She had dumped my possessions on the ground while she went off to stable the donkey. I noticed that its welfare was more important than seeing to me, which was because Thalia is good with animals. In my experience, she is less good with boys. But she thinks she is. When she came back, I was still standing in the doorway. She gave me a suspicious glance as if she thought I probably had gone in and touched things, though of course she found no evidence. I am very good at not leaving a trail.
‘Come in, don’t be shy, Postumus. Nobody’s going to eat you,’ she said. Then ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, showing that she is an alert woman. ‘I ought to have said something about my snake — I suppose you met Jason?’
Yes, I had.
While I was by myself, waiting for her to come back, I heard a sudden rustling noise. There was a large pile of cluttered up garments and what looked like curtains close to the doorway. I was rather surprised when I saw that the tangled mound was moving. Out of it slid Jason. He had come to have a look at me. I looked right back, which he seemed not to be expecting.
I knew who he was. I had heard about him. My father hates him. Falco tells us anecdotes. He has known this snake for many years from encounters with Thalia. He always says Jason looks for a reason to run up inside his tunic and bite him somewhere painful. I knew that pythons can bite; they really overpower their prey by squeezing tight until they are suffocated, but snakes do have teeth, which are sharp, to help them fasten on to their prey while they start constricting.
You probably wonder why a boy who was brought up in a nice home in Rome knows all the facts about snakes. We have a library, which contains an encyclopaedia. I am allowed to read whatever articles I like, so long as I don’t drop ink or parts of my lunch on the scrolls, also if anyone else has left a slip to mark their place while they are working, I must never remove it. I don’t, although sometimes for fun I add a lot of extra slips to confuse people, poked in beside articles no one would ever want to read, for example on Theological Syncretism or on the Sieve of Eratosthenes. I wish I had my own sieve, the Sieve of Postumus.
I looked up snakes. As soon as I was told that I had a mother who owned pythons and who danced with them in public, I thought I had best know what I had to deal with. So I knew what to expect from Jason when he slithered out of the garments and curtains. Sections of him kept coming until he was six feet in length. That meant he was fully grown. If he seized hold of me, I would find him powerful and hard to escape.
His markings were mainly shimmery gold, with irregular patterns of dark brown and sometimes white, as if his skin had cracked and deeper colours were leaking through. He had dark eyes, so I could tell he was not shedding his skin, which I had learned would make his eyes turn blue. His head was shaped like a trowel and I looked at his mouth carefully because I had been told that a large python can eat a small boy. Only a very sensational encyclopaedia would inform you of that, but I heard it from Katutis, my father’s secretary. Katutis comes from Egypt and likes to tell me amazing nonsense to see if I foolishly believe him. It is a very annoying habit. Why would a person want to be a nuisance to somebody else?
Sizing up the situation carefully, I could not see how I would fit in, even though snakes’ mouths are specially hinged to enable them to eat large things. My sisters call me chubby, which would now be very useful if it protected me from Jason.
I wondered if he would let me take hold of his jaws to test how wide his mouth would open. It might be premature to try so I would observe him more, before I did any experiments. Experiments need to be thoughtfully planned. I have learned that by having them go wrong.
He reared up and swung about, taking a good look at me. His tongue was flickering. That is so they can smell you. A nervous boy might have been frightened but I decided not to let him think it. My father had always told us Jason was a bully. Father says you have to stand up to bullies because they will be very surprised. Sometimes for a joke, he adds they will be so surprised they’ll hit you harder. But you will feel better in yourself, he adds comfortingly.
I folded my arms and said in a clear voice: ‘My name is Marcus Didius Alexander Postumus and I have come to live here. Thalia is my birth mother so I shall have certain privileges. I expect you believe you are king of this pavilion, but all that is now changing. Don’t give me any trouble or I shall be compelled to assert my authority.’
He hissed at me.
‘I presume you are insecure and nervous,’ I replied calmly to the presumptuous python. Falco had warned me he had a nasty attitude. ‘But that’s enough nonsense, Jason.’ I thought about picking him up and putting him back in his pile of curtains, but I could see he was too big. If he was stretched up vertically by his pointed tail, he would be one and a half times as high as I am. His body was fat and round, indicating he would weigh a lot if anyone tried to lift him and put him away to make the tent tidier.
To subdue him I would have to use my superior status and personality. ‘Behave yourself please. I am the young master and you will just have to put up with it.’
Jason immediately became cowed. He curled up in a ball as if he was trying to hide. That was when my mother came back.
‘I’m glad to find you getting on so well together,’ she remarked. ‘If you have an old tunic you don’t want to wear, we can put it near his nest so he can get used to your scent.’
I did have an old tunic in my luggage, because when Helena was packing for me she had said, ‘I shall put this in, darling, so you can make a bed for Ferret where he will feel at home.’ She had not said she was relieved to be getting rid of him because of him scenting his territory all around our house, although I knew she must be. Mothers are a little fussy about smells. He also jumped out at people unexpectedly while he was busy exploring.
Anyway, instead of complaining, Helena Justina stroked his fur and told me she would miss him. ‘Though not as much as I shall miss you, Postumus.’ This was an example of her being a kind and loving mother, which she is. I decided I should jump into her arms and hug her in case Helena was feeling miserable about me going.
Look after your mother, Father always says. Of course I am a dutiful boy. Still, it was going to be rather time-consuming, now I had two.
Thalia told me some more about Jason, who remained curled up. ‘He’ll soon unwind his daft self and come nosing out to see who I’ve brought to live here. Snakes are inquisitive and they love to explore.’ I informed her that the same is true of ferrets. Mine would be popping his head out of my sleeve any moment to look around the place where I had brought him. He likes expeditions, though I have to keep hold of him in case he runs into any dark places and I can’t lure him back out.
‘Hmm,’ answered Thalia, in the kind of voice people use when you have just asked for permission to go outside and watch two drunk men fighting one another on the embankment. I now realise she must have been thinking Ferret might pop inside Jason for a look around in him, and Jason would eagerly let him become lunch. ‘Don’t go upsetting my big boy, Postumus; pythons easily go right off their food if they are worried about anything. Next time someone catches a rat I can show you how I have to tempt this big softie into eating.’ She had a thought. ‘As for your ferret, I suggest you keep him close with you, where you can supervise what he gets up to.’