Second Act Read Online Free PDF

under their burdens of chests, trunks and baggage, their stomachs rumbling from hunger, and marvelled at this amazing new direction that her life was taking.
    Not taking on a string of gadfly actors.
    Going straight.
    *
    Excitedly, the company gathered up the array of trunks and clutter.
    Packed in the tight, concise way that only travelling people manage to achieve were all the things essential to a theatrical performance. Costumes. Buskins. Musical instruments. Masks. Painted scenery boards were far too bulky for a troupe of strolling players to cope with, and for that reason painted canvases served as backdrops. These could then be rolled up tight and hung quickly and easily by means of a simple pulley system.
    Gripping the leather strap of one of the prop chests and oblivious to the running chatter of the young lad on the other, the Digger smiled.
    A lot of things had happened since autumn.
    And they kept getting better and better.

Five
    Claudia’s lanky Macedonian steward did not so much as blink when his mistress charged into the atrium, threw her fur cloak into his arms, chafed her hands over the charcoals in the brazier, then calmly announced that there would be twenty strolling players arriving shortly who would be staying over Saturnalia, oh and could he prepare a hot bath, please, her feet were blocks of ice.
    Leonides didn’t blink, for the simple reason that he couldn’t.
    He just stood there, beaver fur halfway up his nostrils, paralysed.
    God knows, when Master Gaius was alive, there was a constant traipse of clients, scribes, secretaries and messengers buzzing in and out. It wasn’t that he couldn’t cope. Or that there had been any less traffic in the house since the master’s death. Admittedly, it was a different kind of busy and heaven help him, it was nothing to have the master’s carping relatives in one room, members of certain law-enforcement agencies in another and irate moneylenders in a third, whilst he ran back and forth between them like some demented monkey, serving wine and honey cakes while the mistress was out implicating herself in an even deeper jam. But all the same. Strolling players?
    Leonides dragged himself to his senses. No point in lamenting. The deed was done and the person who could talk the young mistress into changing her mind hadn’t been born yet.
    ‘Lock up the silver,’ he urged the household slaves. ‘Take everything away that might be flogged before we’ve had a chance to notice that it’s missing, plan on four to a room and don’t forget to count the blankets on the bed.’
    Outside, voices, common ones at that, were growing louder. The dog next door began to howl. Leonides knew exactly how it felt. Within seconds, a laughing, shivering, grumbling prism of colours, shapes and textures surged through the vestibule door, filling the atrium with odours of wet wool and leather, cheap scent and cosmetics. What had he done to offend the gods, he wondered? He, who led the household prayers piously every morning and poured generous libations with conscientious regularity.
    ‘Dear lady.’
    A small tornado in scarlet embroidered kaftan and what looked for all the world like a blue parrot bobbing on his head pushed his way to the front of the crush, his shining eyes on Claudia.
    ‘Allow me to compliment you on your charming house. Utterly enchanting, madam. Just like your wondrous self.’
    ‘Enough with the flattery, Caspar, I’ve already allocated you a guest bedroom,’ Claudia laughed. The others would have to take their chances in the slave quarters.
    ‘Dear lady, my motives are entirely selfless,’ Caspar said, affecting a mock wound. ‘Your domicile positively oozes taste. Sophistication and elegance weep from every marble column.’
    Claudia was glad he approved. Many of the features were additions (costly ones at that) she’d had installed upon her husband’s death. Features designed to impress potential business contacts, proof that Gaius’s business