‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they? And maybe they are, if you don’t take quadruple doses. Have one of these little pies, they’re fantastic.’
They were. We dined amiably. So did the rest of the crowd. The lights were getting lower. The strings were getting sweeter. Then, with a bang and a cloud of greenish smoke, the apothecary and the witch arrived.
As the smoke cleared I saw the witch in the classic fairytale garb, ragged black dress and tall pointy hat. She also had a nose like a carrot and a profusion of stick-on warts from the Magic Shop. She might have been pretty under all that, but who could tell? She might not even have been female. Green skin, ragged garments and a funny nose are very disguising.
Daniel and I waited until the crowd had surrounded them before we lounged over to inspect their wares. The witch had a couple of baskets which contained such things as red toffee apples (for poisoning Snow White), packets of coloured sweets (for enticing children into the oven), gingerbread shingles from a gingerbread house, and small dolls and the packet of pins that went with them. They were labelled with instructions for linking the doll with the victim. Meroe had always refused to sell voodoo dolls and now I could see why; they were such ugly, obvious things, evidence of raw emotions like fear and lust and greed.
The witch’s voice was also disguised; it was a throaty cackle. She threw out her arms in a broad gesture and revealed that she was festooned with charms. They were cheap pot-metal hearts, phalluses, heads, other miscellaneous body parts and skulls, hung from coloured ribbons. The crowd purchased freely and moved away. We were pushed to the front. Daniel bought a toffee apple at a ruinous price. The witch leaned close to me and offered me a wax doll.
‘Tired of the flesh, lady?’ she insinuated. ‘Maigre can melt your fat away.’
I was about to hotly deny any desire to be thin when I remembered my role. I simpered and bought the doll, trying not to gasp at the amount she was asking for it. At these prices for a scrap of wax, the witch must be coining money hand over broomstick. Then we moved to face the apothecary.
He was wearing a tall hat with price tickets around it. I searched my memory. Aha! The Mad Hatter from
Alice in Wonderland
. He was wearing a gentleman’s evening costume which had seen better years; the lapels were threadbare and the material was shiny. Someone’s op shop purchase, I guessed. His shirt lacked a collar. His hands were gloved in pale kid. But his face was alarming. It was a mask, of course, I realised a moment later. A shiny, bland, young man’s face with all the personality of a shop mannequin. The voice which came from behind it was epicene and more than a little eerie.
‘Well, master, are you the cunning man?’ I asked, recalling my role in
The Recruiting Officer
at university.
He did not answer but swept a hand over the goods displayed on his folding table. Interesting. There were bottles labelled ‘water of green pineapples’ and ‘Gregory’s cordial’. There was ‘Walter Raleigh’s Elixir’. There were soaps and bath powders, crudely scented. I could smell the cheap perfumes even through the packaging. I could not see the badly made beige paper wrapping of the weight loss tea. I took up a bottle of Gregory’s cordial. As I recalled from my careful reading of the immortal Heyer, Gregory’s cordial had been made with mercury. We had better get this tested. The apothecary extorted a shocking sum from me, and Daniel and I drifted away.
It was getting on for three in the morning and I was tired. Daniel felt the same.
‘Let’s wander along to bed, eh?’ he said, allowing me to take his arm. ‘Want a bite of my toffee apple, princess?’
‘Zounds, no,’ I replied. ‘I do not wish to sleep for a hundred years.’
We claimed our cloaks and went out into the street. Daniel’s pocket contained a packet of tea. Bo had come through. All was silent and shiny. It had been raining. Our footsteps rang in the cold air. Daniel’s stick tapped a rhythm. It was very quiet. Not even a car passed us.
The attack came without any warning. Two men jumped out of an alley and they both grabbed for Daniel. That was a mistake, because it left me free to kick. I had spike-heeled boots on and I kicked hard. I got one behind the knee and he fell. I jumped on him, pinning him to the ground under my knees. Daniel had his attacker with an arm twisted up behind his back. It all happened so fast I didn’t have time to be afraid, which was lucky. Now it was all over it seemed silly to be afraid, so I wasn’t. Besides, we had won. That always warms the cockles.
The man under my knees was squirming. He was a young man in a blue t-shirt with Folsom Prison on it, which reminded me vividly of Jason as I had first seen him. He had that same heroin pallor and pinprick pupils. But that didn’t mean he got to attack innocent passers-by. I glared my best dominatrix glare at him and he subsided.
‘Lemme go,’ said the first assailant to Daniel.
‘Now why should I do that?’ he said, sounding amused. ‘After I went to all that trouble to catch you? And your friend is making a nice cushion for my lady. However, I will think about letting you go if you tell me what you were after.’
‘Just money,’ mumbled Daniel’s thug. The only difference I could see between our two attackers was that Daniel’s prisoner had a bone t-shirt with ‘condemned’ printed on it.
‘Why don’t I believe you?’ Daniel mused. ‘Corinna, do you believe him?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This attack was far too pat. You —’ I joggled the man I was kneeling on — ‘who sent you?’
‘You weigh a ton, you know that?’ he groaned.
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘I know that.’
‘All right,’ said the crushed one. ‘You’ll let us go?’
‘Probably,’ said Daniel.
‘It was the dude in the Vlad club,’ he said. ‘The one in the mask. Told us to get the tea back. Said we could keep your money and your watch.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Do you know the dude’s name?’
‘Nah,’ said Daniel’s prisoner.
‘Not only will we let you go,’ said Daniel, releasing his prisoner and holding him at stick’s length. ‘But I will give you this splendid toffee apple to comfort you for missing out on my wallet and my watch.’
I clambered off my cushion and he arose, groaning and rubbing his knee.
‘Off you go,’ I said. ‘If I see you again, I’ll sit on you.’
They took the toffee apple and I saw the first one bite it as they scurried off down their alley. I shook myself into order. Daniel brushed his hands together as if wiping off a contaminating touch.
‘The crime rate,’ he commented as I took his arm again, ‘really is climbing.’
‘Fortunately the apothecary hired a couple of idiots,’ I said.
‘You just can’t get good help these days,’ he agreed.
We walked home without further incident. I expected to feel some emotion after all that excitement, but all I felt was a little elevated. We let ourselves into the apartment, were greeted with sober pleasure by Horatio, and put ourselves gently and slowly to bed. Gently and slowly we made love and then we fell asleep, gently and slowly. It had been an action packed night.
Saturday is my favourite day. I do not have to get up, and I do not have to go to bed early. Bliss. Daniel brought me croissants from the French baker and we breakfasted in bed. Horatio joined us for his statutory dab of butter. He is a dairy cat descended from a long line since humans began to domesticate the cow. When the first woman sat down to milk the first cow, Horatio the First would have been there with his head in the pail and his whiskers covered in cream.
Then we drifted back to sleep until suddenly it was lunchtime and time to be up and doing. Neither Daniel nor I felt like doing much so we compromised with lunch at Cafe Delicious. Del Pandamus was minding the shop. He supplied us with moussaka made by his grandmother, than which no better moussaka has ever been compounded, and all the latest gossip.
Del is a big, cheerful, moustachioed Greek man with a deceptively guileless expression. People tend to assume that his thoughts go no higher than ouzo and soccer and that is a major error. His moustache is in loving memory of Eleutherios Venizelos the Great Patriot and his expression results from contemplating the fact that he comes from the same island as Odysseus of the swift word, who bluffed his way though long years of war and travel and still got home to his wife at the end.
‘Them nerds,’ he began, polishing a glass. ‘They been shut for two days.’
‘Really?’ I asked. That was unusual. Nerds Inc, otherwise known as the Lone Gunmen, might be erratic in the morning hours, since they mostly stayed up all night playing computer games, but they stayed open late to compensate. At least one of Taz, Rat or Gully could mostly be found either drowsing at the desk or engaged in furious debate with some other gamer. Had their cash flow slumped so low that they had closed the shop? But they had enough to trade for another month at least, provided they had sent in that BAS form.
‘Did they mention going away?’ asked Daniel. ‘Is there a sci-fi convention anywhere?’
‘There’s always a sci-fi convention somewhere,’ I told him. ‘No, I saw them a few days ago when I went to do their accounts and they didn’t say anything about going away. Then again, they mightn’t want to disclose such things to a mundane.’
‘Maybe their diet of tacos and Twisties has finally done for them,’ said Daniel, taking up another forkful of eggplant and lamb mince, unctuous and rich.
‘Chili sauce finally penetrated the brain, you reckon?’ I asked idly. ‘Did they say anything to you, Del?’
‘They don’t like my food,’ he grunted. ‘We don’t talk much. Anyway, their door’s been shut for two days.’
‘Maybe we’d better enquire,’ I said to Daniel. ‘If they are in there, suffering from chili sauce poisoning, we could take them an antidote.’
‘All right,’ he said agreeably. ‘After lunch.’
‘We can talk to Trudi. She always feeds Helob for them when they’re away.’
‘I almost don’t want to know the answer to this,’ said Daniel, raising his glass of water, ‘but what is Helob?’
‘Their bird-eating spider,’ I told him.
‘And what does it eat?’
I had never thought about this. ‘Birds, I expect. No, I can’t imagine Trudi countenancing that. Let us leave the subject. I’m sorry I mentioned it.’
Cafe Delicious is a small room, with only three tables. Most of the trade is takeaway. Del has hung the walls with pictures of Ithaca, all blue sea and blue sky and olive groves. And water cisterns, the emptiness of which was the reason his family left the island. The tables are blonde wood and the chairs hardwearing cane and wide enough for the broad-beamed to sit on without discomfort. We were just dividing a piece of baklava to eat with our Greek coffee when the Professor pottered in, seeking a Pandamus roast lamb and tatziki wrap. I recalled that I had a question to ask him about the book we had found in my father’s possessions.
‘I’m always delighted to offer advice on the classics,’ he said affably when I had explained. ‘Bring it up to my apartment after lunch and we shall see.’
He paid for his food and departed. Daniel and I sipped Del’s coffee, which would guarantee that we stayed awake for the foreseeable future. If we ever find zombies lurching along Flinders Lane, like in
Night of the Living Dead
, it will be because someone has injudiciously allowed some of Del’s cafe hellenico to spill on a corpse.
After lunch, I collected the book and we rode the elevator to the Professor’s apartment, Dionysus. His Roman furniture, specially made for the space, is so comfortable that I revised my views on Romans as strong-jawed soldiers to luxury loving couch potatoes, except that they didn’t have potatoes then, of course. Couch turnips? Couch mangold wurzels?
We were greeted by Professor Dion with Nox, his black kitten, riding on his shoulder. Nox means night and she is as black as Belladonna. She was originally called Soot and spent her early kittenhood trapped in the ducting, but this has not soured her essentially kind nature. She rules the Professor with a firm paw, and he loves it.
‘Do come in,’ he invited. ‘Nox and I have enjoyed our roast lamb. She left me the tatziki, which she does not care for. Have a seat. A glass of wine?’
We accepted. Nox roved over our laps, stuck her cold little nose in Daniel’s ear, dipped a paw in my wine, and then settled on the Professor’s shoulder again. When she grew up she was going to look like Guy Boothby’s Dr Nikola (retd).
We exchanged the usual pleasantries. It does not do to hurry the Professor, who was brought up in a time when people had manners. We admired how much Nox had grown and how shiny her fur was now that she was not living on condensation and mice in the air conditioning. We commented on the weather, which was cold but agreeably wet. We agreed that Del Pandamus’s business was entirely dependent on the health of his seemingly indestructible eighty year old Yai Yai. Then Professor Dion held out his hand for the book and smiled as he opened it.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘A rather waterstained copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antonius.’
‘Who was he?’
‘A sad man,’ said the Professor. ‘He was emperor of Rome but he really ought to have been a philosopher or a scholar, or perhaps a farmer. He was a Stoic. He hated the spectacles at the circus but he had to attend. He got a very bad press in the past for persecuting Christians, and he certainly didn’t like them, but there is no evidence that he sent anyone to the lions. We don’t have any good history of his time, unfortunately.’
‘Who would find Marcus a good companion, Professor?’ I asked. His blue eyes twinkled. Nox yawned elaborately. Evidently, Marcus Aurelius bored her.
‘The world weary, the oppressed, those saddened by life,’ he replied. ‘I find him a bit of a trial, to be truthful. Let’s see … yes, listen to this. “Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man, to do what thou hast in hand with simple dignity, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self love, and discontent with the portion which hath been given to thee.” That’s about standard Marcus Aurelius.’
‘Right,’ said Daniel.