'Honest, helpful and earnest on one side of the coin. A blackmailing cad on the other.'
'People who have been hurt can often be both. We've all said and done things in the heat of the moment that we regret.'
'So why not Hadrian?'
'Claudia, you haven't met him or you wouldn't be suggesting it, but take it from me, that boy's so wet, you could wring him out with your bare hands. He has neither the guts or the strength to pierce a stomach wall with his dagger, then yank it out and drag a writhing, gurgling, terrified Lichas across the water meadows before pitching him into the river.' Marcus blew out his cheeks. 'The wound was undoubtedly fatal, but stomach wounds are messy, painful and slow. Lichas drowned in the end.'
A horrible, horrible way to die, and no wonder Rosenna was bitter.
'If there was a storm that night, wouldn't it have washed away any bloodstains? How do you know he wasn't killed by the river and simply fell in?'
'Imagine you were arranging to meet someone in that kind of weather. Wouldn't you choose a place where there's shelter? Exactly. And your trusty investigator found a pool of blood in the lee of a large yew below the hill in the bend in the river.'
No wonder they'd promoted him, Claudia thought. The man thinks of everything. Including forgery, tax evasion, fraud, theft…
'You know what strikes me as odd?' she said, picking up a handful of pebbles and tossing them one at a time at the wicker fence that enclosed the vineyard to prevent deer browsing on the tender new shoots. 'Everywhere you look at the moment, it's either toy boys, playboys, lady boys She paused in her aim. 'All boys, though, have you noticed? All boys.'
'Yes I have, and I'm thinking of one seventeen-year-old boy in particular,' he said grimly. 'One who is very much dead.'
'Really?' She hit the target with her very last pebble. 'Strangely enough, I was thinking of old Etha who went searching for her grandson the night of the storm. Tages was seventeen years old, as well.' Claudia turned her face to the hills. 'And that boy remains very much missing.'
Ten
Bad luck, Larentia called it. An epidemic of bad luck was sweeping the town, but praise be to Candace's spells, it had passed over her and spared the estate, the villa and its slaves. No blight, no rust, no vine weevil, she'd said, and she was certainly right about that. Claudia had examined every single leaflet and since that was what bailiffs were for — ensuring such plagues were kept at bay — she'd sent for him the minute Orbilio had ridden off.
And wasn't remotely surprised to hear the bailiff express astonishment (if not downright bewilderment) that the Mistress should even mention blight or rust, much less weevil. Everything was exactly as he'd detailed in his monthly reports, he'd insisted, adding that — ask anyone — weather conditions had been perfect for the vines this winter and spring, and throwing in a baffled scratch of his head for good measure. The Mistress mustn't fret, he assured her firmly. The customary precautions had been, and would continue to be, taken. Seferius wine would continue to uphold its prestige and reputation.
Claudia had returned to her room, changed into a robe of pale lilac linen and pinned up her hair. Either Candace's spells were so powerful that she'd ended up protecting half of Italy, or viticulture remained a skill, not a lottery!
'Clemens the driver says he's waiting to take you to Mercurium,' a small voice piped up.
'Clemens talks too much.'
'So do I.' Amanda made herself comfortable on the bed and began to unpick the tasselled fringe on the coverlet. 'Mummy says.'
'Mummy's right.'
'No, she's not. I heard her tell someone that the old witch arrived yesterday, but it's only you here, so what does she know?' Little blue eyes rolled upwards in disdain. 'Anyway, Indigo and I are going to Mercurium with you.'
'Are you?'
'Yes, we're all packed and we have enough cheese and sausage to last us to Rome.' She held up a package that wouldn't last a mouse to the end of the driveway.
'Rome, you say?'
'Indigo and I are going to live with my father, and though we don't know who he is yet, we know we'll find him in Rome. It's a very big place.'
'All the more reason not to find him, don't you think?'
A lot of cupped hands and whispering into thin air followed. At which point, Amanda announced with a sniff that Indigo said that was so negative, but could Claudia say whether Rome was as far as from here to Mercurium and back, or maybe a little bit less?
'Are you sure you want to run away today?' Claudia asked. Amanda had already abandoned the tassels in favour of a lump of black sausage. 'Wouldn't you rather wait, say, until after the Beating of the Bounds?'
'That's ages off.'
Twelve days probably was ages off when you're only six years old and running away from home with just a small chunk of pecorino cheese and a badly gnawed sausage.
'Yes it is, but in between we've got the Lamb Festival, the Parade of the Trumpets as well as the Dance of the Brides of Fufluns on the full moon, and you tell Indigo that the Beating of the Bounds is well worth waiting for. There's feasting and singing, you can dance, dress up in costume-'
'Children aren't allowed at the ceremonies.'
'Oh, but this is a holiday for everybody, Amanda. Children, grown-ups, poor people, animals-'
'Animals! You mean rats and snakes have a holiday, too?'
Claudia meant beasts of burden, but she supposed snakes deserved a day off now and then.
'And… we get to dress up, me and Indigo?'
'Like the Queen of Sheba with bells on.' Another robe down the drain!
Amanda wrinkled her nose then called a Council of War with her friend. 'All right, we'll wait till after the beater thing to run away, but only because we like lambs and the trumpet parade's fun, but Indigo says we're still coming with you this morning.'
Did she indeed?
'Very well.' Claudia dug a copper quadran out of her purse. 'Heads or tails?'
Childish freckles merged into a single brown mass of a frown. 'Huh?'
'There's only room for one person beside me in the cart,' Claudia said briskly. 'So the fairest thing is to flip a coin to see whether it's you or Indigo who gets the spare place.'
Several seconds passed while Amanda thought this through, and Claudia imagined it was the first time anyone had taken her make-believe friend seriously.
'We've decided we'll both stay,' Amanda declared at last, 'because we need to tell all the animals that they're going on holiday soon.' And off she skipped, leaving Claudia wondering why Mummy hadn't had a nervous breakdown. Bitch or not, the woman deserved at least one.
'I want to take a detour,' she told Clemens, once the cart was clear of the estate.
She was no physician, but epidemics don't go unchecked and last night's theatricals suggested a distinct escalation in whatever game was being played out here. Certainly, the show hadn't been staged for her benefit. Candace's communion with the dead had been planned well in advance — hell, she'd all but sold tickets! — and Claudia intended to find out why, and in particular where Larentia's obsession with bad luck fitted in.
'Pull up here,' she instructed the driver.
Until recently, this converted grain store had been used by a local paper merchant until fire had swept through, destroying his stock. Claudia studied the blackened walls and a courtyard that was already being reclaimed by weeds. Fires were common in Rome, the threat of it constant, and it was not unusual to see the night sky glowing orange as a tenement went up here, a warehouse caught fire there, especially in the winter, when portable stoves were all too easily overturned and burning logs jumped out of their baskets. More than one paper merchant in Rome had suffered the same fate. But twice? In six months?
'The brickworks next,' she told Clemens.