The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (19 page)

Imbecile. Did he imagine she didn’t know what she was doing? Did he think she’d let an occasion like this pass, without having half of Rome turn out to witness it? And what a feast the procession was for their eyes! The young widow of the wine merchant Gaius Seferius being transported shoulder-high on an open litter through the streets of Rome by eight of the most handsome and muscular bearers in the whole of the Empire, accompanied by the finest entertainers in town.

“For gods’ sake, slow down,” she told the bearers. “This isn’t a bloody foot race.” Dammit, any faster and they’d be there in ten minutes, with an Olympic medal to boot. “There’s an extra denarius apiece if you take another half-hour.”

The bearers eased up so quickly, she was almost thrown off the cushions. The crowd laughed, believing it was part of the act. She laughed back. And made a mental note to reduce the bearers’ tip to only half a denarius.

“Good luck, love!” cheered the throng.

“All the best!”

“May the gods smile on you, darlin’!”

They were all there. Coppersmiths, perfumers, mule doctors and rent boys, cleaving a path for her noisy cavalcade. Auctioneers, surveyors, stonemasons and barbers stepped aside to watch her pass. Fishwives, sack-makers, tax collectors and chandlers whistling and clapping their hands. Claudia returned every wave with equal vigour. Dear me, so many well-wishers, it brought a mist to her eyes. Young and old, rich and poor, sick and healthy, they stopped what they were doing to cheer her on. Cradling the battered bowl to her breast, she didn’t realize she’d been rubbing it until:

“In my country,” an Arab with rings in his ears called out from the crowd, “we use lamps to conjure up jinni.”

Thank Croesus her face was hidden by the veil. She adjusted her expression, lifted the linen, a perfect smile pasted in place.

“My good luck charm,” she retorted. “I never go anywhere important without it.”

“Looks like an old begging bowl to me,” someone else shouted.

“It is,” she laughed, waving the battered bronze cup in the air. “I begged Apollo for sunshine and look! Not a cloud in the sky.”

As she planted an ostentatious kiss on the metalwork, she felt her stomach churn and quickly dropped the veil back over her face.
But there was no going back now
–

“Be happy, love!” the crowd chanted.

“May you and your husband be blessed!”

Ah. Husband. On her soft swansdown pillows scented with chamomile, Claudia shifted position.

Tall as a Dacian, lean as an athlete, bronzed as Adonis himself, Arlon was one of Rome’s most eligible bachelors. With his glossy blond hair and marble quarries spread across Africa and the Aegean, not to mention a flush of stud farms
down south, Arlon had it all. The big house in Rome. Villa in the country. Winners galore at the Circus Maximus racetrack. And today, on this twenty-first day of June, on the shortest night of the year and under a clear sky when a full moon would transmute blackness into silver, Claudia Seferius would be plighting her troth to this man.

Widow and widower, bound together until death do them part
.

She considered the gifts she was bringing. Most, like the ivory inlaid chair and the thick Persian carpet, had been despatched separately, but others, like the beads of Arabian frankincense resin and the heavy gold betrothal medallion, were not the kind of presents which should be delivered by an anonymous household slave. Neither – she patted the onyx perfume phial and the engraved silver hip flask in her lap – were these. Such treasures were to be handed over personally. When the occasion demanded.

Having circled the Forum, the procession now left the way it had come. Behind the Temple of the Divine Julius, back up the Via Sacra, then branching off towards Arlon’s great sprawling mansion on the Esquiline Hill. There were no crowds lining these elegant, patrician streets, but Claudia didn’t care. She had done what she set out to do. The orange drapes round her litter and the orange veil on her head might have contravened the odd convention or two, but since when had conventions mattered to Claudia Seferius? She had been noticed today.
That’s
what mattered.

For the men in the crowds, there had been only goodwill wished upon her. In the women, though, she had seen mixed emotions. Most of them, of course, had turned out for no other reason than to enjoy the acrobats, give their toddlers their first sight of a stilt-walker and to cheer on the bride-to-be.

Others had a different agenda. They were the ones standing
pinch-lipped and smug. Brought to book at last, the uppity bitch. I mean, who did she think she was, taking over her husband’s wine business, indeed! These women had lined the route, arms folded over their chests in grim satisfaction that everything she owned (or at least, everything the gold-digging bitch had inherited!) would pass to Arlon after the wedding. Arlon would see she kept her place. Arlon would make sure she’d do what she should have been doing a long time ago. Keeping house and dropping babies like everyone else. To that section of the crowd, not fooled by her misuse of the veil, Claudia waved harder than ever.

But there was a third group of women which had caught her attention. A minority, true, but they were the ones who weren’t smiling either in joy or schadenfreude. Who hadn’t thrown rose petals into her path.

You had a chance
, said their sad, accusing eyes.
You had the chance to pave the way for other women to take on the men in their own world. Instead, you betrayed us. You sold the sisterhood out
.

The litter drew to a halt outside Arlon’s villa. Trumpets sounded. A carpet of red shot with gold thread was thrown out across the pavement to welcome her. Rainbow ribbons soaked in lavender and cedar wood oil streamed down from the rooftops. In a vestibule lined with lilies in tall silver pots and elegant floral frescoes, liveried slaves carried her in on their hands to an atrium gleaming in marble and gold. Here, light streamed in through the roof, fountains danced, and bronze charioteers guided Arlon’s bronze stallions in an eternal victory lap. Surrounded by priests, family, friends, business colleagues and neighbours, the man of the house stepped proudly forward.

Claudia stretched out both hands to greet her blond Adonis and smiled. I ask you.
What
sisterhood?

*   *   *

“I shall cherish this moment for the rest of my life.” With great tenderness, Arlon rubbed the ring he had just slipped on Claudia’s finger and brought it gently to his lips.

“Ah,” sighed the congregation, and one or two of the women surreptitiously dabbed at their eyes.

“The physicians tell us there’s a nerve which runs from the ring finger direct to the heart,” Arlon murmured, smiling deep into Claudia’s eyes, “and that it is this nerve which governs our happiness. Sealed for eternity by this gold band of love, may the gods strike me dead if I ever have cause to harm you.” This time he raised both her hands to his lips. “I love you, Claudia. I love you with all my heart and with all my soul, and nothing and no one can change the way that I feel. You do know that, don’t you?”

Claudia felt an unaccustomed rush of colour to her face. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I know that, Arlon.”

Now the women were sobbing quite openly, and there were a few sniffs from the men in the audience as well. Even the priest had to swallow.

“Let us make sacrifice with offerings of spelt,” he intoned solemnly, “that the gods may bless this joyful betrothal.”

They made such a good-looking couple, he thought, so in love, that he had forgiven Claudia her transgressions over the veil. Her previous husband had been old when they’d wed. Fat as a pig, if he recalled correctly, with bad teeth and a bald spot. A marriage of convenience for both parties, and now that the husband was dead, and looking at a lifetime of happiness with a dashing and virile young blade, what woman wouldn’t want to advertise her wedding twice over? The priest, laying spelt cakes on the altar and pouring libations, couldn’t begrudge her the orange veil for her betrothal, as well as her marriage.

All the same, he wondered why she hung on to that battered bronze bowl, even during the ceremony, when
tradition decreed both hands should be free. It had made his task of exchanging rings and medallions virtually impossible, and he’d had to call one of his acolytes to assist. Most unusual woman, this beautiful young widow, and the priest resolved to have a word with Arlon before the wedding. Intractability is no asset in a wife and if this wilfulness looked like it was persisting, the priest would recommend a jolly good beating. A tactic which had certainly brought his own wife to heel.

“When did you sweethearts meet?” one old hen clucked.

“Yes, do tell us. And where?” clucked another.

“It was last Saturnalia,” Claudia told the middle-aged female crowd which had knotted around her. “I’d laid on a sumptuous banquet and invited a select group of merchants round, in the hope of persuading them to sign up for barrel loads of Seferius wine, when –”

“When Arlon persuaded you to love him, instead!” the hens shrieked.

“Well, no, actually,” Claudia said. “His first words were, ‘How much would you take for your cook?’ ”

Everyone laughed.

Claudia slipped away.

Outside in the garden, it was hotter, not cooler. The mosaics and marble, the honeycomb screens and gently waving ostrich feather fans conspired to keep the atrium at an ambient temperature, despite the crush of the revellers. But there were too many people talking at once. She needed the space. And the quiet.

Her gown trailing over the path, she found a secluded bench in the shade, overhung by clusters of fragrant pink damask roses. Jewel-coloured birds chirruped and preened in an aviary set in the wall, and marble nymphs danced round fountains which splashed prettily and made prisms as the drops caught the sun. She sat down on the marble bench and
stretched out feet shod in the softest white leather. The air was heavy with birdsong and the buzzing of bees, and scented from swathes of bright purple lavender, with valerian, pinks, and a thousand sweet-smelling herbs.

Why, then, could she feel no peace in her heart?

“I suppose there’s no point in my asking what you’re up to this time?” the bay tree to her left asked in a melodious baritone.

Claudia spun round. The bay tree was grinning.

“Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, don’t you ever think of approaching people in a normal fashion, instead of creeping up on them?”

“If you’d seen me coming, you’d have run off.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

He stepped out from behind the bush, his dark eyes twinkling.
All the better to see you with
. . . “I’ll have you know, there are some people who actually like me,” he said, settling himself beside her on the bench.

“Name one, and your mother doesn’t count.”

“Not everyone sees the Security Police in a sinister light,” he laughed, tugging at his right ear lobe.
All the better to hear you with
. . . “There are those who actually believe we’re an asset to the Empire, rooting out assassins, rapists and thieves.”

“Oh well, then. If it’s gardening you’re into, the potting shed’s over there.”

The grin broadened, to show white, even teeth.
All the better to eat you with
. . . “Trowel by jury, you mean?”

Orbilio folded his arms behind his head, leaned back against the trunk of the sycamore tree in whose shade they were sitting and closed his eyes. Claudia did not fall into the trap of believing he was asleep. And now she knew that his sandalwood unguent was truly the scent of the hunter.

Time passed. It could have been minutes. Then again, lifetimes might have elapsed.

“Tell me about Arlon,” he said at last. “Tell me why you’re playing this particular charade.”

Until Claudia exhaled, she hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. She counted to five. Then –

“You’re the law,” she said brightly. “You know how the system works.”

Rome needed babies. As the Empire swelled, so did its population, but it was swelling with the offspring of slaves, not baby citizens. A victim of its own success. With peace came prosperity, and with prosperity came luxury goods, gourmet foods, safer streets, marble temples, libraries, sewers and the dole. It provided everyone with better education and better health. Which, for women, led to improved contraception. Oh, come on. When the risk of dying in childbirth was one in ten, who could blame the poor cows? So a law was passed to reverse the downward trend.

Widows of childbearing age had two years in which to find themselves a new husband. And if it wasn’t a man of her choosing, then by Jupiter, she would be forced to accept the choice of the State.

Claudia shot Orbilio a radiant smile. “My two years are nearly up,” she said cheerfully. “Arlon is the man I have chosen.”

He grunted and closed his eyes again. Cicadas rasped, bees hummed and the heat in the garden pulsed harder. She watched his profile. The patrician nose. The decisive jaw. The vein that beat at the side of his neck. She swallowed. Watched a bumblebee scour the pink blooms of hyssop in its quest for nectar. And found her gaze locked on the flowers long after the bee had flown off.

“Tell me how you two got together,” he said.

“It was last Saturnalia,” Claudia began. “I’d laid on a sumptuous banquet and –”

“That,” he murmured, “is word for word what you told
those old ducks indoors, and an investigator always mistrusts the account which never varies.”

“You don’t trust your own shadow,” she snapped.

A muscle twitched at the side of his mouth. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” he said. “Tell me what happened
after
that.”

One. Two. Three. “Very simple. I told Arlon, ‘I can’t sell just one slave. If you want my cook, you’ll have to take his wife, his three daughters, his mother-in-law and an aunt, I won’t have the family broken up.’ ”

“Claudia,” he growled warningly. One eye opened. “Explain to me –
please
– how it was that several months passed before you and Arlon met up again.”

Something tightened beneath Claudia’s rib cage. He was the Security Police. What did he know? Correction. How
much
did he know . . .? Lies formed into a plausible story, but before she could open her mouth, Marcus said,