Marilyn Todd - Second Act

Doris took her silence as a cue. ‘The Spectaculars open with Felix doing his dance solo. This time he’s enacting the Judgement of Paris accompanied, as usual, by Periander our castrato and the delectable Renata on the flute.’

The likelihood of one bleached blond miming Paris, two goddesses plus Helen of Troy without Claudia’s atrium walls ending up splattered with fruit was a slim one. She could only pray that Periander had a voice like an angel or that Renata fluted so loudly it distracted the audience from everything else.

‘Then Skyles and I perform this wicked little domestic scene between the Emperor and his lady wife-in which yours truly naturally plays Livia.’

‘Skyles?’ Claudia queried, selecting a date.

‘Big butch bitch who shaves his head, but put a wig on him and, dear me, that boy’s a ringer for Augustus.’ Claudia remembered Skyles now. The Buffoon with his monkey walk, who tripped over invisible obstacles and who, this morning, had chased the kitchen maids with a feather duster. But acting, acting, all the time acting. She wondered whether Leonides wasn’t wise to send for padlocks for the silver.

‘If I wasn’t the very soul of discretion,’ Doris said, ‘I could name you twenty aristocratic wives who have not so much surrendered their virtue to that boy as lobbed it at him.’

‘I hope Skyles is gentleman enough to refuse?’

‘Charity begins at home,’ Chiselled Cheekbones trilled, rattling the bangles round his wrist. ‘Just look at the little knick-knacks my admirers have given me. As I said. The name means bountiful.’

‘Don’t confuse admirers with groupies, Doris. Tell me what you know about Skyles.’

He assumed a pose of mock indignation. ‘Honestly, do I look like someone who dishes dirt like an ostler dishes oats? Don’t answer that. Anyway, after Skyles and I have finished, the girls launch into their song-and-dance routines and then-ta-da! One “splendiferous” musical farce as the great lord would call it.’

‘With nudity.’

Doris hopped down from the chest. ‘When it comes to the exposure of female flesh, kiddo, the audience likes their arena filled.’

Well, they’d certainly get that with Caspar’s girls. If not overflowing.

‘Me,’ Doris said, pulling a gold pendant out from his tunic. ‘I go for subtlety. Get the jewels in first, I say. Then show ’em what you’ve got.’

*

The swearing in of tribunes was a solemn business. These, remember, were the justices elected by the people to defend their rights. A heavy weight of responsibility hung on them. These men now held the power of veto over elections, laws, edicts by the Senate, hell, they could even overrule the decisions of the all-powerful magistrates if they felt so inclined. Charged with the protection of the lives and property of the working classes, and with their own legislative body, the newly elected tribunes were today accorded privileges akin to senators and cuirasses special to legates in honour of their role.

Orbilio stifled his yawn.

Too much toga posturing for him. Subtly, he shifted his weight and tried to ignore the throbbing behind his eyes. No one doubted that the ten men currently swearing to uphold their tribuneship were genuine in their intentions. It was everybody else, he thought. How broad a purple stripe you had on your toga. Whether your shorter, military tunic was more impressive than your magisterial neighbour’s long one. Who cared?

In front of him, and a whole head and shoulders shorter, the Head of the Security Police oiled his way through the ceremony in a way that only a man with a narrow purple stripe hoping to get a wider one can do. But then Callisunus would sell his mother into harlotry and throw in his sisters for good luck if it secured him a promotion.

Orbilio made a mental calculation. Another two mind-numbing hours, if he was lucky. The way things were going, though, it might be three.

On his face, his patrician breeding showed nothing but encouragement and interest, the expression of a man stimulated by long-winded procedures, as he reviewed his current case notes in his head.

December being a particularly active month for criminals, there was quite a pot on the boil. Too many festivals combined with too many layers of thick clothing equals too many purses snatched and secreted, but that wasn’t the concern of the Security Police. Nor was the fact that, because people went to bed earlier to save lamp oil and thus unwittingly improved working conditions for burglars, incidents of rape and murder went up in proportion, often as a result of those burglaries going horribly wrong. What did concern the Security Police was that, with the courts closed from the beginning of November, jails were overcrowded through lack of trials, while the crime rate continued to soar.

Perfect conditions for anarchy to breed and Rome was positively rife with plots to bring down the Emperor. Small wonder Augustus had installed the Praetorian Guard.

But apart from conspiracies requiring sharp nips in their buds, he had a killing down in the Subura to deal with. A domestic, which the husband tried to pass off as the work of an intruder, but Orbilio was gathering witnesses and evidence. No challenge there, he’d have the man in irons by tomorrow. And then there was that forgery ring operating out of an old warehouse on the edge of town. Small-scale stuff, just the duplication of dole tablets, and that wouldn’t take long to wrap up. Orbilio had the place under twenty-four-hour surveillance and the next time the mastermind dropped in-a swarthy, low-ranking civil servant from the Water Department-that was that.

Callisunus, even though he’d taken no interest in either case, would nevertheless scoop the credit for both. Orbilio glanced down to where his boss was smarming away to Olympic standards, and knew his only course of action was to congratulate him on the outcome with a smile. Nothing got up the little toady’s nose more than the knowledge that his younger, taller, good-looking patrician subordinate didn’t give a damn. Petty tactics, Orbilio admitted. But a soldier is trained to employ any weapon in his armoury, even if it’s only a pin, and he hadn’t spent two years in uniform for nothing. (Which was another thing that raised Callisunus’s low-born hackles. That he hadn’t been given a commission.)

From the corner of his eye, Marcus noticed a legionary slip into the hall and murmur something to the soldiers on guard. His mind turned to another item on his case load, one involving a certain Claudia Seferius. He shook his head in amazement. Mother of Tarquin, what was it with that woman? Couldn’t she ever stay out of trouble? A smile twisted up one corner of his mouth. He bloody hoped not. But what amazed him about this particular business was that someone as sharp as Claudia had been taken in by someone as obviously slippery as Moschus. Was she growing careless, or just desperate, he wondered? Either way, if she’d only thought to check how many ships the captain had lost in various storms, she’d have realized that the authorities would have caught on sooner or later and that, when they did, Moschus was the type who’d squeal like a litter of piglets.

As the fourth tribune approached the rostrum to a deafening applause, Orbilio realized that the legionary who’d just entered the hall was edging through the crowd in his direction. The legionary’s nose was pinched with cold, but then legionaries, unfortunately, don’t have nine yards of woollen toga in which to swaddle themselves in winter.

‘For you, sir,’ he mouthed. ‘Urgent.’

It wasn’t difficult for Marcus to unroll the parchment quietly, not the way the soldier had been gripping it until it had turned soft, but he resisted the urge to use Callisunus’s head as a rest upon which to read it. Suddenly the ceremony, his case review, even his normally restful musings on Claudia were sent spinning into oblivion. Every muscle in his body seemed to have been paralysed. He couldn’t breathe. He read it twice. And then again. Unable to believe what he was seeing.