Sour Grapes

by Marilyn Todd

  The hot springs, the hot springs, always the hot springs.

  ‘So why is Thalia so certain that she killed him?’

  ‘Because they were always arguing, those two, and I know you must find it hard to believe when she appears scatterbrained and simpering now, but my little sister’s extremely highly strung.’

  ‘Is that why you give her pills?’

  ‘There’s a poppy that grows wild in Sumeria. I’m told you extract the latex from the unripe capsules and it calms the nerves.’

  ‘Whilst turning her into a gibbering idiot.’

  ‘Better an irritating fool than a self-confessed murderess,’ Terrence snapped. ‘I’ve worked hard to establish a rapport with the people of this town.’ His voice softened to a chuckle. ‘I told you once that I have enough glory to last me a lifetime, but no man can be too popular, Claudia. All joking apart, Thalia’s claims are bullshit, but they’re the very sort of wild declarations that attract scandal, and shit sticks. I will not have my sister undermine the trust I’ve established with these people. Like Caesar’s wife, she too must be above reproach. Now, unless I miss my guess, that’s the three-legged race about to kick off.’ He shot Claudia a warm grin. ‘How about you and I tying our legs together and cementing our business arrangement?’

  ‘My left to your right good enough?’

  ‘Perfect,’ he said with a wink.

  *

  As dawn broke through the bright new leaves of the chestnuts and the grove filled with the song of the birds, Etha knelt on the bare soil behind her stone hut staring into the east. Through the trees, on the far side of the valley, rheumy eyes could just about make out the first of Cautha’s fiery rays lighting Master Terrence’s enormous white villa. All through the night, she had watched with empty eyes the flicker of torchlights burning around it and, as she’d sat staring out into the blackness of the valley, she’d pictured the folk of Mercurium laughing and drinking, dicing and feasting. Aye, he laid on a good spread, did Master Terrence. But the townspeople’s happiness was like a vice round her chest, crushing hope from her heart until every last drop drained away.

  She had spent the past week praying to the gods of the sunrise, but the gods of the sunrise were powerful gods. They’d be too busy answering the prayers of rich men and priests to bother with an old woman like her. So she’d turned to the deities of good fortune to the north, for fortune is notoriously capricious and rash, and who knows what games the gods might be playing this time on mortals? But as the old woman waited, she’d received no signs from the north wind. What little breeze there was blew warm from the south, and Etha took that as an omen. With tears dribbling down her wrinkled cheeks, she lifted shaking hands to the sky.

  ‘O wolf-headed Aita, who makes thy home at the edge of the Universe and presideth over the Dead, I offer this wreath of myrtle.’ Myrtle was the death tree. Aita would understand. ‘But before I open my heart and let Deathmist enter, I beg thee to speak to the gods of the south, that they might be persuaded to give up my grandson.’

  If he’s dead, let the earth no longer conceal his body. Let Horta, Fufluns and the rest of the gods who dwell therein surrender his corpse that Etha might send Tages to the Afterlife with the proper rites, and though it weren’t in the Order of the Cosmos for the old to bury the young, it weren’t right, neither, that his soul be denied entry to the Hall of Purification. Despite the pain in her arthritic bones, Etha bent low to the damp soil and kissed it.

  ‘If my boy’s dead, as I accept he must be, at least grant him a resting place where the Guardians of the Graves can watch over his immortal soul,’ she begged the earth. ‘I ask this for Tages, thou understands. Not myself. But I beseech thee, with all my heart I beseech thee, don’t deny the poor lad.’

  The earth gods were good gods. Even as she was reaching for her stout laurel stick to straighten up, she heard footsteps on the path. The footsteps were heavy. Etha turned and saw Philo, her neighbour, and though his face told his story, it was not at his face that Etha was staring. It was at the blanket-covered bundle he held in his arms.

  The heavy rains of the night before had washed away the earth from the boy’s shallow grave.

  The Guardians had a place to stand watch, after all.

  Eighteen

  If there was one thing Orbilio had noticed about Mercurium, it was that news travelled fast around here. Locals joked that this was the reason the town had been named after the messenger of the gods. Gossip travelled on the same invisible winged sandals. Marcus could well believe it. Even before Etha’s neighbour had taken Tages home, news of the discovery had reached the townsfolk—and since most of them were wholeheartedly maintaining the ancient tradition of celebrating right through the night, it was at Terrence’s villa that the news broke.

  As it happened, Orbilio was among the first to hear it. This was pure chance, since he had participated very little in the festivities. Not because he hadn’t wanted to. He’d thoroughly enjoyed climbing into a wolfskin and scattering little lambs hither and thither. Their delighted squeals lifted his heart, reminding him how he longed to father a tribe of his own, hoisting one on to the crow’s nest of his shoulders whilst another whirled from his waist as—I don’t know, another two, maybe three—danced around him like a maypole until finally they all collapsed in one dizzy, idiotic heap. Oh, and did he mention dogs? Wolfhounds, poodles, hunting dogs, mongrels, he didn’t care what breed they were, or how many, so long as they loped beside him and his kids as they gathered baskets of mushrooms from the forest floor or stretched out on the river bank, tickling trout.

  He had no doubt such pleasures lay in store, but meanwhile, given the choice, who wouldn’t have preferred joining in the footraces Terrence had organized, or putting his name down for the tug-of-war, to bypassing the festivities in favour of a backlog of files? However, when he accepted the post as Head of the Aquitanian Security Police, he’d accepted responsibility, loyalty and commitment to Gaul. On previous trips back to Rome, he’d been accompanied by a chest full of case notes and Milo, his scribe. The difference was, on this trip it was Milo who had done all the hard work. Thus Orbilio contented himself with admiring the skills of the rope walkers from a distance while he annotated his scribe’s meticulously prepared reports and added to the ever-growing list of actions for his return to Gaul. His return…

  After only a week with Claudia Seferius, Santonum seemed a lifetime away.

  An expert at compartmentalization, Marcus stuffed that particular demon back in its box and snapped the lid shut. One thing at a time, he reflected, and, as Terrence’s guest, he’d felt duty bound to put in regular appearances throughout the night, introducing himself to all and sundry and generally making the right noises. Surprised at seeing Rosenna, he would very much have liked to have taken the girl aside and talked privately for a while, but each time he approached, she ducked away and he had to respect that. Her brother had only been dead a week, and attending Terrence’s party was Rosenna’s first step at overcoming her grief. This was not the time for him to rake over her sorrow.

  But Claudia, he couldn’t help noticing, had managed to cast aside her worries about Darius. Every time Orbilio made a tour of the revels, there she was, in the thick of it, playing featherball, competing in the three-legged race, clapping at the mimes, gasping at the fire-eater, laughing at the antics of the clowns. Terrence seemed to be clinging like a shadow, that same fixed oily smile plastered all over his face, but Orbilio wasn’t going to lose sleep over that. Claudia had seen at first hand how he bullied his sister, undermining what little confidence Thalia had, until the poor cow was so frightened of saying something stupid that she always ended up saying something even more stupid. But it felt right, somehow. Looking up and seeing Claudia there. As though that’s how it was meant to be…

  Another lid snapped shut on another compartment. One thing at a time, old son, remember?

  ‘Ah, Rex!’

  ‘Marcus, m’boy.’ The general’s eyes were puffy fro
m lack of sleep, his jowls hanging heavier than usual. ‘What can I do for you?’

  That old patrician trait, he reflected. No matter how tired or weary one was, be polite, be interested, be what one was expected to be, never show what you really feel. Orbilio pasted on a suitably gracious expression of his own.

  ‘News has just filtered in about Tages. The shepherd boy who went missing the night of the storm.’

  ‘Found him, have they?’

  It was because Rex was tired, he supposed. But the general didn’t say, ‘turned up, has he?’ He asked if the boy had been found…

  ‘His body was discovered late yesterday afternoon,’ he explained. ‘From the state of him, it looks like Tages had been dead for a week.’

  In fact, decomposition had wedged him so firmly between the rocks that it took the rescue team several hours to retrieve him, but it was important to the Etruscans that their dead be despatched to the afterlife in as perfect a condition as possible. They’d have beavered away for days if needs be.

  ‘Glad for the old woman,’ Rex sniffed. ‘Terrible thing, not knowing what’s happened to your loved ones, but now she knows he slipped in the storm, it gives her closure, what. Listen.’ He patted Orbilio’s shoulder. ‘Would ask you to join me for my customary constitutional, but don’t mind admitting I’m done in. Not bothering with breakfast. Going straight home for a kip.’

  From the corner of his eye, Orbilio noticed slaves with blue headbands clearing up the debris while a squad with red headbands laid breakfast out on the trestle tables. Hot bread, pancakes, cheeses and fruit were being heaped up, plus there were still great piles of leftovers from last night’s feast for people to help themselves from. The townsfolk were not averse to a free meal, he observed dryly. Hardly any had filtered off home, and he truly admired those die-hards who were still at it, playing bounce-ball or clipper, jogging round the lake, taking a dip, while those sober enough to aim true (or inebriated enough not to care) were engaged in darts, discus or the javelin as children trundled hoops and spun tops.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said evenly, ‘Tages didn’t slip. The area had been canvassed several times in the past week, and the reason the search team missed it was because the body had been banked over with earth. Earth, which the recent downpour uncovered.’

  Rex dismissed buried shepherd boys with a snort. ‘Storm most likely the culprit. Same way the rain washed it out, it probably covered his corpse in the first place. Just hope the lad wasn’t alive at the time, eh?’

  ‘Oh, Tages was dead, Rex.’ Orbilio looped his thumbs in his belt. ‘The rescue team say his throat had been cut.’

  ‘Wolves. Bloody things are a menace. Take my lambs, they would, if I didn’t fence my bloody pastures. Even then, I have to mount a guard.’

  ‘Some of the big cats have been known to hide their kill from the competition, but I’ve never heard a wolf pack do that.’ Marcus puffed out his cheeks. ‘And by a strange coincidence, wouldn’t you just know it? The place where Tages was dumped was a mere fifty paces from the yew tree where Lichas was killed, and do you know what’s really bugging Hadrian, Rex?’

  The tiredness dropped like a stone. ‘If you’re accusing my son—’

  ‘I’m not.’

  As he’d told Claudia, he’d had Hadrian pegged for the toy-maker’s murder until he’d wangled that session beside his prime suspect at the hot springs. Softly, softly had been his attitude. In rekindling their childhood friendship (if that was the word), he hoped to win Hadrian’s trust and that, combined with the soothing warm mud and a relaxing massage, he’d wring out the boy’s confession. The technique was successful. Having swapped do-you-remembers and some rather bland childhood experiences, the warm mud started soothing, the massage began relaxing and in no time the lot came tumbling out.

  He loved Lichas, Hadrian said. Lichas was a good person, a kind person, and maybe the oils were too fragrant and the steam too calming, because this outburst immediately prompted an extensive list of the toy-maker’s worthy deeds which, if Orbilio remembered correctly, included a contraption to help a crippled boy regain the strength in his legs and a doll’s house for a poverty-stricken orphan called Jemma.

  Right. Boy meets boy, but not round Mercurium, because both Hadrian and Lichas had to come to the hot springs to meet like-minded souls. And Hadrian had admitted sneaking out after dark, because he was shit-scared of his father’s reaction should Rex get wind that his son’s homosexuality wasn’t the passing phase he had hoped. So far, so good—but at this point Orbilio’s softly-softly technique threw up a response as startling as it was unexpected.

  ‘I was prepared to leave everything to be with him,’ Hadrian blubbed. ‘I loved him, I’d have done anything for him, but Lichas said it was madness, throwing my life away.’ Tears made runnels in the mud plastered to his pallid face. ‘He said he loved me too much to let me waste my future on someone like him. He said I didn’t know what he had done. I said I didn’t care. He said I should, and when it got out my father would disown me, so I told him again I didn’t care. Lichas said, “that’s what you say now, but what about when we’re broke, when we’re the scandal of the town and no one will talk to us, and when the luxury you’ve been used to and the family who raised you are both cut off irrevocably?” That’s what we rowed about, Marcus. That’s why my big honey-babe took his own life.’

  Orbilio ran his hand over his jaw and heard the scrape of his own stubble. (Honey-babe?) ‘Were you aware that your son genuinely believes Lichas committed suicide?’

  Rex looked startled. ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Hadrian is convinced Lichas fell on his own dagger after their row, and that somehow Lichas either crawled to the river to throw himself in and finish the job quickly, or he tried to ease the pain with the water and fell in, or else he got disorientated stumbling around in the dark and somehow missed his footing.’

  The general ran his tongue under his lower lip. ‘Pity my son didn’t tell me that at the outset, but can’t be helped, I suppose. If it was suicide, it was suicide. End of story.’

  Orbilio tugged at his earlobe, because they both knew full well that the knife was too deeply embedded for Lichas to have yanked it out himself. Not when he was in that kind of agony. ‘What about Tages?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? That snide little queer killed him, then covered his tracks best that he could.’

  ‘His motive being?’

  ‘Equally blatant, I would have thought. Couldn’t bugger my son, so he tried his luck with the nearest available male, only Tages spurns his advances, so Lichas kills him.’

  ‘And then commits suicide?’

  ‘Absolutely. Filled with remorse. Realizes what a monster he’s become. Does the decent thing.’ Rex threw back his shoulder blades and tossed his chin in the air. ‘Case solved, d’you hear me? Case—let me make myself absolutely clear Marcus—closed.’

  Orbilio sank down on the low stone wall that encircled the fishpond and buried his head in his hands. He didn’t believe it. More to the point, he didn’t want to believe it. A hero of how many campaigns? All the values he’d been raised to appreciate, all the qualities he’d come to admire in one of Rome’s finest living generals, shattered like glass at his feet. Where was the honour in saving one’s own skin? Where was the integrity in conspiring to cover up murder? He thought back to watching with pride as a child as the Emperor laid crowns of laurels and oak on the head of the man his own father had been proud to call a friend. Which crown for cowardice, Rex? He spiked his hands through his hair. God knows, his father would be turning somersaults in his grave, knowing his son had forsaken the family profession in favour of lowly investigative work, but what would the old man make of his friend’s betrayal of patrician principles, he wondered? What would the two say when they finally met?

  ‘When a chap sits there with a face like a walnut, there’s only one possible conclusion,’ a voice breezed in his ear. ‘That just when you think things can’t get worse, life proves you wid
e of the mark.’

  Orbilio felt his bad mood lifted from his shoulders like a weight. ‘Do you want to know the truth of it?’

  ‘Good heavens, Marcus, surely you know me better than that.’ She sat down beside him and he inhaled the richness of her spicy, Judaean perfume. ‘So what happened to leave you looking like you’ve sat on a wasps’ nest? Did you come home and find your girlfriend in bed with another man?’

  ‘I’d have given him a bloody good hiding, too, if it hadn’t been her damned husband.’

  Claudia’s laughter was like a drug to him and he drank deeply. He repeated his conversation with Rex.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, producing a linen cloth bursting with warm, sticky pancakes.

  ‘Not going to let it drop, that’s for sure.’ Orbilio hadn’t realized he was hungry until he reached for a second one. ‘But Rex isn’t only a local hero, he’s a national icon—and he wields a lot of power around here.’

  ‘Well, you know my motto. If at first you don’t succeed, quit.’

  He licked the honey off his fingers. ‘Oh, so if all else fails, lower your standards?’

  ‘There’s no sense in being obstinate, Marcus. You can’t win ’em all.’

  ‘Agreed.’ This time, he selected a pancake bursting with raisins and figs. ‘But I’m buggered if I’m going to let Rex get away with two murders.’

  Was it stubbornness on his part? A refusal to back down, even though he risked his career? Or was it because Rex had been a close friend of his father’s, and he was worried he’d be tainted with the same brush of corruption? Both, probably, but at the root it was knowing he could not in all conscience turn his back on justice. Justice was blind out of impartiality, not bias.

  ‘Then come to my house tonight,’ Claudia said, dabbling her fingers in the fishpond. ‘Having eaten all the pancakes, you’ll probably be too stuffed to want dinner, but Candace is walking the winds again, or so Larentia tells me.’