Marilyn Todd - Sour Grapes

'No, no, you keep that, Rosie,' he'd said when she'd offered him a half share of the takings. 'Reckon they thinks Oi'm a goose that needs fattening for Saturnalia, Oi'm that well fed up at that villa.'

'Fancy titbits, aye. But do they feed you rabbit stew with lentils and leeks?'

A look of longing crossed his freckled face. 'Thick gravy?'

'So thick, you'll need a knife,' she promised, and Rosenna had never broken a promise in her life.

She proceeded to strip the skin off the coney and joint it. By the time she'd finished chopping the vegetables, the herbs and the spices, the blade she'd been using was blunt, and she resolved to sharpen it on the grindstone, but not until Orson packed up for the night. She didn't want anyone to overhear the spell she cast while she honed it. The spell that would carry it straight to the heart of three bastard patricians: Hadrian, Rex and the other one. Marcus.

She hefted the cauldron on to the stove. Aye, Marcus, they called him. Not one of your soft types like the coward who betrayed her brother, nor the bullying kind, like the father, which only left the other kind. The kind who tried to bribe you to keep your mouth shut. Oh, don't think she hadn't seen the way he followed her around last night! Trying to catch her attention, so he could stuff gold in her pockets — as though that would bring Lichas back! But she was glad now that she'd gone with Orson to the festivities. She hadn't wanted to go, but he insisted that, rather than dignifying the dead, too much mourning dishonoured them, and if Lichas was half the man she had claimed, he must've been a chap who'd taken life by the horns and she could do worse than follow her brother's example. Part shamed, part inspired, what had tipped the balance was that Orson had no one else to go with. Flavia was stuck at the temple, he said.

'Reckon it would give us both a treat, Rosie, for you and me to horse around for a couple of hours.'

And show those bastard patricians how to play featherball, she thought triumphantly. That'll teach 'em — and while she was up at Terrence's mansion, she'd got the chance to look all three of her enemies in the eye, too. Nits and lice, just like she'd said, and no one thinks twice about exterminating them.

'Dinner smells good,' Orson called up.

'Looks good, too,' she called down, giving the pot a hearty stir with the paddle and adjusting the seasonings.

That was one heck of a big stew, but he'd probably scoff the lot, would our Orson. Strapping fella with a wise head on broad shoulders, and a heart of gold on the inside. Why, look at the amount of time he'd spent on that contraption Lichas had been designing to help the crippled lad walk.

'Still ain't right though, is it?' he'd said in the end, but he weren't giving up. 'Leave it with me, Rosie, and Oi'll see what Oi can do. Reckon it needs three wheels, see. One at the back here, to steady the frame and stop it from tipping forward.'

As the light began to drain from the sky, Rosenna lit the oil lamps and resolved that, before the red-headed moon waxed to its full, she would will this workshop to Orson. She'd have to get a document that was drawn up all legal, like, to prove she'd given it to him before she'd killed them patricians. Because afterwards the State would crucify her for what she had done, but them Romans weren't getting their hands on this shop. No way.

But Orson now. Orson liked wood. It didn't matter a jot what happened to her, but this way Lichas's memory would live on through his wood. Orson would see to that.

'Supper's ready,' she called down the stairs. 'And don't forget that knife for your gravy!'

Candace stared into the shining crystal on the centre of the table, while Larentia explained to her dinner guests how she was able to see the future through the visions it produced. Vaguely, she was aware of Eunice's heartfelt hope that Candace couldn't see her future wrinkles; she had more than enough at the moment, thanks, and if that crystal even mentioned the word 'fat', she'd smash the thing with her shoe.

Candace continued to stare, knowing that it would be interpreted by the assembly as the first stage of her trance, since silence and stillness were as integral a part of her windwalking ritual as the persona she had developed of wearing rich, bold fabrics, a plethora of gold and honing her naturally deep voice to this melodious drawl. Yet it was not for professional reasons that Candace stared into its glistening facets, and it was not for its visions that she carried the prism around.

Her mind travelled back on a journey that took her down a long, dark, distant tunnel. And though she had never given up hoping to see lush lowlands at the end of the tunnel, where giant grey beasts with a fifth leg coming out of their forehead trumpeted loudly, where long-necked, long-legged creatures grazed the treetops and where striped horses ran wild in herds, no such visions had ever formed. It was always only more darkness she saw. A terrible blackness in which people were screaming, making terrible gurgling noises from deep in their throats, a blackness where fathers pleaded and mothers sobbed, and terrified children screamed…

Staring into the crystal, the memories solidified like the rock itself and shimmered every bit as brightly.

Kush was a land of plenty, she'd been told. Apart from the gold that oozed out of the rocks, there was brisk trade to be had in supplying Rome with exotic creatures and huge profits to be made from the enterprise. Candace had never been to Rome, so it was only through hearsay that she'd learned about huge spotted cats that spent all their lives up trees, and snakes thicker than a man's thigh that could swallow a billy goat whole. Indeed, it was through such tales that she'd heard about the grey five-legged monsters whose footsteps shook the ground and from whom giant logs of ivory came. Candace needed no telling that the Kings of Kush had grown rich from this ivory — very rich. Or that rich men grow powerful — very powerful. To the point that, when one of them dies, no one questions whether it is right or wrong that three hundred and twenty-eight men, women and children be buried along with the king. Or that he'd stipulated they should still be alive.

How old would Candace have been? Four? Maybe not even that, for she had no memories of life before that fateful day. All she recalled was being dragged in chains into that pit and seeing people strangled one after the other. Some were strangers, some were from her own village, many came from her own family. As her mother's turn came, she remembered the ribbon being wound round her neck as she sobbed and pleaded and begged for her baby's life. Candace recalled the startling warmth of the ribbon as it was wrapped round her own throat. Remembered the constriction, the pain, her vision blurring as the haze turned to red, but then, as she fell forward on to the corpse of her mother, a hand clamped round her mouth and a voice hissed in her ear,

Make a sound and I'll finish what I started.

Candace made no sound. Not a whimper. She lay there, face down and frozen with terror as her mother's corpse slowly cooled, and she listened to the gurgles and screams until finally, mercifully, only silence filled the air. As darkness cast its cloak over the burial pit, she felt a rough hand pulling her out, but this, she discovered, was no humanitarian rescue. She'd been snatched for pure profit, sold on as a plaything for a rich Roman family. A black toy for white children to tease and torment.

'As I was telling Terrence this afternoon, I got a letter from Cousin Julius to say old Auntie Antonia has lost her mind completely,' Thalia was twittering.

'Hardly a disaster,' Eunice retorted. 'It was a closed one, anyway; no one'll miss it.'

'Especially Antonia,' Terrence added dryly.