Wolf Whistle

I

Rarely do moneylenders, when faced with non-payment of debt, veer towards benevolence. But this one was in a good mood. In fact, so keen was he, today, to demonstrate his generosity, that he offered Claudia a head start before unleashing his dogs.

‘Bastard!’ she yelled over her shoulder. That was the last time she’d do business with him!

At the first turn, she slewed the honey-seller’s table across the lane behind her. Dozens of small red pots oozed their sticky sweetness on to the pavement. Although Claudia was running too fast to catch the shopkeeper’s exact words, she believed he called her a something-some-thing-little-something, and threatened that if she ever came back he’d something-something her, which seemed none too polite. Then again, gentlemanly conduct tended to be thin on the ground around here.

‘Stop her,’ cried one of the dog handlers. ‘Stop that woman!’ But the crowd had no intention of being deprived of their free entertainment. They cleaved a path.

Croesus, thought Claudia, haring down the street, it was a hardboiled pack that bloodsucker had put on her tail and no mistake. Baying and slavering, you’d think they hadn’t eaten for days. She skidded into a charcoal dealer, sending his coals tumbling over the cobbles. Hell, maybe they hadn’t, but no way did Claudia Seferius intend to be on their menu tonight! Skirting a pile of slippery fish guts which the fishmonger had jettisoned into the gutter, she paused at the tallow man’s.

‘I turned left, understood?’ She threw the candle-maker sufficient bronze to keep him in food (or more probably drink) for a week.

His appreciative grin showed a row of blackened teeth. ‘Left, yer said.’

Good. If duff directions didn’t put the dogs off the scent, the stench from his rotting teeth would. Before ducking to the right, Claudia stopped to check her pursuers. The tallow man was pointing directly her way.

She ran and she ran, darting left, hooking right, constantly cursing the strong Judaean perfume which blazed a trail for zealous snouts. What was wrong with that moneylender? For heaven’s sake, we’re only talking a few hundred gold pieces (all right, a thousand, who’s counting?) It’s not as though she intended to decamp with his money! It was merely that, at present, the repayment date required a modicum of flexibility…surely he could trust her on that? Fine cottons, gold rings and the ivory combs in her curls had been reassurance enough when he was dishing out the loan, and look how his eyes had popped when she’d written down the address. Quite right, too. It was a bloody good address. Up on the Esquiline, where the patricians hang out. A rather modest house, perhaps, by Esquiline standards, with a courtyard of shade and gentle fountains and sweet singing birds. You can’t miss it, she’d told the moneylender. It’s right opposite the goldbeater’s. Which it was. It just happened not to be Claudia’s address.

Jupiter, Juno and Mars! Whichever way she turned, the lanes twisted, narrowed, doubled back and led relentlessly downhill. Damn! The dogs were not giving up, either. One had a distinctive howl-not dissimilar, she mused, to the sound her cat, Drusilla, made this morning when her tail got caught in the door.

Kneading the stitch in her side, Claudia paused and looked around and felt a sudden chill of terror. She could not say when or where it had changed, but twisting wynds had turned into stinking runnels, sedate apartment blocks were now crumbling tenements. A standpipe dripped at the end of the street and a young mother with a child at her hip blew her nose with her fingers. Daylight was beginning to fade, too, exacerbated by the heavy grey clouds which had been building up during the course of the afternoon. Doors were being slammed, latches fastened, shutters drawn. With panic rising in her breast, Claudia knew she was well and truly lost. While the dogs still bayed close by.

‘Hello?’ Someone help me. Please. But only shadows and vermin roamed the alleys amid the raw sewage, the vegetation rotting on the middens, the bloated corpse of a puppy being picked over by rats. A three-legged trucklebed sat upended where it had been dumped, broken pots crunched underfoot, and from open windows came the sounds of drunken bullies beating their wives and their children in the name of obedience. Spooked by the rankness that defines sheer and utter hopelessness, Claudia went spinning down the lanes. Stumbling. Tripping.

Oblivious to the cess trenches, the dogs and the thugs who ran with them, she had to get out…

‘Shit.’

Swallowing hard, she blinked back the tears as she again came face to face with the truckle-bed, the rats and the dead puppy dog.

‘Shit, shit, shit!’

Perhaps, then, it was time to use brains and not footwear? A raw-boned mongrel, grey around the face, wandered up to the broken bed, cocked its leg then lolloped off. Dear Diana! Impossible to imagine that all roads lead from Rome, reaching even the darkest outpost of our mighty Empire, while these alleys criss-cross like the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

‘There! There she is!’

Dammit, they’d caught up. Claudia shot down the nearest passageway, then skidded to a halt. The mongrel was examining something dark and sticky on a rusty skillet. The inspection appeared to be in its early stages. Plenty of time for a girl to unclip her blue cotton wrap, rip it with the brooch pin and ram the poor mutt’s head through the hole before it even a had chance to snarl its disapproval. Stung in the rump by a shard of pottery, it shot off down the street, flapping oceans of blue cotton in its wake. Blue cotton heavily scented with Judaean perfume, no less.

As she flung open the nearest tenement door, Claudia realized her ploy had failed. The dogs wanted to follow the scent, but the handlers had sharp eyes. The gap was closing. Claudia flew up the dimly lit stairs two at a time. While they searched the lower floors, she could hide. She ran along the corridor, testing door after door until, finally, one surrendered.

‘Anyone home?’

A toothless crone sat on a stool supping porridge straight from the crock.

‘Can you hide me? I can pay.’ She pulled off a ring set with emeralds.

Watery gruel dribbled down the old woman’s chin. Sweet Janus, was she blind?

‘Please!’ A cupboard. Under the bed. There must be some way out of this mess. ‘Will you help me?’

‘Oi!’ Fists pounded the door. ‘Open up!’ The hinges were weak, they would not stand much rough treatment.

Rheumy eyes watched disinterestedly as the crone continued to slurp from the bowl. Bugger! Claudia ran to the window and looked down. The front door was bulging more and more with each shove from the moneylender’s thug.

‘No way out, luv,’ he crowed. ‘You’re trapped.’

Really? Ignoring the dizziness, Claudia climbed on to the sill. What about that balcony over the way? She took a deep breath.

Now eight feet is not very far. Measure it out and you’d be hard pressed to fit in, say, a decent bout of shadow-boxing or half a game of hopscotch, you couldn’t even rig up a funeral pyre. So, no, it’s not very far…on the ground. Heart pounding, mouth dry, Claudia launched herself into space.

Yes! As her hands connected with the balustrade, she felt a rush of such elation that she actually laughed aloud.

Then she heard the crack.

This wasn’t a rail. This was woodworm holding hands.

Her knuckles were white as she glanced down. Janus! It must be seventy feet at least. Waves of nausea washed over her as she struggled to swing her body on to the balcony before the rail gave way.

Too late. With a splintering sound, the balustrade began to bow inexorably downwards. Claudia closed her eyes. And wondered which great Olympian divinity owed her a favour.

*

It was true, then. At times like this, you do hallucinate. Claudia could have imagined glimpsing flashes of her past as she hung there, limp and helpless, like a festival banner on a wet and windless day. Maybe her mother, drunk as usual. Perhaps her father, despite his being absent most of the time. Or post-childhood scenes-say, that sea of leering faces as she danced, or coins changing hands and not necessarily for dancing. Definitely she’d have expected Gaius Seferius to pop up-he was the man she’d married after all. Ah, yes! Rich, shrewd, fat, old Gaius. Who had not loved her, but who had required a trophy wife. Maybe, even, she’d see the glinting piles of money that he’d left her when he died. Instead, as the wood cracked relentlessly, Claudia heard a voice.

‘Oh, oh, oh, oh!’

A voice, it would appear, in the final throes of ecstasy.

‘Oh, yes, Venus! O-oh, yes, yes!’

Her wits solidified with common sense. That was no hallucination, so where the devil was it coming from? Pinpointing the sound to the room one down, Claudia noticed that it, too, had a balcony. Could she make it? Did she have a choice?

‘Yes! Yes! Venus, yes!’

Actually, old chap, she thought, as the rail finally parted company with its mortice and tenons, we might shortly be giving a new dimension to the phrase coitus interruptus.

The wooden floor absorbed her tumbling weight and when Claudia eventually found the courage to unclamp her eyelids, it was to view a tiny apartment with one narrow pallet, one chair, one table laid with one cup, plate and knife. Curiously, its tenant was prostrate on the floor, mother-naked, mumbling what appeared to be abject apologies.

‘F-forgive me, blessed lady.’

Heavy footsteps rumbled on the stairs beyond, accompanied by a backdrop of yips and yelps. Damn. The handlers had raced across the road and were already searching this block.

‘I am but a worthless wretch.’ He was a scrawny individual, whose appearance was not enhanced by jug ears and heavy pock marks, although it was his twisted backbone which explained his solitary tactics for gratification. ‘Do not punish me harshly, oh goddess.’

Goddess? Claudia blinked and blinked again. In fact, had there been a competition for blinking, she’d have won the laurel crown. He couldn’t-? Nobody in their right mind-? Not seriously-? But he did. Incredibly, the hunchback believed Venus had dropped down from Olympus to punish him!

‘I’ll n-never take your name in vain again. I swear!’

The footsteps on the stairs were drawing closer. She had just one chance…Claudia stepped forward purposefully. ‘Remember Actaeon?’

Already pale, the poor chap blenched. Actaeon the warrior had stumbled across the goddess Diana as she was bathing. His punishment was to be turned into a stag, whereupon he was promptly torn apart by his very own pack of hunting dogs.

‘Oh, divine one!’ They could probably hear his gulp back in the Forum. ‘I s-swear on the life of my mother-’ The rap on the door cut short his grovelling and Venus watched him turn green.

‘Mortal, here is thy test. Breathe one word of my divine presence, and thou shalt suffer as Actaeon suffered. Answer the door.’

The hunchback’s gibbering denials more than convinced the gruff questioner, and Claudia’s breath came out in a hiss. Juno be praised, that was close. When she looked up, pleading eyes were upon her.

‘You think Venus does not keep her word? Leave the room, mortal, and do not return for two hours.’ A little harsh, but he wasn’t the one scheduled to satisfy some hungry tripehound’s appetite.

As he pulled on his tunic and scuttled down the stairs, Claudia pressed her hands to her forehead. So far so good, but I’ve still got to get out of here. She’d long since realized she was in the notorious district between the Esquiline and the Viminal, but where towering blocks had frustrated navigation, being five storeys up meant she could now see a way out of this maze. Lost she might be, but thanks to the march of the aqueducts and the statues high on temple roofs, trapped she most certainly was not.

Once outside, with the sound of disappointed dogs fading into the distance. Claudia dusted her hands, took a deep breath, and set off up the darkened street. An unseen tomcat howled, but nothing else stirred, and neither did she expect it. Too poor to light candles just for the hell of it, darkness signalled bedtime for the denizens of the slum. Any man abroad after sunset would certainly be up to no good.

Especially a group of burly individuals holding a blazing torch apiece.

Claudia melted into the shadows, surreptitiously slipping her rings and her ear studs into the pleats of her cotton stola. The men waved their brands back and forth as though searching and she realized, with horror, that these were the Midden Hunters. Men who scoured the cess pits and rubbish dumps for babies to raise into slavery.

She shivered in the darkened doorway. Who hadn’t heard of these ghouls? Until now she’d imagined them legends, bogeymen born out of rumour. Empty-handed, the four moved level with Claudia’s niche and a thousand crawling insects prickled her skin. She dared not breathe as the flickering torchlight distorted their features in a way that, elsewhere, would have been comical-except for the bearded man. The scar on his cheek, vermilion and shaped like a horseshoe, made her flatten her backbone tight to the stonework.

‘Well, Captain, you owe me another denarius.’ The voice was cultivated, quiet, jocular, even. ‘That’s three out of three I’ve been right.’

The man addressed as Captain, the man with the scar, snorted. ‘Your luck can’t hold, lad. Double or quits.’

‘Hear that?’ A lushly embroidered sleeve gestured to the two men bringing up the rear. ‘You boys are my witnesses, when this miserly sod tries to dodge out of it.’

When their footsteps and laughter had faded, Claudia released her pent-up breath and set off at a run. In theory, she supposed, Midden Hunters could be seen as men who were saving the lives of the newborn, but Claudia wouldn’t give you that (mentally she snapped her fingers) for theory. It was not difficult to see why mothers here abandoned their babies. Where food was scarce, money was scarcer, precious few mouths could survive. The Emperor had stamped out the worst of the poverty by issuing males over ten with the dole, but all too often those wooden tablets changed hands on the black market for wine, leaving the men befuddled and the women half-starved. By exposing their infants on the middens to be seen-or rather heard-attention would be drawn to their plight. For all the unwanted children born in this city, there was an equal number of barren women sobbing through long, lonely nights for a babe of their own. When dawn showed the child to be gone, its mother would weep with relief and pray to Cunina, Goddess of the Cradle, to protect it. Claudia wondered how easily these poor women would sleep if they knew the stories about the Midden Hunters were true.

The relief she felt at leaving the slums and its secrets behind her could not be put into words. Why is it, she asked herself, some folk sail through life with not a hint of trouble, whereas it haunts me like a lovesick ghost? No matter, she thought, turning her aching feet towards the Argiletum, apart from the fact that Gaius’ mother and daughter and a squad of his aunts were set to descend for the Festival of Fortune, life was pretty much plain sailing. She knew why the old trouts were coming, of course. Festival be damned. Money is relative, they say, and how true. Indeed, the more the money, the greater the number of relatives.

If these old cats hoped to disinherit Claudia Seferius, they had another thing coming.

Thank heavens, the Argiletum was deserted. During the daytime, this thoroughfare was thronged with merchants, porters and a veritable army of rich, idle wives flanked by their slaves and retainers as they checked out the latest footwear, fingering the leather and admiring the stamping. The air vibrated with hammering from the lasts, but now it was merely heavy with the tang of their hides. Upmarket booksellers also congregated along this street, their wares ranging from rare volumes to Claudia was wrong. The street was not quite deserted. A small boy sat in the gutter, elbows on knees, fists balled into his cheeks. His face was puffy from crying, the tears had left runnels in the grime.

‘Hello, soldier.’

Melancholy eyes rolled up to look at her. Words did not come.

Hmm. That was not a head of hair you could ruffle. Not unless you had a stomach for beetly things. But you couldn’t just pass on. Not while his little lower lip still trembled.

Claudia plumped herself down and mirrored his pose. ‘Want to talk about it?’ she asked softly.

Small shoulders shrugged. Bewildered, dejected, he was determined not to give in.

Claudia studied him as closely as she could by what paltry light was cast from an upstairs window. Maybe five years old, his clothes had been stitched and stitched again, and his bare feet were clearly strangers to leather.

‘Lost, are you?’ Too well she knew what it felt like for a grown-up-the terror and the claustrophobia-what must it be like for a tiddler?

A small chin jutted out defiantly before he nodded. ‘I want me ma.’

Will I never get a hot bath?

‘I asked that lady to take me home, but she wouldn’t help me.’ A grimy finger pointed towards a shuttered bookshop. There was, of course, no one there.

‘No?’ Claudia stood up and shook the folds of her tunic. ‘Well, I’m here now. Come along.’

‘She’s asleep.’

‘Who is? Your ma?’

‘That lady there.’

Poor kid. ‘What’s your name, soldier?’

A half-smile flitted across his tear-stained face. ‘Jovi.’

‘And where do you live, Master Jovi?’ Merciful heavens, please don’t say back where I’ve come from!

‘Dunno.’

Dumbfounded, Claudia leaned down to look him in the eye. ‘Say that again.’

He gripped one thumb in his fist and stared at his little blackened feet. ‘I’ve never bin away before.’

He was making such tremendous efforts not to cry that, in spite of herself, she ruffled his matted hair. ‘You’d better fall in line then, soldier, because tonight you’re on escort duty.’

Jovi stood up and cocked his head on one side. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. You can deputize as my bodyguard and walk me home, and as a reward, you shall receive a hot pie and a bowl of honeyed apricots, and after breakfast I will take you home to your ma. How does that sound?’

‘Promise?’

‘Upon my oath, young man. First thing in the morning, we’ll have you washed and scrubbed so clean your mother will think she’s got two sons called Jovi.’

‘You won’t forget you said apricots, will you?’

As a small, dry hand slipped into hers, Claudia had a feeling they were not entirely alone on the Argiletum. It could be the lamps flickering from the upper storeys. It could be the dark, damp, starless sky. But she had the strangest feeling that wretched lovesick ghost was back to haunt her.

The one whose name was Trouble…