Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

It was the same when she introduced her to Lora. A message, a warning — this time with the stressing of Claudia's name.

'What I wouldn't give to have a waist like yours as slender as the neck of an amphora,' Claudia replied, noting that Bonni's hands, interestingly enough, had already disappeared under the table.

'I know what I wanted to ask you,' Salome said. Attagirl, change the subject. 'How's the restoration of the Marcian aqueduct coming along?'

Claudia brought her up to date, as dishes of mullet in mustard sauce appeared on the table alongside shrimps swimming in garlic, asparagus spears, lobster rissoles with chives and a selection of spicy, smoked sausages.

'I often wonder if that old Nubian sword swallower's still fooling the crowd outside the basilica.' Silas's gnarled but nimble fingers prised a mussel out of its shell. 'By Gannymede, that old fraud must have made a fortune.'

'Tell you who else made a mint, me lovely,' Nairn said, and if Silas minded her large breasts pressing against him, he manfully refrained from pointing it out. 'That line walker on the Field of Mars.'

When she pushed her corkscrew curls out of her face, two feathers fluttered gently to the floor.

'Every morning he'd dance, I tell you, across a tightrope stretched between two trees, and he'd be there all day, from when the sun rose until it set. Is he still there, me darling?' she asked Claudia.

'Oh yes,' she lied, and she'd been in Rome for eight years and had never seen such a performer. 'Sometimes he dances with a small dog in his arms, as well.'

What colours were in fashion, Bonni wondered, her wide blue eyes drinking in with disbelief their guest's serviceable plain tunic. What hairstyles were in vogue, what style of gowns? Even Tobias stopped glowering long enough to ask whether the old fortune-teller on the corners of Fig and Pepper Street was still going strong, lord alive, she must be eighty-five if she's a day.

So many questions about Rome! Why the sudden interest, she wondered, because most of their queries were distorted by memory or else several years out of date, though the questions suggested they knew the city well. Could it really be that simple? That Rome was the common denominator on this farm? As she brought the group up to date on the latest exotic animals to find their way to the navel of the Empire, creatures like black and white striped horses and fuzzy beasts with two humps on their back and the obnoxious tendency to spit, Claudia was not getting the impression that these were simply reunited friends sitting round a table.

'D'you intend to marry the King, then?' Silas didn't even look up from the chunk of herb bread he was pulling apart.

The sudden switch in conversation caught her completely off her guard, and she wiped an invisible dribble of sauce from her mouth to buy time.

'Much depends on what happens when I meet him, I suppose.'

'Really?' The old man glanced at Salome and frowned. 'I thought it was all cut and dried-'

'More wine, Silas?' Salome asked, silencing him with a smile.

Claudia pretended not to notice. Instead, she rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward.

'What do you make of the King, Silas?'

'Don't have an opinion either way, love.' But the old man refused to meet her gaze. 'I'm too old to concern myself with politics. My job's pruning apple trees and fanning out the peaches, making sure the apricots don't catch the blight.'

'Now, I find that surprising,' she said, spearing a prawn floating in rich garlic sauce. 'Because if the King gets his way and does stamp out Salome's reforms, your job, as indeed everyone else's on this farm, will go. Doesn't that bother you, Silas?' She beamed a sunny smile round the entire group. 'Doesn't it bother any of you?'

'It bothers me.'

'Lora, please don't start on that again,' Salome said firmly. 'How many times do I have to tell you, your father-in-law has no jurisdiction over me or my land. My husband was given this farm by the Emperor. I'm a Roman citizen, I inherited it legally, I retain legal title, I pay my taxes, I worship Roman gods, and, dear me, it's no one else's business what I get up to on my own property. Am I correct, Claudia?'

And you have a bust of the Emperor on display,' she said sweetly.

Salome must be slipping: she'd missed Augustus off the list — or rather, script. Well prepared and well rehearsed, the widow's mistake was to quote it verbatim, which draws more attention, not less. However, the most interesting point was that, last time, she used the same script about Rome!

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.

Now she'd turned it on its head to use it against the Histrian King, and suddenly Claudia realized there was another death to add to her list. Stephanus, Salome's soldier husband, who would have been — what? — just forty-four when he died.

'Excuse me.'

She'd just noticed a creature little more than a child fingering the edge of one of her richly embroidered flounces. The overlap for the girdle would look ridiculous when worn in high society, the girl being at least a handspan shorter than Claudia, but her hair was thick, dark and wavy, and once tied up Roman-style with a few silver brooches to reflect the torchlight, who among the escorts, eating and drinking away happily at the gate, would notice the difference? The girl proved not only a willing accomplice, she was the envy of her young Spanish peers and, seated at the margin of the May Feast, no one at Salome's table had the least interest in what happened to a bit of washing draped over a drying frame, not even frecklefaced Mo. Thus, invisible in her working tunic, Claudia worked her way back to the table.

'Don't you think you're imagining this, me darling?' Naim was saying.

'No, I bloody don't,' she heard Tobias growl. 'That bitch is a spy.'

Spy? Claudia stepped two paces back into the shadows. Bitch…?

'Surely she's far too high-status to be a spy?' Bonni countered.

'And that's the beauty of it,' Tobias snapped. 'They think we couldn't possibly suspect the King's would-be bride.'

'Like the Divine Julius's wife, she'd be above reproach, you mean?'

'Exactly, Bonni.'

'Sounds a bit far-fetched, lad.' Silas added his voice of reason to the argument. 'If they wanted to send a spy, they'd have put a girl in undercover.'

'They've already tried that once, me lovely.' Naim rested a plump hand on the old man's arm and patted gently. 'Remember that little Cretan girl, the one with the squint?'

Silas buried his head in his hands and groaned. 'We shouldn't have let our guard down there,' he said. 'We should have sent her back.'

The hairs on Claudia's neck started to prickle. There was a cold chill down her spine.

'Well, we didn't and that's one spy they won't be seeing again,' Tobias said with disturbing finality.

'What is you suggesting for Claudia, Tobi?' The little laundress was close to tears.

'What do you bloody think?' Lora snapped back. 'We keep on being nice to her, show her anything and everything the nosy bitch wants to see, and let the blushing bride think we're stupid. And then…'

When she snapped her fingers, Claudia's knees turned to aspic. If only she'd had a phial of the sedative she'd slipped the little woodpecker the other night, she'd use it now to drug the guards and make good her escape. Her head began to pound. Croesus, why hadn't she done that in the first place? Why complicate the issue by playing bluff and doublebluff? But this was no time for recriminations. Right now she needed to 'My dear, I haven't thanked you for the good work you've done helping Broda to recover from the trauma of seeing Nosferatu.'

How long had Salome been standing there, she wondered. And why hadn't she realized before that the Syrian girl was missing from the group around the table?