Dark Horse (3 page)

Persian by birth, Shamshi retained the traditional garb of knee-length baggy trousers and shoes which tied in a bow. Like most of his people, he wore thick bands of gold in each ear, though Shamshi went one stage further and drew attention to his earrings by shaving the whole of his head apart from a small cap of black hair right on the top. What really made the hairs of Claudia's neck stand on end, though, was the way his soft, sibilant, girlie voice seemed to caress every inch of her skin. With Volcar, you knew where you were: he was forthright, outrageous and funny. Whereas Leo's human channel to the future was as slimy as you can get without leaving a trail.

'So if I'm neglecting you, I apologize,' Leo told Claudia as the main courses were ferried in on steaming silver salvers. 'But I'm concerned the building work won't be completed in time for the wedding. Any idea when the atrium will be finished, Saunio?'

'Tomorrow,' Rome's most illustrious artist announced pompously. 'Tomorrow you may go in and have a look at the finished artistry, if you wish.'

'Very kind, I'm sure.' Leo chuckled, darting an amused glance at Claudia. 'My own atrium,' he mouthed, 'and I'm not allowed to see it!'

'It's why you commissioned the great Saunio,' the artist replied, running a podgy finger over the little curled beard that encircled his chin. 'To create magic'

'Modest with it,' Leo murmured.

'Modesty is for the mediocre.' The great man sniffed. 'Saunio is anything but mediocre. Note, ladies and gentlemen, how in this dining hall I have designed the painted shadows to fall away from the light entering through the double doors behind. This is because when the sun . . .'

Volcar nudged Claudia in the ribs and nodded at Saunio.

'I'll wager the old sod's got goat's legs and cloven hoofs under his tunic,' he muttered, slithering an oyster down his stringy throat. 'You've heard the gossip, I suppose?'

Hadn't everyone? The maestro and his BYMs. Beautiful Young Men. Travelling around the Empire with a team of thirty junior artists, labourers and apprentices as he sold his services to anyone wealthy enough to afford his exorbitant charges, rumours were bound to spring up. Typically Saunio, the gossip could never be less than ostentatious: tales of orgies, unnatural practices, bloodthirsty rituals, the list was endless. Volcar wouldn't be the first person to liken the maestro to a satyr, not when Saunio got his barber to shave his upper and lower lips, leaving just that preposterous narrow band of dyed hair round his chin. But how much of the gossip was fiction? Claudia wondered. How much lies, put about by jealous rivals? While Saunio lectured the assembly on the principles of perspectives, his curls adhering themselves to his forehead with a mixture of perspiration and their own dye, Claudia thought, love him or loathe him, you had to hand it to the little chap, he'd built himself a monumental reputation as an artist, a reputation well deserved.

'You don't believe those rumours?' she said.

'Believing's got nowt to do with it, gel. What's the point of having gossip unless it's to pass on?'

'You, old man, are incorrigible.'

'At my time of life, I can't afford to wait for discretion to come calling.' He let out a wheezy chuckle. 'These days when I bend down to pat old Ajax here -' he ruffled the ears of the ancient hunting dog chomping on a chop bone - 'I try to find other things to do while I'm down there.'

'Exactly how old are you?'

'Put it this way, gel -' Volcar winkled a snail out of its shell with a loud plop - 'when I was a boy, the Dead Sea was only sick.'

'Something funny over there?' Leo called across.

'Do share it,' Silvia drawled, dabbling her long slender fingers in the scented water bowl. 'We could use a laugh.'

Laugh? In six days, Claudia had not seen the Ice Queen so much as smile.

'Silvia's right,' Leo said. 'We've had enough shop talk for tonight, let's change the subject. Any suggestions?'

'Pirates,' Volcar said, spearing a prawn on his knife.

Apart from Nikias, who didn't look up, the others all exchanged glances.

'Oh, come on, Uncle,' Leo said. 'Surely we can think of a better topic to entertain our guest—'

'Why?' the old man cut in. 'Seen 'em, haven't we? Prowling the waters out there. Heard 'em, too. That weird wailing's enough to send shivers down a dead man's spine. Like a banshee, it is, howling for blood.'

Claudia ran her finger round the rim of her wine glass. 'Is piracy a threat?'

'No,' Leo said, glowering at Volcar. 'We're as solidly defended as any place in the Empire. Take no notice.'

"Course it is, gel,' Volcar said, pulling a crab claw out of its cracked shell. 'Sure, the mainland which encircles this archipelago is defended, but Rome can't do much to protect the coastline. Too deeply indented, see?'

'You're scaring her, Uncle. Cressia's a large island and—'

'Size don't mean diddly, lad, and you know it. In fact, I'm not sure it don't make matters worse, us being right at the head of the Adriatic as we are.' He eased another claw out of its casing. 'We're just one of twelve hundred islands, you see, gel. Them fast pirate ships can dart through the channels, in and out the inlets, and what can the Imperial Navy do? Bugger all.'

'That's not true, Uncle, and you know it. The navy's on patrol—'

'Sod all use that is to the poor sods who've had their crops raided, their livestock stolen, their women and children raped and carried off to be sold. Whole bloody settlements have been torched, the marauders long gone before the first imperial trireme hoves into sight.'

The mainland. So near and yet so far . . .

'Ignore the old buzzard,' Leo said firmly. 'Volcar, you should have been a cook, you're that good at stirring. And on the subject of cooking, Claudia, I insist you try our local

mutton. The salty grass combined with a diet of wild herbs gives it a magnificent flavour and— What? Not leaving already, Llagos?'

'Sorry, yess.' The little priest was shaking his robes as he slipped into his sandals. 'I hef to be up early,' he explained. 'Temple busyness.' He shot an apologetic smile at Claudia. 'Much complicated on Cressia. Because we are island, we worship the Sea God above all the others. Me, I say, Bindus, Neptune, Poseidon, what does it matter in what name we invoke his protection? For Bindus we had only humble stone altar. For Neptune we have magnificent temple now, with gold and marble and a splendiferous statue three times the height of a man. But some -' his small shoulders shrugged eloquently - 'some peoples here cannot forget the old ways. So tomorrow -' he made a salute of farewell - 'tomorrow iss one time when I must also serve the old ways, keep everyones happy. But!' He lowered his voice to a comical whisper. 'You must not tell the Romans, heh?'

'Talking of mutton reminds me,' Leo said, barely troubling to wave the priest off. 'Tomorrow, Claudia, I
must
show you the vineyards. They'll knock your eyes out,' he insisted. 'I got the idea from apple trees, originally. I thought, hell, if you can espalier fruit trees along ropes for good cropping, why not vines?'

'Excuse me?'

'Told you it was a revolutionary technique.'

'You don't seriously grow them
sideways?'
Even the slowest dunce knows grapes aren't grown laterally. Ask any vintner. They're trained horizontally on a trellis of overhead poles between elm trees.

'Why not?' Leo laughed. 'The soil's pretty poor on Cressia, this way we can manure that more often, the goodness reaches the plants that much faster and it makes it easier to hoe round the roots to keep the soil open. I admit the grapes aren't yielding as well as I'd hoped, in fact they're twenty per cent down on what I was expecting, but still high. It's early days yet and in any case, my wine's pitched at the - well, let's say lower end of the market.'

Produce more, sell for less, and still make a bloody good

profit? Funny how the idea of growing them laterally didn't seem quite so stupid all of a sudden . . .

Looking at Leo, tall, lean, with thick, dark, wavy hair and that attractive dimple in his chin, she wondered why he'd left it so long before finding a wife. Most patricians married in their early to mid-teens. Leo was thirty-six. Scooping up a juicy scallop in rich garlic sauce, she thought, you know catching him at certain angles - say, in profile, when the light is right - he looked a lot like someone else she knew. Someone she'd seen recently, in fact. Except Orbilio's hair was darker, with subtle highlights which glistened in the light. It was thicker and wavier, too, with a fringe that flopped over his face when he was angry. Also, now she thought about it, Orbilio had a funny way of spiking his hair with his fingers when he got annoyed—

Not
that she thought about it, and dammit, that bloody scallop had gone down the wrong way, too. Claudia took a long draught of chilled wine. From now on, she really must check the shellfish. It would not do to find she'd eaten a bad one.

'Nikias,' Leo said, 'how's my painting of the Banquet of the Gods coming on?'

Silvia let out a pointed sigh.

'Fine,' Nikias replied, not raising his eyes from his plate.

Although theoretically a member of Saunio's team, since he was on sub-contract to the maestro on this job, Claudia disqualified the Corinthian from the BYM category on technical grounds. At thirty-eight, he was too old to be young. With an intensity of expression bordering on the hostile, he was far from pretty. Also, she did not think he was homosexual, either.

'Still scheduled for completion next week?' Leo persisted.

'Yep.'

'And you don't foresee any problems with the deadline on the portrait of my bride and myself above the bed of the new marriage chamber?'

'Nope.'

Well, that settled that, then. As silence descended on the group, Claudia took to admiring the dining hall's splendid white marble columns garlanded with deep-blue delphiniums,

white oleander and sulphur-yellow hibiscus. Aromatic resins crackled in wall-mounted braziers and fragrant oils burned in the dozens of lamps which hung on the walls and from tall silver stands. In this brilliant artificial light, the bronze dining couches gleamed like gold.

Shamshi took advantage of the lull in conversation. 'Bees,' he announced, in his soft sibilant voice.

'Bees?'
everyone echoed in puzzled unison.

'I noticed a swarm,' he said, 'travelling east. Coupled with the flight of three pigeons across the sun at midday and the fall of the bones, there is only one conclusion to be drawn.' His dark eyes fixed on Claudia. 'Before a new light is born in the sky, bad news will come over the water.'

'Ah,' Leo said thoughtfully. 'Will it, indeed?'

This time a longer silence descended on the diners, and Claudia wondered how much notice Leo paid to the Persian's prophecies. From what she'd seen of him, he seemed a level-headed enough chap. But then he had been resident on Cressia for several years, and on an island where dark deeds figured heavily in its past, superstition found a perfect breeding ground in a race of people isolated by the sea. How much of this hocus pocus had Leo absorbed? And how much of an influence did Shamshi exert on his patron? Leo did not strike Claudia as the imaginative type, so was it the Persian who had planted the idea of training vines in rows like soldiers? To espalier them sideways, instead of dangling them from overhead trellises? Ditto the Villa Arcadia. Architecturally, the mould had been broken here, too.

Abandoning the traditional concept of four wings round a central courtyard, Leo had expanded the accommodation to cover three wings of the original building and demolished the fourth in favour of a fabulous marble portico lined with friezes and statuary. The trades which used to be contained within the original villa now lay outside in a cluster of sheds, mills, stores and workshops, and he'd built a brand new self-contained bath house, complete with domed roof and gymnasium.

Volcar's acerbic quote came to mind. 'All he needs now is a smattering of beggars and the odd painted whore, gel, and he's created a whole bloody town. Don't know why

he just doesn't call the place "Leoville" and be done with it.'

An old man's bitterness at his nephew's success, while he was reduced to living on handouts? Or sharp insight into a side to Leo's character Claudia had yet to discover?

'Of course I'm going to bloody well kill it,' Leo said.

What? She had been so busy daydreaming, Claudia had missed the start of this new conversation. What was he going to kill? A rumour? Volcar had nodded off on the far side of the couch, his breathing in rhythm with his ancient hunting dog, Ajax, snoring at his feet.

She glanced at Silvia for clues, but the Immaculate One was torn between selecting a roast hazel hen and the squid in coriander. Claudia suspected this was about the toughest decision the woman had ever had to make. Unless, of course, it was deciding which frock went with which emeralds. On the couch opposite, Shamshi was busy picking his hooked Arab nose, no help there, and Saunio sat stroking the pretentious beard that encircled his chin, while Nikias's face was, if that were possible, even more of a blank. He seemed more intent on pushing a sardine round his plate with the point of his knife, as though teaching it how to swim in the thick mustard sauce.

'I'm right, aren't I, Claudia?' Leo asked.