Marilyn Todd - Sour Grapes

So what inspired Felix to dip his fingers in Imperial funds? Of all people, he would have known that, if he was caught, the State always made an example of the thief — no exceptions — by seizing his assets and sentencing him to the very minimum of ten years' hard labour?

Which was all very interesting and certainly aroused Claudia's curiosity. But went absolutely nowhere towards proving Felix and Darius were one and the same!

'How did you come to be involved at the trial?' she asked, biting into a herb-encrusted drumstick and tasting garlic, parsley, oregano and thyme.

'Me?' The landlord wiped his hands on his canvas apron and rejoined her at the table. 'Saw him taking the money from the Treasury clerk and packing it in his saddlebag. Right under that silver birch there, matter of fact. With the lights from the tavern, they was lit up like a sunrise, them two, but then ifyou're open about your dealings, people tend not to take any notice. Didn't then, to be honest with you, ma'am. It was only later, when the soldiers came asking questions that I remembered seeing them there.'

The crime tumbled out. There was so much gold missing from the Treasury that it was noticed at once. The clerk was arrested before he'd even joined the main road to Rome, and instantly betrayed Felix as the mastermind. Indeed, the horse on which he made his escape was proven to come from Felix's stables and the bulk of the gold was still in Felix's saddlebags when the authorities conducted their search. The clerk also admitted to handing it over outside the tavern, believing, like the inn-keeper, Felix's attestation that the more open one is, the less one is noticed. Except in the end six citizens of unimpeachable character happened to be in the square at the time.

The inn-keeper saw them through his tavern window, no doubt the paper merchant had been returning home after a long day, the brick-maker out buying his wife a birthday present from the goldsmith's for instance, and so on, and so on, and so on…

Claudia cut into the rich partridge pie. 'I can't remember what Gaius wrote about how he recognized Felix. His lantern jaw, was it? His dimpled chin?'

Some other feature that was highly conspicuous to mark him out as separate from Darius?

'Felix? Bless you, ma'am, there wasn't nothing that stood out about him, though there was nothing weak about his face, either.'

Good.

'But he always rode the same sorrel mare, did our Felix, and I suppose, if I was honest, I'd have to say he was a bit of a dandy. Wore quality clothes in the manner of a man used to wearing 'em — '

Like Darius.

' — but wore a gold headband to keep his curls out of his eyes — '

Knew it!

' — and, of course, what did set him out from the crowd was that, unlike most freemen, Felix didn't favour white tunics. Bright blue was his colour. Wanted folk to see he'd risen up through the ranks, and though he'd been promoted to equestrian status like your late husband, Felix only tended to wear his purple-striped tunic on state occasions.'

So a man with a neat Caesar crop, wearing a crisp white linen tunic, dazzling white woollen toga and wearing high patrician boots wouldn't be lumped in the same social class as the johnny-come-lately dandified Felix. Especially if he adopted different mannerisms and gait.

Claudia polished off the partridge pie along with the relishes. Sabotaging the wine would have been easy for anyone committed enough to want to bother. Five earthenware dolia were set in the tavern's stone counters like gigantic toilet seats. Simple matter of dropping the contents of a phial into those during the night, then nipping into the cellar, removing the spigots from the casks, souring that wine, then re-plugging them without leaving a trace. But to plan this, Darius would have had to have been inside this tavern, and twelve years ago was too far back to rely on mere memory…

'In Rome, artisans tend to drink at their various guild houses,' she said. 'Is it the same here?'

'Oh, aye.' The landlord explained that his clientele fell into two types. Shopkeepers and residents of the apartments above them who ate here on a regular basis, and barflies who never left, at least when there was wine to be had! 'Not wishing to sound snobby, ma'am, but that type tend to comprise the lower orders, if you get my drift, or else those fallen from grace, who just drink themselves stupid.'

Damn.

He ambled off to the kitchens and returned with a steaming hot pumpkin tart that he set down with a bang on the table. 'Course, we do get gentry like yourself occasionally.' He sliced it with the same knife that had cut the partridge pie. 'Not often, but it happens.'

'Yes, now you mention it, I do believe Darius said he'd been in here a while back.'

Pine. It was the pine over the lintel that gave him away.

'Do believe you're right, milady.'The landlord nodded sagely. 'Not often, but like I says, it happens. Here, you sure you don't want a piece of this tart? The missus bakes 'em herself.'

'No.' Claudia was too excited to eat. 'No, I don't, but I'll tell you a secret,' she said. 'It's not something I share with everyone, but I've just had a vision.'

'A vision, ma'am?' His face twisted in the manner of a man worried that the partridge was off.

'A vision,' she said. 'And in my vision, I saw Fufluns, and do you know what? He was lifting his curse from your tavern.'

There'll be no more sour wine in this place, my friend. Felix has just met his match.

The first thing that struck Rosenna, returning from shopping, was the smell of freshly carved wood. She hooked her basket over her arm and thought, daft. This was a toy shop! She was used to the prickly sensation at the top of her nose. Well used to the dry, dusty air. All the same though… She swapped the basket to the other arm. The vividness of it caught her right off guard, reminding her of when Lichas sat hunched over his chisels, and she realized with a start that it had been eight days since she'd last inhaled that timbery smell. Three days during which she'd been out of her mind with worry. Five days during which she'd gone out of her mind with grief…

She ducked under the counter and thought, no. No, it wasn't like when Lichas was working. Her brother'd sit in the corner, rasping away, his tongue clenched between his teeth in concentration. Orson moved his stool right up to the street, often stopping to show the kiddies what he was working on, explaining how he was going to turn this offcut of cypress into a soldier, why fig was the best wood for making a hoop, and why grain oak was good for the crossbars of lyres. And when he wasn't surrounded by curious kids, he'd be humming away to himself. 'Whistle while you whittle, Rosie,' he'd laugh. And that was another thing: no one had ever called her Rosie before.

'Oi'd have thought it were the first thing that sprung to mind,' Orson said when she told him. 'What with name, your rosy round cheeks and hair that's the colour of rosehips in autumn.'

'Not my rosy nature, then?'

'Oh, that'll come back,' he'd assured her, fixing the hinges to Jemma's doll's house. 'Like a tide coming in on a steepshelving beach, you don't see it creep up, but it do. Pass them tacks over, would you?'

'I don't have a rosy nature to creep back,' she told him, steadying the miniature cottage as he tapped the nails home.

'No?' Broad hands satisfied themselves that the structure was rigid. 'Then who's responsible for painting them jugs in the kitchen? Who stencilled those floral swags on the walls?'

Jugs? Swags? Did he honestly think such things mattered? Rosenna returned his wave with a jauntiness she didn't feel and thought, justice is what counts. Not flowers. Not sodding paint. A life for a life, and with Tages' body being found late yesterday afternoon, it wasn't one murder she'd be avenging when the Brides of Fufluns danced for their god. She'd be doing old Etha a favour as well. Climbing the stairs with a heavy tread, she laid the contents of her shopping out over the table. Leeks, peas, beans, onions. A clutch of freshly laid eggs. And, thanks to those kiddie-sized flutes he carved out of that old leftover pine yesterday and got her to paint Pan faces on, she could throw a coney on the table as well, for they'd sold like hot cakes, them flutes. It weren't fair to punish Orson for the sins of the Romans. Oh, he were a Roman, she knew that, but he weren't the double-crossing, skin-saving kind of Roman — and hell, he deserved a decent meal at the end of the day for helping little orphaned Jemma and the crippled boy.