'Go away!' She screwed up her eyes and covered her ears with her hands. 'Go back to the hell where you came from!'
But, oh, this was Gaul. Home of Druids and magic, human sacrifice and sorcery, where the dead could walk and evil spirits lurked in the shadows. They turned back the clock to the time when Claudia cowered under the bed as insults and crockery rained all round her. Then the spirits in the shadows shifted and time spiralled forwards. Now it was the waiting, the waiting, the endless bloody waiting. The watching, the watching, the endless bloody watching. And suddenly, with the cruellest of clarity, she realized what had triggered this nightmare.
A splintered table rose out of the darkness. There was no dinner on the table, because a loud-mouthed drunk had tipped the housekeeping money down her throat — so there were no breakfasts, no lunches and no suppers on it, either. Day by day the wine got cheaper and her mother grew dirtier, and the demons in the shadows cackled when Claudia pushed open the door of their cramped tenement and came face to face with her mother's corpse, cold and grey, beside an empty jug and a pair of slashed wrists.
At least, she thought, Stella would be able to tell her kids that the bastard was sorry.
Claudia had had nothing.
Her father simply marched out of her life, leaving her mother to fill the emptiness with whatever she could until her pain reached the point where she could take no more. Neither had left so much as a note to say 'sorry', 'goodbye' or even 'I love you'.
Too numb to weep, too deadened to hate, Claudia drizzled perfume into the dips of her collarbones and set off to join the dinner guests.
If His Majesty wanted more mushrooms, then more mushrooms it was, and never mind the poor sod who had to drop what he was doing and go tramping round these woods to collect 'em. The kitchen slave despatched at such short notice jabbed two fingers in the air at Marcia's chef and, having satisfied himself that his boss couldn't see round corners, over hills, through thickets and past trees, repeated the gesture again and again.
'Ceps, I need more ceps,' His Majesty had roared. 'You know what ceps look like, don't you, boy?'
'Course I do,' the lad had wanted to snap. 'I've collected the fonking things for you often enough.'
Instead, he'd dipped his head and said yes, sir.
'Then bring more chanterelles while you're about it, and if you find a couple of Jew's ears, I'll have them, too, and for heaven's sake, don't just stand there, I need them NOW.'
'Well, you should have bloody well planned things better,' the slave sneered. But only to the beech trees, the oaks and the birches.
As two more yellow chanterelles joined the collection in the trug, he thought that it weren't like he minded collecting mushrooms. Truth be told, he enjoyed being outdoors in the open, away from the steam and getting his ribs poked with a careless ladle or a strainer dropped on his toe. And it made a pleasant change from His Majesty pinching his ear all the fonking time, too.
Finding a clump of ceps hiding behind a sapling, he fell upon them and thought, that's another thing. Being able to tell his parasols from his panther caps, 'cause the one you could eat and the other could kill you, and he liked being entrusted to go out alone, 'cause not everyone were allowed to do that. Milers, the boss called 'em, meaning give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile, being gone all afternoon if they wasn't supervised proper. Well, he were no miler. He worked hard and weren't that the truth, and the boss valued that, that's why he gave him the responsibility of getting the mushrooms in now. Knowing he'd fill his trug and wouldn't dawdle.
It were just the way he yelled at him, that were all. Made him feel small in front of the kitchens. Not that most of 'em was listening, and it weren't like he never yelled at them, either. His Majesty bellowed for Gaul. But that little Spanish girl. The new one with the hair that shone like a mirror and a laugh like a springtime cascade. He didn't want her to think he was meek or stupid or nothing, but how the fonk was she going to think well of him when the boss kept talking down to him?
Gathering more velvety chanterelles that smelled of ripe apricots, he tried to think of ways to impress her. He couldn't carve, felt too embarrassed to bring her a garland of flowers, and in the kitchens she had her run of fancy foods to nibble. Yeah, but what if he wrestled a couple of the boiler room boys? He had muscles, she'd see what he were made of then, and know that he were just being polite to the boss. Respectful like. Not gutless. The boy rubbed his grubby hands on his tunic. That were it. Strength of body, strength of character. He'd fonking well gone and cracked it with that!
The sound of a twig cracking interrupted his train. From the corner of his eye, he just caught the fleeting outline of a figure before it disappeared behind a tree trunk. Immediately, it was followed by a frantic flutter of wings as birds flew out of the canopy.
Some said the Scarecrow was the presager of death.
Others believed him to be Death himself.
The boy was taking no chances. Abandoning his ceps and chanterelles, he legged it back to the villa as fast as he could.
Vines were all very well, but sooner or later someone was bound to catch on that Claudia's understanding of viticulture extended little further than twiggy bits that had to be pruned, twiddly bits that had to be tied and late summer squalls that were perfectly capable of rendering bunches of big, juicy grapes a rotting mass fit only for vinegar. Given that Marcia intended parading her collection of artisans to the local luminaries tonight, Claudia decided to play safe — and no subject was safer than that of her hostess's tomb! Marcia could talk for hours about Paris's exquisite marble nymphs, Hor's intense artistry and Semir's fastidious landscaping, so Claudia decided to explore the menagerie before the supply of superlatives ran dry.
Following the mournful mew of a peacock, she wound her way down the hill, past ancient walnut trees and stately oaks, to the sheltered valley that opened out at the bottom. So this was where the water from the diverted stream had ended up. Expecting Roman-style fountains and Grecian grottos, her eyes popped. It was as though a prism had exploded. Pink plumage from the flamingoes, grey from the cranes and white sacred ibis reflected in the pool, yellow baboons picked at their lice, lovebirds and finches preened in the aviary.
Give the woman her due. She said she wanted to stage an exhibition and stage an exhibition she had! Mongooses, bears and porcupines snuffled around in their pens. White-ruffed monkeys chattered as they swung from the bars of their cage, their babies clinging on to their backs for dear life, gazelle grazed serenely in the pastures across the way, while, at the far end of the pens, a cheetah snarled.
'Good evening, Mistress Seferius,' drawled a voice from behind. 'May I have the pleasure of escorting milady to dinner?'
That voice — there was something familiar about its deep baritone. Claudia spun round, but even before he'd stepped out of the shadows, she'd picked up the smell of sandalwood. Unmistakably, the scent of the predator. Only this one wasn't caged in.
'Orbilio?' The Security Police in Santonum? This had to be another hallucination. 'Please, Jupiter, tell me I'm dreaming.'
'Would it help if I kissed you? It's what dashing heroes do in folk tales, you know. Kiss the maidens to wake them up.'
'You're right. It's not a dream, it's a nightmare.'
'And it's lovely to see you again, too.'