Cholon gave a small bow and left. Claudia emerged from her quarters as he crossed the atrium and, since she stood before him, he could hardly do as he wished and ignore her. So he stopped, bowed slightly and waited for her to speak. They looked at each other for several seconds before she obliged, with a wry smile.
‘I’m aware that you don’t like me, Cholon, just as I’m aware of the reasons.’
The Greek, of all people, had seen the way Claudia’s coldness, after the birth of her bastard, a child he had himself placed on the cold ground to die, had affected his late master. He had also seen their relationship as it was before her capture: happy and tactile. Claudia had turned to stone from the moment she and her husband had been reunited, and Aulus, who blamed himself for her ordeal as well as her fall from grace, had suffered when to Cholon’s way of thinking he should not.
‘Then there seems little more to say, Lady.’
Claudia paused, hoping that he would say more, but Cholon stood silent. ‘I heard raised voices.’
‘Only one voice was raised.’
She smiled again. ‘Quintus has a temper.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Would you mind telling me the cause of the argument?’
His face was like a death-mask. ‘It was not an argument, Lady.’
‘You seem to have acquired the stiff Roman neck very quickly,’ Claudia snapped. ‘It is a pity that in adopting our codes you didn’t take on board our manners as well.’
The reply was calm, his demeanour imperturbable. ‘No doubt I shall, in time, if I’m careful with my tutors.’
Claudia clasped her hands together, her face taking on an anxious look. ‘This will not do, will it, Cholon?’
‘Do for what, Lady?’
‘Do you see me as an enemy?’ she asked. ‘There was a time, wasn’t there? I hurt Aulus and you hated me for it.’
‘Emotions may pass on with those who die. They tend to remain in the living.’
‘I know Quintus is short of money. I wonder if you know why?’
‘It would be impolite to enquire.’
‘His father, many years ago, transferred a large portion of his wealth to me.’ Cholon tried, but he could not keep the surprise off his face. ‘Unfortunately for Quintus, it seems to be the most easily tradable part of the estate. You are aware that an eldest son normally inherits everything. Aulus felt that Quintus might be unjust to me…’
‘I wonder why he felt that?’ said Cholon, coldly.
Claudia’s eyes dropped and she clasped her arms together and shivered slightly. Quintus had found her the day her ‘captivity’ had ended; it was his men who had killed Brennos’s personal bodyguards to free her. He had also seen her condition and the thought that it might become public terrified him. She could remember the thoughts she had had when Quintus went to fetch his father, Claudia refusing to move from the spot where he had found her. Sitting in the wagon, she had contemplated killing herself, but the first stirring of the child in her womb had stayed that thought. Like Aulus, Cholon only knew half the truth and, tempted as she was to open up now that she was 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.’