Second Act (21 page)

‘Who’s it from?’ she asked, leaning back to maximize the light from the tall candelabra behind her throne as she studied the bowl.

‘Sextus Valerius Cotta, estate owner, senator, and gullible fool.’

How they fell for it, she’d never know. You’d think someone would twig that the ghosts they met were not floating on air, but on wooden platforms manipulated by black painted ropes. It never ceased to amaze her by what miracle these so-called Seekers of Destiny uniformly accepted that the faces of their loved ones had been rendered unrecognizable by death, not by a thick coating of chalk. Even more incredibly, no one had questioned the necessity of the heads of their ancestors being veiled in the Underworld. They didn’t think that maybe long, flowing robes and an abundance of thick, swirling mist might be to disguise physical dissimilarities between the originals and the facsimiles?

Of course, it wasn’t all smoke and mirrors and a cast of bad actors. To maintain her credibility, the Oracle needed to have her facts right, so she and her brother arranged for the Seekers of Destiny to be drugged, disorientated then left alone in a darkened antechamber to stew for a while. During this time they were able to compile a dossier on the Seeker’s nearest and dearest from the masses of files which were housed in these tunnels. Given that only the very, very, very, very, very, very rich could afford the exorbitant entrance fee to the theme park that was Hades, the Oracle and her brother could easily afford to have these files constantly updated by a whole team of scribes working round the clock on data gathered by a network of informants. It was from the secret libraries beneath Cumae that the scenes for the re-enactment were rehearsed and put together.

‘Is the Arch-Hawk planning a return trip?’ she asked hopefully. The work on this bowl was quite splendid.

‘He doesn’t say.’ The priest turned the note over. ‘Nope. It would appear this is simply a token of his gratitude.’

‘Pity others aren’t as grateful,’ the Oracle muttered.

‘We don’t do badly out of the deal, little sister.’

‘It’s an expensive business, the special effects, the informants, the huge number of staff, the elaborate costumes—’

‘Get away with you.’ The priest laughed. ‘We earn enough to give this bowl to the dogs to eat off.’

Ah, but they were good howlers, those hounds. Mournful buggers, whose baying travelled for miles through those underground echo chambers.

‘Buying silence doesn’t come cheap,’ the Sibyl reminded him tartly.

Only last year, the wife of a well-known politician became lost in the catacombs and fell down a shaft. Her pitiful wailing had only added to the atmosphere, but by the time the team had located her, she was so badly injured that she’d died before they could get her up to the surface. Then, and rather more recently, there was one of the Sibyl’s lovers, who, when discarded, had threatened to expose to the Emperor the hokum they practised, and unfortunately had had to be strangled.

‘Not so expensive,’ the priest corrected. ‘Remember, an awful lot don’t come out anyway.’

He’d lost track of the poor sods who were so keen to speak to their ancestors that they’d tried swimming what they thought was the Styx, only to drown as the underground river sucked them under before disappearing in swirls back into the rock. Or those who came here for the express purpose of joining their loved ones. Once they were convinced there really
was
life after death, they’d stab themselves, fall on their swords, slash their wrists—and in such quantities that each Seeker of Destiny was now searched for concealed weaponry.

Death, however, accounted for only a small percentage of mishaps. Far more visitors became so traumatized by the experience, succumbing to claustrophobia and worse, that they suffered a complete mental collapse. Many more fell victim to the effects of ingesting a cocktail of henbane, belladonna, hellebore and poppy seeds which was fed them. Consulting the Oracle was a dangerous business.

None of which, the priest reflected cheerfully, led to adverse publicity! Disappearances and breakdowns only added to Cumae’s mystique, corroborating the Sibyl’s power to summon the dead. After all, it wouldn’t do for Hades to become a place which was not to be feared.

All that gold the Seekers laid out, just to watch a few actors wailing away on a plank suspended in mid-air by ropes! Throw in a spurt of fake blood from the loved one’s ‘fatal’ wound. Gloss over tough questions with a moan or a groan. Ward off misgivings by having the weary ghost being called back to the Elysian Fields. Money for nothing.

But what the Sibyl and the priest could not get their heads round—and had frankly given up trying—was that every single Seeker of Destiny went away happy with their few lines of inscrutable gibberish. The Sibyl did not feel in any way responsible for her actions. Did not see how she shaped anyone’s destiny, other than her own and her brother’s. Even though she had an idea of what Cotta was planning, so what? I have no influence here, she would plead. Fate is fate, I cannot change it. We simply let the punters see what they want to see, let them hear what they want to hear.

‘Right,’ the Sibyl sighed, replacing her wrinkled mask. ‘Back to business.’

Business was greed. Business was god. Their minds had been closed to morality a long time ago. Brother and sister ceased to take interest in the ambitions of their clients, even when that client was the Arch-Hawk of the Senate and his plans threatened to undermine the whole Roman Empire.

The High Priest tossed more sticky beads of Arabian incense on the fire, turned down the lights, then beckoned the next disorientated visitor forward.

‘Who’s there?’ the ancient crone on her gold throne cackled. ‘Who comes to consult the Oracle?’

Twenty-Three

One of the less noble consequences of a quarter of a century of peace was gluttony. As the Empire stabilized, it grew increasingly fat on its victories, and since fat had become synonymous with affluence, wastage with wealth, it was a sign of true prosperity that a person could stuff themselves until they were sick, then start again.

Whether her Saturnalia guests might be so inclined or not (and the johnny-come-lately merchant classes definitely showed a tendency to keep abreast of fashion), Claudia had no intention of allowing anyone at her tables to progress to such disgusting extremes. For a start, no one was stinking her house out with their nauseating practices, thank you very much, and secondly, if they wanted to throw up, they could bloody well bring their own slaves to hold the goddamned bowls. Outside!

On the other hand, certain social standards had to be maintained and this was where cooks became unwitting conscripts in the ferocious social war being waged among the equestrian and patrician classes. For as the rich grew richer, the pressure was on to keep coming up with more and more innovative menus, which—roughly translated—meant more and more outlandish delicacies were served up at banquets.

In this, cooks were aided by the influx of exotic creatures as the boundaries of the Empire continued to expand. Wild beasts were already being captured for the arena, why not ship over ostriches, gazelles and porcupines for the dinner table? Very quickly it became a benchmark of status that a man could afford to have peacocks despatched from farms on Samos in the Aegean at the same time as a delivery of lampreys arrived from Spain for the same banquet.

Unfortunately, as Claudia was rapidly discovering, bear cutlets and antelope steaks were no longer singular enough to satisfy the jaded taste buds of the Roman glitterati. Which meant that, now the novelty value of Syrian hazel hens and specially fattened dormice was wearing increasingly thin, the burden was falling upon the holder of the banquet to come up with further culinary refinements, with the emphasis shifting away from content towards ostentatious presentation. In a nutshell, then. the more complicated the meal and the more elaborate the preparation, the more impressed the guests—and thus the more amenable they would become to engaging in trade with Gaius’s alluring widow.

Hence her idea of a zodiac theme for Saturnalia.

That she couldn’t actually afford to
buy
the food was neither here nor there.

‘Da zodiac vill be a real talking point,’ her cook boomed when she outlined her proposal. ‘A real talking point!’

Behind her back, Claudia carefully uncrossed her fingers. With twenty Spectaculars sprung upon him without warning, the cook had not been in the best of tempers lately. Naturally he would carry out whatever commands the mistress ordered, but far better to have the big man on her side.

‘Bugger stuffed sow udders and pickled goat wombs dat the nobility are demanding,’ he expounded in his loud Teutonic roar. ‘Give people proper food on dere plates, dat’s vot I say. Give dem things dat makes da mouth vorter.’

By the time he’d finished outlining his ideas for twelve substantial, unpretentious and wholesome dishes to correspond with the signs of the zodiac, Claudia’s mouth was already vortering and she left him rubbing his hands as he went off to plan the banquet, oblivious of any conflict in the Roman ethos that nothing divides society quite like food, even though he was enslaved himself. Going well, she thought happily. Now she’d got him hooked, it would be so much easier when he went to buy the food to find that he’d also have to negotiate credit terms.

‘How dare you barge in here like this
,’
a female voice shrieked from upstairs,
‘
then have the bare-faced cheek to
—’

Taking the steps two at a time, Claudia thought, that bloody Marcellus! The old, old story no doubt. How his guilt preyed on his conscience and now he wants to make a clean breast of it, blah, blah, blah. Men! She raced along the gallery. When will they ever learn that adultery shared is not adultery halved? But when she flung wide Julia’s door, it was Flavia on the receiving end of Julia’s tongue, not Marcellus.

‘You won’t believe what this little bitch has done now,’ Julia hissed, slamming the door behind Claudia, as though no one in the house had heard her voice rattling the nails in the roof tiles.

‘I’m not ashamed of it—’ Flavia countered, but her aunt’s strident tones drowned the girl out.

‘She’s only insisting on marrying that…that
gigolo
of an actor!’

‘I love Skyles, so there,’ Flavia said sulkily.

‘And what about the oleiculturist?’

‘I thi
nk
you can forget that angle,’ Claudia interjected.

‘After all I’ve done to get you hooked up with him,’ Julia continued, ignoring her. ‘He’s handsome, rich, extremely well-connected—’

‘I don’t care if living with Skyles means living in poverty,’ Flavia said. ‘At least I’ll be happy.’

‘Happy?’
Julia, of course, had never understood the word, what chance of projecting it on to a third party? ‘For gods’ sake, the man’s old enough to be your father. He’s a sexual predator on an Olympic scale and heaven
knows
what unspeakable disease he spreads with his alleycat morals. Tell her, Claudia. The only reason that vile little man plays the stage is because it gives him the opportunity to screw anything with a pulse—’

‘I love him,’ Flavia screamed. ‘And I’m going with him when the troupe leaves.’

‘And what happens when he discards you? Do you really think men like Skyles
like
women? His type are misogynists, girl, they loathe women. That’s why they use them so freely and so cheaply. They want to defile them, exploit them—’

‘Skyles loves me, I know it, and in any case, you keep telling me I’m old enough to make my own decisions, well I’ve made one. I’m going to make my career in musical farce, and so what if it means taking my clothes off in public? Anything’s better than being stuck in this shit hole for the rest of—’

The slap was so hard, it sent both Julia and Flavia reeling with its ferocity. For two stunned seconds, Flavia could not believe that her aunt had actually struck her. Then her cheek started to burn and before Julia could stop her, she was storming out of the room, calling her aunt all the names under the sun, although ‘bitch’ figured more frequently in her tirade than most.

Julia rounded on Claudia. ‘I
warned
you what it would be like, inviting that vulgar tribe into your house. That beast has not only corrupted my baby, he’s manipulating the child. I tell you he’s only after her money—’

What is it with this family? Can’t
any
of them see past the end of their elbow? ‘Leave it with me, Julia.’

‘—the scandal won’t just taint Flavia, it will sully the whole family name and everything my dear brother worked for will be washed down the drain because of his stupid, self-centred daughter—’

‘She’s not going to marry Skyles, now calm down. I’ll sort this out.’

‘Doesn’t that girl have
any
concept of the word responsibility? Doesn’t she stop, just for an instant, to think what impact the scandal would have on Marcellus and me? We, who brought the poor child up, when her father wanted nothing to do with her—’

‘
Julia
!’

Claudia’s tone stopped the older woman in her tracks. Julia blinked, regrouped, then poked a bony finger into Claudia’s flesh.

‘This is your fault,’ she snarled. ‘You got us into this mess, Claudia Seferius, you can bloody well sort it out.’ And in a swirl of green linen she was gone, slamming the door in her wake.