The Raven's Wing Read online

  Dedication

  For David.

  Amor meus amplior quam verba est.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  A cry!

  Opening my eyes to the dark room I sat up, my body tensed, waiting to hear it again. It had been so full of pain and sorrow … like a baby, abandoned, left on the bank of a river by a jealous king who —

  Oh for goodness’ sake, could I be any more dramatic? I’d probably only dreamed the cry.

  I lay down again and inhaled the scent of the verbena and sweet marjoram I had gathered for my wreath, trying to will myself back to sleep (a bride with bags under her eyes wasn’t exactly the look I was hoping for). But after a few minutes of determined deep breathing I gave up. Sliding out of bed, I lit a lamp. I had no idea what time it was, but knew it must be early: before the sun, before the rooster; not even the household slaves were stirring.

  My wedding clothes were already laid out. Prisca, my stepmother, would be coming later to dress me, and an ornatrix would arrange my hair in the traditional six plaits (and, with any luck, reveal a remedy for baggy eyes).

  I held the plain white woollen dress against my body, then, on impulse, pulled it on over my under tunic. Let’s see how I looked without Prisca here to spoil the moment with her disapproving stare. Taking the veil, which was a deep yellow the colour of egg yolk, I arranged it so that it streamed down my back. Over this I put the wreath I’d made. Finally I tied the woollen cord around my waist in a Hercules knot like my stepmother would use. Once she had tied that special knot, it could only be undone by my husband.

  I held up the silver mirror. Beautiful. (Well, it wasn’t like Prisca was going to say it, so I might as well.) Turning my head to the left then the right, I admired how the soft yellow veil floated in the barest current of air.

  Then my eye was caught by another movement in the mirror, and I had a brief glimpse of a face reflected behind my own.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I asked, but as I spun around the lamp was snuffed out, plunging the room into darkness.

  For a moment I just stood, my heart thumping in my chest. I could sense something … someone.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I asked again, my voice unsteady now.

  There was no reply, but a rustle of movement told me I was not alone.

  ‘Is somebody —?’

  Suddenly an arm was holding me fast around the waist, squeezing the air from my lungs. Before I could cry out a sack was pulled over my head and down past my elbows almost to my wrists, so that my arms were trapped by my sides. I opened my mouth to scream as I was lifted, as easily as if I were a bag of grain, but only managed a whimper.

  What was happening? Where were the slaves who guarded the door to the house? Why weren’t they stopping this?

  My captor moved swiftly through the house, but I was so frightened and disoriented I couldn’t tell in what direction. I only knew we were outside when I heard the gentle snorting of a horse and then, from above me, a grunt of query. Though the sound was muffled by the sack, I heard the man holding me answer, ‘She was already awake. Dressed for the wedding.’

  The man on the horse uttered what sounded like a curse.

  In the silence that followed, the stillness of the predawn was pierced by a strangled cry, the same cry as in my dream, and I realised that it came not from a baby, but a crow. The cry of the crow was said to be the loneliest in the world — and the unluckiest. Instantly my mind returned to the ill omen on that day back in Arretium: the brush of those rough feathers against my cheek. Perhaps this was the moment that first crow had foretold. Perhaps these men meant to murder me too — for I couldn’t help but think of the other wedding that never was, the other bride never to be. Now, it seemed, it was my turn …

  Five months earlier

  ‘Claudia, why are you still here in the caldarium? You’ll boil like a ham.’

  I had been half dozing, but on hearing my name I lifted my head from the tiled edge of the pool. Through the fine mist rising from the hot water I saw my aunt, a towel wrapped around her ample form. She had been for a massage and I was supposed to be waiting for her in the dressing room to go home. But I’d begun mentally furnishing the house Rufus and I would have after we were married (I had seen a royal-blue divan at the bazaar earlier in the week, and I wanted one just like it for our atrium) and then the heat had made me drowsy, and, well, here I was.

  ‘You go ahead, Aunt Quinta,’ I said. ‘Anthusa will walk home with me.’

  Aunt Quinta, looking doubtful, bent down to push strands of hair from my sweat-slicked forehead. ‘I don’t like the idea of you walking around the streets on your own, especially in the heat of the day,’ she said. ‘Think of your complexion.’ She raised her eyebrows meaningfully. ‘Rufus Crispus won’t want a bronzed bride.’

  I groaned. Since Rufus’s proposal my aunt had been full of what he would and wouldn’t want. ‘I’ll make sure Anthusa carries a sunshade,’ I promised. I didn’t bother to add that this early in spring my face was more likely to go ruddy from cold than sunburn.

  ‘Please don’t be too long, Claudia — Anthusa will be needed in the kitchen to help with dinner, remember.’

  That evening Rufus and his family would be joining us for dinner to celebrate my fifteenth birthday and begin planning our engagement party.

  When my aunt had left I stood up abruptly, sending ripples along the surface of the pool. A woman a few feet away, soaking up to her neck, gave me an irritated look. Her hair was elaborately coiffed and braided, and she was probably trying to avoid getting it wet. (Maybe she should avoid coming to the baths then?) I climbed out of the pool and one of the attendants hurried forwards with a towel. Stepping into the wooden-soled sandals that were placed before me, I clattered across the tiles towards the dressing room.

  Anthusa was waiting there with the other slaves.

  ‘I don’t know why you sent your aunt on ahead,’ she complained as she helped me to pull my long white dress over my head then tied the belt around my waist.

  ‘When I’m married,’ I said, ignoring her, ‘I’m going to have a dress in every colour I can think of. I am so sick of white.’

  Anthusa handed me my cloak then kneeled to strap on my sandals. ‘Get dark colours,’ she said. ‘That way, when you decide to walk home through the dirty streets instead of going in the litter the mud on your hem won’t be so obvious.’

  I made a face at the top of her dark head. ‘Don’t you start.’

  Despite my aunt’s admonishment, the sunshade wasn’t necessary as we left the baths; the street was cast in shadow from the tall narrow apartment buildings lining each side. People were milling
between the shops and food stalls, forcing carts and chariots to slow to walking pace. Up ahead, I saw a messenger on horseback stop to ask directions of a barber who had a chair set out by the side of the road. The barber lifted the blade from his customer’s chin and pointed with it, describing the shape of the Temple of Diana in the air.

  Leaving the crowd behind, we followed the rider as the road inclined gently, then more steeply, and the apartment buildings gave way to one- and two-storey houses. As we neared the temple, we passed my aunt’s friend, Julia Domitia, being carried up the hill in a sedan chair, two slaves struggling to bear her weight.

  ‘Where are you going in such a rush, Claudia?’ she called. She looked as hot and flustered as if she were the one exerting herself. ‘It’s not right for a girl your age to be dashing about the streets in the hot sun — think of your complexion.’

  Did she and my aunt have some kind of psychic connection? I just waved and carried on.

  When we turned the corner into the first street after the temple I saw the messenger had turned too. With rising excitement I saw him dismount, pull a scroll from his saddlebag, and rap on the door of my uncle’s house. It was opened and he disappeared inside.

  ‘Anthi, look!’ I hurried forwards, hoping that the scroll was what I had been longing for: a message from my father. Three weeks had passed since Uncle Marius sent a message to Rome to tell him of my engagement, but we hadn’t heard a word. I shouldn’t have been surprised — Father hadn’t been in touch at all in the ten years since he and my brother moved to Rome, leaving me in the care of my aunt and uncle — but the least he could do was send his good wishes, I thought. Or a good gift …

  As I picked up my pace, I saw a dark shape swoop towards me from above. Blinded by the sun at first, I could only just make out the silhouette of a bird, its wings outstretched. I blinked and a sharp beak came into focus beneath a pair of glittering black eyes. They seemed to fix on me, full of malice, and for a moment, as our gazes locked, time seemed to slow. Then I heard Anthusa shriek and everything sped up again.

  My vision filled with black. I cried out and beat at it with my hand and at the last moment the bird turned, so that I felt only the rasp of feathers as its wing brushed my left cheek.

  ‘What was that?’ I gasped, pressing my hand to the spot it had touched.

  ‘A crow,’ Anthusa replied, watching the bird’s flight. When she turned back her brow was creased. ‘On the left side too. That’s a bad omen.’

  I saw again its glittering eyes, how they had seemed to know me, then shook my head to dispel the image.

  One of my uncle’s slaves was leading the rider’s horse away to the stables as I ran inside through the heavy wooden door, barely pausing for Anthusa to take the cloak from my shoulders. I went directly into the atrium, the largest room in the house. The pool in its centre, where rainwater was collected, shimmered with light pouring in through the opening in the roof, and I saw my aunt seated at the table on the far side of it. She had what looked like the household accounts in front of her, but her eyes were fixed on the door of Uncle Marius’s office, which was to my left.

  ‘Aunt Quinta?’ I said, and she shifted her gaze to me.

  ‘Your uncle is in the office with a messenger,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I heard the man say he came from Gauis Claudius Maximus.’

  Yes! The message was from my father.

  I walked across the atrium to join her in watching the door. Neither of us spoke as the minutes ticked by slowly, the silence broken occasionally by murmurs from behind the curtain covering the office doorway. After what seemed like an eternity, my uncle emerged from his office carrying a scroll of parchment. He was followed by a tall, dark, bearded man — Greek, judging by his thick black hair, heavy black brows and long straight nose. He nodded to us. Uncle Marius beckoned to a slave, who then conducted the bearded man towards the door leading to the kitchen.

  As my uncle approached us, I jumped up. No doubt Father had timed the arrival of his message so he could send me birthday wishes and his blessing for my betrothal on the same day.

  ‘Well, Marius? Don’t leave us in suspense,’ my aunt said.

  Tall, with a slight stoop, my uncle was a slender amphora while Aunt Quinta, her short, stout figure clad in a dark brown gown with a rust-coloured stola over the top, resembled one of the sturdy, plump-bellied urns made in her husband’s workshop.

  My uncle lifted the scroll. His face was grave. ‘I have this from Gaius Maximus.’

  ‘We know that,’ I said. ‘Tell us what it says!’

  ‘Sit, Claudia.’

  Obediently I sank onto a stool, only to rise again as a dread thought occurred to me. ‘Why are you looking like that, Uncle Marius? He’s not objecting to the engagement, is he? But Rufus is —’

  ‘Sit,’ my uncle repeated quietly, and I sat. ‘He writes of your brother.’

  ‘Tiberius? What about him?’

  ‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid.’ He reached down to rearrange the folds of his toga as if trying to delay what came next. ‘It seems Tiberius was in the army. He went to Cantabria with Marcus Agrippa, and was killed while trying to quell an uprising.’

  My older brother was dead. I repeated the words to myself — Tiberius is dead; my brother is dead — and tried to feel something, but it was useless. Tiberius was a stranger to me.

  ‘I’m sorry for my father,’ I ventured, knowing I should say something.

  ‘His only son,’ my uncle murmured. ‘By Jupiter, it must be a heavy blow for the senator.’ His eyes moved towards the shrine containing small marble busts of his ancestors. It must be especially hard for a man in my father’s position to lose his son, I supposed, and have the family line cut short.

  ‘But what about Claudia?’ my aunt asked. ‘Has he said anything about her?’

  Yes, what about Claudia? I held my breath as I waited for the answer.

  ‘She is to go to Rome.’

  ‘Gaius wishes for her to visit?’ my aunt asked.

  I was going to Rome to see my father! Now that was a message worth waiting for. I was about to demand more details when my uncle said, ‘No. Not a visit.’

  Oh.

  ‘What are you saying, Marius?’ Quinta’s voice was rising.

  My uncle lifted a hand to smooth his bald head. He did not meet his wife’s eyes or mine as he said, ‘It is all arranged. Claudia is to join the senator’s household.’

  Join his household? ‘But what about my marriage?’ I whispered, my mouth dry.

  Marius’s lips tightened. ‘Your father’s letter doesn’t acknowledge your engagement. He merely states that your proper place is in your father’s house. A carriage is already on its way to fetch you. You will leave the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow?’ my aunt shrieked. ‘She’s to leave us just like that, after ten years? Impossible! You must write and tell Gaius we refuse to part with her.’ She shook her head violently and her curls trembled.

  ‘Quinta …’ My uncle put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. ‘It’s his right to demand the return of his daughter. You know that it is.’

  My aunt let out a choked sob and if my throat hadn’t been so closed up I would have done the same. Since I was five years old she had been a mother to me, and my uncle a father.

  ‘You’ll have a new family in Rome, Claudia,’ my uncle said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘We heard that your father’s second wife had children of her own, didn’t we?’

  ‘I don’t want a new family,’ I protested. I couldn’t believe this was happening. ‘Why do I have to go to Rome?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a reaction to the death of Tiberius,’ my uncle suggested. ‘In his grief for his son, Gaius might be seeking solace in his daughter.’

  Quinta’s expression softened. ‘That is likely it,’ she said. ‘And who knows? Maybe when his grief is less sharp he’ll allow Claudia to return.’

  Uncle Marius rose to his feet. ‘I have to get to the workshop,’ he said. ‘We�
�re shipping a large order to Florentia this week.’

  ‘Make sure you find Aulus Crispus and tell him what has happened,’ Quinta said. ‘Be sure to emphasise that it is beyond our control.’

  The Crispii were our close friends as well as Aulus being an important business connection of my uncle’s. Rufus’s father was in distribution, sending the products of Arretium’s famed pottery workshops all over Italy and beyond. Uncle Marius and Aulus Crispus had been planning the marriage between me and Rufus since we were children in the schoolroom together. It was a good match; Aulus’s network of contacts would enable Marius to expand into new markets, and Rufus would one day take over both Uncle Marius’s pottery workshop and his father’s business. And it didn’t hurt that I was the daughter of a senator, meaning the marriage would give Rufus a certain prestige.

  When my uncle had left the room Quinta reached over to take my hands in hers. ‘Oh, Claudia,’ she said, tears welling in her eyes.

  I squeezed her hands then got to my feet, knowing the only way to keep my own tears in check was to get busy. ‘I’d better go see about packing.’

  I went to my room but there was really nothing I could do. Nearly everything I owned — my dresses and under tunics, the warm woollen cloak I wore in winter and the lighter one I had for the warmer months — was already kept in a large wooden chest. Once I’d put my jewels and cithara in the chest too, my whole life would be ready to be transported down Via Cassia to Rome.

  I sat on the stool by the dressing table and opened the brass box that held my jewellery. It wasn’t a big collection: a few pieces that had belonged to my mother, a bracelet I’d had for years, some earrings that Aunt Quinta had decided drew too much attention to her wrinkled neck and so had given to me, a gold chain with beads of green glass that had been a present from my uncle and aunt on my last birthday — a happier birthday than this was turning out to be.

  At the bottom of the box was a cameo portrait of my mother, and I took it out and cupped it in my palm. My memories of her were as hard to grasp as smoke. What would my life be like now if she had lived?

  ‘Claudia?’ My aunt was in the doorway. Seeing what I held in my hand, she crossed the room and took the cameo from me. I got up and flung myself onto the bed, turning my head to watch as she ran her finger over the engraved onyx.