Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

'But not richer in the financial sense,' she said aloud, noting the plain whitewashed walls and simple flagged floor.

'No.'

Salome's laugh was as elegant as the woman herself.

'There's no profit in medicine around here, the folk are too poor. Now that Pula's expanding, though, we're gaining quite a reputation for our cosmetic aids and I'm hoping those will generate income.'

'Selling eternal youth to women with more money than sense?'

'There are plenty of those around Pula,' Salome chuckled, 'and every tide washes in a few more.'

Washing in more resentment among the locals, too, Claudia mused.

'You're a fine advertisement for your products,' she said, again struck by the young widow's height and angular beauty.

In her thirtieth summer Mazares had said, yet despite so much time spent out of doors, Salome's skin had the bloom of a girl half her age, and the simplicity of her gown only emphasized her foxy red mane and the loveliness of her figure.

A becoming blush suffused the tan. 'Thank you, but it's not only cosmetics we're a dab hand at. With so many talents coming in to our collective pool, we prepare everything from laxatives to love potions to furniture polish that — ' she rapped a gleaming door jamb with her knuckles — 'keeps its shine for a year. Did Mazares send you?'

Mazares, Mazares, always Mazares.

'A whole year?' Claudia said, examining the woodwork.

A not uncomfortable silence settled over the room, as Salome laid out a dish of olives and cheese. It gave Claudia a breathing space to assemble her thoughts.

Soldiers weren't allowed to marry until they retired from the army and it was obvious that little had changed in the ten years since Salome's husband built this house for his bride. Constructed of white stone, like everything else around here, it conformed to the standard Roman practice of four wings round a central courtyard, but the accommodation block was small, just three bedrooms and the atrium, which were all sparsely furnished and lacking in the decorative arts that were such a feature of Roman homes. In fact, the only personal artefacts that Claudia could see were a bust of a rather bullnecked individual, presumably the late husband, and an exquisite ivory carving of two racing greyhounds. But there was something else missing from Salome's house. Something Claudia couldn't quite put her finger on…

'I can see you love this place,' she said, sweeping her arm round the kitchens, shed, dormitories and workshops that comprised the other three wings and where every craft from weaving wool to weaving chaplets, baking bricks to baking bread was in varying stages of progress.

'Very much.' Salome draped herself over a couch with unassumed grace. 'Histria is so beautiful, so fertile, so full of giving, that you can't help but fall in love with the country.'

Claudia pictured the unforgiving deserts of Salome's Syrian homeland.

'My husband was one of the first to be given a farm here, you know. It's the Emperor's aim to apportion a third of this peninsula to retiring soldiers, although less than half that target has been achieved so far.'

As she spoke, Claudia realized what was so odd about Amazonia. Children! Right across her Etruscan vineyards, the valleys echoed with the shrieks of workers' offspring, so much so, she often wondered the slaves didn't stuff their ears with felt to block out the racket as the little buggers chased one another round vats, played hide and seek in the treading house and hopscotched round the cellars.

'You and your husband weren't blessed with babies?'

'Goodness, is that old lesbian rumour doing the rounds again?'

Salome untied the green ribbon at her nape and combed her long hair with her hands.

'How that starts, I'll never know,' she said, re-tying it. 'Everybody knows I was devastated when Stephanus died.'

Not devastated enough that you didn't free his slaves the very next day.

'But your workers,' Claudia persisted. 'Don't you take on women with children?'

The muscles round Salome's mouth stiffened. 'Most of the girls come alone.'

And most of them were exceptionally young, she might have added. Sixteen, seventeen, Claudia could see how misunderstandings might start to arise, prompting her to take a closer interest in the nubile young Amazons as they bustled about, milking goats, churning cheeses, dyeing cottons and hanging laundry on large circular wooden frames to dry.

In theory, paying hired labourers was not much different from paying slaves. Foreigners had this ludicrous notion that Roman slaves were on a level with dogs — fed, watered, but that's about all. How ridiculous! How could you possibly coax good work from a browbeaten, downtrodden drone? All slaves, regardless of status, received a salary on top of their board and lodgings, a remuneration which naturally varied according to skill. Foreign nobles were always amazed to discover that everyone in Augustus's court, from book-keepers to clerks, was enslaved. That slaves also owned slaves themselves. And that a good many invested their salaries in business, often running a profitable little sideline in barbering or tavernkeeping.

'What was Rome's reaction, when they found out you'd freed all of your husband's slaves?' Claudia asked.

'Since I haven't told them,' Salome said lightly, 'that delight's still in store.'

'They don't know?'

She tried not to think of the administration's reaction when it came to their ears that a Syrian widow had undermined one of the driving principles of Roman economy.

'How long ago since you let them go?'

'Six years last autumn.'

Croesus. The Senate would explode.

'I have done nothing wrong,' Salome said steadily. 'When I inherited those people, they were mine to do what I liked with and it just so happened that it pleased me to give them their freedom.'

Technically, perhaps. A master was entitled to free any slave that he chose, and slaves were also entitled to purchase their freedom, providing they had sufficient funds and permission. But to release them all, and at the same time, was to fly in the face of imperial principles — and if there wasn't a law against what Salome had done, there bloody well would be when someone found out. Which they would! As more Histrian soil was claimed by Roman soldiers… as Pula expanded… as trade and traffic increased…

'Salome, it's not too late to own up.'

She was no fool. She must know her actions could not remain secret for ever, why not get in before she found herself arrested for treason — when losing her farm would be the least of her problems! Or had she just been out of the loop for so long that she'd forgotten Rome's attitude towards reprisal?

'What I do with my land and who I employ is my business, not some busybody's in a city, who has never set foot on this peninsula.'

Salome leaned forward and fixed her visitor with her penetrating green eyes.

'I inherited this farm legally, I retain legal title, I pay my taxes, I worship Roman gods and I have a bust of the Emperor on display.'

That? Claudia glanced at the ugly bull-necked image, about as far removed from the handsome, lean, athletic Augustus as a man could get, and thought, hell, he'd have her thrown to the lions just for the insult.

'How did you meet your husband?' she asked, changing the subject.

'Stephanus?'

Something inside Salome seemed to melt.

'Well, the first thing you have to remember is that I was only sixteen at the time and the second thing you need to know is that we Syrian girls aren't anywhere near as worldly as you Romans.'

Her gaze fixed on a point on the wall and many years back in the past.

'Anyway, this particular day, a soldier knocked, wanting to see my mother about a wound he'd sustained on the training ground that hadn't healed. This wasn't unusual. No disrespect, my dear, but your army surgeons can set bones, remove arrowheads and stitch flesh to perfection, but they don't know spit about herbs. However, this day my mother was out delivering a baby, so I offered to lance his festering wound.'