Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

They've already tried that once, me lovely, she'd said. Remember that little Cretan girl, the one with the squint?

Silas had buried his head in his hands. We shouldn't have let our guards down, he'd said. We should have sent her back.

He knew. The old man was wise to the ways of the authorities.

He knew what would happen to the farm and the workers, if word of the Freedom Trail got back. And Tobias knew, too. Claudia recalled how the hairs on her neck had started to prickle when he gave his chilling response.

Well, we didn't, and that's one spy they won't be seeing again.

At the time, and in light of Orbilio's account, she'd feared the worst. But look at the man! Look at them all! These people weren't slogging their guts out day in and day out for money, or glory, or power. The farm just about ticked over, because all the profits of their hard labour were being ploughed back to give runaways a new life and a new identity. The masters were working harder than any slave and they were doing it out of love, not for greed. Idealists the lot of them, and Claudia shook her head in despair at their naivety and ignorance. Love, she thought, as Salome came running back with pells of parchment stuffed under her arms, has much to answer for.

'Where is she?' she asked. 'Where's the little Cretan girl, the one with a squint?'

Salome slanted a glance at Tobias. 'Athens, isn't it?'

His springy curls nodded as he tossed the statements into the flames. 'Running a brothel the last we heard.'

'And making more than us, that's for sure,' Salome laughed, pushing her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. 'But Lora — dear me, Lora was furious, wasn't she, Tobi? "Another example of the exploitation of women!'" she mimicked.

Tobias, of course, didn't smile.

'I don't know why she was so insistent that I shouldn't go with her this morning,' he muttered. 'It's bound to turn ugly, a bunch of women rising up against the establishment and disrupting the marriage auction. I should have been there for her, Salome. Stepped in and helped her escape.'

'Well, my dear, there are two things,' Salome said. 'Firstly, Lora doesn't want to escape. She intends to meet Mazares head on in this matter, and the other, of course, is that she doesn't want you rotting in jail.'

Her nose was black from smuts.

'Don't you see, Tobi? Don't you understand why Lora refuses to return to Histrian society?'

'She was worried she'd be palmed off with Mazares, just like her mother-in-law. She's said so many times.'

Salome rolled her cat-like green eyes. 'Yes, but why do you think she's so passionate about women marrying who they want, not who they're told to? It's because of you, you bone-head!'

'Me? Salome, I swear I've never given that girl any encouragement.'

'Then it's about time you bloody well did, because Lora's no fool. She's seen how you look at her — which reminds me.'

She turned to Claudia.

'How did Mazares take the news when you declined his proposal?'

Mazares, Mazares, always Mazares. Claudia felt the world spin. How on earth was she going to tell this poor woman, who had already seen one ideal crushed, that it was Mazares all along…?

But tell her she would have to. How it was Mazares who was looking to create new out of old and eliminate the stale bloodline. No one was better placed to be more Roman than Mazares and no one, as Claudia had said many times, had greater opportunity and motive. Killers like Nosferatu don't have the same thought processes as everyone else, she would have to explain. He'd have viewed the murder of his own wife and kids as nothing more than eliminating obstacles in his path, and how easy — oh how easy — to make these things appear accidents.

The trouble was, Salome was so in love with Mazares that although she could grapple with the imperial stance on her Freedom Trail, hearing monstrous accusations levelled against the man who, in her mind, was purer than pure, meant that Claudia would have to tread carefully. So, as the next batch of incriminating documents were piled on the flames, she outlined the plot that was poised to tip Histria over its finely balanced edge, and thanked Jupiter that Orbilio was by the King's side, making certain that no more innocent lives could be taken.

When she finished, the silence was almost interminable and, surprisingly, it was Tobias who broke it.

'Funnily enough, Lora suspected as much,' he said. 'She told me that she believed her husband had been murdered, and she never accepted that her mother-in-law committed suicide. That's why she sought refuge here in the first place. She feared she was next.'

'Delmi not take her own life?' Salome tutted, her lovely brows drawn in a frown. 'Lora loved her dearly, I know, so I can see how she might want to believe that, but, dear me, her husband murdered by dog? Anyway, our Lora's never been a girl for not speaking her mind. If she feared there was a killer on the loose, she would have broadcast the fact.'

'Not necessarily,' Claudia said. 'She already believed that her presence here was the cause of the farm's rape and pillage, yet she stayed on. Now, Lora doesn't strike me as a coward. If she thought she could stop the destruction, she would have left. There had to be another, more compelling reason to keep her here.'

'Yes. Tobias was one, and her commitment to the Freedom Trail was another.'

'Actually, Salome, there might be a third.' Tobias looked troubled. 'She did say-' he gulped and looked from one woman to the other and back — 'Lora did say that she wondered, well, if Mazares himself wasn't behind it.'

Claudia could have kissed him.

Not so Salome.

'I have never heard such nonsense in my entire life! The King is a good man, Tobias. He is honest and fair and does right by his people, the notion is utterly ridiculous.'

She bundled her loose hair into a bun to calm herself down.

'Now then, Claudia, you never did tell me how he took the news of your refusal.' Green eyes glared daggers at Tobias's betrayal. 'How is he, poor man?'

This was going to be tougher than Claudia thought.

'Don't you worry about Mazares,' she said, forcing a smile. 'If you must know, he got horribly drunk and I left him trying to nail his eyeballs back into focus and stop the tingling in his mouth from spreading any further over his face. Tobias, did Lora voice her suspicions to anyone else?'

'Yes, I think she told Pavan-'

'Tingling?' Salome grabbed hold of both Claudia's wrists and the grip was stronger than steel. 'Did you say he had tingling in his mouth that had spread to his face?'

'Yes,' she winced. 'But he-'

She tried to shake free, but Salome was like a woman possessed.

'It's monkshood, you ninny! The King's being poisoned, and if the symptoms have reached this stage…'

She was racing to the treatment room before she'd even finished the sentence.

For the first time, Nosferatu experienced a ripple of unease.

Nothing definite.

Nothing that one could put one's finger on and say, That's the thing, that's the cause of this unrest, let's get rid of it.

Only a vague fear that something was starting to unravel.

Claudia's footsteps echoed through the maze of marble corridors, and as she ran, the censure of every strange beast sculpted out of bronze or painted on the wall bored into her — dragons, griffons, serpent-tailed giants — and their anger was boundless. In the distance came a rumble of thunder. The storm had been building, yet Claudia could not shake off the notion that Perun's enmity had been stirred and that his wrath was to follow as surely as dusk follows day.

'Long before the tingling that starts in the mouth and spreads up the face', Salome had said, hurriedly packing a basket of remedies, 'Mazares would have experienced a general feeling of fatigue, of not being right.'