Marilyn Todd: Dark Horse

Rome was hot.

So hot, that one flimsy shift was one too many.

So hot, that if the Tiber began to steam, no one would blink.

Biting flies moved in, little black things with long proboscises and big brown brutes with even longer ones. The overwhelming stench of sewage was everywhere. There were no festivals to compensate for the sweltering heat. No Games, no processions, no theatres, no nothing.

But for Claudia Seferius, the Tiber could boil and it would be cool compared to her current predicament. Bastards! Thought they could drive her out of business, did they? Over her dead body! The vegetable market was packing up as she cut a diagonal path across the cobbles. No shade in the market place at this time of day. Shadows would not fall from the Palatine Hill for another four hours and those cast by the Capitol had already passed over.

'Nice sprig of fragrant mint, lady,' an enterprising trader offered, 'to counteract the river pong?'

Sweat poured down his face to drip off his chin but not, Juno be praised, on to his herbs.

'How kind,' she said, sweeping the bouquet out of his hand as she passed.

Ordinarily, Claudia would have had her litter take her to the Field of Mars, but for the job she had to do today, the less attention drawn to her presence the better. Slip in, slip out, don't get noticed. Impossible in a litter draped in turquoise and silver, shouldered by eight hunks in matching tunics!

Skirting mushy cucumbers and mouldy marrows, limp lettuce leaves and slimy beans, she made her way to the river. No chance of getting noticed down here. The wharves were busier than a wasps' nest being smoked out. Barrels and amphorae rumbled over the flagstones, sacks were tossed down from the gangplanks. Lions in crates, camels in ropes, great blocks of marble were swung on to the dock; ungreased pulleys whined out their protest. Stevedores shouted up to workers in the towering warehouses in an air thick with everything from spices to hemp, cedar to salt fish. The mint came in jolly handy down by the bridge. A dead dog had got stuck under one of the piers, where its bloated corpse was happily being prodded by a group of boys with a stick.

From the tumult of the quayside, Claudia merged with the crowd heading for the Field of Mars. Official festivities might be thin on the ground, but Rome's entrepreneurial spark was alive and well in the form of privately organized horse races on the flat belt of grassland in the bend of the Tiber. Nothing like the chariot races in the Circus Maximus, of course, but they were no less serious a business. Already rival supporters, their legs and faces painted in their team colours, were goading each other. Fists were only an insult away.

In the officials' enclosure, vets inspected hooves and ears as grooms plaited the horses' manes and tails and wove in the team ribbons, and flustered clerks shored up last-minute changes to the programme. Who, among the jockeys flexing their joints and pulling on rawhide gloves and the harnessmen adjusting the reins, paid attention to a young woman in a simple pale-grey linen gown? Claudia slipped through to where the horses for the third race were tethered. Easy to pretend you're studying the thoroughbreds as you feed one a handful of grain…

'Now there's a sight I never thought I'd see,' a rich baritone murmured in her ear. 'Claudia Seferius looking a gift horse in the mouth.'

Above the acid tang of the dung, she smelt sandalwood overlaid with a faint hint of the rosemary in which his long patrician tunic had been rinsed. A. k.a. the scent of the hunter.

'Beats looking at the other end,' she said airily. 'Still, as I've always said, Orbilio, one good nag deserves another. Here you go.'

She stuffed the little blue cotton sack of grain into his hands and turned on her heel.

'Don't leave on my account.' His tone was mild. Particularly for someone who'd stepped in front of her and blocked her exit. 'The second race is barely under starter's orders. Or are you telling me you've given up gambling in favour of opening a stud farm?'

'Tut, tut, Orbilio. I would have thought that the Security Police know gambling's illegal.'

His gaze skimmed the betting tables, where coins and bronze vouchers were changing hands like the cards in find the lady. 'Obviously, were I to see evidence of such nefarious activities, I would be duty bound to report it,' he said, and was it the sunshine or was there a twinkle in his eye? 'Oh, look, they're leading the horses out for the third race.'

'So soon?' Bugger.

'A group of supporters rushed on to the track during the second race, so the steward's had to abandon it. Why don't we see if this one is as exciting?'

There was no arguing with the hand which had slipped under her elbow and was steering her firmly towards the course, a euphemism for the rather rough and ready arrangement of two wooden posts driven into the grass six hundred paces apart. A dozen four-year-old mares were already jostling against the starting rope, fresh, skittish, eager to run.

'No cheating, no holding back,' the course steward announced through his speaking trumpet. 'Any hint of match fixing results in instant disqualification. Anyone who runs on to the track this time or throws missiles to put the horses off gets an automatic one-hundred-sesterces fine.'

'Booo!' the crowd yelled, although Claudia noticed that several stones plopped surreptitiously to the ground.

'White Star to win,' Orbilio said, folding his arms confidently across his chest.

'Didn't I hear someone say she was the favourite?'

'Your bookie, probably.'

Damn right. Owned by Hylas the Greek, White Star would knock spots off the rest. These weren't the top runners you saw in the Circus Maximus, but horses for courses, as they say. Today's entrants were trained especially to compete on rough grass rather than a smooth running track, and when it came to breeding winners for these provincial derbies, Hylas the Greek was second to none.

'What's a bookie?' she asked.

Up went the rope. Up went the cheers. Up went a cloud of divots and dust.

'Come on, White Star!' cried the crowd.

'Come on, White Star!' cried Marcus Cornelius.

Claudia yawned and pretended to study her nails. Come on, come on, you stupid nag. From under lowered lashes, she followed White Star as the mare thundered up the track, turning at the post neck and neck with her rival, Calypso. Back they thundered, then another tight turn and back up. Faster, you clot, she urged the jockey, what do you think spurs are for? The rest of the field started to trail. Five times they'd turned now. Still Calypso and White Star kept pace. Six laps. Seven… Her knuckles clenched white. Only the final length left.

'Calypso!' the race judge called. 'Calypso by a head!'

Across the enclosure, she noticed Hylas's thickly greased curls jerk up fast. He muttered something to one of his flunkies. The flunky's eyes scanned the crowd. A finger pointed. To a woman in a pale-grey linen gown.

'Well, this has been absolutely fascinating,' she said, as Hylas beckoned over a couple of heavies. 'But I really must be off now, Marcus. Things to do, you know, places to go ^- '

'People to annoy?' Beside her, the tall, dark patrician with the wavy hair grinned. 'And to think you haven't even asked me what I'm working on.'

'The usual Security Police heroics, I imagine.' Unmasking killers, rooting out assassins, keeping the Empire stable.

'Those, too,' he said, falling into step as she pushed her way through the crowd. 'But I'm keeping my eye on a couple of other things at the moment.'

Me too. They're about six feet five, weigh three hundred pounds each and have muscles where most people have brains. Juno be praised, they had reached the road at last.