Sour Grapes

by Marilyn Todd

  Dammit, the bastard was right. It wasn’t fair on the girl to keep uprooting and moving on. She needed real children to be friends with.

  Taking a deep breath, Claudia had clenched her fists and broken her oath to Amanda.

  But it was better Candace heard from an impartial source that her daughter was so unhappy that she planned to run away, and it shocked her rigid to learn that Amanda preferred to start a new life with an imaginary father and an imaginary friend, rather than continue with the life she had. Feeling like an intruder, Claudia had left mother and daughter mingling their tears of pain, hugging each other tight. Will anyone ever understand love, she wondered? Has anyone actually got it right?

  Absently, she watched the little moons dance in the flickering, fairy-lit circle. The first was dressed in diaphanous silver, another in a headdress of crescent horns, the third clad in a costume of clinging ivy. And now Claudia’s attention was focussed.

  For a split second, she swore she could smell the stale sweat of the sailors, hear their coarse jeers ringing once again in her ear.

  She was their age when she began, too. The difference was, it had been every night, not just once a year, but orphaned, penniless and alone in the slums, dancing was her only escape. Like a dam bursting its barricade, memories flooded back with every sensual sway. The rhythm. The pulse. The arched back and the come-on look in the eye. As the fifth moon swept into the ring, chin held high, skirts billowing, Claudia recalled her own half-parted lips, the pretence to each leering sailor that this dance was for him and that she couldn’t get enough of his pawing as she stretched, coiled and gasped her way through her routine. Except the performance here tonight was authentic. As the fire moon stroked her budding breasts with teasing sensuality, arousing the earth god with the thrust of her hips, Claudia realized the girl wasn’t acting. Of course, it wasn’t the same for all the performers. Three had danced stiffly and had been acutely self-conscious. But when a virgin bride peels off her clothes and gyrates with erotic abandon…

  ‘I see you have to scrape around to find a virgin these days,’ she quipped to Timi, standing at the edge of the circle.

  So far, three out of five needed no husband to initiate them into the art of the bedchamber. These were practised seducers who knew exactly what they were doing.

  ‘Lady Claudia!’ Timi bridled with indignation. ‘It is the girls’ very innocence that arouses Fufluns to the state of excitement where He can no longer contain His seed and in spilling it, makes the earth fertile. I personally verify my pupils’ virginity!’

  ‘If they’re not pure, they don’t dance?’

  ‘Virginity is the gift they bring to the earth god,’ she snapped. ‘Without it, they dishonour Him.’

  ‘But there are no half measures here,’ Claudia pointed out. ‘The girls are either completely inhibited or…um…they’re not.’

  Timi flattened her hackles. ‘That is the god’s own will,’ she stated. ‘I must admit, I have been extremely surprised by some of my brides. Their movements are more…how can I say…suggestive than any choreography I’ve taught them.’

  She let Claudia into a secret. That it was her quest to enlighten her pupils that, although they lived in a male-dominated society, there was no reason for men to have it all their own way. There was fun to be had for women too in the bedchamber, and, although she didn’t tell Tarchis, she emphasized the pleasures of receiving, rather than giving.

  ‘But they’re not,’ Claudia said. ‘What those girls are enacting out there—in fact, exactly what your little fire moon is doing with that tinder stick at the moment—is pleasing her man.’

  ‘My point precisely,’ Timi said, smiling. ‘We can impart our personal viewpoints till the cows come home, but when the time comes to dance, it is the god’s will inside the pupil’s, not a mortal’s. It is Fufluns who shows His virgins the way.’

  Maybe so, Claudia thought. But it wasn’t Fufluns who showed Vorda how to tie a rock round her waist. And it wasn’t Fufluns who stuck a knife into Lichas.

  I can see you working out how Candace did it, what Darius’s game is, what’s behind the run of bad luck and why Lars married Eunice before the moon combs her lovely red hair.

  Perhaps it was seeing Supersnoop over there, leaning nonchalantly against a pillar with his arms folded over his chest, that made Orbilio’s words echo in Claudia’s head. But either way, she had done it. She’d worked out how Candace summoned the spirits, what Darius’s game was, how he was behind the run of bad luck, why Lars married Eunice, and now here was the moon combing her lovely red hair.

  Except Claudia hadn’t been able to connect Felix to Lichas…or Tages…or Vorda—and without hard evidence the bastard would walk.

  Frankly, she had a better chance of solving that political crisis in Mauritania.

  *

  The flames of the torches flickered on the temple walls, and the candles round the idol shimmered like sun on the ocean. As the wine flowed freely and the music grew wilder, the harvest moon skipped into the circle and as Flavia offered herself to the earth god, no one noticed a young woman with flaming red hair pass through the crowd.

  Or the knife in her hand.

  The patrician she sought was leaning with his back against one of the salmon-pink pillars. He had his arms folded over his chest and was concentrating hard on the dance. Rosenna waited until he raised his hands to applaud.

  Then aimed her blade straight for his heart.

  Twenty-Seven

  The day dawned warm, soft and golden, bathing the landscape in the same glow that had suffused it for centuries. Subtle and gentle, tranquil and pure, the sun promised springtime and growth and renewal. For the people of this land, the people who had, for the same centuries, farmed its fields, fished its rivers and hunted its woods, the dawn was a time of contentment. Exhausted from revelry, satiated from wine and secure in their time-honoured identity, they slipped away from the temple. Thousands dwindled into hundreds, hundreds became scores, scores filtered away into nothingness until only the smell of incense and stale wine remained in the precinct.

  That, and a pool of dark blood.

  Kneeling over it, Claudia stared at the sticky puddle. Shouldn’t it be blue, she wondered dully? Shouldn’t it at least have been blue? Rocking on her knees, she could not leave this place. The Etruscans believed in Guardians of the Graves who stood over the tombs and protected the soul for eternity. But what of blood? Who guarded the blood to stop blowflies from feasting? To stop rats licking it up? To prevent ghouls from stealing his lifeblood away?

  Life.

  She tried to say the word aloud, but nothing could get past the rock in her throat, and you’d think it would hurt, but it didn’t. Everything was numb. Leaden. Completely without feeling, and for some reason she couldn’t see properly, her mind wouldn’t work, nor would her legs or her arms. And there was rain falling now. Rain from a clear blue sky, that bounced down to leave crown-shaped imprints in the blood. Oblivious to the tears that coursed down her cheeks, Claudia rocked herself back and forth. So much of it. Like her mother’s, it was the quantity that always surprised her. How much blood one stupid body contains…

  Marcus.

  But she daren’t speak his name aloud. If she did…if she did…

  When she closed her eyes all she could hear was the wild, wild music, and all she could see were the dancers. Every one whirling, swirling, blurring into one by the lights of the flickering candles.

  Flavia.

  This time Claudia didn’t even try to say the word aloud. She would never speak it again. She hated the name. Hated her. Hated, you hear? Because while she was waiting, watching that little bitch run through her dance, Rosenna was sticking her blade in his—

  No, don’t. Don’t think about that. Forget Rosenna. Forget Flavia. Forget everything. Forget, forget…

  Please Jupiter, let me forget.

  Twenty-Eight

  The mare galloped through the arched gateway and up the long drive to the
villa, foam flecking its mouth from where it had been ridden so hard. In the courtyard, Claudia jumped down but there was no groom rushing forward to take care of the horse. Twenty-four hours of non-stop revelry had taken their toll, and whether bailiff’s house or dormitory, stable yard or guest room, snoring emanated from each open window. Even the dogs were too tried to snuffle and lay slumped on their sides in the yard or draped over doorways, paws and noses twitching in sleep.

  She flung open the atrium doors, but nothing moved in this ghost villa, save a butterfly searching for a way out and even those wings were silent. She paused at the fountain and sluiced cool water over her face. The reflection that peered back came straight from Hell. A gargoyle tormented by demons.

  The temple physicians were good. They had to be, didn’t they? Yes, of course they were. Competent. Professionals. They had all the skills, the equipment, the medicines, the technology. Life-savers weren’t they, these doctors? Well, obviously. They wouldn’t have bundled him into their infirmary so quickly if they didn’t know what they were doing. Or would they? Who consulted the physics of Fufluns? Impotent men? Barren women? Drunks to be cured of the shakes? Beside the bust of Apollo, she reeled, grabbing the shrine to the household gods for support.

  What support?

  She tossed her head and squared her shoulders. What did the gods care? If they cared, they wouldn’t have let that stupid temple acolyte throw a bucket of water over the flagstones and wash away Marcus’s blood. Oh, she’d flown at the idiot, scratching his face, his arms, clawing his neck, but too late. Too late. The blood—so much blood—that ought to have been blue was already gone. All traces of him washed down the steps.

  Now somebody…oh yes somebody…had to pay.

  ‘Get up, you bastard!’

  Darius pulled at the coverlet, but it was already in a heap on the floor.

  ‘I said get up, you murdering coward.’

  ‘Claudia?’ Fresh from sleep, his voice held even more gravel. ‘What’s the matter?’

  As he propped himself up on one elbow, she could see the stubble on his head where the hair needed shaving to keep up the pretence of baldness.

  ‘What’s the matter, he says, like he hasn’t heard about Rosenna’s settling of scores!’ In a flash she was across the room, holding a knife to his throat. ‘The girl’s spitting nails, apparently, since one out of three is bad odds in her book.’

  According to the temple guard who was first on the scene, Rosenna believed that by stabbing Orbilio, she’d improve her chances of killing Hadrian and then, while Rex was finally understanding how it felt to lose someone he loved, she would complete her mission and bring peace to her dead brother’s soul. What happened to her didn’t matter, she told the guard as he carried her away. But now, because she’d cocked up, the louse and its nit would go free. Remorse, it appeared, was not high on Rosenna’s priorities.

  ‘Do you know the penalty for stabbing the Security Police with a skinning knife?’ Claudia pressed the point of her own into Darius’s throat. ‘Cruci-bloody-fixion.’

  And Rosenna didn’t damn well deserve it. She was as much a victim as Lichas, because, in killing her brother, Darius put that knife in her hand.

  ‘I had nothing to do with that.’ He wasn’t frightened. Concerned, yes. But not scared. He should be. ‘Ask Larentia. Ask Terrence. I was at the front with them when she struck.’

  It took every ounce of restraint not to plunge that blade into the artery that throbbed in his throat.

  ‘And where,’ Claudia hissed, ‘was Felix Musa?’

  He blinked rapidly. ‘Felix Who-sir?’

  Still bluffing, eh? Even now, you’re still trying to bullshit your way out?

  ‘Felix,’ she whispered, leaning so close that she felt the heat from his body, ‘is the scumbag who sees the six upright citizens who witnessed him pocketing bags of imperial gold as members of some kind of conspiracy, which they supposedly concealed by framing him.’

  That got his attention.

  ‘Felix,’ she said, ‘is the scumbag who spent ten years down the silver mines, making his heart as hard as the rocks he was breaking. And when his time was served, this scumbag visited the same suffering upon the witnesses as had been visited upon those he himself had loved, grinding them down by heartache and fear, making sure their assets were eroded as his had been taken, their lives ruined beyond salvation.’

  ‘And what? You think I’m this Felix character?’ His Adam’s apple moved up and down, but his voice, though characteristically rusty, remained even. ‘Claudia, I know you’re upset about Marcus, but…’

  ‘You want to take this argument public? Explain why you shave your head? Why your cough sounds like every other poor sod’s who’s served time down the mines, because their lungs have been scoured raw with the dust? Or will you just whip off the tunic that you cling so coyly to at the hot springs, to prove there are no lash marks scarring your back?’

  ‘I keep my clothes on because I’m shy and… Look, I don’t have to justify myself.’ It’s not easy to smile with a knife pressed to your throat, but he made a pretty good try. ‘You’re bound to fear the loss of control if I marry Larentia, it’s natural, but you can keep the wine business, I don’t want it, I don’t need it…’

  ‘Save your excuses for the Ferryman. I thought Candace must have been subsidising you, but now I realize you’d been skimming off some of the ore and salting it away while you worked. Perhaps you had a guard in on the scam, I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure. Stealing from the State is a capital offence. There’ll be no second chance for you this time.’

  If she didn’t know better, she’d almost believe she read relief in his amber-quartz eyes. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Wrong. I don’t care, but you should know this, Felix Musa. So help me, I will see you in Hell if he dies.’

  There. She had said it.

  If. He. Dies.

  But he must not. He cannot. She would not allow it. A pain welled up, the likes of which she’d never known. It happened so quickly, that was the thing. Laughing one minute, on the banks of the River Styx the next, and the worst part was, she hadn’t even known until it was over. So busy watching some stupid dance…

  She blinked back the tears and beneath the tip of the blade, Darius shuffled. ‘They deserved what they got,’ he rasped. ‘The sour wine in the tavern, the fire at the parchment warehouse…’

  ‘Don’t sell yourself short, Felix. You didn’t just torch it the once, you made sure the merchant could never trade from that building again. Like the kilns you so persistently sabotaged, the well that you poisoned, the donkey you killed, the old woman you led on, the axle you patiently sawed through—’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’

  As he jerked up in protest, the knife pricked his skin and a dribble of blood ran down his throat. He didn’t seem to notice—or care.

  ‘I admit I took advantage of certain incidents, helped them along a bit, but Larentia’s right. Bad luck does breed bad luck. I set fire to the warehouse, I doused the kiln, but only the once, and when you’re down on your luck, bad things follow as sure as sun follows the rain.’

  He had a point. Pessimism does engender negativity, and in retrospect maybe she had attributed too many misfortunes to him. Accidents happen, calamities occur naturally. He couldn’t have been responsible for everything on her list. Only the ones that really mattered.

  ‘I’m not responsible for sloppy maintenance or clumsy practices,’ he said and she’d forgotten how persuasive these conmen can be, ‘and I sure as hell don’t go round killing animals. All right, it is a nasty thing to do, leading Larentia on then dumping her at the altar, but Seferius was the only man smart enough of those six to organize the conspiracy, so it’s only right his mother gets a taste of her son’s medicine, and there’s a difference between tossing sewage down a well and sawing through axles where somebody might have got hurt. You check. I’ll bet that was rotted right through and quite honestly it
served the penny-pinching bugger right. In fact, I don’t care if they all go bloody bankrupt.’

  How he must have punched the air seeing their despair lead to neglect.

  ‘Except financial ruin wasn’t enough for your greedy cold soul. You wanted emotional destruction, as well.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? Claudia, those bastards set me up to cover up double dealings of their own.’

  ‘And exactly what double dealings would those be?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? I’ve been in prison!’

  ‘You don’t know? Suddenly, and with all those long, lonely years in which to think about it, you… Let me hear that again. You don’t know. Let’s fall down on our knees and give praise for paranoia.’

  ‘I swear on my life those bastards set me up.’

  ‘I can swear I’m the Queen of Sheba, but people still won’t call me Your Highness. Because of you, Vorda risked condemning her soul to immortal obscurity—’

  ‘Who’s Vorda?’

  ‘You cut short the life of a shepherd boy—’

  ‘This is ridiculous. Now you’re painting me as some kind of monster!’

  ‘Am I? Sorry. But it’s a mistake anybody could make when the person they’re addressing has destroyed livelihoods, quality of life, peace of mind, and the pain has torn families apart… Oh, and did I mention the part where you inflicted such a protracted, painful, terrifying torment on a young man that his sister becomes maddened with grief and lashes out at the wrong people in her misguided quest for revenge? And guess what? This idea of the Furies pursuing the innocents on behalf of the guilty? It’s bullshit. Drama for playwrights, Felix. Grist for the zealot’s mill.’

  The silence was deadly.

  ‘You cannot prove I’m not Darius,’ he said at length. ‘By the time you send for the evidence I’ll be gone, so if you’re going to kill me, I suggest you do it now.’

  Faster than she could blink, he’d caught her wrist like a manacle. She couldn’t hold on. He twisted. The knife clattered harmlessly into the corner.