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?’