Second Act

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 on 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.

A thin claw laid itself on her arm. ‘My dear, if you’d only heard the piece they were rehearsing when I came in. Quite frankly, there’s no other word to describe it, it was lewd. Absolutely vulgar. In fact, disgusting would not be too strong a term.’

Claudia inhaled the scent of the yellow iris. ‘So you’ll be staying for Saturnalia, then?’

‘Very well,’ Julia sighed. ‘If you insist.’

*

It was all hands to the pump for Caspar’s Halcyon Spectaculars. Just like the big productions staged in giant, stone-built theatres which were watched by thousands of spectators, the backdrops still had to resemble three adjoining house fronts, complete with marble columns, statues and mosaics, and even though they were made of canvas and operated on a pulley system and the audience was small, the scenery must look fresh as well as realistic. For that reason, half the troupe were sprawled on their knees with paintbrushes in one hand and script notes in another.

The Digger among them.

Deft strokes from the Digger’s paintbrush filled in the blue bits on the canvas spread across the floor as Periander, the castrato, warbled his soprano solo. Light banter was the order of the day as red paint pots jostled with yellow brushstrokes, interspersed with practical jokes and good-natured backchat. There was no option for a small unit locked together for months on end but to rub along. Friction was a commodity everyone could do without, so you closed your eyes to faults and niggles and concentrated on the positive and, since the company came almost exclusively from low-born or slave backgrounds, this way of life came naturally. For the same reason, no one asked probing questions. And if they did, those questions didn’t get answered.

A plump female hand reached out and tickled Leonides’s leg as he passed, the whole group shrieking at the steward’s equal mix of outrage (that the unseemly incident had happened) and relief (that the hand had not belonged to Doris).

There was a unity about this company, the Digger reflected, filling in the clear blue summer sky, even though the very nature of their business meant that it was transitory. The female members fluctuated more than most, hooking up with men they met along the way, returning when the love affairs had soured, but the ambience went deeper than that. The group as a whole symbolized acceptance. Come or go, it doesn’t matter a flying fig to us was their attitude. We take you for who-or what-you are.

Quite who had stayed and who was new to the company after last October’s breakaway was not entirely clear. Renata, bless her plastered face, was one of the old gang, the fat boy who’d been gelded at the tender age of twelve another. Felix the dancer quite possibly another. But just as the Digger had been incorporated seamlessly into their society, so had everyone else.

At last, the blue parts of the canvas, at least this canvas anyway, had been refreshed and now the whole backdrop radiated brightness and sparkle. Just like the new play. The Digger leaned back, admiring the handiwork, not only on the canvas, but the production as a whole. For instance, too small to sustain a separate orchestra, Renata’s talents were augmented by the cast, who had been given training in at least one percussion instrument, whether cymbals, tambourine, castanets or sistrum. That was how it was with Caspar’s Spectaculars. Teamwork all the way. They were like raisins in a bun, the Digger thought. Separate, yet bound together in a warm and pleasant setting.

It took a moment before it filtered through that, for the word ‘they’, one should substitute the word ‘we’.

The Digger was also one of the raisins in the bun.

*

And the body in the grave pointed an accusing finger.

‘I am not the last,’ it said. ‘Am I?’