Free I, Claudia by Marilyn Todd

his birth, Lucius had been groomed to take over the business, to ensure Seferius wine continued to reach the same exacting standard expected of it, and over the years the boy had proved himself a capable organizer, a hard worker in the mould of his father.
    Rollo explained he’d died from eating bad fish, and round the table heads nodded solemnly in commiseration. There was hardly a Roman in the empire who didn’t know of a friend or relative who’d perished along the same unfortunate route. Yet, glancing round the dining room the instant the news was broken, Claudia noticed that, with the exception of Gaius, none of the family looked particularly distressed. Including herself, it had to be said. Surprised, yes, but no signs of grief—even from the boy’s sister. And for Flavia not to snivel was, in itself, rather interesting.
    ‘Alms! Alms!’
    A leprous hand, bound with filthy bandages, thrust itself under the curtains of the litter. Claudia hit it as hard as she could with the sole of her sandal and watched its hasty retreat. The oath that accompanied it lacked a certain charity, she thought.
    Driven by grief and a desperate need to oversee this season’s transformation of fruit to wine, Gaius had left at first light the following day, accompanied by the poor bailiff who had been forced to repeat the arduous journey without so much as a decent night’s sleep. Claudia had kept her head down in the fervent hope her husband might have forgotten her until he was well underway—by retiring early and cocking a deaf ear to the clatter of hooves and the shouts of the grooms right under her window—but, luck wasn’t with her. She was hastily summoned to his room on the point of departure and issued with a long list of instructions, culminating in the inevitable: she must join him and the family at the villa when she’d finished, it was her duty.
    ‘Bugger.’
    As the litter lurched, she picked up a fan of ostrich feathers and frantically began flapping. Bugger, bugger, bugger.
    ‘We can’t stay long,’ Gaius had said miserably. ‘I need to be back in time for the Wine Festival.’
    For a wine merchant, this was the second most important event in the calendar, although little consolation that was. Not when there’s a whole blessed month in between with nothing to do except stagnate at that wretched farm. Claudia ground her teeth. I’ll miss all the fun of the festivals, and I do so enjoy the Lucaria. People would congregate in the groves, singing and dancing and picnicking for two luscious days, followed by ten whole days of the Caesarian Games. Then there’d be all the processions, the parties, the thanksgivings—oh, dammit, Gaius, I’ll miss the whole bloody lot! Mind you, I told him straight. This is the Nones, I said, there’s no way one poor helpless female could possibly work through that onerous list before the Ides. No way at all. Sceptical even in grief, Gaius compromised on a week and even as she waved him off Claudia congratulated herself on screwing seven days out of him. Two were more than adequate. Oodles of time to lap up what’s left of Apollo’s Games!
    Not that she’d forgotten her quest, because Claudia was well aware that for some poor sod time was running out. It didn’t take a mathematical genius to work out that the murders were being committed with greater frequency and that, by definition, the killer’s confidence would be growing with each one. There had been times, of course, when she’d wondered whether the fact that the four dead men happened to be punters was pure coincidence. Those thoughts, however were confined to moments when the moon was high and her spirits were low. Of the five clients she’d cornered this week, every last one expressed profound shock at the suggestion they might have revealed the relationship. To them the arrangement was as sacrosanct as it was pleasurable, they said—although she freely acknowledged their sentiments may well have been swayed by the