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

  I knew this from Helena telling me stories.

  Because it was summer, the sky had a little light still. It was past the time when swifts squeal about, though I heard an owl out in the Gardens of Agrippina. I could discern the long empty space inside the Circus. The banks of seats and the spina were shadowy shapes and the track looked a slightly different colour from them so I could see where it was. But when I walked forwards I couldn’t really see the ground, so I was scared of falling over. I made my way very carefully and slowly. The dry sand on the track was slippery underneath my sandals, though it made no crunching sounds. Nobody would hear me coming. Of course I wouldn’t hear them either.

  I knew that when the acrobats finished for the evening they had left all their equipment propped against the spina, a little way down from the entrance. Most was small items for balancing or juggling, though they also had ladders and towers. The actors had brought less baggage. Davos had explained that if Manlius Faustus, the aedile, agreed to let them perform in the Roman Games, they would be allocated a proper theatre which would have its own permanent stage and backdrop. However, since they never knew what disreputable place they might have to work in, they did drag around with them a portable set with three doorways. It was so dilapidated they must have owned it a long time. It would be here, along with the props baskets that Dama had been sorting out. Those were what I wanted to investigate for weapons.

  The first thing I stumbled into, to my surprise, turned out to be an animal cage. I could tell from the smells and snuffling sounds whose cage it was. I remembered how Thalia had been trying to make Roar, the half-grown lion, do a tightrope walk. After she became exasperated with his refusal, she had him left here so she could try again with him tomorrow.

  I thought Roar must be lonely out here all on his own. Perhaps he was being punished for being naughty. He had to stay in his cage by himself until he apologised. I murmured hello to him, since we were acquaintances. I had met him at the menagerie when I was sweeping out the cages and I made him the high point of my tour for the public. He had not been appreciative of visitors, just padded about looking superior. Despite his attitude, people were really impressed to see a lion close up, even one who still had some growing to do.

  I heard Roar come right up to the edge of his cage, where I was standing. He grumbled in the back of his throat because a lion always has to make out that he is dangerous. He then gave a huge yawn full of smelly breath. I wasn’t frightened of him but I stood back, because Lysias had warned me never to get too close or Roar could grab my arm through the bars and pull me in to eat me up.

  When I walked on I could hear Roar prowling as much as he could in his travelling cage. Then he did a gigantic lion pee. It sounded like a big burst pipe from an aqueduct. I did a little pee myself against the spina, to keep him company. If it had been a competition, Roar would easily have won the prize.

  I went on further, only to find that another enclosure had been built with hurdles; inside it were the nasty little performing dogs. One of them was digging a tunnel so they could escape. They had been provided with a lantern, a nightlight so they could find their foodbowls and the bedding that they slept in. They all rushed up to the edge of their pen when they saw me, yapping their stupid heads off, because they hoped I was bringing them more dinner. But I only stole their lantern.

  After that it was easier to walk along to find the baskets and baggage that had been left piled up. I started to investigate these things, which took a long time. I could not remember exactly which was the props basket with the swords and stage armour. There were several, all looking as if they could be the one I wanted. None were labelled. If it had been my job, I would have made sure they were.

  Their lids were fastened down with extremely stiff old leather straps or roped up with complicated knots. Fortunately I am known as a determined soul. I stood the mutts’ lantern on a bale of straw so it shed light where I wanted, then I began to open the containers one by one. If they were no use, it seemed polite to do them up again, so that made everything take twice as long. I knew you should never make a mess of other people’s property then expect some slave to come along to tidy up for you. Or your mother. She has better things to do. Helena Justina is very good at explaining this, and never even loses her temper, except one time when I had completely destroyed the salon and her brother was coming to dinner with his smart new wife. The wife soon divorced Uncle Aulus, same as his previous one, so what I had done didn’t matter as much as Helena had thought. But by then she had had a volcanic fit that quite impressed me.

  In the end I did find the weapons. I made sure not to take the sword I had tried out earlier, the one Dama had told me to put back and not play with. I chose a different one that he had not given instructions about.

  The baskets’ hard leather straps had made my hands hurt. While I stopped to massage my fingers, I thought I heard voices. Being a boy of quick thinking, I curled up small behind one of the sets of steps that I had seen the tumblers jump off onto a see-saw. It flung them up to the sky, so they did somersaults as they flew through the air until they landed on someone else’s shoulders. I wished I could do that. If I stayed with Thalia long enough, I would ask to be trained. I felt sure I could master it easily but if someone was going to give me lessons, first I would have to remember whatever I was supposed to have done that made my visits to the oratory teacher end badly. I believe that after the experience of teaching me, he left Rome unexpectedly. Father claimed the man had fled to become a hermit in the Tripolitanian desert, but Helena told me he just went to start a school in a new town. That was far enough for him to feel safe again.

  There were definitely people here in the Circus. They were too far away for me to see them or tell who it was, but near enough to know that it was a man and a woman, who were arguing. Whatever they were quarrelling about must be important, for their words rang out bitterly and they kept at it for a long time. Sometimes they seemed to move around, as if they were pacing angrily up and down like Roar.

  They seemed to be working their way towards me. If they came any closer they were likely to discover me. I wanted to avoid that in case they noticed I had taken a sword as part of my retribution plan and for protection as the unwanted heir. Never let the opposition know that you are armed, at least not until you have cleverly worked out who the opposition is and how you will dispose of them.

  By now I thought the people I could hear sounded like Pollia and Hesper. I would have expected her to be rowing with her husband, Pedo, but perhaps he was busy doing something else. Besides, Pollia and Pedo could argue in their own tent, they wouldn’t need an assignation in a secret location after dark. Probably the argument would be short too. Once people get past ‘I cannot take any more of this!’ and so forth, someone storms off in a huff. If the children are crying, the other person will calm them down saying, ‘Don’t worry; they will come back as soon as they are hungry’. If it’s raining they come home sooner than that.

  This arguing upset me. I decided I wanted to leave, so I had a good idea about how to escape. I wriggled among the baskets until I found the ghost costume Dama had mended. I pulled it over my head, tucked the sword I had come to get tightly under my arm, held up the many long folds of cloth, and went out towards Pollia and Hesper, weaving to and fro like a ghost. I couldn’t take the lantern with me, because I had my hands full of costume. Anyway, it would have made me more visible.

  Pollia screamed at my sudden spooky appearance. Hesper let out a huge exclamation and I heard his heavy footsteps coming towards me. I could not see out of the costume properly because the eye holes were not where I thought they would be. Hesper was angry. As a crude man, he might not know the rule that nobody may lay violent hands on a free citizen of Rome. So I ran away as fast as I could, hoping I could find the right direction for the gates.

  Hesper was easily gaining on me. The cloth of the costume tripped me up. I fell down with a mighty whack. Luckily it didn’t matter because I heard Hesper
fall over as well, because the little dogs had finished making their tunnel to freedom so they all come pouring out from their pen and ran into him. He crashed to the ground as they scampered under his feet.

  Holding the sword tight, I made a fast run for it, managing to reach the gates. Behind me was a horrible sound of Hesper yelling curses. Some were very bad words. Behind him in the distance I heard a woman weeping inconsolably. The dogs barked. Roar let out a huge roar. And when I looked around, pulling the eye holes into place, I saw that the lantern had toppled over on the bale of straw and set fire to it. Hesper had got up and rushed back to put out the fire. That was lucky for me.

  Quickly I squeezed back through the Circus gates, wrestled my way out of the ghost costume which I dropped on the ground, then ran furiously fast back to Thalia’s tent, flew inside and jumped into my bed.

  There I lay like a good boy. I was so tired out that I was falling straight to sleep. But just before I nodded off, someone came into the tent.

  12

  Someone was coming to get me.

  The person sounded different from Hesper, heavier and more blundery. Anyway, Hesper must be still putting out the fire in the Circus. The first thing I noticed was this new person fumbling with the ties on the door flaps. I knew it wasn’t Thalia. She had gone back to the theatre people, to spend the night with Davos, who was her husband and she hadn’t seen him for a long time so they would have many things to discuss. Anyway, she knew how to deal with the ties quietly. They were her own knots.

  Whoever it was came inside and began blundering around the pavilion. He was making noise as if he was a clumsy person.

  I didn’t know what to do. I put out my hand and tried to feel if I could burrow under the side of the main tent to get away secretly, but the leather was pegged down too firmly for me to pull it up to wriggle through. You have to make a tent secure from rats or thieves and barbarians reaching in to grab your kit or the hunk of the bread you are saving for breakfast. Also you have to keep out mud and dust or floods if there has been a downpour. I know the laws of camping from my father (I mean Falco) and his great friend, Uncle Lucius, who love to describe how they were in the army once.

  I thought I had better get away from here, but I must do it in some other way. I would have to get up, move quickly from my end of the tent through the round outer part, then run like mad. I had to go right past this man, before he saw what was happening.

  I decided not to put on my sandals, which might make a noise and tell him he was not alone. I picked up the wooden sword, though. I crept to the curtain that separated the tent rooms. I was being perfectly silent, which I know how to do. Many people have commented on how well I can creep up on them. I am not allowed to creep up on Falco, in case he spins round and instantly kills me, thinking I am an assassin.

  As soon as I slid through the curtain, I saw a large man. He did have a pottery oil lamp but very small and faint. He was also shielding the light with one hand so it illuminated the tiniest area, but then he turned from the place where Thalia had her bed and looked right at me.

  ‘Oi!’ he yelled. ‘Come here, you!’

  He was going to grab me. He smelled of wine, which I knew meant he would be hard to reason with. It would be no use asking what he wanted or begging him not to hurt me.

  I ran straight at him, with the sword held out in front of me. It hit him at waist level. Dama was right, the point would not go into him, but the man nevertheless wobbled right off balance.

  I ran out past him. Hearing cries and struggling noises, I looked back through the doorway. Straightaway I recognised that the man was Soterichus, the animal-seller.

  Soterichus had barged against the big basket. He knocked it, so hard the heavy pot on top fell off, clanging. The basket lid dropped off too. Jason the python instantly shot his head out. He seemed highly annoyed at having his sleep disturbed and his basket knocked over while he was inside it. His tongue was flickering more wildly than I had ever seen and he was making a strange noise.

  Soterichus lay on the ground, waving his arms about and rolling, trying to stand up again. He was definitely drunk so this was very funny. One of his flailing arms hit Jason in the eye. I could see it was an accident. Jason, that dumb snake, thought it was on purpose. He was mightily displeased. Oh dear.

  Jason slithered all the way out of the overturned basket in one long smooth uncoiling movement. Before we knew what was happening, he wrapped his strong body around Soterichus. He began squeezing. He was tightening as hard as possible.

  Soterichus went very red in the face. His mouth opened, though he was too busy being squeezed to say anything. He couldn’t escape from Jason’s coils. I could hear him breathing in horrid jagged gasps.

  I decided to address the unfortunate situation. ‘Jason is suffocating you,’ I said in a stern voice. ‘He is too strong for me to stop him, so I will go for help.’ Fetching someone to rescue the man was a polite thing to do. I didn’t say that I wanted to save Soterichus because I needed a discussion with him about whether he was my father.

  I scuttled as fast as possible over to where the theatre people had their own encampment. In the dark I had to be careful not to get lost and I had no sandals on, so I was held up when I trod on stones and had to hop about squealing. Everyone was still having their dinner. I ran to Thalia, telling her at once what was happening to Soterichus. She leapt up. Bowls and cups scattered in all directions. Faster than I would ever have thought she could run, Thalia pelted off. Davos and lots of other people saw that this was an emergency so at once followed, leaving their foodbowls and beakers behind. I limped in the rear, until I was suddenly seized by Lysias, who saw I was barefoot. He kindly picked me up and carried me all the way back to Thalia’s tent, although when we arrived, he kept me outside while other people went in.

  Not long after, two men dragged out Soterichus by his feet, with his head lolling in the dirt. They pulled long faces and told us he was dead.

  13

  I felt extremely annoyed. It was bad enough that I might need to execute my mother, once I could organise it, but now by hitting him with the sword I had helped Soterichus to fall against the snake basket, which offended Jason, who killed this man who might have been my father. How fortunate I was that Falco and Helena had adopted me. Otherwise I would soon be all alone as an orphan. I felt a worry I sometimes have: who would then take care of me?

  ‘He was carried off by shock,’ announced Davos. ‘The snake hadn’t finished; his heart gave out.’

  People were fussing around me, so I pulled my sad little boy face. As I hung my head looking frightened, they asked gently what I had seen before I ran out of the tent. I replied in a brave tone that while I was sleeping in my bed where my mother had tucked me in, I heard an intruder. Startled by me and seeming drunk, Soterichus fell over. Jason escaped. I ran for help.

  People sniffed at the corpse and remarked that yes, Soterichus had must have had a lot to drink; he reeked of it. Apparently he was known for it, too. Lysias patted me in approval for having been so observant.

  ‘Coming to sell you his crocodile!’ rasped Davos to Thalia, with a snooty look. ‘Still negotiating sales on your back, are you?’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Thalia threw back at him crossly. ‘Why do you think I made sure I was not in the tent when he toddled up?’

  ‘Because you know you can never resist temptation! Yet you left your boy there.’

  ‘I left my python too, may I remind you – I thought if Soterichus wandered by, he would just put his head in, see I wasn’t there, and bugger off. He would only be after one thing and it didn’t involve either Postumus or Jason.’

  Somebody had found the wooden sword. Dama, the props man, asked me in a dark tone whether I had taken it. Thalia snapped that of course not because I was tucked up nicely in my bed by her, my loving mother, a poor little soul innocently waiting for an intoxicated livestock merchant to crash in and spoil my happy dreams. Dama backed off, looking nervous.

  He
sper arrived. I was sure I would now have to confess about the sword, but Hesper told a story that he had been to the Circus because he smelled smoke and heard the little doggies barking. He made no mention of Pollia. While he was there, he said, he was terrified by an apparition that suddenly jumped at him, a man wearing the spook’s costume. Hesper reckoned it must have been Soterichus. Everyone agreed that Soterichus had no reason to steal a wooden sword from the props basket, so he must have been at the Circus for some other bad reason. They decided it was because he knew Roar was left there. Soterichus was hoping to kidnap our lion.

  So that was all right. It served the lion-thief right that Jason constricted him.

  ‘How is the poor python?’ Hesper asked Thalia. Apparently it had taken lots of them to haul Jason off Soterichus, coil by coil. Once he started constricting, he wanted to finish the job.

  ‘Highly agitated. He never attacks people. He must have felt threatened to do anything like this. It’s going to take weeks to nurse him through it.’

  Everyone then told me what a brave boy I had been. I was not to worry about what had happened. As the body of Soterichus was towed away somewhere else, even Davos was kind to me, taking me back to my bed and saying he would sit and keep me safe until I fell asleep again.

  I would have fallen asleep quite fast, only Thalia replaced Jason in the big basket, which took her some trouble, aided by Lysias and Hesper. Jason did not want to be there. He kept me awake for a long time, bumping and banging as he tried to escape again.

  14

  Next morning everybody was subdued. Thalia had to go and tell the people who belonged to Soterichus that they would not be seeing him again. When she came back, to our surprise she brought the crocodile that he had been trying to sell her. She said it was compensation for him dying at our camp. Anyway somebody who knew what they were doing had to volunteer to look after the reptile. I watched its arrival at the menagerie. They had one rope tight around its long scaly snout and others on its body. He was struggling wildly. It took five men to drag him into the enclosure where they meant to keep him.