Second Act

by Marilyn Todd

  ‘No.’

  Whatever else followed, Claudia would never know. Julia chose that moment to come flapping into the office, her hair spiked in a dozen different directions as though she’d been taking lessons in coiffure from Hermione.

  ‘She’s gone,’ she cried. ‘Flavia’s run off with that gigolo just like she threatened.’

  ‘Calm down.’ Emerging from behind the podium as though it was the most natural place in the world to be standing, Claudia pushed her sister-in-law into a chair and forced a glass of vintage Chian wine down her throat. ‘No one’s run off with Skyles, Julia. See for yourself. The gigolo is outside in the garden.’

  ‘Then where is she? Her bed’s not been slept in and—’ Bony hands bunched into fists. ‘That little cow’s playing me up again, isn’t she? When I get hold of her, I swear I’ll—’ She broke off as a thought suddenly occurred to her. ‘What am I saying?’ she laughed. ‘Once Flavia meets our handsome oleiculturist, she’ll soon forget about penniless actors!’

  ‘You do realize that his sexual preferences swing the other way?’

  ‘What?’ Julia reeled in her seat. ‘My divine Marcus?’

  ‘Keeps a harem of little black boys in his house on the Esquiline, and another at his estate at the seaside.’

  ‘Oh, my!’ Julia fanned herself with her hand. ‘So many shocks, one on top of the other, that I’ve come over all—’

  ‘Queer?’

  ‘Faint.’

  She rose to her feet and made some effort to pull herself together.

  ‘So much has happened, I nearly forgot,’ she said primly. ‘Sister-in-law, I shall expect you to have bolts fitted to my bedroom door by tonight, and I would advise you, my girl, to have them fitted to yours.’

  ‘Bolts?’

  ‘This house,’ Julia hissed, ‘is turning into a brothel.’

  With that, she swept out through the door, knocking Leonides aside.

  ‘Four hard-boiled eggs, milady,’ he said, laying down a covered silver platter.

  ‘Eggs?’ Claudia scowled as she lifted the lid. ‘Eggs? Oh, for gods’ sake, Leonides, take them away. You know I can’t stand the bloody things.’

  *

  Unlike other divinities, the Shrine of Consus was sited underground, below the first turn in the Circus Maximus. In a mirror image of the August festival, when a bowl of earth was removed from its place as centrepiece of the altar, in December a bowl of freshly turned soil was positioned in the empty slot. The gesture was purely symbolic. The August bowl represented the tired soil in which the harvest had been grown. The December bowl symbolized the rich, fertile earth for the new seeds, the idea being to bless the god of the store bin, for in theory without wheat, Rome would starve.

  Theory be damned. Since Augustus took the helm, the provinces of Egypt, Pannonia and Sicily had been turned into the Empire’s wheatfields, with fleets of four-hundred-tonne cargo ships, known as ten-thousanders after the number of sacks that they carried, doing the Puteoli-Alexandria run in under twelve days. Rome would never be brought to her knees again, held to ransom over her need for grain. But it was important not to forget these things. Remind citizens of how it used to be, before the Eagle’s shadow covered the earth, and for that reason Augustus had restored the much larger temple to Consus on the Aventine. It was here, in the main temple, that the sacrificial offerings were burnt before being taken in festive procession down the hill to his underground shrine, but it was in the Circus where the real entertainment took place.

  In full Imperial regalia, Augustus himself would ride a circuit in his war chariot. This would be followed by a procession of some of the finest horseflesh in Rome, then the consecration of offerings to Consus. After that, it became a free-for-all of mule races, donkey derbies, athletes racing on foot, before the festivities culminated in a series of full-blooded chariot races, and all this with the six most mysterious women in Rome in attendance at the Emperor’s side, the Vestal Virgins. Something for everyone, then, on this lively public holiday.

  Everyone, apparently, except Claudia Seferius.

  ‘If you’re going to make a habit of inviting men into your bedroom,’ Orbilio said, warming his hands briskly over the brazier, ‘you’ll have to get your pitch in a lot faster. Jemima’s already offered me a knee-trembler, thank you.’

  ‘Be grateful it wasn’t Hermione. Thecks in the thellar for thickthpenth,’ Claudia mimicked.

  ‘I was more worried about Fenja. I have nightmares about her catching me in the hallway and jolly well helping herself.’

  Ah, yes. The more urbane, the more dangerous…

  Claudia shifted her weight to the other foot and thought about the reason she’d invited him into her room. Frankly, she wasn’t sure how to play this. Whichever way, it wasn’t going to be easy—

  ‘Last year’s victims,’ she began.

  The dancing light in his eyes vanished. ‘You’re talking about the rapist?’

  She nodded. Ran her tongue over her lips. ‘Could you write down the addresses of the three women who identified their attacker?’

  ‘For gods’ sake, Claudia, if you know who—’

  ‘I don’t.’

  That much was true. It was still only a hunch. Images swirled like a kaleidoscope inside her head. Of Ion, handsome and rugged, but never happy, sneaking out as the herald called the sixth hour. Of Doris, slipping out after him. Of a draught from the front door. Of Caspar, sneaking along the gallery in the dark. Blood thundered at her temples, and there was a pain at the back of her eyes.

  ‘Claudia,’ he said, warningly, and there was no trace on his face of the unimaginable relief that had swamped him when he heard about the hot-food vendor’s wife. ‘This is too dangerous a game to mess with. The man’s a monster and if you have even the tiniest suspicion, you have got to tell me. I’m serious, now who is it?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  ‘It’s within my authority to have this house searched top to bottom,’ he said. ‘If I find one of your actors is injured—’

  ‘Very well, if you must know.’ She smiled, although the smile did not seem to reassure him. ‘I got to thinking last night that, well… Maybe a word, woman to woman, might coax one or two details out of the victims that they hadn’t liked to discuss in front of a man.’

  Scepticism stretched the air. Silence stretched into infinity.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re up to,’ he growled at last, spiking his hands through his hair. ‘But I don’t believe you’d cover up for this bastard, or that your talking to these girls can be worse than a pair of flatfoots trampling their fragile emotional progress.’ He reached for a quill and the inkwell.

  Claudia’s eyes narrowed. ‘Last night you said you wouldn’t—couldn’t—put the victims through that torture again.’

  ‘Nor would I,’ Orbilio said tiredly. ‘You have to remember that I’m no longer in charge of this investigation.’

  Both horns of Claudia’s dilemma prodded her at once. Bugger.

  If she told Orbilio who she suspected was responsible, he would arrest him at once. That would be fine, provided, of course, she was right. But it was possible, more than possible in fact, that her suspicions were way off course—and there would be no way back for Marcus Cornelius after that.

  Of course, a disgraced Security Policeman was a Security Policeman off Claudia’s back and, with Orbilio’s career in shreds, she would no longer be facing a lonely and penniless exile for fraud. But was she really prepared to jeopardize the career of a passionate investigator, who spat in the face of family convention to fight murderers, assassins and rapists? Especially when it had become a personal crusade between him and the monster terrorizing the streets? Being wrong twice would destroy him—

  The horns started to hurt.

  ‘Dymas is adamant we interview the victims again,’ Marcus said, ‘and has it in his head to start with Deva, to ask her the questions we didn’t have a chance to put yesterday, and although I can see hi
s logic, that girl’s sanity is already stretched to the wire.’

  ‘Then stop him,’ she said brusquely.

  ‘I can’t. The Head of the Security Police backs him all the way on this, but…’

  His voice trailed off into a tortured silence and, with his eyes glued to a point in the corner, he explained how Deva had tried to jump from the mezzanine. How he’d caught her, felt her bones quake uncontrollably in his arms, read the hopelessness in her eyes. He talked about what Deva had been like before the attack. Vivacious and vibrant, with her pretty pert bodices and Damascan fringed skirts.

  ‘A happy young woman with her whole life ahead of her, until that bastard destroyed her.’

  Then, fixing his gaze on the doorjamb, he explained how the herbalist had been driven to the last resort of drugging her into oblivion with poppy juice, even though the risks of addiction were perilously high.

  ‘The herbalist seems a good man,’ Claudia said softly.

  ‘One of the best,’ Marcus replied, and, maybe because it was cold and he hadn’t slept last night, maybe he was in confessional mood, or perhaps it was simply because he was lonely, demoted and utterly demoralized, fearing the drops of the water clock were moving too fast and that soon, far too soon, there would be another victim to add to the list, he also told her the reason why he’d gone back to the little house by the river.

  ‘That was why my steward summoned me home,’ he explained. ‘Angelina had moved lock, stock and barrel into my house—’

  But when he glanced up, it was to find Claudia and the three addresses had gone.

  Which was a pity, Marcus felt, because he hadn’t got round to telling her that Captain Moschus had escaped from jail.

  But then he had a feeling she already knew about that.

  Twenty-Eight

  ‘Who are you?’ A hatchet-faced woman with permanently pinched lips peered through a slot in the woodwork. ‘What d’you want?’

  Claudia told her.

  ‘So?’ the dragon barked back. ‘What’s it to you?’

  Claudia told her that, too.

  ‘Hmmm.’ Shrewd eyes bored into shrewd eyes. ‘Well, you’d best come on in, then. Before the neighbours start gawping.’

  The woman, who introduced herself as the victim’s aunt, relieved her of her mantle in a pleasant hallway from which four equally pleasant rooms led off. Fragrant oils burned in a niche, and the hall was decked with holly and yew. A white cat snoozed on a tasselled cushion on a chair.

  ‘In there.’

  The aunt beckoned her into a light, spacious living area with rich tapestries hanging on the walls and bearskin rugs on the floor. The seating was padded and comfortable, apple logs crackled and spat in the hearth, filling the air with their scent.

  A year on and the poor girl was still jumpy, and was it any wonder, Claudia thought. Her bastard husband had thrown her out after the rape, proclaiming her an unfit mother for their children, an unfit wife as a result of her subsequent breakdown. Now she was reduced to living off a divorced aunt, and the only good thing to come out of that was at least the aunt was comfortably off. For a year, now, the girl had refused to set foot outdoors, the aunt said, could not be left alone, was terrified of strangers, especially men.

  ‘I’ve spent twelve months nursing her,’ she warned under her breath. ‘You be careful.’

  It was like walking on butterflies’ wings. Round and round the questions went, gradually creeping closer to the target, every moment more painful than the last.

  ‘He pushed me in the middens,’ the girl said at last, and it might have been an automaton talking, a wooden dummy from whose mouth the ventriloquist projected his voice. “‘Filth”, he said. “All of you, nothing but filth,” and he put his foot on my neck and pushed me under, knowing I couldn’t breathe and I’d have to swallow the muck. “Go back to the filth where you belong,” that’s what he said.’

  And that was it. The ultimate violation. The one that preyed on the victims’ consciousness and remained there. That he had made them dirty. Dirt, from which there could never be any cleansing…

  ‘How could you identify him, if he was masked?’ Claudia asked gently.

  The girl tensed, glanced at her aunt. ‘Same as I told the Tribunal. From the smell of aniseed, the way he held himself, his voice, the shape of his hands. Why?’ Her jaw tightened, her knuckles clenched white. ‘He is dead, isn’t he?’ She turned to her aunt, her face stark with horror. ‘You said he was executed. You swore—’

  ‘Yes, he’s dead,’ Claudia assured her, and caught an imperceptible nod of relief from the aunt. ‘I watched the execution myself. Lions. Very nasty.’

  The girl relaxed, but only a fraction. ‘Then why all the questions?’

  ‘The Emperor,’ Claudia lied. ‘He was so concerned for the daughters of Rome, that he asked me to, uh—counsel the victims and help them talk it out of their systems.’

  ‘Did he send money?’ the aunt asked.

  * * *

  At home, the revisions to The Cuckold were going well. Which, roughly translated, meant that the group hadn’t actually killed each other—at least, not yet. But the amendments were testing the company’s cohesion to the limit. Adrenalin had finally ceased to pump. Last night’s dress rehearsal seemed aeons ago and now they were tired, scratchy, anxious and vulnerable. A perfect breeding ground for egos.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Ugly Phil protested. ‘The Virgin has to come on first, so I can walk around the edge of the stage leering at her. It isn’t funny otherwise.’

  ‘It isn’t funny either way,’ the Virgin protested, amazed that her chaplet was still fast round her bun after the energetic rerun of scenes. ‘Ogling is what perverts do.’

  ‘Erinna’th right,’ Hermione said. ‘The Thatyr ith thuppothed to be a comic figure.’

  ‘All right, then. Suppose I creep behind the Virgin on tiptoes?’

  ‘Creepings is not funny,’ Fenja boomed. ‘Make you look like pervert with bunion.’

  Everyone laughed, save Ugly Phil. Hermione tried to force her unruly frizz into the pins. Fenja adjusted Periander’s Cupid wings, which had gone crooked in the melee. The Virgin and the Satyr tried again.

  ‘Iss worser,’ Fenja said and even Renata, who liked to keep the peace wherever possible, could not disagree.

  ‘Oi, Skyles,’ Jemima called across. ‘Show Ugly Phil how it’s done, willya?’

  But Skyles seemed lost in space, so she tossed her slipper across the atrium to attract his attention. ‘There,’ she crowed triumphantly. ‘That’s clowning, Master Satyr. Look how he pretended to wince when it hit him, how his breath came out in a hiss, and it’s only an old felt shoe. Soft as lard.’

  ‘How did you do that?’ Ugly Phil asked Skyles. ‘How d’you make yourself turn pale like that?’

  ‘Can’t you see he iss hurt, you damn fool?’ Fenja snapped. ‘Skyles, let uss look, huh?’

  ‘It’s nothing, I’m fine,’ Skyles rasped. ‘Touch of cramp.’ But his colour still hadn’t come back. His face was as white as Renata’s. ‘Look, this is how I’d play the scene,’ he said, and instead of hobbling round the set leering at the Virgin as Ugly Phil had been doing, the Buffoon cracked his knuckles, licked his lips and with a wink at his audience, set to caressing Erinna’s voluptuous shadow. The more they laughed, the more he put a finger to his lips to silence the chortles, and so the more the audience laughed, and as the Virgin turned, so did Skyles and her shadow, so that the Virgin appeared to be the only person not in on the secret.

  ‘I still don’t see why I can’t play the Virgin,’ Adah whined. ‘Now Erinna’s got two parts in the play, as the Soldier’s Mistress and the Virgin, and me, I’ve only got a brief walk-on.’

  ‘Swings and roundabouts, kiddo,’ Doris said, buffing his fine oval nails. ‘I’m sure Caspar will write you a bigger role next time, although—’ He leaned back and peered at her backside. ‘Some might say you’ve a big enough roll already.’

  ‘Up yours,’ she retorted,
but there was no sting in the rebuke.

  In fact, Adah was happy with the part she’d been given. It was right at the beginning, when the Miser mistakes the Neighbour’s Wife for his own spouse and rips off her gown, thinking he’s about to make love to his wife. As a result of her full-frontal exposure so early in the proceedings, Adah was assured of the audience’s unwavering interest, and therefore she was guaranteed to be the centre of attention in all subsequent scenes, even though the Neighbour’s Wife merely stood in the background wagging a censorious finger. What more can any actress ask?

  ‘One more time, then,’ Ugly Phil said. ‘From where I come on, up to the bit where my horns get stuck in the Virgin’s robe and—here! How about her frock comes off when I pull away?’

  ‘No,’ Adah squealed. It was too early to introduce further nudity, it would take away the effect of her scenes. ‘The point is to make the Satyr look stupid, stupid.’

  ‘Hey.’ Jemima paused from combing her red hair through her fingers. ‘Suppose, instead of creeping in, the Satyr comes down on Jupiter’s platform as though he’s descending straight from Olympus?’

  ‘Jem, you’re a star,’ Skyles said, his hand still clamped over his side.

  ‘I still think we ought to check with Caspar first,’ Adah cut in.

  ‘But he’s not here,’ Ugly Phil said patiently, ‘so I vote we incorporate it straight into the act.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Renata asked, rouging her cheeks with wine lees. ‘Not like him to miss a rehearsal, considering we’re opening tomorrow night.’

  ‘Never mind Caspar,’ Ugly Phil said, eager to keep his comic profile raised. ‘Let’s get cracking.’

  Doris indicated the stairs with an eloquent roll of the eyes. ‘In bed, lovey,’ he told Renata. ‘Catching up after a rough night, he said.’

  ‘Not from me, he bloody didn’t.’ Jemima let out an infectious giggle. ‘Come on, own up, you lot. Which one of you buggers gave him that shiner?’

  ‘Not guilty,’ Ugly Phil said.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past him to hit himself with a broom handle,’ Skyles said, ‘just so the colour of his eye can match his kaftan.’