After a mortified Cypassis had rounded up the runaway, Larentia crossed one hand over the other on her stomach and turned to face her daughter-in-law. ‘I think,’ she said, spitting out one word at a time, ‘this might be as good a time as any to discuss finance, so let us begin with my granddaughter’s dowry.’
Well done, Larentia. Just when I thought we were only ever going to eat the bloody thing, you finally start talking turkey.
The dowry, of course, was a sensitive issue. Legally the girl was Claudia’s stepdaughter, but from birth, Gaius had foisted his unwanted daughter on to his frigid, childless sister, Julia. If for nothing else, Claudia had loved him for that, because in the five years that Claudia had known her, the girl had proved awkward and sulky and dull, traits which in children can be overlooked, forgiven even, but not when she was entering womanhood and a competitive marriage market. Even in an arranged marriage, a man needs to feel some attraction for his wife. Claudia’s stepdaughter had all the sex appeal of a plucked goose.
‘Or would you,’ snapped Larentia, ‘prefer we start with Julia’s endowment?’
Claudia carefully examined her nails. The lyre player she had hired for the evening began to warm up in the banqueting hall. ‘Since when, pray, did Julia have an endowment?’ she asked quietly. Gaius had left Claudia the lot.
The old woman’s eyes narrowed. Clearly she had been expecting blackmail to be an easier path. ‘Morally-’ she began.
‘Morally?’ Claudia evicted soil from under her thumbnail. ‘A strange word to use, when you and I both know, Larentia, any money I bestow on Julia would be swallowed up by her wastrel of a husband-’
‘What?’ squawked Julia. ‘How dare you call my-’
‘-who has already “borrowed” his foster child’s generous annuity.’
As Julia fought to grasp the issues, it occurred to her that both women were talking as though she wasn’t here. She’d expected that gold-digging whore to cold-shoulder her, but Mother?
‘It’s quite beyond belief,’ continued Claudia, raising her voice to override Julia’s shrill protests, ‘how an architect can run short of money when the Emperor is undertaking the restoration of over eighty public buildings and temples, not to mention flood defences, bridges, aqueducts and parks.’
Larentia waved that aside. ‘Everyone knows my son-in-law’s a prat-’ She broke off and turned to Julia. ‘For gods’ sakes, woman, if you have nothing sensible to say, go away. Go on. Shoo.’
For several seconds, Julia’s mouth opened and closed like a river pike before she finally withdrew, eyes brimming. But beneath the tears, Claudia observed something the old woman had not-Julia’s burning hatred for Larentia. Julia was thirty-five. It was not an age to suffer humiliation lightly, especially in the face of the enemy.
Larentia waited until her daughter left the hall. ‘My point, you money-grubbing bitch, is that whatever my son-in-law’s faults, it’s not fair Julia should suffer.’
‘So invite her to live with you in Etruria. I’ll increase your allowance to cover the pair of you.’
‘I’m not sharing a roof with that self-righteous cow and you know it. I have a good life up at the villa, I’ve got friends-’
‘Do you all fly out of the same cave at nightfall?’
A bony claw jabbed into Claudia’s breastbone. ‘Think twice about mocking me, you degenerate hussy. You can’t parade your bastard brat under my nose and get away with it.’
Bored with her cuticles, Claudia settled herself on the edge of the pool and threw one long leg over the other. ‘Maybe I’ll get married again,’ she said lightly.
The changes which skipped over Larentia’s face were pure entertainment. Surprise. Disbelief. Amusement. Puzzlement. Fear.
Claudia trailed one of the severed fern fronds in the water and didn’t wait for Larentia to stop spluttering. ‘As a widow, I’m a free agent.’ She flashed the old witch a keen glance. ‘And if the man I choose happens to be a butcher’s boy, then a butcher’s boy I shall marry.’
‘You’ll do no such thing! Ours is not a family of alley cats. Respectable families don’t crossbreed and you’ll do well to bear that in mind!’
Her husband had been a humble road builder. It had been Gaius, her son, who had slogged night and day to build up a business and establish a reputation for his fine wines. Gaius who had raised the family from freeborn to high-ranking equestrian status. Gaius who had married his silly sister to an up-and-coming architect. Gaius who died and left all his money to some high-handed bitch instead of his own blood relatives.
Larentia looked as though a rotting rodent had been wedged up her nostril. ‘Tch! We’re getting nowhere,’ she snapped. ‘But just you remember, you can’t wriggle out of your obligations, my girl.’
‘Why, Larentia.’ Claudia’s eyelashes fluttered like butterflies round a hyssop bush. ‘Let me show you the accounts some time, dear.’ Another delectable flash of suspicion crossed the old woman’s face. ‘The business is booming, I have extended wine sales right across the country and am hoping to expand into Gaul in the summer. If I chose, the dowry could be double what Gaius had promised.’
Greed lit the old cat’s rheumy eyes like candles at Saturnalia, but she still had the last word.
‘Frankly, daughter-in-law, your business acumen surprises me, but make no mistake. When I find the father of that brat and prove you cheated on my son, I’ll have you disinherited as an adulteress and thrown on the street with barely a rag to your name.’
She stormed off to her room, leaving Claudia fanning the warmth which had rushed to her cheeks. On the whole, though, Claudia felt she had argued her case rather well, considering the business was foundering and she was deeply in debt. And, whilst Jovi might not be her child, if Larentia actually dug deep enough, she’d have cause to throw Claudia Seferius out on the street at least two dozen times.
*
In a house of a very different shape, in a room of very different furnishings, a weapon lay swaddled in cotton. The cotton was maroon, to match the cornelians in the knife’s handle, for this was no common kitchen knife, no carpenter’s companion, no genteel dining implement. Once it had been an illustrious heirloom, handed down from father to son upon each boy’s coming of age, but that had been during the time of the Republic. Since then, civil wars had ravaged three generations, taking its toll just as heavily on the nobility as on the plebeians and the knife had suffered a similarly chequered career.
Stolen by a trusted secretary upon the death of its owner and sold for a mere fraction of its value, it first passed to a legate, who bequeathed it to his grandson, who in turn was captured by buccaneers off Gaul and held for ransom. For a while the knife did sterling service, changing hands in a series of fierce piratical raids until it was requisitioned in the name of the Empire by the captain of a warship who bequeathed it to his only child, a daughter. She, having no use for such an artefact, bejewelled or otherwise, sold it for enough to buy a small house in Frascati to keep her handsome Cretan lover safe from the prying eyes of her fat and ageing husband. Then again, it could have been because she had learned that, way back in its bloody history, the weapon had been given a name.
Nemesis.
But whatever her reasons for selling, the knife was back where it belonged. With a fond and loving owner, one who would cherish its sinister beauty and keep the blade sharper than any barber’s razor.
Had the weapon ears, it would have heard, as the Day of Luna faded, the flurry of activity which accompanies any household as it settles for the night. The splash of washbasins being emptied with iron ladles. The clatter of shutters opening and closing, as hopeful eyes once more wondered if the weather wasn’t changing for the better. Instead, the sumptuous weapon was left to reminisce, inside its wine-dark cotton shroud, on its fortunes and adventures. How its worth had varied from owner to owner, and how its owners, too, had varied-male to female, noble to criminal, light of touch to downright light-fingered. And yet, with the exception of the naval captain’s daughter, every owner from the date of its first and splendid forging had used the weapon to kill and to maim. Sometimes in anger, maybe in defence, all too often in war, that same thin blade had slipped between ribs or sliced through a windpipe, leaving scars and widows in its wake.