‘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.
They had come to the apartment block that her bodyguard had followed Marcellus to, to confirm Claudia’s suspicions about her brother-in-law. Prime site on the Aventine Hill, with the Imperial Palace directly opposite and the Circus down below, establishments in this part of town rarely came more exclusive. Exquisite frescoes in the corridors reinforced the notion, as did the ornate carvings on the wooden stair rails, the painted stuccoed ceilings. The strong scent of elecampane burning in wall-mounted braziers emphasized the status this building carried, and not a single window had been sheeted out by heavy felt or skins. They were all protected by proper glass. Claudia contrasted this with the moths having such a field day in Julia’s wardrobe.