'And that's the beauty of it,' Tobias snapped. 'They think we couldn't possibly suspect the King's would-be bride.'

'Like the Divine Julius's wife, she'd be above reproach, you mean?'

'Exactly, Bonni.'

'Sounds a bit far-fetched, lad.' Silas added his voice of reason to the argument. 'If they wanted to send a spy, they'd have put a girl in undercover.'

'They've already tried that once, me lovely.' Naim rested a plump hand on the old man's arm and patted gently. 'Remember that little Cretan girl, the one with the squint?'

Silas buried his head in his hands and groaned. 'We shouldn't have let our guard down there,' he said. 'We should have sent her back.'

The hairs on Claudia's neck started to prickle. There was a cold chill down her spine.

'Well, we didn't and that's one spy they won't be seeing again,' Tobias said with disturbing finality.

'What is you suggesting for Claudia, Tobi?' The little laundress was close to tears.

'What do you bloody think?' Lora snapped back. 'We keep on being nice to her, show her anything and everything the nosy bitch wants to see, and let the blushing bride think we're stupid. And then…'

When she snapped her fingers, Claudia's knees turned to aspic. If only she'd had a phial of the sedative she'd slipped the little woodpecker the other night, she'd use it now to drug the guards and make good her escape. Her head began to pound. Croesus, why hadn't she done that in the first place? Why complicate the issue by playing bluff and doublebluff? But this was no time for recriminations. Right now she needed to 'My dear, I haven't thanked you for the good work you've done helping Broda to recover from the trauma of seeing Nosferatu.'

How long had Salome been standing there, she wondered. And why hadn't she realized before that the Syrian girl was missing from the group around the table?

'It's only jacks and hopscotch,' she said, delighted there was not a hint of quiver in her reply.

'Yes, I know, but her mother tells me that Broda's so exhausted these days, she falls asleep almost at once.' Salome's smile was as ingenuous as they come. 'I can see I'll have to give up dispensing medicines and open a gymnasium instead.'

'You'd still need your remedies,' Claudia retorted. 'Probably more so, after all those wrenched joints and torn muscles.'

'Then we'll have to go into business together. You mix 'em, I'll fix 'em — great Marduk, what's that?'

Her smile had frozen into a death rictus. Claudia followed her horrified gaze, just as screams filled the courtyard.

'It's burning,' someone cried.

'The whole farm's on fire!'

'The bastards!' Salome hissed. 'The absolute bastards. This time they're out to destroy me!'

But even as she spoke, she was racing off to organize chains of leather buckets to douse the flames, issuing orders for the release of the livestock from pens, telling her Amazons to forget the crops in the fields, look to drenching the hives, to protecting the grain store, to making sure they covered their hands to avoid burns, to putting damp cloths over their noses and mouths.

Now was the time. While the Histrian chauvinists told Salome what they thought of her practices once and for all by destroying everything on the farm in one sweep, this was the time to sneak out.

Claudia had already established her hideaway.

The earliest inhabitants of the Histrian peninsula were hunter-gatherers, who'd braved the preponderance of bears, lynx and wolves to make their homes in the hundreds of caverns that pitted the richly forested limestone hills. These caves afforded more than adequate protection from predators and the elements, penetrating the rock by anything from a hundred feet to as much as a mile, where dripping stalactites made strange shapes and the cavernous halls still echoed with the moans of their ghosts.

But as the hunter-gatherers became farmers, so the caves were abandoned as dwellings and used as animal pens or for storage. Over time, the magnificent paintings on the walls faded, pelts over the entrances shredded and fell, bones crumbled to dust, to be blown away on the wind.

But the farmers did not entirely forsake the past. The new homes they built for themselves in the valleys retained many of the hallmarks of their previous existence. They still used stone to protect themselves from the weather and carnivorous marauders. Great flat slabs of stone, laid in small, defensive circles which gradually narrowed as the walls grew until they ended up with a sturdy grey cone with a hole in the roof to let the light in and to let out the smoke from their hearth.

It was in one of these ancient, long-abandoned beehives that Claudia had desposited a basket of food, a couple of thick blankets and one very grumpy cat in a cage. This had necessitated a series of furtive manoeuvres because she'd needed to completely hoodwink her escort, but praise be to Juno, the fires wouldn't touch Drusilla out there.

Amazonia was in chaos. The whole farm had turned into a choking mass of swirling smoke, the flames leaping and dancing in joyful abandon as they crackled and spat and hitchhiked on the breeze, spreading new fires to new fields, new incendiaries to new buildings. Screams rang into the night, but worse still were the laughter and taunts in the Histrian tongue. Dark figures flitted about with torches, setting fire to whatever they could — goose grass, fodder stores, farm implements. Everything burned.

Amazonia has stirred up a lot of trouble round here, Mazares had said, the night he bumped into Salome. If she doesn't change her ways soon, something terrible is going to happen. I know it.

Claudia remembered the anguish behind his velvety eyes, and knew that the anguish was genuine. Bile rose in her throat. Suspicious of Salome and her farm, someone (the King? Pavan?) had sent a young slave girl undercover to learn what went on here. That girl had never returned. The anguish in Mazares's eyes had been genuine, sure — but only for his fellow conspirators. Claudia felt nothing but contempt for them all. Long may Amazonia burn.

She was halfway across the meadow when she noticed the pigsty. No longer fat, calm and contentedly pregnant, the spotted sow was squealing in terror as the thatch on her roof crackled and spat. The pig was new. The Amazons had dealt with situations like this before, although never on such a vicious and co-ordinated scale, and they were attacking the blazes the best that they could. But the pig was a recent arrival. No one, goddammit, had given a thought to the new sty

… 'Shit!'

Changing tack, Claudia raced across to the smouldering building, the screams of the trapped sow tearing talons into her heart. She could hear her crashing into the walls to escape flames that licked higher and higher, and knew that each collision meant a dead piglet. Terrified of not reaching her in time, Claudia's skin fused with the searing hot metal bolt that fastened the gate. She recoiled in pain and anger, and the pig charged past, shrieking in panic, her snout bloody and raw.

'Ey!'

From nowhere, a hand clamped round Claudia's waist. It smelled of cheap wine and stale sweat, tinged with arousal and smoke.

'Ja bim mir un Amazoni!'

'Get off me, you fat bastard!'

Too late she remembered Mazares's other complaint. That they were sick of burning rapists round here…

'Let go of me, you oaf!'

She thought she could shake him off. She honestly thought that, between her slum heritage and her dancer's training, she could shake her attacker off. Maybe she could. But he was calling out in his thick, guttural tongue words that she remembered from the crew on the galley. Some were what one might call basic. Another was the crew's term for Drusilla. Vildkatz. Wildcat. A second figure emerged from the swirling smoke. His laughter was deep as his arms lashed around her, forcing her to her knees.

'Dal Dom het un vildkatz heer, alfid!'

His erection pressed into her spine when the first monster ripped her tunic away with both hands. Squirming, kicking, writhing, twisting, the more Claudia struggled, the more the bulge on her spine jolted in arousal, but she was not giving up. They were not going to take her like this. Never!

'Ayiee!'

A head butt in the first monster's groin sent him retching on his knees into the ditch, but her spunk only fired the second man's hunger.

'Dom vetta spiel, vildkatzi?'

You want to play, little wildcat?

Gripping her neck in his elbow, he squeezed.

Hetta spiel!'

Then let's play.

He knew exactly how hard to press. Not hard enough that his victim passed out, there was no pleasure in that. He pressed on her windpipe with exactly the right amount of pressure, while he roared with laughter at her helpless flailing. Around her, screams and shouts filled the bitter night air, and the roof of the pigsty collapsed with a crash. With tears of frustration spurting down her cheeks, she felt him unbuckling his pantaloons. Gagged as his naked erection pressed against her. Smelled the stench of his sweat.

'You'll pay for this, you bastard,' she gurgled.

His reply was to hitch up her skirt.

'I'll find you. I'll hunt you down if it's the last thing I do, and you'll die screaming for mercy.'

'Da! Spiel, spiel, mir pritti vildkatz!'

Mighty Mars, Sacker of Cities, hear me! Make him writhe in the Pit of Eternal Fire for this. Make sure he never sails to the Lands of the Blessed to walk with his ancestors in the Elysian Fields. Let the Waters of Forgetfulness never be his to drink.

'Merr, merr, mir pritti vildkatz!'

His breath was hot in her ear as his hand yanked at her loin-cloth. Then…

'Dom vetta spiel, huh?'

Deep and low, the question came through a mouth full of gravel, and suddenly sweat was overwhelmed by a strong smell of leather.

'Dom vetta spiel, du bastardo?'

With a crunch, the grip round her neck loosened as her assailant let out an unearthly yell. As he stumbled past her, she saw his arm hanging at an unnatural angle, with what looked like bone sticking out of his shirt.

'Dom steel vetta spiel?'

A punch thudded into his open jaw, spinning him sideways on to the ground, where he landed with a thud on his broken arm. A boot connected to his screaming ribs. The boot was the size of a tree trunk. An oak tree, to be precise.

'I think we'd best get ye home, eh?' Pavan growled, throwing his shirt round Claudia's shoulders.

The war knot had gone, the ponytail was back, and his grey eyes were unreadable as a huge thumb wiped the hair out of her eyes. But there was nothing he could do to stem the sudden flood of tears as he hefted her into his arms.

'Wait,' she blubbed. 'Wait, we need to go into the hills first. I can't leave Drusilla up there alone.'

'Hmm.' The rumble came from deep in the general's throat. 'Ye run round in work clothes, ye risk your life for a pig, ye damn near was raped and now ye want to go looking for cats.'

He nodded thoughtfully as he tucked the shirt tight round her neck.

'I'd say the man who marries ye is gonna have his work cut out, that's for sure.'

Way down in the Ionian Sea, mighty Neptune struck his trident in the seabed and conjured up a tempest. The seas rose obediently, sending great waves to lash the cliffs of the Peloponnese and swamp the coasts as far north as the Gulf of Corinth, but Neptune's rage was short. Having rapped the knuckles of the Greeks for not making sufficient propitiation — who knows, perhaps the bull wasn't black enough? — he banished the winds back to their caves and gave orders for the heaving seas to subside.

Typical of equinox storms, it was over in a matter of hours and could have been far worse. A preposterously clear, calm dawn revealed that only two ships had been dashed against the black rocks in the night, though both had foundered with the loss of all hands on board, and by the time Apollo's golden chariot had begun its slow climb above the horizon, his anger was already being appeased with prayers and offerings in the form of sacrifice, libations and garlands. The ethos of fear and revere was strong in Neptune's book.

Such surges, though, always have repercussions. On the tiny island of Kithira, where Helen of Troy had consummated her adulterous relationship with Paris and sparked off the mother of all wars, a weak roof collapsed, killing the priest who sanctified oaths. Taken as a sign of Neptune's displeasure with a character which, although it appeared on the surface to be completely impeccable, was obviously far from the case. You can fool humanity, the islanders reasoned, but you can't fool the gods. Recent affidavits were instantly rendered null and void, and wailing women prayed for the dead man's wicked soul.

Higher up the coast, another reputation was being tarnished by the storm. A blacksmith in his thirty-seventh year had collapsed from simple heart failure as he fought to batten down the shutters on his forge, but because he was young, strong and supremely fit, none of the villagers could accept death from natural causes. It was obvious to them that he'd been punished by the Furies, those frightful dog-headed creatures with hair like snakes and bat-like wings instead of arms, who hound the consciences of the guilty with relentless passion. His widow ought to count herself lucky she'd found out in time!

The undercurrent left by Neptune's tantrum surged inexorably northwards. It travelled slowly, tempered by the various streams and currents that it met along the way, but it travelled onwards just the same. Eventually it would hit the little peninsula at the very top of the Adriatic, and only a handful of fishermen would grasp the significance of the exceptionally large catch they would be hauling in.

Finally, the swell would impact on the narrow channel separating Rovin from the mainland. Distance, time and nature would have dissipated virtually every ounce of power, but the channel would act as a funnel to the dying surge, swirling up the eddies that comprised the dark and oily realm of the firebreathing monster, Vinja.

Vinja didn't know it yet, but when that swell hit Rovin, he would be forced to give up several of his grisly secrets, and the corpses of a boat builder and a little priest would be among them.

But, for now, the swell was still gurgling its leisurely way up the Dalmatian coast.

Nosferatu wouldn't have to re-think any plans just yet.