Marilyn Todd - Second Act

‘By the time I’ve finished with the gold-digging trollop who’s had her hooks in you these past months,’ she told Marcellus, ‘you’ll have enough to live on until March. After that, you’re on your own.’

Untrue. She wouldn’t let him. Couldn’t afford to. But there was no reason to let him know that, and you never know, the shock tactics might just work.

‘You don’t know what it’s like, my marriage,’ he bleated, as they navigated the tortuous stone steps of the Aventine. ‘Whenever I felt frisky, Julia stiffened up and stared at a point over my shoulder, and no man can make love to a statue. I’m thirty-six years old, Claudia. I can’t be expected to live without sex. It’s unnatural.’

Darkness had cloaked the city and the drizzle had taken on an icy bite, but warm inside her furs and with their path illuminated by the bearer’s torch, Claudia barely noticed as Marcellus grumbled his way along one winding alleyway after another. No one said Julia was in the right.

‘I really love my little rosebud,’ he said, ‘and the instant Flavia gets married, I’m divorcing that frigid cow. I’ve had it to here with her endless bloody carping and now I’ve been given a shot at happiness, I’d be a damn fool not to grab it.’

That was one way to look at it, Claudia supposed. She’d taken a rather different slant on the affair, and had a sneaking suspicion hers was the more accurate.

They had come to the apartment block that her bodyguard had followed Marcellus to, to confirm Claudia’s suspicions about her brother-in-law. Prime site on the Aventine Hill, with the Imperial Palace directly opposite and the Circus down below, establishments in this part of town rarely came more exclusive. Exquisite frescoes in the corridors reinforced the notion, as did the ornate carvings on the wooden stair rails, the painted stuccoed ceilings. The strong scent of elecampane burning in wall-mounted braziers emphasized the status this building carried, and not a single window had been sheeted out by heavy felt or skins. They were all protected by proper glass. Claudia contrasted this with the moths having such a field day in Julia’s wardrobe.

‘I don’t know how I’m going to explain to my little rosebud why I’ve brought you along,’ Marcellus said, tipping the torchbearer.

‘Leave the talking to me,’ Claudia told him.

‘She’ll be surprised.’ With every stair, his eyes glistened with emotion. ‘I usually only pop in after I’m finished at the baths and before I visit the library.’ His face took on a sheepish appearance. ‘I, er, tell Julia I’m lunching with clients.’

By the time he rapped on the door, his face was flushed, his breathing shallow.

‘Cherub?’ he called softly. ‘It’s me.’

‘Marcellus.’ The door was opened a crack by a hard-faced woman in her twenties, whose hennaed hair was awry. Her tongue flicked apprehensively around her lips. ‘Look, do you mind if I don’t invite you in right now, darling? I’m really not feeling too well at the moment.’

‘Nothing serious, rosebud?’

‘Yes, I can see we’ve got you out of bed,’ Claudia said cheerfully.

The rosebud pulled a shawl over her bare shoulder and ignored the woman at her lover’s elbow. ‘Come back in about an hour,’ she cooed to Marcellus. ‘I’m sure my headache will be gone by then.’

‘Of course, darling.’

‘Not bloody likely,’ Claudia said.

‘ Please, Claudia,’ Marcellus muttered under his breath. ‘You’re putting the poor girl in a very difficult position.’

‘I’m sure she’s used to that,’ Claudia breezed. ‘Aren’t you, cherub?’

The love of Marcellus’s life pulled her skimpy shawl tighter round her naked curves and glowered at her lover. ‘Who’s this cow?’ she asked.

‘Humour her, darling,’ Marcellus whispered, his face turning scarlet with embarrassment as Claudia barged past him. ‘She’s um-um-’

‘Your wife, is it?’ Rosebud rolled her eyes in disgust.

‘No wonder you’re divorcing the old bitch.’ She turned to Claudia, who was checking the rooms and even lifting the crumpled bedsheets to peer under the couch. ‘I don’t know what you’re looking for, but you can bloody forget it. Marcellus. Get this old bag out of my flat.’ Her voice changed to a wheedle. ‘I told you, darling. I’m not feeling well.’

‘You poor love, I-’

Claudia punched the wooden shutter opening on to the balcony. The woodwork winced. ‘You can come out now,’ she told the shutter. ‘Besides. You must be freezing.’

A blanketed, cowering, shivering figure crawled sheepishly into the room. He could not be half as cold, Claudia thought, as the icicles which flashed from the cherub’s eyes.

‘I-don’t understand,’ Marcellus said. ‘Who’s this?’

‘He’s my brother, of course.’ A hard kick landed on a shivering shin. ‘Aren’t you, Paulus?’

‘I think you and your brother had better start packing,’ Claudia said.

Paulus didn’t wait. He grabbed his clothes from the balcony and shot down the stairs, flinging them on as he went. Claudia didn’t think lightning moved faster. Another married man, then. As for the rosebud, a few petals might have been knocked off, but the stem was holding firm. Without making any attempt to stop Claudia stuffing clothes into a trunk, she homed in on the weakest link, sidling up to Marcellus’s chest and nibbling his earlobe.

‘Now our relationship’s no longer a secret, you can leave that old bag and move in with me. We can be happy here, just the two of us.’

Marcellus might be gullible, but he wasn’t stupid. ‘You’ve been screwing him all along, haven’t you?’

The cherub blew in his ear. ‘You’re the only one I’ve been screwing, darling, and very nice it is, too. The old cow’s just trying to drive a wedge between us. Paulus really is my brother.’

‘Large family, is it?’ Claudia trilled, emptying the jewels from the casket.

The cherub snorted. ‘Don’t let her wind you up, darling. She’s just jealous, because I’ve won your heart in a way that she never could.’

Marcellus pushed her away. ‘You even smell of him,’ he said thickly.

With nothing left but her thorns, the rosebud pounced on the woman sorting through her bracelets and rings. ‘You leave them alone,’ she said, snatching the box back. ‘They’re mine. Marcellus gave them to me.’

‘Which means legal title remains with the owner,’ Claudia said smoothly.

Oh, goodie, there was an amethyst among the trinkets. Dear little Flavia might well have abandoned herself to impetuosity under Skyles’ craggy, sex-drenched influence, but she was nothing if not her father’s daughter. Come bedtime, that girl would be blubbing into her pillow for tossing a perfectly good amethyst down the well.

‘You have until midnight,’ Claudia informed the cherub, pocketing the keys of the apartment, ‘before the bailiffs move in.’

Behind her, her brother-in-law’s eyes were shiny with tears, there was a look of sheer agony on his pitted face.

‘Come on, Marcellus,’ she said softly. ‘We’re done here.’

*

The Digger dreamed. In the dream, the trees were clothed in their autumn riches. Golds, russets and amber. The air was warm, a stream bubbled nearby and butterflies filled the woodlands as they migrated south. In the dream, the Digger leaned on the spade and looked down at the newly covered grave.

Watched a hand rise up out of the soil.

As fast as the spade could shovel the leaf litter, the hand pushed, until it became an elbow, a whole arm, and suddenly the corpse was climbing noiselessly out of the hole. Black and crawling with maggots, it advanced, and over its face it wore an actor’s mask.