Second Act by Marilyn Todd Page B

thing in the morning, she would send Butico the three thousand sesterces ‘profit’ she’d made from Moschus. That would keep the dogs at bay and she’d just have to take it from there.
    Claudia closed the shutters and climbed back to bed, but the herald had called another hour before she finally drifted back to sleep.
    It’s unlikely her eyes would have closed at all, had she known she was separated by just a few bits of bricks and mortar from a killer.
    *
    The Digger had also been woken by the rumpus. Everyone had.
    The Digger also lay awake long after the disturbance had died down, but, unlike Claudia, the Digger did not get back to sleep.
    Killers do not know the luxury of peace of mind.
    *
    And the body in the grave nodded knowingly.
    ‘You’ll never get away with my murder,’ she sneered. ‘They’ll find you in the end. One way or another, they’ll find you and then you’ll have to pay.’

Twelve
    As festivals go, the Seven Hills of Rome wasn’t Deva’s favourite. She much preferred those which fell around the summer solstice, such as the Festival of Fortune, where she could wear her pretty summer bodices and weave flowers in her hair without crushing them under a woollen mantle to keep out the cold. But still. It was a festival. There would be processions, sacrifices, chariot races at the Circus Maximus later on, and tomorrow, with luck, pottery mugs might be on sale inscribed with the winners’ names, and she just might buy one of those for her man, to go with the tunic she was embroidering for him for Saturnalia.
    He didn’t care too much for embroidery, Deva knew, but she was Damascan and Damascan women didn’t let their men go about in plain cloth and that was that. He couldn’t have it both ways. If he liked the way she wore short bodices that revealed a tight midriff and fringed skirts that came halfway down her calf to show off her finely boned ankles, then he’d have to accept that every once in a while he’d have to look good for her. And since looking good in Damascan eyes meant wearing a tunic embroidered in traditional designs, then he could bloody well lump it.
    ‘You’ll rue the day you set up with a Roman,’ her mother had said. ‘It doesn’t do, two cultures crossing. No good can ever come of it.’
    Deva spat on to the pavement. What did her mother know? The old crone had been a widow these past fifteen years, she’d grown sour and miserable, and you’d think she’d have been pleased her only daughter had found a good man to settle down with. A herbalist, too! In fact, if Deva only had a child to present to him, her joy would be complete. She giggled. Of course, they’d only been together six months, her and her man. He’d hardly leap for joy if she handed him a bawling bundle and said, ‘There you are, love, that’s your son.’
    The joke sustained her as she crossed the Sublician Bridge, its timbers reverberating under the solid clomp of her clogs. Ahead, the sheds and warehouses lined up along the river looked grey and forbidding on this dull, damp day, the shadow of the Aventine Hill looming over them, but Deva wasn’t worried that there was no one else around so early in the morning. A pleasant change, not having to step over piles of steaming dung, or sidestep refuse left behind by the delivery carts, or be on the constant lookout for pickpockets and gropers.
    Turning up between the spice warehouse and a marble store and shifting her basket to her other arm, she squeezed the small brooch which lay in the palm of her hand. Bronze and engraved with an intricate leaf pattern, she knew her mother would find the gift ‘too Roman’ for her taste, but then the old crab found fault with everything these days, and you’d think she’d just get on with it and accept that she was a Damascan living in Rome and bloody well get on and enjoy the life and the customs.
    ‘That’s because you don’t know no better,’ her mother would snap. ‘You was born into it,