‘Why should the Empire rest on her laurels,’ they cried, carrying his echo into the streets, ‘when we can get our hands on the gold mines of Dacia?’
Living in death-trap tenements, where burglary was rife and fire claimed victims every night of the year, Cotta’s followers saw a future in which they paid fewer taxes and less tribute once the shipping revenues from the Black Sea fell into Roman hands. They saw valuable minerals from the Orient rebuilding their slums the way the spoils of war had raised temples of marble from brick. They saw Indian spices paying for water coming straight to their courtyards, Britannia paying for their sons to be educated, African campaigns providing them with beds stuffed with feathers not straw, and where the only thing that moved on the mattress was the occupant, not the fleas.
‘Rome can win,’ they rallied. ‘Our army is the best in the world, we have wealth on our side, strength in discipline, let’s not waste the opportunity.’
Impoverished men with impoverished vision, they couldn’t grasp the Emperor’s argument that strength lay in holding on. In reinforcing ties with one’s neighbours, rather than testing them. Strength lay in trade. In security. In peace. Only with stability could the Empire stand firm. One had to consolidate before one moved on.
‘Bullshit,’ the crowed bayed. ‘We’ve done it before, we can do it again, the eagle and the hawk are invincible.’
All Orbilio could hope for was that, this close to Saturnalia, Cotta’s incitements would fall on deaf ears. Young or old, rich or poor, sick or healthy, this was a season when people were happy and heaven knows, no month matched December for festivals. Eighteen, to be precise, with chariot races, dancing, donkey derbies and banquets, processions, dedications and music. This would herald a New Year. A fresh start for everyone. Halcyon days, indeed.
And on the loose, the Halcyon Rapist.
At the top of Fig Street, Marcus paused to tickle the ears of a bright-eyed ginger kitten and found himself trapped as the kitten rolled over and demanded a belly rub, squirming and purring with pleasure.
‘It’s all right for you, you rascal. The most you ever have to do to keep vermin off the streets is chase rats.’
At which point, the kitten discovered that toga hems were the gateway to a wonderful playground, and it was with considerable difficulty that he disengaged the sharp little claws and repositioned the squirming bundle back on the pavement. Being a kitten, of course, and not a puppy, it instantly dismissed its new acquaintance in favour of phantom moths, squirting up the fig tree like liquid.
The streets were eerily quiet. The fourth Lamb Festival of the year was also a holiday for beasts of burden, so no delivery carts rattled over the cobbles tonight, and no plod of oxen or whinny of mules broke through the silence. Only the odd creak of a barrow, the off-key song of a late-night carouser in the distance, the shuffle of a funeral bier as it was carried away for cremation unmourned. Walking these silent streets without even his own shadow for company, Orbilio could see how a young woman could be hauled into an alleyway and raped. But nights like this were rare in Rome. Day and night the city bristled with frantic activity, and it was a well-worn joke that more people died from insomnia than the plague. Moreover, the rapist snatched his victims in daylight.
Nor were these, strictly speaking, the Halcyon Days. Officially, they didn’t start until the fifteenth of December, bridging the seven days either side of the winter solstice, and today was only the eleventh. The name Halcyon Rapist came from the animal himself.
‘Remember well your halcyon lover,’ he told his victims, before launching into a string of obscenities so vile that the girls couldn’t bring themselves to repeat it.
Last year, this self-styled halcyon lover had committed fourteen vicious assaults over the holiday period, with the exception of the four days of Saturnalia itself, his last rape falling on the final the halcyon day. A pattern which, goddammit, was repeating again.
Head down, his toga drawn close against his body for warmth, Orbilio turned into his own street just as the herald called the midnight hour. It had been a long day. Trying to find witnesses and not succeeding. Trying to convince himself it was a copycat crime-and not succeeding there, either.
What would he say, what could he say, to the mother of the man he’d sent to face the lions?
Round and round, like donkeys on a treadmill, his thoughts had been tramping the same ground. Stale thoughts, because he’d gone through this process last year and was finding nothing new this time round. His only clue was that the four days ‘off’ suggested the killer couldn’t get away during Saturnalia, but dammit that applied to half the men in Rome. Which, at a rough count, left him with a quarter of a million potential suspects. Mother of Tarquin, he needed to sleep. Perhaps in the morning he might be able to get a handle on this. Find a new angle to explore. A crack to probe.
Glancing up as he approached his own house, he blinked. And blinked again. There, in the middle of the street, a woman was…dancing. Not a drunken sway, or some spontaneous burst of emotion expressing itself in a quick tap of the feet followed by a spring in the air and maybe a click of the heels. This was professional choreography at work. He paused. There was something vaguely familiar about the sinuous Egyptian ballet. About the plaited Cleopatra wig, the silver breast band and tight fringed skirt that barely covered her modesty, the shapely legs that seemed to go on for ever. Then he remembered. Two nights ago, at his cousin’s house, this girl had been hired to dance for the all-male party.
‘It’s Angelina, isn’t it?’ He vaguely remembered his cousin introducing them.
The dance stopped abruptly. In the light of the torches that burned in sconces either side of his front door, the beads in her black wig shone like jewels.
‘Marcus!’ She was breathless after her routine, making her pretty breasts heave in a most interesting rhythm, and he couldn’t help noticing the effect the cold air had had on her nipples.
‘What are you doing here?’ He glanced around, noticed her cloak rolled up against his doorstep and flung it round her shoulders.
‘Well, I was rather hoping you were going to invite me inside.’ Her eyes were bright, either from cold or excitement, and he had a sinking feeling as to which of the two was the culprit.
‘I, er-’
Debating whether the offer of money would offend her, Orbilio was saved the bother. She pulled off her wig, shook her head and a cascade of honey-coloured curls frothed around her ears like a halo. Mother of Tarquin, the pixie!
‘You stood me up last night, you naughty boy.’ She combed her fingers through her hair with professional ease. ‘I had dinner waiting and everything, but you didn’t even send me a note.’
Shit. ‘It was the same thing tonight,’ he said truthfully. ‘I didn’t finish until midnight.’
‘Yes, I know, you poor pumpkin.’ Angelina linked her arm with his and tousled his fringe. ‘You’re working on those halcyon rapes. I heard. That’s why I came to you, instead of you having to trail over to my place. Makes more sense, doesn’t it?’
‘Angelina-’
He remembered chatting to her at his cousin’s house, where one thing had obviously led to another and, fuelled by wine, he’d ended up in her bed. But what, for him, had been a one-night stand clearly meant more to her.
‘Angelina, we need to talk.’ Not inside his own house, either. ‘There’s a tavern three streets away with a crackling log fire, we can warm you up there and, er… ’
He let the sentence trail. Milo’s tavern would be quiet tonight, without the delivery trade. Orbilio would be able to let her down gently over a meal as well as anywhere, he supposed.