Second Act

Thirty-One

Orbilio had still not returned home, but coincidentally several large muscular types had appeared in Claudia’s street and stationed themselves on various corners, trying for all the world to blend in as locals and ending up looking-well, like large muscular types. It could be the linen merchant was taking no chances with his money box for Saturnalia. Then again, Claudia wouldn’t bet her life on it.

Moschus had gone. Very soon he would realize that he’d been conned, but at the time he was too terrified to do more than answer Claudia’s questions. Jail for a sailor used to wide-open seas was the ultimate terror. Especially for one who had, as Orbilio very conveniently pointed out, a low threshold of pain. Put the two together and Moschus had been putty in Claudia’s hands.

Getting her five thousand sesterces back was easy. After leaving Claudia in the Temple of Portunus, Moschus had merely transferred the funds within the temple depository, with a view to collecting them later. With the misfortune of being picked up by the Security Police shortly after, he’d had no chance to return. Moschus had been a tad reluctant when it came to disclosing the precise location of the receipts which would redeem her money, but then the Butcher of Brindisi began to strop his blood-encrusted knife, and of course Moschus didn’t know the blood came from skinning rabbits for the stewpot. After that, he became very accommodating, because Claudia had needed more from the good captain than her money back.

Moschus and Butico had to be partners in this shipwreck scam, and you could bet your bottom quadran that Claudia wasn’t the first person they’d conned. No doubt the deal was that Moschus got to keep the profits of the fraudulent wreck, while Butico made his money from his extortionate thirty-two per cent interest, knowing only desperation would drive people to embark upon a criminal course in the first place. After that, he’d have them for life, sucking them drier and drier until they shrivelled like raisins. Bastard.

Conclusive proof of their collaboration, were it needed, was the involvement by the Guild of Wine Merchants. Clearly one of their members knew about the scam and passed the information on to his brothers, knowing that if penury didn’t force Claudia Seferius out of business, then exile on some scrubby island would. She really, really hoped they’d paid Butico a humungous amount of money for this. As much as she despised the moneylender, she despised the Guild even more. How sublime, that moment when they realized that they’d shelled out huge sums for nothing.

And so, for that reason, Claudia had needed more from Captain Moschus than her five thousand bronze sesterces. She’d pumped him for details of all his previous transactions with Butico and he, of course, with three goons standing over him, sang like a lark over a wheatfield.

A small matter, then, of paying Butico a visit.

*

‘The deal is straightforward,’ she told him. ‘One, you forget you’ve ever seen me. Two, you give me your solemn oath that my body won’t be found in some dark alleyway with its throat cut, because if anything nasty happens to me, there’s a box that goes straight to the Security Police containing Moschus’s confession. And three, I shall, of course, require the name of the wine merchant who hired you.’

From his considerable height, Butico stared down at her for several seconds and this time she returned his gaze quite steadily.

‘The Guild were foolish to underestimate you, my dear,’ and maybe it was the lamplight, but Claudia could have sworn she caught a slight twinkle in his cold, implacable stare. ‘As, I’m beginning to think, was I.’

Which was nothing to what Moschus was thinking. Butico had undoubtedly ridden rougher seas than these, although it was unlikely the captain would, once Butico caught up with him. His chilling words floated back to her. No one gets away from me, he had said. No one. The seas might be closed, but one ship would certainly try battling them this winter and the Artemis would have to change more than her name and the colour of her canvas this time.

‘There’s one final piece of information I need from you, Butico. The addresses of your two burly henchmen.’ Revenge on the scum from the slum was Claudia’s Saturnalia present to herself.

*

It was dark, but not late, when Orbilio wove his way through the crush and up the Esquiline to check on Deva. More than any of the others, he felt personal anguish for the young Damascan girl. Perhaps it was because the attack had happened on her seventeenth birthday, perhaps it was because he had struck up an acquaintanceship with the herbalist last summer, just when he and Deva had moved in together. Marcus didn’t know. All that mattered was that they got through this ordeal. Somehow.

Mid-December, of course, there was inevitably a bite in the air, but the drizzle had gone and although clouds still hung low over the hills, they were altogether much lighter, brighter and whiter. The kind that, one never knows, might suddenly part to admit blue skies and sunshine. The wind had gone, too. And with tomorrow being Saturnalia Eve, the whole city resounded with laughter and joy. So much holly and fir was decking the houses, it was a wonder there was any greenery left in the forest, and down on the Colonnade of the Argonauts, the Saturnalia market buzzed like a beehive as people shopped for gifts of candles and dolls, sipping spiced wine from street vendors as they browsed, munching on hot sausages and slices of wild boar hot from the spit roast.

Orbilio hadn’t eaten, and the smells from the taverns made his stomach growl, although he was unaware of the rumbles. It frustrated him that, thanks to Dymas diverting him away from the rapes to sort out that domestic killing down in the Subura and rounding up the counterfeit dole gang, he was no closer to getting this beast off the streets. His head pounded. It made him physically sick that another girl would soon be enduring the worst ordeal imaginable and that her life would be ruined because of him cocking up, and sending the wrong man to die for a crime he hadn’t committed Evil. Many times Marcus had pondered the meaning of the word. Many times he had seen it made flesh. But the Halcyon Rapist’s savage depravity brought a new dimension to the word.

A pain stabbed at him behind the eyes.

When he chose to forgo a lucrative career in law in favour of the dark underbelly of society, he’d realized it would mean shouldering a huge responsibility. Like the judiciary, he knew he wouldn’t be able to win every case, but, until now, he hadn’t realized how big a burden he would have to carry. Or that he would be shouldering it for the rest of his life…

The acrid smell of smoke prickled his nostrils. Shouts in the next street. Another fire, he thought wearily. More families with no roof over their heads, salvaging whatever possessions they could. At least up here, in the patrician quarter of the city, it would be an isolated fire. An artisan’s workshop, perhaps, or a bookseller’s premises. Down in the populous areas, such as the Subura, where he’d just come from, where families were crowded together in six-storey apartment blocks, or packed into the slums, the fire would be far more damaging.

He turned the corner, saw buckets of water being fetched in a line. His own street. Orbilio clucked his tongue in sympathy. He couldn’t help this time. Unfortunate if a neighbour had been burned out at Saturnalia, but he had promised the herbalist that Deva could stay as long as she liked and she had to have privacy. The consolation, he supposed, was that at least people around here could afford to rebuild and repair. Those poor creatures in the slums and the artisan quarters were all but ruined. Darting between two slopping leather buckets, it was at the back of his mind that he was glad there was no wind tonight to fan the flames. Why, they were so close, it could well have been his house that It was his house.

Breaking into a run, he barged through the crowd that had gathered to gawp. Mother of Tarquin, his atrium! It was blacker than Hades, and swimming with a viscous black sludge. Choking black smoke streamed out of every doorway, oily and sour, and he could hardly see his own hand in front of his face. Damping his handkerchief in what was left of the atrium pool, he covered his nose and mouth.

‘Sir? Is that you, sir?’ The voice of his steward, hoarse from the smoke, called from somewhere in front. He realized that, in his white toga, he must stand out like a barn owl.

‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Is anyone hurt?’

Janus. Deva! How much more could the girl take? As the last of the flames were extinguished, he flung open whatever doors and windows he could to distribute the smoke into the night.

‘No, sir, no casualties.’ But the steward’s lungs were in such a state from breathing the acrid air that, when he wasn’t wheezing like a pair of rusty bellows, he was wracking his ribs with the cough. Orbilio immediately sent him outside. If he wanted to help, better that he thanked the fire chain who had rushed to their rescue. It took him a moment or two before he realized that there was someone else stumbling around in the blackness, helping to fling open the shutters.

‘You lead an interesting life,’ the herbalist said.

‘This is only Saturnalia. You should see what happens when we celebrate birthdays,’ Orbilio said. ‘How’s Deva?’

‘I think it’s no exaggeration to say the fire was a distraction.’

‘Is that why you started it?’

There was a flash of a grin from the corner. ‘Had I thought it would have worked, I’d have burned down the city, but no. I’m afraid I didn’t pay the young lady.’

‘Excuse me?’ Orbilio found a candle and lit it.

‘Little blonde thing. Very pretty, as far as tornadoes go. Your toga is ruined, by the way.’

‘And your face is blacker than a Nubian’s arse. What blonde-oh shit.’

Angelina! The candle began shaking in Marcus’s hand, so the herbalist took it.

‘If you want my professional opinion,’ he said, ‘your pixie is two strigils short of a bathhouse.’

He and Deva had only been here three hours, he explained. Three good hours at that. The opiate was already wearing off when they arrived and rather than tell her the blunt truth of why they had decamped to this exquisite house on the Esquiline Hill, the herbalist had explained this was the Emperor’s treat.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said miserably. ‘I’ll own up when she’s better. Make sure you take the credit-’

Orbilio grinned. ‘Yes, I can see how that will impress her. Telling her you lied when she was at her most vulnerable.’

The herbalist smiled back. ‘Oh, well. Since you put it like that… Anyway, I wouldn’t say she was perky, but coming here was a turning point. Deva suddenly realized she wasn’t alone in her torment.’ His voice became ragged, and not from the smoke. ‘That other people, rich, influential people, acknowledged the seriousness of the crime-and felt compassion.’

He had even got her to eat something. A few delicacies. Things she’d only seen from afar, that they’d never been able to afford.

‘I sat with her until she fell asleep.’ He pointed to what had been the master bedroom. ‘I–I just needed some air, you know?’

It haunted him that he should have walked round the courtyard, rather than leave, but god knows, he had needed some space to himself. So he’d taken himself off to the public gardens, to think and to mourn, to rage and to grieve, and when he came back, a young woman with a froth of honey-coloured curls was throwing oil at flaming drapes. The herbalist cast a wry glance at his host.

‘I am, of course, assuming this was Miss Four-Times-A-Night you referred to the other evening?’

‘No, I have this effect on all women.’

The smile on the herbalist’s lips froze. He wiped a sooty face with a sooty hand and shook his head. ‘I’m responsible for your lovely home being destroyed,’ he said. ‘If I’d been here-’

‘Then Angelina would have come back some other time.’

‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged, unconvinced, as Orbilio took the candle back and held it high to inspect the pixie’s handiwork. It was a mess, certainly. But nothing that could not be put right.

‘No structural damage, thank heavens,’ Marcus said, adding, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’

‘That’s the trouble with delusions,’ the herbalist sighed. ‘That’s all they are. The only way your pixie can protect herself from a complete mental breakdown when the fantasy is exposed is to eradicate the source. Once it no longer exists, you see, it is as though it never happened. She has wiped it clean from her mind.’

‘She thought I’d supplanted you,’ a female voice said.

Both men spun round. In the doorway to the garden, shivering from the cold, Deva stood in her night robe. Orbilio thrust his toga round her shoulders, the herbalist rubbed her warm.

‘Darling, I told you to stay in the kitchens. You’re freezing.’

‘Am I?’ She hadn’t noticed. Her eyes were scanning the destruction.

‘I’ll take you home,’ he said gently.

‘You will not!’ Deva pulled the wool tight around her. ‘The Emperor said I could stay here for Saturnalia, and stay here I damn well will.’

Behind her back, both men exchanged smiles. There was no sign of the red shawl.

She scowled at the walls, the floor, the ceiling. ‘She’s not getting away with it,’ she spat. ‘She can’t just barge in here and overturn the oil lamps then walk away.’

Angry eyes turned on Marcus.

‘She has to be made to understand. She can’t go around spoiling things out of spite. It’s not right, leaving people’s lives in ruins and not paying the price.’ She swung round to face her man. ‘I’m not going home. I’m going to wash these walls and scrub these floors until they sparkle like new.’ She picked up a marble statuette and polished it on Orbilio’s toga. ‘That bitch is not going to beat me,’ she hissed.

With a tingle running the length of his backbone, Marcus realized that her tirade wasn’t aimed at Angelina. This was Deva’s way of getting back at the rapist. Of telling him that he could do what he liked with her body but her spirit could not be broken. The herbalist’s woman was fighting back, she was saying. And she would win

Replacing the statuette on the table, which she had also wiped clean on Orbilio’s toga, she turned to the herbalist.

‘Why on earth are you crying?’ she asked. ‘It’s only a bit of wool, love. It’ll bleach out.’