Dark Horse

by Marilyn Todd

  Abandoning the traditional concept of four wings round a central courtyard, Leo had expanded the accommodation to cover three wings of the original building and demolished the fourth in favour of a fabulous marble portico lined with friezes and statuary. The trades which used to be contained within the original villa now lay outside in a cluster of sheds, mills, stores and workshops, and he'd built a brand new self-contained bath house, complete with domed roof and gymnasium.

  Volcar's acerbic quote came to mind. 'All he needs now is a smattering of beggars and the odd painted whore, gel, and he's created a whole bloody town. Don't know why

  he just doesn't call the place "Leoville" and be done with it.'

  An old man's bitterness at his nephew's success, while he was reduced to living on handouts? Or sharp insight into a side to Leo's character Claudia had yet to discover?

  'Of course I'm going to bloody well kill it,' Leo said.

  What? She had been so busy daydreaming, Claudia had missed the start of this new conversation. What was he going to kill? A rumour? Volcar had nodded off on the far side of the couch, his breathing in rhythm with his ancient hunting dog, Ajax, snoring at his feet.

  She glanced at Silvia for clues, but the Immaculate One was torn between selecting a roast hazel hen and the squid in coriander. Claudia suspected this was about the toughest decision the woman had ever had to make. Unless, of course, it was deciding which frock went with which emeralds. On the couch opposite, Shamshi was busy picking his hooked Arab nose, no help there, and Saunio sat stroking the pretentious beard that encircled his chin, while Nikias's face was, if that were possible, even more of a blank. He seemed more intent on pushing a sardine round his plate with the point of his knife, as though teaching it how to swim in the thick mustard sauce.

  'I'm right, aren't I, Claudia?' Leo asked.

  'Absolutely -' she began, then noticed that the sardine had stopped moving - 'not,' she finished firmly. The sardine continued smoothly on its course.

  'You disappoint me, Claudia, really you do. I'd thought better of a fellow wine merchant and estate owner.' Leo snorted. 'It's only a bloody fish, for gods' sake.'

  'A dolphin is not a fish,' Nikias pointed out, steering his sardine east to west now and avoiding an anchovy amidships. 'It's an animal, and a very intelligent creature at that. It's harmless, gentle, the children adore it—'

  'That's the whole point.' Leo's fist thumped the arm of his couch. 'The entire town loves that - fish. Ooh let's swim with it, ooh let's play with it, ooh let's sit on its back,' he mimicked. 'Thanks to that fish, half the island's tramped over my land. The point's one of the few places round here with easy access to a beach and you ought to see it, Claudia. So much ground's

  been churned up, it looks like a bloody battlefield. They're scum, that's what they are. Thoughtless, ill-mannered scum, and the mess they've left is disgusting.'

  'It's only scrubland that's been disturbed,' Nikias murmured. 'Try asking them to take their litter home.'

  'I don't need to ask a bloody thing,' Leo snapped. 'This is my property and these people, goddammit, are trespassing.'

  The Corinthian ran his tongue slowly under his upper lip. 'You've heard the stories of invalids being healed after swimming with dolphins? That crippled boy in the town? The cobbler's son?'

  'Cobblers is right.' Leo waved his chicken bone in emphasis. 'It's all in the mind. If they think they'll be cured, then the superstitious sods will be. Good luck to them, I say. Just don't expect me to put up with their blasted mess a moment longer, and since it's my bloody land they're trampling—'

  'Actually, it's my bloody land they're trampling,' slurred a voice from behind. 'And I've given them permission.'

  The woman swaying in the great double doorway was in her early thirties, no great beauty, but striking. With clothes well cut and hair well styled, she exhibited all the grooming and bloom of her class. As all eyes turned on the newcomer, Claudia noticed Saunio slipping quietly out through a side door.

  Volcar suddenly snorted awake. 'This'll liven up the evening,' he murmured, smacking his gums with relish.

  'Who is she?'

  'Don't y'know?' the old man sniggered. 'That's the wife!'

  Volcar wasn't with it. He'd woken up too soon, was still dreaming, poor old duffer. 'Leo hasn't actually got married yet,' Claudia pointed out gently. That was the whole point of these costly renovations. 'He's fetching a bride over from Rome in a couple of weeks, a rose-grower's daughter or something.'

  Volcar's chuckle was positively ribald. 'Didn't tell you, then, the crafty bugger? Not surprised, frankly. Should be ashamed of himself.' He leaned closer, but this time it wasn't to touch her up. 'All of a sudden, just like that, he upped and divorced her. Said Lydia wasn't giving him children,

  so he made a scything motion with his hand - 'end of marriage.'

  No. Not Leo. Surely not?

  'Tossed the poor cow out on her ear,' Volcar whispered. 'Built her a crummy little house on the point and - oh, sssh, sssh. I want to hear this.'

  'Lydia, you're drunk,' Leo said. The word 'again' all but hung in the air. 'Go home. Please.'

  'But this is my home, Leo. Or at least the improvements are mine.'

  'You're talking gibberish, woman. Go back. Sleep it off.'

  'Gibberish is better than bullshit, which is what you gave me, Leo. Bullshit - and no baby.' She suppressed a small burp. 'Now you're using my money to pay for a few pretty pictures, a new bath - and for what? To impress a man who grows roses, for gods' sake. Oh, those drapes are new.' She staggered over to finger the elaborate tapestries which graced the arches. 'At least you're putting my dowry to good taste.'

  Leo's face coloured dangerously. 'This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the financial settlement, Lydia. I'll get someone to escort you ho— back.'

  'Who says I'm going "back"?' Lydia retorted. 'Who says I might not decide to spend the night here? In one of the— how many bedrooms are we up to now, Leo? Ten?' She leaned over and helped herself to Claudia's wine. 'Ooh, you're new, too,' she purred. 'But you're out of luck, darling. If it's his money you're after, there is none. He lost it in those bloody vines, despite what he tells everyone, and he lost in half a dozen other hare-brained ventures, as well. Now the bastard's spent my divorce settlement on his wonderful refurbishments, so I'm in debt, too. God, I hate you, Leo. How I didn't see through you years ago I don't know!'

  'Lydia, please,' Leo cajoled. 'You're embarrassing yourself.'

  She turned her wine-laden breath upon Claudia once again. 'You're too old for him, sweetie. You're young and you're beautiful, but darling, you've got breasts. Has he told you how old she is, his little prepubescent bride? Thirteen. Can you believe that, sweetie?' Her laugh was bitter. 'Now if

  we'd had children, how do you think Leo would have felt about some middle-aged pervert taking his thirteen-year-old daughter to bed?'

  'Enough!' Leo jumped to his feet. 'I will not have you inferring I'm some kind of depraved monster, simply for wanting an heir. It's a man's right, dammit, to continue the bloodline, and the girl hails from good breeding stock.'

  'Stock. Yes. How sensitive you are, Leo, seeing her in terms of a prolific foaler.' Lydia staggered between the dining couches until she was eyeball to eyeball with Leo. 'Eighteen years,' she hissed. 'Eighteen years I put up with your boorish behaviour, your insufferable arrogance, and how am I repaid? I'm put out to pasture, while you fuck a child in my bed.'

  Teetering, she knocked the table sideways, sending a salver of honeyed peaches slithering over the mosaic floor. The smell of split fruit exploded into the air. No one moved. All eyes were riveted on Lydia.

  'Well, fuck you, and fuck the rose-grower's daughter. You're not my concern any more. I came here tonight to talk about Magnus.'

  'Who's Magnus?' Claudia whispered, but Volcar flapped a hand to silence her.

  'What did you tell him, Leo? What did you say to frighten him off? Or did you bribe my little marble man away?'
/>   When she tried to laugh, it came out a throaty, unstable rumble. As though Lydia's tenuous hold on her emotions would give way any second to a stream of unstoppable tears.

  'That would be the ultimate insult, wouldn't it? You buying off my suitor with my own money?' She waved her hand in weary dismissal as he opened his mouth. 'Oh, spare me more of your lies, Leo. I don't care what you told Magnus, it doesn't matter, really it doesn't. I don't want a man who can be bought off or bullied.' She paused for breath. 'But you went too far, Leo. Now it's my turn.'

  'I'm trembling.'

  'Mock all you like, but I'm still putting a stop to your marriage.'

  'Impossible. I'm already wearing her betrothal medallion.

  We exchange wedding rings on the girl's fourteenth birthday. Even you can't break the contract.'

  7 don't intend to,' Lydia said, and there was a glint of triumph in her glazed eyes. 'You'll be the one doing the breaking.'

  'That contract's sealed in law. No one and nothing can break it.'

  'What if I say, "life and death", my dear darling husband? Life and death cut straight through signatures and seals.'

  'Bollocks.'

  Lydia let out a soft snort of contempt. 'Don't say I didn't warn you, Leo. Didn't I tell you I wasn't prepared to stand by while you wrote me out of your life like some cheap playwright editing a character out of his script?' She pounded his chest with two feeble fists. 'Dammit, I'm entitled to something, you bastard.'

  'This isn't the—' he began, but at that point, Lydia's heel caught on a peach and, skirts flapping wildly, she tumbled backwards in an inelegant heap, landing on the low dining table and sending everything flying. Nikias gallantly lent a hand hauling her upright.

  'Lydia!'

  This was the first time Silvia had spoken since the visitor had burst in, and her voice was imperiously cold. She made no attempt to disguise her revulsion at the combination of bad language, bad behaviour and the food mashed into Lydia's clothes.

  'Lydia, you're tired, you're obviously overwrought and . . . and it doesn't appear you've been eating properly,' she added in venomous euphemism.

  'And since when have you been interested in my welfare, you self-centred cow?' Lydia snarled, ungraciously shaking off Nikias's arm. 'You bugger off without a word, you don't write, the family have no idea whether you're dead or alive, and suddenly wham! Up you turn, four years later, out of the blue. And where do you set up camp, you snobby bitch? With me, your darling long-lost sister? Or with Leo, because his house is grand and comfy?'

  Claudia wondered whether anyone, above this furious interchange, had heard her gasp of astonishment. Silvia and Lydia were sisters? She knew, of course, that Leo was Silvia's brother-in-law, but she had blithely assumed the connection was on Leo's side. But yes, now you looked closer, you could see the family resemblance. Even though Lydia was ten years older and a brunette, the nose and high forehead were the same, as were the hands.

  'Well, you've made your bed, baby sister, you can bloody well lie in it,' Lydia sneered. 'I just hope what you're giving him in it is worth it.'

  'Right!'

  Leo's tolerance finally snapped and grabbing Lydia roughly by the upper arm, he dragged her through the wide double doors on to the terrace.

  'Qus!' he bawled, and his tall Ethiopian bailiff came running. 'Qus, will you please escort my lady wife home.' He closed the double doors firmly on Lydia's profanities. 'Messy things, family feuds,' he said to Claudia. 'I'm really sorry you had to be party to that ugly scene.'

  'What did she mean,' she asked innocently, 'about only life and death being able to break a contract?'

  That Leo had behaved so abominably was bad enough. That Claudia hadn't realized he was capable of such callous behaviour was unforgivable.

  Silvia, her lips white, patted her immaculate ringlets and ran a finger over each elegantly plucked eyebrow. 'Vitriol always flows when my sister takes to the wineskin,' she said. 'Take no notice of Lydia.'

  That, thought Claudia, wasn't the question. And you weren't the one I was asking. She glanced at Leo, his head tilted on one side, and wondered why Silvia had answered for him. And why he had let her. There was an undercurrent running between them. She had noticed it several times since her arrival. An undercurrent which was anything but sexual.

  'For heaven's sake,' Leo snapped, 'let's have some music in here!'

  Flautists and harpists launched into a cheerful tune, and an Indian girl clacked castanets as she danced.

  'Come on, Shamshi, Nikias. Clap along,' Leo said, but his voice was strained, his jaw clenched. Why? Because be was embarrassed that his ex-wife had aired the dirty laundry in public? Or had it got to him that Lydia might, just might, be in a position to queer his forthcoming marital pitch?

  Having dropped one stone into the pool and created a few ripples, Claudia tried another wee pebble for size. 'Who was this Magnus character Lydia mentioned?' she asked, adopting just the right air of disinterest. 'A marble merchant, didn't she say?'

  'Sculptor,' Nikias corrected.

  'Not,' Claudia's jaw fell to the floor and bounced twice, 'not the Magnus?'

  'I only hire the best,' Leo said.

  'Magnus doesn't simply recreate a superficial likeness,' Nikias said. 'Next time you stroll through the garden, read the expressions on the figures he's sculpted, see how his subjects carry themselves, the way they look back at you, and you'll find yourself looking at their hopes and aspirations, their virtues and their faults, their energies and frailties. Take a long hard look at them, Claudia. Get to know the people Magnus captured. Because by looking at his sculptures, you're staring straight into these people's souls.'

  The stunned silence which followed was broken only by the clack-clack-clack of the dancer's castanets. No one had ever heard Nikias speak for so long. Or with such passion.

  Leo cleared his throat. 'Yes. Well. If you kiddies will excuse me, I'm for an early night.'

  He made a circuitous loop round the central table, as though by avoiding the piles of overturned seafood, the mangled poultry and splattered peaches he could somehow pretend Lydia's visit had not taken place.

  'Given that I have to spear a fish in the morning,' he added.

  'You're making a mistake, Leo.'

  Leo faltered. Perhaps having thought the taciturn artist had shot his bolt, he was surprised to find himself mistaken. Or perhaps he was just not used to people standing up to him in this way.

  'Are you threatening me, Nikias?' He chuckled.

  'Nope.' Nikias leaned back on his couch and stared at a point on the ceiling. 'But I'm not prepared to let you butcher a tame dolphin, either. Not when it means so much to the children.'

  'They'll forget soon enough,' Leo said, dismissing the notion with a wave of his hand. 'Isn't that right, Shamshi, old man?'

  The Persian laced his bony hands together and locked his dark eyes on Claudia's. 'I've said everything I have to say,' he lisped quietly. 'Before a new light is born in the sky, bad news will come over the water.'

  The last click of the castanets died away in an echo.

  'When the gods speak,' Shamshi whispered, 'only a fool covers his ears.'

  Five

  Drifting on her swansdown mattress beneath a damask coverlet scented with rose petals, Claudia dreamed. She dreamed of thumping great lobsters, of crayfish and, of course, those succulent white truffles from the forests on the Istrian mainland, and there was nothing to interrupt her aromatic slumber. In Rome, darkness signalled the opening of the city gates to traffic, and thus there was a rowdy cacophony of rumbling wagons, cracking bullwhips, shouts from the drivers, tavern brawls, the whinnies and neighs of the dray animals and the constant clatter, clack and bang of loading and unloading. In Arcadia there was only silence, broken, perhaps, by the odd creak of settlement, the muffled sound of a door closing, the faint too-woo of an owl in the pinewoods behind the villa.

  Nestled into the dip at the base of Claudia's spine, Drusilla, her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark
Egyptian cat twitched her whiskers and dreamed, too. She dreamed about big fat spiders, crunchy moths and the mice she would torment in the morning.

  Peace. Perfect peace. The night was warm, the air pleasant and, together as always, mistress and cat slept, and the three-quarters moon rose in the sky. Far away, a fox barked, and a nightjar churred on the wing.

  Fire!

  A sixth sense alerted her, even before her throat prickled with the distinctive tang of burning. Claudia swung her legs over the side of the bed, stubbing her heel in the dark on its bronze foot. Like every room of this single-storey villa, hers had double doors opening outwards. Throwing open the shutters, she saw that, less than a hundred paces from the house, flames were licking through the roof of a small building raised on vermin-thwarting stilts.

  Leo's grain store.

  With a low howl from the back of her throat, Drusilla shot behind the chair.

  'FIRE!' Claudia shouted.

  Croesus! Nobody heard! She cupped her hands round her mouth.

  'Fire in the grain store!'

  No good. People were in too deep a sleep. She drew a deep breath to yell her lungs out when something caught her eye in the moonlight. There, on the steps. Squinting through the swirling smoke, she tried to make out the twisting shape. Wrong. Not one shape. Those were two separate figures, writhing together on the narrow stone stairs. Bugger. That's all we need. A private war while an inferno rages!

  Decisions, decisions.

  Raise the alarm? Or stop the fight before the fire spreads?