Marilyn Todd - Sour Grapes

'Pull up here,' she instructed the driver.

Until recently, this converted grain store had been used by a local paper merchant until fire had swept through, destroying his stock. Claudia studied the blackened walls and a courtyard that was already being reclaimed by weeds. Fires were common in Rome, the threat of it constant, and it was not unusual to see the night sky glowing orange as a tenement went up here, a warehouse caught fire there, especially in the winter, when portable stoves were all too easily overturned and burning logs jumped out of their baskets. More than one paper merchant in Rome had suffered the same fate. But twice? In six months?

'The brickworks next,' she told Clemens.

And as the mule clip-clopped along, she mulled over the profits to be made from construction, now that peace had settled over the Empire. With a whole generation having grown up without the spectre of civil war looming over them, one could not emphasize too strongly the effect this peace had had. The tombs that lined the main roads into cities were being filled with the bones of old men, not young warriors, and a massive influx of prisoners of war had brought about a prosperity the Empire had never experienced. Thanks to this slave labour, the land produced a glut of foodstuffs, which could then be exported, plus there was mineral wealth to be mined — again by slaves or convicted criminals — and industry was flourishing as never before. Warehouses, bath houses, shops and apartments sprang up like groundsel. Temples, basilicas, bridges and roads became the backbone of Augustus's new Empire, along with aqueducts, sewers, theatres and gates, race courses and triumphal arches, and it was the Emperor's boast that he inherited a city of brick and would leave it a city of marble. In such an economic climate, how on earth can a brick-maker go bankrupt?

Claudia stared at the business that had been snapped up for a pittance by one of the insolvent brick-maker's competitors. It wasn't as though he'd set up his works too far from Mercurium and overreached himself with transportation costs, and in any case it was a small-scale operation. Claudia counted forty, fifty slaves — no more — and, watching the bricks being tipped out of their moulds, reflected on Larentia's explanation that his kiln had been cursed by the gods, or why else would his fires keep going out?

Fire…

'Thank you, Clemens. That's all here.'

One man gets too many fires, while another gets too few…

Yet not all this so-called bad luck could be laid at the door of a capricious arsonist. There was the miller's donkey that dropped dead in its prime. The tavern-keeper whose wine turned to vinegar and whose axle then broke, costing him several gallons of wine. Listening to Larentia — and Claudia freely admitted that she'd got lost among the clouds of detail — she vaguely remembered somebody's well going sour, livestock keeling over somewhere else, crops failing, and all sorts of personal difficulties erupting at once. Quarrels, death, divorce, and wasn't it the miller's brother's wife (dammit, why are these relationships always so complicated?) who'd walked out recently, taking the children with her to Rome? The brother was a blacksmith, Claudia recalled. And don't blacksmiths have forges?

With fires?

Bad luck… or simply bad character? There was no denying that a lot of bad things had happened round here, but coincidence? Uh-uh. The sun would have to rise in the west before Claudia accepted that. Sabotage was almost certainly behind the poisoned well, the spiked wine, the fires at the paper merchant's warehouse, the damping of the brick-maker's kilns. And just as it was a human hand, not a divine one, that was orchestrating these disasters, so it was a human hand that stabbed Lichas and dragged him — still twitching and gushing blood — across the field and calmly tipped him in the water.

Larentia might call it a run of bad luck.

Claudia called it unadulterated evil.

Now she needed to track this evil back to its lair, because Tages the shepherd boy still hadn't come home and she had personally endangered the life of another seventeen-year-old youth.

And if evil thought it was going to get its hands on young Orson, evil had another think coming.

In the dark, sulphurous caverns between the living and the dead, Veive strode upright and proud. His was no life to be spent gazing endlessly into the Waters of Prophesy or poring bent-backed over the Runes of Adversity among the sorcerers and necromancers of the netherworld. Like Terror and Panic, twin sons of black-winged Night, and their sisters Discord, Deception and Strife, the God of Revenge was constantly on the move. Always alert, ever dispassionate, it was Veive's role to answer the calls of those who invoked him. To ensure that his aim was true.

'Forgive me for intruding.' With great reverence he approached the Goddess of Shadows, who guarded the Mirror of Life. 'But I wish to track the progress of my arrows.'

'There is no intrusion,' she whispered, and her voice was a thousand echoes as she unveiled the Mirror. 'You are always welcome in my house, dear friend. Tell me, what do you see?'

'I see fires. I see death. I see desecration,' he told her, and his heart neither rejoiced nor saddened, for it was not Veive's role to apportion sorrow and blame. It was for other gods to move among the reeds and take the shape of birds to impart their wisdom to mortals, just as it was their task (should it please them) to even out the distribution of health, wealth and happiness and administer justice.

'Is that all you see?' the goddess asked.

'No,' he replied truthfully. 'I see your sisters Ruin and Greed walking amongst the devastation, but equally I see Success, O Wise One.'

Every arrow that had been loosed from Veive's Bow of Vengeance had found its rightful target.

'But hark! My name is being invoked even while we speak. Forgive the brevity of this visit, O Wise One, but I fear I must leave. My work, it seems, is not finished.'

Beside him the Goddess of Shadows laughed softly. 'Our work is never finished, dear friend, but I bid you call again soon.' She closed the veil over the Mirror. 'You are always welcome in this house.'

Market day in the Roman Empire fell every eighth day, and in Mercurium the narrow, twisting streets were packed with sacks and stalls, trestles and trays selling everything from needles to fleeces to honey in little red-painted pots. There had been talk of building a proper marketplace at the foot of the hill between the basilica and the Temple of Saturn, but so far the plans remained nothing more than outlines on parchment. What was the point? The townspeople were never going to change their ways, and maybe it was the sense of community — jostling through lanes clogged with donkeys laden with panniers or carts piled high with fruit, hides and chickens — or simply a sense of security, being packed into so tight a space, but since their ancestors had raised the first walls round this town, this was how markets had been held and this was how markets would continue to be held.

Which made trade both effortless and impossible at the same time.

The same jugs of wine that enticed shoppers with their bouquet banged against elbows and stained clothes with their careless drips. The same wreaths that hung from ropes pegged across the street to lure matrons into decorating their homes tangled in their neatly coiffed hair. No forehead was safe against dangling poles, swinging baskets, protruding cauldrons or muslins and mugs. Reactions were universal. Some laughed at their misfortune, others groused, some cursed, some scolded, while there were always those on both sides of the commercial fence who thrived on exaggerating the damage. It drew attention and bolstered their sense of importance, they argued, little realizing that it had the opposite effect.