Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

Unfortunately, his boss was not exaggerating. The numbers didn't lie, and if this case did come to court, it would attract the highest profile of any seen before in Rome. Such would be the passions raised that civil unrest would be unleashed, sweeping through the city, the suburbs, the whole bloody Empire, with unimaginable — and unpredictable — consequences.

It was absolutely right that the matter be drawn to the Emperor's personal attention, just as it was necessary to be absolutely certain before charging in head first, and he was right to volunteer for the job of gathering the evidence. Even his boss agreed, albeit reluctantly, that his patrician blood made him the best man to do it.

But Orbilio had a bad feeling about this case.

A very, very bad feeling about this case.

The body of the royal physician had been carried back to Gora with as much pomp and ceremony as was possible with a corpse that was missing seven fingers, one left foot and half its thigh bone. Despite the ravages of foxes, lynx and crows, identification was made possible by the distinctive gold amulet still wrapped around his arm, and also by the scattering of medical instruments and personal possessions recovered later from the ravine by the army, the operation overseen by a tribune from Rome in his first year of overseas service.

The tribune might have been young, but he was conscientious. He made a thorough inspection of the valley, of the slope, of the slippery scree at the top of the hill, examined the breaks and fractures of the dead man's bones and then made his report.

It was obvious, he concluded, that, while on his way to Rovin, the royal physician had lost his footing, either in the dark or in the rain, and had tumbled down the forested hillside, sustaining injuries that, if they didn't kill him outright, would have rendered it impossible for him to crawl back up for help. Without access to his own medications and without appropriate clothing (the tribune made a special note of the drop in temperature at night in the interior this time of year), the royal physician's death was ruled a tragic accident.

The tribune also took the opportunity to emphasize in a postscript the dangers of people travelling alone.

And that would have been that, had it not been for an equally young, equally conscientious member of the royal physician's team. He, too, concluded that the bone breaks were consistent with a fall down a hillside, and that such injuries could cause coma and death, assuming exposure hadn't claimed the victim first. But the young doctor had a keen eye. He noticed that the distinctive little bone in the throat called the hyoid was broken. There was no reason to suggest this hadn't happened during the physician's tumble. A root or branch slamming into his adam's apple. Equally, though, this injury was consistent with strangulation, and a far more likely scenario, in the young doctor's opinion.

The question is, who could he tell?

Nosferatu couldn't give a stuff.

'Are you sure about wearing a simple tunic, my dear?'

Claudia dismissed Salome's concern with a wave of her hand. 'This is fine, really it is.' More accurately, it was perfect!

'Maybe your own robe will be dry in time for the feast?' Though the clouds of concern in her green eyes and the flatness of her tone suggested otherwise.

'Don't worry, Salome.' Claudia gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. 'It was my own fault, falling in the pigsty like that, and you said yourself, these tunics are awfully comfy.' Question: Where's the best place to hide a pebble? Answer: On the beach.

Therefore, in order to become one more anonymous Amazon, Claudia needed to ditch her expensive robe for rough work clothes without arousing suspicion, and there was a comforting irony in using her jailer to open the doors of her prison. Unfortunately, Mazares would never know he was the instrument of his own downfall; that it was his pig, his payment for the baskets of flowers, that allowed Claudia to weave her plan. But it had to be the pigsty she 'fell' in, because, yes, a rinsed robe might dry in time for the feast, draped over the circular drying frame. But those stains, bless their hearts, would never come out. My, my, she couldn't sit down to dinner like that.

As a tiny freckle-faced creature scrubbed the mucky marks with sage leaves, the sun slowly dipped below the far horizon and the Nymphs of the West trekked home from the fields, their skirts kilted up to their knees, their rakes and bill hooks over their shoulders. Back in Rome, the advent of May was celebrated with gladiatorial games, the bouts interspersed with salacious stripteases performed by state prostitutes in affirmation of the old life-and-death cliche, with the whole event culminating in a torch-lit procession. From the totem dances of the northern tribes, in which they bound winter to a tree with ribbons as they danced to the festival of Zeltane, in which Summer triumphed over Winter, day over night, life over death, such rites were universal. In Amazonia, the only thing that marked the passing of one season to another was that the feast was held at night, rather than during the daytime.

The lovely Salome could protest all she liked, but these were not normal customs. This was not a normal farm.

'You haven't met Mo, have you?'

The soldier's widow wriggled up to allow the little frecklefaced laundress to join the group.

'Her name is Modestina,' she added. 'Mo for short.'

'It is very sorry,' the newcomer told Claudia earnestly, 'but without bleachy it is no rubbing of those stains out.'

She smiled. The last thing she needed was someone to keep plugging away at the stains. Dammit, the whole idea was to persuade some gullible young Amazon to parade round in her Roman robe when it was dry, so that by the time her armed escort realized that it wasn't the Lady Claudia they were keeping their eye on, she'd have gone to ground. But no one, not even a girl who'd never felt cotton next to her skin, much less a lavish gown, would want to try on a soggy cold frock!

'Never mind the bleachy,' she told Mo. 'I'll have the robe unpicked and made into a nightshift.'

Mo's freckles warmed to this suggestion, since her laundry expertise lay in eliminating stains from fabrics such as woollens, felt and coarse linens. She haves no experience with them liddle pleaty things, Claudia added to herself, frills and flounces patently a black art to her, and the thought of tangling with the ironing-out of embroidery ruckled by soapy water too dire to even contemplate.

'Yes, yes, is wondergood idea,' Mo said. 'My bleachy only make green dye to run and lovely dress end up even biggy mess.'

'You mean piggy mess,' Silas chortled.

Equality had broken down all barriers between gender, age and class, with the result that everyone sat where and with whom they liked, though most of the Amazons spoke little or poor Latin and tended, therefore, to cluster in knots of their own native language speakers. The group seated round Salome's table was different. Silas, the elderly expert in fruit production, had a pronounced Athenian twang. Mo's accent placed her from somewhere in southern Gaul. Scowling Tobias had a rolling Macedonian brogue, Nairn she put north of Galatia and Lora's soft Illyrian burr was unmistakable. And now there was another one joining the league of nations round the Syrian's table!

'Sorry I'm late, everyone.'

This Amazon's hair was so fair that it was almost white, her skin as pale and translucent as alabaster. Which probably explained why the black stains on her fingers stood out so clearly.

'Only, that last one was a bugger. I thought I'd never get the handwriting-'

'My dear, this is Barribonea,' Salome said, cutting the girl short. 'Except we call her Bonni, and with very good reason, don't you think, Claudia?'