Read Online The Spook Who Spoke Again: A Flavia Albia Short Story by Lindsey Davis - Free Book Online Page B

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.

10
    We went over to where the theatre people had pitched their tents; we were having dinner with them that evening. It was supposed to be all friendly and festive. That means people who really despise one another are pretending to be best pals, although you can see they are not trying hard. Terrible music is played while you eat, on whiffly flutes and twangy string instruments of country design. People sing miserable songs about other people leaving home. The food is delicious though nobody notices; they all tuck into the wine flagons, then pretty soon some fights start.
    As a sensible boy who had been properly brought up in a good home, I would have to be the peacemaker, which I would achieve with my impressive oratory. I had learned it from a grammar teacher I was sent to once, until he asked to be relieved of the burden. But I was not sure the actors and performers would have been taught to respect the power of oratory.
    When we first arrived, Davos’ actors and Thalia’s acrobats and animal-keepers greeted one another as if they had not met properly earlier in the day. Some sounded quite cheerful and welcoming. A few groaned and muttered, though they did it in an open way that was meant to sound as if they didn’t mean it. ‘Oh it’s you again, you worthless lot. We heard you had all been thrown in jail in Arriminium!’
    ‘Was it your group who put on
Medea
at Neapolis and only two people came, both of them by accident because they thought it was to be fighting cocks,?’
    ‘And with a blind rat who left at the interval?’
    ‘No that was in Bruttium and it was a three-legged dog. The two men had been promised naked women in the chorus. They all stayed to the end, but only because someone had given them free tickets which they wouldn’t waste.’
    ‘Did you do the show?’
    ‘Yes, but we cut half the play so we could go for an early supper. And we put up the understudy as Jason.’
    I was confused by this, since why was Thalia’s python in
Medea
? Then I remembered it was another Jason, the hero of the play.
    ‘That understudy of yours needs some practice, by all