Marilyn Todd - Second Act

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.’

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.