‘Oi!’ he yelled. ‘Come here, you!’
He was going to grab me. He smelled of wine, which I knew meant he would be hard to reason with. It would be no use asking what he wanted or begging him not to hurt me.
I ran straight at him, with the sword held out in front of me. It hit him at waist level. Dama was right, the point would not go into him, but the man nevertheless wobbled right off balance.
I ran out past him. Hearing cries and struggling noises, I looked back through the doorway. Straightaway I recognised that the man was Soterichus, the animal-seller.
Soterichus had barged against the big basket. He knocked it, so hard the heavy pot on top fell off, clanging. The basket lid dropped off too. Jason the python instantly shot his head out. He seemed highly annoyed at having his sleep disturbed and his basket knocked over while he was inside it. His tongue was flickering more wildly than I had ever seen and he was making a strange noise.
Soterichus lay on the ground, waving his arms about and rolling, trying to stand up again. He was definitely drunk so this was very funny. One of his flailing arms hit Jason in the eye. I could see it was an accident. Jason, that dumb snake, thought it was on purpose. He was mightily displeased. Oh dear.
Jason slithered all the way out of the overturned basket in one long smooth uncoiling movement. Before we knew what was happening, he wrapped his strong body around Soterichus. He began squeezing. He was tightening as hard as possible.
Soterichus went very red in the face. His mouth opened, though he was too busy being squeezed to say anything. He couldn’t escape from Jason’s coils. I could hear him breathing in horrid jagged gasps.
I decided to address the unfortunate situation. ‘Jason is suffocating you,’ I said in a stern voice. ‘He is too strong for me to stop him, so I will go for help.’ Fetching someone to rescue the man was a polite thing to do. I didn’t say that I wanted to save Soterichus because I needed a discussion with him about whether he was my father.
I scuttled as fast as possible over to where the theatre people had their own encampment. In the dark I had to be careful not to get lost and I had no sandals on, so I was held up when I trod on stones and had to hop about squealing. Everyone was still having their dinner. I ran to Thalia, telling her at once what was happening to Soterichus. She leapt up. Bowls and cups scattered in all directions. Faster than I would ever have thought she could run, Thalia pelted off. Davos and lots of other people saw that this was an emergency so at once followed, leaving their foodbowls and beakers behind. I limped in the rear, until I was suddenly seized by Lysias, who saw I was barefoot. He kindly picked me up and carried me all the way back to Thalia’s tent, although when we arrived, he kept me outside while other people went in.
Not long after, two men dragged out Soterichus by his feet, with his head lolling in the dirt. They pulled long faces and told us he was dead.
13
I felt extremely annoyed. It was bad enough that I might need to execute my mother, once I could organise it, but now by hitting him with the sword I had helped Soterichus to fall against the snake basket, which offended Jason, who killed this man who might have been my father. How fortunate I was that Falco and Helena had adopted me. Otherwise I would soon be all alone as an orphan. I felt a worry I sometimes have: who would then take care of me?
‘He was carried off by shock,’ announced Davos. ‘The snake hadn’t finished; his heart gave out.’
People were fussing around me, so I pulled my sad little boy face. As I hung my head looking frightened, they asked gently what I had seen before I ran out of the tent. I replied in a brave tone that while I was sleeping in my bed where my mother had tucked me in, I heard an intruder. Startled by me and seeming drunk, Soterichus fell over. Jason escaped. I ran for help.
People sniffed at the corpse and remarked that yes, Soterichus had must have had a lot to drink; he reeked of it. Apparently he was known for it, too. Lysias patted me in approval for having been so observant.
‘Coming to sell you his crocodile!’ rasped Davos to Thalia, with a snooty look. ‘Still negotiating sales on your back, are you?’
‘Rubbish!’ Thalia threw back at him crossly. ‘Why do you think I made sure I was not in the tent when he toddled up?’
‘Because you know you can never resist temptation! Yet you left your boy there.’
‘I left my python too, may I remind you — I thought if Soterichus wandered by, he would just put his head in, see I wasn’t there, and bugger off. He would only be after one thing and it didn’t involve either Postumus or Jason.’
Somebody had found the wooden sword. Dama, the props man, asked me in a dark tone whether I had taken it. Thalia snapped that of course not because I was tucked up nicely in my bed by her, my loving mother, a poor little soul innocently waiting for an intoxicated livestock merchant to crash in and spoil my happy dreams. Dama backed off, looking nervous.
Hesper arrived. I was sure I would now have to confess about the sword, but Hesper told a story that he had been to the Circus because he smelled smoke and heard the little doggies barking. He made no mention of Pollia. While he was there, he said, he was terrified by an apparition that suddenly jumped at him, a man wearing the spook’s costume. Hesper reckoned it must have been Soterichus. Everyone agreed that Soterichus had no reason to steal a wooden sword from the props basket, so he must have been at the Circus for some other bad reason. They decided it was because he knew Roar was left there. Soterichus was hoping to kidnap our lion.
So that was all right. It served the lion-thief right that Jason constricted him.
‘How is the poor python?’ Hesper asked Thalia. Apparently it had taken lots of them to haul Jason off Soterichus, coil by coil. Once he started constricting, he wanted to finish the job.
‘Highly agitated. He never attacks people. He must have felt threatened to do anything like this. It’s going to take weeks to nurse him through it.’
Everyone then told me what a brave boy I had been. I was not to worry about what had happened. As the body of Soterichus was towed away somewhere else, even Davos was kind to me, taking me back to my bed and saying he would sit and keep me safe until I fell asleep again.
I would have fallen asleep quite fast, only Thalia replaced Jason in the big basket, which took her some trouble, aided by Lysias and Hesper. Jason did not want to be there. He kept me awake for a long time, bumping and banging as he tried to escape again.
14
Next morning everybody was subdued. Thalia had to go and tell the people who belonged to Soterichus that they would not be seeing him again. When she came back, to our surprise she brought the crocodile that he had been trying to sell her. She said it was compensation for him dying at our camp. Anyway somebody who knew what they were doing had to volunteer to look after the reptile. I watched its arrival at the menagerie. They had one rope tight around its long scaly snout and others on its body. He was struggling wildly. It took five men to drag him into the enclosure where they meant to keep him.
The menagerie would be closed that day. I offered to do dung-sweeping but Lysias said Sizon would do it today. That would teach him to drink himself into a stupor at the feast. Hesper wasn’t being much use. He was moping. Someone had given him a big black eye. I whispered to Sizon was it Pedo? To which he answered no, Pedo couldn’t hit a fly if it landed on his nose; the gorgeous Pollia whacked him.
Since nothing was happening there, I went to the Circus. I had asked Hesper if he would give me money for another fig pastry as my reward for keeping his secret. He said, no he bloody wouldn’t since it wasn’t a secret now, was it? He continued that if he found out what vicious bastard had snitched to Pedo, he would string them up and disembowel them with a rusty knife, extremely slowly. I was glad it was Moschion who snitched. I assured Hesper that it wasn’t me, so he snarled to get out of it. That was when I went to the Circus of Gaius and Nero, so as not to annoy Hesper any more.