Widow's Pique (6 page)

'You honour us, My Lady,' Drilo said, bowing deeply.

Round his oiled, braided hair he wore a band of gold engraved with the same creatures Claudia had seen on the torque around Mazares's neck.

'On the contrary,' she replied, covering his hand gently with hers. 'It is you who honour me.'

She gazed into his penetrating dark-blue eyes and smiled her most beguiling smile.

Let him think she was hooked. Let them
all
think she was hooked. That she'd been won over by the gifts, by the flattery, by the lure of the big prize at the end, but make no mistake, my cunning, sneaky, double-dealing Histrian friends. You can pay me, because, oh yes, I'll take your money.

It doesn't mean I've been bought.

Marcus Cornelius Orbilio leaned his tall frame against the temple wall and folded his arms across his chest. The sun was setting, but the evening air was quite without chill, despite the gentle breeze that ruffled the hem of his long, patrician tunic. Inside the temple, the priests and scribes were busy cataloguing the day's intake of offerings to Hercules. As patron of commerce as well as leader of the Muses, the gifts covered the broadest spectrum on the religious scale, and from what Orbilio could hear, today's donations included everything from lyres to poetry engraved on bronze tablets right down to humble terracotta goblets and lions carved from sacred wild olive.

Orbilio wasn't interested in the goings-on inside the temple. It was the house along the street that he was watching. It was a fine house, newly built, with red roof tiles and doors of cedarwood, and from the small slits in the walls that faced the road, he could see the bright flickering of lamps, even though the sun had not yet sunk. Reluctantly, he prised himself off the temple wall and sauntered slowly down towards the house, and maybe it was the scent of Hercules's sacred laurel, but there was a bitter taste on the back of his tongue.

He lifted the gleaming bronze panther-head knocker and let it fall. The door opened at once and a naked black girl, her skin oiled and fragrant, bade him welcome. Once inside, the opulence of the mansion exploded from every angle. Pillars of glistening pure-white Parian marble. Fountains with three, and sometimes four, cascades. Exquisite mosaics on the floors,

the most superb artistry on the soaring walls. Gilded ceilings emphasized the luxury.

Having removed his sandals and bathed his feet in rosewater, the servant girl handed him a glass of vintage Falernian then offered him a plate of sweetmeats. He took a candied cherry stuffed with almond paste, mainly because he didn't want to offend her, rather than because he was hungry, thanked her with a silver coin and moved on. Rare Arabian resins burned in braziers on the walls. Musicians played on flutes and pipes and drums, acrobats in Eastern dress performed a tumbling act and sword dancers from the Orient leapt across their deadly curving blades with practised ease. The very sort of entertainment, Orbilio reflected, that he was used to seeing at family banquets. Before his family stopped inviting him!

'Is there anything I can do for you?' a voice breathed in his ear.

He cast his glance around the beauties draped across the richly upholstered couches, at the revealing slits in their diaphanous garments and the feathered fans in soft bejewelled hands that made subtle beckoning gestures to the male visitors. Then his eyes lifted to the artfully rouged cheeks, the red pouting lips, the kohled eyes, and he drew a deep breath.

'Another glass of wine would be nice.'

'Of course.'

The voice sounded vaguely disappointed, but the wine appeared almost at once. He resisted the urge to toss it down in a single swallow and forced himself to sip slowly from the green glass goblet as he passed from atrium to dining hall and out into the garden.

'Follow me,' a gorgeous creature whispered, 'and I'll show you paradise.'

'I don't doubt it,' he replied, disentangling his arm and wondering how much the transparent linen fabric shot with gold would cost. 'Give me an hour, though.'

Mingling among the brothel's clientele (foreign merchants mostly, for who else could afford the exorbitant rates?), Orbilio listened to the babble of laughter and this time he didn't ration

his drink, but knocked back what was left in his goblet and grimaced. Beneath the joking and the banter, the teasing and the tempting, there ran an undercurrent of desperation and heartache. These were not mosaics that his boots were treading on. He was trampling the remnants of a thousand broken dreams. Crushing the relics of a million shattered promises. For prostitution, even on this exalted level, still exacts a price . . .

And what price am I paying, he wondered? When he joined the Security Police, he genuinely believed he could make a difference. What was the point, he'd argue, in following the family tradition to become a lawyer, when he could be out there, fighting hand to hand on the battlefield in the war between Good and Evil?

He was young then.

An idealist fresh out of the army, and all too painfully he'd discovered that the lines between Good and Evil are frequently blurred. That the enemy isn't always the enemy, and that Good isn't always an advantage - or necessarily right. Furthermore, as the only investigator in the Security Police with blue blood in his veins, he was never fully accepted by the other members of the team, his lower-born boss resented him, and the very nature of his work ostracized him from patrician society. (At least polite patrician society, he qualified wryly, spotting a retired senator sandwiched between two simpering beauties.)

But it was worth it. Half the time he spent traipsing the same old streets, interrogating the same old suspects - little men with big egos or else hotheads with half-baked ideals -and usually all he managed to unearth for his pains was a mixture of bravado and bullshit. Also, the public seemed to be under the impression that once the Empire had rid itself of a few conspirators, that was the end of the matter. It wasn't. Subversion's a weed. A vicious, pernicious, perennial weed, and no matter how often you cut off its blooms or yanked at its stems, the roots of sedition were too deep to dig out. So why did he bother? Why keep beating round the same old dusty bushes?

Simple. If he didn't, the anarchists and assassins would prevail, and imagine if the law of the sword was permitted to win. The seas and the highways would become unsafe to travel; trade would collapse; the Empire would tear itself apart like rabid dogs. It wouldn't happen overnight, of course. Such a downfall would take years. Generations, perhaps. But Rome had seen enough of her own sons' blood spilled. Augustus had single-handedly crushed a hundred years of bitter infighting to give the Empire peace and stability, endowing his people with a prosperity and a pride that they had not known before. It was worth the lack of acceptance to keep that flame alive, but there were times - God knows there were times -when Orbilio could use a little human comfort.

He continued to work through the fragrant crush, conscious of fingers sliding against his thigh or brushing his hip. Expert fingers, enticing, inviting; gateways to relief and oblivion.

In the fountain by the rose arbour, a slant-eyed dancing girl, naked apart from a black velvet mask, twisted and writhed to a tune played on a lyre by a blind musician, her long wet hair slapping against her oiled skin with rhythmic provocativeness. He moved on.

'They call me Rapture.' A jangle of bracelets rattled in his ear before a fusion of fine lemon cotton and forget-me-not scent blocked his path.

'I can see why,' Orbilio replied, running his eyes over the transparent flounced gown, the delicate embroidery, the finely tooled kid-skin slippers. 'Unfortunately, Rapture, I've arranged to meet with someone else.'

'Pity.' Black-rimmed eyes at a level with his flickered with practised coquettishness. 'Maybe next time . . . ?'

'Definitely,' he lied, watching Rapture sashay seductively down the path.

Too tall, he thought, far too tall, and his heart lurched for the woman who only came up to here on him. The woman who was not forced by law to wear the dyed yellow wig of the prostitute, but one with hair piled high in tempestuous curls and eyes that flashed like twin forest fires - and a tongue

that burned twice as hot! A half-smile twisted his lips. To tame Claudia was to tame the whirlwind while riding white lightning with both hands tied behind his back, but, by Croesus, he was up for a challenge.

Watching the last rays of the sun disappear behind the building, he wondered what she was doing. Was she, like him, sipping wine as the light slowly faded? Was she feasting on oysters and prawns, while musicians serenaded her under an open sky? And what was she wearing? That midnight-blue arrangement pinned with gold clips on her shoulders that accentuated her breasts? Or a fiery red number that reflected the wearer's own passion? More to the point, did she have
any
idea what she was getting herself into? Histria, for gods' sake, and she—

His train was interrupted as the whore he was waiting for emerged from one of the bedrooms. He watched as money changed hands - gold, naturally - and felt something churn in his stomach when the thick-lipped, pot-bellied Arab stood on tiptoe to kiss his paramour farewell. Laying down his glass, Orbilio glanced over his shoulder at the door to the street. The door that led to the clean, open air and to freedom. For a few seconds, bodily desire fought with integrity, but the battle was brief. Squaring his shoulders, he marched down the peristyle and, without any preamble, slapped a soft buttock then squeezed.

His efforts were rewarded with a seductive giggle. 'Ooh. A man who knows what he wants!'

Just a few yards away, the thick-lipped Arab was still pulling his robes straight.

'More than that,' Marcus whispered. 'I'm a man who always gets it.'

'Then you must
come
with me.'

There was no mistaking the innuendo, and as he followed the swaying hips along the portico, Orbilio wondered what in gods' name he was doing. His mind flashed back to his failed marriage. Too young, far too young, and good luck to her that she ran off with some sea captain from Lusitania, everyone

deserves a shot at happiness. He was just thankful there were no children involved. Oh, but he wanted children. Sons to go hunting with, daughters he could protect, but, more than that, much, much more than that, he wanted a wife to grow grey and wrinkly with. He tried to picture Claudia Seferius with wrinkles—

'Do share the joke, darling,' his companion begged.

'No joke,' he replied. Claudia would never get wrinkles. The wrinkles wouldn't dare!

'Then what are you laughing at?'

'Nothing,' he said, and suddenly it was true.

He looked at the rich patrons being fed wine, food and the other delights of this sumptuous whorehouse and his gut wrenched. For all its enforced gaiety, this was nothing more than casual, unemotional, pay-through-the-nose sex. Truly the coldest comfort in the whole world. And he should know. By the gods, after all this time, he ought to know—

'How about this room?' His stunning companion paused in a doorway. 'It has the most naughty pictures on the walls—'

'I don't care what's on the bloody walls,' he said roughly. 'Get inside.'

'Ooh, goody. No foreplay, no Smalltalk, none of this my-wife-doesn't-understand-me bullshit.' The giggle was girlish but not forced. 'You know, sweetie, it really arouses me when a man gets straight to business.'

He thought again of the Arab . . .

'You want to get straight to business?' Orbilio yanked off the whore's expensive yellow wig and there was a harsh edge to his voice. Then straight to business it is.
Sweetie.'

Red lips pouted prettily, before dropping into an astonished and horrified
O.

'Marcus!'

'Yes, my dear cousin, it's me. Now you can pull your skirt down and explain just what the hell you're doing here.'

'I - I don't understand . . . What's this got to do with the Security Police?'

'Bugger all,' he growled. 'Your father asked me—'

The gasp was pure terror.

'My father?' Tears began to well up. 'Does he know about . . . about this?'

Orbilio wished he'd had the courage to follow his desires and walk out that front door a few minutes ago. Why did he have to be so bloody tied to his duties? Family duties, in this particular instance, but none the less binding for that. And how bloody ironic that his uncle so disapproved of his role in the Security Police, until he needed his help . . .

'He'd been hearing rumours,' he explained patiently, because, heaven knows, it wasn't the first time his little cousin had been caught whoring. 'He asked me to investigate.'

Translation, hush it up.

'Marcus, I beg you on my life, don't let my father find out! I'll be ruined. Oh, for pity's sake, Marcus. I'm married.'

The sobbing was pitiful.

'I've two boys and - sweet Jupiter, you know the law. What I'm doing isn't just adultery. It's - it's - Oh please, if word gets back, they'll take my kids away, I'll never see them again.'

'Pity you didn't think of the consequences beforehand,' he snapped. After all, it's not as though you needed the money.'

He'd checked. But no, this was for kicks.