Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

The woman indicated the tots sitting white-lipped beside her. 'Where would we go?' she asked wearily.

'You can come here.' Salome rubbed in a cream made from balm of Gilead and calendula to relieve the pain. 'I've told you time and again, Jarna, any time, day or night, my doors are open.' She ruffled the youngest child's head. 'Look, you two. Why don't you go and collect some eggs for your mother?'

Two pale faces looked at each other, then nodded.

Salome called, 'Naim?' and immediately a jolly, big-busted girl with corkscrew curls poked her head round the door.

'That's me,' she quipped to Claudia, with a broad wink. 'A rose by any other Naim.'

The feathers in her hair proclaimed her as Amazonia's poultry queen, and she would have been as plain as a pudding had it not been for the broad smile on her face.

'Now, what can I be doing for you, me lovely?' she asked Salome.

'I was hoping you might help this pair of tots hunt down some eggs for their supper.'

'Sure, me darlings.' Naim scooped a child under each ample arm. 'Sure we can, but if you're wanting to hunt 'em, we'd best find you some bows and arrows first, hadn't we?'

She led her two chuckling charges into the yard.

'Or would you rather be attacking them eggs with a spear?'

Salome waited until the giggles were well clear of the treatment room.

'Right then, Jarna.' She wiped her hands down the side of her gown as though it was an old apron. 'Lora tells me you're pregnant.'

The tanner's wife gulped and stared at her hands.

Salome wasn't a girl to go beating round bushes. 'If you want to keep the baby, Jarna, you're going to have to leave that vicious husband of yours before he kills it with his fists.

Assuming she proceeded to prod Jarna's stomach with expert fingers — 'he hasn't done so already.'

'He hasn't, has he?' What little colour was left in Jarna's cheeks drained to white.

'No. No, thank Jehovah, he hasn't, but we both know he will. Lora, mix an infusion of cinnamon and ginger, will you, dear? That'll ease any morning sickness and Lora will also give you a supply of marsh-mallow poultices for the swellings.'

'Should I add a phial of hyssop oil for the bruises?' Lora asked over her shoulder.

'Good idea.' Salome helped Jarna back into her clothes. 'Now think about what I've said, my dear, and remember. My house is always open to you.'

'Thank you.' From her purse, Jarna pulled out her only coin.

'Save it,' Salome said, pushing it back. 'Buy some clothes for the children before he drinks it away.'

'You and the tanner have much in common,' Claudia observed after Jarna had gone.

'How so?' Salome didn't seem particularly rattled by the comparison.

'Neither of you pulls your punches,' she said. 'And I get your point about there being no money in medicine around here.'

'We do all right,' Salome assured her. As long as I make sufficient to cover my costs, I'm happy, really I am, but listen! That's the lunch horn. Please say you'll stay.'

Tempting…

'I can't,' Claudia told her.

'I quite understand.' Salome nodded. 'Mazares is waiting.'

Now why on earth would she think that? Claudia wondered, as she waited for the ferry to take her back to Rovin. That there was something between them was in little doubt, and she couldn't forget the intensity of the surge when they bumped into each other by accident. Both recovered quickly, but Claudia knew that if either Salome or Mazares had been prepared for such a meeting, their reactions would have been very different indeed.

As the ferryman pulled on the ropes, she stared into the dark, oily waters. The very depth of the channel made for currents that were as dangerous as they were unpredictable, and the undertow was deadly in every sense of the word. Next to the landing, a marble shrine, hung with dozens of red mourning ribbons, testified to the fate of those who'd attempted to swim the quarter mile out of folly, drunkenness, necessity or bravado, and a flame burned day and night in supplication to Vinja, the fire-breathing sea monster who protected the island but who also made his home in this channel, devouring any unfortunates who came his way.

A dread feeling in Claudia's stomach told her that Raspor was one of his victims.

How sad that the beauty of Rovin was disfigured by tragedy. Gazing across waters so clear that you could dress yourself in their reflection, to the evergreen archipelago that shimmered under an azure sky, it was hard to imagine heartbreak in this oasis of cypress and cedar. Claudia's eyes followed the necklace of long, curving beaches that encased coral lagoons swarming with turtles and shellfish, then turned her head towards the mainland, to the fertile paradise of vineyards and olive groves, pastures and meadows, which stretched away to serene rolling hills in the distance. Beyond those lay the mountains of Kotar, a region of dense forests and snow-covered peaks which was home to predators such as wolf, bear and lynx. An untamed wilderness of sparkling rivers, deep lakes and rushing cascades, where icy caverns led down to the bowels of the earth and the caves in the hills were patterned with the handprints of men long since dead.

A self-contained kingdom. Magical, beautiful, thick with secrets and primeval wisdom, where jackals prowled, chamois jumped and pinewoods marched down to the edge of the sea.

Right now, their resinous perfume mingled with myrtle and wild oleander, with the smells of fish from the boats, and from cooking, as the island women busily prepared their menfolk's dinners. There was no poverty here, Claudia reflected. In Rome there was poverty. It hit you on every street corner, but here, in this far-flung outpost, there was none. So who would want to undermine what the late King, Dol, and his successor had worked so hard to achieve? Did they believe they could do any better? Or were the motives, as she suspected, venal…?

'I saw him, too,' a small voice piped up alongside. 'I saw Nosferatu, and nobody believes me, either. Not even my mother.'

Her hair was as glossy and black as a raven's, and her face was as white as this island's stone.

'I'm Broda,' she said, 'and I'm eight summers old, and my uncle built that boat, and that one, and that one.'

'He must be a very clever man.' Claudia's heart lurched at the hollowed eyes of one so small, at the tunic that billowed around her skeletal frame.

'What about your father?' she asked. 'Is he clever, too?'

Shutters came down over her haunted eyes. 'I have to go now.'

'No, wait!'

Please don't go.

'Why don't we play hopscotch together?'

With a pebble, she scratched squares on the pavement, then numbered them. Troubled eyes widened in wonder.

'You've never played hopscotch, Broda? Then prepare to learn from an expert.'

Claudia threw the pebble and hopped.

'Your turn.'

An hour passed, by which time both of them were wheezing like rusty bellows, though there was colour in Broda's cheeks and a healthy sparkle in her hollow eyes.

'Do you know any other games?' she asked, panting.

'Knucklebones, dice, soldiers, twelve lines — I can show you them all, if you like.'

'I like, I like!'

Proof that you're never too young to pick up a gambling habit.

'Can I come back tomorrow?'

'Whenever you want, Broda. Whenever you want.'

She watched the child skip away, then continued along the shore until she reached the spot where the noose had lashed round Raspor's trusting neck. Knowing Mazares had killed him was one thing. Proving it, quite another. Especially in light of her testimony being dismissed as the unfortunate consequence of a hastily prepared asinine sedative!

Sitting down on the warm rocks, she rested her chin on her knees and concentrated on the azure horizon and the terns that swooped and dived in its translucent waters. A small cat, not dissimilar to the kitten Lora had been tickling this morning, chased its own tail then scampered off in search of meatier prey, and now it was the scent of cypress and juniper that drifted across on the breeze.