According to the astrologers and soothsayers in the Forum — at least those diehards who hadn’t fled this vile, stinking heat — terrible storms were in the offing unless almighty Jupiter could be appeased. For everyone else in the Empire, storms would be a relief from this torpid, enervating swelter. Sweat soaked workmen’s tunics and plastered their hair to their foreheads. Meat turned within the day, and fish was best avoided unless it was flapping. Even Old Man Tiber couldn’t escape. His waters ran yellow and sluggish, stinking to high heaven from refuse, sewage, and the carcasses of rotting sheep. But for farmers with grapes still ripening out on the vine, storms on the scale that were being predicted provoked only fear. A single hailstorm could wipe out their entire vintage.
“Prayers and libations aren’t enough,” Claudia said, as two more feathers flew out of the fan, “and I can hardly buy grapes from the market and palm them off to Jupiter as my own.”
It was enough that that bitch Fortune happened to be unwavering when it came to divine retribution at the moment. Claudia didn’t want it spreading round Mount Olympus like a plague.
“And you’re forgetting, Leonides, that I can’t despatch a slave to Etruria to cut bunches until tomorrow at the earliest, because today, dammit, is the Festival of Diana — which just happens to be a holiday for slaves!”
“Oh, I hadn’t forgotten,” Leonides replied mournfully.
Claudia blew a feather off the end of her nose and thought at this rate, the wretched fan would be bald by nightfall, and why the devil can’t people make things to last anymore, surely that isn’t too much to ask. She stopped. Turned. Stared at her steward.
“Very well, Leonides, you may go.”
He was the only one left, anyway, apart from her Gaulish bodyguard, and it would take an earthquake, followed by a tidal wave, followed by every demon charging out of Hades before Junius relinquished his post. She glanced across to where he was standing, feet apart, arms folded across his iron chest, in the doorway to the vestibule, and couldn’t for the life of her imagine why he wasn’t out there lavishing his hard-earned sesterces on garlands, girls, and gaming tables like the rest of the men in her household.
The girls, of course, had better things to do. Dating back to some archaic ritual of washing hair, presumably in the days before fresh water had been piped into the city by a network of aqueducts, the Festival of Diana was now just a wonderful excuse for slave women to gather in the precinct of the goddess’s temple on the Aventine. There, continuing the theme of this ancient tradition, they would spend the day pinning one another’s hair in elaborate curls and experimenting with pins and coloured ribbons. Any other time and Claudia would have been down there, too, watching dexterous fingers knotting, twisting, coiling, plaiting, because at least half a dozen innovative styles came out of this feast day on the ides of August, and all too fast the shadows on the sundial on the temple wall would pass.
But not today. Today she had received the news that her bailiff was covered in spots and that rather than risk the harvest by having the workforce fall sick, he had put them in quarantine to the point where no one was even available to pick a dozen clusters of grapes. There was a grinding sound coming from somewhere. After a while, she realised it was her teeth.
“Junius?”
Before she’d even finished calling his name, he’d crossed the hall in three long strides. Was any bodyguard more dedicated, she wondered? Sometimes, catching sight of his piercing blue gaze trained upon her, she found his devotion to duty somewhat puzzling. Any other chap and you’d think he carried a torch for her, but hell, he was only twenty-one, while she was twenty-five, a widow at that, and tell me, what young stallion goes lusting after mares when he can have his pick of fillies?
Widow. Yes.
With all the excitement, she’d almost forgotten poor Gaius. Yet the whole point of marrying someone older, fatter, and in the terminal stages of halitosis was for these vineyards, wasn’t it? Well, not the vineyards exactly. She had married Gaius for what they’d been worth, although the bargain wasn’t one-sided. Gaius Seferius had had what he wanted, as well — a beautiful, witty trophy wife, and one who was less than half his age at that. Both sides had been content with the arrangement, knowing that by the time he finally broke through the ribbon of life’s finishing line, Gaius would be leaving his lovely widow in a very comfortable position. In practice, it worked out better than Claudia had hoped.
Maybe not for Gaius, who had been summoned across the River Styx a tad earlier than he’d expected, and certainly before he would have wished.
And maybe not for his family, either, who were written out of his will.
But for Claudia, who’d inherited everything from the spread of Etruscan vineyards to numerous investments in commercial enterprises, from this fabulous house with its wealth of marbles and mosaics, right down to the contents of his bursting treasure chests, life could not have turned out sweeter if she’d planned it. So why, then, hadn’t she simply sold up and walked away? It was how she’d envisaged her future after Gaius. No responsibilities. Draw a line. Start again. Instead, she hadn’t just hung on to the wine business, she’d taken an active, some might say principal, role. And as for his grasping, two-faced family, goodness knows why she continued to support them! Something to do with not wanting them to root around in her past, she supposed, but that was not the point.
The point was, she must remember to lay some flowers beside her husband’s tomb sometime. And maybe she’d have his bust repainted this year, too. After all, it couldn’t exactly be improving down there in the cellar.
“Junius, I want you to run down to the Forum and hire a messenger. The ones by the basilica are usually reliable, but if there’s no one left today, and I’ll be very surprised if there is, given that it’s a holiday for slaves, try the place behind the Records Office.”
“Me?” The Gaul was shocked. “B-but I can’t possibly leave you here alone, madam.”
“I promise that if a gang of murdering marauders come barging in, I’ll ask them to wait until you’re back to protect my honour, and that way we can both get killed. How’s that?”
“With respect,” his freckled face had darkened to a worried purple, “I don’t consider danger a joking matter. These are the dog days of summer. Men are driven mad by the appalling heat, madam, and by the sickness and disease that grips the city. With rich folk decamped to the country, only criminals and undertakers flourish in Rome at the moment.”
Claudia nodded. “Very eloquently put, Junius. You are, of course, absolutely correct, and if you don’t hurry, there won’t be any messengers at the place behind the Records Office, either.”
“But, madam—”
“It’s a straight choice, Junius. Either you hire a courier to gallop like the wind to my estate, pick a dozen bunches of the ripest grapes, then ride straight back, where we might — just might — make it in the five days we have left and therefore save the day. Or I turn you into cash at the slave auction in the Forum in the morning.”
The young Gaul drew himself up to his full height, squared his impressive shoulders, and clicked his heels together. “In that case, madam.” This time he didn’t look at her, but stared straight ahead. “In that case, I see I have no alternative.”
Excellent. Using the full services of the post houses and changing stations, the messenger-
“You will have to sell me in the morning.”
What? The remaining feathers sprayed out of the fan as Claudia crushed it in her fist. “This is not a debatable issue, Junius. You will—”