‘What do you know about these people?’ Orbilio whispered, applauding loudly as Felix retired from the stage. Quite a few of the slaves had slipped in to watch, Claudia noticed. Leonides, the cook, several of the boiler-house boys, half a dozen of the kitchen girls (to swoon over Skyles, most likely), plus a small contingent of the cleaning staff, too.
‘What’s to know?’ she replied as Skyles, dressed as Augustus in imperial purple and with a laurel crown over a cropped wig, strode on to the stage with Doris, as the Emperor’s lushly adorned wife, on his arm. Her agent’s report echoed in her head. There is nothing on this man at all, he insisted. He is self-made in every sense of the word.
‘What do I do all day?’ Skyles boomed, and dammit he even sounded like Augustus. ‘ Livia, darling, haven’t you seen the giraffes I’ve brought back from the African plains? The black bulls from Spain? The lions from the Syrian desert?’
‘ Exactly. All you do is play zoo — ’
That was it. Chip-chip-chip at the political scene. Nothing too contentious, just a gentle poking of fun at the expansion of the Empire, and fingers crossed Livia won’t take offence or we’ll all be facing lions from the Syrian desert. Seated on the floor with her back to the pillar, Flavia applauded Skyles’s every word and movement, funny or otherwise.
‘You men are all the same,’ Doris-as-Livia said. ‘I suppose you think it’s easy, being a woman, while you’re out potting Germans and Gauls all day long?’
Beside her, Orbilio stared at his thumbnail. ‘I apologize for the subterfuge, but I felt it was necessary, because of the Halcyon Rapist.’
‘I do have a bodyguard,’ she reminded him sweetly. ‘Or is one Security Policeman better than six lowly slaves?’
‘… Livia, darling, last year I built eight-two temples. All you did was weave me this shirt…’
Claudia clapped, not so much because it was a funny line (indeed the humour came not from the script but in the fact that the scene was set inside a humble thatched cottage, another dig at the Emperor’s asceticism), but because she didn’t want Caspar to think his satire was so poor that it made her attention drift. Beside her, Orbilio understood and said nothing until Jemima, Hermione and Adah came on to perform the first of three song-and-dance routines. Since they weren’t acting, the girls weren’t obliged to wear veils for this part and, versatility being the name of the game, they played their own percussion instruments. Hermione’s lisp was unnoticeable when she sang.
Orbilio leaned sideways in his seat. ‘It occurs to me that the rapist might be an actor,’ he said.
Claudia swallowed. ‘Because of the mask?’
‘Not entirely.’ He gave a broad beam of encouragement to the girls, but the smile didn’t extend to his eyes. ‘The rapist only strikes during the winter solstice, which just happens to be when most strolling players are in Rome. He’s also a man with a pathological hatred of women, who has the ability to stalk his victims without arousing suspicion.’
‘He could be any one of several entertainers, not just actors,’ she said. ‘An itinerant musician, an acrobat, a juggler, a rope walker.’
‘I’m sure he is.’ He turned round to face her. ‘I’m just not prepared to take any chances.’
‘Well, he’s not one of the Spectaculars, that’s for sure.’ Jemima, Adah and Hermione left the stage, and Erinna and Fenja took their place, but Claudia barely registered the change. ‘After all, I think I’d know if I was harbouring a monster under my roof.’
A muscle tweaked at the side of his mouth. ‘You didn’t know I was here.’
‘Oh, you’re like a draught. You sneak in anywhere.’
‘Thanks. It makes a change from being told I’m a load of hot air. But the point is, Claudia, I’m worried.’
‘Orbilio, I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.’
‘If you were able to take care of yourself,’ he countered mildly, ‘you wouldn’t be so wary of the Security Police. But shabby as it is to admit to such base needs, it’s not just you I’m thinking of.’ He drew a deep breath and held it. ‘There’s been a shift in policy at Headquarters. My boss insists it’s purely political, but whatever the reason, he’s handed the case over to Dymas.’
‘Then let Dymas have the headache of solving it.’
‘I can’t,’ Marcus rasped, and suddenly he looked ten years older. ‘Because of me, an innocent man went to the lions. I have to make that right.’
Claudia pleated the folds of her dress. That’s the trouble when you keep saving the world, Marcus. After a while, the world comes to expect it.
‘Silly question,’ she said, ‘but you have spoken to last year’s victims?’
‘Some.’ He rose to his feet and called for an encore, but she could see his mind was elsewhere. ‘Unfortunately, so deep was the trauma that it’s virtually impossible to draw the girls out.’
He spiked his hands through his hair. As a member of the same sex as the beast who’d perpetrated those brutalities, how could he explain how it felt when he saw the victims recoil physically-and sometimes violently-when he and Dymas had knocked on their doors?
‘All we’re doing is forcing the victims to relive the agony,’ he said thickly. ‘They don’t deserve that.’
One had trembled and started to whimper. Another curled herself into a ball and howled like a wolf. One screamed her lungs out. One clawed at her own flesh, drawing blood. Worst of all, one, like the Damascan girl Deva, had even tried to commit suicide. Only that poor bitch had more success.
‘What makes you so certain you didn’t put the culprit on trial last time?’
‘That’s the trouble. I was sure.’
He waited until the intermission between the second and final routine before outlining the evidence that had nailed the man he and Dymas believed to be the Halcyon Rapist. Information through street contacts that led them to a suspect. The mask beneath the suspect’s bed, which tallied with the description the victims had given. The strong smell of aniseed on his clothes.
‘Crucially, of course, the suspect signed a confession.’
‘Wouldn’t you, under torture?’ Claudia countered.
‘He was a citizen,’ Orbilio replied with the ghost of a grin. ‘Not Captain Moschus. He was never put to the torture. And anyway, it was immaterial. Three of the victims identified him.’
As Fenja and Erinna wound up their routine, Claudia digested the information. Well, if those were the facts, those were the facts. Unless…
Unless -
She thought of the mask and the creeping around, the rapist’s ability to merge with his surroundings, the mentality of the man who committed such visceral crimes. Secrets, secrets, so many secrets.
Then, suddenly, as though a lamp had been lit, everything fell into place.
*
‘Master Orbilio?’ The messenger nodded apologetically to Claudia. ‘Sorry, sir, but the steward says you’re to come home as a matter of urgency.’
Jupiter, Juno and Mars, should she tell him now, Claudia wondered. Or think it through first? Later, she decided. She’d tell him about her suspicions later, because Mr Upright-Conscientious-and-Thorough had made what he believed was one terrible mistake on this case. He’d need to be one hundred and ten per cent convinced next time round.
The arrival of the messenger provided the very breathing space that she needed. Yes, of course, she thought she was right. But far preferable to jumping to conclusions and forcing the pieces of the puzzle to fit, wasn’t it better to lay the evidence out in her own mind first? Check any cracks in her theory?
Claudia watched Marcus go. And prayed to Jupiter that her hunch was wrong.
*
‘The lady is in your bedroom, sir,’ Orbilio’s steward announced.
‘Lady?’ he queried. ‘What lady?’
But he might have known. Angelina lay sprawled across his wide double couch in a diaphanous silver gown.
‘I think we should paint these walls green,’ she purred, ‘and have clouds on the ceiling, so we can pretend we’re making love outdoors, under the open sky.’