My word, the old spondulicks comes in jolly handy at times. Of course that was valid more for equestrians, she mused, ducking behind a marble bust to avoid certain marauding security policemen, than for patricians. There would be no need for the likes of Fancypants, for instance, to dip into his coffers. Toadies cluster round the aristocracy for free. She watched him knock at a door along the east wing and waited until it swallowed him up.
Strange. That was Sergius’ bedroom. Why should Orbilio decide to visit the sick? Claudia ran her finger up and down the cool, smooth upstand, absently noting the quality of the Numidian marble. It was difficult to know what to make of that man Pictor. On the face of it he was urbane and charming, and he’d extended every hospitality since her arrival, it was difficult to read anything sinister into his actions. Except, maybe…
‘That’s my father.’ Alis’ voice made Claudia jump.
‘Handsome,’ she remarked, glancing at the serene, white face set in its eternal watch over the colonnade.
‘I fear the sculptor somewhat flattered him.’ The enigma that was Sergius’ wife let out a slight, self-deprecating laugh. ‘He had the same ill-defined jaw as the rest of us.’
Providence might have pushed Alis into Claudia’s path, but there was no way Providence was going to have her back again. Not until Claudia had extracted her ore. She was on the point of commenting that Euphemia’s jaw was exceptionally well defined when she remembered that the man in the statue was in no way related to her.
‘How come you didn’t stay with your father after he divorced your mother?’
The law was rigid. Adulteresses, by definition, lose all their rights and access to their offspring-in fact, most consider themselves lucky if they’re granted an annual visit.
Tears filled Alis’ eyes. ‘Papa was such an honourable man, Claudia, I wish you could have met him. As a merchant who spent much of the year travelling, he believed that, at nine, I was too young to be subjected to constant upheaval.’
‘You’d have preferred that?’
‘Claudia, I’d have followed him through the Pillars of Hercules and searched for Atlantis if he’d so much as whistled. Instead I was stuck at home with the woman who’d cuckolded my father then laughed in his face when she was heavy with another man’s child.’
Quite. ‘Didn’t you get on with Euphemia’s father at all?’
‘That man!’ The keys at her girdle agitated as she shuddered. ‘He was coarse, he was common and oh, the way he and my mother flaunted their bodies! If I told you what they got up to, you’d throw up.’
I doubt it. ‘How did Euphemia cope?’ It was probably just honest, earthy sex.
Alis’ lower lip twisted and untwisted. ‘To be truthful, I’d have to say she was too young to understand and, in any case, they spoiled her rotten with pets and toys-will you think me terribly wicked when I say I was glad the plague took them?’
It makes you refreshingly human, Alis. Welcome to the human race.
‘They ruined my life, marrying me off to Isodorus like that, it was a nightmare, I can’t begin to describe it. Look, I have to go. It’s been such a relief talking to you, would you mind awfully if I…if I-’
‘Oh no,’ Claudia replied truthfully. ‘Come and have a chat any time you like, Alis.’ Enlightenment is always a welcome visitor.
‘Thank you! Thank you so much, but I’m late.’ Alis had reverted to type, fluttering her hands and tut-tutting. ‘I still haven’t prepared the dining hall for dinner.’
She set off up the atrium on the run, then stopped suddenly. ‘Where are my manners? I forgot to ask whether you’d like to organize the silver. Claudia? Claudia?
The side room into which Claudia had dived was small and cosy and very, very comfortable. Its friezes commemorated Agamemnon, the warrior king, from his initial involvement in the Trojan War through his quarrel with Achilles to his ill-fated return to Mycenae, and, on the floor, an exquisitely tessellated Paris was dithering about who to dish that golden apple to, which, to judge from his expression, was getting a tad too hot to hang on to.
Had it not been for the fact that the room was full of Euphemias, Claudia would have liked it very much. She was slouching against the window, watching the rain hammering down on the bath-house roof as she chewed a lock of hair.
‘I hate the country, don’t you?’
With every fibre of my body! I’ve had it up to here with birds tweeting, buds opening, bees buzzing and frog spawn clogging up the ponds. You can keep your blue swathes of Venus’ Mirrors, your marsh marigolds and your aconites in the orchard. I want to watch the concentrated frown of the leather-worker as I munch on hot sausages, wince at the burned arms of the glassblower as I drink tansy wine-and forget migrating cranes honking all over the place, give me the cheeky backchat of the fruiterer’s boy any day.
‘How can you say that, when the fields and waysides are chequered with anemones, the bellies of hinds are heavy with fawn and baby bear cubs are gambolling their paws off after winter hibernation?’
‘If Sergius makes the money he thinks he will with his shows, we’re going to live in Rome, did you know that? The Esquiline’s the place. Since they pulled the old stuff down, it’s gone really upmarket. Is that where you live?’
The Esquiline Hill is a pocket of aristocracy, Euphemia. Old money only need apply. ‘My house-’
‘Is Rome fun? Is it exciting? What’s it like this time of year?’
How could you explain, to someone who’s never been there, that in Rome the spring equinox signals more than the end of the winter rains? Trade routes reopen, bringing gold from Asturia, cotton from the Indus, cedar from Phoenicia. Ivory from Africa will flood in to the Forum, along with porphyries and pomegranates and pitch. Seas will be open, too, and wives, glad to see the back of their drunken lazy menfolk, will be dancing in the streets as their sailor spouses swap henpeck and trivia for life on a knife-edge and jokes with the boys. How could you begin to describe that?
‘Average.’
‘We’ll get to see all the races, the games, the gladiator fights. I’ll wear Syrian linens and watch every play going, even the Greek ones. Sergius says there’s entertainment laid on for every single day-’
‘Not quite.’
‘-and on top of that, there’s jousting on the Field of Mars and rowing on the Tiber. I can watch-’
‘My dear child, steady on-’
Euphemia flashed her a glance of undiluted insolence. ‘I am not a child.’
‘Indeed you are not,’ Claudia smiled back. ‘You’re eighteen years old, and well versed with delivering messages with menaces.’
‘Nineteen, actually, and the threat still stands.’ Euphemia spat out the lock of hair. ‘Fuck with me and I’ll kill you.’
‘I thought you’d already tried,’ Claudia replied calmly, positioning herself the other side of the window.
Euphemia pulled a sarcastic face. ‘Now why should I want to do that? As long as you don’t interfere with me, I won’t trouble myself over you.’
Consider me indebted!
Claudia was staring at the opposite wall, where a wounded Agamemnon was facing the prospect of the Trojans breaching his Greek defences, and wondering why Euphemia remained unmarried, because if she’d been Sergius, she’d have got rid of the moody little trollop ages ago, when she heard voices in the next room. As though eavesdropping was a social grace to be trumpeted from the rafters, Euphemia moved across to the dividing curtain and put her sulky little ear to it.
‘I don’t see the problem.’ Tulola’s voice drifted across. ‘We’ll get one of the carpenters to run you up a pretty pyx to take home to wherever you live and-’
‘N-N-Narni.’
‘Whatever you say, sweetie, just leave me to square it with Auntie Macer.’
Claudia peeped round the edge of the curtain. Draped on a couch in the next room, her tunic slit to the hip to reveal a shapely oiled thigh, Tulola dangled a bunch of black grapes in the air. Slightly wrinkled after a winter in barley, they didn’t seem to deter her couch-mate in his efforts to snatch one in his teeth. The cheetah, chained to one of the couch’s solid bronze feet, settled down as Salvian, plum red in the face and his hair ruffled, shifted his weight from foot to foot and looked everywhere except at Barea’s hand moving around inside Tulola’s tunic.