Second Act

Nine

There is no point being a sponsor of a Halcyon Spectacular if no one gets to hear about the wretched thing. Advertising is everything these days, and Claudia had no intention of her support being anything less than the talk of the town. Impossible, of course, if the players never set foot out of doors. They were, after all, her advertising hoardings. Let them bloody advertise.

‘I am not sure we have the time, dear lady, to indulge in the luxury of relaxation,’ Caspar protested, his turban askew and little round face daubed with paint. ‘Think of the scenery, the costumes, the script, the choreography!’

‘Think of the money.’ Once word got round, he’d be booked solid right through the summer.

‘Doris, Jemima, Erinna, Skyles, drop what you’re doing and get your glad rags on,’ Caspar ordered. ‘Adah, Ion, you go with them.’

‘But-’ they chorused in unison.

‘Butts are for billy goats.’ Caspar clapped his little fat hands. ‘Come along, come along, we haven’t got all day, we have an important engagement lined up.’ To Claudia he asked under his breath, ‘Which might be what, exactly?’

Actors! Don’t know the time of day it is. Don’t even know what day they’ve lost track of time on.

‘It’s the Festival of the Lambs,’ she reminded him, tapping the calendar nailed to the wall right in front of him and wondering, was wolf fur thick enough to wow them at the sacrifice or should she stick with beaver? Decisions, decisions. Quality or colour. Dear Diana, whatever was she thinking of! There would be more than enough colour with Caspar’s rainbow troupe. Especially if Jemima opened her mouth.

Slowly, so that everyone could get an eyeful, the multicoloured snake made its way down to the Forum. Being market day, the city was thronging with farmers, shoppers, beggars, hucksters, but all heads turned at the procession which stopped outside the tiny Temple of Janus. Claudia had deliberately taken her litter, looping up the drapes and sod the tramontana, to catch as many gawpers as she could. Gossip was still one of the best publicity devices on the market, and the sight of Gaius Seferius’s young widow bumping along in a litter draped in turquoise and silver and shouldered by eight hunks in matching tunics with a peacock of a companion was enough to set tongues wagging, never mind the human billboards bringing up the rear.

‘They know what to do?’ she murmured, alighting from the litter.

‘Trust me, madam, they are professionals.’ Caspar righted his turban and hitched up his belt. ‘Well, some of them, anyway.’

Claudia glanced at the preparations being made for the sacrifice. No knives laid out, no incense burning, the fire barely lit. Excellent. Another half an hour to the start, unless she missed her guess. Just right. By the time that poor ram was led up to the altar, no one except the priest would be interested in its fate. Even Janus would have both his faces trained upon the show.

There had been a bit of a problem at the beginning. Since it was sacrilege for women to attend a sacrifice without their heads veiled, how was Claudia to make the volumptuous beauties stand out from the crowd? The men were easy. Unlike the big theatres, strolling male actors relied on the age-old technique of gurning to bring about laughs, and Claudia was convinced that Doris and Skyles would have the crowd regretting they’d not practised their pelvic-floor exercises more meticulously. But that didn’t solve the problem of the plumptious beauties, when women were only allowed on stage providing their heads were covered. (Exactly. Even though convention encouraged them to end up wearing nothing else, they still had to wear a veil!) Today, the solution was simple. Keep the girls veiled, but have the boys wear proper theatrical masks, then no one could have any doubt about what the group could be. Or who was sponsoring them!

‘… this is but a detail,’ Doris was saying, supposedly reading from a script on the portico of the basilica adjacent to the temple. ‘We must address the fundamental issue here-’

At which point, Jemima bent down and touched her toes. The veil, naturally, slipped off.

‘Some fundament there!’ Ion shouted from the steps.

‘I wouldn’t mind getting to the bottom of it, that’s for sure,’ Skyles jeered from the other side of the group.

The crowd shuffled closer. Jemima promptly lifted her hem and peered at them through her chunky ankles.

‘What are you lot laughing at?’ She straightened up and looked from left to right, adopting a puzzled air. ‘No, come on. What?’

Skyles and Ion both held up innocent hands. Doris pretended to get cross that rehearsals weren’t going according to plan. The crowd began tossing coppers.

‘O Janus,’ the priest intoned solemnly, ‘god of beginnings, porter of heaven, guardian of the gates, may your powers be great from this offering.’

No one heard him. No one heard the poor ram bleat as it tugged on its lead. No one noticed that the temple doors, kept permanently shut during peacetime, had been opened by a pair of sombre, white-robed acolytes so that Janus might watch the sacrifice in his honour.

‘Don’t you accuse me of buggering up rehearsals,’ Jemima told Doris, hands planted on her ample hips. ‘It’s them two fat ugly cows.’ She jerked her head at Adah and Erinna. ‘Distracting people from the ceremony, you want to keep ’em indoors, out the way.’

‘Me fat?’ Erinna shrieked. ‘You’re the one whose favourite food is seconds!’

‘At least I haven’t reached the point where food’s a substitute for sex,’ Adah sneered.

‘No?’ Jemima shot back. ‘Then why’s there a mirror above yer bleeding dinner table?’

Copper coins became bronze.

The priest raised his voice. He had long ago given up any hope of silence during the sacrifice, his best hope now lay in incense. Choking grey clouds tried to draw the attention of the masses, but fat remained triumphant. Only a pious young widow and a rotund individual dressed like a kingfisher strained to listen to the prayers as the young ram was purified with holy water. Adah lunged at Jemima, Erinna tried to pull Jemima off, handsome Ion leapt off the steps to rush to Erinna’s aid and whoops! Erinna’s tunic came off in his hands.

Uproarious cheers.

Silver showers.

The ram went to its doom unmourned.

‘You dirty devil,’ Erinna gasped, torn between slapping Ion round the ear and covering her embarrassment. ‘You know damn well I don’t wear underclothes!’

Ion, in his Jupiter-chasing-the-nymphs mode, managed to convey to the crowd that, no, he hadn’t actually forgotten that aspect of Erinna’s attire… In the background, Doris searched the script for something he’d missed. Jemima and Adah clung like virgins in a brothel, in case their own clothes came under assault. The audience were agog. Then, just when they thought it couldn’t get any better, Skyles whipped off his yellow woollen tunic to protect Erinna’s modesty, but in doing so, exposed his own form for inspection. Bulging muscles, rippling pecs, with just a tiny loincloth to cover the essentials. Claudia could see what attracted the ladies. (And one or two of the men, she couldn’t help noticing.) The crowd went wild.

The priest had finished. With the longest face this side of the Tiber, he had flayed the sacrifice, passed its liver to the haruspex for inspection, and was now sprinkling the flesh with holy salt before roasting it in strips over the fire. Oh, Caspar, what magnificent timing your people have! No wonder you call them Spectaculars. And now it was her turn. Wrenching herself away from the sole mn ceremony, the young widow was mortified to discover that her house guests had been causing chaos alongside the basilica.

‘I am so sorry,’ she told the crowd. ‘This is all my fault. They were rehearsing for the show I’m putting on at my house-’

She didn’t get a chance to finish. ‘When?’ ‘Where?’ ‘How much?’ ‘Can we get seats?’ bellowed from every direction. Oh, yes. And this was only the start. Tomorrow, to celebrate the Festival of the Seven Hills, there was chariot racing in the Circus Maximus. Word would have spread, there’d be even more spectators at tomorrow afternoon’s performance.

A total of fifty thousand potential sales.

*

‘That went well,’ Ion said to Doris, wiping the sweat from his face beneath his mask.

‘Fat jokes always do,’ Doris retorted, comically mopping the outside of his tragedy mask. ‘They unite both sexes and bridge every generation. Well. Them, and Gaulish virgin jokes. Did you hear about the one who sat in the chair right through her wedding night?’

‘Go on, tell me,’ Ion groaned.

‘Her mother told her it would be the best night of her life, so she stayed up so as not to miss it.’

*

‘That went well,’ Skyles told Erinna, belting up his spare tunic.

It was the first time he had seen Erinna at such close quarters, and he’d rather liked the view. Unblemished olive skin, full firm breasts, hips that he could grip when he… If he…

He cleared his throat. ‘Don’t you think?’ he finished hoarsely.

*

‘That went well.’ Leaning against a pillar in the portico, Adah adjusted the strap of her sandal, which had come loose.

‘Bleeding did an’ all.’ Jemima combed her red hair with her fingers, replaced her veil and shook out the hem of her tunic. ‘Got meself another admirer out of it.’

‘Don’t tell me. You’re meeting him down the side of an alley?’

‘Behind the temple, if you must know. But that’s one more gold piece to put away for me old age, Adah, which is one more than you’ll have.’

*

‘That went well,’ said Claudia, relieving Caspar of the takings.

‘And with extreme rapidity,’ Caspar commented dryly, watching them disappear into the depths of her cloak. ‘But you were quite right, dear lady. A better advertisement for the Halcyons I could not have envisaged, and should you wish to reconsider my proposal of marriage, you will find my betrothal ring on your pillow within the hour.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Caspar, but if my future husband can’t respond faster than that, then he’s of no interest.’ The bejewelled turban was still bobbing with merriment as it led its little masked snake home to continue work on the genuine Spectaculars.

*

‘That went well,’ a baritone murmured in Claudia’s ear. She caught the faint hint of sandalwood before she turned.

There it was again, the unmistakable scent of the hunter.

‘Any chance of a box?’ he asked mildly.

‘I presume you’re not raising my hopes by asking for a coffin?’

‘My health is perfectly sound,’ Orbilio replied. ‘But your concern is most touching. I was referring to a ringside seat at the show.’

‘What a shame we’re fully booked.’

Bowing reverently backwards from the open temple doors, white-robed acolytes passed round platters piled high with strips of chargrilled sacrificial lamb. Inside the tiny sanctuary, the bronze statue of two-faced Janus gleamed from the reflection of the firelight. Both profiles were positioned so that they could watch across the city’s gates and doorways, and around the statue stood twelve minute altars, one for each month of the year. December’s was hung with shiny, aromatic, dark green myrtle, symbolizing the love and peace appropriate for Saturnalia, and sprigs of the shrub lay wreathed at Janus’s feet. The god of new beginnings, Claudia reflected, selecting a sliver of crispy lamb. The god who, because he could see the past, watched for the future. She wondered what he was looking at when he saw her with the Security Police.

‘I thought you might be interested to know we’re holding a man prisoner,’ Orbilio said. ‘A sea captain called Moschus. Ring any bells?’

Funny how, even inside a fur cloak and squirrel-lined boots, she still felt the tramontana’s icy bite. ‘Moxer, you say?’

‘Moschus.’

‘Sorry, Orbilio, don’t know any Mushers.’

In front of her, the bronze-clad doors ground shut. They would stay closed until the next Festival of the Lambs came round in January. By which time, of course, Claudia’s own future would be assured. One way or another.

‘The good captain’s keeping his counsel at the moment, but the fascinating thing about this case is that Moschus isn’t a Roman name.’

‘My, my, you Security Police are a mine of information,’ she trilled. ‘But if you want my advice, Orbilio?’

‘Yes?’

‘Eat your lamb before it gets cold.’

‘The thing about non-Romans,’ he continued, ‘is that the same rules of interrogation don’t apply. Unlike citizens, they can be put to the torture to extract information.’

‘You have my undivided indifference.’

‘My grapevine informs me that Moschus has a very low threshold of pain.’

Claudia swallowed. One day you’ll wake up to the fact that I’m the best friend you have. Was he warning her, she wondered? Or was the spider more likely spinning a web for the fly…? About to toss out another flippant retort, she suddenly noticed something different about him this morning. Wrapped in a heavy woollen toga over a long patrician tunic and with the wind baffled by the high buildings all round the Forum, his face should not be white and pinched, his expression should not be frozen. His eyes should not be dead. Jupiter, Juno and Mars, I’m going to regret asking this, I know, but ‘Marcus, is everything all right?’

He hadn’t so much as looked at the sacrificial roast. Just held it between his fingers, spots of grease congealing on his nails.

‘I suppose that largely depends on your definition of all right,’ he said, tossing the lamb to a shaggy wolfhound, whose beseeching eyes had been on him for several minutes. ‘The halcyon rapes have started again.’

Claudia shivered. ‘But the man confessed. H-he was executed in the arena.’

‘A man confessed,’ Orbilio corrected. ‘A man was executed, but-’

‘But nothing,’ Claudia said.

Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was renowned for his near-perfect record. Not because he was cleverer than the rest of the Security Police, although he was certainly better educated. But because his patrician training made him thorough to the point of pedantry. Even in those instances where he could not bring the perpetrator to book-itinerants, for instance, and those protected by High Society and the government-he nevertheless satisfied himself that he had done everything within his power and had at least some gratification in knowing that the case was closed. Dogged wasn’t the word, and that was why Claudia walked on eggshells around him. She hadn’t dragged herself out of the gutter to watch everything she’d worked for washed out to sea. Upright, conscientious and thorough, if Orbilio had nailed the Halcyon Rapist, then the Halcyon Rapist was nailed.

‘This has to be a copycat crime,’ she said.

‘That’s what my colleague, Dymas, thinks. That some arrogant bastard wants to prove himself smart enough to outwit the authorities.’ Orbilio tried for a smile and failed. ‘Well, my colleague is right on that score. I spoke to the girl who was attacked yesterday morning and I’ve just come from questioning the second victim now and it’s exactly the same as last year. Not similar,’ he said wearily. ‘Identical, Claudia, right down to the aniseed and the mask, and you know what that means.’

The lamb she’d eaten as part of the sacrifice threatened to regurgitate itself over the cobbles. No wonder he hadn’t been able to face it.

‘Yes,’ she said softly, and something tightened inside. ‘I know what it means.’

It meant Mr Conscientious-Upright-and-Thorough had made a mistake.

As a result of that error, an innocent man had been sent to his death.