Widow's Pique

by Marilyn Todd

  '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.

  Four

  Even the most cursory glance beyond the harbour made it obvious why those sneeze-inducing blocks of limestone were being discharged in such quantity. Pula was one huge construction site, with a rash of triumphal arches going up here, the ground being cleared for an amphitheatre there, what looked like a bathhouse going up next to the barracks while, across the way, town houses, shops and tenements stood in varying stages of completion.

  This was because Pula had the dubious distinction of being the only city in the Empire to be built twice in thirty years.

  What started out as a small fortress to guard Rome's naval base at the head of the Adriatic quickly mushroomed into a thriving trading post that serviced lands far beyond imperial boundaries and provided a crucial, not to mention profitable, link in the Amber Road that ran in an almost straight line to the Baltic.

  Pula's mistake lay in backing the wrong side in the civil war after Julius Caesar's assassination. To teach the traitors a lesson, Augustus razed Pula to the ground, but give a chap his due. The Emperor was man enough to admit he'd made a mistake and, before you could say what-the-devil-made-us-think-backing-Mark-Antony-was-a-good-idea, the combination of geography, politics and that lynchpin of the Empire, trade, had the architects' pens scratching, and now Pula was once more poised to take her rightful place on the world's commercial stage.

  Claudia wasn't stupid. She knew that if she was to have

  any kind of role in this forthcoming drama, rubbing Histrian power brokers up the wrong way wasn't the best way to go about it.

  Mazares was one thing. This strutting cockerel had needed taking down a peg or two, but alienating both the King's envoy and the head of his personal bodyguard was no way to secure royal contracts. From now on, if anything was to be offensive, it would have to be her charm.

  So when Mazares eventually got round to re-tying his shirt at the same leisurely (one might almost say insolent) pace, she simply shot him her most dazzling smile. Even when he asked was there anything else she'd like to look at while she was about it, she merely told him with the utmost graciousness that if there was any sightseeing in Pula, she'd do it on her way home, thanks all the same, because right now her priority was to meet with the King and find out exactly what he had in mind regarding this particular contract.

  Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought she caught a swift exchange of glances between the envoy and the general before Mazares said smoothly: 'Naturally, My Lady. This way, please.'

  But when he ushered her towards a galley tied up at the far end of the quay, enough was enough.

  'I thought we were going to the capital,' she said sharply. 'Which, according to my map, is just one hour's ride.'

  'On Pegasus, maybe.' Mazares didn't even break his stride. 'But you need to understand the politics here.'

  The trouble with biting one's tongue is the bitter taste it leaves in the mouth. But she bit, and although the teeth marks started to hurt, she refrained from reminding him that, honestly, she would hardly have set out on a trade expedition unless she had a fair grip of the situation, now would she?

  'I know the King walks a fine line with his people,' she said smoothly.

  Something of an understatement, since half the Histri bitterly resented their Roman overlords and were aggrieved because the King was rolling over before the foreign aggressors. While

  the other half didn't feel he'd gone far enough in currying favour with the imperialists, not when there was so much trade at stake! Poor old duffer. He must feel like a bone being pulled at both ends by starving jackals.

  'Nothing new about that,' Mazares said dismissively. 'And yes, I suppose on the old maps, it would show the capital an hour from here. But Pula's the problem. Pula is new, and Pula is Roman, and many of our people found the proximity intimidating.'

  He made it clear that, as far as the Histri were concerned, when their supercilious overlords started laying the foundations of a brand new city within a bow's shot of their historic capital, it was the equivalent of putting a torch to raw naphtha.

  'The late King, that was Dol, by the way—'

  'He was the invincible one?'

  'No, it was Lijac the Invincible. Dol was the just one.' He sidled a glance out of the corner of his eye. 'I take it you find the royal family tree confusing?'

  'Let's just say it has more rings than a Persian concubine and leave it at that. What were you saying about the late King?'

  'Only that Dol sought permission from Rome to make Gora, in the interior, our new seat of justice.'

  And it was granted?'

  Rome was celebrated for keeping the closest of tabs on its conquered tribes. How else could they forestall rebellion? A task rendered damn near impossible, surely, if the capital was relocated to the heart of the Histrian interior?

  'Not capital. Seat of justice,' Mazares corrected mildly. 'You see, be they from the coastal communities or the interior, there isn't a single Histri who would pledge allegiance to anyone except their own king, and since Rome wishes to maintain order among us barbarians, what better way than to trust the natives to police themselves?'

  Provided they toed the imperial line and that taxes were paid in full and on time, foreign rulers were invariably left to their own devices as far as local government was concerned.

  The system tended to balance out both ways, since this way Rome steered well clear of the murky waters of local politics. Nevertheless, moving this so-called seat ofjustice inland showed an almost unprecedented level of faith in the late King Dol. It meant Dol was either exceptionally shrewd or—

  They're cunning, they're sneaky and they're all doubledealers, Orbilio had said, and who better placed to know these things than the Security Police . . . ?

  'The thing is, madam.' Mazares twirled his m
oustache in a comical gesture. 'Despite everything you Romans have taught us, we Histri remain a bunch of renegades at heart. The late King, Dol, knew that whatever he counselled, his people would still rise up against this encroachment, same as he knew that, if they rebelled, they'd pay heavily for their stupidity. More than most, our late King understood that, as much as one might wish it, even the gods can't make the sun go backwards.'

  Looking at Mazares, Claudia wasn't so certain. Handsome, affable, sure of himself, the King's envoy was as trustworthy as a hooded cobra.

  'So, Dol set up a new seat ofjustice in Gora, where - out of sight and out of mind - the Histri could pretend they were in control of their own destiny, and the King could pretend to let them be?'

  'It's wise to know your enemy,' Mazares retorted, grinning. 'But even wiser to know one's self.'

  He turned away, looping his thumbs in his gold chain-link belt.

  'Needless to say, Dol the Just died suitably young, but the point is, Gora was chosen because it's midway between the east and west shores and equidistant between our northern boundaries and the southernmost cape.'

  He ushered her on to the galley, where Claudia's blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat, Drusilla, was howling protests between the bars of her wooden crate in a manner that was reducing the crew to jelly, never mind the ship's rats.

  'We disembark at Rovin and spend the night, before

  travelling inland,' Mazares said, once the galley was clear of the harbour. 'You'll like Rovin. It's a beautiful little island, rising out of the sea like your Venus rising from the foam—'

  'Tell me about Dol's successor,' she said, having no interest in overnight pit stops, but a very keen interest in the man signing up for gallons of wine. 'What's he like?'

  Mazares rested his back against the red painted handrail as the flautist piped time for the oarsmen, and folded his arms over his chest. Even over the freshness of the ocean and the tarry smell of the ropes, she caught his cool mountain-fore sty scent.

  'Are you asking about the King or about Dol's successor?' he asked.

  High on the yards, the crew were unbrailing the sails. With a roar louder than Jupiter's thunderbolts, the canvas bellied out, the ship bucked, and suddenly there was no longer any need for the oars.

  'You see, Dol had three sons,' he said, 'of whom Brae was the oldest. Confident -' he pulled a face - 'some might even say cocky, the elders believed he'd grow into a wise and powerful ruler in the image of his father.'

  'But?'

  'But.'

  Mazares unfolded his arms and concentrated on fiddling with the buckle of his solid-gold belt. It must weigh a ton, yet he wore it as though it was leather.

  'Three days before his twentieth birthday, Brae was dead of a fever, leaving the mantle of responsibility to fall on the middle son.'

  'Tell me about the middle son, then. The man who wasn't meant to be king. What's he like?'

  With studied casualness, the King's envoy turned his gaze to a point over Claudia's shoulder.

  'Why don't you answer that question, Pavan? Why don't you tell Claudia what our illustrious King's like.'

  His voice was as smooth and velvety as ever, yet beneath it ran an undercurrent of iron. Or was it ice?

  The ponytailed general held Mazares's gaze for several long seconds before dropping his hard grey eyes to Claudia.

  'That's not for me to comment on,' he growled. 'Ye'd best judge the man for yourself, ma'am.'

  And with that, the two men strode off in opposite directions without exchanging another word.

  Well, well, well. Claudia leaned her elbows on the rail and watched the prow slice through the glistening waters. Depending on the height of the sun and the tilt of the galley, the sea might be azure, it might be aquamarine, it might be as green as spring wheat after rain. A more perfect mirror of Histrian politics she couldn't imagine. Twisting, turning, constantly metamorphosing, yet all the while the outward picture remained the same. Serene and utterly calm.

  She glanced up at the mastheads, where a blaze of flags and pennants fluttered in the mellow breeze. Pavan was annoyed, but was this because he'd been asked to venture his opinion of the King - or pique, at being caught eavesdropping on a private conversation? Also, if Pavan was the King's general, then judging from the deference of the crew, Mazares must be the King's admiral. Which made it moot, just how much piracy this tribe had given up! Sitting low in the water with her single bank of oars, this galley was as fast as she was sleek. Like others of her ilk, her job would be to police these waters on behalf of the imperial navy, but with coastlines as heavily indented as this, and with hundreds of islands able to provide cover, buccaneering was still a thorn in the Roman side. Claudia considered the wide range of gifts the King had sent, and found her thoughts wandering towards galleys, plundering such luxuries from far and wide - galleys which could be in and out before the alarm had been raised . . .

  Were they allies, Pavan and Mazares? Or were they pulling on opposite ends of the political tug-of-war rope? And if so, which of the two was anti-Rome? The General, who controlled an army which had sworn allegiance to the eagle, but had a perfect hothouse for nurturing plots in the new seat of justice in the interior? Or the Admiral, with access to the navy, and

  thus perfectly placed to burn and sink the Emperor's warships? Equally, a case could be made the other way, though. That trade with Rome would benefit the coastal communities the most, linking isolated towns and villages, generating wealth and lifting social standing to the point where they'd be more Roman than Rome!

  Still. If there was a power struggle between Pavan and Mazares, it was no concern of hers. She was here to sign a contract that would make her rich, rich, rich, and not before bloody time, either. She stared into the churning waters. Jupiter alone knew why she'd hung on to the wretched business after Gaius died. True, the Guild of Wine Merchants had acted like vultures, descending almost before his body was cold, in the hope of dividing up his contacts, his client base and his vineyards between them, but so what? She'd only married Gaius for his money, why not sell? Why not give in to the Guild, let them have what they wanted? Fighting them at their own dirty game had got her so deep into debt that she'd had to resort to all manner of illegal activities, and it was getting harder and harder to keep that one crucial step ahead of the law. Especially when the law took such long, strong, muscular strides—

  'Mazares,' she called. 'This contract with the King.'

  'What about it?'

  The wind billowed out his white shirt and stirred the aureole of glossy curls that framed his face as he crossed the deck.

  'Well, I was wondering how much he'd need per annum.'

  The deep crevices around his eyes narrowed into canyons. 'How much what?'

  'Wine, of course.'

  That irritatingly lazy twinkle returned to his eyes. 'Are you implying our King's a dypsomaniac?'

  'Mazares, I don't give a fig whether the old duffer's a drunkard, a dilettante or a down-and-out degenerate. He invited me to Histria to supply him with wine and I—'

  'Wine?' Mazares threw back his head and laughed. 'WINE?'

  In fact, he laughed so long and so hard, that he had to rub a muscle in his side that went into spasm.

  'Have you actually stopped to look at the land that we're passing?' he wheezed. 'Because, if not, I suggest you take a look now.'

  Something solidified in Claudia's stomach.

  'This kingdom, My Lady, is wall-to-wall forests bursting with game and dotted with rivers, lakes and streams that are absolutely chock-full of fish.'

  Not barren and scrubby, then . . . ?

  'Our bright-orange soil gives us everything we could ever need in terms of grain, cattle, pigs and sheep, and it provides us with more fruit and vegetables than we can eat.'

  Not poverty-stricken, either, if they can export.

  'The climate is perfect for apples, cherries, figs, pears and plums, for nut trees of every kind, and the boughs of our olive groves swee
p the ground because the yield is so heavy.'

  Not even a tiny bit of ferocious summer sun that bleaches the rocks white . . . ?

  'So, naturally, we have vines.'

  His hand made a sweeping gesture.

  'Miles upon miles of rolling vineyards, Claudia, that produce robust reds on the coast and whites so fine that they are the favourite of a great many high-ranking Romans. Including, I might add, the Lady Livia.'

  Who was, as it happened, the Emperor's wife . . .

  'Alas, My Lady.' He wiped his streaming eyes. 'The King didn't bring you all this way in order to execute some paltry little commercial deal.'

  'He ... ' She cleared her throat and started again. 'He talked about drawing up a contract between us.'

  By now, every eye on the ship was on her, though only two seemed to bore straight through. They were hard and they were grey, and she didn't trust herself to return Pavan's gaze. From the recesses of her memory, she recalled how foreign military commanders were forbidden to wear weapons and uniform unless in times of war or for ceremonial occasions.

  What a stupid, stupid time to remember. She focussed on a family of dolphins leaping joyfully alongside, and knew that she would always associate them with this terrible moment.

  'Yes, but . . .' Mazares composed his face into a mask of politeness. 'I'm sorry if you are under a misapprehension, My Lady, but His Majesty isn't interested in your wine,' he said gravely. 'It is unfortunate that he was too ill to travel to Rome to make his request in person, but . . .'

  Dammit, the bastard actually had the nerve to pause for impact.

  '. . . but the King invited you to Histria to ask for your hand in marriage.'

  Five

  The hell he did.