Marilyn Todd: Virgin Territory

How on earth was Claudia supposed to know Gaius’s fortune was tied up in property? Did he discuss his business? Did he confide in her? Did he ever so much as mention money to her? Did he hell! Instead of inheriting a shining pile of gold pieces there for the spending, Claudia was lumbered with a bloody great house in Rome, a vineyard and villa in the middle of nowhere and a wine merchant’s business that she knew bog-all about and cared even less for. It simply wasn’t fair. You marry a man for his money and he leaves you with this to sort out!

What Claudia Seferius knew about viniculture could be written on the back of…well, a vine leaf. I mean, what was there to know? Vines have thick, twisty stems, they throw out dark green leaves and lots of twiddly bits and at some stage they produce bunches of grapes to be picked by slaves who then trample them around in some buckety thing. Frankly, what happened between that and the filling of her glass was of no interest whatsoever. Yet within days of her husband’s funeral, Claudia had been swamped. Buyers to meet, contracts to honour, shipping to arrange-there was no end to it. Pricing, irrigation, pruning, manuring, it was enough to make a girl’s head spin and there was only one solution, really there was. The races.

There was a cry from the shrouds and a collective howl rose up from the men. Claudia spun round. A black rock rose high and jagged. White water seethed round it, breakers crashed into it. Over it. In the pellucid flash of Jupiter’s thunderbolt, each menacing spike showed clear, beckoning, beckoning…

‘Heave!’ the captain cried.

Every man threw his weight against the tiller.

‘Heave, men, heave!’

The little freighter plunged helplessly on, tossed by the wind and the force of the waves. Up she went. Teeter. And crash. Up and teeter and crash. Claudia’s nails gouged deep into the woodwork. They stood no chance! They were going to hit it! They were really going to hit it!

Then, with a sudden merciful lurch, Neptune relented and the ship, spinning in the current, missed that rock by the smallest whisker on earth. Claudia didn’t hear the cheers. She was too busy promising white bulls. To Jupiter the Storm Maker. To Neptune, lord of the sea. To the Tempestates, whose shrine stood just outside the Capena Gate. Anything they wanted was theirs. She was rich now. She could afford to be generous.

In fact the very first thing she’d determined was that Gaius had left in his moneybox a float of 23 gold pieces, 1 silver denarius, 835 sesterces, 6 asses and 12 quadrans. Hardly a fortune, but ample funds to finance the odd flutter. Her mouth twisted down at the corners. She ought to stop. Hadn’t she been taught a lesson once already?

Except the old excitement had taken hold, more and more with each wager-which in turn became heavier and heavier, wilder and wilder. The addiction was back. With a vengeance.

‘Boredom,’ she told herself.

And so rather than face up to the fact that the weight of her inheritance was too great and she simply couldn’t cope, Claudia immersed herself in the thrill of the chariot race, the combat of the gladiators. Here it was easy to ignore pressing commercial problems and decisions up at the farm. Here you could escape in-laws clamouring for a decent settlement. With breathtaking alacrity that liquid float turned itself into a paper deficit of over 700 sesterces, the equivalent of a labourer’s annual wage. Claudia sighed. It was true, the old saying. The best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one… Therefore that letter from Sicily, coming out of the blue, had been nothing short of a godsend.

One Eugenius Collatinus, an old friend of her husband, sends condolences to the grieving widow and invites her to stay with him and his family for as long as she needs. If, however, she does decide to visit, would she mind chaperoning his granddaughter, Sabina, returning home after thirty years’ service as a Vestal Virgin?

He lived just outside Sullium, he said, not far from Agrigentum. Claudia, who barely knew where Sicily was, much less Sullium, rooted out an ageing map etched on ox hide, blew the dust off and unrolled it. Triangular in shape and large enough to be a continent in itself, Sicily was plonked right in the middle of the Mediterranean and it wasn’t so much a bridge between warring nations as a breakwater. It was easy, now, to see how the province had become Rome’s first conquest. Where are we? Ah yes, there’s Agrigentum, on the south coast. So where’s, what’s it called, Sullium? Claudia’s finger trailed along the cracked surface of the hide until she found it. West of Agrigentum. Oh good. Right by the sea.

After that, the hard work had begun in earnest, but a thorough-and she meant thorough-search of Gaius’s business papers for transactions involving this Collatinus chappie came up empty-handed. There was nothing in his personal correspondence either.

But she did find something else.

Something very, very important.

Something which put her whole future in jeopardy…

Claudia lost no time winging off a reply along the lines of how she desperately needed to get away from Rome. Each street, each sound, each sight reminded her of poor, dear Gaius, taken before his time, she could not bear to stay here any longer.

As to chaperoning Sabina, she’d be delighted-and that, at least, was partly the truth. It was a damned prestigious role, Vesta’s priestess. Conspicuous in bridal dress, celibate and serene, these six women took prominent roles in many festivals and, like everyone else, Claudia was aware of the system. Every five years, after a thirty-year stint, the senior Vestal retires and the next oldest steps up to take her place. At the same time, a little novice, a specially invited initiate aged between six and ten, slips in at the bottom and the rota continues. Representing the daughters of an ancient king, they tend the hearth of Rome itself-and legend says should the sacred fire ever go out, the city will be destroyed for ever. Was it surprising they were held in such reverence?

Or, to put it bluntly, Eugenius Collatinus needed considerable clout to have got a granddaughter ordained and Claudia, for one, had no intention of letting a chance like that pass by.

She did everything that was necessary. She’d avoided her in-laws, evaded her debt collectors and commissioned a special cage for Drusilla, until finally the whole kit and caboodle had arrived at Ostia’s wharf last Tuesday by which time the captain’s ulcer was twitching badly. Another hour and the wind wouldn’t have been strong enough, he’d have had to set sail without her. After a smile that did more to neutralize his ulcer than half the limeflower infusions he guzzled down, she was ushered towards Sabina’s cabin with the respect and veneration associated everywhere with the Vestals.

‘How do you do?’ Sabina, smiling coyly, rose to meet her chaperone as the ship weighed anchor and began to bob gently on the waves.

Claudia stared hard. Tall, willowy and dressed in an elegant dove-grey tunic, the woman was a picture to behold. Her eyes seemed a little distant, as though she was staring through Claudia rather than at her, and she was clutching what appeared to be an empty blue flagon to her bosom. A apart from those two anomalies, this was one of the most handsome specimens Claudia had ever seen.

Pity the woman was a total stranger. Because whatever else this creature might have done with her thirty-six years, she hadn’t spent the last three decades serving Vesta.

In fact, two weeks hadn’t passed since she came face to face with the Holy Sister at the Feast of Jupiter-and unless that girl had taken extensively to drink in the meantime, this was not the same woman.

As the ship cleaved its way through the seething white water, rain bouncing off the heavy goat’s-hair cloak, Claudia groaned.