No contest, old chap.
No contest at all.
Sixteen
Claudia must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes, dusk was casting its soft cloak over the Villa Arcadia.
As much as a spot of light relief would have gone down rather well after the trauma and tragedy earlier, she had decided against accompanying the olive-grove nymph back to her over-populated home. If her theory was wrong — and Jason's intention was indeed to kill Leo out on the water — then the villa would be wide open to attack and Claudia had no intention of straying far from her escape route.
Thanks to plunging cliffs, much of Cressia's indented coastline was inaccessible. But not all. A great sweeping bay to the east sheltered the island's principal town and only deep harbour, though rocky coves and pretty sandy beaches proliferated. Plenty of places for a determined warship to put in. Plenty of places for a small rowing boat to be secreted, ready for a strapping bodyguard to row his mistress across to the mainland.
The pearl in a necklace of interconnected islands, Cressia was a long, narrow tongue of land forty miles long but rarely more than three miles wide. Craggy limestone mountains rose almost vertically out of the sea to the north, attracting squalls in winter and a pall of grey cloud even in summer. It was a place for only the brave, the foolish and the vultures, and much of the central hills were equally intractable, an untamed wilderness of oak, sweet chestnut and scrub. But where the landscape softened, so the climate changed, also. Here, rich pasturelands, olive groves and vineyards flourished. Warm in winter, but without the searing summer heat that bleached the Dalmatian coast to the west, deer and rabbits were hunted for game, trees coppiced for firewood, hives set up for the yellow bees which feasted off the nectar of wild herbs and produced such incomparable honey.
Heading homewards along the ridge of a hill, Claudia understood what attracted Leo to this extraordinary Island of the Dawn. The soil might be too thin, too dry, too starved of nutrients to make a fortune out of the estate, but who could blame anyone for settling here? What a bloody shame Lydia had not been able to give him the heir he so desperately wanted.
She had seen, from a distance, the small house of white island stone way out on the flat land of the point that Leo had built for his jettisoned wife. Odd. His behaviour didn't square with the man Claudia knew. Divorcing Lydia after eighteen years was one thing. He was blinkered about sustaining the bloodline and, whilst it was far from noble, he wouldn't be the first chap to set a wife aside. But to do it without notice was callous. Worse, for Lydia to find out by chance that the dowry to which she was legally entitled to have returned had been squandered on his costly renovations — well, that was simply unconscionable. How could he?
Back at the villa, Claudia had paused in the forecourt, absorbing the clang from the metalwork shop, the sparks from the blacksmith's, the dull thuds from the carpenter's shed overlaid with that distinctive sawdusty smell. Volcar's acerbic description of 'Leoville' wasn't so very wide of the mark. Legions of slaves fetched and carried, sweat making damp ropes of their hair and sticking their cheap cotton tunics to their bodies. Sacks on backs went past. Barrels. Baskets. Jars, rumbling over the flagstones. From the kitchens came the clamour of pans being scraped, skillets washed, skivvies being clipped round the ear. The pitchy tang of charcoals tingled in her nostrils, along with the smell of the goose which had been roasted for lunch. Fish hung like washing on a line as they were cured in the sun, and water was ferried in buckets to the spanking new bath house.
Leoville.
Complete with the eagle, that ultimate emblem of Roman supremacy, emblazoned upon the entablature over the stone gateway. Leo, Leo, what a mess you've created in your stupid obsession for heirs!
Shamshi had just been leaving the bath house, his baggy trousers flapping like fish gills round his stick-like legs. 'I say, Claudia.' His wet hair clung to his skull like a black cap. Oh. It was a black cap, worn to protect his head against the fierce rays of the sun. Creepier and creepier. This guy wears a cap over the only part of his head that isn't shaved!
'Yes, yes, I know. Before the new light was born in the sky, bad news came over the water.'
The Persian nodded. 'Truly, the prediction was accurate. But, dear child, this morning I cast the bones and looked into the fresh entrails of a goat-'
'My, my, some chaps have all the fun.' And before he could draw a second breath, Claudia's long legs had put as much distance between her and the gut-gazer as they could possibly manage.
Who can trust a man who claims to do everything? Inspect entrails, interpret dreams, observe birds, watch for portents, my armpit! With sixteen colleges in Rome devoted to an individual discipline, each requiring years and years of training, how does one lone Persian pretend to cover the lot? Creepy bastard. His boasts during the fire of how he would have handled her welfare, had he been in Leo's place, still made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Just let it be you who left this lump on my head. Oh, please, let it be you. But no matter how many times she'd encountered him in Arcadia, not once had Shamshi smelled of cinnamon. Bugger.
Claudia took a plate of food to her room, and that's when her exertions must have caught up with her. Because now Hesperus was settling down to join his daughters in the Garden on the mainland. The type of sunset that the islanders interpreted as the blood of Medea's murdered brother turning the sea red. She yawned, stretched, swung her legs over the bed. Four doors along, Silvia's glacial tones lashed one slave girl after another.
'For pity's sake, you stupid lump, are you colour blind? We are wearing the green robe tonight. Gre-e-e-en, do you hear? And you! Careful with that hairpin, you clumsy girl, you've drawn blood!'
Juno save us from royal we's.
'Not that necklace, you fool. How many times do you have to be told, we want to make this a victory feast for the master. Nothing but our best emeralds will suffice for tonight.'
Whoa. Leo was back? And victorious?
Hurriedly, Claudia pulled on a gown of the finest Egyptian linen, midnight blue and trimmed with gold, and ran an ivory comb through the tangles of her hair. There might be issues to sort out with Leo tonight, but no way was she going to let that little cat Silvia outdo her in the looks department. With a quick drizzle of Judaean perfume in the hollows of her collarbone, she set off round the path outside her bedroom, adjusting her golden girdle as she went.
Looking even smaller in the red glare of the sunset, sure enough, the Medea was safely moored against the jetty. No holes in her side from where she'd been rammed. No mast missing. No keening of widows and orphans.
'Everything comes to those who wait, whether they want it or not,' a cracked voice said.
Volcar? 'What are you doing hiding behind trees?'
'Thinking,' the old man said.
'Drinking more like.' She could smell it from here.
'Thinking, drinking, same thing at my age. A man drinks to think and thinks to drink, sod all else to do in this dreary backwater.'
We have murder, vendettas, eviction orders on children and execution orders on dolphins. We have sisters at war, a bitter ex-wife, scandal, financial betrayal, the clash of artistic egos and the dark influence of a Persian astrologer. What kind of a life had Volcar led that he considers this dreary?
'Why don't you go back to Rome?'
The old boy spat in the dust. 'Ask Leo. See what answer you get from him.' He pointed his stick at the Medea. 'What d'you make of that business, then, gel?'