‘Oh, oh, oh, oh!’
A voice, it would appear, in the final throes of ecstasy.
‘Oh, yes, Venus! O-oh, yes, yes!’
Her wits solidified with common sense. That was no hallucination, so where the devil was it coming from? Pinpointing the sound to the room one down, Claudia noticed that it, too, had a balcony. Could she make it? Did she have a choice?
‘Yes! Yes!
Venus, yes
!’
Actually, old chap, she thought, as the rail finally parted company with its mortice and tenons, we might shortly be giving a new dimension to the phrase coitus interruptus.
The wooden floor absorbed her tumbling weight and when Claudia eventually found the courage to unclamp her eyelids, it was to view a tiny apartment with one narrow pallet, one chair, one table laid with one cup, plate and knife. Curiously, its tenant was prostrate on the floor, mother-naked, mumbling what appeared to be abject apologies.
‘F-forgive me, blessed lady.’
Heavy footsteps rumbled on the stairs beyond, accompanied by a backdrop of yips and yelps. Damn. The handlers had raced across the road and were already searching this block.
‘I am but a worthless wretch.’ He was a scrawny individual, whose appearance was not enhanced by jug ears and heavy pock marks, although it was his twisted backbone which explained his solitary tactics for gratification. ‘Do not punish me harshly, oh goddess.’
Goddess? Claudia blinked and blinked again. In fact, had there been a competition for blinking, she’d have won the laurel crown. He couldn’t—? Nobody in their right mind—? Not seriously—? But he did. Incredibly, the hunchback believed Venus had dropped down from Olympus to punish him!
‘I’ll n-never take your name in vain again. I swear!’
The footsteps on the stairs were drawing closer. She had just one chance…Claudia stepped forward purposefully. ‘Remember Actaeon?’
Already pale, the poor chap blenched. Actaeon the warrior had stumbled across the goddess Diana as she was bathing. His punishment was to be turned into a stag, whereupon he was promptly torn apart by his very own pack of hunting dogs.
‘Oh, divine one!’ They could probably hear his gulp back in the Forum. ‘I s-swear on the life of my mother—’ The rap on the door cut short his grovelling and Venus watched him turn green.
‘Mortal, here is thy test. Breathe one word of my divine presence, and thou shalt suffer as Actaeon suffered. Answer the door.’
The hunchback’s gibbering denials more than convinced the gruff questioner, and Claudia’s breath came out in a hiss. Juno be praised, that was close. When she looked up, pleading eyes were upon her.
‘You think Venus does not keep her word? Leave the room, mortal, and do not return for two hours.’ A little harsh, but he wasn’t the one scheduled to satisfy some hungry tripehound’s appetite.
As he pulled on his tunic and scuttled down the stairs, Claudia pressed her hands to her forehead. So far so good, but I’ve still got to get out of here. She’d long since realized she was in the notorious district between the Esquiline and the Viminal, but where towering blocks had frustrated navigation, being five storeys up meant she could now see a way out of this maze. Lost she might be, but thanks to the march of the aqueducts and the statues high on temple roofs, trapped she most certainly was not.
Once outside, with the sound of disappointed dogs
fading into the distance. Claudia dusted her hands, took a deep breath, and set off up the darkened street. An unseen tomcat howled, but nothing else stirred, and neither did she expect it. Too poor to light candles just for the hell of it, darkness signalled bedtime for the denizens of the slum. Any man abroad after sunset would certainly be up to no good.
Especially a group of burly individuals holding a blazing torch apiece.
Claudia melted into the shadows, surreptitiously slipping her rings and her ear studs into the pleats of her cotton stola. The men waved their brands back and forth as though searching and she realized, with horror, that these were the Midden Hunters. Men who scoured the cess pits and rubbish dumps for babies to raise into slavery.
She shivered in the darkened doorway. Who hadn’t heard of these ghouls? Until now she’d imagined them legends, bogeymen born out of rumour. Empty-handed, the four moved level with Claudia’s niche and a thousand crawling insects prickled her skin. She dared not breathe as the flickering torchlight distorted their features in a way that, elsewhere, would have been comical—except for the bearded man. The scar on his cheek, vermilion and shaped like a horseshoe, made her flatten her backbone tight to the stonework.
‘Well, Captain, you owe me another denarius.’ The voice was cultivated, quiet, jocular, even. ‘That’s three out of three I’ve been right.’
The man addressed as Captain, the man with the scar, snorted. ‘Your luck can’t hold, lad. Double or quits.’
‘Hear that?’ A lushly embroidered sleeve gestured to the two men bringing up the rear. ‘You boys are my witnesses, when this miserly sod tries to dodge out of it.’
When their footsteps and laughter had faded, Claudia released her pent-up breath and set off at a run. In theory, she supposed, Midden Hunters could be seen as men who were saving the lives of the newborn, but Claudia wouldn’t give you that (mentally she snapped her fingers) for theory. It was not difficult to see why mothers here abandoned their babies. Where food was scarce, money was scarcer, precious few mouths could survive. The Emperor had stamped out the worst of the poverty by issuing males over ten with the dole, but all too often those wooden tablets changed hands on the black market for wine, leaving the men befuddled and the women half-starved. By exposing their infants on the middens to be seen—or rather heard—attention would be drawn to their plight. For all the unwanted children born in this city, there was an equal number of barren women sobbing through long, lonely nights for a babe of their own. When dawn showed the child to be gone, its mother would weep with relief and pray to Cunina, Goddess of the Cradle, to protect it. Claudia wondered how easily these poor women would sleep if they knew the stories about the Midden Hunters were true.
The relief she felt at leaving the slums and its secrets behind her could not be put into words. Why is it, she asked herself, some folk sail through life with not a hint of trouble, whereas it haunts me like a lovesick ghost? No matter, she thought, turning her aching feet towards the Argiletum, apart from the fact that Gaius’ mother and daughter and a squad of his aunts were set to descend
for
the Festival of Fortune, life
was pretty much plain sailing.
She knew why the old trouts were coming, of course. Festival be damned. Money is relative, they say, and how true. Indeed, the more the money, the greater the number of relatives.
If these old cats hoped to disinherit Claudia Seferius, they had another thing coming.
Thank heavens, the Argiletum was deserted. During the daytime, this thoroughfare was thronged with merchants, porters and a veritable army of rich, idle wives flanked by their slaves and retainers as they checked out the latest footwear, fingering the leather and admiring the stamping. The air vibrated with hammering from the lasts, but now it was merely heavy with the tang of their hides. Upmarket booksellers also congregated along this street, their wares ranging from rare volumes to—
Claudia was wrong. The street was not quite deserted. A small boy sat in the gutter, elbows on knees, fists balled into his cheeks. His face was puffy from crying, the tears had left runnels in the grime.
‘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.