The Spook Who Spoke Again

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.