Claudia thought about the tax she had fiddled in order to fund this expedition and smoothed the pleats of her robe. Praise be to Juno, Santonum was the one place where the Security Police wouldn't be able to ferret her out and, with luck, by the time she returned home that dear little goddess Discord would have cooked up enough assassination plots, murder and heaven-knows-what to put her petty fraud in the shade. Because if there was one thing you could guarantee about Rome, it was its obsession with conspiracies and revolt.
'Well, you know my motto,' she'd quipped airily. 'Make money first, then make it last!'
'Hm.' Marcia rolled her tongue over her teeth in a manner that suggested humour was on a par with rotting fish in her book. 'I'll send my people up to pack your belongings. This is no place for a woman like you.'
And with that she swept out again, leaving Claudia dashing down to the Temple of Fortune to donate a bracelet for her good luck.
Actually, that wasn't strictly true. Originally she'd draped a gold pendant round the goddess's neck, the one shaped like an owl and inlaid with lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl. Then she remembered that that particular pendant matched a pair of earrings that went perfectly with that new midnight robe with the embroidered hem, so she went back and swapped it for an old silver bracelet engraved with two swans that was sadly starting to tarnish.
Actually, that wasn't strictly true, either. She'd had to pin the priest against the wall by his throat before he handed the bloody pendant back, but the main thing was, Fortune had been placated, and Claudia was damned sure that a successful businesswoman like Marcia had much to teach her.
Such as holding on to her money, for one thing!
Good grief, you wouldn't think it could be so difficult, inheriting a swathe of vineyards that covered half of Tuscany plus an assortment of properties and businesses in Rome. Yet no matter how much money Claudia made, there seemed to be twice as much going out as came in, and, dear me, it wasn't as though she hadn't made sweeping economies. For instance, she could easily have bought another pair of sandals from that cobbler's shop up on the Esquiline, a green pair to match her new emerald robe, but she'd deliberately restricted herself to six pairs on that visit and was proud of her resolve. Which, incidentally, had held equally firm at the goldsmith's, ditto the dressmaker's, the perfumer's, the hairdresser's and the beautician's, although she could hardly be expected to make a trip to Gaul in last year's fashions, now could she, and it stood to reason that she'd need matching accessories and a decent supply of cosmetics and creams.
'You're back.'
Not a woman to use three words when none would do, Marcia came marching down the portico, hotly pursued by a flurry of slaves and liveried lackies. Heading this retinue was a man who looked like he'd been hewn out of an ancient oak. Broad at the shoulder, narrow at the hip and with his dark hair cropped in a neat Caesar cut, it was the same man Claudia had seen stationed outside the Lyre Street Inn during Marcia's visit. His name was Tarbel, he wore the same highly polished leather armour, and his eyes were every bit as alert to danger today as they had been two days ago.
'Come,' Marcia said, linking her arm firmly with Claudia's. 'I'll show you my tomb.'
Since it wasn't an invitation, there was no point in declining. Guest or servant, friend or relative, purchaser or vendor, every single person in Marcia's orbit was expected to jump when she clicked her fingers and thus, swept up in the avalanche of attendants and flunkies, Claudia could only marvel at the overheads wasted in running such an overstaffed household. And feel her skin tinge with green…
'I make no bones about it,' Marcia announced, leading her human snake past topiaried laurels and the giant white trumpets of lilies. 'This tomb will outshine every other civil monument in Aquitania.'
(Not so much a question of adapting to life under the eagle, then. More ego, in Marcia's case.)
'Surrounded by its own park, it- I say, you! Yes, you over there!'
The slave upending a bucket over an arching rose bush jumped as though he'd been scalded. His pail clattered into a bed of heliotrope, knocking them flat.
'How many times do I have to tell you people?' Marcia barked. 'You pour wine over those roots, not water!'
The slave reddened to the base of his neck. 'I–I — '
'Ah, but thees iss wine, your Graciousness.'
The creature whose immaculately oiled black curls emerged from the hedge bowed deeply. Clad in only a loincloth, and a tight one at that, his olive skin glistened almost as brightly as the bangles round his ankles and wrists and the plethora of beads braided into his hair.
'White wine, all the way from the island of Lesbos.' He flashed Marcia a broad, white smile. 'It iss better for rosses than red, being sweeter and not so harsh.'
Marcia's long, pointed nose twitched in what Claudia took to be pleasure. Thank you, Semir.' She turned back to the slave. 'Well, don't just stand there, boy! Get on with it.'
The slave looked like he'd just been spared execution, and his hands were shaking like aspens in a gale as he reached for his empty leather bucket. Claudia gulped.
'You… water your gardens with wine?' she asked, as the entourage swept onwards through the gate.
Still. Marcia said it herself, there was no embarrassing way to get rich, and who cared whether Seferius wine went down throats or down thistles? A sale is a sale is a sale.
'Semir is from Babylon,' Marcia said, ignoring the obvious. 'Next year, once my tomb is complete, he will recreate the famous hanging gardens, though right now he is busy landscaping the park, part of which is to house a menagerie the likes of which has never been seen in these parts. I tell you, my collection will be the envy of western Gaul.'
'Don't tell me, you have your own trapper.'
'Four,' Marcia said without irony. 'One hunting lions in Syria, another fetching me something called an elephant and two more are touring the Orient, seeking out exotic beasts for me to exhibit in crates.'
Claudia wasn't sure that a collection of half-starved, ill-treated creatures would be the envy of anywhere, much less western Gaul, and plucked an apple from the tree as she passed. Beyond the garden, vast herb beds buzzing with bees stretched away into vegetable plots, and, beyond them, lush meadows of grazing cattle, but it was down the hill to the valley that Marcia led her human snake, where the sound of babbling water competed with birdsong in the mellowing sunlight. So. The old bat had a soft centre, after all.
'This is a beautiful place to spend eternity,' Claudia breathed.
Bathed in warm sunshine and brushed by soft breezes redolent with the scent of willow and alder, tall heads of hollyhocks nodded gently on the river bank and the leaves of the poplars rustled like parchment. As a lizard scuttled over the path, a pair of blue butterflies danced down the glade and a frog croaked in the reeds.
'Obviously, the trees have to go,' Marcia said. 'You can't see my tomb for the damned things, but I'll wait a month before chopping them down. Then I can sell the wood on.'
Oh, yes. All heart, this girl.
'You don't think that might spoil the effect?' Claudia ventured.
'Exactly what the Gauls said when I started clearing the site.' Marcia snorted. 'Told me this was a holy site, a sacred place, and that I shouldn't touch it or I would be cursed. Absolute bollocks. It's my land, I can do what I like with it, and if I choose to divert this stream to feed my fountains, they will have to bloody well lump it. Also, my soothsayer tells me that this river is blessed. Padi?'
A plump Indian, who had been hidden by his taller counterparts in the crowd, stepped out of the squeeze, placed his little fat palms together and bowed. Arguably it was the most obsequious bow Claudia had ever seen.