Second Act (15 page)

He retied the pouch, opened another and tipped out a series of opaque yellow crystals, each forming a perfect metallic cube. A third pouch contained crystals of a much brighter yellow. Needle-like, these crystals were sulphur, while yet another pouch kept separate the gritty, vermilion-coloured cinnabar, which the old man had insisted was essential. The final pouch contained the most precious ingredient of all. A substance known as Poseidon Powder.

Poseidon was the name the Greeks gave to the God of the Sea, who conjured up storms and cleaved the land with his trident, sending waves three storeys high to devastate the land after he’d shaken it. Fine and chalky, white as flour, Poseidon Powder was only found in a handful of secret places in the world, one of which lay close to the rose-red city of Petra in the Jordanian desert.

These nitre beds were formed from camel dung from the huge caravans that used to camp outside the city in the old days, before the sands—and the caravans—shifted. Over time, the dung reacted with the salty soil and the moisture in the air to form crystals that dissolved in rain then dried into a fine, white powder on the surface. To the Arabs who guarded these precious nitre beds, the powder was known as salt of Petra. Saltpetre.

For Cotta’s father, this substance was the key to eternal life.

For Cotta, it was the key to releasing the eagle.

In its present form, the powder was not dangerous, but when mixed with other substances, it was—as his father discovered—highly combustible. What Cotta needed to know was the precise formula the old man had worked to.

Only one other person knew the answer. The servant who had helped the old man with his fatal experiment.

A servant who had apparently vanished into thin air.

Seventeen

Julia’s husband, Marcellus, had no idea he was sitting a mere hundred paces from the Arch-Hawk of the Senate, and even if he had, he would have imagined the Senator’s thoughts were concerned more with the burning of Dacian cities and the storming of Scythian fortresses than how a pinch of chalky powder would change the future of Rome. Every afternoon around this time Marcellus took himself off to the library. Not any old library, mind you, though heaven knows there were plenty to choose from. For Marcellus, there was only one library which mattered. The one adjacent to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine.

The incentives were numerous. The view, for one. The vast spread of the city sprawled away below him, he could watch the ants bustling back and forth across the open plazas. Slaves doubled under the weight of barrels, beams and sacks, children scampering, donkeys plodding along with bulging panniers. He could see litters carrying the rich. Young men carrying the old. In fact, every stratum of humanity passed below him here, and if a man preferred a gentler pace on which to rest his eyes, he only had to gaze across to the rolling hills beyond, or watch the barges being hauled along the banks of the Tiber by patient oxen. On the other hand, if it was excitement that he craved, he could always crane his neck and watch the charioteers practising in the Circus Maximus below, leather chest protectors tied tight around their torsos and helmets to protect them when they fell. Not that Marcellus could see any of those things today. Low, grey clouds obscured the hills and released a relentless shrouding drizzle.

But if the view wasn’t enough to lure a person up the Palatine’s steep embankment, there was the sheer grandeur of the temple itself. The breathtaking colonnades of yellow Numidian marble. Exquisite frescoes, statues, marble busts, not to mention the Great Frieze depicting Augustus’s victory over Antony and Cleopatra’s fleet at Actium. Some of the finest paintings and sculptures the world had ever seen were on display here, many of them precious beyond price, being works by the old masters, but views and artistic splendours were not the motivation behind Marcellus’s daily visits. He didn’t give a hoot about the Greek and Latin archives, either, or the fact the ancient Sybilline Prophecies were stored at the base of Apollo’s bravura statue.

Important men passed through this library. Senators, philosophers, landowners, merchants, shipbuilders, shipowners, shipping magnates. One day might find Marcellus engaged in debate with a tribune, another day with a prefect for the roads. Sooner or later, he reasoned, one of them was bound to shove a co
mmi
ssion his way.

There were few potential patrons in the library this afternoon, however. Rain invariably kept people indoors and now that the light was fading, there were even fewer. But Marcellus was determined to remain here to the very last, and he was happily whiling away his time on Plato’s treatise on the—

‘Janus Croesus, Claudia!’ He picked himself up from where he’d been sent sprawling across the floor and looked around. ‘Did you see what just happened? Some bastard sneaked up behind me and socked me clean off my stool.’

‘You need a shave,’ she said, sucking her knuckles.

Her?
‘What did you do that for?’ he asked.

‘Pleasure,’ she purred.

Marcellus never expected to figure out what went through women’s heads, but come on. What the hell was wrong with Plato? ‘You’ve killed my reputation as an architect, you know that.’

‘If your reputation had any sense of decorum, it would have committed suicide months ago,’ she retorted. ‘Outside.’

‘But—’

‘
Outside
.’

Trailing behind her, Marcellus wished he could have felt something other than a stirring in his loins, but by heaven, his sister-in-law was magnificent when roused. Her breasts heaved, her eyes flashed, a curl would spring loose from its hairpin, and although Marcellus would never have obeyed any other woman’s orders, much less trot meekly after them, with Claudia he would jump off the Tarpeian Rock if she asked him.

‘Would you mind telling me what that was all about?’ he hissed outside. ‘I’ll be the laughing stock of the Apollo Library for months.’

A lie. He knew damn well they’d take her for a disgruntled mistress and that, if anything, his stock would soar.

‘How long before it sinks into that thick skull of yours that prestigious patrons aren’t placing contracts with you, Marcellus, because you spend too much time idling it away in this blessed library?’

‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, love.’ His patronizing would have made more impact, had he not had to break into a run to keep up with her. ‘This is what’s known in the business as “networking”. Making contacts, sowing seeds—’

‘Bollocks.’ In the shade of the primrose marble portico, Claudia rounded on her brother-in-law. ‘Has it never occurred to you, Marcellus, that if you were out supervising projects occasionally, these people might actually feel better disposed towards you? That they might see you then as a successful architect with a thriving business to run? Instead, you come over as a sad loser, hanging around hoping for work.’

‘Well.’ Marcellus’s complexion turned the colour of porridge. ‘That’s pretty much the sum of it, isn’t it?’

‘The Emperor boasts that he’s turned a city of brick into a city of marble in under seventeen years,’ she replied. ‘You must be the only architect in the whole bloody Empire without work, so ask yourself: What am I doing wrong?’

‘Um—’

‘That wasn’t a question. Now then, I’ve been thinking.’ They had reached the shrine in the portico that looked out over the city and, sheltered by the high walls from the wind and the rain, Claudia settled herself on the top step. ‘Julia’s told you I’m sponsoring the Halcyon Spectaculars?’

‘Is it true the girls are going to strip nak—?’

Her glare cut him dead. ‘By the time the curtain goes up, you will have put together a convincing portfolio of contracts that you’ve undertaken in—I don’t know, Pisa, Florentia—places far enough away for people not to know the owners of the houses you are supposed to have built.’

‘I specialize in warehouses,’ he reminded her dolefully.

‘Even better. Who cares who designed which depot where. That gives you three clear days to—’

‘Three? I thought the first Spectacular was on the eighteenth?’

‘By popular demand, the schedule’s been brought forward to Saturnalia Eve, so you’ll have to move fast, and you’ll need a fistful of new proposals to flash around, too. That way, people will think you have a whole bank of overseers beavering away behind the scenes, earning you so many gold pieces that you’re more than able to squander your valuable time in the library. I’ll get one of my scribes to give you a list of who’s attending and when, so you can tailor your pitch.’

‘I say.’ Marcellus’s pitted cheeks glowed like a mulberry. ‘This is dashed good of you, Claudia. I’ll start drawing up that fictitious portfolio first thing in the morning, and don’t worry about potential new projects. I have sheafs of proposals at home in my office.’ He put his arm round her shoulder and squeezed. ‘You know, Claudia, perhaps you and I—’

‘In your dreams,’ she snapped, flicking the hand off.

Marcellus couldn’t believe it. He was going to be rich again. Rich. Just like the old days, when Gaius was alive!

‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m a good architect, you have to believe that, it’s just that I’ve never been hot on the sales side of the business. I either fumble my presentation, or drop the damn drawings and then I’ll make the price sound too high or I’ll oversell it. The long and the short of it is, I’m just not cut out to be a salesman—’

If she heard one more ‘I’ from him, so help her, she’d black it.

‘This is not about
you
, Marcellus. We both know that my husband secured all your contracts for you while he was alive, then after he died you relied on me baling you out. Well, I didn’t mind you doing bugger all—for a while. Sooner or later, I reasoned, Marcellus is bound to stand on his own two feet.’

‘I’ve been trying.’

‘Exceedingly.’

Suddenly the impact of her words sunk in. ‘You… You’re not cutting my allowance? Think of little Flavia. You can’t punish her because of me. And Julia. Think of Julia!’

‘Unlike you, you selfish oaf, it’s your bloody wife I’m thinking of.’

And before he could draw breath to protest, he was being lambasted by a list of the moth-eaten furs Julia had brought with her, of gowns two seasons old, of worn shoes.

‘She turned up at my house without a single slave to attend her, and it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t because she was penny-pinching. She’s had to sell them to pay your household bills!’

‘Times have been hard without contracts.’

‘The ball’s in your court, Marcellus. If you’re no good at selling, hire an agent who is, because yes. As of now, your allowance is indeed severed.’

‘B-b-ut how will we live?’

‘Ah.’

Marcellus had a bad feeling about the cat-like grin that she shot him.

That’s the next little problem we’re going to solve,’ Claudia said. ‘Follow me.’

*

She didn’t begrudge paying Marcellus an allowance. Hell, no. Far better to buy the Sponger Family a set of comfortable living standards than for them to contest Gaius’s will, because god knows, if they dug hard enough, they’d find enough skeletons that the weight of them falling out of the closet would probably crush Julia and Marcellus to death. But comfort zones are one thing. The knowledge that the allowance was squandered on floozies quite another.

She snapped her fingers and a torch bearer came running to light their way across town. This went deeper than Julia not having clothes befitting her station, or being unable to heat her house properly, or even having a slave count that was going down and not up. Family values are the lynchpin upon which Roman society hangs. Claudia kicked a beetroot into the gutter. It went beyond Marcellus bejewelling his mistress at the expense of his family. Their social status was a reflection upon Claudia’s social status, and she could hardly project herself as the epitome of wealth, success and prosperity if her sister-in-law went round wearing rags. Society would expect her to intercede. Which she was. Only not in the way Society might imagine.

‘By the time I’ve finished with the gold-digging trollop who’s had her hooks in you these past months,’ she told Marcellus, ‘you’ll have enough to live on until March. After that, you’re on your own.’

Untrue. She wouldn’t let him. Couldn’t afford to. But there was no reason to let him know that, and you never know, the shock tactics might just work.

‘You don’t know what it’s like, my marriage,’ he bleated, as they navigated the tortuous stone steps of the Aventine. ‘Whenever I felt frisky, Julia stiffened up and stared at a point over my shoulder, and no man can make love to a statue. I’m thirty-six years old, Claudia. I can’t be expected to live without sex. It’s unnatural.’

Darkness had cloaked the city and the drizzle had taken on an icy bite, but warm inside her furs and with their path illuminated by the bearer’s torch, Claudia barely noticed as Marcellus grumbled his way along one winding alleyway after another. No one said Julia was in the right.

‘I really love my little rosebud,’ he said, ‘and the instant Flavia gets married, I’m divorcing that frigid cow. I’ve had it to here with her endless bloody carping and now I’ve been given a shot at happiness, I’d be a damn fool not to grab it.’

That was one way to look at it, Claudia supposed. She’d taken a rather different slant on the affair, and had a sneaking suspicion hers was the more accurate.