Sour Grapes

by Marilyn Todd

  Good.

  ‘But he always rode the same sorrel mare, did our Felix, and I suppose, if I was honest, I’d have to say he was a bit of a dandy. Wore quality clothes in the manner of a man used to wearing ’em—’

  Like Darius.

  ‘—but wore a gold headband to keep his curls out of his eyes—’

  Knew it!

  ‘—and, of course, what did set him out from the crowd was that, unlike most free men, Felix didn’t favour white tunics. Bright blue was his colour. Wanted folk to see he’d risen up through the ranks, and though he’d been promoted to equestrian status like your late husband, Felix only tended to wear his purple-striped tunic on state occasions.’

  So a man with a neat Caesar crop, wearing a crisp white linen tunic, dazzling white woollen toga and wearing high patrician boots wouldn’t be lumped in the same social class as the johnny-come-lately dandified Felix. Especially if he adopted different mannerisms and gait.

  Claudia polished off the partridge pie along with the relishes. Sabotaging the wine would have been easy for anyone committed enough to want to bother. Five earthenware dolia were set in the tavern’s stone counters like gigantic toilet seats. Simple matter of dropping the contents of a phial into those during the night, then nipping into the cellar, removing the spigots from the casks, souring that wine, then re-plugging them without leaving a trace. But to plan this, Darius would have had to have been inside this tavern, and twelve years ago was too far back to rely on mere memory…

  ‘In Rome, artisans tend to drink at their various guild houses,’ she said. ‘Is it the same here?’

  ‘Oh, aye.’ The landlord explained that his clientele fell into two types. Shopkeepers and residents of the apartments above them who ate here on a regular basis, and barflies who never left, at least when there was wine to be had! ‘Not wishing to sound snobby, ma’am, but that type tend to comprise the lower orders, if you get my drift, or else those fallen from grace, who just drink themselves stupid.’

  Damn.

  He ambled off to the kitchens and returned with a steaming hot pumpkin tart that he set down with a bang on the table. ‘Course, we do get gentry like yourself occasionally.’ He sliced it with the same knife that had cut the partridge pie. ‘Not often, but it happens.’

  ‘Yes, now you mention it, I do believe Darius said he’d been in here a while back.’

  Pine. It was the pine over the lintel that gave him away.

  ‘Do believe you’re right, milady.’ The landlord nodded sagely. ‘Not often, but like I says, it happens. Here, you sure you don’t want a piece of this tart? The missus bakes ’em herself.’

  ‘No.’ Claudia was too excited to eat. ‘No, I don’t, but I’ll tell you a secret,’ she said. ‘It’s not something I share with everyone, but I’ve just had a vision.’

  ‘A vision, ma’am?’ His face twisted in the manner of a man worried that the partridge was off.

  ‘A vision,’ she said. ‘And in my vision, I saw Fufluns, and do you know what? He was lifting his curse from your tavern.’

  There’ll be no more sour wine in this place, my friend. Felix has just met his match.

  *

  The first thing that struck Rosenna, returning from shopping, was the smell of freshly carved wood. She hooked her basket over her arm and thought, daft. This was a toy shop! She was used to the prickly sensation at the top of her nose. Well used to the dry, dusty air. All the same though… She swapped the basket to the other arm. The vividness of it caught her right off guard, reminding her of when Lichas sat hunched over his chisels, and she realized with a start that it had been eight days since she’d last inhaled that timbery smell. Three days during which she’d been out of her mind with worry. Five days during which she’d gone out of her mind with grief…

  She ducked under the counter and thought, no. No, it wasn’t like when Lichas was working. Her brother’d sit in the corner, rasping away, his tongue clenched between his teeth in concentration. Orson moved his stool right up to the street, often stopping to show the kiddies what he was working on, explaining how he was going to turn this offcut of cypress into a soldier, why fig was the best wood for making a hoop, and why grain oak was good for the crossbars of lyres. And when he wasn’t surrounded by curious kids, he’d be humming away to himself. ‘Whistle while you whittle, Rosie,’ he’d laugh. And that was another thing. No one had ever called her Rosie before.

  ‘Oi’d have thought it were the first thing that sprung to mind,’ Orson said when she told him. ‘What with name, your rosy round cheeks and hair that’s the colour of rosehips in autumn.’

  ‘Not my rosy nature, then?’

  ‘Oh, that’ll come back,’ he’d assured her, fixing the hinges to Jemma’s doll’s house. ‘Like a tide coming in on a steep-shelving beach, you don’t see it creep up, but it do. Pass them tacks over, would you?’

  ‘I don’t have a rosy nature to creep back,’ she told him, steadying the miniature cottage as he tapped the nails home.

  ‘No?’ Broad hands satisfied themselves that the structure was rigid. ‘Then who’s responsible for painting them jugs in the kitchen? Who stencilled those floral swags on the walls?’

  Jugs? Swags? Did he honestly think such things mattered? Rosenna returned his wave with a jauntiness she didn’t feel and thought, justice is what counts. Not flowers. Not sodding paint. A life for a life, and with Tages’ body being found late yesterday afternoon, it wasn’t one murder she’d be avenging when the Brides of Fufluns danced for their god. She’d be doing old Etha a favour as well. Climbing the stairs with a heavy tread, she laid the contents of her shopping out over the table. Leeks, peas, beans, onions. A clutch of freshly laid eggs. And, thanks to those kiddie-sized flutes he carved out of that old leftover pine yesterday and got her to paint Pan faces on, she could throw a coney on the table as well, for they’d sold like hot cakes, them flutes. It weren’t fair to punish Orson for the sins of the Romans. Oh, he were a Roman, she knew that, but he weren’t the double-crossing, skin-saving kind of Roman—and hell, he deserved a decent meal at the end of the day for helping little orphaned Jemma and the crippled boy.

  ‘No, no, you keep that, Rosie,’ he’d said when she’d offered him a half share of the takings. ‘Reckon they thinks Oi’m a goose that needs fattening for Saturnalia, Oi’m that well fed up at that villa.’

  ‘Fancy titbits, aye. But do they feed you rabbit stew with lentils and leeks?’

  A look of longing crossed his freckled face. ‘Thick gravy?’

  ‘So thick, you’ll need a knife,’ she promised, and Rosenna had never broken a promise in her life.

  She proceeded to strip the skin off the coney and joint it. By the time she’d finished chopping the vegetables, the herbs and the spices, the blade she’d been using was blunt, and she resolved to sharpen it on the grindstone, but not until Orson packed up for the night. She didn’t want anyone to overhear the spell she cast while she honed it. The spell that would carry it straight to the heart of three bastard patricians. Hadrian, Rex and the other one. Marcus.

  She hefted the cauldron on to the stove. Aye, Marcus, they called him. Not one of your soft types like the coward who betrayed her brother, nor the bullying kind, like the father, which only left the other kind. The kind who tried to bribe you to keep your mouth shut. Oh, don’t think she hadn’t seen the way he followed her around last night! Trying to catch her attention, so he could stuff gold in her pockets—as though that would bring Lichas back! But she was glad now that she’d gone with Orson to the festivities. She hadn’t wanted to go, but he insisted that, rather than dignifying the dead, too much mourning dishonoured them, and if Lichas was half the man she had claimed, he must’ve been a chap who’d taken life by the horns and she could do worse than follow her brother’s example. Part shamed, part inspired, what had tipped the balance was that Orson had no one else to go with. Flavia was stuck at the temple, he said.

  ‘Reckon it would give us both a treat, Rosie, for you and
me to horse around for a couple of hours.’

  And show those bastard patricians how to play featherball, she thought triumphantly. That’ll teach ’em—and while she was up at Terrence’s mansion, she’d got the chance to look all three of her enemies in the eye, too. Nits and lice, just like she’d said, and no one thinks twice about exterminating them.

  ‘Dinner smells good,’ Orson called up.

  ‘Looks good, too,’ she called down, giving the pot a hearty stir with the paddle and adjusting the seasonings.

  That was one heck of a big stew, but he’d probably scoff the lot, would our Orson. Strapping fella with a wise head on broad shoulders, and a heart of gold on the inside. Why, look at the amount of time he’d spent on that contraption Lichas had been designing to help the crippled lad walk.

  ‘Still ain’t right though, is it?’ he’d said in the end, but he weren’t giving up. ‘Leave it with me, Rosie, and Oi’ll see what Oi can do. Reckon it needs three wheels, see. One at the back here, to steady the frame and stop it from tipping forward.’

  As the light began to drain from the sky, Rosenna lit the oil lamps and resolved that, before the red-headed moon waxed to its full, she would will this workshop to Orson. She’d have to get a document that was drawn up all legal, like, to prove she’d given it to him before she’d killed them patricians. Because afterwards the State would crucify her for what she had done, but them Romans weren’t getting their hands on this shop. No way.

  But Orson now. Orson liked wood. It didn’t matter a jot what happened to her, but this way Lichas’s memory would live on through his wood. Orson would see to that.

  ‘Supper’s ready,’ she called down the stairs. ‘And don’t forget that knife for your gravy!’

  Twenty

  Candace stared into the shining crystal on the centre of the table, while Larentia explained to her dinner guests how she was able to see the future through the visions it produced. Vaguely, she was aware of Eunice’s heartfelt hope that Candace couldn’t see her future wrinkles, because she had more than enough at the moment, thanks, and if Candace’s crystal even mentioned the word ‘fat’, she’d smash the thing with her shoe.

  Candace continued to stare, knowing that it would be interpreted by the assembly as the first stage of her trance. Silence and stillness were as integral a part of her wind-walking ritual as the persona she had developed of wearing rich, bold fabrics, a plethora of gold, and honing her naturally deep voice to this melodious drawl. Yet it was not for professional reasons that Candace stared into its glistening facets, and it was not for its visions that she carried the prism around.

  Her mind travelled back down a long, dark, distant tunnel. And though she had never given up hoping to see lush lowlands at the end of the tunnel, where giant grey beasts with a fifth leg coming out of their forehead trumpeted loudly, where long-necked, long-legged creatures grazed the treetops and where striped horses ran wild in herds, no such visions had ever formed. It was always only more darkness she saw. A terrible blackness in which people were screaming. Making gurgling noises deep in their throats. A blackness where fathers pleaded and mothers sobbed, and terrified children screamed…

  Staring into the crystal, the memories solidified like the rock itself and shimmered every bit as brightly.

  Kush was a land of plenty, she’d been told. Apart from the gold that oozed out of the rocks, there was brisk trade to be had in supplying Rome with exotic creatures, and huge profits to be made from the enterprise. Candace had never been to Rome, so it was only through hearsay that she’d learned about huge spotted cats that spent all their lives up trees, and snakes thicker than a man’s thigh that could swallow a billy goat whole. Indeed, it was through such tales that she’d heard about the grey five-legged monsters whose footsteps shook the ground and from whom giant logs of ivory came. Candace needed no telling that the Kings of Kush had grown rich from this ivory—very rich. Or that rich men grow powerful—very powerful. To the point that, when one of them dies, no one questions whether it is right or wrong that three hundred and twenty-eight men, women and children be buried along with the king. Or that he’d stipulated they should still be alive.

  How old would Candace have been? Four? Maybe not even that, for she had no memories of life before that fateful day. All she recalled was being dragged in chains into that pit and seeing people strangled one after the other. Some were strangers, some were from her own village, many came from her own family. As her mother’s turn came, she remembered the ribbon being wound round her neck as she sobbed and pleaded and begged for her baby’s life. Candace recalled the startling warmth of the ribbon as it was wrapped round her own throat. Remembered the constriction, the pain, her vision blurring as the haze turned to red, but then, as she fell forward on to the corpse of her mother, a hand clamped round her mouth and a voice hissed in her ear,

  Make a sound and I’ll finish what I started.

  Candace made no sound. Not a whimper. She lay there, face down and frozen with terror as her mother’s corpse slowly cooled, and she listened to the gurgles and screams until finally, mercifully, only silence filled the air. As darkness cast its cloak over the burial pit, she felt a rough hand pulling her out, but this, she discovered, was no humanitarian rescue. She’d been snatched for pure profit, sold on as a plaything for a rich Roman family. A black toy for white children to tease and torment.

  ‘As I was telling Terrence this afternoon, I got a letter from Cousin Julius to say old Auntie Antonia has lost her mind completely,’ Thalia was twittering.

  ‘Hardly a disaster,’ Eunice retorted. ‘It was a closed one, anyway. No one’ll miss it.’

  ‘Especially Antonia,’ Terrence added dryly.

  Candace didn’t smile. Her features remained wooden, her eyes distant and, trapped in her memories, her mind travelled forwards. To the time when she was too old to continue as a source of childish amusement and was sold on again, this time as a slave. Do this, do that. I’ll pinch you again if you don’t do it quicker. Ah, yes, but slaves earn money… Some more than others, admittedly, it didn’t matter. In addition to her upkeep, she was entitled to a small sum of pocket money to spend as she liked, and the crystal was her very first purchase. A lump of native rock on sale in the market at a price she’d had to pay for in six monthly instalments, but once she had it—once she clutched it to her breast—that shining glass would surely bring back her homeland. It would bring back her mother, her father, her brothers, her sisters. All the memories the old King had killed along with their persons.

  But as the past stubbornly failed to materialize, so Candace could see the future…

  Not through visions in the rock. She saw how she might use its reputation, for if others had tried to see the future and failed, surely it was because they weren’t Kushite? The same instincts that had guided her as a child to keep her mouth shut during The Terror guided her then. She hadn’t gone straight to her mistress. She began to convince other slaves that she could see their future, bland predictions that were nonetheless straws to clutch in a world where you owned nothing, not even your own soul. Word rippled up through the ranks until one day she was summoned. Basically, through rhetoric she had practised and gestures she’d rehearsed, it boiled down to nothing more than the Mistress encountering troubles and tribulation, but rising above them like migrating cranes. As the stupid bitch lapped it up, so Candace became a pampered pet with her own quarters, her own slaves, and slowly perfected her act. For a start, she made it clear that she couldn’t ‘see’ every day. It was the crystal that imparted the sight. She was merely the instrument of prophecy. Picking and choosing these times gave her control, and by studying the ancient oracles, Candace mastered the art of juggling ambiguity, guesswork and gossip with the well-heeled’s insatiable insecurity. As her reputation grew, so did her money chest. Along with her contempt for them and their class.

  Once she’d saved enough to buy her own freedom, she adopted more sophisticated techniques to separate them from th
eir money. The forces of the supernatural are all around us, my child. I am merely their instrument. So why hang on to this empty block of glistening glass? Why keep this crystal which shows neither future nor past?

  Like the prism itself, Candace had no answer. Instead, she brought her mind back to the present, demanded silence, for lights to be extinguished, for incense to be lit to propitiate the dead.

  ‘I remind you. The shades of our ancestors inhabit a world of darkness and quiet. If they are to walk again, even for one night, an atmosphere must be created in which they feel comfortable, even though for the rest of us, it will feel cold.’

  She bade the assembly link hands, cautioning them to ignore the chill and concentrate on the rhythm of the harp. Let the music fill their minds, she intoned, for the harp was the gateway to the Afterlife.

  ‘Through the circle you form,’ she picked up a blade and shook back her sleeve, ‘and the blood that I sacrifice,’ she broke off while it splashed into the little bronze bowl, ‘we create a dark demi-world in which the dead live and the living are dead, and now I cover the sacred Crystal of Kush that time may be as frozen as the air that sweeps over us from the distant Isles of the West.’

  In the dark, the gold thread of her veil shimmered like sunlight on water as she threw it over the table.

  ‘O Vanth, Demon of Death, who has eyes on her wings and sees everything, I summon you to walk among us tonight.’

  Three loud raps reverberated round the dining hall, echoed by gasps from Eunice and Larentia.

  ‘O Leinth, who waits at the Gates of the Underworld and drinks of human tears, I call upon you to turn your faceless face to the stone and approach.’

  Three more knocks.

  Candace drew a long breath and deepened the pitch of her voice.

  ‘By the Falcon of the Sun, by the Vultures of the Moon, I bid ye spirits enter.’

  Twenty-One