Second Act

Thirty-Five

Claudia opened her eyes to blackness and the sound of a percussion orchestra on their first practice run. It took her a while to work out that the cymbals and drum rolls were inside her head, and that the blackness came from lying face down on a pile of thick fleeces. The fleeces had been washed, and they were soft and comforting, like floating on a cloud, and smelled slightly oily. She tried to sit up, and found that her furs had been stripped from her, her arms tied behind her back, her ankles bound and memories of being trapped down Pepper Alley flooded back. Looking round, shivering from the bitter night air, she realized she was in some sort of shed, possibly a warehouse, lit by a single oil lamp placed on the floor.

‘I’m so glad you are able to join us, Mistress Seferius.’ The voice was cultured and deep, imbued with natural authority. With his thumbs looped into his belt, he was tall, well built and, under other circumstances, Claudia would have described him as handsome with his thatch of blond hair and distinctive patrician attire. Beside her, white as a ghost, Erinna had hauled herself into a kneeling position on the fleece cloud.

‘My apologies for the rude form of transportation.’

The kidnapper was leaning almost nonchalantly against a stack of soft, bulging sacks and, although Claudia could not make out the colour of his eyes, she recognized triumph dancing in them.

‘Unfortunately, I’m not sure a direct invitation would have been accepted, and-’ he indicated Claudia’s head ‘-I must apologize, too, for my boys’ manners. They can be a little over-enthusiastic at times.’

The air was dry and dusty and she wanted to sneeze. Instead, she lifted her chin to face him.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What do you want with me?’

But even as she asked the question, she knew it wasn’t for ransom.

And in the end it wasn’t the kidnapper who answered.

‘His name,’ Erinna said quietly, ‘is Sextus Valerius Cotta and it’s not you he wants. Is it, Senator?’

*

Autumn. The air was sticky. Leaves hung limp on the trees surrounding Cotta’s estate in the Alban Hills. Amber. Scarlet. And rust. Over the horizon to the east, the sun was just starting to rise. Soft, golden and mellow. A few birds sang, magpies chattered and an old boar snuffled for acorns. Rabbits scampered over the clearings as the first slanting rays of liquid gold penetrated the patchwork canopy, and the air was ripe with the scent of beechnuts and sweet chanterelles. Crashing through the undergrowth, the Digger noticed none of the season’s sultry beauty. Fear gave wings to her heels. Any second now, the news would break. They would set the dogs on her. The human kind, as well as the estate hounds, and she remembered what happened last time she tried to break free.

It had been different then.

For three years, Erinna had worked with the old man as he concocted his recipe for the Elixir of Immortality. Like the Senator, she thought it was nonsense, but the old man was defiant and besides, he would argue, if not life everlasting, then another half century would suffice. Fifty years? Was he serious? He was bent and crippled as it was, his chest wheezed like a pair of ancient bellows and his eyes were rheumy and dim. In five years, never mind fifty, he’d be blind, shrivelled and bed-bound and what life was that? But Erinna had grown fond of her master and knew the old man cared for her in return. For a slave, a kind master is all you can ask for.

‘The Poseidon Powder is the key,’ he would cackle merrily. ‘Once I’ve cracked that, I’m immortal.’

Saltpetre, this strange salt of Petra, was apparently the only substance which could adequately dissolve the vermilion cinnabar crystals, which in turn were crucial to the fabled elixir, and it was for just one pouchful of this precious white powder that he had scoured the earth and shelled out a small fortune. What he had bought, though, rendered him almost delirious with delight and he was happier than Erinna had seen in a long time at the prospect of finally fulfilling his dream. That fateful afternoon, Erinna and the old man had been experimenting with the ingredients as usual.

‘Are you sure about this, master?’

This wasn’t the first time she’d questioned his formula. Recent chest pains had prompted him to start taking shortcuts. Erinna worried, and with good reason. White nitre hadn’t been named after the Earth-Shaker for nothing.

‘Oh, stop fussing, gel, and pass me the honey.’

He had given up trying to dissolve the red grit a fortnight before. Either the formula was incorrect, he said, or the whole thing was a hoax, and the old man hadn’t given credence to the latter. The Orientals possessed the secret of eternal life, this was a fact, and after many years of experimenting, he was absolutely certain that he was finally on the right track.

‘This’ll make your fortune, gel,’ he would tell her. ‘When I die, you receive your freedom under the terms of my will. You can sell the formula and be rich.’

Watching the chemicals bubble and fizz, Erinna knew she would never be rich. But freedom…? That was another matter entirely. Around his room, this self-styled laboratory sited as far from the domestic area as his son could organize without insult, bowls and jars, phials and philtres cluttered every available shelf space and table. The Senator claimed he kept the laboratory clear of the house because of the smell, which was pretty noxious, Erinna had to agree. Personally, she tended to think that the Arch-Hawk was ashamed of his father’s eccentric dabblings.

‘Are you sure you’ve roasted the iron pyrites correctly?’

‘Yes, master,’ she’d replied patiently. ‘And I collected the vapour and recrystallized it according to your exact instructions.’

No wonder they called it fools’ gold! But with each pain in his chest, each wheeze in his lungs, the old man grew progressively tetchy, and his hands were no longer steady enough to hold a spoon to his own mouth without spilling. For three years, Erinna had undertaken the intricacies of his chemical experiments that his failing body could not.

‘Hmph.’ A bony finger tapped impatiently. ‘Then I don’t know what’s wrong.’

This was a regular exchange, and Erinna saw no more reason to pay particular attention that afternoon to his grumblings than to any of its predecessors.

‘Maybe that Arab didn’t give us the true salt of Petra,’ he suddenly said. ‘That’s it! I’ve been swindled, this isn’t Poseidon Powder at all. That dirty wog bastard has diddled me!’

‘Calm down, master.’ He was getting overexcited again. Any moment and another claw would rip at his heart. ‘The Arab didn’t cheat you, you watched yourself when he scooped up the powder.’

But the old man was beyond listening. ‘I’ll have to test it,’ he said. ‘Light that brazier, gel.’

‘Let’s test it tomorrow,’ Erinna suggested.

She hadn’t liked the look of the old man’s colour, but knew he wouldn’t have the estate physician near his laboratory, not after the names he had called the elixir, and the master was a proud old duffer, for all that.

‘Now! I’m going to test it now,” he said shrilly. ‘If the powder burns with a purple flame, then it’s genuine. If not, I’m going back to Petra and have that Arab’s intestines strung out on a clothes line.’

Slaves cannot argue with their masters. They can only render the place as safe as possible. Leaving him poring over his brew of realgar, honey and sulphur above a brazier which she hadn’t yet lit, Erinna scooped up the limewood box, the only orderly apparatus in the room, and took it away for safe keeping in his bedroom. Accidents had happened before. Acid burns, fires, small explosions inside the cauldron. They could laugh about it now, but at the time it wasn’t funny, having your eyebrows singed ginger and watching your dinner explode. Senator Cotta had no idea of the amount of furniture that had been quietly smuggled out in smouldering pieces.

Returning from his quarters, Erinna was walking along the shade of the portico when she was blown backwards off her feet. The old man, too impatient to wait for her return to test out his powder, had lit the brazier himself.

Poseidon, the Earth-Shaker, had spoken.

Even as the dust rained down on her head, Erinna was astute enough to realize that, had she not removed the lime-wood box, she and the whole house would have blown up. Hundreds of lives would have been lost. Very little saltpetre, she had learned, was required to create an explosion. It was the combination of the ingredients which rendered them volatile. That, and the fact they were mixed in a small, metal container. When the container exploded, so did everything round it, and paradoxically, the smaller the container, the greater the explosion.

Erinna did the only thing she could think of. She ran.

They caught her, of course. Just outside Frascati, and she knew the Senator would execute her for murder, because the old man had most certainly not died from natural causes. She had screamed her bloody head off, kicked and screeched and called for help, because with the old man’s death she was officially a freewoman now, she was entitled to trial by jury. But the townspeople decided this was none of their business. They viewed her desperate fight only in terms of light entertainment. The bastards had actually laughed.

To her surprise-no, to her astonishment-the Senator didn’t charge her with murder when they dragged her back. Instead he shut her in a storeroom and asked her, very politely, what formula the old man had used. And in that moment, Erinna understood everything. She saw that, in the explosion, the Arch-Hawk had seen a fast track to his expansion plans Terrified now, truly terrified, she prevaricated. Told him she didn’t know the precise formula, that the master wouldn’t disclose his secrets to a mere slave, but the Senator wasn’t fooled. They both knew she had been his instrument.

Three days passed. Cotta tried every trick in the book and it didn’t matter to him that she was free now. He needed the formula and Erinna was the only person who possessed it. How much saltpetre to sulphur, what ratio of honey to realgar, and so on. As she continued to bluff it out, he offered riches and made threats in return. But Erinna wasn’t stupid. His patience would not last for ever and he would turn to other methods to extract the information he needed. Hand twisting or the bastinado. In any case, Erinna was dead. He would not, could not, afford to let her live now. Whatever he promised.

Her only chance lay in escape.

Strangely, it wasn’t that hard. Like most sensible interrogators, Cotta employed violence as a last resort. More results were obtained by keeping the questioning friendly, and for that reason Erinna was allowed a certain privacy for her ablutions. Foolish. Very foolish. Claiming an urgent need for the latrines, she knocked her jailer unconscious with a block of wood and picked up a couple of small, but precious objects from the atrium as she fled. Cotta owed her that much, she thought. With that gold statuette and the ivory carving, she could get to Alexandria and disappear.

As dawn turned to daylight, birdsong filled the woods. Erinna had no plan. She didn’t know which direction she was headed, only that she must get away. Hitch a lift on a cart, anything, to put distance between this terrible place and herself. Juno be praised, there was only one other person on the road this early. A young woman with a cloak of dark hair and shabby clothes, whose face was a picture of burning resentment. The girl stopped when she saw Erinna.

‘What’s wrong, love?’ she asked, and Erinna hadn’t realized she’d been crying until the woman pointed it out.

Even now, she didn’t know what possessed her to go babbling off to a stranger. Stress, she supposed. The desperate need to confide after the horrendous few days. Oh, she didn’t let on about Cotta’s secret, of course, that would go with her to the grave. But Erinna couldn’t halt the sudden outpouring of emotion, and it all came gushing out. How urgently she needed to reach the coast. Book a passage on a ship. Any ship. To Athens, Massilia, anywhere.

At what point had the stranger’s concern twisted into something darker? It was only afterwards that Erinna remembered the scowl, the expression of burning resentment that had been on her face when she first saw her walking towards her on the road. Compassion, she discovered later, had been instinctive-but fleeting.

‘How will you pay for your passage?’ the stranger had asked, and there had been a shrewd look in her eye. Again, something Erinna paid no heed to at the time. Vulnerable and afraid, the desire to trust and be trusted was overwhelming. She showed the woman the gold statuette and the carving under her cloak.

‘Then I think I can help you,’ the dark-haired woman said, brightening. ‘Come with me.’

Taking Erinna’s arm in sisterly solidarity, she had led her up past the post house, and Erinna barely noticed the spade leaning against the wall at the time. She had heard only the snicker of horses, reminding her that any minute, Cotta’s men would come charging through the dawn mist towards her. She felt sick to her stomach, yet safe. Safe in the hands of this woman, this sister who understood and who cared.

When she looked back over her shoulder to check on possible pursuers, she did notice that the spade had gone, although there was still no sign of the ostler.

‘I’m an actress,’ the stranger explained. ‘With a few tricks of the trade and the aid of cosmetics, I can change your appearance to the point where your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.’ And as she led Erinna down into the woods, where this miraculous transformation would take place, she explained how the group of strolling players she had been with had split up. The very bitterness and venom in her voice should have alerted Erinna, but she was too bound up in her own sorrows. Still grieving for her dead master, for herself, for the predicament for which-hallelujah! — she had found a solution, but heavy with the knowledge that Cotta would stop at nothing to find her. Down the hill, near a stream, her companion paused. Set down her bundle and covered it carefully with her cloak. Erinna caught the clang of something metallic, but yet again paid no attention. To give yourself up to someone else’s ministrations was a luxury she’d never experienced before.

‘Look at those beautiful butterflies,’ the actress gasped, using both hands to point to the profusion of painted ladies heading south through the canopy. ‘Don’t they take your breath away, the way they dance through the trees?’ Erinna looked up and saw hope dancing among the profusion of painted ladies. ‘They’re beautif-’

Her breath was cut off. Two hands clasped round her neck and began squeezing, and suddenly the dance of the butterflies had turned into a macabre dance of death. Even as they fought, Erinna knew she was losing the battle. The actress had the advantage of surprise and her hands, strong from hauling scenery, pressed deeper into Erinna’s throat. She fell to her knees, heard a hideous gurgling sound and knew it was her last breath.

Why fight? Give in, you’re dead anyway, a little voice said. Let go, Erinna.

But the need to survive was stronger than the voice in her head. Erinna desperately wanted to live and, as she twisted and writhed, a red mist closing over her eyes, she saw the spade. The cloak, which had been kicked aside in the struggle, exposed its shiny, deadly metallic blade. In that second, that single split second, Erinna turned into a killer.

A transformation, she realized belatedly, that was far worse than death at the hands of a stranger.

*

And the body in the grave screamed, ‘You bitch! You killed me, you bitch, caved my bloody head in. Don’t you see that with that statuette and the carving, I could have done so well for myself! I could have bought fine clothes and jewels and secured myself the protection of a man who would demand only my body in payment-and what did you do? You wasted those treasures! Instead of selling them and making a comfortable life for yourself, you climbed into my old threadbare clothes, put my pack on your back and hooked up with a troupe of losers! Caspar threw me out, did you know that? Said the company was fed up with my carping, that it undermined their morale, and even the splinter group wouldn’t take me. Bitch. With that gold, I could have been happy. Really happy. I hope you rot in hell for what you’ve done!’

*

The curse was more successful than she could have predicted.

Not a day passed when the Digger didn’t regret swinging that shovel. The more she bonded with the Spectaculars, and the more they accepted her without question, the more accute the pain.

And then there was Skyles She should have listened to that little voice inside her head, the one which told her to give in, stop fighting, let go. But she’d fought back and survived to dance solo among the butterflies in the woods, and now there was only one solution to ending the torment that locked her in eternal autumn.

Once Saturnalia was over and she had discharged her obligations to perform, there would be one final spilling of blood.

Erinna’s own.