'Me,' Claudia said, and watched his single eye light up at the gold torc she dangled in front of it.
Zip, zip, zip. The walnut shells flew across the flagstone, but under which one lay the wizened legume? Claudia's finger hovered, then pointed. The surprise One-Eye feigned as she won was almost convincing. He snuffled again. Zip, zip, zip went the little dried pea. Oh, well. If wanted to play games… She dithered even longer before pointing this time. The Syrian was protesting. Weeping, almost. So much bad luck. Would she give him just one more chance? He was begging…
'Winner takes all?' she suggested.
The Syrian nodded, licking his lips as the torc see-sawed back and forth in her hands. 'Winner takes all.'
'And how much exactly would that be?'
It was all One-Eye could do not to drool. 'Today?' he said, throwing a cursory glance inside his money belt. 'Forty-three sesterces.'
'Not bad for two hours' work,' she murmured to Vincentrix. To the Syrian, Claudia simply said, 'Then let's play.'
Zip, zip, zip. You could almost hear his greed, it was that damn palpable. In fact, he reminded her of a bullfrog at dawn on the day the first mayflies hatch out.
'Which shell, lady?'
Claudia didn't give him the opportunity to pull a switch. Lithe as a lioness, her hand swept down and lifted the walnut shell before he had time to palm the pea. 'That one, I think.'
The Syrian spluttered in protest, but the crowd was behind her. Reluctantly he unhooked his money belt and tossed it across.
'Good guess.' Vincentrix laughed, re-fixing his torc.
Claudia smiled. 'Wasn't it, though?'
Live long enough amongst swindlers and thieves and you soon get the hang of it. Swiftness of the hand deceives the eye. The trick is to watch carefully, a task made all the easier when the dealer is left-handed, like One-Eye back there. Tossing a couple of coins to a street vendor in exchange for a bag of warm almond cakes, she said, 'Why isn't the Head of the Druid Guild married?'
Vincentrix's teeth hovered above the sweet-scented cake. 'Technically, I suppose he still is.' Piercing green eyes slanted her a wry glance. 'When my wife inherited a ring from her aunt, she decided to use it to fund her aspiration to travel.' He bit into the cake. 'She's been travelling for twenty-two years.'
'Some ring.' Claudia laughed. 'Was that what prompted you to take up the priesthood?'
They zigzagged through the streets until they arrived at the wharf, where several more cakes got themselves polished off and a shoal of small fish took the opportunity to find shelter in the shadow of their dangling feet before Vincentrix finally answered.
'It was never a proper marriage,' he said, staring across at the triple-gate bridge, where mules clip-clopped through, their saddlebags bulging, and carts laden with timber or stone lumbered over, pulled by oxen whose horns had been shorn. 'I was young, then. Seventeen. Impetuous and headstrong in a way that only seventeen-year-old youths can be, but I swear by the sun's holy light that she was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. She was perfect. Tall, slender, with hair the colour of ripe wheat and skin as soft and white as a dove — and I wanted her. By the stars that turned in the heavens, I wanted that woman and I vowed to have her at any cost.'
'At any cost?' Claudia repeated slowly.
Were any three words more laden with doom?
'Oh, yes.' Vincentrix chewed his lip. 'I courted that girl for six months. Sent her gifts, sang her songs, but she was not interested in me.'
Claudia didn't dare look at him. Couldn't bear to see the pain on his face.
' "Marry me," I said, "and on our wedding day I will give you anything that is within my power to give." "Anything?" my true love replied, and I swear to you, Claudia Seferius, that all these years on I can still feel her soft breath on my face when she whispered that one little word. "Anything," I vowed. "Draw up a contract. I'll sign it without even looking."'
He wouldn't have been the first hothead to have made a rash promise to a girl and lived to regret it. From time immemorial, boys have thrown their lives away on quite the wrong woman, though Claudia was curious to know what this particular paragon of perfection had wrung out of Vincentrix that remained a source of agony so many years on.
'She demanded you went to Britain for twenty years to train as a Druid?'
'Nothing so prosaic,' Vincentrix rasped, and the anger in his voice was barely disguised. 'The bitch demanded to keep her virginity.'
Claudia tossed the last cake down to the ducks on the river, then emptied the crumbs out of the bag for the sparrows.
'I'm sorry to hear that,' she said evenly. 'Now tell me why you sought me out this morning.'
The old woman lay in the bed staring up at the thatch. Time was, those would have been her creels dangling from hooks up on the rafters. Until her hands became claws, she'd been dead quick with the withies, she had. Weaving baskets for eggs, for gathering fruit, firewood, straw for the animals, storing blankets and cloths through the summer. Now she couldn't hardly hold a mug, and the creels that hung from the beams had been woven by the deft hands of her granddaughter.
The old woman's eyes misted. What an angel, that girl! Not only nimble fingered, but a keen eye as well, dying her willows blue, yellow and red to create patterns that sold for a canny price in the market. Always after market day, her angel'd bring home a gift for her old grandma. Sometimes a shawl, sometimes a brooch, sometimes a flagon of fine Roman wine. No, she'd not save her money, that girl, no matter how much she was told! And if it wasn't fine things, it'd be fancy cheeses, ripe peaches, fish that had been caught in the ocean to tempt an appetite that was as shrivelled as the poor body it inhabited, but, bless her, the lass never gave up. Only last week she'd blown her savings on nothing more than a bunch of red roses for her old gran, saying the perfume alone was worth the coin, and at nights she'd sit by the bed, weaving her baskets, while the old woman talked of the old days and told stories told to her by her mother, and her mother before her, until the girl's eyelids closed and the withies dropped from her fingers.
Aye, she were an angel, that child. With both parents dead of the plague three summers back, and her brothers and sisters buried alongside, it were just the two of them now. You ought to be married, the old woman would tell her. While the bloom of your youth is still fresh, lass, and there's still a bounce in your step, because, praise be to the Hammer God, that child was a beauty. Like the old woman in her salad days, she had a tight narrow waist with curves where you want them and not where you don't, and hair as fair and as glossy as a meadow of buttercups.
Only it were not like the lassie not to come home…
It could be she'd found herself a lover at last, and spent the night in his bed. Fifty years might have passed, but the old woman still remembered how it felt, having a man hold you for the very first time. Aye, the right man and it turned any girl's head. Made you forget your own name, if you was lucky!
But that were last night. What about today, the start of the Fire Festival, with two days of market ahead?
A terrible emptiness filled the old woman's chest as she stared at the pile of brightly coloured baskets piled in the corner, and fear crawled like a nest of snakes in her gut as the sun began to disappear behind the trees.
If only she could lift herself out of this damn bed, she'd get the Elders to start making a search!
If only her thin voice would carry a bit further, she'd call for help from her neighbours!
If only, if only, if only…
As darkness crept over the thatch, tears of frustration and terror coursed down the old woman's cheeks.
Down at the boatyard, the nightwatchman finished his rounds, jabbed his torch back in its sconce and then settled down with his back to the boat shed and closed his eyes. No point having a dog if you have to bark your bloody self was his motto. Rome provided soldiers to patrol the streets, let them earn their bloody money, and, besides, if he didn't get a good kip overnight, how would he be fit enough to put in a full shift at the sawmills tomorrow? Dreaming of the luxury that his two jobs kept him in, the nightwatchman began to snore.