Widow's Pique

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The beggars' pleas carried like midwinter winds — some high-pitched and keening, reminiscent of blizzards, others deeper and low, like the northerlies that keep the earth frozen — and every last one echoed with the bleakness of their existence. Pushing through the huddle of begging bowls and gruel-stained rags, Claudia shielded herself from the April drizzle with her veil. At night, these lined, empty faces would huddle in doorways or seek shelter in the lee of the towering warehouses lining the wharves, but the minute day broke, they swarmed to the approach roads, seeking alms from the multitude who flocked into Rome every day. Merchants, poets, philosophers and sightseers; foreigners, furriers and farmers. The Ostia Gate on the Ides was no exception.

'Can you spare us a copper?'

'Ease an old soldier's war wound!'

Many of the injuries were fake. That amputated leg, for example, would be a lot more convincing if the beggar had put blood on the inside of the bandage and tied his ankle higher up the thigh so you didn't see his foot when he hopped. But ribs poking through flesh testified to the authenticity of most of the claims. As did the stench of festering ulcers. 'Clear off, you scabrous scum, you!'

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