Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

'Picking out a horse?'

'Would you have preferred it if I'd said cows?'

Further along the quayside, a cloth merchant from India rolled bale upon bale of jewel-coloured cottons over the flagstones, drawing gasps with each imaginative dye, and an Arabian sea captain tossed back a flagon of wine. You could always tell the Arabians. They shaved the whole of their head, apart from a circular mop on the top. Tough luck, she supposed, if you were an Arabian who went bald. The captain tossed back another full flagon — he was obviously on for a bet — and now the auctioneers were taking their place on the bench with the King, fortifying themselves with a glass of strong wine before the haggling started in earnest.

'I presume your intention was to mingle unobtrusively?'

Claudia said nothing, since to state the obvious was to waste breath.

'Black suits you,' he said. 'Plus, you don't look half so ballsy with your hair down.'

'Black makes me look like a crow,' she retorted, 'and I look ballsy with my hair up or down. And now that we've dispensed with the flattery, can we cut to the chase, please?'

There was something different about him this morning, she decided. He looked… well, not like when he retreated to the house at day break, that's for sure! Then, his brows were knitted tighter than the stitching on a saddle blanket and he seemed bowed by the cares of the world. But now, within the space of a couple of hours, no prisoner given a last-minute stay of execution could have a broader grin etched between his ears. Orbilio seemed younger, happier, taller, lighter — as though he was floating on air for some reason and, though it was an odd thing to say about a man built like a gladiator and towering several inches above her, he looked weightless this morning. Dear Diana, if she lived to be a hundred, she'd never understand aristocrats.

'Two things,' he said. 'One, I thought you might be interested in hearing Orbilio's Great Hypothesis concerning the young physician and Rosmerta's encounter with a roof tile.'

'You thought wrong.'

'No, please, I beg you to curb your impatience, madam! But before I let you prise my conclusions out of me-'

'Prize conclusions from the Security Police is a contradiction in terms.'

'-I want to talk about something you said when you were declining the King's proposal last night.'

'News travels fast.'

'Not as fast as it travels when one listens at keyholes, but that's not the point. I-'

'Attention, please.'

The order was amplified thanks to a bronze trumpet which had been sawn off half a cubit up from its mouth.

'Would all remaining brides gather in the area outlined in chalk.'

Claudia snorted. Whatever you call it, it was still a cattle pen.

'That means you, dear,' the trumpet added.

Claudia looked over her shoulder.

'Yes, you, miss. Come along.'

She still couldn't see who they meant. Then her shoulder-blades received a jolt.

'Don't be shy, dearie,' an old hag cackled, shoving her forward. 'Yer a pretty gal, someone'll soon snap yer up.'

'Me?'

She spun round, but there was no spotless white toga in sight, and now she was being propelled through the crowd at such speed that her feet were barely touching the ground.

'Let go of me, you son-of-a-bi-'

'Mistress Seferius.'

Mazares's smile was more wolfish than ever.

'I hadn't expected you to indulge so wholeheartedly in our customs, but since you've decided to join us, perhaps we could start the bidding this morning with you?'

'Dammit,' she hissed. 'He put me up to this.'

Twin fireballs scorched the spotless patrician tunic sitting beside him. Orbilio grinned happily while the girl who had been deemed the prettiest of the prospective brides glowered daggers at the interloper who was now setting off the auction instead of her, snapping up the richest husband for herself, the scheming bitch.

The auctioneer's hammer tapped twice. 'Any bids?'

'Three thousand sesterces,' Orbilio said, as the steward dragged Claudia into the arena and paraded her like a prize bull.

'Three thousand?' the crowd gasped.

They were used to dealing in hundreds.

'Three thousand?' Claudia protested.

Sweet Janus, his tailoring bill cost less than that.

'Quite right,' Marcus told the auctioneer. 'Make it two thousand five hundred.'

The crowd laughed.

'So help me, Orbilio, I will kill you,' she vowed under her breath.

'Believe me, it's for your own safety,' he hissed back through his grin.

'This is degrading, humiliating and utterly outrageous.'

'Agreed, but not dangerous. Oh, very well,' he called across to the auctioneer. 'Two thousand, but that's my final offer.'

The whole quayside had doubled up and were wiping their eyes.

'Stop!'

The laughter stopped abruptly and all heads turned towards the woman who had grabbed the trumpet from the unsuspecting flunky's hand and was marching purposefully into the square.

'Mazares, I insist you stop this monstrous ritual at once!'

The speaker was dressed head to foot in white robes, but it wasn't her protest that made people draw breath. Rather that her features were elfin and her hair fell down her back in walnut cascades.

'Lora!'

Mazares was off the podium and into the plaza in the blink of an eye.

'Lora, how are you, my dear? Are you well? Are you happy?'

His reaction completely wrong-footed his daughter-in-law. The set of her chin suggested she'd been expecting anger and reproach, a fight to avoid the armed guards, yet the King's sole concern was for Lora's welfare, and it occurred to Claudia that, for all her rantings against him, what that girl wanted to do was throw her arms around Mazares and hug him. But rebels have an obligation to their cause and, behind her, a whole swarm of women in white were pushing their way through the astonished crowd. Plump smiling Naim was among them, Claudia noticed, and freckle-faced Mo, and the Nordic beauty was there, too. Bonni, the girl with white hair and black fingers, which Claudia now knew to be ink stains, thus making her the forger in Salome's racket. And amazingly, surging forward with purpose, there was Jarna, the tanner's wife, the fresh bruising round her eye clearly the catalyst for her change of heart. Noting the frowns of uncertainty which had begun to ripple over her followers' faces, Lora cleared her throat and spoke authoritatively into the trumpet.

'These archaic auctions cannot go on,' she announced. 'It's time we women had a say in our own future and I say, it's up to us, who we choose for our husbands. It's us who decide who's good enough to sire our sons…'

In the riot that erupted, Claudia found it very easy to slip back into the crowd as Lora urged women to stop being door mats, to accept that they had rights equal to their menfolk, and to damn well start using them.

'Don't let yourselves be sold off to useless lumps of gristle and fat, just because they happen to be rich! Don't sacrifice love because it's what your mothers did and their mothers before them! Now is the time to stand up for yourselves, girls! Take what's yours by right and say no to this abomination that passes for marriage!'

'Hisssssss.'

'Hurrah!'

'Booooo.'

'And what might a young grieving widow's opinion of those sentiments be, I wonder?' a baritone rumbled in Claudia's ear.

'I condemn them entirely,' she replied tartly, because he was still the Security Police, and the Security Police, as everyone knows, never sleep.

'Just as I thought.'

Mazares was doing his best to calm the upsurge that had gripped both sexes with passion, but, King or no King, he lacked the tactical advantage of Lora's metal trumpet, meaning it was his daughter-in-law's exhortations that rang over the crowd.