The bastard could not be on the rampage again, it was impossible.
Orbilio had personally supervised the execution.
Eight
One of the best things about Saturnalia was the atmosphere in the run-up to the holiday. Wall-to-wall with festivals beforehand, this was a time of jollity and fun. Of decorating houses with greenery and garlands. Of celebrations. Banquets. Aid to the poor and needy. A time of exchanging gifts, of mooching round the craft market in the Colonnade of the Argonauts, which specialized in presents to exchange at Saturnalia. The ultimate time of revelry. Of peace and goodwill to men. An end to grudges.
There was always an exception…
‘Sister-in-law.’ If Julia had spent the morning chewing alecost and washed it down with vinegar, her expression could not have been more sour. My house, stomped her footsteps down the peristyle. My marble pillars. My fountains. My sundial. My black hellebores in bloom.
My arse, they were. Julia had just never come to terms with the fact that her brother hadn’t just cut her out of his will in favour of the young chit whom he’d married, but he hadn’t made any provision whatsoever for the daughter that he’d foisted on her and her husband years before. To Julia, it flew in the face of decency and reason, not to mention Roman law-and how Gaius got past that she would never know, but you didn’t need to look too closely to see that A Certain Party Not A Million Miles Away had had a hand in that!
Forget the extenuating circumstances that existed at the time he made his will.
Forget that the widow had been supporting the family ever since, even though Marcellus was an architect and should have been more than capable of supporting himself.
And forget that, legally, Claudia didn’t owe them one black bean.
Curdled milk ran in Julia’s veins. Grudges every bit a part of her as her long, thin nose and propensity for summer colds. The closer she approached along the garden path, the easier it became to compare Claudia’s fur cape with her own. Finding the other’s lusher, more lustrous, just like her clothes, her slippers, her jewels-even the money-grubbing bitch’s skin and hair. No silver strands requiring walnut juice in those curls, dammit, and her bosoms didn’t need padding, either. Julia’s own linen wodges had started to slip halfway along the Via Sacra. Must remember not to take her cloak off. Better a flat chest than to be seen with breasts around her waist.
‘I need to speak to you about your daughter,’ she said without preamble. To her immense irritation, a dunnock started to sing in the cherry tree.
‘Gaius’s daughter,’ Claudia corrected. There were times, and this was one of them, when she had to remind herself that Julia was only a decade older than herself. Ten years, but she might as well be another species. ‘What’s the sulky little cow been up to now?’
‘These last few days have been a nightmare. An absolute nightmare, I tell you.’ Julia sniffed and the dunnock wisely flew off. ‘Teenage daughters are always a problem, I know, but Flavia is giving us so many sleepless nights, now she’s acquired an interest in boys.’
‘She’s fifteen. It would be unnatural if she didn’t.’
‘I’ve been trying to drum into her the importance of securing a good marriage, but she simply repels potential suitors.’
Repel was the right word. Spotty, fat and moody, Flavia was hardly catch of the day.
‘The child insists she will only marry for love, and this selfish attitude is scuppering any headway Marcellus and I make to fix her up with a husband-’
‘To get her off your hands, you mean.’
‘-and all the time the wretched creature keeps mooning about over the most inappropriate youth you could imagine. The son of an artisan. Imagine!’
Teenage crushes come and go. It wasn’t the first one Flavia had had, it would not be the last, and this hardly constituted a crisis.
‘What’s really troubling you, Julia?’
‘ Me? Good heavens, there’s nothing wrong in my life, nothing whatsoever- Well. Actually, I suppose there is a little matter I might take the opportunity to discuss in confidence, seeing as I’m here.’ She glanced round the garden to make sure no one else was within earshot. ‘After all, dear, you are family.’
Claudia preferred her sister-in-law as a bitch.
‘I am not exaggerating when I say Flavia’s been a pain, but-’ Julia stared at a rearing stone horse. ‘Marcellus has been behaving strangely, too.’
‘How can you tell?’
Indignation flared the older woman’s nostrils. ‘Don’t get impertinent with me!’ But the need to confide had engulfed her, she couldn’t turn back the tide now. She looked at the holly bush, awash with bright red shiny berries, and the rows of clipped laurels and the aromatic myrtle, and came to a decision. ‘I think Marcellus might be having an affair.’
Honestly, who could blame him?
‘Do you know who?’
‘I would have preferred you to have asked, do I know why. After all, it’s not as though there are cracks in our relationship.’
‘What do you call not letting Marcellus in your bed for two years?’
‘Lots of couples sleep in separate rooms,’ Julia reminded her, pointedly swivelling her eyes towards the house behind her, with its wide double staircase leading off the atrium. With Claudia’s bedroom on one side of the gallery, Gaius’s on the other…
‘Anyway, I made it clear a long time ago that I don’t like That Sort Of Thing.’ Julia’s thin lips pursed white. ‘But that doesn’t mean he has to go elsewhere.’
‘Actually, I rather think it does, although I agree about you not having any cracks in your relationship. They’re bloody great canyons, Julia.’
‘How dare you!’
‘Well, what would you call a marriage in which one party is frustrated and unhappy while the other claims that it’s faultless?’
The luck of the draw?
‘For gods’ sakes, Julia, life’s not a straight road paved by other people for you.’
Believe me, it’s crazy paving, and worse, you have to lay it yourself.
‘But-’
‘But nothing. Try talking to Marcellus instead of at him, see what happens. Oh, and you might consider offering him an incentive to stay home.’
‘Bribing my own husband with sexual favours?’ Julia snorted derisively. ‘I should have known better than to come and seek advice from you. Anyway.’ She pulled her fur tighter to her body. ‘What’s all that nonsense in the atrium?’
Moving down the path, to where tubs of fragrant pale purple irises provided a backdrop to the stunning white Stars of Judea, Claudia informed her sister-in-law of her plans to sponsor the Halcyon Spectaculars.
‘But you can’t possibly allow that troupe to live here,’ Julia protested. ‘Think of the gossip. The scandal. If he knew what you were doing, my dear late brother would be rolling in his grave!’
Wouldn’t he just! Rolling about with laughter at Caspar’s gaudy dress sense, his ‘volumptuous beauties’, the little castrato, the dancer who could fold himself backwards in two. Funny the things you remember, she thought suddenly, plucking a Damascan iris and holding it to her nose. For instance, when Gaius laughed, he’d tip his head right back and bellow like a bull in a meadow full of heifers. Whereas his sister’s face would crack if she so much as smiled.
A thin claw laid itself on her arm. ‘My dear, if you’d only heard the piece they were rehearsing when I came in. Quite frankly, there’s no other word to describe it, it was lewd. Absolutely vulgar. In fact, disgusting would not be too strong a term.’