Second Act (25 page)

‘She wounded him, apparently. Don’t know where she got him, or even how badly the bugger was hurt, but by Jupiter, she got one over on the dirty bastard. He won’t be so hard to hunt down now.’

‘Grabbed him by the balls, the hot-food vendor said, then stabbed him with her knife and ran home.’

‘A bloody heroine, that woman. The Emperor ought to give her a medal.’

*

Orbilio had still not returned, but Claudia was elated by the news. It was like Atlas taking the weight of the world from her shoulders, giving her a reprieve when she didn’t deserve it. And an appetite to match. She was taking breakfast in her office, working on the schedule for Saturnalia with Leonides, when Skyles burst into the garden. He was wheezing and holding his side, as though he’d been running, and sharp eyes searched the courtyard and peristyle. Whoever he was expecting to see wasn’t there and he arranged himself with carefully constructed nonchalance against one of the marble pillars.

‘There are no eggs with my breakfast, Leonides.’

The steward tilted his head on one side. In all these years, the mistress had never asked for eggs with her breakfast. Fruit, yes. Bread, yes. Cheeses, cold meats, salt fish, grilled chicken, goose liver, omelettes and walnuts, yes. But—
‘
Eggs,
madam?’

‘Little ovally things. Often speckled. You find them in nests.’

‘And…you’d like some right now?’

‘Hard-boiled,’ she replied.

‘Naturally,’ Leonides murmured, and dammit she’d sack him if he wasn’t enslaved. Well, now. Hard-boiling a few eggs must take a good while, she calculated, moving behind the tall bust on the podium where she could look out into the peristyle but not be seen in return.

‘One day a stranger

Rode into our village,’

a clear voice sang.

‘Ravaged with scars of hard battles long past.
‘

‘Adah told me you wanted to see me,’ Erinna said.

‘I have something for you.’ Still propped against the pillar, Skyles dangled a perfect circlet of flowers from his outstretched finger.

Erinna looked at the chaplet then at the flower beds. ‘Does our hostess know you’ve been raiding her garden?’

‘If you’re asking, does this constitute receiving stolen goods, then the answer is “probably”.’

The clown. Always the clown.

‘But with the courts closed and the jails full to overflowing, I don’t think they’ll clap you in irons, Mistress Erinna.’

‘I think you’re missing the point,’ Erinna said.

‘What? That I didn’t actually buy you the flowers? Well, no. But I wove them myself.’

‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’

Claudia could only see the back of Erinna’s head, but she could see all of Skyles. Especially the dark intensity burning holes in his eye sockets. ‘I’m an arsehole at times,’ he said equably.

‘Aren’t you.’ There was a smile, though, in Erinna’s reply.

‘Good, because if we agree on that, we at least have
some
common ground.’

‘You’re incorrigible,’ she replied, and of course, it being Skyles, Erinna couldn’t help laughing.

Very slowly, very gently, he positioned the chaplet of crocus and hellebores. They were a perfect fit over Erinna’s tight chestnut bun. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about going to the Circus and having dinner with me?’

‘No.’

Skyles stared at his feet. ‘Mind if I ask why?’

‘You can ask, but I’ll only lie to you, Skyles. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to rehearse my lines, now that Caspar’s got me playing the Virgin as well.’

A hand fell on her arm. ‘Then let me ask you something else.’

‘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 his 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.