The Spook Who Spoke Again: A Flavia Albia Short Story Read online

  ‘So what do I need to do about it, Dama?’

  ‘Keep your head down and try to stop annoying people.’

  I promised him I would stop being annoying. It was easy. People are always making me say that.

  9

  I am brave. I was not worried. If any of the animal-keepers or acrobats were coming after me because I was the unwanted heir, I would thwart them with my cunning. All I had to remember was to look behind me when I was going anywhere, listen for sinister footsteps following me and watch out if any door handles began to open silently, That would be when I was sitting still indoors, probably absorbed in writing up one of my note tablets by the light of a whickering lamp.

  Of course in a tent there are no door handles. To enter a tent secretly, you have to untie the door tapes. That takes too long for you to creep up suddenly, because there is a long row of tapes that are tied up in bows all the way down the door flaps. They are not just to keep out unwelcome visitors while people inside are doing private things such as sleeping or nose-picking, they are to stop wind and rain. Weather is very insidious, Thalia had told me. I thought that was a silly thing to say in Rome in August.

  Of course a bad person with murderous intentions wouldn’t wait around untying a lot of tapes. They would simply cut through them in a trice, one big swoosh with a brilliantly sharp dagger that they had honed for days in readiness. Then they would have the dagger ready, for coming to get me. I must find a weapon of my own to use to kill them first. While they were looking everywhere in the tent for me evilly, I would jump out from behind Jason’s basket and take them by surprise.

  That reminded me about Jason. I still had to deal with him.

  Nobody at the Circus of Gaius and Nero was bothered about me, they were all too busily rehearsing and practising. I went by myself to the stone armchair seats and sat a few rows from the front. I spent some moments thinking sad thoughts about Ferret.

  These front seats are reserved for senators, so it was an appropriate place for a boy who might eventually become a big rissole. I would have explained this to any ushers who came to ask me to move off, but there were none that day. I was free to get used to the armchair seats, which I did almost immediately. They had an excellent view. They would be better with cushions, but a rissole would bring those, or have his people carry them in for him.

  I had saved up the cake Manlius Faustus bought for me so I ate it now, rather slowly because it was not long since I ate the other one that Hesper had provided. At one time I did see Thalia stand up straight and look around, as if she wondered what had become of me and whether I was doing anything she wanted me to stop. I waved, giving her my innocent look. That’s the look Father says is about as innocent as a nicker’s nadger. He never explains what a nicker is, nor the purpose of his nadging tool. That’s Father. He has wild ideas. We are all used to it.

  Thalia was too far away to tell whether I was up to something. My innocent look satisfied her. She just waved back cheerily and went back to what she had been doing. She didn’t know me as well as Helena Justina, who would have come over to check more carefully.

  After I licked the stickiness of the cake off my hands and as far around my face as my tongue would reach, I spent the whole of the rest of that afternoon sitting in the senators’ seats and thinking. I did an extremely large amount of useful thinking. A lot of people would have been very scared if they had known the thoughts I organised.

  One idea that came to me was this: if somebody wanted to scare me away, so I would go home and no longer threaten them by being the unwanted heir, they might have chosen the well-known wicked ploy I had heard about, the one where you don’t actually harm the person you are aiming at, but instead of that you do awful things to somebody else they care about. Had someone deliberately killed my ferret so I would take their hint?

  If that is what they tried to do, they must be a person who didn’t know the rules. You are supposed to leave the body on display in public. This is to send a visible message. Also, the person who has to receive the message must be able to understand what it is.

  If I had found Ferret’s limp corpse nailed on a big tent pole with his paws outstretched and his fur bedraggled, and with his dead eyes looking at me, I would have been very upset. I felt quite upset just imagining it. Even so, I would not at first have realised it meant, Get lost unwelcome newcomer, don’t steal our rights because Thalia is your mother. Or anyway, she’s one of your mothers.

  When it was time to leave the Circus, Thalia came to collect me so I asked her straight out. ‘Did you bring me here because I am intended to inherit your company?’

  ‘No, I bloody didn’t!’ How angry she was! I understood what was going on. It happens among people who are in charge and therefore occupied by many anxieties. Thalia had had a long day of people and animals not doing what she wanted. She sounded tired. Being tired had made her cross. ‘I brought you to muck out the cages – and look where that’s got me!’ She had a rant, while I listened politely. ‘It’s all very well looking forward to the day when I can say, “That’s my son, the Consul; he’s my boy!” You will have to be forty years of age, so what will that make me?’ I decided not to ask her. Mothers are old to start with, while according to Helena, having children puts many extra years on them. ‘Gods in Olympus, Postumus, I’ll be a hundred and long past caring.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘Well, if I’ve got to stick it out that long, I just hope I keep my libido and all my teeth.’

  I had never heard of a libido. Since Thalia was so fond of it, it must be some exotic creature that I had not met when I was sweeping out the menagerie. I wondered if it ate ferrets.

  I still thought Jason was my chief suspect. That meant Thalia was responsible for him doing what he did to Ferret. So as we went to have our dinner, I thought further about ways I might be able to impose retribution on Thalia.

  10

  We went over to where the theatre people had pitched their tents; we were having dinner with them that evening. It was supposed to be all friendly and festive. That means people who really despise one another are pretending to be best pals, although you can see they are not trying hard. Terrible music is played while you eat, on whiffly flutes and twangy string instruments of country design. People sing miserable songs about other people leaving home. The food is delicious though nobody notices; they all tuck into the wine flagons, then pretty soon some fights start.

  As a sensible boy who had been properly brought up in a good home, I would have to be the peacemaker, which I would achieve with my impressive oratory. I had learned it from a grammar teacher I was sent to once, until he asked to be relieved of the burden. But I was not sure the actors and performers would have been taught to respect the power of oratory.

  When we first arrived, Davos’ actors and Thalia’s acrobats and animal-keepers greeted one another as if they had not met properly earlier in the day. Some sounded quite cheerful and welcoming. A few groaned and muttered, though they did it in an open way that was meant to sound as if they didn’t mean it. ‘Oh it’s you again, you worthless lot. We heard you had all been thrown in jail in Arriminium!’

  ‘Was it your group who put on Medea at Neapolis and only two people came, both of them by accident because they thought it was to be fighting cocks,?’

  ‘And with a blind rat who left at the interval?’

  ‘No that was in Bruttium and it was a three-legged dog. The two men had been promised naked women in the chorus. They all stayed to the end, but only because someone had given them free tickets which they wouldn’t waste.’

  ‘Did you do the show?’

  ‘Yes, but we cut half the play so we could go for an early supper. And we put up the understudy as Jason.’

  I was confused by this, since why was Thalia’s python in Medea? Then I remembered it was another Jason, the hero of the play.

  ‘That understudy of yours needs some practice, by all accounts!’

  ‘But he’s a pretty
boy. He can just recite a laundry list and the women start fainting with pleasure. Any magistrates they are married to are so pleased the wives start taking an interest in sex again, they give us an extra night in the programme …’

  And so forth. I didn’t know how to converse like that so I just kept quiet. Thalia had introduced me to a group of the actors, then she left me with them while she went and sat beside Davos. I presumed that since he was her husband and she had not seen him for a while they wanted to talk privately about their adventures in the meantime. In fact for most of the evening they said nothing at all to each other; I know people who would say that proved they were married and had been for a long time. I looked at them in case they were quarrelling, but they were just taking no notice of each other, side by side. It did make them look as if they were jointly the king and queen of the feast.

  It was all rowdy but good natured. Everyone there seemed colourful in some way. They were used to having open-air dinners like this. Quite a few had not been at the Circus track that day so they were new to me. I also noticed children, though none of them came and spoke to me.

  Some of the actors I had been left with got up and walked over to another place, but three stayed with me as if they did not mind having been asked to look after me. These all had real names, plus names of the character they were to be in my father’s play and titles of the kind of character that was. I was flummoxed about all these; when they tried to explain it they decided to stick with their characters’ names.

  ‘So I am Moschion,’ announced the young man. He had unruly yellow hair that should have been cut about a month ago, but he let it tumble around in a way I wished mine would go. He looked like a wild brigand. ‘I’m the young hero. He is dim and cowardly; he cannot bestir himself to action, so he needs prodding.’

  ‘I am the clever slave who has to prod him. I do everything to sort out the plot,’ said another man, who was older but equally untidy and exciting. ‘I am called Bucco.’ That meant Fatso, but he was very thin. He told me this enabled him to show off his powers of acting.

  ‘And I play the Virgin, traditionally so-called – always a laugh as she works in the brothel,’ added a young lady. ‘She is Chrysis and is very beautiful –’ I didn’t think she was. She had a big wart on one cheek and her mouth went down at the corner in an ugly way, though I realised she couldn’t help it. Helena would say, she probably made up for it with a lovely personality. I think that was true because Chrysis kept picking out nice morsels of food and feeding them to me in a dainty way as if I were her little pet sparrow. ‘I never get any stage time even though I am supposed to be the prize the men are all wild to get. Moschion is in love with me, but he is too useless. The Spook has to pop up and order the idiot to get on with it.’

  ‘Who plays the Spook?’ I asked with interest.

  ‘Anyone who isn’t doing much at the time. He’s covered up. He has no words. You can just throw his sheet over your other costume and prance on.’

  That sounded like a good disguise.

  ‘Who is it the spook of? Who is dead?’

  ‘No one is dead, Postumus,’ the Warty Virgin corrected me sternly. ‘This is a comedy. Relatives are lost at sea, lovers are thwarted by mean parents, partners argue over a bag of gold, the jokes are terrible, but nobody can die or it would depress the audience. On comedy nights people come for pork scratchings, feeling up their neighbour’s wife and happiness.’

  ‘Until they go home very sick from too many snacks,’ added the Cowardly Hero gloomily.

  ‘But they smile through their vomit, darling!’ sneered the Clever Slave

  That sounded a good trick. Next time something made me sick I would see if I could throw up while smiling.

  ‘It was supposed to be the ghost of Moschion’s father.’ Chrysis was musing, as if she remembered the play when it was performed before. ‘For reasons of his own, the actor-manager they had at the time, old Chremes, decided the father was only lost at sea so Falco had to change it. He was doing so many re-writes he got lost at sea himself over it.’

  ‘So you were there?’ I asked.

  ‘A mere child, Postumus! Falco’s big idea was this: the ghostly father would tell Moschion that he, his father, had been murdered by his uncle, who had then married his mother. Well, everyone poo-pooed that. In comedy mothers are always loyal to their husbands, that makes it so poignant when they deplore the men’s bad behaviour, especially when the father goes chasing after the Beautiful Virgin that the son is in love with.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘And of course a son will always be true to his pa, even if his pa is an idiot and has paid money to the brothel-keeper to buy the son’s girlfriend to have her himself. Still the son stays loyal and respectful. This is how theatre works. You have to have known elements. The audience needs to feel secure.’

  Chrysis insisted that Falco had wanted Moschion to be a respectful son to his missing father in the play, which she thought reflected Falco’s views. I corrected her because everyone knew Falco and Favonius had been estranged for many years. Falco still says Grandpa was as painful as piles. But Chrysis insisted you have to have a happy ending.

  I asked what about someone who had several fathers in his life? I was thinking of me. As well as Falco, who had adopted me, I had his father Favonius and perhaps three others: Soterichus the animal-seller, Davos who was Thalia’s husband and the mysterious ‘man in Alexandria’ that my parents spoke about, if he was someone different from Soterichus. I did not name all these men to strangers, but I said there were a lot of possibles. The actors giggled and said, knowing Thalia, that was all too true. Bucco reckoned there were bound to be others too. Chrysis thought to be on the safe side I had better be loyal and respectful to them all. That would keep me busy.

  Moschion was still laughing; he decided this would make a very good plot for a play. You could have the different fathers running in and out of the three doors that are always on a stage set while he, Moschion, tried to keep them from meeting each other. I complained he wasn’t taking my predicament seriously. Bucco apologised for him and said that now I could see that the Young Hero was indeed an idiot. It sounded as though Bucco was jealous of Moschion for always getting the best part.

  They had poured wine in my beaker whenever they took some themselves so I seemed to become unusually talkative. I didn’t intend to mention anything secret but I did tell them about Hesper and Pollia and Pedo and the other acrobats. They guffawed. I then asked if they could point out Sophrona, so I could see if the water organist was very beautiful; Chrysis said Sophrona was nothing special (apart from being able to make all Hades of a noise on a hydraulus). I explained that I wondered how she had ensnared both her idiot husband Khaleed and Ribes the sneaky orchestra conductor who was the real father of all her five children. Bucco guffawed loudly, then he jumped up and strode off to another group of people to tell them what I said. Chrysis and Moschion muttered to each other that for a Clever Slave, he was never clever. Chrysis pointed out the five children, who were scampering around in a happy fashion.

  Then I started to feel very sleepy and stopped talking.

  The next thing I remember about that evening is that while the feast seemed to be going on for ever, Thalia came and took me back to her tent. She said she was going to stay with Davos, but I would be all right on my own. She helped me lay out my bed, and tucked me in, though she did not tell me a story, which Helena Justina does.

  ‘You can have Jason for company.’ Thalia must have seen me pull a face, for then she said if that worried me, she would fasten the python into his big basket. He didn’t want to be put in the basket; he rocked it from side to side as much as he could, but Thalia lifted a heavy cooking pot on top to hold the lid down.

  I yawned a lot and made sleepy noises, so off she went, leaving me alone.

  If I had had a sword, I could have lifted the pot off, raised up the lid of Jason’s basket, then sliced his nasty head off as he came out to have a look aroun
d. I didn’t have a weapon. But when I was sure the coast was clear, I squeezed out between the ties on the tent flaps and went to get one.

  11

  Away from the feast it was extremely dark. Nobody had wasted lamp oil by leaving lights in their tents. I couldn’t really see the Circus of Gaius and Nero, though I sensed where it was. In the dark it felt as if a giant had made it grow even larger so the huge long building stretched away endlessly.

  I tiptoed through the other tents, though they all lay quiet. Only when I came near the Circus was there a faint light at the entrance. Torches were attached either side of the gates. They were too high up for me to lift one down. I had feared the Circus would be all locked up, but when I approached the two great gates through which processions entered, I found they had been left open a small crack.

  By this time my eyes were growing used to the night. I edged through the gates and entered the deserted Circus silently. At this moment I remembered being told that you should never go to an empty building on your own without telling someone first, in case an accident befalls you, or some wicked person is lying in wait to tie you up and murder you after hours of gloating torture. You are bound to drop your oil lamp and be plunged into pitch blackness. But there was nobody at the Circus, they were all having their dinner.

  Besides, you only have to worry about an ambush if a dangerous person that you are trying to catch has drawn you there with a fake message. The best thing is if you have worked out their whereabouts using your super intelligence, so you can jump on them suddenly. You just have to keep looking around for their brutal henchmen. But that is all right if you have secretly brought your own loyal assistants who are lying low, disguised as bushes and statues. You can summon them with your special whistle, then you all burst out and beat up the bad people. Then they cry, Oh Jupiter Best and Greatest! Postumus, you clever swine, we never expected that!