Second Act

Thirty-Seven

‘It occurs to me,’ a melodious baritone murmured, ‘that you should forget all about theatrical productions and turn this place into a hospital.’

Claudia opened her eyes. She expected to be torn apart by the pain. Instead she felt only a lightness, as though she was floating outside of her body.

‘What happened?’ she asked. This was her own room. Her own bed. Even her own cat stood on the table, tail bushy, hackles raised, growling at everyone and everything, but refusing point blank to leave.

‘Ah-’ Skyles began.

‘You passed out,’ a face with receding red hair cut in cheerfully.

This was the herbalist, Claudia presumed, noting that his left hand bore four bright-red parallel scratch marks. Good old Drusilla. Orbilio she could (just about) tolerate in the house. But a stranger in her mistress’s room?

‘Skyles carried you home,’ the baritone said, and Claudia thought she caught a note of pique in Orbilio’s voice. He looked ghastly. His skin was a hideous grey colour, and he was leaning against a chair for support. A thick wad padded out the left side of his tunic, and he smelled of balsam and mouldy bread.

‘What about Erinna?’ she asked. Strange, but she’d grown kind of used to the sandalwood. And that hint of rosemary, where his clothes had been rinsed.

‘She’s fine,’ Skyles said. ‘Really. Her pride was hurt far more than her body. The fall was cushioned by a huge pile of blankets.’

Cotta would have put them there, of course. Just in case. The only contingency he couldn’t have predicted was Skyles. Skyles who was so deeply in love with Erinna that he had found a way out of the house and followed her, just to be near her. Skyles who was so deeply in love with Erinna that he was scared to let his emotions show. Hence the lack of expression he had schooled himself to wear whenever he looked at her. Hence his asking her out in secret. In a company where everything was shared openly, Erinna was so precious, so dear to him, that he wanted her all to himself. Secrets, secrets, so many secrets, she thought.

Instinctively, perhaps runaway to runaway, Erinna had read Skyles’ past in his face and had even written the song about him. He recognized himself and tackled her about it, but even then he could not see the truth staring him back in the face.

Erinna, too, had fallen. So deeply, so violently, that she dare not give in to it. She was a killer, she deserved the pain she was suffering and deserved the end she planned for herself, and she could not afford to let Skyles into her heart.

How many times had Claudia felt like clashing their thick heads together?

Skyles was on the run, which is why he’d changed his name, shaved his head. Who can connect a runaway slave, who had more than likely killed the master who had inflicted those vicious beatings, with a laughing, clowning, bald-headed Buffoon? That was why Claudia needed to find out who he was from her agent. To protect him. She had seen the way his face scanned the crowds with such intensity. Had anyone recognized him, he was wondering. Were they making their way through the crowds towards him out of adulation-or to take him back to face summary execution? Act, act, act. Pretend, pretend, pretend. How exhausting such a role must be on a man, how draining. With Erinna, though, he could dispense with all that weighty pretence. With Erinna, Skyles could just be himself.

For her part, Erinna believed Skyles went with the women after the shows to maintain his macho persona and impress his peers. Far from it, Claudia thought. He accepted their favours because he was lonely. For a few minutes he could escape to yet another fantasy world. A world of rich tapestries and rare woods, vintage wines and fine foods, where damask sheets perpetually covered the beds and chandeliers hung from tall, vaulted ceilings. Another role to immerse himself in, and in those few moments, Skyles was wanted. Genuinely wanted. The weight of his burden was lifted. Loneliness, he discovered, like many men before him, could be assauged with hot sex.

Yet all he wanted was just one woman. His soulmate.

Don’t we all, Claudia thought.

‘You rest,’ the herbalist said, patting her head like a child. ‘I’m going to see how Deva’s coming along, and I’ll return later to check up on my patient.’

Claudia waited until he was gone before swinging her legs out of bed.

‘Whoa! Where do you think you’re going?’ Skyles asked.

‘It’s Saturnalia Eve,’ she reminded him. Incredibly, her only sensation was that of walking on air. ‘In a few hours’ time, twenty guests will troop in to watch a troupe of twenty.’

She could easily disguise the gauze bandage round her neck and she’d picked up enough acting techniques to know that, by the time her personal performance was done, no one would have noticed a thing.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he protested.

‘No, that’s Claudia,’ Orbilio laughed. ‘You might just as well try turning the tide, Skyles. Incidentally, how did you get that wound in your side?’

‘It’s not a wound, it’s a cracked rib,’ Skyles said, adding with a low chuckle, ‘Probably two, after lugging her ladyship home.’

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Marcus said.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, will you two stop gossiping like fishwives? Skyles, go and give Caspar a hand, we’re running late enough as it is.’

Secrets, secrets, so many secrets, and the last thing Claudia wanted bandied abroad was how he got that wretched rib cracked. Oh, Flavia, Flavia, what a nasty spoiled child you are underneath! Skyles would have gone to that tavern at the Capena Gate, but you don’t let a girl like Flavia down gently. Not one so entrenched in having her way. What? A lowborn, common actor spurning her virginity? Her? The child of a wealthy wine merchant, the stepdaughter of Claudia Seferius, the foster child of Marcellus, the architect! Claudia could almost hear the clatter as the stool splintered against his ribcage. Followed immediately by violent sobs of contrition. Silly cow. Let her stew in her misery for a couple of days. Then see who they could field as a husband…

‘Will they be able to perform tonight?’ Orbilio asked, his knuckles white from gripping the chair.

Claudia wondered how deep the knife had gone in.

Wondered, too, who had done it, and why, and whether he had caught Dymas in time, and most of all, why the thought of his injury should make her feel sick. He was only a policeman, for heaven’s sake. This was his job.

‘With all the walking wounded, you mean?’ She smiled. ‘That lot would have to be dead before they cancelled a show.’

‘Caspar has a stunning black eye and quite a bad limp. I don’t suppose you know how he got that?’

‘Me? No idea.’

Secrets, secrets, so many secrets-and small wonder Julia wanted bolts fitted to her door. But it was Caspar she felt sorry for. He truly believed he was doing the old boot a favour by sneaking into her room in the dead of the night to perform the task he thought Marcellus was neglecting. He, for whom no woman could be too plump, too joyful, too wobbly, must have felt truly a hero as he slipped under the blankets of Julia’s bed, and oh what a pity mother and daughter weren’t the type to swap stories! What a treat for the fly on the wall, hearing them both confess to beating up men in their bedrooms.

‘Just as you’ve no idea how Doris pulled a muscle?’ Marcus asked dryly.

‘None at all.’

Claudia smiled. Doris, Doris, who never told a lie…

Oh, and then there was Ion. Big, bearded, macho Ion, who had been gripped by the most terrible depressions of late, and why? Because Jupiter had fallen in love! It happened all the time in tight-knit groups, of course. Allegiances form, friendships develop, love blooms and when four people share a room, you learn so much about one another. What a shock for Ion, finding how closely life imitates legend. Jupiter fell in love with Ganymede, and Ion, he who epitomized manly love, had fallen for a sinuous youth whose eyes bore traces of kohl and whose bracelets jangled ever so softly.

Claudia almost laughed aloud. What a shock when he discovers Doris’s secret. Those fine chiselled cheekbones, those effeminate hands, those eyelashes like a giraffe…

‘What’s your real name?’ Claudia had asked.

And what was the reply? Tongue in cheek and designed to mislead, the reply had still come straight from the heart. Daphne. Doris was not a man, but a girl. She disguised it with over-the-top feminine gestures and who would guess from strong muscles built up from hauling on scenery? But unless she wanted to contain herself to musical farce, it was the only way a woman could appear on the stage. And Doris (Daphne!) was a natural actor. She played the Miser to comic perfection. No doubt, she would play tragedy to wring out the tears Yet even as she was picturing the moment Ion found out about the bandages binding her breasts, there seemed to be something wrong with Claudia’s legs. They just weren’t getting the message to walk and were setting off in directions all of their own. She put her hand up to the lump where that thug had knocked her out on the dray cart, and as she did so she brushed another, much larger bump on her temple.

‘What happ-?’

Her knees buckled. As Orbilio staggered towards her, his face white with concern, she found herself clutching at bedclothes.

‘That’s why Skyles had to carry you home,’ Marcus said, and she hoped it was the blood thundering in her ears, but dammit, it sounded for all the world like he was laughing.

‘As he whooped for joy at Erinna’s survival, he-um-accidentally set the hook in motion again.’

It was always going to be like this with Orbilio, she realized, as she reeled sideways on to the floor. Ups and downs, storms and torrents, it would never be a smooth ride with this man. He wouldn’t get the credit for saving the Empire, either, because there was no credit to take. When Cotta died, the evidence died with him and the Senate would sincerely mourn their Arch-Hawk, whose life was tragically snuffed out by an accident in his warehouse, where a carelessly tied hoist had swung loose. Marcus would always be fighting for his seat in the Senate, just as she would always be fighting to maintain her position as a woman in trade.

Aristocrat in a pleb’s world.

Woman in a man’s world.

They were more alike than she’d realized.

She tried to laugh with him at the absurdity of the second bump, at the ridiculous mass of walking wounded downstairs, at the sheer farce played out within a farce, but the pull of the blackness was stronger. She had to tell him, though. She had to tell him, before she passed out again. Make him understand ‘You’re right,’ she whispered, as oblivion rushed up to meet her. ‘You are the best friend I’ve ever had.’

Orbilio shouted to someone to call the herbalist back quickly. Claudia Seferius was clearly delirious.