Second Act (29 page)

‘No, sir, no casualties.’ But the steward’s lungs were in such a state from breathing the acrid air that, when he wasn’t wheezing like a pair of rusty bellows, he was wracking his ribs with the cough. Orbilio immediately sent him outside. If he wanted to help, better that he thanked the fire chain who had rushed to their rescue. It took him a moment or two before he realized that there was someone else stumbling around in the blackness, helping to fling open the shutters.

‘You lead an interesting life,’ the herbalist said.

‘This is only Saturnalia. You should see what happens when we celebrate birthdays,’ Orbilio said. ‘How’s Deva?’

‘I think it’s no exaggeration to say the fire was a distraction.’

‘Is that why you started it?’

There was a flash of a grin from the corner. ‘Had I thought it would have worked, I’d have burned down the city, but no. I’m afraid I didn’t pay the young lady.’

‘Excuse me?’ Orbilio found a candle and lit it.

‘Little blonde thing. Very pretty, as far as tornadoes go. Your toga is ruined, by the way.’

‘And your face is blacker than a Nubian’s arse. What blonde—oh shit.’

Angelina! The candle began shaking in Marcus’s hand, so the herbalist took it.

‘If you want my professional opinion,’ he said, ‘your pixie is two strigils short of a bathhouse.’

He and Deva had only been here three hours, he explained. Three good hours at that. The opiate was already wearing off when they arrived and rather than tell her the blunt truth of why they had decamped to this exquisite house on the Esquiline Hill, the herbalist had explained this was the Emperor’s treat.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said miserably. ‘I’ll own up when she’s better. Make sure you take the credit—’

Orbilio grinned. ‘Yes, I can see how that will impress her. Telling her you lied when she was at her most vulnerable.’

The herbalist smiled back. ‘Oh, well. Since you put it like
that…
Anyway, I wouldn’t say she was perky, but coming here was a turning point. Deva suddenly realized she wasn’t alone in her torment.’ His voice became ragged, and not from the smoke. ‘That other people, rich, influential people, acknowledged the seriousness of the crime—and felt compassion.’

He had even got her to eat something. A few delicacies. Things she’d only seen from afar, that they’d never been able to afford.

‘I sat with her until she fell asleep.’ He pointed to what had been the master bedroom. ‘I—I just needed some air, you know?’

It haunted him that he should have walked round the courtyard, rather than leave, but god knows, he had needed some space to himself. So he’d taken himself off to the public gardens, to think and to mourn, to rage and to grieve, and when he came back, a young woman with a froth of honey-coloured curls was throwing oil at flaming drapes. The herbalist cast a wry glance at his host.

‘I am, of course, assuming this
was
Miss Four-Times-A-Night you referred to the other evening?’

‘No, I have this effect on all women.’

The smile on the herbalist’s lips froze. He wiped a sooty face with a sooty hand and shook his head. ‘I’m responsible for your lovely home being destroyed,’ he said. ‘If I’d been here—’

‘Then Angelina would have come back some other time.’

‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged, unconvinced, as Orbilio took the candle back and held it high to inspect the pixie’s handiwork. It was a mess, certainly. But nothing that could not be put right.

‘No structural damage, thank heavens,’ Marcus said, adding, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’

‘That’s the trouble with delusions,’ the herbalist sighed. ‘That’s all they are. The only way your pixie can protect herself from a complete mental breakdown when the fantasy is exposed is to eradicate the source. Once it no longer exists, you see, it is as though it never happened. She has wiped it clean from her mind.’

‘She thought I’d supplanted you,’ a female voice said.

Both men spun round. In the doorway to the garden, shivering from the cold, Deva stood in her night robe. Orbilio thrust his toga round her shoulders, the herbalist rubbed her warm.

‘Darling, I told you to stay in the kitchens. You’re freezing.’

‘Am I?’ She hadn’t noticed. Her eyes were scanning the destruction.

‘I’ll take you home,’ he said gently.

‘You will not!’ Deva pulled the wool tight around her. ‘The Emperor said I could stay here for Saturnalia, and stay here I damn well will.’

Behind her back, both men exchanged smiles. There was no sign of the red shawl.

She scowled at the walls, the floor, the ceiling. ‘She’s not getting away with it,’ she spat. ‘She can’t just barge in here and overturn the oil lamps then walk away.’

Angry eyes turned on Marcus.

‘She has to be made to understand. She can’t go around spoiling things out of spite. It’s not right, leaving people’s lives in ruins and not paying the price.’ She swung round to face her man. ‘I’m not going home. I’m going to wash these walls and scrub these floors until they sparkle like new.’ She picked up a marble statuette and polished it on Orbilio’s toga. ‘That bitch is not going to beat me,’ she hissed.

With a tingle running the length of his backbone, Marcus realized that her tirade wasn’t aimed at Angelina. This was Deva’s way of getting back at the rapist. Of telling him that he could do what he liked with her body but her spirit could not be broken. The herbalist’s woman was fighting back, she was saying.
And she would win
—

Replacing the statuette on the table, which she had also wiped clean on Orbilio’s toga, she turned to the herbalist.

‘Why on earth are you crying?’ she asked. ‘It’s only a bit of wool, love. It’ll bleach out.’

Thirty-Two

‘Skyles? A word.’

The dress rehearsal was already underway, but Claudia didn’t care. What she wanted to say couldn’t wait, and in any case it shouldn’t take longer than Felix’s balletic mime.

‘Shut the door.’

He made an exaggerated show of closing the door to her office, but she was sick of the act-act-act, pretend-pretend-pretend style of this actor with no name and no past.

‘Flavia,’ she said crisply.

‘You weren’t kidding when you said you only wanted one word.’

It would have been easier, this conversation, if he’d been dressed in the Buffoon’s brightly coloured patchwork, a razzle-dazzle juxtaposition of reds and yellows, oranges and blues. Instead, his first skit was impersonating the Emperor and he remained in character. Dignified and majestic in purple, with a cropped wig and laurel crown, he took a seat in a high-backed upholstered chair, crossing one stately leg over the other.

‘You took her to a post-hotel,’ Claudia said.

One noble eyebrow rose languidly. ‘As I said before, Livia wants to keep his mouth shut.’

‘If it hadn’t been for Doris, you irresponsible bastard, we’d have been out of our minds looking for Flavia. Where did you take her?’

One imperial shoulder shrugged. ‘How could I afford hotels?’ he asked. ‘Me, who hasn’t two copper quadrans to rub together, and you can search me, if you don’t believe me.’

‘I didn’t ask how much.’ Typical. The girl even pays to lose her virginity! ‘I asked where? Hold on a moment—’ She flung open the office door. ‘Leonides, did I just hear someone come in?’

‘No, madam. That was a cask falling over in the kitchen.’

‘Orbilio isn’t back yet?’

Leonides shook his head. Damn. She’d left strict instructions at his house to call here as a matter of urgency. She’d even said it was concerning the rapist. Which meant he hadn’t called there, either. Double damn.

‘The instant he sets foot indoors, then?’ she reminded Leonides.

Across the atrium, Helen of Troy was doing her utmost to convince Paris that
she
was the most beautiful woman in the world and worthy of the prized golden apple. Time to cut to the chase.

‘How much do you want?’ she asked Skyles.

The intensity in his eyes darkened. ‘I thought I’d made that point clear. I never take money from ladies.’

‘I’m no lady. How much will it cost to keep you away from Flavia?’

Puzzlement swept his face. Claudia didn’t think he was a good enough actor to fake it. ‘Are you serious?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing. ‘Is she really missing?’

The word ‘missing’ made Claudia’s heart skip a beat.

‘Her bed wasn’t slept in and she hasn’t been seen since the dress rehearsal last night, when she sat gooey-eyed following your every movement.’

Another time and he would have smiled and said,
‘
Every
movement?’ Now he swore, a four-letter word rhyming with duck, and the Imperial impersonation popped like a bubble.

He didn’t like to say anything, he said, because he hadn’t wanted to get the poor kid into trouble. But last night, after the rehearsal, Flavia had rushed up to him, told him in an excited whisper that she’d rented a room near the Capena Gate, that she’d wait for him there, and that she loved him and was going to marry him and have his babies.

‘I had no idea,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘I mean, I wanted the kid to have a good time. I took her to a few grown-up places, a cock fight, stuff like that, and I made her laugh, flirted a bit—’

‘A
bit
?’

‘All right, more than a bit, but come on, you’ve seen her parents. No wonder she’s mixed-up and repressed.’ He ran his hand over his shaven head. ‘That kid’s not like Jemima or Adah, who eat because they enjoy food and thus life. Flavia’s fat because the food she stuffs in her mouth is a substitute for love and affection.’

Claudia felt a pang of something that might have been guilt.

‘I admit I opened her eyes to another world, showed her a side of life that was shocking and exciting to someone her age, but never in a million years did I think she’d read so much into one afternoon touring the fleshpots of Rome plus a few odd winks on the side.’

Flashes of imitation wedding bouquets flashed through Claudia’s mind. Of Flavia pouncing on this blessing of her engagement to Skyles. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

Outside, Periander was singing about Paris’s dilemma. Which of the three should receive the apple engraved ‘To the Fairest’?

‘I told her I couldn’t
go
to the hotel. I explained about the script conference and the rewrites that were necessary after rehearsals and thought, hell, that would be that. “But you have to sleep some time,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter what time, day or night, you come to me, I’ll be waiting.” Oh.’ He flashed her a grin. ‘I think she called me “darling” as well.’

Outside, Paris had made his judgment. He’d awarded the apple to Venus and now, in angelic soprano, Periander sang of the irony of that decision. How Venus would m
a
ke Helen of Troy fall in love with him, starting the war to end all wars…

Claudia waited.

‘In the end, I realized I had no choice. I had to go to the tavern and tell the poor kid the truth.’

‘What is the truth, Skyles?’

‘That she’s too young. Obviously.’

‘Yes, and she’s too fat, and she’s spotty, and awkward, and silly, but Flavia will grow into herself, and her age isn’t the reason you didn’t sleep with her.’

‘Hey, I don’t go around deflowering virgins—’

‘I know. You go for married women with no strings attached, you shallow bastard.’ She leaned forward into his face. ‘You’ll take sex, provided it comes without emotion.’

‘What I do is my business.’

‘Not where my stepdaughter’s concerned.’

The last haunting notes of Renata’s flute died away.

‘I have to go,’ Skyles said.

He covered the room in three strides, a blur of imperial purple, and as he did, other images flashed through Claudia’s mind. A bald Buffoon chasing the kitchen girls, riding make-believe horses round the garden to amuse the children, slapping his head like an ape, tripping over imaginary ropes, caressing Erinna’s shadow, mimicking Leonides, the cook and anyone else. Act, act, act. Pretend, pretend, pretend. But running through this round-the-clock performance ran the constant thread of the entertainer. A man who wants to make people like him. Tell me, are those the actions of a man who is shallow?

‘One more thing. That wound on your side.’

‘Cramp.’

Yes, and I’m Pegasus and I can fly. ‘How did you get it?’

The intensity of his eyes burned through to the back of her skull. ‘That’s also my business,’ he rasped.

The draught from the slamming of the door was reminiscent of the draught from the front door in the early hours. Skyles might have sneaked out this morning, Claudia thought. But Juno be praised, neither he, nor anyone else, would be sneaking out for a while. Her bodyguards had the house sealed.

Dammit, Orbilio, where the hell are you? I can’t cope with this by myself.

*

In a gr
im
little room in an overcrowded hostelry close to the Capena Gate, Flavia snivelled into her pillow. Unlike the pillows at home, it wasn’t stuffed with soft swansdown, it was lumpy and dirty and she could swear she’d seen something move. She hated this horrible place. She hated Skyles, and her aunt, and her uncle, she hated them all.