The Spook Who Spoke Again

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!

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.