Second Act by Marilyn Todd Page A

realized that the authorities would have caught on sooner or later and that, when they did, Moschus was the type who’d squeal like a litter of piglets.
    As the fourth tribune approached the rostrum to a deafening applause, Orbilio realized that the legionary who’d just entered the hall was edging through the crowd in his direction. The legionary’s nose was pinched with cold, but then legionaries, unfortunately, don’t have nine yards of woollen toga in which to swaddle themselves in winter.
    ‘For you, sir,’ he mouthed. ‘Urgent.’
    It wasn’t difficult for Marcus to unroll the parchment quietly, not the way the soldier had been gripping it until it had turned soft, but he resisted the urge to use Callisunus’s head as a rest upon which to read it. Suddenly the ceremony, his case review, even his normally restful musings on Claudia were sent spinning into oblivion. Every muscle in his body seemed to have been paralysed. He couldn’t breathe. He read it twice. And then again. Unable to believe what he was seeing.
    The note was from a colleague. Dymas. The note was brief.
    ‘The halcyon rapes.’ it read. ‘They’ve started again.’
    Impossible.
    Orbilio’s hand shook as he folded up the note and tucked it into the folds of his toga.
    Impossible.
    Starting a year ago to the day, fourteen women were raped, one every day for the two weeks bridging the winter solstice. The attacks were the most brutal Marcus had ever known, had shocked everyone involved in the hunt for the rapist, traumatizing the victims beyond belief. In broad daylight, girls were dragged off the streets, stripped, forced to commit oral sex on their masked attacker, then buggered and dumped on the middens. Once the halcyon days were over, the rapes stopped, but the search did not. It was the end of March before Orbilio tracked the bastard down. Luckily, three of the victims had been able to identify him as their assailant. The incriminating mask was found under his bed. His clothes stank of the aniseed his victims had mentioned. More importantly, the rapist eventually signed a confession.
    The bastard could not be on the rampage again, it was impossible.
    Orbilio had personally supervised the execution.

Eight
    One of the best things about Saturnalia was the atmosphere in the run-up to the holiday. Wall-to-wall with festivals beforehand, this was a time of jollity and fun. Of decorating houses with greenery and garlands. Of celebrations. Banquets. Aid to the poor and needy. A time of exchanging gifts, of mooching round the craft market in the Colonnade of the Argonauts, which specialized in presents to exchange at Saturnalia. The ultimate time of revelry. Of peace and goodwill to men. An end to grudges.
    There was always an exception…
    ‘Sister-in-law.’ If Julia had spent the morning chewing alecost and washed it down with vinegar, her expression could not have been more sour. My house, stomped her footsteps down the peristyle. My marble pillars. My fountains. My sundial. My black hellebores in bloom.
    My arse, they were. Julia had just never come to terms with the fact that her brother hadn’t just cut her out of his will in favour of the young chit whom he’d married, but he hadn’t made any provision whatsoever for the daughter that he’d foisted on her and her husband years before. To Julia, it flew in the face of decency and reason, not to mention Roman law—and how Gaius got past that she would never know, but you didn’t need to look too closely to see that A Certain Party Not A Million Miles Away had had a hand in that!
    Forget the extenuating circumstances that existed at the time he made his will.
    Forget that the widow had been supporting the family ever since, even though Marcellus was an architect and should have been more than capable of supporting himself.
    And forget that, legally, Claudia didn’t owe them one black bean.
    Curdled milk ran in Julia’s veins. Grudges every bit a part of her as her long, thin nose