by Marilyn Todd
‘You had fair warning,’ he said.
‘For gods’ sakes,’ there was a rising note of panic in the youth’s voice, ‘we’re barely surviving as it is.’ He wiped his hand with his face. ‘It started off at ten a month, then twenty, thirty, forty—where will it end? I’m only a smoker of fish, have some pity!’
‘I’m not paid for pity,’ and for a moment the woman thought she detected a note of sympathy in the thug’s voice, but she was mistaken, because she knew without looking again into that single, cold eye that he had been born without warmth or compassion. And when he said, ‘Right, boys, you know what to do,’ she hugged her daughter tight to her chest and buried her face in the silky, soft hair, crooning to the child to block out the splintering and crashing around her.
The smoke-house door was the first casualty. Then rack upon rack of hanging fish were hurled on to the grass to be pulped with staves as the bullies kicked over fires, drenched the wood piles with water and trashed the living quarters, even grinding the baby’s clay rattle under a heel, and she heard her man spit ‘Bastard!’ at the leader of the gang.
‘Well,’ One Eye brushed his hands together and wiped them down his tunic, ‘we all have some trade we’re good at.’ He laughed. ‘And I’m damned good at being a bastard, right, lads?’
The others guffawed at the joke, then One Eye pulled at his ear lobe.
‘You’re still in arrears,’ he said, shrewdly surveying the mess, ‘by fifty sesterces, don’t forget.’
‘You’ve destroyed my stock, my equipment, my shed,’ the fish smoker whispered. ‘You’ve left me with nothing, not even our baby’s birthday dinner.’
The woman looked round, to see jars of beans smashed and trampled, oil jars kicked over, even the bread that she’d baked bore a footprint. Her daughter was one year old today and even her honey cake had been scoffed by the thugs. Then without warning her own face was pinched in the thug’s hand and she screamed.
‘Pretty piece,’ he leered. ‘Can’t be more than seventeen. I’m sure you’ll find ways of settling the debt.’
‘Leave her alone,’ her man yelled. ‘Take your filthy hands off her, you hear!’
‘Me?’ sneered One Eye, brushing him off. ‘I’ve no use for a pregnant sow, but I tell you, boy, there’s men who likes ’em like that.’
‘You dirty bastard—’
‘Now, now,’ the thug laughed, crunching over the debris and deaf to the young woman’s whimpers, ‘I’m merely opening your mind as to different ways of raising the cash you owe. Don’t be too hasty to dismiss the idea.’
And with that, he and his gang strode back up the path towards Spesium as silently as they came. The young man staggered outside to inspect the damage.
The smoke house had gaping holes in the wall. They could be patched.
The doors were smashed, their hinges thrown in the lake. New could be bought.
The dog had been clubbed, but it was a mastiff with a head like a stone. It would recover.
Slowly, he nodded to himself. He’d worked hard to establish a reputation for plump, juicy smokies and for that reason he hadn’t minded handing over a small part of his income to nameless individuals for what was known as ‘protection’. In time he hoped to sell to Atlantis, so he didn’t complain, even when the price for protection crept up. So what, if it meant postponing building a proper house for a while? Life was sweet. He wore no man’s shackles, ran his own business, had the love of a good woman, one child and a second on the way, this time maybe a son? It would happen, he felt, in good time, the house and cart and the smallholding.
But not at fifty sesterces a month. That was over half his income.
The bastards were bleeding him dry.
He was not alone, of course. The baker—they put weevils in his flour, killed his donkey until in the end he found it easier to succumb. Now he received chicken-feed to manage the very business he’d set up, his own profits siphoned off. The wheelwright, too—his solution was to take his boys out of school to earn the extra money, and the fish curer knew there were more, many more. Shops changing hands for a pittance, families weeping as they packed up and left town…
Well, humble fish smoker or not, he would not be driven away like the others. He was not a fighting man, but if that’s what he had to do, so be it, he would learn to use a bow and swing a sword. His woman, child and unborn son were worth fighting for and when he found the bastard who was masterminding this, he’d kill him. So help him, he would gut him like a mullet and smoke him for days over oakwood.
‘We must leave.’ Her whisper was so faint that at first he did not catch the words. ‘Did you hear me? We must leave now.’
‘Never,’ he said firmly, kicking at the mangled fish with his bare toe. ‘We’re young, we can rebuild and I swear on the life of my daughter you won’t be driven to prostitution to pay off this so-called protection. But I must make a stand.’
‘I’ve put our clothes in a bundle, let’s go.’ She tugged like a mouse at his sleeve, and forcing a smile, he turned to put his arm round her and draw her towards him.
Instead his arm froze.
‘What is it?’ he rasped. Her face was grey, she looked thirty years older, and something had died in her eyes. Involuntarily he shivered.
‘Come,’ she said, and he saw she was clutching an old towel rolled into a ball and a beaker whose handle had just been smashed off.
A thousand leeches sucked at his blood, draining every single drop. ‘Where is she?’ The words became snagged on his lip. ‘Where’s the baby?’
Skidding in his panic, he raced back into the tiny hovel, where feathers from the ripped bolster floated in the smoke-filled air as his feet crunched over the shattered furniture. In her cot, sleeping, lay his baby daughter, one white feather on her chest, and the young man scolded himself for being so jumpy. Gently he leaned over the cradle, inhaling the milky soft smell of her and smiling at the pink, button nose.
‘It’s all right, pumpkin,’ he crooned. ‘Daddy’s here, it’s all right.’
But it was not all right.
As he lifted his child, the tiny blonde head lolled backwards and her little arms fell limp—and he knew, then, what he had known the second he had looked at his woman.
His baby was dead.
Suffocated in her mother’s terrified embrace.
For several long seconds, he stared at his child, before laying her back in the cot and tenderly tucking her in. After several long minutes, he leaned over and kissed her rosebud lips.
When the revellers in Spesium finally stumbled back to consciousness, they awoke to an animal howl from the lake end of town.
XVII
In the dark, dry serenity of Carya’s grotto, Claudia munched on a hunk of Sarsina cheese, redolent of the lush Umbrian fields of its homeland, and paused from time to time to pour water down her throat, either inside or out, it didn’t matter, both were sensational. Here, the slope of the cave muffled any eerie howlings which came from over the lake, filling the void with the hypnotic drip-drip-drip of the water nymph’s tears, and soon Claudia’s eyelids became weighted…weighted with lead…
‘Are you deaf as well as stupid, boy?’
The nasal whine, shriller still in anger, jolted her into wakefulness and instinct made her retreat into the corner where it was too dark to make out much more than reflected ripples on the wall and the white blur of Mosul’s priestly garb, but the slap did not need to be seen. Neither was it necessary to see Leon’s face to appreciate the impact of Mosul’s wrath, the lad’s groans were expressive enough.
‘How dare you’—thwack—‘come down here’—thwack—‘when I have forbidden it.’ Mosul was puffing from effort, Leon was gulping back sobs. ‘Out, you little shit, before I take the buckle end of this belt to your hide.’
‘I only wanted to help—’
‘Out! You hear me?’ Another octave higher and Mosul’s voice would have shattered glass. ‘Out!’
Memories blasted back, crus
hing hearing, sight, every known sense. Bitter memories. Of a leather strap biting in flesh. Of pain. White-hot pain. And an uncle, her mother’s brother, beating obedience into a small, orphaned child…
In the darkness, Claudia cringed and curled herself into a ball. Go away. Go away. But the uncle would not go away, not until his arm tired, although if she made herself small, she could hide. Hide inside herself and seek refuge against the bristly cheek of her father and it didn’t matter he was dead. Tight in a ball, she was his again. Safe and protected…
Through the tears—stinging tears, salty tears, not the make-believe tears of a nymph—Claudia became aware of Leon, stumbling out of the cave, whimpering like a whipped mongrel. Of the mole-eyed priest, glancing several times over his shoulder before leaning into the cistern. Finally, his hands swished the water, then he, too, was gone and soon the dancing ripples moderated their rhythm and Carya’s grotto was calm once again.
Scrubbing her face with the back of her hand, Claudia crawled out of her hiding place and cupped trembling hands in the water, but the water was sour and the darkness no longer a haven. Nevertheless she counted to twenty before striding out of the cave, and when the tub of a priest glanced up from the shrine, he saw a young woman skipping up the red marble steps without a care in the world, tossing back her curls as she improvised silly words to a popular festival tune.
*
‘You’ve got a bloody sauce.’
He was leaning with one shoulder against the window embrasure, his arms loosely crossed, staring towards the orchard of cherry trees and damsons, where pink piglets squealed over fat, contented sows and where blossoms fell like snow on the grass, and he did not look round when she entered, though the rush of air must have alerted him, even if the door slamming on its hinges did not.
‘Well, let me tell you now, you duplicitous son-of-a-bitch, you can stick your apologies where the sun—’
‘Uh-uh.’ Still he did not turn his head, and just like on the island the day before yesterday, his expression was veiled by the mane of dark hair. ‘I am not here to apologize, merely to explain.’
‘Forget it, Tarraco,’ Claudia said coldly, ‘the game’s over.’
‘Game?’
Sorry, I was forgetting. For you, this is deadly serious, isn’t it? ‘Allow me to spell it out in words even a simple Spaniard can understand. You’ve lost, Tarraco. Give in gracefully, because,’ she flashed a wicked smile, ‘I’m nowhere near as wealthy as I make out.’
His head snapped round so fast, Claudia wondered whether it would spin off altogether. ‘Is that what you think?’ he hissed, and the sinews in his neck stood out like clewlines. ‘You think I am after your money? Tcha!’ He flicked his thumbnail against his front tooth. ‘You have seen my island, do I look poor?’
‘But how much is enough for you, Tarraco?’ she fired back. ‘Where does greed draw the line?’
‘You sneer at me, because I pursue rich, lonely women, yes? Is better to slog from dawn to dusk in the wheatfields, to spend a life underground in the silver mines? Which would you do, my so-upstanding maiden, when uprooted from your home and family and shipped in chains to foreign land? Stoke furnaces? Scrub pots? Pour wine yes-sir-no-sir for the scum who put manacles around your ankles and sell you as slave?’
Fury had distorted his features, colouring his skin and blazing bolts of white lightning from those charcoal-dark eyes.
‘I am eighteen, have no skill, only muscles to be sold by the pound at an auction. Then I catch eye of rich lady and wonder, hmm…? So I flirt with her from the block, rich lady buys me, all is fine until her husband finds out, then—rich lady stripped of her status, thrown into the gutter and spat on by those who once called themselves friends. But Tarraco?’ He let out a bitter laugh. ‘Suddenly this ignorant Spaniard is in great demand, for what does he have, the fine ladies wonder, that is worth losing everything for?’
Outside the crickets buzzed with irritating regularity, and inside the room, the sweltering heat threatened to squeeze the breath from Claudia’s body. That, surely, was her reason for holding it in? A heady blend of pine and woodshavings drifted across on the air and the gold on his tunic, fish, leaping round a navy-blue hem, shimmered in the sunlight.
‘So they had an itch and you scratched it?’ she snapped. ‘Think I give a damn?’
Tarraco turned back to gaze out of the window, where the hills had disappeared in a blue smoky haze, hiding pines grown to tap for their resin and myrtles grown for sweet-smelling garlands.
‘You look down on me because I am gigolo, but what—’ he paused to spike his mane out of his face with his fingers ‘—if I am woman in same situation?’
Carefully (very carefully) Claudia poured herself a glass of wine.
‘My husband, I admit, might have been one or two years older than myself.’ Thirty, if you’re picking nits. ‘However, I married him because he was a witty and entertaining man—’ this was not the time to mention he’d been an ageing lardball with poisonous bad breath ‘—and good points too numerous to mention.’ All of them inside his moneybox. ‘I was utterly bereft when he passed away.’ Her voice dared him to call her a liar, yet when the Spaniard turned to face her, the blood pounded at Claudia’s temples as dark, demanding eyes peeled back the layers of her past, laying bare memories only she could possibly know…
It was no mean feat, staring him out/ ‘At least I didn’t kill him to get my hands on his money.’
Tarraco’s laughter came out as a snort through his nose. ‘Is that what the gossips put out? Because Virginia drowned in the lake? It was dark, there was a thunderstorm, I told her not to row out alone, but like you,’ he flashed her a glance, ‘she is stubborn.’ Suddenly he grinned. ‘Knows it all.’ Then the grin slipped away. ‘Next morning, her boat is in pieces and Virginia floats face down on the water.’
‘Rich, was she?’
‘Comfortable enough to afford long and regular visits to Atlantis,’ he conceded. ‘Is how she became friendly with Lais, and when Tuder died, it seemed natural for me to…comfort the grieving widow.’
‘As only you knew how?’
In a flash the Spaniard leapt over the room, grabbing Claudia’s wrists in his hands and jerking her round. With a crash, her goblet smashed into a thousand sparkling smithereens and the strange thing was, neither of them noticed.
‘I have worked hard to achieve my ambitions,’ he spat. ‘The gold and the marble, lush grounds, a big house. But I have done nothing without honour, you hear? Nothing I am ashamed of.’
He released her and pushed her away.
‘First you believed I was a slave, who ingratiated himself with Lais and Tuder. I tell you otherwise, but still you suspect me of wrongdoing. I know nothing about the banker, how he came to die, and I do not think it is any of your business, either, but if you really want to know, why don’t you ask Lais?’
Congratulations. I thought you’d never get round to her.
‘Lais of the harebell-blue gown, you mean?’
Tarraco’s chin jutted out, but it was his only reaction. There was a pause, then, ‘I wanted,’ he said simply, ‘to give you a present. Was spontaneous, and that robe was—oh, Claudia, that gown was—’ his eyes closed in pleasure ‘—just perfect on you.’
Silver-tongued bastard.
‘It was probably perfect on Lais, as well.’
‘No, no, no. Lais is a fine woman, but she is fifty-six. Of course,’ he spread his hands, ‘she thinks herself twenty years younger, never allowed me to see her without her cosmetics, but when a man makes love to a woman…’
Unable to meet his smoky gaze, Claudia reached for another glass to fill with thick, heavy wine. ‘Don’t tell me. You found it a chore.’
‘I tell you the truth, Claudia, as I have told no living soul. It was bloody hard work.’ There was no anger in Tarraco’s voice, only sadness. ‘Desiccated flesh, sagging breasts, face whitened with a ton of chalk. Every day you live with her eyebrows painted on, the brow itsel
f long since fallen out, you steel yourself to put your tongue in a mouth where it probes round missing teeth. Do you start to get the picture?’
Claudia recalled the pinched and petulant middle-aged woman conferring with Kamar in the early hours of this morning and thought, yes, that’s the type he means. Self-obsessed and self-absorbed, the likes of Stonypuss couldn’t understand why a dashing blade wouldn’t want to court them.
‘Can you imagine making up to old women as though they were virgins? Playing day in and day out the role of their pleasure boy? Flattering, cajoling, learning to lie with the utmost conviction, yet knowing all the while your livelihood depends on the size of your muscles and the strength of your stamina in bed?’ His voice was little more than a whisper, and it seemed to be addressing Lake Plasimene. ‘I defy you to tell me I haven’t earned what I own.’
A long silence followed, and when Claudia finally broke it, her voice was as soft as a breeze in a poplar. ‘How, exactly, is it that you come to own Tuder’s island, Tarraco?’
‘I am Lais’ husband,’ he huffed. ‘Is mine by right.’
Really? Claudia drained her glass and refilled it. Of course, the law was unequivocal. A woman’s property automatically transfers to her husband upon marriage; that was Lavinia’s point. On the other hand, it was a naive Senate which imagined it could outwit a wealthy woman and virtually unimaginable that a rich banker’s wife would not be cognisant of loopholes. Rather, Claudia imagined, rolls and rolls of legal parchment would have been invested to ensure wealth on that scale remained in Lais’ title…unless…unless…
Claudia phrased her next question carefully. ‘How long since Lais left you?’ she asked, with almost indecent politeness.
‘Wednesday. Why? You imagine I take you to my bed, while the marriage still stands?’
