I, Claudia Read Online Free PDF

precisely what to do.
    The parade began as the lump of lard that was her husband resumed his seat, chortling because he’d talked his colleague into taking another two hundred amphorae without so much as dropping his price by one copper quadran. In a flurry of gold and purple cloaks, the gladiators strutted round the arena, followed by slaves holding aloft their plumed helmets and weaponry. That was typical of Gaius, she thought. So damned shrewd. Through sheer hard work and enterprise he’d amassed a veritable fortune—yet he saw nothing contradictory in spending the same amount of money on a small consignment of Black Sea caviar for his banquets as he did a yoke of oxen for his farm. Both were justifiable expenses in his eyes, and he’d flay her alive if he learned she was squandering his money on fripperies.
    Except that her gambling was no idle pastime. It had become an addiction, a monster of Olympian proportions, forever ravenous and totally out of control, and not for nothing did Claudia Seferius spend more time on her knees propitiating Fortune than any other deity.
    The gladiators marched out, the musicians upped their tempo and, to a crash of cymbals, an elephant lumbered into the arena to be matched against a bear. Claudia felt her whole body tense. Already her mouth was dry, her heart pounding. Using a secret signal, she indicated to Junius, ‘Bet on the elephant’, and wiggled five fingers, intimating the bear would be dogfood within the space of five minutes. The way she tilted her head told him to bet two quadrans. She always started low, it was part of the game. Small bets gradually became large bets which in turn became almost impossible bets and, dear Diana, she couldn’t help herself, the daring was all part of the exquisite torture. The same way your heart freezes as you wait for the dice to land, or when your charioteer tries a tight manoeuvre at the end of a circuit and you just don’t know whether he’ll make it.
    Unfortunately Fortune seemed deaf to her prayers, or perhaps Minerva had thrown in her might with the moneylenders. Either way, Claudia’s debts had spiralled. She’d tried to stop herself, but be it a simple game of knucklebones or a full-scale race at the circus, she was there and it wasn’t unheard of for Claudia Seferius to be hanging around the training schools, betting on the practice fights. What, initially, was a straightforward case of syphoning off the household expenditure fell at the first hurdle when Gaius had begun to comment, and thus she set out to find another well to dip into. The answer when it came, was amazingly simple.
    To pay for her own vice, others could pay for theirs.
    Not that hers was a service she bandied about. On the contrary, these clients had been carefully cultivated for their unusual proclivities and little could she have envisaged the scale on which it would take off. Magistrates, merchants, high-ranking civil servants were suddenly queuing up to be spanked or whipped, tortured or humiliated, and whilst they didn’t deserve to die for their perversions, Claudia had scant sympathy for them. Except maybe Quintus, for no one deserved the indignity of being found in that frightful flyblown room.
    She signalled to Junius. Two quadrans on the panther tearing the lion’s throat out within four no—three minutes. It would be a lie, of course, to say Orbilio’s visit on Tuesday afternoon hadn’t shaken her. Probably the best thing was to go back to that dreadful dive, in full view of everybody, and confound the boots off possible witnesses. And she’d have to do it pretty smartly, she supposed. Memories, in slums like that, would be relative to their lifespans. Meaning short in the extreme. Tomorrow morning? Why not? Let me see, that would make it the, ah yes, the Nones of the month, she could excuse herself, if necessary, by pleading attendance at one of the ceremonies. Splendid.
    Come the interval she was five asses and a quadran ahead and should