Marilyn Todd - Sour Grapes

'Apparently so.'

'What do you know about him?'

'Not a thing, but don't worry. That'll change soon enough.'

'It might change a bit faster with this.' He fished out a scroll from the depths of his patrician tunic. 'It arrived yesterday evening,' he said. 'One of the reasons why I was late, as a matter of fact, but there's no point in having a battery of informants and despatch riders at one's disposal without making use of them, and… well, since I was in the area, and what with your mother-in-law's relationship with Darius being quite a talking point locally and… er, because I happen to know you, I um, thought you might be interested in what we could dig up on our friend with the voice like a rusty horse razor.'

More fish stinking out the air, she thought. The Security Police had better things to dig for than a bit of hot gossip. Orbilio was up to something, the bastard.

Claudia took the scroll. 'How thoughtful.'

'I'm a thoughtful person.'

'Modest with it. '

'Modest Cornelius Orbilio was my nickname at school.'

'Thoughtful, modest, are there no end to your talents?'

'Wait till you see me at tiddlywinks.'

Claudia flipped open the scroll and read, then re-read and, just to make certain, read the report again, but the words on the page didn't alter. Blah, blah, blah, it boiled down to the bald fact that Darius Amarantus Tubero, patrician, forty-nine years of age, ex-this, ex-that, but currently a horse-breeder in Salernium, widowed twenty-two years but no heirs, was rolling in money.

'But he's exactly who he says he is!'

'You sound surprised.'

'In my experience, Orbilio, if something seems too good to be true, then it is.'

No breeder of racing flesh of his age, with reasonable looks and with gold pieces coming out of his ears, was so lost and so lonely that he couldn't find companionship with a more compatible partner, because Larentia's narrow existence and lack of education hardly made her an intellectual match and at twenty years his senior she wasn't going to fulfil him in bed, either.

'Maybe instead of worrying about Darius being who he claims to be,' Orbilio said as he followed the antics of a squirrel scampering between the overlapping branches, 'you might want to ask yourself how best to get round the problem of him assuming control of your estate once they tie the knot.'

'If there are any knots to be tied, it'll be a noose and I'll tie it, and quite honestly, Marcus, throttling Larentia will be an unqualified pleasure.'

His chuckle echoed round the valley. 'There you go again.

Inviting me to whisk out the imperial handcuffs when we barely know one another! Suppose we rectify that situation by having dinner tonight?'

'Splendid idea, Orbilio. I'll eat at my house and you can dine with Rex over at his.'

'I'll take that as a maybe, but with your wits that sharp, I can see you working out how Candace did it, what Darius's game is, what's behind the run of bad luck and why Lars married Eunice before the moon combs her lovely red hair. Oh, and I wouldn't put it past you to solve the political crisis in Mauritania while you're about it.'

'What political crisis in Mauritania?'

They walked on in silence, while, in the distance, the doves in the pigeon house flexed their collective wings over the villa, coils of blue wood smoke spiralled up from the forge, and steam rose like dragon's breath through the vents of the bath house. Slaves small as ants busied themselves with the morning tasks of laundry and food preparation, cows trotted out of the milking shed happy and mooing, and gardeners fetched pails to top up the troughs.

'So why aren't you in Gaul?' she asked, and it was interesting to see that he wasn't wearing a wedding band. Yet. The social pressures on such a post would be strong, and she wondered why it mattered that she was relieved. 'And don't give me any of that crap about being Rex's nephew, Orbilio, it won't wash.'

'Funnily enough I am, in a way. Rex was a close friend of my late father's, and I did used to call him Uncle on the few occasions I saw him when I was small. The thing is, Claudia…'

He stopped and leaned his weight against an elm. Tall and stately, it was one of several planted in perfect ranks and squares to take the supports for the heavy vines. Its military precision seemed appropriate for the subject in question.

'Hard to believe under all that bluster, but Rex was one of our finest generals. He led enormously successful campaigns in Galatia, Thrace and Iberia, and it was his masterful tactics that got the Fourteenth out of that mess on the Rhine, where they were surrounded by hostile tribes on all sides.'

'Dare I suggest that he shouldn't have got them into it in the first place?'

'Not his doing,' Orbilio said. 'The previous incumbent was ill. Dying of a tumour as it happens and doing the best that he could, but the bottom line was he led his men into an ambush and Rex got them out, with precious few casualties into the bargain. Over the course of his career, Rex won several crowns and he earned every last one.'

'But?'

'No buts. Here he is in Tuscany, with his olive groves and pastures, where he intended to grow old with his wife.'

'Except she died twenty years ago.' Claudia hadn't forgotten the lump in the old soldier's throat and the tenderness in his voice as her ghost spoke to him in the dining hall just last night.

'She did, and I suppose that it was because he was on campaign most of the time that Rex never married again.'

'I know it's expected of you aristocrats to keep remarrying every time you mislay a wife, but perhaps the founding of one dynasty was sufficient for Rex?'

Marcus chuckled. 'In some cases, perhaps, but not his. You see, his wife bore him five daughters but only one son, a boy called Hadrian, and trust me, Hadrian is not going to continue the ancestral line.'

'Is he ill?'

'Not exactly.' He folded his arms across his chest. 'Don't forget I've known Hadrian all my life. He's only three years younger than me, and whilst you'd never accuse us of being friends, I know him well enough, I think, to judge him incapable of killing Lichas.'

'The toy-maker?' Claudia goggled. 'The boy whose body was washed up on Terrence's land?'

'One and the same.'

'Why on earth would the son of a wealthy, respected general be the prime suspect in an impoverished wood-carver's murder?'

'Because they were lovers,' he said, 'and the same attitude to homosexuality that applies in Rome applies to the whole of the Empire.'

'We live in a world where men are men and women are drudges. Yes, thank you, I'm already aware of that.'

'If you're a drudge, then I'm a drury.' Not much of a pun, but the best he could manage this hour of the morning. He prised himself away from the elm tree and ambled slowly beneath the overhead vines. 'Right now, public opinion sides with Lichas's sister, Rosenna, who's convinced Hadrian murdered her brother. Quite honestly, it's only a matter of time before the local authorities move in to arrest him, and the only way I can prevent that from happening is to find out who really killed Lichas.'

'Nepotism obviously taking priority over the scores of conspiracies fermenting merrily away in south-west Gaul.' Claudia plucked a sprig of mint and rubbed it between her fingers.

'The importance of false accusations can never be underestimated,' he said sanctimoniously.

'Ooh, can you hear that, Marcus? That bellowing in the distance?'

'No,' he said, craning his neck to listen.

'Funny, but I could have sworn I heard bull. Carry on.'

Orbilio ran his hand round his jaw and wondered what the bloody hell he was supposed to say. Admit that he'd been missing her so bloody badly that he was prepared to risk his whole career just to see her? That during one of his regular trips to Rome, the news shot round the family like a fireball about Hadrian allegedly stabbing his lover and Marcus had snatched this as his chance to be close to her? That while he was here, it came to his ears about Larentia and her younger suitor and, worried Darius was a conman, investigated him on Claudia's behalf? He'd jump into a vat ofboiling oil first.