Widow's Pique (23 page)

The judges had moved on to trying the rapists, but since four strapping representatives of the King's Bodyguard had taken a great deal of satisfaction in beating a confession out of them earlier, the trial was little more than a formality. Nosferatu tried to look interested as the rhetoric droned on and on.

Murder was child's play. Anyone can kill another human being, provided they have sufficient strength and guts and

motive, but it takes a clever person to get away with it and an
exceptionally
clever person to get away with several without arousing suspicion.

On face value, for instance, eliminating the royal physician appeared a simple enough task, but
you
try to make murder appear like an accident. First you have to wheedle his itinerary from some lackey in a way that he won't remember. Then you have to contrive to be in the middle of bloody nowhere without anyone noticing
this
end. And if that's not difficult enough, you have to win the victim's trust. Not the easiest of tasks, considering he already suspects an attempt to destabilize the throne!

However, with the royal physician happily strolling among his ancestors in the Lands of the Blessed, those suspicions had been eradicated and there was nothing now to stand in the way of the New Order. Histria could rise up - become a force to be reckoned with - a powerful nation - wealthy -respected - strong in its own right.
At last, this kingdom was poised to fulfil its true potential.

Where Nosferatu succeeded was in employing a variety of homicidal techniques, then testing the plans from every angle.

One doesn't take risks when killing a king!

Poor Dol. Lovely fellow, charming, honest, fair and moral, devoted to his kingdom, dear chap, but blind to the obvious, i.e. that bridging the divide within his people only prolonged the country's uncertain future. Dol had to go. Eventually, Nosferatu found the perfect solution, and by coincidence it grew wild in the woods. The humble columbine. Remove the top parts, slip them into a tasty titbit or two and, hey presto, shortness of breath. Nothing fatal, just an uncomfortable couple of days, when the patient is encouraged to eat to keep his strength up and obviously needs his appetite tempted, although his physician is surprised at first that the King doesn't recover more quickly. But, as further bouts lay him low, the physician accepts this as a natural course of the illness, and is not surprised that each bout is worse than the previous and lasts longer, weakening the King's lungs further each time.

Nosferatu sighed. Who would suspect a flower so blue and so beautiful set in a floral display could prove so treacherous? And the columbine's beauty is that, as it dries, so it is rendered harmless.

But then for the big part - and again, the various vases of sumptuous flowers disguise their deadly intent. Lilies, larkspur, roses, foxgloves. Ah, yes, the lovely foxglove. Stately and tall, deep-pink, spotted, it is the leaf which does all the damage. Those beautiful, soft, grey downy leaves bring on nausea, breathing problems . . . and, tragically, cardiac arrest. The nation mourns, but is not surprised. Dol the Just had a weak chest.

A conclusion which was nothing short of inspirational.

Nosferatu hadn't planned it that way, but surely, by default, weakness of the lungs is hereditary? With the King newly crowned and a kingdom divided, one small child's unlucky inheritance aroused no suspicion, not even in the girl's mother. So it was more tasty titbits, more tightness of the chest, more solicitous bedside visits.

Delmi flashed before Nosferatu's memory. Silky blonde hair, wide innocent eyes, breasts as white and smooth as alabaster. Bitch. Publicly, of course, it was all sunny smiles, happy-happy, not a
word
of criticism levelled. Alone? Alone, Delmi didn't even
try
to hide her dislike, and as for holding back with her opinions . . . ! Nosferatu's fists clenched. Slut. I saw you slinking off in the night.

'Your fate is something you have brought upon yourselves,' said the senior elder, as he passed sentence on the rapists, 'for, to let violation pass unpunished is to unleash anarchy. Virginity is sacred in every society, not purely our own, and for you to force yourselves one after the other upon this wretched child . . .'

Supported by a warrior's sympathetic arm, the little Amazon sobbed uncontrollably and Nosferatu's heart went out to her. The girl hadn't been called to give evidence against her attackers, the judges wanting to save her the ordeal, since they had a confession, but she was adamant that the whole

community should understand the depths these kinsmen of theirs had plumbed, and she spared the court no detail. Nosferatu resisted an overwhelming urge to reach out and comfort the child.

As the senior elder excused the little Amazon and expounded on the sanctity of marriage and the damage caused by the violation of decent, respectable women, Nosferatu's thoughts were propelled back to Delmi's infidelity. Oh, but how that sunny disposition failed her, fretting over her baby girl! Time and again, Delmi was brought down as her daughter fell ill, only to have her spirits lift each time the youngster recovered. Nosferatu remembered them clearly. Mother and child, each a spitting image of the other, bowling hoops in the courtyard, spinning tops together, braiding hair, laughing and dancing, singing and skipping. Yet all the while Delmi, that most perfect of mothers, that most faultless of wives, was sneaking from bed to bed . . .

Drowning the child as she convalesced after yet another debilitating bout had been hard. Many sleepless nights had been lost contemplating the act, even more afterwards, but if the end justifies the means, what choice is there? A new order had to be created. Histria demanded nothing less. And if this meant terminating the stale bloodline and instituting fresh, then, with the girl in her grave, the New Order was brought another step closer.

No one said it was going to be easy.

The trial ground finally to a close. The prisoners were led away, the villagers dispersed and a smile played at the side of Nosferatu's mouth. Actually, there
were
times when taking life became something of a pleasure. Giving Delmi that hemlock was one.

'Are ghosts getting prettier . . . ?'

The voice that took Claudia so completely by surprise was deep and seductively slow.

'. . . or am I the luckiest man alive to find myself suddenly alone with the beautiful Claudia?'

Same husky pitch as his brother's and with hair every bit as glossy and dark, Kazan leapt the ditch that encircled the graveyard with muscular ease. Personally, Claudia found it simpler to cross by the bridge. Dawn was breaking, rosy and warm, and the air was filled with the sound of birdsong and the scent of a million wild herbs. Chamomile, thyme, lemon balm. Today was the Festival of Kikimora and, to honour the Cat Goddess, Histrians everywhere would dress in white and pour libations of milk instead of wine. Later, after a procession, hymns and sacrifice, the races and games would begin, and already stewards were hard at work checking the stadium across the way, straightening wobbly markers and hammering in flags. But Claudia hadn't expected company in the graveyard at such an early hour.

'Are you sure we're alone?' she rejoined. 'You Histri go to a lot of trouble constructing your cemeteries, and it makes me wonder why you're so desperate to keep your dead in.' Kazan let out a throaty chuckle.

'These moats and banks are designed to keep the shroud-eaters
out,
sweet lady, not fence the tenants
in,
and see those? They're
bajuks
.'

He pointed out four hideous clay masks nailed to the oak

trees that surrounded the cemetery, whose faces were painted black, and contorted his features into a comical matching grimace.

'The ferocious guardians of our ancestors,' he said, 'who face north, south, east and west to protect our loved ones spring, summer, autumn and winter through earth, wind, fire and water. In fact, everything inside this graveyard comes in fours. Four is the number of the dead.'

Below the masks, black empty robes flapped menacingly in the breeze.

'I trust you don't bury your people in fours.'

'Only because we have trouble finding three volunteers to go in there with them,' he laughed, falling into step as she strolled round the cemetery.

How different from Rome! In Rome, you died, you were cremated and, according to what you could afford, your ashes were either interred in a marble tomb along one of the approach roads, like Claudia's husband (and dammit, she really must find out which road) or they were laid to rest in little pigeonhole arrangements, although the really poor had to settle for having their ashes scattered. In the Histri's eyes, burning was the worst punishment that could be inflicted upon the soul -hence the fate of rapists and murderers. So, for their dead, Kazan explained, four-sided pits were dug in the ground and lined with oak planks, in which the deceased was laid to rest on their own bed, dressed in their best clothes along with their worldly possessions, then the grave covered with an unmarked flat rock. The only difference between rich and poor here was the size of the pit that contained their belongings.

'At the risk of sounding stupid,' she said, 'why are you carrying a bird cage?'

It wasn't that the birds weren't pretty. And she was sure they sang like choirs of angels. But Kazan hadn't struck her as the type of chap who made a habit of lugging caged birds round the countryside.

'Well, there's another thing that separates our two cultures,' he said. 'Look around and, yes, you'll see an abundance of

floral tributes, but to the Histri, birds represent the souls of the dead. These little creatures,' he patted the cage, 'will provide company for the souls who abide here.'

Claudia tried to imagine every soul as a melodious warbler and failed. She'd encountered far too many hawks on her travels to see them changing their feathers after death. Not to mention quite a few bustards. Kazan stopped by one of the larger top stones to unhook the lid of the cage. Instantly, the birds fluttered off into the trees, but his dark eyes remained on their flight long after they'd disappeared.

'Or, rather, one soul in particular,' he said quietly.

'Your mother?'

'Brother,' he corrected. 'Every year on the anniversary of his death, I come back and release a flock of finches.' His tormented expression was quickly replaced by the more familiar grin. 'Although I can't help wondering whether they're not the same finches I net every year. That I keep recycling the same flock, as it were.'

She tossed back a light riposte, something to do with reincarnation, she thought, but her mind wasn't on jokes.
Because if Kazan's brother was buried here, then so, by default, was Mazares's . . .

'Since we don't believe in desecrating the top stones with engravings,' Kazan was saying, taking her arm and moving on, 'we resort to other ways to identify the departed.'

He indicated the menagerie of carved creatures that nestled close to the graves.

'The larger beasts denote clan, like those bears, lynx and stags, while the smaller mammals -' he pointed to dormice, pine martens and hedgehogs - 'are the family emblems. The birds, of course, are the true souls of the individual and these denote status within the household.'

An eagle signified patriarch, a dove was the mother, a kite for the first son, an owl for the second and so on and so on.

'The custom harks back to the days when Histria was part of the great Kingdom of Illyria,' he added. 'The days when Jason and the Argonauts sailed these seas in search of the

Golden Fleece and a storm blew Odysseus's ship on to the island of Circe the Enchantress, who promptly turned his crew into swine. See?'

He pointed to a carved boar.

'One clan even claims descent. After she turned them back into humans, of course!'

'I thought you said four was the number for the dead?' Claudia asked. Large mammal, small mammal and bird made three.

'You're not looking hard enough,' Kazan laughed, brushing his hand across the chaplets and wreaths that covered his brother's top stone.

It was only when the butterflies didn't fly off that Claudia realized it was far too early in the day for them to be feeding and that these were, in fact, painted carvings, which had been placed artfully among the blooms. Another example of Histrian sneakiness, but this time the sentiment was at least admirable. As dawn cast her pink cloak over the cemetery, she found an inexplicable lump in her throat at the tranquillity of this enclosure, at the exquisite detail to be found in the carvings and in the loving attention that had been given to the floral tributes laid on the graves. Through the oak trees, she noticed the first trickle of white-clad figures making their way to the stadium, obviously wanting to bag themselves a good seat.

'The butterflies are indicators of age,' Kazan said, clearly in no hurry to join the early birds. 'Holly blues represent one year, brimstones a decade and swallowtails count for fifty.'

Claudia decided to put to the test what seemed like a very clever system for uneducated people. She found the largest top stone in the graveyard and studied the carvings impaled on stakes alongside it. The eagle proclaimed the deceased as the head of the household, a swallowtail and two blues put him at fifty-two when he died. But, of course, she had no idea whose family carried the squirrel totem, much less whose clan belonged to the dragon. But wait. Why were there
five
groups beside this particular grave? She peered closer and saw that two of the carvings were birds. The eagle, and a woodpecker,