Sour Grapes

Away from the Forum, the streets quickly narrowed. Basilicas and temples gave way to six-storey tenements, and in no time the seductive tones of orators were drowned by the ringing of hammers as metalworkers beat out everything from swords to ploughshares to pastry cutters by torchlight. From the upper storeys, babies bawled and dogs bayed, while in the workshops below, chisels, planes and saws rasped out sideboards, ladders, writing tablets and hay rakes, as cobblers sat astride their iron lasts. Looms clacked, and the smoke from tavern ovens mingled with the dust from the stonecutter's and picked up flakes of hemp from the rope-maker's premises. Lifting her skirts to avoid the refuse piling up in the gutters, Claudia understood his ambition to escape.

When you're born in the gutter, the desire to better yourself never wavers — though for men, at least, the route is more open. Indeed, Gaius had been a shining example. The son of a common road builder, he'd slogged night and day for what he believed in, until eventually he'd worked his way up to become one of the most respected wine merchants in Rome. Indeed, by the time he died, the name Seferius had become a byword for quality, and Gaius had been promoted to the prestigious rank of Equestrian by none other than the Emperor himself. In fact, the only thing Gaius Seferius had been lacking in his hard-won prosperity was the inevitable trophy wife to flaunt before his competitors, a gap the eighteen-year-old Claudia had been more than happy to fill. Admittedly, Gaius wouldn't have married her had he known that, having been orphaned and penniless at the age of fourteen, her only means of survival had been through dancing (for want of a better word) in a northern tavern for sailors, but a deal was a deal. They'd both stuck by their side of the bargain and it was simply fortunate for her, if not for him, that the Ferryman had come to Gaius before his allotted time. Which made her even more determined, as she turned into the dark twisting alley where Flavia's admirer had his carpentry workshop, that there would be no sneaking in the back door as far as Claudia's stepdaughter was concerned. If this Orson fellow wanted to better himself and live high on the hog, that was fine. Just find another damned pig.

'Hello?' She had to shout over the whirr of the apprentice's hand drill. 'Is the owner around?'

The apprentice, a thick lump of a boy with thighs like a bolster, laid his drill down. 'He be out.' He wiped the sawdust off his hands on his tunic. 'Can Oi help?'

'Only if you're a gravedigger, because I have three burly bodyguards outside this door, each of them armed with a shovel, and when I find the bastard who messed with my stepdaughter I intend to put them all together.'

'Oi see.' The boy frowned. 'And for this you be looking for Master Paulus?'

'Paulus? Hell no, it's Orson's hide I'm looking to nail to my wall.'

'Oi'm Orson.'

There was a crashing sound, as prejudices shattered into tiny pieces.

'You?'

Fortune-hunters she could handle. No matter how slippery, no matter how smooth, they were no match for Claudia Seferius. But this boy! How old was he? Seventeen at the most, with hair straight and thick, just like him, and eyes pale and dim, ditto.

'Why on earth did you own up?' She could see the back door and it was open.

'Oi'm not ashamed of me feelings for Flavia, miss… Oi mean, marm. She be a sweet girl and Oi'm right fond of her, and without wishing to brag, Oi believe she's right fond of me, too.'

'Too fond. The girl's pregnant.'

'She never is!' Orson drew himself up to his full, lumpy height. 'Oi'd not dishonour my Flavia out of wedlock and that's the truth of it, marm. Now Oi ain't saying we haven't kissed and cuddled a bit, coz we have, but Oi haven't overstepped no line seedwise, pardon my being so frank, so Oi don't know where she got that idea from. Well. Not unless…' He coloured to his sandy roots. 'A couple of times Oi, um

…' He wrung his big, lumpy hands. 'But a girl can't get pregnant from that.'

Claudia sighed. That was the trouble living with an aunt who never allowed her own husband into the bedroom, she supposed. The facts of life become totally muddled, but praise be to Hymen, Flavia was still a virgin. There was a gleam of light in the darkness yet.

'Very well, Orson, this is what we do next. You write Flavia a note-'

'Sorry, marm. For one thing, Oi'm not lettered, and for another, Oi ain't going to give my Flavia up, not when Oi cares for her and Oi know she cares for me.'

Dammit, she'd spent the last hour bribing, beguiling and bullying Flavia into ending this ridiculous affair without success. Now we have an apprentice with scruples! Claudia perched on the edge of his workbench.

'You enjoy working with wood, don't you, Orson?'

'Aye.'

'Well, suppose someone were to set you up with your own business?'

Several seconds passed in which she wondered whether he'd actually heard her. Then he swallowed.

'Oi might not serve up no banquets at my table, but so long as my larder has enough in it to fatten a mouse, then Oi'm happy, and it's not that Oi ain't grateful for your offer, marm, but Oi don't have the experience to be running a shop of me own, and before you say you'd get people in to run it for me, that ain't the point, is it?'

Damn. She twisted round, smiled prettily and began swinging her leg.

'Experience, you say?' She picked up the abacus he had been making. Ran her finger round along the exquisite grooving. 'Maybe I'm wrong here, Orson, but it strikes me that you're doing a professional's job for an apprentice's wages.'

'Reckon Oi probably am, aye.'

'You don't resent that?'

'As Oi see it, there's no going to Hades in a gilt litter chair.'

'Tell that to Flavia. Do you really think she'll be happy, living in a garret?'

Orson ran his tongue round his thick lips. 'No, marm, that Oi don't. But that's for her to decide, don't you think? Not the likes of you and me.'

Integrity as well as scruples. Claudia jumped down from the bench.

'Very well, Orson, this is what we do next.' She brushed the sawdust from her skirts. 'While I write Paulus a note, explaining how I've bought out your apprenticeship — ' She tried not to think how much it would cost, but set against Flavia's virginity, it was worth every gold piece '- you pack your bags.'

For the first time, Orson looked worried. 'What for?'

'Because you're coming to Tuscany with me.'

'Oi am?' If anything, the boy looked even more anxious. 'You ain't just luring me outside to three men armed with shovels?'

'No, Orson, as much as it pains me, I'm not.'

There was a saying, she recalled, that when poverty walks in the door, love flies out the window. There was never any question of Flavia experiencing such a heartache, but equally there was no point in marrying her off against her will while she still had this ugly lug in her blood. Elopement and adultery were no grounds for a wedding! On the other hand, thrust these young lovers together and it's just a question of who backs off first. And how fast.

When Porsenna the Etruscan founded Mercurium during the height of his kingdom's military power, he would have stood on the hilltop and scanned pretty much the same panorama that the townspeople overlooked five long centuries later.

The Roman villas, glistening white with local stone, would not have been there, of course, nor the straight metalled roads bustling with legionaries, merchants, strolling players and despatch runners, but otherwise Porsenna would have surveyed the same rolling hillsides verdant with olives and vines, the same pasturelands dotted with sheep, and the same waving fields of wheat that fused with forests rich in timber and game in the distance. What's more, every last vista would have been suffused with the same golden glow that was such a feature of this glorious landscape.