Second Act

by Marilyn Todd

  She was slicing off a wedge of pecorino cheese, her favourite, when Chiselled Cheekbones, he who had been watching her so intently yesterday, minced comically into the room, tossed back his fringe and perched cross-legged on top of the chest containing the silver.

  ‘I’m Doris,’ he announced. His voice was soft and slightly husky. ‘The name means bountiful, you know.’

  ‘Wasn’t Doris the nymph who married a sea god who could change his shape at will?’

  ‘And your point?’ The young man tilted his head to one side as he grinned. ‘Be a love, would you, and toss me a roll. Caspar said to brief you on the Spectacular, but he never said to do it on an empty stomach.’

  ‘I thought actors perform best when they’re hungry.’ Claudia threw across a hot roll peppered with poppy seeds, which he caught with one hand.

  ‘Not this thesp, kiddo,’ he said, catching the chunk of spicy sausage that came winging after it. ‘Right then,’ he said through a mouthful of dough. ‘The programme’s as follows.’

  Claudia wasn’t interested in the programme, only the schedule. ‘Just tell me, yes or no, will the show be ready for the eighteenth?’

  That was the day after Saturnalia, traditionally a day of anticlimax following the exchanging of gifts, the Great Sacrifice outside the temple in the Forum, the games and feasting throughout the day before. It would not impress jaded merchants much if the play wasn’t ready.

  ‘If you can trust the great lord’s propaganda, I’ll be in Miser’s costume by this afternoon,’ Doris said. ‘I play First Lead, which means I’m the cuckold of the title, wouldn’t you believe. Listen, are you sure you aren’t even a tinksy bit curious about what twenty strangers will be doing in your house? It’s more than putting on just the one play, you know.’ Eyelashes like a giraffe, Claudia thought. Thin, feminine hands. And, of course, those fine chiselled cheekbones.

  Doris took her silence as a cue. ‘The Spectaculars open with Felix doing his dance solo. This time he’s enacting the Judgement of Paris accompanied, as usual, by Periander our castrato and the delectable Renata on the flute.’

  The likelihood of one bleached blond miming Paris, two goddesses plus Helen of Troy without Claudia’s atrium walls ending up splattered with fruit was a slim one. She could only pray that Periander had a voice like an angel or that Renata fluted so loudly it distracted the audience from everything else.

  ‘Then Skyles and I perform this wicked little domestic scene between the Emperor and his lady wife—in which yours truly naturally plays Livia.’

  ‘Skyles?’ Claudia queried, selecting a date.

  ‘Big butch bitch who shaves his head, but put a wig on him and, dear me, that boy’s a ringer for Augustus.’ Claudia remembered Skyles now. The Buffoon with his monkey walk, who tripped over invisible obstacles and who, this morning, had chased the kitchen maids with a feather duster. But acting, acting, all the time acting. She wondered whether Leonides wasn’t wise to send for padlocks for the silver.

  ‘If I wasn’t the very soul of discretion,’ Doris said, ‘I could name you twenty aristocratic wives who have not so much surrendered their virtue to that boy as lobbed it at him.’

  ‘I hope Skyles is gentleman enough to refuse?’

  ‘Charity begins at home,’ Chiselled Cheekbones trilled, rattling the bangles round his wrist. ‘Just look at the little knick-knacks my admirers have given me. As I said. The name means bountiful.’

  ‘Don’t confuse admirers with groupies, Doris. Tell me what you know about Skyles.’

  He assumed a pose of mock indignation. ‘Honestly, do I look like someone who dishes dirt like an ostler dishes oats? Don’t answer that. Anyway, after Skyles and I have finished, the girls launch into their song-and-dance routines and then—ta-da! One “splendiferous” musical farce as the great lord would call it.’

  ‘With nudity.’

  Doris hopped down from the chest. ‘When it comes to the exposure of female flesh, kiddo, the audience likes their arena filled.’

  Well, they’d certainly get that with Caspar’s girls. If not overflowing.

  ‘Me,’ Doris said, pulling a gold pendant out from his tunic. ‘I go for subtlety. Get the jewels in first, I say. Then show ’em what you’ve got.’

  *

  The swearing in of tribunes was a solemn business. These, remember, were the justices elected by the people to defend their rights. A heavy weight of responsibility hung on them. These men now held the power of veto over elections, laws, edicts by the Senate, hell, they could even overrule the decisions of the all-powerful magistrates if they felt so inclined. Charged with the protection of the lives and property of the working classes, and with their own legislative body, the newly elected tribunes were today accorded privileges akin to senators and cuirasses special to legates in honour of their role.

  Orbilio stifled his yawn.

  Too much toga posturing for him. Subtly, he shifted his weight and tried to ignore the throbbing behind his eyes. No one doubted that the ten men currently swearing to uphold their tribuneship were genuine in their intentions. It was everybody else, he thought. How broad a purple stripe you had on your toga. Whether your shorter, military tunic was more impressive than your magisterial neighbour’s long one. Who cared?

  In front of him, and a whole head and shoulders shorter, the Head of the Security Police oiled his way through the ceremony in a way that only a man with a narrow purple stripe hoping to get a wider one can do. But then Callisunus would sell his mother into harlotry and throw in his sisters for good luck if it secured him a promotion.

  Orbilio made a mental calculation. Another two mind-numbing hours, if he was lucky. The way things were going, though, it might be three.

  On his face, his patrician breeding showed nothing but encouragement and interest, the expression of a man stimulated by long-winded procedures, as he reviewed his current case notes in his head.

  December being a particularly active month for criminals, there was quite a pot on the boil. Too many festivals combined with too many layers of thick clothing equals too many purses snatched and secreted, but that wasn’t the concern of the Security Police. Nor was the fact that, because people went to bed earlier to save lamp oil and thus unwittingly improved working conditions for burglars, incidents of rape and murder went up in proportion, often as a result of those burglaries going horribly wrong. What did concern the Security Police was that, with the courts closed from the beginning of November, jails were overcrowded through lack of trials, while the crime rate continued to soar.

  Perfect conditions for anarchy to breed and Rome was positively rife with plots to bring down the Emperor. Small wonder Augustus had installed the Praetorian Guard.

  But apart from conspiracies requiring sharp nips in their buds, he had a killing down in the Subura to deal with. A domestic, which the husband tried to pass off as the work of an intruder, but Orbilio was gathering witnesses and evidence. No challenge there, he’d have the man in irons by tomorrow. And then there was that forgery ring operating out of an old warehouse on the edge of town. Small-scale stuff, just the duplication of dole tablets, and that wouldn’t take long to wrap up. Orbilio had the place under twenty-four-hour surveillance and the next time the mastermind dropped in—a swarthy, low-ranking civil servant from the Water Department—that was that.

  Callisunus, even though he’d taken no interest in either case, would nevertheless scoop the credit for both. Orbilio glanced down to where his boss was smarming away to Olympic standards, and knew his only course of action was to congratulate him on the outcome with a smile. Nothing got up the little toady’s nose more than the knowledge that his younger, taller, good-looking patrician subordinate didn’t give a damn. Petty tactics, Orbilio admitted. But a soldier is trained to employ any weapon in his armoury, even if it’s only a pin, and he hadn’t spent two years in uniform for nothing. (Which was another thing that raised Callisunus’s low-born hackles. That he hadn’t been given a commission.)

  Fr
om the corner of his eye, Marcus noticed a legionary slip into the hall and murmur something to the soldiers on guard. His mind turned to another item on his case load, one involving a certain Claudia Seferius. He shook his head in amazement. Mother of Tarquin, what was it with that woman? Couldn’t she ever stay out of trouble? A smile twisted up one corner of his mouth. He bloody hoped not. But what amazed him about this particular business was that someone as sharp as Claudia had been taken in by someone as obviously slippery as Moschus. Was she growing careless, or just desperate, he wondered? Either way, if she’d only thought to check how many ships the captain had lost in various storms, she’d have realized that the authorities would have caught on sooner or later and that, when they did, Moschus was the type who’d squeal like a litter of piglets.

  As the fourth tribune approached the rostrum to a deafening applause, Orbilio realized that the legionary who’d just entered the hall was edging through the crowd in his direction. The legionary’s nose was pinched with cold, but then legionaries, unfortunately, don’t have nine yards of woollen toga in which to swaddle themselves in winter.

  ‘For you, sir,’ he mouthed. ‘Urgent.’

  It wasn’t difficult for Marcus to unroll the parchment quietly, not the way the soldier had been gripping it until it had turned soft, but he resisted the urge to use Callisunus’s head as a rest upon which to read it. Suddenly the ceremony, his case review, even his normally restful musings on Claudia were sent spinning into oblivion. Every muscle in his body seemed to have been paralysed. He couldn’t breathe. He read it twice. And then again. Unable to believe what he was seeing.

  The note was from a colleague. Dymas. The note was brief.

  ‘The halcyon rapes.’ it read. ‘They’ve started again.’

  Impossible.

  Orbilio’s hand shook as he folded up the note and tucked it into the folds of his toga.

  Impossible.

  Starting a year ago to the day, fourteen women were raped, one every day for the two weeks bridging the winter solstice. The attacks were the most brutal Marcus had ever known, had shocked everyone involved in the hunt for the rapist, traumatizing the victims beyond belief. In broad daylight, girls were dragged off the streets, stripped, forced to commit oral sex on their masked attacker, then buggered and dumped on the middens. Once the halcyon days were over, the rapes stopped, but the search did not. It was the end of March before Orbilio tracked the bastard down. Luckily, three of the victims had been able to identify him as their assailant. The incriminating mask was found under his bed. His clothes stank of the aniseed his victims had mentioned. More importantly, the rapist eventually signed a confession.

  The bastard could not be on the rampage again, it was impossible.

  Orbilio had personally supervised the execution.

  Eight

  One of the best things about Saturnalia was the atmosphere in the run-up to the holiday. Wall-to-wall with festivals beforehand, this was a time of jollity and fun. Of decorating houses with greenery and garlands. Of celebrations. Banquets. Aid to the poor and needy. A time of exchanging gifts, of mooching round the craft market in the Colonnade of the Argonauts, which specialized in presents to exchange at Saturnalia. The ultimate time of revelry. Of peace and goodwill to men. An end to grudges.

  There was always an exception…

  ‘Sister-in-law.’ If Julia had spent the morning chewing alecost and washed it down with vinegar, her expression could not have been more sour. My house, stomped her footsteps down the peristyle. My marble pillars. My fountains. My sundial. My black hellebores in bloom.

  My arse, they were. Julia had just never come to terms with the fact that her brother hadn’t just cut her out of his will in favour of the young chit whom he’d married, but he hadn’t made any provision whatsoever for the daughter that he’d foisted on her and her husband years before. To Julia, it flew in the face of decency and reason, not to mention Roman law—and how Gaius got past that she would never know, but you didn’t need to look too closely to see that A Certain Party Not A Million Miles Away had had a hand in that!

  Forget the extenuating circumstances that existed at the time he made his will.

  Forget that the widow had been supporting the family ever since, even though Marcellus was an architect and should have been more than capable of supporting himself.

  And forget that, legally, Claudia didn’t owe them one black bean.

  Curdled milk ran in Julia’s veins. Grudges every bit a part of her as her long, thin nose and propensity for summer colds. The closer she approached along the garden path, the easier it became to compare Claudia’s fur cape with her own. Finding the other’s lusher, more lustrous, just like her clothes, her slippers, her jewels—even the money-grubbing bitch’s skin and hair. No silver strands requiring walnut juice in those curls, dammit, and her bosoms didn’t need padding, either. Julia’s own linen wodges had started to slip halfway along the Via Sacra. Must remember not to take her cloak off. Better a flat chest than to be seen with breasts around her waist.

  ‘I need to speak to you about your daughter,’ she said without preamble. To her immense irritation, a dunnock started to sing in the cherry tree.

  ‘Gaius’s daughter,’ Claudia corrected. There were times, and this was one of them, when she had to remind herself that Julia was only a decade older than herself. Ten years, but she might as well be another species. ‘What’s the sulky little cow been up to now?’

  ‘These last few days have been a nightmare. An absolute nightmare, I tell you.’ Julia sniffed and the dunnock wisely flew off. ‘Teenage daughters are always a problem, I know, but Flavia is giving us so many sleepless nights, now she’s acquired an interest in boys.’

  ‘She’s fifteen. It would be unnatural if she didn’t.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to drum into her the importance of securing a good marriage, but she simply repels potential suitors.’

  Repel was the right word. Spotty, fat and moody, Flavia was hardly catch of the day.

  ‘The child insists she will only marry for love, and this selfish attitude is scuppering any headway Marcellus and I make to fix her up with a husband—’

  ‘To get her off your hands, you mean.’

  ‘—and all the time the wretched creature keeps mooning about over the most inappropriate youth you could imagine. The son of an artisan. Imagine!’

  Teenage crushes come and go. It wasn’t the first one Flavia had had, it would not be the last, and this hardly constituted a crisis.

  ‘What’s really troubling you, Julia?’

  ‘Me? Good heavens, there’s nothing wrong in my life, nothing whatsoever— Well. Actually, I suppose there is a little matter I might take the opportunity to discuss in confidence, seeing as I’m here.’ She glanced round the garden to make sure no one else was within earshot. ‘After all, dear, you are family.’

  Claudia preferred her sister-in-law as a bitch.

  ‘I am not exaggerating when I say Flavia’s been a pain, but—’ Julia stared at a rearing stone horse. ‘Marcellus has been behaving strangely, too.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  Indignation flared the older woman’s nostrils. ‘Don’t get impertinent with me!’ But the need to confide had engulfed her, she couldn’t turn back the tide now. She looked at the holly bush, awash with bright red shiny berries, and the rows of clipped laurels and the aromatic myrtle, and came to a decision. ‘I think Marcellus might be having an affair.’

  Honestly, who could blame him?

  ‘Do you know who?’

  ‘I would have preferred you to have asked, do I know why. After all, it’s not as though there are cracks in our relationship.’

  ‘What do you call not letting Marcellus in your bed for two years?’

  ‘Lots of couples sleep in separate rooms,’ Julia reminded her, pointedly swivelling her eyes towards the house behind her, with its wide double staircase leading off the atrium. With Claudia’s bedroom on one side of the gallery, Gaius’s o
n the other…

  ‘Anyway, I made it clear a long time ago that I don’t like That Sort Of Thing.’ Julia’s thin lips pursed white. ‘But that doesn’t mean he has to go elsewhere.’

  ‘Actually, I rather think it does, although I agree about you not having any cracks in your relationship. They’re bloody great canyons, Julia.’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘Well, what would you call a marriage in which one party is frustrated and unhappy while the other claims that it’s faultless?’

  The luck of the draw?

  ‘For gods’ sakes, Julia, life’s not a straight road paved by other people for you.’

  Believe me, it’s crazy paving, and worse, you have to lay it yourself.

  ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing. Try talking to Marcellus instead of at him, see what happens. Oh, and you might consider offering him an incentive to stay home.’

  ‘Bribing my own husband with sexual favours?’ Julia snorted derisively. ‘I should have known better than to come and seek advice from you. Anyway.’ She pulled her fur tighter to her body. ‘What’s all that nonsense in the atrium?’

  Moving down the path, to where tubs of fragrant pale purple irises provided a backdrop to the stunning white Stars of Judea, Claudia informed her sister-in-law of her plans to sponsor the Halcyon Spectaculars.

  ‘But you can’t possibly allow that troupe to live here,’ Julia protested. ‘Think of the gossip. The scandal. If he knew what you were doing, my dear late brother would be rolling in his grave!’

  Wouldn’t he just! Rolling about with laughter at Caspar’s gaudy dress sense, his ‘volumptuous beauties’, the little castrato, the dancer who could fold himself backwards in two. Funny the things you remember, she thought suddenly, plucking a Damascan iris and holding it to her nose. For instance, when Gaius laughed, he’d tip his head right back and bellow like a bull in a meadow full of heifers. Whereas his sister’s face would crack if she so much as smiled.