Widow's Pique

Thirty

Clouds had closed in to swallow the hills, trapping heat that you could cut with a woodsaw. Thunder rumbled like the bellowing of the Minotaur imprisoned in the bowels of its labyrinth — half man, half bull, all cannibal — and the growls were relentless, rolling from island to island and back. With each roar, the night sky turned a deeper shade of purple and crackled with bolts of white lightning.

'Hrrrowwl.'

In the dark, Drusilla's crossed eyes glowed like diamonds. 'Yes, I know, poppet.'

The rasp of cicadas was grating on Claudia's nerves, too, as she paced the cool marble floor of her bedroom. Salome had treated her head wound with tincture of birthwort and applied a poultice of marsh mallow to Claudia's jaw, and as much as she would have liked Salome to stay, Salome had other, more pressing matters, to attend to.

'Yowwwwl.'

As another silver shaft splintered the heavens, Claudia was gripped by a feeling of impending finality and she shivered. Surely the news must come soon? She shivered again, dreading the news, dreading the lack of news. She wanted nothing to change. Everything to remain suspended in time just as it was. Frozen. Preserved in this limbo for ever.

So, she washed down the exact number of flower buds of meadowsweet, honeysuckle — and something she couldn't identify — as Salome prescribed with the oregano tea she had left, then swallowed another handful because the pain wasn't dulling, though it wasn't the throbbing in her head that concerned her.

'I can't stand this,' she told Drusilla. 'I can't stand this interminable waiting.'

Salome had ordered her to stay in bed. She had lost a lot of blood, she insisted, and on top of her previous injuries, it would be foolish to risk infection. But who could sit twiddling their thumbs while the Grim Reaper's sickle swishes back and forth over Mazares's head? Except the pacing only added to the sense of impotence, and the desolation in her heart was as cold as the Arctic.

She heard boots in the corridor. Hurrying. Scurrying. But they passed on, and the hall fell silent once more.

Time passed.

The sky turned black, as black as the Thunder Maker's face, whose bolts split the heavens. She thought of Raspor. Of the arrowheads that hung round his neck.

'Oh, Perun,' she whispered. 'Mazares is a good man. Don't let him die.'

Fear turned to anger. How could he do this? How could he not realize he was so ill? Damn you, Mazares! Would it have been so hard to delegate a few tasks here and there, so you could at least tell the difference between burden and poison? It is killing him, Drilo had said. His pride is killing him, and he was right. Rosmerta couldn't have woven her evil if Mazares hadn't shown her the way!

Claudia continued to pace. She'd only be in the way in his sick room, and in any case, Mazares was weak enough at the moment, he needed strength pulsed into his body, not fear. Right now, the King needed calm. He needed the soothing touch of a woman who loved, but didn't panic. A woman, moreover, who never doubted…

An old proverb twisted its way into Claudia's head. It was a favourite of her father's, she remembered. That there was a remedy for everything except death. Oh, but if there was even a remote chance of saving Mazares, Salome could do it. On willpower alone she'd win through, and she possessed a knowledge of herbs that had been passed down through the years, each generation adding her own bank of learning. The trouble was, the answer to whether Salome's blend of courage, willpower and healing was strong enough would not be known for some time, and Claudia couldn't keep prowling this room. She had to do something.

There was only one thing to do.

Island funerals are lonely rituals for someone who isn't a native. For priests, in particular, they lack not only the grandeur of their urban counterparts — the professional musicians, hired mourners, orators, acolytes, sacrifice, augury — but also the warmth and companionship that accompanies the deceased on that final farewell as friends and relatives line the streets, rather than strangers merely nodding to pay their respects.

To be fair, the people of Rovin had done their best for Raspor, but even assuming his corpse had been in any fit state to travel to Gora — which, in this heat, it was not — there was no escort available to accompany him on that last, lonely journey.

The riots that had interrupted the auction intensified once news of Rosmerta's conspiracy filtered out, and the King's illness had done little to quell it. The Histrian people were in turmoil. They would not leave Rovin, they couldn't; never before was Mazares needed so much. Despite some protection by his leather cuirass, Pavan was too weak from blood loss to take charge, Orbilio far too Roman and Kazan too close to the source of their pain. Nor was Drilo up to the task, but they took their high priest's advice when he pointed out the urgency of burying the grisly haul that had been dredged up by the current. Sadly, this meant Raspor was but one of several hastily prepared burials, denied the dignity of even a personalized service.

And because order had broken down, or perhaps because he'd needed something to focus on, the ferryman hadn't closed up after dark. Naturally, he protested when he saw his passenger's injuries, but recognized in her the same need to be busy and unhooked the rope without speaking.

Around the archipelago, Perun's anger crackled and spat, and the Kingdom of Histria trembled under his boot. Claudia averted her eyes from the heavens, staring into the deep, silent waters, and her knuckles clenched white round her torch.

Another torch already flickered in the tree-lined graveyard.

She had watched it wind its way down the twisting, narrow street from the house to the ferry, and she'd followed its progress across to the mainland, watching the light getting smaller and smaller as it receded into the blackness. What she hadn't been able to work out was what glistened in the torch-bearer's free hand. But then, how could she possibly have guessed he'd be carrying a spade?

The shovelling stopped when he saw her approach, and he wiped his brow with the back of his wrist. It left behind streaks of red mud, like the battle paint worn by certain Teutonic warriors to frighten the enemy, but Claudia wasn't frightened. Not of Kazan.

'Raspor, I presume?' His liquid dark eyes indicated the chaplet of flowers brimming over her basket.

'I owe him this much.'

She had brought other things, too. Spelt, black beans and laurel leaves to strew on his grave, as well as a small bough of cypress. These might be Roman, but then so was she. Raspor would understand.

'You'll find him over there, second mound down on your right,' Kazan said, returning to his digging.

Claudia thanked him. It was too early for top stones to have been laid on the graves, and as she scattered her offerings, she thought how fitting it was that the thunder god whom Raspor had served was so active tonight. The little priest would appreciate that.

'Is it rude to enquire who you're digging up?' she asked, as another sheet of lightning ripped through the sky. 'Or is this another local custom I'm not aware of?'

Kazan grinned. 'I'm doing the bajuks' work for them,' he said. 'I'm keeping evil spirits out of the cemetery and, since you ask, it's the boat builder's body facing eviction. I won't have his dirty bones contaminating sacred soil, Claudia. He isn't fit to lie here.'

She glanced across to the hideous masks nailed to the tree trunk. It was impossible to make out the bajuks' expressions in the darkness, but the empty black robes that flapped in the wind like sinister pennants gave their position away.

'I didn't realize you felt so passionately about homosexuality.'

'I feel passionately about blackmailing bastards,' Kazan said bitterly. 'Rosmerta told me why she had killed him — oh, and before you ask, no. Murderers aren't allowed to lie in sacred ground, either. Their souls are thrown to the shroud-eaters. They will never find rest.'

Claudia looked across to where Dol the Just rested. In peace…?

'I'm not sure how much of the story will come out,' he continued, 'but I'm betting this bastard's role won't be aired. The court will want to protect Broda as much as they can.'

He paused to wipe the sweat off his face with the hem of his tunic and sighed deeply. 'I don't expect people will believe that I knew nothing of my wife's plans, but it's true.'

'On the contrary, Kazan. I think they'll understand very well.'

It was common knowledge that the couple rarely spent time together. Never talked, because he was never around. Hunting, fishing and women were his only interests, Pavan said, and he was bloody good at all three. Claudia watched while the earth piled up around him. Rosmerta might be a monster, but it was Kazan who had made her one. Charming, handsome, witty and fun, it was his neglect that turned her into what she was…

Claudia swallowed, and the wind hissed like snakes in the trees.

'You know she killed your father?'

Kazan pinched his lips together, but didn't stop digging.

'She poisoned Mazares,' she said, 'she poisoned Delmi, she murdered their children, the boat builder, the royal physician…'

The pain on his face was pitiful to watch.

'… Raspor, of course, and these crimes go back many years. But you know what troubles me, Kazan? Brac. Rosmerta wasn't even on the scene when your brother died.'

She laid her basket on the path.

'His death doesn't fit the picture.'

'Perhaps that's what gave her the idea,' he said, pausing. 'Fevers are unpredictable and death is indiscriminate.'

'Yes. I would accept that.' The heat twisted the night air like a coil. 'Except I saw Pavan hold a pillow over Rosmerta's face.'

'Fine fellow, our general. He saw a way to solve the problem and avoid public scandal at the same time, and he'd have succeeded, too, if you hadn't brained him with an armchair.'

'Yes, I would accept that, as well,' Claudia said. 'In fact, if we put it all together, we have the whole picture, don't you agree? That Brac was murdered for the noblest of reasons?'

'Brac?' The spade didn't falter. 'I told you — hell, everyone knows — it was a fever that carried him off.'

Brac be nimble, Brac be quick, Brac jump over the candlestick.

'Fit young man, newly married? It happens.' Far too often, unfortunately. 'But then, I got to thinking.'

Brac jump long, Brac jump high, Or Brac fall into a fever and die.

'Mazares said your brother was confident to the point of cocky, and he talked of how the elders hoped Brac would grow into the kind of king that your father was. Would grow into, you note. Hoped.'

'If you're implying what I think you're implying — ' Kazan flashed her his famous little-boy-lost smile — 'just remember who releases flocks of finches on the anniversary of his brother's death.'

'Like you release roof tiles, you mean?'

Like an inflated pig's bladder when it suddenly ruptures, Kazan shrank before her eyes. The spade fell from his hand but Claudia felt no satisfaction. No satisfaction at all in the knowledge that no tile was missing from any rooftop.

The islanders were proud of their burgeoning heritage. Rovin, if you don't mind, was the island beloved of the King, and they were fiercely proud of their king. Therefore, they were desperate to make him proud of them in return. Witness the perfect order this town was kept in. No litter. No graffiti. Everything spotless and tidy.

'You have no idea.'

Kazan slumped against the side of the pit as the first hot raindrops started to fall.

'You have no idea what it's like to have a brother strutting around like some puffed-up cockerel, telling me how he's got the best of this, the biggest of that, while pointing out how worthless and useless I was, an unwanted afterthought, nothing but the runt of the litter.'

As droplets became heavier, Claudia grasped a new side to Dol. One in which duty came first as he oversaw everything himself, leaving his sons to grow up without him. The eldest compensated by becoming a braggart and a bully, leaving the youngest to be overindulged by his mother. Only the middle son learned by avoiding their mistakes — then made one of his own by following his father's example.

'It was a good way to go,' Kazan said.

The rain was drumming, turning the red mud to orange sludge.

'Fevers creep up, until all sense of logic is lost. Brac died in his sleep. Crumbs, it was obvious to me, even at the tender age of fourteen, that Mazares was head and shoulders the best man to take over from Father. Brac didn't want the job. He didn't give a stuff about Histria, all he was bothered about were his pecker and his belly. No, Mazares was the caring one. He was the best-looking of us, too, clever at schooling, and Brac's bride wasn't just a stunner, Delmi was a princess. As a mere second son, Mazares would only have qualified for a chieftain's daughter, same as me, so, if you like, you could say I was doing both my brothers a favour.'

An interesting viewpoint, but one which Claudia doubted many would share, and Brac least of all.

'What about Rosmerta?' she asked.

'Yes, well, knowing what I know now, I'm doubly sorry that wig was so thick, and as for that incompetent idiot of a mule doctor…'

Another one who'd underestimated the doctor's abilities, it seemed, because when Kazan slipped what he believed to be an overdose of painkiller down his wife's throat, he was merely putting her into that recuperative sleep.

'I hate her, Claudia, I've always hated the bitch. The look of her, the touch of her, it's revolting, and can you imagine how much I ground my teeth doing what I had to, until I'd sired those boys?'

His sodden hair shuddered.

'She stifled me. One sniffle and she'd have me covered in mustard poultices. She was bossy, domineering, always made me feel less of a man and, sure, I made light of our separate lives, but hell, that isn't marriage.'

No, it isn't, Claudia thought. But it takes two to settle into that kind of arrangement.

'Then Vani told me she was pregnant and that changed everything. Mir knows full well it isn't his, he hasn't touched her in months, and it's not as if she loves the lad.'

So it was Mir the athletic Vani was married to, was it? Claudia tried to picture which of the two sons had restrained the mastiff on its short leash and which one then released it. Either way, both were guilty of murder, and this time they wouldn't escape the smell of roasted man-meat. The flesh on the fire would be theirs.

'So, you wanted Rosmerta out of the way to marry Vani?'

Oh, Kazan. Don't you listen to any of your women? Don't you understand a single one? For better or worse, Vani had nailed her colours to the marital mast. Adultery was one thing, but divorce was out of the question. She tried not to think how it was for Delmi, lost in grief and looking for consolation in the handsome lover with the slow hand, only to find emptiness in both.

'Vani and I are good for each other, you've seen that, but more importantly, that's my child she's carrying.'

Love, protection, affection, Claudia could understand all that. But…

'Why didn't you divorce Rosmerta?'

The puzzlement in his eyes was her answer and Claudia instinctively edged back a pace. He'd stifled his brother and got away with it. With his wife, it hadn't occurred to him to do anything else, and no wonder there had been a look of such deep concern on his face when he realized the assault hadn't proved fatal. He was worried Rosmerta had seen him, so he tried to finish her off with the poppy draught. Like a rogue tiger, she thought, he'd acquired the taste. Kazan had become a rogue male…

'What are you going to do?' he asked quietly.

Claudia drew a deep breath.

'Nothing.'

She lifted the last remaining item from her basket and balanced it on the edge of the boat builder's grave. It was a small phial of green glass that, until this morning, had sat on the shelf in Salome's treatment room. The papyrus label proclaimed it as hemlock.

'We must each take responsibility for our own destiny, Kazan.'

Murderers weren't allowed to rest in this holy precinct, but that was presuming somebody knew.

'Only you can decide whether you want your soul at the mercy of shroud-eaters and to never find rest, or whether you would rather lie here, with your brother and father.'

The rain drummed out Kazan's reply.