Second Act

by Marilyn Todd

  It might have been as though his eyes had never left her.

  ‘Just so you know,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Any man who takes Flavia’s virginity can expect to wear his testicles for earmuffs and warble higher notes than Periander could ever hope to aspire to. Are we clear on that?’

  His long, low chuckle echoed round the little room. ‘Doris wants to keep his mouth shut.’

  He stripped off his tunic, leaned over the bowl on the table, splashed his face, neck and underarms and dried himself on the coarse linen towel hanging on an iron peg on the wall.

  ‘But if it sets your pretty mind at rest, the only cherries that interest me are these.’ He reached into ajar and tossed up one of the candied fruits he’d offered yesterday. ‘Flavia’s young enough to be my daughter.’

  ‘Or old enough to be your wife.’

  He pulled on a clean grey tunic emblazoned with purple and gold, poured two mugs of coarse red wine and bounced up on the bunk opposite. ‘Then here’s to fortune-hunters everywhere.’

  Damn. And Drink-Me-Dry had acquired another chip since yesterday, too. ‘Don’t you ever stop acting?’ she said.

  ‘You ask a lot of questions for a woman alone with a man in the dark.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re used to questions in the bedroom, Skyles.’ The women would all want to know the same things. Where did he get those scars on his back from? Did the wounds bleed much? Do they hurt? Can he feel it, when they do this…?

  He chuckled, a low dirty sound which came from deep in his throat. ‘You’re right, I am, but not to the type of questions you ask. Oh and, if you’re interested, I always tell them the same thing when they get curious about how I acquired these.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the scars. ‘From my last lover’s husband, I say.’

  Very funny, yes, and the women would laugh, but Claudia knew it wouldn’t matter a damn to them, because they didn’t care. They only wanted the salacious details. The pain, the blood, the humiliation. It was all part of the turn-on. They wouldn’t want to know what he had done to receive such a lashing. Only that he’d passed out, to be brought round time and again, and tell me again how you’d bitten through the wood they put in your mouth. His conquests would be aroused sexually by the wheals, not roused to compassion. Who knows, maybe Skyles had deserved a good thrashing? But Claudia would not bet her house and her vineyards on that. No man would need to act round the clock, if he was all bad.

  Or was that just another layer to the act?

  Because hadn’t she seen similar patterns on shoulder blades before? From a man who got sexual kicks from self-flagellation?

  ‘Thanks for the wine,’ she said, jumping down. ‘Although you should be able to afford better quality now on the proceeds from Flavia’s ring. Amethysts buy a jolly good vintage.’

  Skyles leaned back on his elbows and stared at the dull, painted ceiling. ‘The girl just needs to breathe, Claudia. Feel she’s lived a bit, before she settles down and starts turning out babies like pots from a kiln.’

  ‘I have no problem with Flavia breathing,’ she said. ‘Just bear in mind what I said about earmuffs.’

  Dammit, Flavia’s virginity was about the only bargaining power the family had left.

  She was halfway back to the atrium when a deep voice called down the corridor after her.

  ‘By the way, you don’t have to worry about amethysts being wasted on the likes of me,’ Skyles said. ‘Flavia didn’t give me that ring.’ He timed his pause. ‘She threw it down the disused well outside the Temple of Juventus. An offering to the god of youth.’

  Sixteen

  In his office covered with hunting trophies and memorabilia, Sextus Valerius Cotta looped his thumbs into his belt and stared across the peristyle, listening to the orchestral sounds made by the rain. The drumming as it landed on the large leaves of the castor oil plants. A tinkling as it hit the ivy on the trellis, the percussion as it bounced off fan palms and the lavender, the deeper plopping noises as it dripped from the bare branches of the pomegranate tree.

  With space on the Palatine at a premium, his house was smaller than many of his colleagues’, who preferred the grandeur of the Esquiline—the garden poky, if you like, in comparison. But prestige is measured in quality, rather than quantity, and Cotta’s bronze discus thrower and rearing marble horses, like the furniture in his house, were prized antiques and the craftsmen he employed were the finest in Rome. The artists, for example, called every March to perforate the stems of that tinkling ivy to release a gummy sludge which they’d mix with wine and urine then boil to produce the blood-red pigment used to colour the walls of Cotta’s office. There was, he decided, no substitute for detail. None whatsoever.

  It was this attention to detail which had won him his victories in Cisalpine Gaul, among others, and had later honed his skills as a tactician in the Senate. He thought about the boar that had terrorized the Umbrian hills and whose head still snarled in defiance, only now it did so above his office chair. He recalled riding out across the Syrian desert to spear the panther whose glistening pelt he wore home as a cloak, like Hercules, and whose fangs hung round the neck of his youngest son. He remembered the lion he took on single-handed and whose skin made a nice warm rug on his floor, its head a comfy footrest beneath his desk. Attention to detail. Without it, the boar would have sunk its tusks in his belly, gutted him like a sardine. Every victory, every triumph, from Gallic uprisings to the guile of the panther, had been engineered through painstaking plotting. Even in emergencies, Cotta hadn’t rushed into anything, but had pored over the plans, rethinking, redevising, unafraid to scrap previous strategies and start again.

  It would be the same when he blew up the Senate.

  He opened the lime-wood box with an ornately carved hinged lid that sat on his desk. The box had belonged to his father, and Cotta had lost count of the number of times he’d praised the old man’s good sense in keeping it in his bedroom rather than taking it to the west wing when he’d conducted his final experiment in the search for immortality.

  Lined up side by side within the box, like dolls in a cot, lay several kid-skin pouches, separating the ingredients for the fabled elixir. Cotta untied the string from one of the pouches, dipped his finger in the ruby red powder and examined it in the light. Realgar. What the Arabs who fetched it up from the bowels of earth called Fire of the Mine. He sniffed carefully, but did not make the mistake of licking his finger, instead wiping it clean with a cloth. Realgar was a form of arsenic.

  He retied the pouch, opened another and tipped out a series of opaque yellow crystals, each forming a perfect metallic cube. A third pouch contained crystals of a much brighter yellow. Needle-like, these crystals were sulphur, while yet another pouch kept separate the gritty, vermilion-coloured cinnabar, which the old man had insisted was essential. The final pouch contained the most precious ingredient of all. A substance known as Poseidon Powder.

  Poseidon was the name the Greeks gave to the God of the Sea, who conjured up storms and cleaved the land with his trident, sending waves three storeys high to devastate the land after he’d shaken it. Fine and chalky, white as flour, Poseidon Powder was only found in a handful of secret places in the world, one of which lay close to the rose-red city of Petra in the Jordanian desert.

  These nitre beds were formed from camel dung from the huge caravans that used to camp outside the city in the old days, before the sands—and the caravans—shifted. Over time, the dung reacted with the salty soil and the moisture in the air to form crystals that dissolved in rain then dried into a fine, white powder on the surface. To the Arabs who guarded these precious nitre beds, the powder was known as salt of Petra. Saltpetre.

  For Cotta’s father, this substance was the key to eternal life.

  For Cotta, it was the key to releasing the eagle.

  In its present form, the powder was not dangerous, but when mixed with other substances, it was—as his father discovered—highly combustible. What Cotta needed to know was th
e precise formula the old man had worked to.

  Only one other person knew the answer. The servant who had helped the old man with his fatal experiment.

  A servant who had apparently vanished into thin air.

  Seventeen

  Julia’s husband, Marcellus, had no idea he was sitting a mere hundred paces from the Arch-Hawk of the Senate, and even if he had, he would have imagined the Senator’s thoughts were concerned more with the burning of Dacian cities and the storming of Scythian fortresses than how a pinch of chalky powder would change the future of Rome. Every afternoon around this time Marcellus took himself off to the library. Not any old library, mind you, though heaven knows there were plenty to choose from. For Marcellus, there was only one library which mattered. The one adjacent to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine.

  The incentives were numerous. The view, for one. The vast spread of the city sprawled away below him, he could watch the ants bustling back and forth across the open plazas. Slaves doubled under the weight of barrels, beams and sacks, children scampering, donkeys plodding along with bulging panniers. He could see litters carrying the rich. Young men carrying the old. In fact, every stratum of humanity passed below him here, and if a man preferred a gentler pace on which to rest his eyes, he only had to gaze across to the rolling hills beyond, or watch the barges being hauled along the banks of the Tiber by patient oxen. On the other hand, if it was excitement that he craved, he could always crane his neck and watch the charioteers practising in the Circus Maximus below, leather chest protectors tied tight around their torsos and helmets to protect them when they fell. Not that Marcellus could see any of those things today. Low, grey clouds obscured the hills and released a relentless shrouding drizzle.

  But if the view wasn’t enough to lure a person up the Palatine’s steep embankment, there was the sheer grandeur of the temple itself. The breathtaking colonnades of yellow Numidian marble. Exquisite frescoes, statues, marble busts, not to mention the Great Frieze depicting Augustus’s victory over Antony and Cleopatra’s fleet at Actium. Some of the finest paintings and sculptures the world had ever seen were on display here, many of them precious beyond price, being works by the old masters, but views and artistic splendours were not the motivation behind Marcellus’s daily visits. He didn’t give a hoot about the Greek and Latin archives, either, or the fact the ancient Sybilline Prophecies were stored at the base of Apollo’s bravura statue.

  Important men passed through this library. Senators, philosophers, landowners, merchants, shipbuilders, shipowners, shipping magnates. One day might find Marcellus engaged in debate with a tribune, another day with a prefect for the roads. Sooner or later, he reasoned, one of them was bound to shove a commission his way.

  There were few potential patrons in the library this afternoon, however. Rain invariably kept people indoors and now that the light was fading, there were even fewer. But Marcellus was determined to remain here to the very last, and he was happily whiling away his time on Plato’s treatise on the—

  ‘Janus Croesus, Claudia!’ He picked himself up from where he’d been sent sprawling across the floor and looked around. ‘Did you see what just happened? Some bastard sneaked up behind me and socked me clean off my stool.’

  ‘You need a shave,’ she said, sucking her knuckles.

  Her? ‘What did you do that for?’ he asked.

  ‘Pleasure,’ she purred.

  Marcellus never expected to figure out what went through women’s heads, but come on. What the hell was wrong with Plato? ‘You’ve killed my reputation as an architect, you know that.’

  ‘If your reputation had any sense of decorum, it would have committed suicide months ago,’ she retorted. ‘Outside.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Outside.’

  Trailing behind her, Marcellus wished he could have felt something other than a stirring in his loins, but by heaven, his sister-in-law was magnificent when roused. Her breasts heaved, her eyes flashed, a curl would spring loose from its hairpin, and although Marcellus would never have obeyed any other woman’s orders, much less trot meekly after them, with Claudia he would jump off the Tarpeian Rock if she asked him.

  ‘Would you mind telling me what that was all about?’ he hissed outside. ‘I’ll be the laughing stock of the Apollo Library for months.’

  A lie. He knew damn well they’d take her for a disgruntled mistress and that, if anything, his stock would soar.

  ‘How long before it sinks into that thick skull of yours that prestigious patrons aren’t placing contracts with you, Marcellus, because you spend too much time idling it away in this blessed library?’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, love.’ His patronizing would have made more impact, had he not had to break into a run to keep up with her. ‘This is what’s known in the business as “networking”. Making contacts, sowing seeds—’

  ‘Bollocks.’ In the shade of the primrose marble portico, Claudia rounded on her brother-in-law. ‘Has it never occurred to you, Marcellus, that if you were out supervising projects occasionally, these people might actually feel better disposed towards you? That they might see you then as a successful architect with a thriving business to run? Instead, you come over as a sad loser, hanging around hoping for work.’

  ‘Well.’ Marcellus’s complexion turned the colour of porridge. ‘That’s pretty much the sum of it, isn’t it?’

  ‘The Emperor boasts that he’s turned a city of brick into a city of marble in under seventeen years,’ she replied. ‘You must be the only architect in the whole bloody Empire without work, so ask yourself: What am I doing wrong?’

  ‘Um—’

  ‘That wasn’t a question. Now then, I’ve been thinking.’ They had reached the shrine in the portico that looked out over the city and, sheltered by the high walls from the wind and the rain, Claudia settled herself on the top step. ‘Julia’s told you I’m sponsoring the Halcyon Spectaculars?’

  ‘Is it true the girls are going to strip nak—?’

  Her glare cut him dead. ‘By the time the curtain goes up, you will have put together a convincing portfolio of contracts that you’ve undertaken in—I don’t know, Pisa, Florentia—places far enough away for people not to know the owners of the houses you are supposed to have built.’

  ‘I specialize in warehouses,’ he reminded her dolefully.

  ‘Even better. Who cares who designed which depot where. That gives you three clear days to—’

  ‘Three? I thought the first Spectacular was on the eighteenth?’

  ‘By popular demand, the schedule’s been brought forward to Saturnalia Eve, so you’ll have to move fast, and you’ll need a fistful of new proposals to flash around, too. That way, people will think you have a whole bank of overseers beavering away behind the scenes, earning you so many gold pieces that you’re more than able to squander your valuable time in the library. I’ll get one of my scribes to give you a list of who’s attending and when, so you can tailor your pitch.’

  ‘I say.’ Marcellus’s pitted cheeks glowed like a mulberry. ‘This is dashed good of you, Claudia. I’ll start drawing up that fictitious portfolio first thing in the morning, and don’t worry about potential new projects. I have sheafs of proposals at home in my office.’ He put his arm round her shoulder and squeezed. ‘You know, Claudia, perhaps you and I—’

  ‘In your dreams,’ she snapped, flicking the hand off.

  Marcellus couldn’t believe it. He was going to be rich again. Rich. Just like the old days, when Gaius was alive!

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m a good architect, you have to believe that, it’s just that I’ve never been hot on the sales side of the business. I either fumble my presentation, or drop the damn drawings and then I’ll make the price sound too high or I’ll oversell it. The long and the short of it is, I’m just not cut out to be a salesman—’

  If she heard one more ‘I’ from him, so help her, she’d black it.

  ‘This is not
about you, Marcellus. We both know that my husband secured all your contracts for you while he was alive, then after he died you relied on me baling you out. Well, I didn’t mind you doing bugger all—for a while. Sooner or later, I reasoned, Marcellus is bound to stand on his own two feet.’

  ‘I’ve been trying.’

  ‘Exceedingly.’

  Suddenly the impact of her words sunk in. ‘You… You’re not cutting my allowance? Think of little Flavia. You can’t punish her because of me. And Julia. Think of Julia!’

  ‘Unlike you, you selfish oaf, it’s your bloody wife I’m thinking of.’

  And before he could draw breath to protest, he was being lambasted by a list of the moth-eaten furs Julia had brought with her, of gowns two seasons old, of worn shoes.

  ‘She turned up at my house without a single slave to attend her, and it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t because she was penny-pinching. She’s had to sell them to pay your household bills!’

  ‘Times have been hard without contracts.’

  ‘The ball’s in your court, Marcellus. If you’re no good at selling, hire an agent who is, because yes. As of now, your allowance is indeed severed.’

  ‘B-b-ut how will we live?’

  ‘Ah.’

  Marcellus had a bad feeling about the cat-like grin that she shot him.

  That’s the next little problem we’re going to solve,’ Claudia said. ‘Follow me.’

  *

  She didn’t begrudge paying Marcellus an allowance. Hell, no. Far better to buy the Sponger Family a set of comfortable living standards than for them to contest Gaius’s will, because god knows, if they dug hard enough, they’d find enough skeletons that the weight of them falling out of the closet would probably crush Julia and Marcellus to death. But comfort zones are one thing. The knowledge that the allowance was squandered on floozies quite another.

  She snapped her fingers and a torch bearer came running to light their way across town. This went deeper than Julia not having clothes befitting her station, or being unable to heat her house properly, or even having a slave count that was going down and not up. Family values are the lynchpin upon which Roman society hangs. Claudia kicked a beetroot into the gutter. It went beyond Marcellus bejewelling his mistress at the expense of his family. Their social status was a reflection upon Claudia’s social status, and she could hardly project herself as the epitome of wealth, success and prosperity if her sister-in-law went round wearing rags. Society would expect her to intercede. Which she was. Only not in the way Society might imagine.