Second Act

Five

Claudia’s lanky Macedonian steward did not so much as blink when his mistress charged into the atrium, threw her fur cloak into his arms, chafed her hands over the charcoals in the brazier, then calmly announced that there would be twenty strolling players arriving shortly who would be staying over Saturnalia, oh and could he prepare a hot bath, please, her feet were blocks of ice.

Leonides didn’t blink, for the simple reason that he couldn’t.

He just stood there, beaver fur halfway up his nostrils, paralysed.

God knows, when Master Gaius was alive, there was a constant traipse of clients, scribes, secretaries and messengers buzzing in and out. It wasn’t that he couldn’t cope. Or that there had been any less traffic in the house since the master’s death. Admittedly, it was a different kind of busy and heaven help him, it was nothing to have the master’s carping relatives in one room, members of certain law-enforcement agencies in another and irate moneylenders in a third, whilst he ran back and forth between them like some demented monkey, serving wine and honey cakes while the mistress was out implicating herself in an even deeper jam. But all the same. Strolling players?

Leonides dragged himself to his senses. No point in lamenting. The deed was done and the person who could talk the young mistress into changing her mind hadn’t been born yet.

‘Lock up the silver,’ he urged the household slaves. ‘Take everything away that might be flogged before we’ve had a chance to notice that it’s missing, plan on four to a room and don’t forget to count the blankets on the bed.’

Outside, voices, common ones at that, were growing louder. The dog next door began to howl. Leonides knew exactly how it felt. Within seconds, a laughing, shivering, grumbling prism of colours, shapes and textures surged through the vestibule door, filling the atrium with odours of wet wool and leather, cheap scent and cosmetics. What had he done to offend the gods, he wondered? He, who led the household prayers piously every morning and poured generous libations with conscientious regularity.

‘Dear lady.’

A small tornado in scarlet embroidered kaftan and what looked for all the world like a blue parrot bobbing on his head pushed his way to the front of the crush, his shining eyes on Claudia.

‘Allow me to compliment you on your charming house. Utterly enchanting, madam. Just like your wondrous self.’

‘Enough with the flattery, Caspar, I’ve already allocated you a guest bedroom,’ Claudia laughed. The others would have to take their chances in the slave quarters.

‘Dear lady, my motives are entirely selfless,’ Caspar said, affecting a mock wound. ‘Your domicile positively oozes taste. Sophistication and elegance weep from every marble column.’

Claudia was glad he approved. Many of the features were additions (costly ones at that) she’d had installed upon her husband’s death. Features designed to impress potential business contacts, proof that Gaius’s business ventures were not merely ticking over in his widow’s hands, but prospering. A lie, of course, but image is everything when it’s a man’s world, dog eat dog. Her eyes ranged with pride over the soaring atrium with its exquisite mosaics, marble busts and Nile frescoes, the fountain which babbled gently night and day, the aviary of tiny birds which sang their little hearts out. Not all new, of course. But combined, the house was the embodiment of commercial success.

‘Allow me, madam, to introduce the cast, starting with the star of our Spectaculars-’ Caspar presented a tall, blond chap whose hair owed more to art than nature ‘-the sinuous Felix.’

On cue, Felix bent himself backwards so his palms touched the floor behind his heels and then effortlessly performed the splits.

‘Felix is our mime solo,’ Caspar added proudly. ‘And this is Jupiter.’

As with all strolling players, every male member of the company was typecast in certain roles, but towering over everyone, with his curled beard and long black hair falling to his shoulders, his olive skin and saturnine good looks, the actor could easily be mistaken for the King of the Immortals.

‘Should I swoon or curtsy?’ Claudia asked.

‘With Jupiter, you should probably be taking your clothes off,’ the young man laughed, ‘but sometimes Caspar forgets that I’m only the Sorter of Problems on stage. My name,’ he added with a broad grin, ‘is Ion.’

But before Claudia could reply, a swarthy individual with thick, bushy eyebrows was kissing both of her cheeks.

‘I’m Urgularius Philippus,’ he said. ‘But you may as well call me what everyone else does. Ugly Phil.’

The nickname was unfair. He had a pleasant face and green eyes that twinkled, but you could see how he’d got the name.

‘And because I’m the shortest, I’m cast as the Satyr.’

‘He doesn’t need much by way of costume, either,’ quipped a craggy-faced actor, whose shaven head marked him out as the Buffoon. ‘The furry leggings are natural,’ he chortled.

The introductions went on. She met Periander, a fat youth, who’d been castrated at the age of twelve to keep his soprano voice clear and pure, but her attention had wandered. It was attracted by a young man with finely chiselled cheekbones whose eyes bore a thin but nevertheless distinctive trace of kohl and who was watching her closely.

‘Finally, madam-’ with a sweep of his little fat hand, Caspar ushered forward the female members of the troupe ‘-please welcome my splendiferous harem of beauties.’

Good grief. Claudia had no idea that fat could be broken down into so many different categories. There was solid fat, wobbly fat, provocative fat-this latter category being Jemima of the bright red hair and unfettered tongue, who seemed perfectly oblivious to the amount of bosom she was showing, goose pimples and all. Then there was fat that tried to hide it, fat that tried to enhance its beauty with cosmetics and, finally, there was fat that simply didn’t give a damn.

Behind them, the men were admiring the acoustics more than the decor and had already launched into their stereotyped roles. Jupiter was courting an effeminate Venus, while the leering Satyr prowled behind him, playing his imaginary pan pipes. The Poet, on bended knee, was wooing his Lover into adultery with verse. But it was the Buffoon who stole the scene, launching alternately into monkey walks, then pretending to trip over invisible obstacles before being chased by his own shaven-headed shadow.

‘Renata,’ Caspar said, having to raise his voice over the babble as he kissed the hand of the woman whose face was a stiff mask of white chalk and rouge. ‘Our musician and our rock. She plays flute for Felix’s mime, but clever girl that she is, Renata also plays the pan pipes and tuba.’

‘Don’t forget the twin pipes, the horn and the cornet,’ Renata chided.

‘The way she carries on,’ Wobbly Fat snapped, ‘you’d think she played all six at once.’

‘Ah, the lovely Adah,’ Caspar said, patting Wobbly Fat on her ample bottom. ‘Then we have the plumptious Fenja.’

Tall as a legionary, solid as a dam, fair of hair and blue of eye, the girl had to be of Nordic origin.

‘You ferry kind, inviting us to stay wid you.’

Claudia thought of those quaint Nordic customs that so endeared them to the Roman populace. Punishing homosexuality by pressing the offender under a stone until dead. Public flogging for adulterous wives. Criminals executed by being pegged down in a peat bog.

‘You hef luffly villa,’ Fenja said, cracking her knuckles. ‘Much good taste.’

Claudia had a feeling that when Fenja talked of moving house, she meant picking it up and physically carting it off on her back.

‘Jemima, of course, you already know.’ Caspar’s eyeballs nearly disappeared down the redhead’s magnificent cleavage.

‘Everyone knows Jem,’ Adah put in cattily. ‘Leastways, half the men in Rome do.’

‘Bollocks,’ Jemima said, winking at Claudia. ‘It’s less than a third, yer jealous cow.’

To prevent a catfight, Caspar thrust forward a girl whose frizzy hair was escaping from her hairpins to give her the appearance of a startled hedgehog. ‘Hermione.’

‘It’th tho kind of you to thponthor uth,’ Hermione lisped. ‘We won’t be no trouble.’

Claudia sincerely hoped not. She had enough to contend with, thanks to Butico, Moschus and the Security Police.

‘And last, but never least,’ Caspar gushed, ‘the lovely Erinna.’

If Hermione was the one who tried to hide her shape, Erinna was the girl who didn’t give a damn. Unlike the others, who were slaves to fashion with their cheap, but trendy pleated gowns and bright, embroidered hems, Erinna’s long, chestnut hair wasn’t contorted into fashionable styles with hot tongs. She’d merely twisted it into a dark, glossy bun.

Were there really only six of them, Claudia wondered, counting the splendiferous harem for the umpteenth time? And would they ever fit into just two rooms?

‘Fine house this, damn fine,’ Caspar murmured, accepting a goblet of wine from his hostess. ‘I had hoped, you know, that as a producer and director of some years’ standing, I would have owned a residence such as this myself by now, but alas, alas. Certain ill-advised investments…’

‘I had some like that,’ Claudia replied. Indeed, a couple of them were still running, she believed.

Across the atrium, the Buffoon was mimi cking Leonides behind his back, mirroring the steward’s every action and exaggerating it. The more the servants laughed, the more he piled on the comedy, adding a mincing walk as he switched to mimicking Chiselled Cheekbones, then snatching a kiss from an outraged, macho Ion.

‘I don’t suppose,’ Caspar said, fingering an ivory statuette, ‘there’s a vacancy for a husband in this magnificent establishment?’

‘Only a rich one,’ Claudia said. ‘And besides. You’re already married.’

‘A technicality, madam, which I assure you would be no impediment, none at all, to any nuptials, should you consent.’ He took a long hard glug at the wine. ‘Truth to tell, dear lady, there have been three, possibly four, such technicalities during the course of Caspar’s travels.’

‘You don’t remember how many women you’ve married?’

‘Madam!’ he protested. ‘I recall with the greatest sentiment and clarity the four charming creatures to whom I plighted my troth. There’s merely a little question mark over the legality of a certain ceremony in Carthage, an issue which was never entirely resolved. Still.’ He brightened visibly. ‘One less divorce to worry about, what.’

Claudia sighed contentedly as she retreated to her office. Oh, yes, Caspar’s latest Spectacular was going to put a lot of business her way. An awful lot. She took a sheet of parchment off the pile, dipped her stylus in the inkwell and began to draft a list of invitees. How could the glitterati fail to be impressed by such a comedy, when half of it did not need any scripting?