Virgin Territory by Marilyn Todd Read Free Book Online Page B

that woman possessed any brain cells whatsoever, they had to be evenly distributed round her body. Squashed together and concentrated between her ears they might at least have served a useful purpose, but instead Matidia’s thoughts were as sparse and as colourless as her hair, which she hid beneath a succession of elaborate—if perfectly hideous—wigs.
    Funnily enough, this very airy-fairyness was the strongest evidence yet to corroborate Sabina’s claim to Collatinus blood, although even her mother didn’t connect the chubby child who left home with the willowy creature who came back.
    ‘I thought your eyes were grey, darling,’ Matidia said mournfully on greeting her long-lost daughter and Claudia’s ears had pricked up.
    Aha! Was the imposter about to be denounced at last?
    ‘Or do I mean blue?’
    No wonder her husband, Aulus, dissolved his frustrations in the wine goblet. Since his own father, Eugenius, was something of a tyrant, running both business and household with an iron fist in spite of an accident which left him bedridden, Aulus, at the age of fifty-eight, could perhaps have been forgiven the odd indulgence—had he been less of a bigot and a bully, and uncommonly proud of both qualities. His patronizing air bounced right off Claudia, but probably went a long way towards explaining why the good folk of Sullium rarely accepted his social invitations and dished them out even less.
    Of course, in Aulus’s case, Claudia thought cheerfully, it was easy to look down one’s nose at people. When you’ve got a hooter that long, what other option is there?
    Aulus had sired two other children—sons, both as tall and gaunt as their parents. Portius, a mere eighteen with kohl-rimmed eyes and bejewelled fingers, was probably a mistake in his conception and everything had gone downhill since. He was, Matidia enthused, a genius, a prodigy. He had had the Call, she said. He worshipped his Muse with unstinting devotion, she said. Why, you could catch Portius night and day kneeling to Euterpe, she said, laying offerings at her feet and listening to the notes of her flute that gave him the rhythm to his poetry, notes which we mortals were denied unless we, too, had had the Call. She said.
    Then there was Linus. What could you say about Linus? Thirty-one, with his high forehead and receding, gingerish hair, he looked at you the way most people look at cowpats stuck on the sole of their sandals. In true Collatinus tradition he had taken himself a tall, bony wife with a short neck and stooped shoulders and there were, no doubt, many ways of describing Corinna. Mousy, bland and nondescript dashed to the fore. Unfortunately, there were precious few ways of remembering her. She came, and then she went. Finish. No conversation, no animation, no impact.
    A far cry from their offspring, four ghastly, unruly brats. Well, let’s be charitable and say three, because Vilbia was still toddling. Just give her time.
    Add to that a wide range of secretaries, scribes, servants, tutors and slaves. Mix well. Stir in an extra helping of jealousy, vanity, squabbling, back-biting and miserliness, top with a tartar—and a visitor quickly begins to get the picture.
    There’s Dexippus, Claudia reflected, Eugenius’s secretary, with his thick lips and strange, brooding stare. There was Piso the tutor, bald on top apart from a little tuft of wispy dark hair right at the front, with a penchant for the cane. And there was Senbi, their hard-boiled household steward, who, along with his son, Antefa, kept the slaves in line and whose word was law, whose justice was rough.
    The guest bedrooms, being at the front of the house and thus well distanced from those of the family which flanked the garden, gave Claudia some degree of protection, but was it enough? Would Rome be far enough from this bunch of callous, self-absorbed individuals?
    ‘And to think I was in a hurry to get away from Syracuse.’ Claudia addressed her remark to a pair of swallows