Sour Grapes

Marilyn Todd

Description

Deep in the reed beds, the water shimmered and rippled. After three days' submersion, the gases inside gently raised the body to the surface. Setting a seventeen-year-old youth on his final journey downstream.When a wealthy horse trainer starts courting her mother-in-law, Claudia knows love has bugger-all to do with it. Especially with the number of hangers-on who've moved in. But exactly what is his game? Can it be connected to a string of local misfortunes?At first, Claudia is simply curious.Then a young man is found dead...

Informations

• Publié par: Untreed Reads
• Date de parution: 16 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611878080
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
Copyright
Sour Grapes
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Other Works
Sour Grapes
By Marilyn Todd
Copyright 2015 by Marilyn Todd
Cover Copyright 2015 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print, 2005.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Also by Marilyn Todd and Untreed Reads Publishing
I, Claudia
Virgin Territory
Man Eater
Wolf Whistle
Jail Bait
Black Salamander
Dream Boat
Dark Horse
Second Act
Widow’s Pique
Stone Cold
www.untreedreads.com
Sour Grapes
Marilyn Todd
This book is dedicated to all those brave Tuscan wines
who laid down their corks in the name of research.
One
Low, grey clouds had fused with the hills, turning the landscape to lead. Gone were the lush vines that terraced the slopes. Gone were the olive groves that swept down the valley. Gone were the pastures for sheep. All that remained was a keen wind that whistled, and a nearby rumble of thunder.
Bent forward into the gale, a torch of flaming pitch in the one hand, a stick of stout laurel in the other, the old woman shouted his name. She waited. Listened. But once again, it was only the whine of the wind that answered her call and, as she pressed on up the steep mountain path, the first drops of rain started to fall.
Could it be thieves? Aye, the lambing season was a dangerous time. Wolves would devour every last one, given the chance, though not all wolves had four legs. This time of year thieves were all over, so it could, you know. It could well be thieves, and they wouldn’t care that they’d stole from folk who owned just a handful of sheep. The poor were easy targets. You can’t steal from a rich man’s estate.
‘Tages? Tages, can you hear me, boy?’
As she lifted the torch to guide her way, a crack of lightning lit up the beeches and chestnuts. Branches thrashed, silver with menace, then thunder boomed right overhead and suddenly the whole forest was creaking-groaning-moaning-in unison.
‘ Tages? ’
Twilight darkened to black, rain lashed at the landscape, chilling the air and turning the trail oily with mud. Across the valley, rheumy eyes watched the lights of Mercurium twinkling out a grid of warmth and reassurance through the storm, but Etha didn’t waver. She’d raised this boy from a babe, loved him in spite of his birth killing her daughter. He was all the old woman had.
‘Sweet Nortia, who holds our fortunes, I beseech thee.’ Setting her stick to one side, she laid a hand on the earth in which the goddess made her abode. ‘Vetha, who controlleth the seasons.’ She held out her hand to catch the rain. ‘Mighty Tins, who sendeth the thunderbolts and Uni, Queen of the Cosmos, hear me.’ Earth, water, fire and air. ‘Keep this boy safe, I beg of ye-and if it pleases ye that the Herald of Death visit tonight, let him visit upon me, not Tages. Tages is a good boy. An honest boy…’
She was unable to carry on for the lump in her throat, and, stumbling over the roots as thorns pulled at her skirt, the cold in her bones went unnoticed. Even when a blast of wind doused her torch, Etha didn’t turn back, and though her fringed shawl flapped sodden at her breast, the old woman continued to climb.
‘Where you are, Tages?’
It had to be thieves. What else could it be? He was a smart lad, and at seventeen he was skilled with the slingshot, so sure it was some dirty thief that had sneaked up on him. She paused for a moment to rest on her laurel stick. That would be all right, then. Thieves don’t kill. Not for one or two lambs. She’d find him any minute, aye, that she would, with a bump on the head and a right tale to tell…
Wouldn’t she?
As Etha called her grandson’s name into the night, the wind echoed her pain.
Two
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Claudia pushed her stepdaughter out of the road, where the girl was single-handedly causing a jam of donkeys, handcarts, wheelbarrows and sheep. Not that Claudia had any particular aversion to gridlock. But the ears of that mule suggested it wasn’t going to take much more of the driver’s switch stinging its rump, and guess who was closest if it decided to kick?
‘Your grandmother can’t possibly be mooning over some man-’
‘I didn’t say mooning .’ Flavia had to shout over the bleating of lambs. ‘I said she was in love. It’s serious.’
‘There you go, then.’ Claudia steered the girl down a side street lined with balconies that were fragrant with potted hyacinths and narcissus. ‘I always said the old bag was soft in the head and this proves it. Now for heaven’s sake, pick your feet up or the ceremony will be over before we’ve reached the wretched bridge.’
Dear Diana, this girl would come last in a snail race, she thought, hooking left at the goldsmith’s, and it wasn’t as though Flavia was the only lumpy, frumpy, dumpy creature on the marriage market. Rome was teeming with girls every bit as sullen, and they were being snapped up faster than a lizard catches flies. Ducking between the pepper warehouse and a marble store, she thanked Fortune that her late husband had had the good grace to foster Flavia on to his sister when his daughter was born. Inheriting Gaius’s entire estate was one thing. Being stuck with this dozy dollop quite another.
‘I don’t know why we’re bothering with this stupid ceremony.’
Typical Flavia. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Moan, moan, moan. Devoted to the great god, Me.
‘Because consigning twenty-seven sacred effigies into the Tiber is a solemn religious occasion,’ Claudia replied briskly. ‘It’s high time you stopped thinking of yourself all the time and started thinking of your duty to Rome.’
Or in this case, three hundred sesterces and, as she hastened her pace down the Aventine, Claudia reflected that there was no point in having double standards if you can’t live up to both. That bookmaker on Tuscan Street had been taking bets as far back as last Sunday as to which of the Argei would be first past the next pier downriver. It was something to do with the current, she supposed, but Twelve had never failed her in the past.
‘Now do stop slouching,’ she said, yanking Flavia’s shoulders back. ‘You’re giving hunchbacks a bad name.’
Ahead of them, the river shone silver in the afternoon sun, the reflections of its tree-lined banks rippling gently in the wake of the barges, though the plod of the oxen that pulled them was drowned by the crowds streaming down to the Sublician Bridge.
‘I suppose you’d better tell me about your grandmother’s latest act of folly,’ Claudia said, elbowing her way through the crush for a better view.
Terrible thing, senility, she thought, and Larentia’s problems were escalating fast. But how on earth do you reason with a mother-in-law who’s got it into her head that there’s a jinx going round and, fearful of catching it, takes herself off to the hills on the principle that if fir trees can filter germs and prevent people from catching a cold, why can’t they stop someone from catching bad luck? Unfortunately, Larentia’s faculties weren’t fading so fast that she returned home any less waspish, but when a straight-talking, straightforward, cantankerous old battle-axe announces that she’s installing a sorceress called Candace to cast spells to protect her, Claudia felt it would be like kicking a puppy to throw the charlatan out.
‘Who do we need to apologize to for your grandmother’s unwanted attentions?’ she asked, as the Vestal Virgins lined up against the parapet.
A flute began to play, and twenty female acolytes dressed in white were joined by the Priestess of Jupiter, bringing the tally of celebrants to twenty-seven. With great solemnity, each was handed a small white effigy, little doughboys who had been baked hard and dusted in flour, and who were now set to propitiate Old Man Tiber. Claudia concentrated hard on Number Twelve as the effigies were released. Swim, three hundred sesterces, swim…
‘They’re not unwanted,’ Flavia said, her perpetually turned-down mouth turning down even further. ‘Some old fogey called Darius has asked her to marry him.’
Fifteen, Eighteen and Twenty-Two smashed on impact, Three, Five and Ten washed up on the bank, while numbers Twenty-Three to Twenty-Seven had already sunk to the bottom.
‘Nonsense.’
Claudia’s knuckles gripped the wooden rail. Two, Four and Seven were stuck in an eddy, Six and Eight were turning to mush. Come on Number Twelve! You can make it!
‘Who on earth would want to marry your grandmother? She has no money.’
Claudia had inherited every copper quadran of her husband’s estate and frankly the old bag was lucky to get an allowance. It had been open warfare from the day Gaius introduced