Marilyn Todd - Second Act

‘It’s true.’

‘-makes me feel a whole lot better about what I was about to say,’ he replied. ‘Because I was going to tell you that the best thing you can do for me at the moment is give me something to work on. A problem which can occupy my mind, even for the tiniest amount of time, affords me unimaginable relief from the pain.’

Orbilio leaned back in his chair. It was hard and uncomfortable, and far too small for his large frame, but he barely noticed. He knew, from his previous visit to discuss the attempts to poison the Emperor, that the herbalist was a man to be trusted to listen, understand, sympathize and not judge. And perhaps that was the most important role of any physician. That of confessor.

Which is how, at one o’clock in the morning, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio came to be telling a virtual stranger about the pixie. How he had met her at a friend’s house when she was dancing. How they had got chatting and ended up at her house, too drunk to notice, too drunk to care, who satisfied his bodily urges. That, even when he took Angelina to a tavern to let her down gently over a meal, he found himself in exactly the same predicament the following morning. Furred tongue, lack of memory, those damned castanets clacking like crazy behind his eyes.

‘My head wasn’t the only thing that was throbbing when I woke up,’ he admitted ruefully, explaining how he’d vowed never to touch another drop of wine so long as he lived. True to his word, he had gone to Angelina’s house sober last night to break off the relationship but it was in her bed that he awoke, exhibiting the same muzzy symptoms, the same burning erection and, as previously, the day was more advanced than he would have wished.

‘Hm.’

The herbalist laced his fingers together on the desk. Behind him, on the shelves, earthenware vessels lined up like soldiers, along with glass and ceramic pots, copper pots, tin pots, horn, silver and onyx containers. Bronze boxes, wooden boxes, flasks, scoops and balances stood to attention beside mortars and palettes, pestles and bottles, spatulas and bandages of varying widths. On the table beneath the shuttered window sat turnips, garlic bulbs, mustard and rue, and a small jar marked ‘Cedar resin’.

‘You suspect Angelina of drugging you?’ he asked at length.

‘Let’s say the alternative worries me,’ Orbilio replied.

Across the desk, the herbalist shifted. ‘I have some good news and some bad news,’ he said. ‘The good news is that you aren’t losing your mind and have indeed been the victim of drugs. A cyathus of mandrake, a scruple of henbane, one or two other bits and bobs and we have a sleeping draught which leaves a sledgehammer pounding between the eyes and a tongue that could pass for a rodent.’

‘And the bad news?’

A muscle twitched at the side of the herbalist’s mouth as he poured a shot of gentian liqueur for his visitor. ‘The bad news, my friend, is that under a sedative of that strength, you could not possibly have managed anything more energetic than a snore.’

Despite the situation, Orbilio found himself laughing. ‘Not the four times she said, then?’

The herbalist began laughing with him. ‘Not even once,’ he chuckled. ‘Although.’ He tapped the small jar at his elbow. ‘I can, if you like, make you a potion that would help.’

Laughter was the trigger the herbalist needed. Within seconds, the first healing tears started to flow.

*

Orbilio and the herbalist weren’t the only two whose problems kept them awake in the early hours.

*

In her office, Claudia was going through her accounts with a fine flea comb. Sending Butico those three thousand bronze sesterces had literally drained her coffers dry. How on earth was she supposed to fund her Saturnalia banquet now? There was no quick way to liquidate her assets. That brickworks on the Via Tiburtina wouldn’t sell this close to Saturnalia. Rents on her properties could not be collected until New Year’s Day. To be seen selling off the silver and gold plate would start alarm bells ringing.

It was enough that her fellow wine merchants had conspired with Butico and were, through him, turning the thumbscrews. She couldn’t afford to have anyone else get wind of her financial troubles.

What a bloody mess.

She drained a glass of warm, spiced wine and went through the accounts again.

*

Julia’s husband hadn’t been able to face his scrawny, sourfaced wife after the scene in the apartment on the Aventine. Couldn’t bear to hear another whine from her thin lips, another of her sanctimonious opinions. Pleading the necessity to work on his portfolio, he had returned to his own house and now, in the darkness and the cold, he had never felt more alone in his life.

His darling. His rosebud. His precious cherubkins.

My, how she must have laughed when he told her (time and again!) that making love with her went beyond the mechanical release of bodily tensions.

‘For the first time in my life,’ Marcellus had confided, ‘I know what it means to give someone my soul, my heart, my very being through the act of making love.’

He felt the prickle of salt behind his eyelids, felt the pillow dampen under his cheek. Trust him to have fallen in love with a whore. A cold-hearted whore, who had rented the most expensive flat on the Aventine, demanded it be furnished to the highest standard, redecorated, and all at Marcellus’s expense. Claudia would have flayed him alive, had she realized that the stuff she’d repossessed was less than half what he’d given the slut. She’d been selling it on, salting away the proceeds like the good little whore that she was, but what hurt, what really hurt, was that she hadn’t cared about him at all.

Another stab of pain ripped at Marcellus. She’d already be latching on to another poor sap, flattering him with her weasel words, seducing him with her body (her beautiful, beautiful body), preparing to suck another man dry like the parasite that she was.

That Claudia, of all people, should have seen through her was the ultimate in humiliation. She hadn’t pulled any punches, either. She’d exposed him to the truth in brutal fashion, emasculating him completely. She would never look him in the eye again. Jupiter’s balls, was she blind? Couldn’t she see that his beloved had been the image of her, with her bold, thrusting breasts and dark, flashing eyes? Did she not realize that his affair, at least in the beginning, had only taken off because he saw his mistress as a substitute for the real thing?

Another spurt of salt water squeezed between his eyelashes and dribbled its way down to his pillow. Now he was little more than a eunuch in Claudia’s eyes. A middle-aged gullible fool. Even his rosebud would have forgotten him six months from now.

He thought about the things he had said to her. The words she had said in return. That’s all they were, he thought bitterly. Words. I love you, Marcellus. The memory clawed at his heart, ripped it out with both hands. No one had ever said I love you to Marcellus in his life. Not his parents. Not his siblings. Not Flavia. Not even his wife.

His darling, his rosebud, his precious cherub.

He would have married her, too.

*

Sextus Valerius Cotta was not asleep. Beside him, in the wide double bed cast in solid bronze and covered with a damask counterpane scented with lilac, slept Phyllis. As beautiful and undemanding a mistress as he had ever taken. Skin the colour of cinnamon, the texture of silk, and with a laugh as soft as summer rain, she understood her status and behaved accordingly. Cotta was extremely fond of Phyllis. Much more so than his wife, in fact. His wife had the brains of a sheep. With his beautiful mistress, Cotta could indulge in his love of poetry, his passion for horseflesh. She sang as he strummed the lyre. More than any woman he’d known, Phyllis understood the complexities of politics, but Cotta was careful about what he disclosed. He didn’t believe Phyllis was a spy, but a man could not be too careful these days. In any case, as an ex-general and military tactician of some standing, he was used to making decisions unaided.