widowed, she knew she still had to keep secret the truth.
‘You and I are now the only people who know what happened. I am aware of the regard you had for my husband. I doubt if I could ever convince you how much I esteemed him…’
The interruption was brutal. ‘I doubt he sought your esteem.’
She reached out and grasped his arm. ‘Unbend, Cholon. I cannot explain to you, neither will I demean myself to attempt it, but if we were enemies once, we can be friends now. The memory of that man is as dear to me as it is to you.’
Cholon’s voice had a crack in it, half a sob. ‘I cannot believe that!’
Claudia tightened her grip as she saw his head drop. ‘Who will you talk to? With whom can you share your past with some degree of understanding, or will you be forever telling strangers of the greatness of the man you loved, knowing that they don’t believe you, thinking that you are merely taking on airs in a famous man’s shadow. You can talk to me. I know what he was worth.’
The anger returned again. ‘Do you?’
‘Ten times me, if not a hundred. I hurt him more than anyone alive, yet I asked him to put me aside.’ Cholon looked into her eyes, seeking the truth. ‘Aulus refused. In a way he inflicted the suffering on himself. He was a victim of his own nobility.’
‘He loved you, Lady.’
Claudia quickly wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘I have money to pay his bequests, and to reimburse you.’
‘You were listening?’
Claudia shook her head. ‘I do not need to listen at doors. One of the soldier’s wives came with her children to express her thanks. I know Quintus didn’t pay her. I’m like you, Cholon. I would not want Aulus to suffer from posthumous disgrace and, sometimes, I would like someone to talk to that I know I can trust.’
Cholon bowed his head, half in acknowledgement, half to hide his distress. Thoas the Numidian slave flitted from behind a nearby pillar. Cholon, more alert than Claudia, turned and saw him. The man’s colouring and height identified him, making the Greek wonder if Quintus had set Thoas to spy on his stepmother. He could quite believe it, which only served to widen the gulf between what he thought of the father and the lack of regard he had for the son. It was because he decided to say nothing that Cholon missed the point; his suspicion of Claudia outweighed every other consideration. If he had spoken, he would have found that Thoas, along with her handmaiden Callista, had been bought from Quintus as soon as the will was read.
CHAPTER FIVE
The road was dusty, the air hot and arid, so Didius Flaccus ordered his men to dismount and walk the horses, a command greeted with blank and silent stares. It worried him that they did not grumble; he was used to the company of legionaries, and they did little else. These men were not soldiers, though a few of them must have been so at one time. They had recently been guards and instructors at a gladiator school, which had gone under due to the owner’s debts; tough, scarred men and ruthless, who would spear an opponent on the nod from anyone who would pay their wages. He had offered them more than that to act as his personal bodyguard because what he had to do would be hard and dangerous. The Sicilian slaves he was about to take over would work or die, probably both, and no one man, alone, could feel secure in such a situation.
‘How far’ve we come?’ demanded Toger. ‘I need a wet.’
Flaccus stopped and half-turned to answer; unlike the others, this individual actively troubled him. He was squat, lantern-jawed, with huge shoulders and a square head covered in tight curls. His eyes, small and pig-like, never ceased to move, as though he was forever on guard against some unseen attack, an impression strengthened by the worry lines that furrowed his tiny forehead. He would smile occasionally, but there was no friendliness in it. Toger’s physical presence was alarming and he had a wild and unpredictable temper. The other men did not like him, though they laughed heartily enough at his feeble jokes, and never questioned any of his suggestions. They were afraid of him and it was quite possible, Flaccus thought, that the best way to ensure their undying loyalty would be to kill him.
‘We’re near a place called Aprilium,’ he replied, looking around the cultivated fields that lined the road and stretched to the grazing land for sheep and cattle on the nearby foothills. The substantial and well-tended villas they had passed were ample evidence of the wealth such land produced, just as they were proof that the owners would not be common farmers. Barbinus himself had a property round these parts — one he had just avoided — there was no way he could take this bunch of thugs into such a place, but thinking on that reminded him of another fact. His mind went back to the pass at Thralaxas and the men he had left to die there. ‘A few of my cohort came from round here, poor bastards.’
Toger snorted derisively. ‘Poor bastards is right, if they have to work the soil.’
‘They’re even worse off than that. They were trampled into it, that is if there was anything left of them after they had been hacked to pieces.’
‘Are you thinkin’ of payin’ any social calls?’ asked Dedon, another of his ruffians.
Flaccus did not reply. Clodius Terentius had come from land that lay close to the Barbinus properties, which caused the centurion to remember two other things: Clodius had been a surrogate legionary for someone better off than he, called Piscius Dabo. The second thing was that Clodius had died owing him money. They would have to stop for the night soon, find a bunkhouse in one of the flea-ridden post-houses that lined the route. How much better and cheaper it would be to impose themselves on a free billet. Right now, Flaccus was paying for everything, their wages as well as their bed and board; a personal bodyguard had not been part of his deal with Barbinus. This lot would not consent to sleeping in a field and if they did stay at a post-house, Flaccus knew that he would probably wake in the morning to find a couple of women and several flagons of drink added to his bill.
He turned to Dedon and gave him a grim smile. ‘I’m thinkin’ of paying a call, though I doubt I’ll be welcome.’
Toger grinned, his tiny yellowed teeth making a sharp contrast with the thick red lips. ‘Who cares about that?’
They turned off the busy road slightly further south and started to ask for directions. Perhaps if Dabo had been less crabbed he might have had on his side the natural hostility of country folk for strangers, let alone a band of men such as these. That would have guaranteed a dumb response to questions about the location of his farm, but his grasping nature, as well as his parsimony, had become a local byword, so even people who had had no dealings with him, and therefore no real cause to dislike him, were happy to direct Flaccus to the right place.
The builders, Mellio and Balbus, were near to finishing for the day and, still working on the roof, they were the first to see the small band of armed men approach. What they observed made them hurry to put away their tools and for once their attitude to Aquila was as dusty as the boy himself. An air of impending trouble seemed to emanate from the horsemen as they rode into the compound, hauling their mounts to in front of the main section of the house. Minca stood, his tail stretched out behind him, the ruff along his back proud, a sure sign of danger. The workmen left from the back of the building, taking care to keep out of sight. Dabo, who had come out to greet these visitors, hurried back into the house having looked them over, sending a slave to fetch everyone in from the fields.
‘Greetings,’ he said when he re-emerged, squinting up at Flaccus, astride his horse with the sinking sun behind him.
‘I’m looking for a fellow called Piscius Dabo.’
The idea of lying crossed Dabo’s mind but he dismissed it, sure that this man knew he was at the right farm. Besides Aquila had jumped down from the uncompleted roof and wandered over to stand beside him. The dog loped across the compound and took station by the boy’s leg, his presence causing some of the horses to shy away till Aquila took him by the ear, said something quietly in that heathen tongue he had learnt from the Celtic shepherd who had owned the animal, and Minca sat down.
‘That’s me,’ Dabo replied with an air of confidence he certainly did not feel. ‘And who might I be addressin’?’
‘Says it all really. Here he is, Piscius Dabo of the 10th, a legionary Hastari, who has just spent years fighting
