Claudia inhaled the scent of the yellow iris. ‘So you’ll be staying for Saturnalia, then?’
‘Very well,’ Julia sighed. ‘If you insist.’
*
It was all hands to the pump for Caspar’s Halcyon Spectaculars. Just like the big productions staged in giant, stone-built theatres which were watched by thousands of spectators, the backdrops still had to resemble three adjoining house fronts, complete with marble columns, statues and mosaics, and even though they were made of canvas and operated on a pulley system and the audience was small, the scenery must look fresh as well as realistic. For that reason, half the troupe were sprawled on their knees with paintbrushes in one hand and script notes in another.
The Digger among them.
Deft strokes from the Digger’s paintbrush filled in the blue bits on the canvas spread across the floor as Periander, the castrato, warbled his soprano solo. Light banter was the order of the day as red paint pots jostled with yellow brushstrokes, interspersed with practical jokes and good-natured backchat. There was no option for a small unit locked together for months on end but to rub along. Friction was a commodity everyone could do without, so you closed your eyes to faults and niggles and concentrated on the positive and, since the company came almost exclusively from low-born or slave backgrounds, this way of life came naturally. For the same reason, no one asked probing questions. And if they did, those questions didn’t get answered.
A plump female hand reached out and tickled Leonides’s leg as he passed, the whole group shrieking at the steward’s equal mix of outrage (that the unseemly incident had happened) and relief (that the hand had not belonged to Doris).
There was a unity about this company, the Digger reflected, filling in the clear blue summer sky, even though the very nature of their business meant that it was transitory. The female members fluctuated more than most, hooking up with men they met along the way, returning when the love affairs had soured, but the ambience went deeper than that. The group as a whole symbolized acceptance. Come or go, it doesn’t matter a flying fig to us was their attitude. We take you for who-or what-you are.
Quite who had stayed and who was new to the company after last October’s breakaway was not entirely clear. Renata, bless her plastered face, was one of the old gang, the fat boy who’d been gelded at the tender age of twelve another. Felix the dancer quite possibly another. But just as the Digger had been incorporated seamlessly into their society, so had everyone else.
At last, the blue parts of the canvas, at least this canvas anyway, had been refreshed and now the whole backdrop radiated brightness and sparkle. Just like the new play. The Digger leaned back, admiring the handiwork, not only on the canvas, but the production as a whole. For instance, too small to sustain a separate orchestra, Renata’s talents were augmented by the cast, who had been given training in at least one percussion instrument, whether cymbals, tambourine, castanets or sistrum. That was how it was with Caspar’s Spectaculars. Teamwork all the way. They were like raisins in a bun, the Digger thought. Separate, yet bound together in a warm and pleasant setting.
It took a moment before it filtered through that, for the word ‘they’, one should substitute the word ‘we’.
The Digger was also one of the raisins in the bun.
*
And the body in the grave pointed an accusing finger.
‘I am not the last,’ it said. ‘Am I?’
Nine
There is no point being a sponsor of a Halcyon Spectacular if no one gets to hear about the wretched thing. Advertising is everything these days, and Claudia had no intention of her support being anything less than the talk of the town. Impossible, of course, if the players never set foot out of doors. They were, after all, her advertising hoardings. Let them bloody advertise.
‘I am not sure we have the time, dear lady, to indulge in the luxury of relaxation,’ Caspar protested, his turban askew and little round face daubed with paint. ‘Think of the scenery, the costumes, the script, the choreography!’
‘Think of the money.’ Once word got round, he’d be booked solid right through the summer.
‘Doris, Jemima, Erinna, Skyles, drop what you’re doing and get your glad rags on,’ Caspar ordered. ‘Adah, Ion, you go with them.’
‘But-’ they chorused in unison.
‘Butts are for billy goats.’ Caspar clapped his little fat hands. ‘Come along, come along, we haven’t got all day, we have an important engagement lined up.’ To Claudia he asked under his breath, ‘Which might be what, exactly?’
Actors! Don’t know the time of day it is. Don’t even know what day they’ve lost track of time on.
‘It’s the Festival of the Lambs,’ she reminded him, tapping the calendar nailed to the wall right in front of him and wondering, was wolf fur thick enough to wow them at the sacrifice or should she stick with beaver? Decisions, decisions. Quality or colour. Dear Diana, whatever was she thinking of! There would be more than enough colour with Caspar’s rainbow troupe. Especially if Jemima opened her mouth.
Slowly, so that everyone could get an eyeful, the multicoloured snake made its way down to the Forum. Being market day, the city was thronging with farmers, shoppers, beggars, hucksters, but all heads turned at the procession which stopped outside the tiny Temple of Janus. Claudia had deliberately taken her litter, looping up the drapes and sod the tramontana, to catch as many gawpers as she could. Gossip was still one of the best publicity devices on the market, and the sight of Gaius Seferius’s young widow bumping along in a litter draped in turquoise and silver and shouldered by eight hunks in matching tunics with a peacock of a companion was enough to set tongues wagging, never mind the human billboards bringing up the rear.
‘They know what to do?’ she murmured, alighting from the litter.
‘Trust me, madam, they are professionals.’ Caspar righted his turban and hitched up his belt. ‘Well, some of them, anyway.’
Claudia glanced at the preparations being made for the sacrifice. No knives laid out, no incense burning, the fire barely lit. Excellent. Another half an hour to the start, unless she missed her guess. Just right. By the time that poor ram was led up to the altar, no one except the priest would be interested in its fate. Even Janus would have both his faces trained upon the show.
There had been a bit of a problem at the beginning. Since it was sacrilege for women to attend a sacrifice without their heads veiled, how was Claudia to make the volumptuous beauties stand out from the crowd? The men were easy. Unlike the big theatres, strolling male actors relied on the age-old technique of gurning to bring about laughs, and Claudia was convinced that Doris and Skyles would have the crowd regretting they’d not practised their pelvic-floor exercises more meticulously. But that didn’t solve the problem of the plumptious beauties, when women were only allowed on stage providing their heads were covered. (Exactly. Even though convention encouraged them to end up wearing nothing else, they still had to wear a veil!) Today, the solution was simple. Keep the girls veiled, but have the boys wear proper theatrical masks, then no one could have any doubt about what the group could be. Or who was sponsoring them!
‘… this is but a detail,’ Doris was saying, supposedly reading from a script on the portico of the basilica adjacent to the temple. ‘We must address the fundamental issue here-’
At which point, Jemima bent down and touched her toes. The veil, naturally, slipped off.
‘Some fundament there!’ Ion shouted from the steps.
‘I wouldn’t mind getting to the bottom of it, that’s for sure,’ Skyles jeered from the other side of the group.
The crowd shuffled closer. Jemima promptly lifted her hem and peered at them through her chunky ankles.
‘What are you lot laughing at?’ She straightened up and looked from left to right, adopting a puzzled air. ‘No, come on. What?’