I therefore advised her to take early retirement, and soothed her indignant objections by pointing out that the morrow’s programme not only included a long and arduous forced march through difficult and dangerous terrain, but the possibility of lethal assault by the maniac, Ascaris, of whom the suspect centurion had been thoughtful enough to warn us.
I fancy this comforted her to some extent; and she went obediently to her room, muttering something inaudible in which I could only detect the words ‘senile dementia’ –
possibly a reference to the late Maximus Petullian, though on what grounds she should doubt his sanity I am unable to say - and with only the evidence of a light pallor about her features to indicate that I was right to surmise that she had allowed herself to become over-tired. Youth is so often unaware of the physical limitations which the more mature have learnt to take in their stride; as indeed I always ignore my own, if any.
After a pleasant hour or so spent in lecturing my new military acquaintance on the relative advantages and disadvantages of the phalanx and tortudo when campaigning against Parthian cavalry - a subject on which I consider myself to be something of an expert - I noticed that he was beginning to display signs of drowsiness, and took this as the cue to plead my own fatigue - simulated, needless to say - and go to my quarters; for I deemed it prudent to get in a little lyre practice, if I were to be able to converse with Nero about the instrument on anything like an equal footing.
I soon mastered the rudimentary principles on which the lyre can be persuaded to operate, and was endeavouring to implement some permutations which had occurred to me involving its more advanced harmonic frequencies, when I was distracted from this pleasant pastime by a series of thumps and bangs, which appeared to emanate from the next room.
My immediate impression was that my neighbour might possibly be a percussion player, anxious to accompany my impromptu recital; and glad as always to accept professional assistance whenever offered, I strode rapidly to the communicating door, which I flung open with a few well-chosen words of welcome, which now escape me. But no matter; for it was soon obvious that for once I was under a misapprehension.
Crouched in the centre of the room, beating on the floor with his simian fists, his already unappealing features contorted further by an expression of malign fury which temporarily obscured his eyes in rolls of fat, or some such substance, was a squat figure in the uniform of a Legionary, second class; which on the selfsame instant sprang headlong through the space where the door had been until I opened it; and carried by its own inept impetus across the width of my own accommodation, it presently came to rest in a crumpled heap at the foot of the opposite wall, where it lay, breathing deeply, and gloomily inspecting a severe laceration of the left hand caused by a knife grasped in the right.
‘Damn!’ it complained loudly; but in so slurred a voice that I had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the man was not only on a murderous errand, but at least partially intoxicated! And since it seemed to me that it could only have been my ‘prentice performance on the lyre which had roused him to this paranoid pitch, a moment’s further thought inclined me to the belief that this creature must certainly be that selfsame Ascaris about whose homicidal musical criticism I had already been apprised.
It was therefore but the work of a further moment for me to entangle his flailing limbs in a blanket which I snatched, toreador-like from my bed; and then to rain a series of stinging blows about his bestial body.
(I was once, as is well known, a highly-rated practitioner of pugilism and other martial arts.)
Ignoring his agonised cries of ‘Gerroff!’, I now proceeded to entwine the strings of my instrument about his cloven fists, from one of which I then had no difficulty in removing the knife; and victory was mine!
I hauled him to his feet, and was about to question him closely as to his murderous activities, when the door behind me opened once more, this time to admit my young friend Vicki; who misinterpreting as always the essence of the situation, screamed so loudly as to startle me.
Whereupon I fear I jumped, and inadvertently pushed my assailant out through the window, before I could obtain the information from him which I required.
It seems likely that he then escaped into the night, for there was no sign of his mangled remains when I remembered to look this morning.
Breakfast was a gloomy meal; for I am, I must say, becoming irritated by Vicki’s constant juvenile and hysterical intrusions into my masterly grasp of affairs, and next time I think I may well leave her at home, or at least in the TARDIS.
Conversation was, therefore, sporadic; and not much enlivened by the centurion’s naive, and, it seemed to me,
nervous
attempts to question me: ‘Had I really slept all
that
well?’ ‘Was I absolutely positive that my privacy had
not
been invaded during the night by some kill-crazed assassin or other?’ And much more to the same effect.
I answered all these questions with the dismissive, absent-minded smile I keep for such occasions, and turned to my devilled kidneys and kedgeree in the confident knowledge that I was right, as ever, not to trust the man.
He knows more than he admits: and in spite of his over-bland protestations of friendship, I now believe him to be in league with the villain!
Never mind: today we shall be in Rome – where I am confident I shall find an opponent more worthy of my steel: namely the Emperor Nero!
Third Letter from Legionary (Second
Class) Ascaris
Dear Mum,
How would you and Dad feel about buying me out of the legion, and the sooner the better? I have made enquiries, and find that by a happy coincidence the sum required is exactly equal to your life savings, and would be money well-spent in my opinion.
I will not trouble you with all the details which have led me to decide on a change of career, but execution comes into it, and I naturally don’t want that at my age.
I have no fixed address at the moment, but a reply dropped down the first grating of the main sewer, just after it leaves the Temple of Minerva, is almost certain to reach me, if you follow?
Wish you were here.
Oh, and please keep the news that I am back in Rome to yourself for the present, and oblige
Your undone son,
Ascaris
Third Extract from the Journal of Ian
Chesterton
To think that in my previous existence I should ever have contemplated spending a summer holiday cruising these turbulent waters, the tempestuous reality of which is so very different from what the travel brochures lead one to expect! I have yet to see a sunlit vista, and pine-capped promontories escape me.
Instead, the restricted visibility offered by the neighbouring slimy and barnacle encrusted oar-port affords me a cheerless view in which rotten rocks and an apparently bottomless swirling vortex feature prominently
- Scylla, possibly, and Charybdis, perhaps; but I fear I have neglected my classical studies in favour of scientific principles; and a fat lot of good those are at the moment, I must say! Archimedes’ hare-brained hypothesis provides no comfort whatsoever in my present situation. In fact, I would rather not know what volume of water is likely to be displaced by a falling body; since I gather from the galley-master that the body in question is likely to be my own, if I do not make even more strenuous efforts to synchronise my strokes with those of my fellow oarsmen, The tyrant in question is a sadistic brute of no perceptible intellectual endowment, whose goodwill I have forfeited by a vain attempt to bring him low by another of my rugger tackles. I was, of course, hampered in this endeavour by the safety-belt of salt-corroded iron which secures me to my seat; but the obscene expression which escaped his lips when I later cracked him across the shin with a water-cask warned me at once that these solo escape attempts are probably misguided and doomed to failure.
But escape I must if I am ever to rescue Barbara from whatever unthinkable fate awaits her in the Roman slave-market, and I therefore need an accomplice.
To this end I have made the acquaintance of my colleague on the thwart, a giant, bearded Greek called Delos, who claims to have been a winner of the Pentathlon at Olympus in his youth.
As I myself have some small experience as a deputy games master at Coal Hill - you may remember, Headmaster, that I took over at a moment’s notice when Farthingale lost an ear during a hockey scrimmage - I fancy that together we shall be able to give a good account of ourselves, should fortune favour us with an opportunity to strike back at the beastly bully. But I confess I do not quite see how such an occasion can possibly arise; for since my last ill-fated attempt the man appears to be very much on his guard, and has - quite literally - the whip hand!
Thank God for a sense of humour!
To add to our discomfort, the weather has worsened even while I have been writing this: and am I right in recollecting from my somewhat scant knowledge of Ancient History that, on one occasion, Nero’s entire battle-fleet foundered when almost in sight of Ostia? If so, then I fear that I may well drown before I have a chance to be born; and in that case you, Headmaster, will never have a junior member of staff called,
Sincerely,
Ian Chesterton.
PS.
If you have not, then please disregard this letter.
Fourth Extract from The Doctor’s Diary
Another myth exploded! Not all roads lead to Rome by any means, and Vicki and I have had much ado to find the place: our false friend and guide, the centurion, having left the tavern whilst I was still busy with breakfast, without saying goodbye, and without, as I later discovered, troubling to settle his account with the management! Is this an example of the Stoical Roman Virtue one hears so highly praised?
I was thus under the necessity of paying for
three
rooms, et cetera, in order to redeem my lyre from the proprietress, who remarked nastily that she had met my sort before. I believe her to be mistaken in this, but was naturally in no position to argue, and I find the whole episode outrageous!
Should we meet the man again I shall certainly speak to him extremely sharply; and if he is unwilling to repay his debt to rne, then I must seriously consider reporting his behaviour to the Emperor, whose emissary he claims to be.
However, after many an irritating detour, we eventually achieved the Appian Way; and after this had little difficulty in reaching the City itself, except for that occasioned by dodging the racing wheels of several chariot squadrons, whose drivers appeared to have little or no road sense - or patience either, come to that, since they continually lashed out at each other with horse-whips in what seemed to me to be a thoroughly indisciplined manner, and with small regard for the convenience of pedestrians. Here is another circumstance which I must certainly bring to Nero’s attention at the earliest opportunity, for such behaviour can only have an adverse effect on the Empire’s reputation for ‘gravitas’.
But what of Rome itself? I am prepared to allow that it cannot have been built in a day, since there is such a lot of it; but feel that it will probably be improved by the lapse of a few more centuries, when the popular mellowing effect of Time may have reduced the somewhat Cyclopean modern architecture to a more picturesquely ruinous condition, compatible with a melancholy mourning for departed glories and vanished splendours. At the moment it is brash, to say the least!
High-rise temples, where priests ponder their impenetrable penetralia, impossibly jostle with unimaginably impractical palaces, fumbling for a foothold amongst a crawling sprawl of tenebrous tenements; inimical, I would say, to any proper sense of community in the populace, who seem for the most part an ill-kempt lot and ripe for revolution, if the Praetorian Guards were prepared to let them get on with it!
Wishing to purchase provisions for my importunate young protegée, I asked one of the latter if he could direct us to the market place; and having unscrambled his patronising ablative absolutes and plumbed his disgruntled gerundives, we came at length to an amenity area where some kind of an auction was about to begin. However, it soon became apparent that we were in the wrong department, for not a vegetable was on display: and, on consulting the auctioneer, a drunken functionary named Sevcheria, I quickly realised that we had unwittingly stumbled into the slave market. Not wishing Vicki to witness so degrading a spectacle, I was hustling her towards the exit - none too gently, I fear - when the slaves themselves, those wretched victims of an outworn social system, were paraded onto a platform, and the bidding started.
One of them, a really quite handsome but woebegone young woman, bore some slight resemblance to Barbara -
although the latter, I am sure, would never have consented to appear in public in so dishevelled a condition! However, the similarity was sufficient to give me further cause for self-congratulation that I had had the wisdom to leave Miss Wright at the villa, where she can come to no possible harm.
The slave-girl appeared to sense my interest, and waved at me frantically; but I nevertheless rejected Sevcheria’s insulting invitation to make him an offer for the poor woman; and before hurrying out after Vicki, I saw her purchased by a really ill-favoured fellow who gave his name as Tavius. I shudder to imagine what her future life will be like in the service of such a creature!
I have made a note to take up the case of all such unfortunates, as soon as I am alone with Nero...
First Extract from the Commonplace
Book of Poppea Sabina
Do I really
like
being Empress of Rome, I wonder? Of course, it
does
make me the richest and most influential woman in the whole known world, and that is
something
, I suppose. But we have to set against it the fact that the one
essential
qualification for the job is that I be married to the Emperor – and Nero is
zero
, in every sense of the word!