Widow's Pique

Three

Under a cloudless cobalt sky and in waters so clear you could almost reach down and stroke the wings of the rays gliding through the turquoise Adriatic, the little galley that had brought Claudia from Rome brailed her red and white striped canvas sails, shipped her polished steering oars and let the tug guide her through the maze of larger merchantmen and warships that were anchored in the bay.

Such was the demand for trade in this new and bustling port of Pula that no sooner had the crew dropped the anchor stones than a swarm of scribes and accountants began positioning their tables and tally stones on the quayside down below, and the poor old gangplank had hardly hit the wharf before the first of the harbour clerks was scampering up, scrolls and ledgers stuffed every which way beneath his arm.

'Ladies first, if you don't mind,' Claudia told him, sweeping down.

Twelve days was quite enough. She had no intention of waiting another second before stretching her legs, and besides… That fanfare of trumpets accompanying the long line of rugs being laid across the wharf was obviously in aid of some foreign dignitary's arrival. If she didn't make a break for it now, she'd be stuck aboard this vile floating bucket for another three hours, and dammit, she had an appointment ashore.

'I'll thank you not to use such language in my presence, either,' she added, as the clerk's backwards shuffle consigned two wax tablets and four scrolls to Neptune.

'Wait!' he called after her, manfully juggling the remainder of his scrolls. 'No one's allowed to disembark without registering-'

But the young woman with dark, tousled ringlets had already been swallowed up by the crowd. With a shrug, the clerk tossed his redundant register into the sea and decided he might as well be sacked for a sheep as a lamb.

Dear Diana, did I say stretch my legs?

Between dodging butcher's poles hung with carcases and chased by every mongrel in the neighbourhood and negotiating hawsers, chains and mooring rings while mules brayed and great yellow cheeses were wheeled across the cobbles, it was touch and go whether Claudia's nose had room to run, much less her legs. Crossing Pula's wharf was like taking part in some Persian fire dance, leaping this way to avoid amphorae of olive oil and wine that were being rumbled on and off the ships, sidestepping that way to evade the tanks of live fish that thrashed and splashed her dress, and goodness, if that wasn't enough, progress was now blocked by an oak tree in shirt and pantaloons. With his long hair tied back in a leather thong at the nape, he had the air of a man for whom the term wildlife preservation meant pickling badgers in brine.

'Excuse me,' she said.

But when she moved to her right, the human oak stepped to his left and she caught a whiff of strong, leathery scent.

'Gruzi vol.'

It didn't matter that he couldn't speak Latin or that she didn't understand a word of his guttural tongue. When she moved to her left, all he had to do was stay put. Instead, he moved to his right. Deliberately.

'Gruzi vol,' he insisted, and suddenly daylight dawned.

'Frankly, I'd rather mate with a three-headed gorilla,' she snapped.

Because what kind of ignoramus can't differentiate between dockside scrubbers and women of quality? Only the best, no doubt, only the best, but dammit, the next clod who propositioned her would get a kick on the shins for his trouble.

Skirting bales of cotton billowing over the quayside as merchants in bejewelled turbans and bows on their slippers seduced buyers with their rainbow wares, Claudia hoped to blazes that this trip was worth it. It was a long shot, of course, but gambling (as Anpu's bill testified) ran in her blood and in any case, when you're the only female wine merchant in Rome and the Guild is determined to put you out of business, risk-taking becomes daily routine. Ducking sacks of grain and sidestepping a drunken sailor sprawled out on the cobbles, Claudia knew that if she secured this contract to supply the King with her wine, it would put so many feathers in her cap that it'd look like she was wearing the whole damned ostrich. After which, the Guild were equally welcome to stick their heads in the sand. Or anywhere else the sun didn't shine, for that matter.

Of course, there had to be a catch — there always was — and instead of ostrich feathers, there was the distinct possibility that she'd return home smelling more of wild goose. The catch lay in the last paragraph of the King's letter.

… requests that the Lady honour him with a visit to his Kingdom, in order that a certain contract might be drawn up between His Royal Highness and Herself, binding their two parties in mutual agreement.

Not the bit about the certain contract, but those two other words, 'mutual agreement'. They suggested that the only reason the King had approached her in the first place was because she was the only female wine merchant in Rome. He'd know how tough it would be, a lone woman swimming among sharks, and unless she missed her guess, here was another one, looking to pick up vintage reserve at tavern-quality prices, sending an assortment of gifts to soften her up. What the old duffer couldn't possibly know, of course, was that Claudia Seferius was fighting for survival, not just money. Dammit, the only woman in Rome who'd started out with nothing and still had most of it left!

Decisions, decisions. Suppose she came away from this trip empty-handed, because the old miser was too stingy to stump up for quality wine? She'd be the laughing stock of the industry, her credibility shredded finer than bedstraw. On the other hand, just how low was she prepared to go to secure the King's custom?

If she'd had the funds to commission an agent to negotiate on her behalf, the problem would be solved, but she hadn't dared liquidate His Majesty's gifts immediately or Rome's rumour mill would have gone into overdrive. Juggling creditors whilst maintaining an air of prosperity was crucial to her commercial survival. If so much as one whiff of financial insecurity leaked, she'd be dropped like a hot brick by her clients.

As it happened, the decision had been taken for her.

'There's a foreign gentleman at the front entrance, madam,' her steward announced, 'with two donkeys loaded with fine linens. He requests an audience with you, ma'am. Says it's a follow-up to an earlier communication.'

Front entrance? Foreigner? Follow-up? Bugger. It was that damned Egyptian come for his money and making his demand as public as possible! She'd scrabbled for the note which had arrived the day before, the one threatening seventeen kinds of retribution if his bill didn't get settled 'Tell him I'm out. Tell him I'm away for the whole of the summer,' she hissed. 'Tell him I'm doing business with the King of the Histri and won't be back until — ooh, tell him October at the earliest, and then, for heaven's sake, man, book me on the first available passage to Pula.'

Of all her outstanding accounts, the linen merchant's was the smallest and a mental picture flashed up of the rest of her creditors forming a leisurely queue back to the Forum. At which point, it didn't matter that Claudia couldn't place Histria on a map or that she risked returning home with egg on her face. Suddenly, hacking this deal seemed a very attractive proposition indeed — although you'd think the King's envoy would at least be on time for the bloody appointment.

Her musings were interrupted by a hesitant tug at her sleeve. 'Mistress Seferius?' Although heavily accented, the voice was little more than a whisper.

'Who wants to know?' She had visions of the harbour clerk exacting revenge through a lengthy process of bureaucracy.

'My name is Raspor and I am — atchoo-!'

'The King's envoy?'

Short and chubby, he didn't look much like a regal representative. In fact, in his short, baggy tunic and the ring of dark curls circling his shiny pate like a halo, he looked more like an overgrown cherub. But cherubs don't frown, and their little dark eyes don't keep flashing round as though on the lookout for something.

'No, no, I serve temple of the Thunder God,' he whispered, and as he leaned closer, she noticed a gold chain round his neck hung with flint arrowheads. The odd thing was that he wore it inside his tunic. 'It is imperative that I — atchoo! — speak with you.'

'I hate to state the obvious, Raspor, but you already are speaking with me.'

'No, no, must please be private. Is too dangerous here. If I am seen — atchoo! — atchoo-!'

The snowstorms of dust that were being kicked up from the constant winching ashore of great blocks of limestone were tickling everyone's nostrils, but they seemed to affect Raspor worst of all.

'Let me check that I've got this right.' (Priest indeed.) 'I'm supposed to follow you to some quiet shed round the back of the docks, where my jewels and my virtue will be perfectly safe, since you're really my protector, my life being in terrible danger and all that?'

If he was aware of the sarcasm, he hid it well. 'Not you,' he snuffled, honking into a fine linen handkerchief. 'The King.'

'Oh. The King.'

Bless him, he didn't look like a lunatic. Though in fairness, she hadn't met too many from whom to draw a comparison.

'I must speak out.'

The little cherub began wringing his hands.

'Too many, how you say — innocents? — have died, and the King, he is too trusting. He — atchoo! — thinks only good of people, but there are bad people around him. Very bad. You must tell him, Mistress Seferius. You must warn him. You are outsider, please. You are impartial. He will listen. He must.'

Claudia dragged him out of the path of a great tusk of ivory and only narrowly avoided being trampled herself by a string of Spanish racehorses that were proving extremely frisky after their long voyage. In a week or two, the new season's trade would be scenting these docks with spices from India, Arabian incense, pitch from Corsica and Damascan plums, but right now the resinous scent of lumber from the interior predominated, oak, pine, cypress and fir, bound for the shipbuilding yards.

'It's not that I don't believe you, Raspor.' (Ha!) 'But I'm really not the right person-'

'Meet me,' he urged, frantically scanning the crowd. 'Just say you meet, yes? Then I give you names of people who was killed and dates when these accidents-that-were-not-accidents happen. But not here. Not now. Is too open, too dangerous. I am dead man, if I am seen talking to you.'

He was genuinely frightened, she'd give him that. Those beads of sweat out on his forehead weren't from excess heat (April here was pleasant but it was no heatwave) and you can't fake cheeks drained of colour and trembling lips, or the rigidity that comes only from fear. For one ridiculous moment, it crossed her mind that the cherub was serious — that there was indeed substance in his wild allegations — before she realized it was a severe case of wishful thinking. Of wanting to trade deep, dark conspiracies with the Security Police in exchange for getting that human leech, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, off her back. Fat chance! The authorities would laugh themselves into a collective hernia that Histria could be bubbling this close to treason without so much as a hint of it coming to their ever-vigilant ears!

Besides. She looked down at the overgrown cherub, his little plump hands clutched to his breast, and knew that Greek physicians had a word for his condition. Paranoia, they called it. Insanity characterized by feelings of acute persecution.

'Please, you have King's ear, he will listen. When you give him details of murders, he have no choice but to listen, because Mazares, he will stop at nothing to — atchooooo-!'

Recoiling from the mammoth sneeze, Claudia's knees connected with a crate full of peacocks, tipping her backwards. By the time she'd finished giving the delivery man a frank opinion of his navigational skills (a view, incidentally, shared by the peacocks), Raspor's little bald pate was bobbing deep into the crowd.

'Hey!' she called after him. 'Who the hell's this Mazares?'

'I am,' a deep velvety voice drawled in her ear. 'I the hell am this Mazares.'

'Well, about bloody time,' she said, taking in the King's envoy's swirling moustache, the goatee beard that, rather irritatingly, only served to emphasize his strong jaw as his firm grip helped her up. 'I've been hanging around this dock for hours.'

'At least you managed to take the weight off your feet while you were waiting.'

A torque of solid gold hung round his neck, engraved with creatures she didn't recognize. In the Histrian sunshine, it glinted almost as much as the amusement in his lazy, catkin-green eyes.

'However, I am here now, My Lady, at your service.'

The glossy curls dipped in greeting.

'May Rome and Histria find unity in your visit, and may peace and harmony be our guide. This way, please.'

Every inch as tall as the ponytailed oaf who'd propositioned her earlier, Mazares was lean where the oak tree was broad, and his long, dark curls fell to his shoulders in a manner reminiscent of Apollo. On the wrong side of forty, only a smattering of grey at the temples and a deeper-than-usual imprint of crow's feet round his eyes betrayed his age, and his trousers were the tightest she'd ever seen. One careless stoop and he'd be showing more than just his solidarity, she decided.

'I don't think so.'

'My Lady?'

'I'm sorry if you've mistaken me for some vacuous little bimbo who follows strangers at the snap of their fingers, but before we proceed further, Mazares, you will show me your master's seal.'

'The lady wishes to inspect my credentials?' The twinkle in his eye clicked up a notch. 'Well, well. Who is Mazares to argue with such a request?'

Slowly, deliberately, and quite uncaring of the nudged ribs among the crowd that had gathered, he untied the drawstring of his crisp white linen shirt. And each time he looped another cross-thread free to reveal more of his broad, tanned, Histrian chest, he made it clear that it was another challenge he was throwing down.

'Feel free to inspect anything you wish,' he rumbled, holding wide his shirt to expose a carpet of dark, springy curls that spiralled towards his belt in a V. His skin smelled of cool mountain forests.

Regal envoy or not, Claudia was damned if she was going to pander to such insufferable arrogance. She grabbed the seal that dangled from the thin gold chain around his neck and yanked, so that, like a dog on a leash, Mazares was forced to jerk forwards with it. Even though she was intent on authenticating the woodpecker overarched by a rainbow, she couldn't miss the change behind his eyes. The grin on his lips didn't falter, though, she'd give him that.

'Satisfied, My Lady?' he purred.

One step too far, my friend. One step too bloody far.

'My dear Mazares,' she trilled, flicking the seal away in a dismissive gesture. 'It takes far more than that to satisfy a red-blooded young woman like me.'

'Aye,' a gravelly Histrian accent muttered behind her, and there was a strong scent of leather about it. 'But unfortunately we're right out of three-headed gorillas.'

She spun round and found herself face to collarbone with the human oak she'd encountered earlier.

'I'm Pavan.' The badger-pickler clicked his heels in crisp military fashion as he bowed, but his steely grey gaze remained locked with hers. 'Commander of the Royal Histrian Guard,' he added, almost as an afterthought.

If there was a worse way to learn that gruzi vol meant welcome, Claudia couldn't think of one at the moment.