'That's it, then?' Julia blinked down her long, skinny nose. 'We're on our own in this, Marcellus and I?'
As the last trace of light faded from the room, Claudia traced a circle with her finger round the rim of the goblet. A smarmy spendthrift brother-in-law. A stepdaughter who's moody, rude and ungrateful. The sister-in-law from hell. I'd rather roll naked in a bed of stinging nettles before lending these deadbeats a hand!
Julia's narrow jaw was rigid. 'You're leaving us to cope alone?'
'Definitely — ' Claudia tossed back the last of her wine — 'not. Count me in.'
Chapter Two
I don't believe this.' Claudia paced her bedroom like a leopard in a cage. 'I don't believe I could be so bloody stupid!'
'Mix?' Drusilla, draped lengthways over her mistress's pillow, twizzled one ear around.
'I need a doctor. I'm ill.'
She felt her forehead. It did not feel like a forehead sickening for a fever, but what else could explain the aberration?
'Hrr.'
'Oh, fine for you to say, my girl! You haven't landed yourself the job of tracking down a gang of kidnappers for a family you can't stand and who, in turn, hate your very guts.' She poked around in search of tell-tale swellings in her throat. 'I ask you, what do I know about criminal behaviour?' 'Brrp-brrp.'
'Other than my own, I meant.' Claudia stuck out her tongue and studied it by lamplight in the mirror. 'I ought to send for a physician,' she told the reflection. 'I have a terminal disease.'
What other explanation could there be, for not only shouldering the role of gumshoe, but — and this is what hurt — agreeing to settle the bloody ransom? Was she absolutely barking loony?
'You do realise, don't you,' she addressed the cat accusingly, 'that the coins in my coffers are gasping like fish in a drained pool?' She checked her skin for signs of plague or jaundice. 'The family don't know, of course,' nor did anybody else, 'but Claudia Seferius is broke. Skint. Borassic. Cleaned out. Bust, and on her uppers.'
Good grief, why else would she have been stuck inside her dreary office yesterday when she could have been out dancing, hurling dice or eyeing up the hunky gladiators as they trained? Someone had to stretch those stubborn bills!
'Bloody merchants.' She prodded her appendix. 'This is their fault.'
It's all very well having your husband pop off when he did, him in late middle age and the widow not yet twenty-five when she inherited his thriving enterprise, but what provisions were there for fellow merchants refusing to deal with a woman? Claudia pulled down her eyelids and checked the colour of her eyeballs. Poor old Gaius. Not such a bad old duffer, really. She thought of his bronze bust, dulling in the cellar and his ashes which lay crumbling beneath a marble tomb along the Appian Way. She supposed she ought to visit it some time.
She held out both hands to test for tremors and thought, if she didn't have the shakes before, the merest mention of her fellow guildsmen should surely bring them on! Her husband's ashes were still warm when the rotten sods had banded together in an effort to freeze the young widow out of trade. Their aim? To have her assets stripped from under her, her business torn apart, the proceeds divvied up among themselves. Well. Claudia Seferius, as they would find out eventually, was not the type of girl who could be bullied out of business. In the meantime, however, survival demanded drastic steps be taken: hefty bribes, for one thing; selling her dry, fruity red wine at a loss for another. And temporary though these measures were, right now her piggybank was emaciated to the point of collapse.
Claudia explored for tumours, listened for the first manifestations of pleurisy, pneumonia, bronchitis and wondered, what were the symptoms of dropsy?
'Dammit, Drusilla, the Games of Apollo start in two days!' Festivals and frolics, feasting and tomfoolery. Chariot races, processions, athletic events, theatres. Oh, and did I mention processions? So how does Claudia Seferius choose to spend her time? Playing 'tag' with a gang of kidnappers!
She hurled the mirror out of the window. Useless bloody thing. Doesn't even show up deadly rashes.
'Of course, I'd have a better chance at catching them, if they followed up with the ransom note they threatened.' Await further instructions, the original letter said. But for how long?
Is Flavia alive?
Resting her elbows on her red-painted balcony rail, the heatwave — what else? — pressed like an anchorstone upon her chest. Claudia let her gaze fall on the seething tide below. Dogs, oxen, wagons, carts and barrows surged and staggered, cranked and rumbled their way along the street by the light of dimly flickering torches mounted on the walls. Since Caesar's time, wheeled traffic had been banned during daylight hours (the streets were clogged enough), leaving only night-time free for deliveries too cumbersome to be transported in simple panniers on the backs of donkeys and mules. But short nights squeezed tempers as well as consignment times.
'Oi, you!' Red in the face, a wagoner transporting slimnecked amphorae of olive oil cracked his bullwhip. He was late, as usual, and the delay was always someone else's fault and never his. 'You're blocking half the bloody road, move over.'
'Sorry, mate, this here's my drop-off point.' The carter, his arms full of new roofing tiles for the house three doors down, staggered under the weight. 'You'll have to back up and go round the block.'
'The hell I will! Now you move that cart or I'll bloody move it for you!'
Traffic began to jam in both directions, and when the sweaty wagoner took it upon himself to lead the carter's mule down the nearest side street, sending a score of terracotta tiles crashing into splinters as they slid off the open back end, punches needed no encouragement. Gradually more and more drivers became embroiled in the brawl, pitching in with either verbal or physical abuse, until the rumpus had attracted half the population of the city, or so it seemed. Swarms of beggars gushed from the twisting narrow alleys. Pie sellers, cutpurses, whores, wine vendors — out they came, ever hopeful of cashing in on the occasion, and suddenly everybody was shouting over everybody else in an effort to be heard. No wonder they called Rome the city which never sleeps!
'Mrrr!'
'No one's locking you in,' Claudia told Drusilla, 'but I can't hear myself think with that racket.' Heatwave or not, she slammed the shutters and instantly the tumult dimmed to a throb. In her bedroom, a single lamp burned with aromatic lavender oil.
Where are you, Flavia?
'Frrr.' Drusilla uncoiled herself from Claudia's pillow and scratched at her ear.
'Yes, poppet, I know she's a horrid little beast and we'll all be glad to see the back of her.' Claudia considered her supper tray and selected a fat, pink prawn for the cat. 'But that doesn't make kidnapping right.'
Have they hurt you? Mistreated you? Are you frightened, crying and alone?
She picked up a still-warm roll, inhaling the smell of garlic, thyme and rosemary and found the aromas made her stomach heave.
Have they treated you civilly?
Pictures formed and dissolved in Claudia's mind and she squeezed her eyes shut. The possibility of Flavia being snuffed out like an old tallow candle sent a vicious pain through her head. She's too young, she thought. Too naive. She'll be terrified.
When Flavia's mother died giving life to the girl, she left behind a daughter who Gaius didn't want and three sons who he did, with the result that Gaius used his famous bullyboy tactics to dump Flavia with his youngest sister, taking care to oil the path, however, with sufficient funds to silence any squawks of protest. No one could ever say for sure whether Flavia was miserable by constitution or whether being unwanted had rubbed off on her somehow, but by all accounts, she'd adopted an unlovable nature with uncharacteristic alacrity — scowling when she should have chortled, sulking when it came to playing games — so that when Claudia entered the scene, a scant five years back, the pattern was set like cement.