Second Act (11 page)

Nor were these, strictly speaking, the Halcyon Days. Officially, they didn’t start until the fifteenth of December, bridging the seven days either side of the winter solstice, and today was only the eleventh. The name Halcyon Rapist came from the animal himself.

‘Remember well your halcyon lover,’ he told his victims, before launching into a string of obscenities so vile that the girls couldn’t bring themselves to repeat it.

Last year, this self-styled halcyon lover had committed fourteen vicious assaults over the holiday period, with the exception of the four days of Saturnalia itself, his last rape falling on the final the halcyon day. A pattern which, goddammit, was repeating again.

Head down, his toga drawn close against his body for warmth, Orbilio turned into his own street just as the herald called the midnight hour. It had been a long day. Trying to find witnesses and not succeeding. Trying to convince himself it was a copycat crime—and not succeeding there, either.

What would he say, what
could
he say, to the mother of the man he’d sent to face the lions?

Round and round, like donkeys on a treadmill, his thoughts had been tramping the same ground. Stale thoughts, because he’d gone through this process last year and was finding nothing new this time round. His only clue was that the four days ‘off’ suggested the killer couldn’t get away during Saturnalia, but dammit that applied to half the men in Rome. Which, at a rough count, left him with a quarter of a million potential suspects. Mother of Tarquin, he needed to sleep. Perhaps in the morning he might be able to get a handle on this. Find a new angle to explore. A crack to probe.

Glancing up as he approached his own house, he blinked. And blinked again. There, in the middle of the street, a woman
was…
dancing.
Not a drunken sway, or some spontaneous burst of emotion expressing itself in a quick tap of the feet followed by a spring in the air and maybe a click of the heels. This was professional choreography at work. He paused. There was something vaguely familiar about the sinuous Egyptian ballet. About the plaited Cleopatra wig, the silver breast band and tight fringed skirt that barely covered her modesty, the shapely legs that seemed to go on for ever. Then he remembered. Two nights ago, at his cousin’s house, this girl had been hired to dance for the all-male party.

‘It’s Angelina, isn’t it?’ He vaguely remembered his cousin introducing them.

The dance stopped abruptly. In the light of the torches that burned in sconces either side of his front door, the beads in her black wig shone like jewels.

‘Marcus!’ She was breathless after her routine, making her pretty breasts heave in a most interesting rhythm, and he couldn’t help noticing the effect the cold air had had on her nipples.

‘What are you doing here?’ He glanced around, noticed her cloak rolled up against his doorstep and flung it round her shoulders.

‘Well, I was rather hoping you were going to invite me inside.’ Her eyes were bright, either from cold or excitement, and he had a sinking feeling as to which of the two was the culprit.

‘I, er—’

Debating whether the offer of money would offend her, Orbilio was saved the bother. She pulled off her wig, shook her head and a cascade of honey-coloured curls frothed around her ears like a halo. Mother of Tarquin, the pixie!

‘You stood me up last night, you naughty boy.’ She combed her fingers through her hair with professional ease. ‘I had dinner waiting and everything, but you didn’t even send me a note.’

Shit. ‘It was the same thing tonight,’ he said truthfully. ‘I didn’t finish until midnight.’

‘Yes, I know, you poor pumpkin.’ Angelina linked her arm with his and tousled his fringe. ‘You’re working on those halcyon rapes. I heard. That’s why I came to you, instead of you having to trail over to my place. Makes more sense, doesn’t it?’

‘Angelina—’

He remembered chatting to her at his cousin’s house, where one thing had obviously led to another and, fuelled by wine, he’d ended up in her bed. But what, for him, had been a one-night stand clearly meant more to her.

‘Angelina, we need to talk.’ Not inside his own house, either. ‘There’s a tavern three streets away with a crackling log fire, we can warm you up there and, er…
’

He let the sentence trail. Milo’s tavern would be quiet tonight, without the delivery trade. Orbilio would be able to let her down gently over a meal as well as anywhere, he supposed.

‘That sounds absolutely wonderful, darling.’

Angelina stood up on tiptoes and planted an affectionate kiss on his cheek. This, he realized dully, wasn’t going to be easy. And he had to be up early, as well. Personally, he blamed the wink. Women obviously did like that sort of thing.

*

The sound of dogs barking across the street woke Claudia from sleep. Any other time and she would not have heard them. The clatter of delivery wagons, the crack of bull-whips, the shouts of the drivers, the braying of mules would have muffled any complaints by angry dogs, and noise was a lullaby to Claudia. Without it, the night was eerily quiet. Unnatural in this city of chaos and turmoil. But even beasts of burden deserve a holiday, she supposed. And slept fitfully as a result.

The barking grew louder. More urgent. Then other dogs joined in, as dogs always will, including the mastiff next door. Claudia slipped out of bed, pulling the warm blankets up round her shoulders. Something was up. And now a different sound had joined in the chorus. A metallic clamp-clamp-clamp, the jangle of armour, the sharp bark of military orders. A blast of bitter cold air made her gasp as she opened the shutter. There was damp in the atmosphere. Below her balcony, the street was a blaze of light from the torches of householders and slaves who had streamed outside to see what was going on.

What was going on was that the linen merchant over the way had called out the army. There had been two men loitering in the street all day, he reported, and after dark they remained in his doorway. Any other time and he would have moved them on, he insisted, but his steward had noticed two more round the corner, all four armed with daggers and cudgels.

Not now they weren’t. One large bruiser was being held in an armlock by a tough-looking legionary with a scar down his cheek, while the second suspect was being chained hand and foot.

‘It’s a damn lie, this rumour that I keep my life savings in a wine jar down in the cellar,’ the merchant told the sergeant. ‘I use the temple depository like everyone else, but thieves don’t always believe what they’re told, do they, officer, and I have my wife and five children to think of, not to mention my mother-in-law living with us, as well as the wife’s sister and her three young nippers and a cousin up from the country.’

As he paused to draw breath, another group of soldiers came tramping round the corner, dragging two more heavies between them. Blood poured from one of the men’s heads, its bubbling stream blinding him as it poured over one eye and dripped off his chin. The other one was missing a boot.

‘Got ’em, sarge,’ one of the legionaries puffed, prodding one of the prisoners in the small of the back with his fist. ‘They tried to make a run for it, but we got ’em.’ He was proud that years of hard physical training had given his footsloggers the edge.

‘Are these the men you saw earlier?’ the sergeant asked the linen merchant’s steward.

‘Definitely. I remember that one, because of the birthmark.’

‘Then you four are under arrest for intent to burgle and rob. Take ’em away, corporal.’

‘But we wasn’t—’ That was as far as Bleeding Head’s protest got. One of his companions landed a sound kick on his shin, which silenced him immediately, just as Missing Boot growled a warning which Claudia couldn’t hear.

‘Is it safe, do you think, officer?’ the linen merchant whined. ‘Only there are four women and eight children inside and—’

‘Perfectly safe,’ the sergeant assured him. ‘But just in case there’s more in the gang, I’m leaving two men here to stand guard for the next couple of nights.’

‘It’s not true about my savings down in the cellar,’ the linen merchant called after him. ‘I don’t know where these rumours come from.’

Probably because it wasn’t a rumour, Claudia thought, staring down at the now empty street. The old miser begrudged paying the temple a fee for holding his valuables safe, no wonder people were always trying to rob him. There had been at least five previous attempts that she knew of.

Except this was no bungled robbery.

She’d recognized Bleeding Head and Missing Boot immediately. The scum from the slum. The thugs whose paws had mauled at her flesh. Whose stale breath had been forced into her nostrils.

Butico, goddammit, had posted a warning.

Only a fool would ignore the message.

Pay up or I’ll take my eight grand in kind, he was saying. The bastard wasn’t bluffing. Like a shark, he sensed blood in the water and was moving in for the kill. Claudia saw him sending in his thugs to strip her house of its rare woods and marble, trashing whatever they liked in the process, raiding the storerooms, pillaging artworks, and with a bailiff to legitimize the process by undervaluing the goods as they went along.

That he was able to do this was because he had the backing of the Guild of Wine Merchants. With the Widow Seferius bankrupt and humiliated, her business would go down the sewer with her.

Bastards, bastards, absolute bloody bastards.

Still. First thing in the morning, she would send Butico the three thousand sesterces ‘profit’ she’d made from Moschus. That would keep the dogs at bay and she’d just have to take it from there.

Claudia closed the shutters and climbed back to bed, but the herald had called another hour before she finally drifted back to sleep.

It’s unlikely her eyes would have closed at all, had she known she was separated by just a few bits of bricks and mortar from a killer.

*

The Digger had also been woken by the rumpus. Everyone had.

The Digger also lay awake long after the disturbance had died down, but, unlike Claudia, the Digger did not get back to sleep.

Killers do not know the luxury of peace of mind.

*

And the body in the grave nodded knowingly.

‘You’ll never get away with my murder,’ she sneered. ‘They’ll find you in the end. One way or another, they’ll find you and then you’ll have to pay.’

Twelve

As festivals go, the Seven Hills of Rome wasn’t Deva’s favourite. She much preferred those which fell around the summer solstice, such as the Festival of Fortune, where she could wear her pretty summer bodices and weave flowers in her hair without crushing them under a woollen mantle to keep out the cold. But still. It was a festival. There would be processions, sacrifices, chariot races at the Circus Maximus later on, and tomorrow, with luck, pottery mugs might be on sale inscribed with the winners’ names, and she just might buy one of those for her man, to go with the tunic she was embroidering for him for Saturnalia.

He didn’t care too much for embroidery, Deva knew, but she was Damascan and Damascan women didn’t let their men go about in plain cloth and that was
that.
He couldn’t have it both ways. If he liked the way she wore short bodices that revealed a tight midriff and fringed skirts that came halfway down her calf to show off her finely boned ankles, then he’d have to accept that every once in a while he’d have to look good for
her.
And since looking good in Damascan eyes meant wearing a tunic embroidered in traditional designs, then he could bloody well lump it.

‘You’ll rue the day you set up with a Roman,’ her mother had said. ‘It doesn’t do, two cultures crossing. No good can ever come of it.’

Deva spat on to the pavement. What did her mother know? The old crone had been a widow these past fifteen years, she’d grown sour and miserable, and you’d think she’d have been pleased her only daughter had found a good man to settle down with. A herbalist, too! In fact, if Deva only had a child to present to him, her joy would be complete. She giggled. Of course, they’d only been together six months, her and her man. He’d hardly leap for joy if she handed him a bawling bundle and said, ‘There you are, love, that’s your son.’

The joke sustained her as she crossed the Sublician Bridge, its timbers reverberating under the solid clomp of her clogs. Ahead, the sheds and warehouses lined up along the river looked grey and forbidding on this dull, damp day, the shadow of the Aventine Hill looming over them, but Deva wasn’t worried that there was no one else around so early in the morning. A pleasant change, not having to step over piles of steaming dung, or sidestep refuse left behind by the delivery carts, or be on the constant lookout for pickpockets and gropers.

Turning up between the spice warehouse and a marble store and shifting her basket to her other arm, she squeezed the small brooch which lay in the palm of her hand. Bronze and engraved with an intricate leaf pattern, she knew her mother would find the gift ‘too Roman’ for her taste, but then the old crab found fault with everything these days, and you’d think she’d just get on with it and accept that she was a Damascan living in Rome and bloody well get on and enjoy the life and the customs.

‘That’s because you don’t know no better,’ her mother would snap. ‘You was born into it, Deva.’

‘Yes, I do know better,’ she’d reply. ‘You keep telling me,’ and then she and her mother would argue, and then she’d regret going to visit, much less taking the gift she always brought, which was inevitably far more than she could afford, but she did it anyway, because they always parted on a quarrel and even though it was as much her mother’s fault as hers, Deva still felt guilty. And it always bloody hurt that the gift was never
good
enough…