Marilyn Todd - Second Act

‘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.’

‘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.