Sour Grapes

by Marilyn Todd

  Other things followed. Rex talked to the wife he’d lost twenty years before, almost reducing the old soldier to tears. Lars had a quick word in Etruscan with a school friend who’d died in childhood. While Eunice steadfastly declined to speak to her cousin, claiming that the odious woman had refused to bother when she was alive, she could jolly well go hang herself now she was dead. Then Thalia piped up, wondering if she might make contact with her late husband as there was something important she wanted to tell him, but unfortunately the husband was unable to come through. The gateway, it seemed, was starting to close.

  And once it did, it closed with a crash.

  When the brazier in the east corner toppled out of its holder, everyone jumped and even the harpist missed his string. But before anyone had mustered enough breath to speak, a vase of cornflowers by the door smashed on to the floor. Someone gasped. Claudia thought it might have been her.

  ‘Sweet Janus,’ Eunice breathed, as sulphur engulfed the room.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Thalia shrieked. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Th—this…this has never…’ Larentia’s voice was unrecognizable under the fear.

  Suddenly the jug of wine on one of the tables raised itself high in the air and hurled itself across the room, yet even before it hit the wall, a stool overturned, and figurines of ivory, onyx and silver began flying off their display.

  Then it was gone.

  The smoke, the cold, the smell of sulphur, suddenly they were gone, and the room lapsed back into a silence broken only by the drip-drip-drip of wine down the wall and the soft strings of the harp, though even their hypnotic cadence had been broken.

  ‘Lights!’ Rex was the first to speak. ‘Someone light the bloody lamps, for gods’ sake!’

  Terrence, being closest to the door, fumbled his way across the room, cursing as his shin cracked against an overturned chair. Instantly, light from the atrium flooded the dining hall and slaves rushed forward to light the wicks, their open jaws betraying the destruction that confronted them. Glass, water, flowers, furniture, the desecration was everywhere. Still-rocking ornaments littered the mosaic. Wine drizzled like blood down the exquisite frescoes. Lumps of incense resin glued themselves to the woodwork.

  Thalia’s scream was like nails down a blackboard. ‘Candace!’

  Overtaken by events, the sorceress had been completely forgotten.

  ‘Oh my god, Terrence! Look at the blood! Terrence, she’s dead!’

  ‘No, she’s not.’ Orbilio placed his finger on the pulse in Candace’s neck, and Claudia saw that it was only the blood she’d let splash on the floor that had seeped into her robes where she had fallen. Beneath the heavy embroidery and gold thread, the sorceress’s breast rose and fell.

  ‘Candace, speak to us.’ Larentia leaned over and gently slapped the girl’s cheeks. ‘Candace!’

  ‘Would ye look at that, now,’ Lars exclaimed softly.

  ‘Jupiter’s bollocks!’ Rex leaned over for a closer inspection. ‘In all my years on the battlefield, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s healed. The wound on her forearm has healed.’

  ‘Someone open the doors to the terrace,’ Orbilio ordered, scooping her up in his arms. ‘Quickly, please.’

  Claudia was the closest and outside in the fresh air Candace’s eyelashes began to flutter and her unfocussed eyes rolled as he set her down in a chair. Whatever words she muttered, the language was not Latin.

  ‘Drink this.’ Orbilio coaxed a few drops of water past her trembling lips.

  ‘Did…did they come?’ she asked thickly. ‘The spirits. Did they come through?’

  ‘They came through all right,’ he assured her. ‘Can you stand?’

  ‘I…think so.’

  She was wrong. The same legs that came right up to her armpits wobbled precariously when left to their own devices, and two muscular slaves were entrusted to escort the sorceress back to her room. In the dining hall, Larentia seemed mesmerized by the stains on the wall, Thalia was sobbing silently from the shock, and though Eunice comforted her by rubbing her shoulders, you could see from her white face that she was shaken herself. The men stood with their feet planted squarely apart staring down at the floor, the walls, their own feet—anywhere, except at each other.

  Out on the terrace, Orbilio took ten paces away from the house, clasped his hands behind his back and stared up at the star-studded sky.

  ‘I have to hand it to you, Claudia Seferius. You lie, cheat and steal, you fiddle your taxes, you make fraudulent deals, you forge signatures, documents and seals—plus you gamble, which is also against the law. But…’

  He began to rock on his heels. Maybe he’d been shaken by tonight’s events more than he let on, because in the light of the three-quarter moon it seemed as though his shoulders were shaking.

  ‘But no one can ever accuse you of not throwing a bloody good party.’

  Eight

  Around the twisting streets of Mercurium, only the herald and the town cats were abroad. The herald enjoyed walking this tiny hilltop town at night. No beggars on the corners, no dogs or kids zigzagging in and out of his feet, no porters’ poles to poke him in the eye. He could amble round the town at his own pace, even though by the time he’d called the hour at one end it was practically time to start calling the next at the other. This time of night, though, no one cared. Like country folk everywhere, they shuttered up their windows when darkness fell and rose again at dawn, and most of them, bless their hearts, slept like logs. You could hear half of ’em, especially that old pair on the corner of Pear Street and Hide Lane. Lord alive, there were some nights the herald could hardly hear his own bell for their snoring.

  ‘Third hour of the night,’ he intoned solemnly. ‘Third hour of the night.’

  On he strode, always taking the same route up the hill, checking on the goldsmith’s and the shield maker’s, the vellum dealer’s and the spice seller’s, because even though they lived above their shops, they all slept soundly in their beds and so were happy to slip the herald a denarius each week to check the locks when he went past. Wine had made this town prosperous, he reflected happily. Wine and olive oil. Back in his great-great-grandfather’s day, Mercurium was a walled hill fort like fifty others, a working town in days when meat was a luxury, only eaten once a week, and most houses slept six to a room.

  Not these days! Mercurium had risen like its namesake, and grown rich on the back of an increase in production from the olive groves and vines, their liquid output exported everywhere from Iberia to Damascus, Pannonia to Gaul. Of course, the herald had no idea where these places were. Further than from here to Rome, but beyond that? It didn’t matter. Wherever these exotic places were, they couldn’t get enough of the liquid gold that was pressed out of these fruits and he was glad. It put fat goose on his table, brought fresh water to his street and educated his three kiddies as well.

  ‘Fourth hour of the night.’

  Aye, it was grand to walk streets that had been paved and guttered, and at least at night he could walk without impediment. Why, only yesterday the axle on the tavern-keeper’s cart fell off, bumping amphorae of wine right down the hill, and he was bloody lucky only three of the buggers had broke. Not that you’d think it, listening to him! Lord alive, what language. Course, it stood to reason. Last week was it (or the week before), the poor sod got up in the morning same as usual and found his wine had turned to vinegar overnight. Now his axle broken, poor bloke. All the same, language like that, when there’s lassies present?

  On every block, the herald rang his bronze hand bell and called out the hour. ‘Fourth hour of the night.’ Every building he passed lay in darkness. Maybe he’d hit lucky and hear the squeak of a bat, or a moth would flutter close before his eyes, but usually it was just him and the odd tomcat, and that was how he liked it.

  Approaching Saturn Street, he caught a chink of light through the shutters. He stopped. Watched the crack of amber for a while, but the light was not extinguished in the way it
would, had someone needed the chamber pot, for example, or a drink in the night. The herald pursed his lips. Should he? Aye, why not? He rapped at the door, noting thick branches of cypress piled over the threshold. He waited. No answer. He rapped again.

  ‘Rosenna?’

  After half a minute, maybe more, the bar was eventually lifted and a swollen, tear-stained face appeared round the door, framed by a halo of tangled red curls. He smelled the dusty, dry air of wood and sawdust. Caught a glimpse of carved horses, jointed soldiers and a doll’s house half finished.

  ‘Rosenna, love, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. Honest, herald, I’m all right. Just sitting with him, that’s all.’

  ‘I could send the wife round, if you’re in need of company?’

  ‘That’s mighty sweet of you, but no. If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather stay private in my grief.’

  She closed the door and trudged back up the stairs. Love him, it was the herald who first told her that the body had been found.

  ‘They think it’s Tages the shepherd boy,’ he’d said, ‘but you might just want to take a peek,’ because the herald was the only one who understood how worried she’d been.

  ‘Your brother’s just gone…you know…to the hot springs,’ the townspeople kept telling her. ‘Don’t fuss.’

  Don’t fuss? A seventeen-year-old youth sets out to meet his lover one night, he doesn’t return, and they tell you don’t fuss? Rosenna resumed her vigil beside her brother’s bier. Would they have handed out the same advice, had it been a lass setting off in the storm? she wondered bitterly. Or a seventeen-year-old youth meeting with a female lover, not another man? Lichas’s preferences might be common knowledge round here, but it didn’t mean people accepted it. They liked him well enough, and when they bought their toys they’d pretend he were no different, when in truth it was Rosenna they felt sorry for, on account of the shame her brother visited upon her.

  ‘Lichas, Lichas, what am I to do?’

  The corpse on the bed made no reply, and Rosenna buried her head in her hands. The smell of jasmine in such a small chamber was making her retch, but there was no money in the box to pay for an embalmer, and in any case, three days in the river was three days too late for such services. She had to rely on oil of jasmine, camphor and a thick linen sheet, but she couldn’t let him lie there alone in the State mortuary. Lichas had had his whole life ahead of him, a life that had been cut short with a sharp, stabbing dagger. The least Rosenna could do was keep vigil for her brother, burning torches at all four corners of his bier and laying cypress outside his door.

  ‘All life is ordained,’ the priest had told her, and no doubt he meant it as comfort. ‘Man’s destiny lies in the lap of the gods.’

  Rosenna was having none of it. ‘You can’t teach us on the one hand that we’re allotted seven times twelve years by the gods, then tell us that Satres can bring his sickle down any time he bloody well chooses!’

  ‘You are angry, child,’ the priest said. ‘But destiny is destiny nonetheless, and the cycle of life to which you refer can only be achieved through dedication, sacrifice and prayer.’

  ‘Lichas was seventeen,’ she protested. ‘If you’re saying a person has to stuff all their sacrifice and prayers into their first two years of adulthood, why was it him and not me?’

  ‘Child, we can only beseech the gods for postponement of the inevitable, and however much we read the sky and examine the livers of bulls, the gods only let us know what they want us to know. Their secrets are not always for human divulgence.’

  Too exhausted to cry further, Rosenna picked up a painted wooden chariot and spun the wheels slowly.

  ‘Wee orphaned Jemma’s never gonna get that house for her dolls now,’ she whispered quietly. ‘And what of Tiro’s crippled lad? How’s he going to walk again without that contraption you were designing for him?’

  It was typical of Rosenna to worry about the auctioneer’s son, whose left foot was paralysed when he fell into the quarry, rather than herself. At twenty-one, she had no fears for her own future. She’d get by, but Lichas…? Lichas had been marvellous. I’ll get that foot working, sonny, don’t you fret. She could almost hear her brother’s voice. I’ll rig up a trolley that you can stand inside and push round. Between the two of us—she even remembered the way he’d ruffled the lad’s hair—we’ll have you right in no time.

  The upsurge of memories was too much, and she was consumed once more by grief. Finally, when the spasm had passed and all that remained was an emptiness deep in her soul, she blew her nose, splashed her face with cold water and slumped back in her chair. There were some, she reflected sourly, who feared that any man who loved other men was a threat to their bairns. Huh! You canna help how you’re born, any more than you can help having crossed eyes or a big nose. Lichas was a fine carver, he made loads of kids happy and there was nowt mucky about it!

  You don’t understand, sis.

  His voice echoed back through the years when, even at thirteen, he knew he was different.

  Folk’ll always be prejudiced against something. In this case, it happens to be me.

  That was why he took himself off to the hot springs now and then. There was a quiet corner, he said, where others of his persuasion could link up.

  I’m among friends there.

  Friends, aye—but also lovers, casual acquaintances who meant nothing, or random encounters that satisfied a need…until that fateful trip in December.

  It’s Saturnalia coming up, he had said. The hot springs attract a large number of visitors. There’s a huge market for toys.

  And toy boys, she thought miserably.

  Lichas returned home not only sold out, but happier than Rosenna had ever seen him.

  I met someone, sis. His name’s Hadrian and, would you believe, we’ve both lived in Mercurium our entire lives, yet never found each other until last week!

  Hadrian. Rosenna rolled the name round on her tongue and the taste was bitter. Hadrian, who was a full seven years older than Lichas but a whole world away, with a rich family and a different set of attitudes and outlooks.

  ‘He’ll hurt you.’

  Don’t be daft, sis. How Lichas had danced round the room! Hadrian loves me.

  ‘Maybe he does,’ she’d retorted. ‘Now. But what happens later? Lichas, trust me, this man can only hurt you.’

  Beside his jasmine-sodden bier, wracking sobs overtook her once more. ‘They won’t listen,’ she wailed, wringing her handkerchief. ‘I’ve been to the City Prefect, the Tribune, the Magistrates, the Quaestor. Holy Nox, I’ve been round anyone who’s anyone in this town and told them who killed you, but not one of the bastards listened.’

  At least, they pretended they hadn’t.

  ‘Bastards,’ she said again. ‘I hope the whole bloody lot rot in hell.’

  It was his father. Hadrian’s father had the clout to cover it up, because hadn’t Rex been some general in their bloody army? And that was always the root of it, wasn’t it? ‘Them’ and ‘us’.

  ‘Because we’re Etruscans—commoners—we don’t bloody count.’

  What counted was money. And connections. Then you could cover up your son’s murderous deeds and pass it off as a cheap homosexual quarrel.

  ‘Well, I know,’ she spat. ‘I know who killed you, little brother, and I don’t care what kind of high-flying patrician they’ve brought in to suppress the truth. That bastard Hadrian is going to pay.’

  *

  As it happened, that bastard Hadrian was already paying.

  Nine

  Dawn broke rosy and soft, bathing the vines in its warm rose-pink glow and turning the gnarled black stems to cochineal. Between the rows, hoopoes hopped, their black and white crests erect in courtship, while foxes slunk home and kestrels scythed the air in search of voles. High in the elms that supported the vines, dormice snuggled into a ball, while owls closed sleepy eyes beside their fluffy nestlings. Claudia envied the dormice their dreams. After the ev
ents of yesterday evening, she had not slept a wink and her shoulders were stiff from anxiety.

  Bad luck begets back luck. (Larentia)

  The forces of the supernatural surround each of us, my child. I am merely their instrument. (Candace)

  Hard as she tried, Claudia had not been able to convince herself that the soft brush of a hand against her arm was imagination. Claudia, my dove. Or that gentle pat on her head. I’ve never left you, not for a minute.

  Not only do the spirits hear in the dark. It would seem that they also can see…

  Do you see weevils on any of these vines? Larentia had snapped. Has the bailiff reported any signs of rust or blight?

  All my spells work, Candace said.

  Strolling beneath the dangling branches, Claudia ran her fingers over the sprouting leaves and was once again struck by how hard these vines had to work. They didn’t generate leaf until May, and, in the six months before the leaves fell, they had to deal with two sessions of hard pruning, flowers, get themselves pollinated and absorb sufficient moisture and sun to swell the grapes into juicy ripe bunches that could be trodden into juicy ripe wine. Oh, yes, they were tough little soldiers. To ensure their roots retained adequate moisture, it wasn’t unknown for them to burrow a good sixty feet down—it’s a wonder they didn’t tickle the heads of the inhabitants of Hades. And isn’t it funny how everything keeps coming back to the dead?

  Claudia lifted her eyes to the horizon, where the first warming rays of Apollo were painting the sky the same hue as a kingfisher’s breast and dabbing it with puffs of white cotton.

  ‘Looking round,’ a baritone murmured, ‘you see what inspired the vibrancy and colour in Etruscan art and made them such a happy people.’

  Dammit, this was another reason she hadn’t slept one bloody wink.

  ‘Can’t imagine what they had to be happy about, Orbilio. There’s sod all for miles except hills, fields and trees, and a girl can hardly hear herself think for the racket.’

  ‘I think you might find there’s a technical term for that racket.’ He pursed his lips and nodded solemnly. ‘In the trade, it’s known as birdsong.’