I, Claudia (7 page)

Claudia glowered at the boy. ‘Hop it, you. I want to talk.’

Orbilio tossed him a copper and nodded assent. ‘Come back inside, Claudia,’ he said quietly, sweeping his arm round the room. ‘Because I very much want to listen.’

VIII

Under a sky which made promises of rain it had no intention of keeping, Claudia sat in the cool of the peristyle, half-heartedly strumming a lyre. Around her, tiny birds in cages, their plumage brighter than jewels, trilled to drown the melody. By rights I should be enjoying the second day of the games, she thought, weighing strength of elephant against armour of crocodile, or cheering dwarfs as they cartwheeled through the legs of giraffes or cavorted with ostriches. Instead I spend half my morning ploughing through riffraff and dross in some sleazy backstreet slum. Drusilla came running up, tail erect, and began rubbing against Claudia’s shins until, eliciting no response from this tactic, she jumped on to the seat beside her and yowled at the top of her voice.

‘I’m sorry, poppet, I was miles away.’ At the foot of the Quirinal, holding my nose to be precise. Claudia clapped her hands. Why do they build tenements, with no water and no sanitation, in the bowls of hills where the smell can’t escape? ‘Fetch some chicken, bread and cheese, will you,’ she commanded the slave who answered the call, ‘and root out a sardine or two for Drusilla.’

The girl made no effort to pick up the cat and carry her off to the kitchen. Scars on her wrists had taught her not to tangle with the animal, especially when its mistress was at home. It ate with her, slept with her, followed her around like a shadow. But just you try to stroke it and it would go for you like a wild tiger.

‘Fetch some dates, too,’ Claudia called out. ‘And check whether that idle sod Verres is back yet.’

Bloody cook, never around when you wanted him. Probably come up with some ridiculous excuse that he was out choosing food for tonight’s dinner. Why he didn’t send some of the slaves was beyond her. What on earth was the point of having them, if you did the job yourself?

‘You wanted to see me, madam.’

Bloody cook, always creeping up when you never expected him!

‘Yes, Verres. I wanted to talk to you about the banquet Saturday week.’

‘What banquet?’

‘Come, come, Verres. I told you about it weeks ago. The one on the Ides.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Don’t contradict.’

If he wasn’t such a good cook, imaginative as well as subtle, she’d sack him on the spot. Who did he think he was, anyway, arguing with her like this? Not that it mattered. By the time she’d finished with him she’d have him believing black was white and that she actually
had
told him about the bloody thing.

‘But I—’

‘Stop wittering, sit down and concentrate. Now, at our last feast you did something rather clever with a pig’s innards, if I recall.’

Verres, as plump as a boiling fowl, beamed with pride.

‘The sow’s womb I stuffed to look like a fish? You want me to do that again?’

‘Great heavens, no!’

Gaius had to believe she’d invested the utmost care and attention in its long-drawn-out planning.

‘This has to be exceptional, Verres. I want their eyes popping out on stalks at this…this magnificent extravaganza, so think carefully.’

‘Ummm. Dormice in honey and sprinkled with poppyseeds?’

‘Yes, yes, by all means. Whatever delicacies you can come up with. But I’m talking about a particularly lavish spectacle. Think, man. What can you produce that’ll be the talk of the Senate for months afterwards?’

For a while it looked as if Verres had lapsed into a coma, but eventually a broad grin split his face. ‘I’ve got it! A wild boar which, when you carve it, lets loose a score of live thrushes which I’ll sew up inside at the last minute!’ You had to hand it to the man, he was a genius. ‘Excellent! Well, you go away and work on that—’

‘We’ll start with oysters and leeks stuffed in a peacock, then move on to tuna disguised—’

‘Wonderful, Verres, absolutely splendid. Now go and plan it alone, there’s a good chap.’

He looked a mite crestfallen as he stood up, but Claudia had no interest in domestic trifles and shooed him away with the back of her hand. Drusilla, meanwhile, having cleared every last scrap of sardine, was helping herself to chicken off Claudia’s plate.

‘Melissa!’

A boar filled with thrushes, eh? Oh yes, that’ll make ’em spill their wine.

‘MELISSA!’

The cat jumped and a lump of chicken fell out of her mouth, which she promptly scooped back up when she realized there was no sign of danger.

‘Oh, there you are. Look, there’s a list in my husband’s room of the people attending the banquet. Don’t look so blank, the feast next Saturday, I told you about it weeks back. Now run off and fetch the list—and bring a jug of wine while you’re about it.’

It’ll be interesting to see who he’s inviting. With any luck, Gaius will have forgotten about adding that boring old fart Balbus to the list—but suppose he’d thought to invite Orbilio? No, no, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t have seen him since yesterday. Which was just as well, really. She didn’t fancy another round with Cousin Markie. She nibbled on a date. Well, not yet, anyway.

‘Here you are, madam. Is there anything else?’ Claudia spat the stone across the courtyard. She was getting better. One of these days she’d hit that sundial. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact there is.’

She picked up the lyre again and began to strum. ‘We need entertainers. Singers, dancers, acrobats, that sort of thing. See to it, will you, Melissa?’

‘Me? But I can’t—’

‘Don’t talk rubbish. Here.’ She unclipped her obsidian brooch. Well, it was Quintus’s really, but…easy come, easy go. ‘This might sugar the pill.’

The girl’s eyes widened. ‘For me?’ She’d been given the odd sweetener from her mistress before, but never anything valuable.

‘One problem, though. It might be short notice for some of them, but do what you can, Melissa, and, failing that, bribe the buggers to say they’d double-booked and it was the other party’s misfortune, not ours.’

Hopefully at least one of them will put a spoke in the wheel of that Marcia trollop. Claudia closed her eyes and offered up a silent prayer to Minerva to be with her rather than with the linen merchant’s widow on this. Anything to outdo her! Twenty-two and inherited a fortune indeed. Well, it’s your own fault, she chided herself. You would pick Gaius. More fool you, because the linen merchant was older and had no living children, whereas Gaius had four waiting to inherit, didn’t he? Furthermore, she’d actually wished that spotty little gold-digger luck with the linen merchant. He was a grumpy old sod and a real tightwad, but now the boot seemed firmly on Marcia’s dainty little foot, the bitch. She sighed. It was too late grumbling. Wheels were in motion, there could be no turning back now.

‘What on earth are you babbling about, girl?’

‘I was asking about tumblers, madam. Do you want—’

‘What I want, Melissa, is for you to go away and organize it without pestering me.’ She jerked her head towards the house. ‘Go on, off you go.’

The girl’s fingers wrapped themselves tight around Quintus’s brooch as she ran off, leaving Claudia to scan the list in peace. When Gaius said his guests were important, he meant instrumental in furthering his business activities rather than any reference to the political hierarchy, though there was a healthy smattering of magistrates, prefects and the like. No less than seven, she noted, were punters. There was a heavy night ahead, then, questioning seven men without letting any of them—or Gaius—suspect a damned thing. Still, it was the sort of challenge she could rise to standing on her head and, if the truth was told, even enjoy. She’d track that maniac to his grave, so help her—though she’d be a lot happier if that damned Orbilio wasn’t so fly.

‘Quick as a coney he was, Drusilla, double-checking with the mercer’s porter about that wretched bale of cotton.’

The cat paused in her washing and cocked her head.

‘I could have kicked myself for that.’ Lack of foresight was not one of Claudia’s faults. ‘Or Junius. He ought to have thought of the porter the numbskull. And as for that little arab Orbilio winkled out—well!’

It was difficult to tell how much that obnoxious little snoop had believed her over in that stinking tenement. On balance, hardly at all, she concluded…but he couldn’t prove a bloody thing.

‘Come inside,’ he’d said smoothly, thinking he was about to crack this tough little nut at last, ‘I very much want to listen.’

Listen to what? Did he honestly expect her to pour out a startling revelation? Oh yes, I was passionately in love with darling old Quintus, but please, please, please don’t let my husband know or he’ll divorce me on the spot? Hardly. Whatever else he might be, Orbilio wasn’t gullible. Maybe he was expecting a different sort of admission? The-swine-was-blackmailing-me type of confession? Well whatever, he was completely hamstrung by the time she’d finished and it served him damned well right.

She’d wasted no time. The instant the door closed behind him, she’d spun round, wagging her finger.

‘Listen to me, you filthy little meddler, I’ve had it up to here with you. I do not own, and have
never
owned, a garment in that vile shade of green, and however much you paid that abject little tramp, it wasn’t enough. A bump in the Forum is not proof.’

‘Proof enough,’ he’d said mildly.

‘You aren’t listening,’ she hissed. ‘If I hear so much as one more syllable drop from your lips on this subject, I’ll personally cut your tongue out, chop it into pieces and feed it straight back to you, do you understand?’

‘Is that a threat?’

‘All I need to do is tell my husband how dear old Cousin Markie laid his filthy paws on me and the rest, as they say, is mystery.’

‘Ah! A bribe as well.’

Damn you, Orbilio.

‘Any foul insinuations you make after that will brand you as a vindictive lecher who was spurned once too often and resents it like hell. You’ll be ridiculed from here to Hesperus and you can kiss all your ambitions goodbye.’

If that hasn’t disposed of the irritating little tick once and for all, I’ll eat my shift for breakfast.

A sparrow landed in the courtyard and Drusilla hunkered down, alert and ready to pounce. Claudia threw the bird a piece of bread, which it snatched up and flew off with. The cat stretched and began washing again, too full, too satisfied to think seriously about hunting. The edge had gone. And suddenly Claudia wondered whether her edge had been blunted, too. Without doubt, the hunt was exciting, but what would happen when it came to the kill? ‘Come, Drusilla, we’ve guests arriving shortly.’

Was she too full, too satisfied, to carry it through when it came to the crunch?

The sparrow landed a second time, twisting its head on one side as it hopped closer for more bread. Cheeky little beggar. She smiled at its comical gait and its beady eye and broke off another crust. Suddenly there was a blur of cream and brown. Feathers fluttered in the air. Drops of red splashed over the tiles. And Claudia Seferius had her answer.

*

‘I’m sorry, what were you saying, Gaius?’

‘I said, I’ve invited Ventidius Balbus to my little do.’ Bugger. Now she’d really have to watch her step next Saturday. The slightest hint of any spurious extra-marital activities and he might just make the connection with Genoa. Especially when there’s a nubile young dance troupe breezing around all over the place! Bugger, bugger, bugger.

‘Something the matter, my dove? Your face is all screwed up.’

‘Oh, Balbus is as dull as boiled asparagus. I was merely wondering where to seat him.’

‘Next to Ascanius, I think. I don’t see why he shouldn’t get a dose of the senator’s views on food subsidies, do you?’

That was the thing about Gaius, he could at least make a girl laugh. Which is more than you could say for the old linen merchant!

‘I’ll put them both near the door where they can bore the sandals off each other without troubling the rest of us. Uh-oh, that sounds like Old Sourpuss arriving.’

Gaius patted her shoulder. ‘Don’t be like that, Claudia. It’s not Julia’s fault she’s turned out so…so solemn.’ He picked up his clean tunic. ‘Help me into this, will you, my dove? We so rarely spend time together I don’t want to spoil the moment by calling a slave.’

Sweet Jupiter what a sordid amount of blubber! There were several red marks round his neck and over his chest, which she chose to disregard, but Gaius had caught her noticing them.

‘Yes—um, I can manage the rest.’ Embarrassment darkened his already florid features. ‘Why don’t you go on down and greet them?’

‘Let’s go down together.’ Let Julia think she’d interrupted a bit of hanky-panky. That would stick in the old trout’s craw. ‘Marcellus won’t notice we’re missing, he’ll be too busy eyeing up the slave girls. Julia will be inspecting for dust, Flavia will be trying to avoid Antonius and Antonius will be…well, he’ll just be Antonius.’

If only Flavia could let her hair down, she’d be in for a wonderful time with Scaevola. So what if he was forty years older than her? He was wealthy, generous, virile. Grey rather than bald. Give him the babies he craved and she’d not know she was born. Silly cow.

‘How do I look?’