Widow's Pique

Twenty-Three

Orbilio unbuckled his belt, pulled off his soft deer-skin boots and groaned. Anyone else suddenly confronted by royalty would have dropped to her knees and apologized. Not this woman. Claudia Seferius stomps off along the colonnade without a backward glance, and before Marcus could apologize on her behalf, Mazares had also stalked off, but in the opposite direction.

He didn't know what hurt the most.

Seeing his friend wounded by her assumptions.

Or witnessing the passion with which their marriage bonds would be woven.

He dunked his head in a bowl of cold water until he could hold his breath no more, and when he came up for air, he couldn't be certain at first that it wasn't his imagination that picked up footsteps in the corridor. But they were real. They were light, fast, confident footsteps, the step, no less, of a dancer, and there was an ache inside as they passed by. Orbilio towelled his hair dry. He often forgot that was how Claudia used to scrape a living, performing in dingy, backstreet naval taverns, and a muscle tweaked at the side of his mouth. That was in a previous lifetime, of course! Before she'd forged a new identity for herself and enveigled her way into a prosperous marriage. The twitch gave way to a fully fledged grin.

Poor Claudia. When she took Gaius for better or worse, she never expected to face problems like… well, like having the man she had pegged as a murderer turn out to be a king, for one thing.

Or having a conscience, for another.

He dipped a sponge in the water and ran it over his arms and chest. As much as Claudia Seferius would have people believe that scruples were the dangly bits at the back of her throat, she had a strong taste for ethics — though if she'd only face up to the fact, her life would be a whole lot less complex.

He wrung out the sponge and re-soaked it, knowing that he would never be the one to tell her.

Scrubbing his shoulderblades, he pictured her preparing for tonight's banquet. He imagined her taking a brush to the thick tumble of curls that cascaded over her shoulders. Drizzling her spicy Judaean perfume into the dips of her collarbones.

His gut wrenched. Mother of Tarquin, it would never happen! It would be Mazares, not him, who'd be privy to such intimate moments. The King who'd watch Claudia unpin the clips that held her tunic in place and gaze as the soft cotton fluttered down to make a pool at her feet. Suddenly, he couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear the thought of her untying her breast band The burning behind his eyes halted abruptly as he reached for a towel and caught sight of his bronze powder box on the table. He'd picked up the idea from athletes. Discus throwers always smother their hands with powdered chalk to keep their palms free from sweat on the field. Orbilio had merely taken the concept a stage further, by dusting powder over his skin after a bath. The powder kept him fresher for longer. Only, someone, it seemed, had been poking around in his box. He knew this, because the level was too even, suggesting fingers had searched for something hidden in the powder then shaken it flat. To prove his point, he noticed a light snowfall of particles over the bronze lid as dusty fingers replaced it.

A professional gaze swept the room, taking in the clothes chest that was ever so slightly askew, the counterpane that was ever so slightly ruffled from someone feeling under his mattress. Taking a deep breath, he reached for his satchel and unhooked the clasp. The contents remained in exactly the same order — his letter of authority, for instance, and his other credentials — except the parchments were overly neat. As though they had been patted together before being replaced. The scrolls re-rolled with their ends tucked tidily in.

A woman's touch, experience concluded. This was a woman's doing, and 'You dirty, double-dealing, low-down skunk!'

His bedroom door almost flew off its hinges.

'Why the hell didn't you tell me Mazares was the King?'

Marcus made a dart for the towel. Claudia whisked it out of his reach and brandished it like a weapon.

'Why did you leave me to make a fool of myself?'

'I didn't leave you,' he said, snatching a shirt to cover his embarrassment. 'You insisted I stayed on, remember? You wanted a witness, you said.'

'Bastard.'

'Am I to conclude that you didn't find Mazares's joke funny…?'

'Oh, absolutely bloody hilarious. No wonder people wouldn't tell me what the King's like… he's standing right in front of their faces, and — what a hoot! — everyone in on the joke except the poor bitch who's marrying him. Now honestly. What bride could fail to be tickled by that?'

'I did try to warn you,' he said.

The first time was at the Ostia Gate. He'd even tried to tell her tonight, but no. Modom just wouldn't be told.

'The Divine Julius said no man could do his dying for him. In your case, Mistress Seferius, no man can do your letterreading for you. Because, if you'd read it through properly, instead of cutting your usual corners, you'd have saved yourself a whole lot of grief.'

'So this is my fault?'

Marcus managed to turn a laugh into a respectable cough.

'Dammit, Orbilio, that slimy snake was winding me up from the start.'

She looked like she was about to burst a blood vessel. Unfortunately, it looked like one of his she was after.

'From the minute I demanded to check his credentials in Pula-'

Orbilio couldn't help himself. 'Yes, I've heard that women find them impressive.'

Bad move. She balled up his only towel and lobbed it out of the window.

'-right up to the point where I cornered him tonight in the courtyard-'

'-Or perhaps right up to the point when Mazares decided the joke had gone on long enough? Don't forget, Claudia, tomorrow's the day when marriage announcements are finalized and-'

'Orbilio, who's talking here, you or me?'

'It's my bedroom. Don't I get to decide?'

Her response was a look that scorched timber.

Orbilio belted his shirt round his waist and poured her a goblet of wine. 'Claudia, calm down. Please. Just calm down a moment.'

If there was one thing the aristocracy was good at, it was oiling, he supposed. It wasn't a tactic he resorted to very often, going totally against the personal grain, and admittedly, when it came to stoppering up volcanoes, this wasn't going to be the easiest of tasks

… but after slinking four goblets of vintage red down her throat, followed by two of fruity chilled white, he managed to reduce the eruption to just a few spurts of lava, interspersed with the occasional showering of hot coals.

'You said it yourself, Claudia, and though you didn't realize it was Mazares you were talking about, the King's a good man. Nothing's changed in that respect, and that's why I insisted it couldn't possibly be him who was responsible for the killings.'

'But you do believe there are killings?'

Hmm.

'I believe that a lot of tragedy has befallen his family,' he said carefully, then added swiftly, before she could cut in, 'Look, if you intend changing your gown for the victory banquet, there isn't much time.'

'Sod the victory banquet. Just tell me what you're doing on Rovin.'

'I already have. I'm following up on a runaway slave, remember?'

'Yes, and when we discussed the matter before, I believe we also agreed that I'm the Queen of Sheba. Dammit, Orbilio, you've cooked something up with Mazares, haven't you? And don't play the innocent with me. I can smell your lies three miles away!'

Personally, Marcus would put the distance at a hundred times more (at the least), so perhaps it was time to come clean with her, after all? He rested his back against the wall and tried to look as dignified as any man can, when he's wearing nothing but a tribal shirt wrapped round his waist.

'Mazares came to see me in Rome,' he told her. 'Not in any official capacity, but as a friend. A man he could talk to.'

It had come to his attention via the tribal elders, Mazares said, that something odd was happening at Salome's farm. The elders reported seeing women coming and going at an unusual rate, and since the women were uniformly young, foreign-looking and spoke precious little Latin, the elders feared Salome was running some kind of slave trade. Mazares had reassured them that, if that was the case, then the girls would only be coming, not going, and that there would be ships anchored nearby to take them away, or at the very least wagons. The elders knew this wasn't happening, of course, and accepted the King's explanation that freeborn women travel without restraint in the Empire, that visiting friends and relatives was commonplace, blah-blah-blah, but lying to his people didn't sit easily on Mazares's conscience.

'He couldn't raise the matter with the tribunes in Gora for risk of legionaries raiding the farm. This would prove him a liar in the eyes of the tribal elders, he'd alienate himself from Rome if there turned out to be some perfectly innocent explanation, and you must remember that his daughter-in-law, Lora, is also living up at the commune.'

'So he decided to have a quiet word with his old friend, Marcus, instead?'

Orbilio nodded. Having listened to Mazares's concerns, he explained, he realized this was connected to the disproportionate number of runaways who were disappearing so effectively from the city that not even professional slave catchers could trace them.

'With this case bearing all the hallmarks of an organized gang, it was already under investigation by the Security Police.'

Slavery was the lynchpin of the imperial economy. Anything that threatened to undermine it was naturally classed as treason.

'Salome inherited her husband's slaves,' Claudia retorted. 'She was quite within her rights to give them their freedom.'

'This isn't about what she did six years ago, it's about what's been going on since, and I have to tell you, we're talking serious numbers here.'

'Pfft.' She dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. 'Show me a bureaucrat who doesn't exaggerate and I'll show you a day tripper in Hades.'

Orbilio spiked his hands through his hair.

'If only it was as simple as that,' he replied, and wondered whether he'd been adequately able to disguise the weariness in his voice. 'But, hell, even if it was only half the number being mooted in the corridors of power, can you imagine what would happen if word of these escapees got out?'

Right across the Empire, slaves would revolt. There would be anarchy and dissent, murder and chaos. Streets would run red with blood.

'I didn't tell my boss about my meeting with Mazares, I just convinced him to let me take over the case and-'

'Came to Histria to investigate. I see.'

'No,' he said quietly. 'No, Claudia, you don't see.'

He had a sudden urge to bury his face in her hair.

To close his eyes.

To forget…

'From what Mazares had told me about Salome, it seemed inconceivable that she could be running a racket for venal motives,' he said. 'She's a herbalist, a healer, a nurturer, a nurse, and he and I both felt that — well, if anything untoward was going on at the farm, then Salome had to be doing it out of misguided goodness.'

He swallowed the lump in his throat.

'To prove my point, I decided to send a girl undercover.'

'Sweet Janus, not a little Cretan girl with a squint?'

Hope leapt in his breast. 'You've seen her?'

The look of pity he received in reply dashed his hopes.

'They knew right from the outset that she was a spy,' Claudia replied hoarsely. 'I overheard Silas and the others talking. It was the night of the fire and they… they said — and god forgive me, I'll never forget it — Tobias said — ' she swallowed — 'he said, "That's one spy they won't be seeing again."'

Something congealed in Orbilio's stomach. Every night when he closed his eyes, he'd see the girl's wide trusting face in front of his, and every morning when he awoke it was still there. Now, he realized, it was her ghost looking at him…

'There's more,' Claudia said. 'I'm afraid Lora is part of this scam.'

'Yes, and tonight I come back to discover that Salome has been searching my room.'

She was on to him, but that didn't matter. He hadn't committed anything to paper that she wouldn't have suspected already. No. What mattered was how he was going to break the news to Mazares that the woman he looked upon as a trusted friend was a murderess — and the daughter-in-law whom he cherished was in it up to her neck.

Mazares.

The King who prided himself on justice and right.