‘Hello, soldier.’
Melancholy eyes rolled up to look at her. Words did not come.
Hmm. That was not a head of hair you could ruffle. Not unless you had a stomach for beetly things. But you couldn’t just pass on. Not while his little lower lip still trembled.
Claudia plumped herself down and mirrored his pose. ‘Want to talk about it?’ she asked softly.
Small shoulders shrugged. Bewildered, dejected, he was determined not to give in.
Claudia studied him as closely as she could by what paltry light was cast from an upstairs window. Maybe five years old, his clothes had been stitched and stitched again, and his bare feet were clearly strangers to leather.
‘Lost, are you?’ Too well she knew what it felt like for a grown-up-the terror and the claustrophobia-what must it be like for a tiddler?
A small chin jutted out defiantly before he nodded. ‘I want me ma.’
Will I never get a hot bath?
‘I asked that lady to take me home, but she wouldn’t help me.’ A grimy finger pointed towards a shuttered bookshop. There was, of course, no one there.
‘No?’ Claudia stood up and shook the folds of her tunic. ‘Well, I’m here now. Come along.’
‘She’s asleep.’
‘Who is? Your ma?’
‘That lady there.’
Poor kid. ‘What’s your name, soldier?’
A half-smile flitted across his tear-stained face. ‘Jovi.’
‘And where do you live, Master Jovi?’ Merciful heavens, please don’t say back where I’ve come from!
‘Dunno.’
Dumbfounded, Claudia leaned down to look him in the eye. ‘Say that again.’
He gripped one thumb in his fist and stared at his little blackened feet. ‘I’ve never bin away before.’
He was making such tremendous efforts not to cry that, in spite of herself, she ruffled his matted hair. ‘You’d better fall in line then, soldier, because tonight you’re on escort duty.’
Jovi stood up and cocked his head on one side. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. You can deputize as my bodyguard and walk me home, and as a reward, you shall receive a hot pie and a bowl of honeyed apricots, and after breakfast I will take you home to your ma. How does that sound?’
‘Promise?’
‘Upon my oath, young man. First thing in the morning, we’ll have you washed and scrubbed so clean your mother will think she’s got two sons called Jovi.’
‘You won’t forget you said apricots, will you?’
As a small, dry hand slipped into hers, Claudia had a feeling they were not entirely alone on the Argiletum. It could be the lamps flickering from the upper storeys. It could be the dark, damp, starless sky. But she had the strangest feeling that wretched lovesick ghost was back to haunt her.
The one whose name was Trouble…
II
Less than a mile away, in the smart town house of the pepper merchant, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio killed time by admiring the exquisite decor. Sweeping pastoral frescoes, so perfect you could almost hear the goats bleat. Hanging lamps with six or seven wicks lit the room brighter than a midsummer noon. A bronze dog was curled in the corner and rare aromatics filled the air. He glanced at the water clock. It was not like his informant to be late, but these were difficult times. Less than a fortnight before, the Empire had been rocked to its core when Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa – at once the Emperor’s closest friend, finest general, son-in-law and Regent-had returned from campaign and promptly died. The shock waves could not have been greater had the earth itself trembled, because if the Fates could cut this man’s thread at fifty-two, what chance for Augustus who was the same age?
Orbilio slid open one of the doors to the garden, where torchlight breathed life into the marble statuary and made gems of the whispering fountains. But cloying wallflowers did not understand sophisticated room scents and he closed it again. What chance for Augustus, indeed? There was many a fellow who, in his youth, had been Julius Caesar’s man and had been outraged when Augustus ingratiated himself to become the Great Man’s heir. Although more rational men blamed Caesar for setting his catamite above his natural-born son, any waverers had their doubts dispelled after Caesar’s murder, when the catamite showed the people precisely why he’d paid such a high price for adoption.
First he dealt with Brutus, then he dealt with Cassius and, finally, he dealt with Mark Anthony. Orbilio was only six at the time, yet still he remembered the tremendous ripple of excitement which spread through Rome when Augustus promised an end, once and for all, to three generations of civil war. After that, he went from strength to strength-annexing Egypt, Galatia, Spain, all the Alpine territories, Liguria, Illyria and Germany, as far as the Danube. He eliminated piracy, set up a network of trade hitherto unimagined and certainly unparalleled and finally, with his promise fulfilled, he disbanded the army’s part-time peasant farmers in exchange for a hard core of professionals, releasing the land for full-time farming. Small wonder his people took an ever swelling pride in their new roads, their sewers, the aqueducts which carried sweet water from the springs in the hills. The Emperor Augustus had given them twenty years of ineffable stability, their bellies and the Treasury were full. The spoils of war had turned their temples into marble masterpieces, bronze heroes galloped across the Forum, public baths, libraries, theatres and gardens were springing up pretty well everywhere.
Who, now, remembers that, to be on the safe side, Augustus had felt obliged to murder Caesar’s natural-born son?
Who, now, cares?
No one. But then sedition doesn’t always hinge on history and past grudges. Money is a factor. And let’s never forget the lure of power for its own sake. The Empire was poised on the brink of disaster.
The heat from the braziers had reached unbearable proportions, and Orbilio shrugged off that symbol of his birthright, the toga. That was a real perk of being attached to the Security Police, dispensing with the toga. Heavy and unwieldy, it restricted a man’s movements, although gentlemanly attire was a necessary evil when mingling with the wealthy and the noble (and naturally he’d worn the black toga throughout the public mourning for Agrippa). However, life must move on, and nine days at standstill takes a heavy toll on commerce and industry, there was much catching up to be done.
‘Marcus!’ A young woman, pink and immaculate, swept into the room. ‘Am I terribly late?’
Who said informants were restricted to the dross of society, or that they should be exclusively male?
‘I’m early,’ he lied, drinking in Mevia’s full breasts and rounded hips as she turned the key in the lock.
‘It’s this silly market day that causes so much chaos,’ she pouted. ‘You’d think we hadn’t had one for ten weeks, much less ten days.’
‘When you hold them every eight days, people become dependent upon the routine.’ Disrupt that routine and you disrupt the structure of their lives. Praise be to Jupiter, we’re right back on schedule. ‘So, Mevia. What have you got for me?’
‘Just myself,’ she purred, slipping off her sandals. ‘But you won’t be disappointed.’
Damn right, he thought, watching her girdle slide to the floor. The greatest threat to the Emperor came not from the army, but from wealthy merchants banding together and for that reason, he’d made contact with Mevia. The hem of her tunic rose with tantalizing slowness to reveal first a pair of finely turned ankles, then her shapely calves. Halting half-way up her thighs, Mevia turned slowly round, watching him over her shoulder as she teased the pale pink linen up over her bottom, then her back and then finally drew it over her head. Sometimes she had information about the activities of her pepper-merchant husband and sometimes he drew a blank. Well, it was his duty, in the interests of the Empire, to pursue every angle, was it not?