Second Act

Twenty-Four

In her bedroom, Claudia snuffed the flames of her oil lamps. Too bright. Far too bright. Instead, a single beeswax candle notched with the hour burned in the corner, its flame flickering in the reflection of the enamel inlays of her jewellery boxes, bringing the gold and silver engravings to life. A fawn with its mother. A trio of geese. A dog chasing its tail. Claudia sighed. Sat on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest. Beside her, curled into a ball, her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat slept peacefully, dreaming of crunchy voles and crispy sparrows and biding her time until the street mice felt safe enough to venture out of their holes.

Time passed, the candle burned lower, and Claudia Seferius stared into space.

Orbilio hadn’t returned and within a matter of hours, another girl would be pulled off the streets The responsibility pressed down on Claudia’s chest like a weight, stifled the air in her lungs. If she took action herself and her hunch turned out to be wrong, the fall-out would be horrendous. To accuse an innocent man of being a rapist was tantamount to destroying him. Was she prepared to condemn someone on a mere hunch? On the basis of stringing a few ill-thought-out conclusions together? The hell she was. She would need proof. Concrete evidence. A cast-iron case to present.

All the same, in a few hours, another innocent victim would be walking along minding her own business Drusilla’s paws twitched in her sleep, dark whiskers flicked back and forth. She barely stirred when her mistress swung her legs off the bed and wrapped herself in her furs. Like snowflakes in a blizzard, the same thoughts kept going round and round in her head, getting nowhere, and out on her balcony Claudia forced the Halcyon Rapist out of her mind. There was nothing she could do until she spoke to Orbilio. What was keeping him?

The hour was late. Approaching midnight. The shops had long since ceased trading. Artisans’ workshops had fallen silent. The scaffoldings round half-built structures were abandoned and eerie. But the bustle of day had been replaced by the bustle of night. Delivery wagons rumbled past, bringing everything from tanned calf skins to bricks into the city, and with just two days before Saturnalia, the drivers were homogenously jolly. Even their mules seemed more perky as they kicked and brayed their way down the thoroughfares. Claudia listened to the song of the street, and found herself humming another tune under her breath.

Her thoughts turned to her stepdaughter’s latest crush on unsuitable types, but if there was one thing to be salvaged out of this whole bloody mess, it was that the problem of Flavia, at least, could be solved. Live in poverty and strip for a living? Hades would take day trippers first. The scheming little minx had no intention of running off to join any circus. She was working towards getting her foster parents to buy him off, providing the loving couple with sufficient capital to set up home together, happy ever after.

Claudia shook her head in disbelief. How badly can you misread someone, she thought. But if it had been Flavia’s intention to mention this gem of an idea to her beloved, she wouldn’t have had much opportunity. The instant the curtain went down on the dress rehearsal, the cast disappeared into a scrum, thrashing out the weaknesses in the plot, shoring up the holes, playing up the laughs and, judging by the babble coming up from below, were still hard at work on the rewrite.

In any case, Claudia had pre-empted the situation by calling her bluff. Congratulations on your betrothal, read the note she’d left in Flavia’s room, you will make a wonderful bride. On her bed, she’d laid a wreath of greenery weaved with hellebores, the closest she could get this time of year to orange blossom. Ha. You want to run away with a penniless actor? Be my guest.

Dammit, the song wouldn’t go out of her head.

*

Across the gallery, Caspar’s eyes opened. Easing one arm from where it had become trapped under Jemima’s hip, he climbed gently over Adah and tiptoed across the thick woven rugs. There was no light in the room, but Caspar was used to feeling his way around in the dark. He discarded his nightshift and slipped into his best rose-red embroidered robe. As he belted it, he noticed that both hands were shaking, as though they had minds of their own.

His mouth was dry, too.

His breath shallow.

For a second, he faltered. He didn’t have to do this. He could pull back. Stop right now- He swallowed. Wrung clammy hands together. Wished there was another way.

But there wasn’t.

Familiar now with which boards creaked and which didn’t, Caspar eased open the finely carved cypress-wood door and padded along the gallery on feet that were surprisingly light.

*

The herald in the street was calling the sixth hour when the entrance to the slaves’ quarters was unbolted. The figure was tall and bearded, with black hair that fell to his shoulders, and his handsome face was still flushed from the accolades his fellow thespians had showered upon him for his role as King of the Gods.

From the alcove where the wood for the oven was stored, Claudia had a perfect view of the door. She did not want to believe that the Spectaculars were anything other than they appeared on the surface. But want didn’t enter into the equation. This was real life, not fairy tales. In real life, people got hurt.

Sometimes they died.

Secrets, secrets, so many secrets Pulling his cloak high round his neck to cover the lower half of his face, Ion glanced to the left, then to the right, and then, with the agility for which actors were renowned, melted into the swarm of farmers heading for market.

Very little time passed before Claudia heard another sound in the hallway. With the faintest of jangles, Doris snaked his way past the tables and the shelving, checking over his shoulder as he eased the door shut behind him. It could, of course, be simply an assignation. Then she recalled that look in his eyes earlier. That dangerous, feral expression.

In the alcove, Claudia shivered.

She attributed it to the young man with chiselled cheekbones who’d just made his exit.

In fact, it was the draught from the front door. As another member of the cast slipped silently into the crowd.

*

Skyles hadn’t seen Claudia in the kitchen, but he had smelled her. That rich, Judean perfume was unmistakable, and he had hovered in the doorway for a minute or two, waiting for the scent to dissipate, as it surely would if she’d just been passing through. But the scent lingered, which meant she was waiting. Hidden some place, and watching.

Skyles slipped out through the vestibule instead. Past the porter, whose sleeping mouth was still curved upwards from laughing so much during the show.

*

Dawn was poking a bony finger through the darkness as the Digger breakfasted on warm bread and smoked liver sausage from a street vendor. Like the rest of the cast, the Digger was on something of a high still, the dress rehearsal having sent a rush of adrenalin coursing through everyone’s veins, a combination of excitement, pride, fear of failure, supreme confidence and stage fright.

Performing The Cuckold in ‘real’ time, as opposed to endless rehearsals, the sense of achievement had acted like a rivet, uniting every member of the team and turning them into one cohesive unit as invincible as any Roman legion.

No one in the troupe underestimated this feat. Two months ago, they were a band of strangers brought together by circumstance and held together by chance. Some were old hands at the performing arts. Some, like the Digger, were new to the challenge, but had taken to it like widgeon to water.

But in those two turbulent months, they had united to become Caspar’s Spectaculars in the truest sense of the word. And, just like the hum a n tortoise made when legionaries overlapped their shields and advanced upon a besieged fortress, so the company had united, several individual pieces forming a single unified body.

Indestructible and proud.

But killers are like leopards, they can’t wash off their spots. Dawn might be breaking, the streets might be a crush of barrows piled high with cabbages, live fowl, flowers and carcases, but the Digger’s mind remained trapped in the rich russet shades of autumn.

In a world where the leaves hung permanently limp in the warm, humid air and the proliferation of butterflies never moved on. The smell of moist, Frascati earth remained for ever in the Digger’s nostrils, and the rut of the stags and the yaffle of a woodpecker were a relentless echo in the Digger’s brain. As was the grunt of surprise, when spade crashed down upon skull.

This time, however, the woman in the shallow grave said nothing. She merely pointed a skeletal finger at the blood on the spade. The same hot, red blood which had splattered her murderer’s face.

Warm bread and smoked liver sausage turned to ash in the Digger’s mouth.