The Spook Who Spoke Again

5

Thalia kept refusing to admit that Jason must have killed Ferret. We searched the whole tent and even went to those next door, asking if anyone had seen him. Nobody had.

I didn’t want any dinner. I went to bed. I was pretending not to mind as much as I did. Thalia tried to soften me up but I stayed quiet and private. My father and sister say you should never consent to be drawn in by people you need to investigate. Trust nobody. People are all devious. Suspect them all. So I played the brave boy and agreed whatever was said to me. However, I was not talking. I kept my thoughts to myself.

In the morning Thalia sat down with me saying, as if she cared, that we would keep searching when we had time. I was not to worry about it. He was bound to turn up again.

She knew nothing. Well, she wouldn’t admit it. Classic, as Falco would say. She would be found out. I would do it.

At least now Ferret was officially designated a missing person, so I was allowed to write up posters in order to describe him and to seek information.

LOST: Sable ferret, guard hairs dark, mask white, tail dark, paws dark, eyes black, nose pink, expression sweet, character lively, answers to Ferret. Useful info to MDA Postumus care of Thalia, finder’s fee. No timewasters, please.

Thalia had offered to pay a small reward for anything that led to his return. That was easy for her to say. She knew she would never have to cough up.

I wanted to go to the vigiles and make a report, but Thalia would not let me. In the Transtiberina I didn’t know where the cohort lived so I couldn’t just go by myself. She claimed they had better things to do, saving peoples’ lives in fires, letting burglars run away and harassing innocent performers about their entertainment licenses.

When someone goes missing you have to consider whether they have recently been anxious over anything. I supposed Ferret might be worried that he had come to a strange new place. I didn’t think so, because I was here with him. In the past he had visited the coast with me and came along if anybody ever took me on an outing. Albia took me with her to Nemi to bring me out of myself, though it didn’t. It never bothered Ferret. He just wriggled inside my tunic during the journey and became madly excited when he could explore a new place.

Lysias said if Ferret was a dog or some other kind of animal he might run off and try to find his own way back to what he thought was his real home. I should send a message to Falco and Helena in case he turned up. I didn’t know who would carry a message for me, but if Ferret appeared at our house on the Aventine, they would know I needed to hear he was safe and to have him back immediately. My parents have thoughtful natures. But I couldn’t see how he would travel through the streets to their house without some other boy deciding to grab him to have as a pet of his own.

Hermes and Sizon asked if Ferret had a girlfriend he might have eloped with. They were giggling about their suggestion, trying to annoy me. ‘Has he run off to have a fling, or is he unlucky in love and has gone into hiding to get drunk and mope? Ooh, you don’t think he could be suicidal, do you, Postumus?’ I ignored them.

On my own I thought about that. The menagerie had plenty of animals but no female ferrets he could have fallen for. Anyway, he was loyal to me. Or, as Helena Justina would announce to nobody in particular in her special voice, as a male, he knew when he was well off.

The next question was, did he have any enemies? Only Jason. Normally, when they belong to a responsible boy, captive ferrets have nothing to be afraid of.

I could not remember who told me this but I knew in the wild ferrets are attacked by large birds of prey, badgers and foxes. If he had gone into the lion’s cage to look at Thalia’s half-grown lion, Roar, that might have had fatal consequences but nobody I spoke to had seen him heading towards the menagerie, let alone Roar’s cage. In any case, I had been at the menagerie myself all that morning and much of the afternoon, so he would have seen me there and come joyfully to jump down my tunic-top as usual. He could have poked his head out and looked at the lion from there.

I could find no witnesses to anything that happened in the tent. Unless somebody went in secretly, only Thalia and Soterichus had been there after I left Ferret behind that morning. Thalia vouched for Jason being on good behaviour all the time she was there with Soterichus.

She didn’t go back until the afternoon. Her python must have done the dirty deed by that time. When she arrived with the animal trader, Jason smarmed up to her looking all innocent. That was good enough for Thalia. She would never hear a word against him. She never gave a thought to my pet.

It was deadlock.

Well, I usually win situations like that.

Today I had to go and clean up after the animals again, though only the most dirty cages. The entertainers loved their beasts, or at least took care of them because they were valuable, but did not muck them out every single day or it would cost too much in new bedding. About mid-morning I had finished, so the head keeper, Lysias, said I should go to the Circus and see the rehearsals which might cheer me up. He couldn’t bear me hanging around all moody. Frankly, I myself had had enough of him complaining about my attitude. When people suffer a bereavement, others should show them consideration.

Hermes took me along to the Circus, though the building was large and right beside the tents so I was hardly going to get lost. I asked if he had come with me because he was hoping to get another kiss from the beautiful young woman called Pollia, like yesterday. Hermes jumped at that. He looked at me sideways and said no fear, because Pollia was married to one of the acrobats. They would be practising together and only a fool would touch her.

I must have seemed surprised. Hermes warned me to keep mum. I said that would be a lot easier if I had a fig pastry to take my mind off the secret. I had noticed a sweetmeat seller with a tray, right outside the entrance gate. Hermes congratulated me on not being as dumb as I looked, then he bought me a cake.

Some things are just too easy.

The Circus of Gaius and Nero lies along a large road called the Via Cornelia. It is a very pleasant situation in the Gardens of Agrippina, who was Nero’s mother. Helena Justina says bringing up Nero was nothing to be proud of; she tried hard to do much better with me. I consider I have brought myself up, but to save offending Helena I don’t say so. I am generally a credit to my upbringing. Sometimes I accidentally do something bad, but if I am careful she doesn’t find out.

Agrippina owned the land between the River Tiber and the Vatican Hill, where this Circus had been built. Like the Circus Maximus near my own home, it is a long, enclosed monument for racing chariots, with anks of seating balanced on many fine arches. It has a solid barrier running up the centre, called the spina. The chariots dash up one side as fast as they can, career around the turning point at the end, and zonk down the other side. Each time they complete a circuit, a marker is removed to signify how many laps. Most races are seven laps. Removing markers helps drivers to pace themselves and to know when they have finished, assuming they avoid crashing. Of course everyone hopes chariots will come to grief, with huge splinters and wheels flying all over the place and someone screaming horribly as they die.

In the middle of the spina at this Circus I saw a huge obelisk. Hermes informed me it had been brought to Rome from Heliopolis in Egypt. It was of a red colour, covered with signs that are called hieroglyphics, with a big metal ball on top. Falco’s secretary Katutis was trained at a temple in Egypt, the land of his birth, so he can read hieroglyphics. I was sorry he wasn’t here to tell me what these said. I might try to draw them and ask him later, though there were rather a lot. Now I was investigating the death of Ferret, I might not have time.

On one side of the track, Thalia and her people were doing various kinds of acrobatics. She was trying to train the half-grown lion to walk along two ropes from the top of the spina to a special stand where someone stood offering him food. Roar didn’t want to do the trick so he just stayed still, with one big furry paw on each rope, while she called to him. She saw us and gave up, grumbling as she arrived, ‘I must have spent half my life trying to get one beast or another to perform this trick. I had an elephant who refused to do it for years and now here’s Roary playing me up the same. He will do it, sir. He will be ready by September.’

Then I saw she wasn’t saying this to me, but a man who had been waiting quietly. He was Sir. He wore a heavy toga over a white tunic with purple stripes to show he was very important. Thalia had to be polite him. And she was hardly ever polite to people.

Hermes ignored the important person; he insisted on interrupting, telling Thalia how he had brought me along to be cheered up. As soon as the important man heard me mentioned, he started across to where I was standing on the track (because we had come in through the main gate at ground level). When I recognised him, I immediately said hello nicely, without being told to. Thalia rushed up too, muttering to me not to bother a magistrate.

He said, smiling, that it was all right. ‘Postumus and I are old friends.’ It was Manlius Faustus, the aedile I had seen a few times with my eldest sister, Flavia Albia. She is an informer and knows all types of people, even disreputable ones.

Thalia looked amazed, then seized on the connection eagerly. She said I should sit with my friend Faustus while the company performed for him, because he was reviewing their acts as one of his official duties, seeing if any were good enough for the Roman Games next month. ‘You can help him decide to have us!’ she said to me, winking heavily.

Albia had told me this Faustus was a man who never said much, but when he walked into a room, he had better find you doing something he approved of. I knew for myself that he had a strict attitude. He once told me off, for being out in the streets on my own at night, because I needed to observe the proceedings of the Festival of Ceres on the Aventine. Albia said he meant it for my protection, then she told me off too.

Last month he saved my sister’s life when she was very ill, so all her family had to be grateful to him. I was prepared to take the lead and schmooze him, as my father calls it. I was the family representative.

Faustus and I walked up steps and found ourselves seats from which to watch the acts. While we waited for them to start, he said in a friendly tone, ‘I am glad to see you, Postumus. I need to ask you a favour, if you don’t mind.’

I replied, ask away then.

‘Flavia Albia is bringing me to dinner at your house. Your parents have invited me, to meet everyone.’

I was surprised because Albia didn’t want us all to inspect Faustus and ask him nosy questions. Albia thought Father would stomp about complaining about her new boyfriend, which he usually did, so when Father dropped hints about how it was high time he met this Faustus, she just looked as if she was very busy thinking about something else and she did not answer him. She was good at that. I had studied how she did it, so I could follow her method.

‘Naturally I am apprehensive,’ said Faustus. ‘Since you and I already know one another, I hope you will be there to give me kind support.’

I promised I would, adding that we were all intrigued, since we had thought my sister would never find anybody to suit her because of her difficult standards. ‘There are bets that you will run away when you find out what she’s really like. My other sisters are saying, “Albia is such a terror; even if he is wonderful, she will soon throw him out”.’

Manlius Faustus winced. ‘Is it inevitable?’

‘No, we think she likes you.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t worry, we have ordered her to be nice to you. By the way, on behalf of our family, Manlius Faustus, thank you very much for rescuing Albia when she was having the squits and dying on the floor.’ My mother, Helena Justina, thought somebody ought to say this and get it done soon, or he would think we had no manners. And Helena said it wasn’t enough for Father to take him for a drink, to which Father replied obediently, all right it could be a drink with three kinds of olives in nicknackeroony bowls.

‘Your mother wrote to me very touchingly,’ Faustus told me.

That was when I felt I should explain to him my state of having two mothers, one of whom was Thalia. She was at that moment winding Jason around her body and preparing to show off her famous snake dance, which Falco called an eye-watering cultural experience. I believe Faustus had already heard all about my situation, probably from Albia, because he wanted to discuss whether I was happy here with the entertainers. Albia must have told him to check up.

He confided to me that he had lost his own mother when he was young and had missed her badly ever since. So I was lucky to have two. Then he said, I should probably view Helena Justina more favourably. Not only had she brought me up from a baby, but she was the best choice for a boy who might go far in life. Helena was a senator’s daughter which could be an advantage.

I agreed with that, but said I had thought coming here would be a useful experience. Fair enough, replied Faustus. Enjoy it for the time being. He seemed a reasonable man, for a friend of Albia’s.

I explained about having to go home once a week for dinner, so we could make it the same day as he had to go; he said that would work neatly. ‘There is something else I could ask you to do, Postumus, if you were interested.’ I said again to ask away. ‘I may be organising a wedding soon.’

‘Is that another job an aedile has to do, sir?’

‘No, this would be a family occasion. If it happens, I shall need a sensible boy to be the chief torch bearer, in the procession afterwards. It is quite a responsibility,’ said Faustus, looking sideways at me. ‘Apart from the religious aspects, the other boys who hold the torches — you know it’s obligatory to have the groom’s snivelly little nephews and the bride’s horrible cousins — they all have to be supervised carefully, in case they set fire to anything.’

I liked the sound of that. I mean supervising horrible little cousins. I don’t mean setting fire to stuff. If you burn someone’s house down, they can sue you for compensation. This had been explained to me. Several times, actually.

‘So it will be the real works with all the nuts, including relatives?’ I had heard Helena Justina describe weddings in that way.

‘Yes. A big public show.’

So lots of people would see me with the torch. Excellent!

Then we ended our chat, because Manlius Faustus had to evaluate the acts that Thalia was announcing. I wanted to take a good look at the performers, just in case one of these had gone to Thalia’s tent yesterday and seen something, or even stolen my ferret. This rehearsal turned out to be a good chance for me not only to be on good terms with my sister’s important new friend, supposing he managed to last with her, but also to size up suspects.