Doctor Who: The Romans (5 page)

Oh, what a fool I was to allow myself to be wooed and won by all that romantic nonsense he gave me about having just poisoned his mother! Because he didn’t even do
that
himself – no, he left the whole business to Locusta as usual – and even then it seems that the old battle-axe had to be finished off with blunt instruments after she swam ashore from the funeral barge!

Just big talk, that’s all it was – lover’s lies to turn a young girl’s head; but innocent as I am, I trusted him, and now there’s no way out but the vein in the bath or the asp in the bosom, and I don’t fancy that, thank you!

Unless... unless I get
him
first, of course... But, heigh-ho, these are only idle dreams, for I am but a poor weak woman with only one pair of hands, and must leave all that kind of rough stuff to some disaffected officer or other.

How fortunate that most of the Household Cavalry are my lovers, and prepared to do anything for me, on the usual terms.

Well, we shall just have to see how my whimsy wafts me

- but a regular old butcher’s shop of an assassination, like when Uncle Caligula got
his
... That would be fun now, wouldn’t it?

But I mustn’t ramble artlessly on like this, because there is a more immediate problem which distracts me. For some time I have been aware that Nero has been recruiting into my personal retinue of hand-maidens, slaves of a more than usual comeliness, and I suspect his motives. Can he be planning to deceive me with one, or all of them? Would he dare? And has he the strength?

Another one arrived this morning, introduced into my quarters by the cretinous and altogether loathsome Tavius, the palace staff-gatherer; a man whose very presence fills me with the sort of nausea I normally reserve for my husband. The girl was obviously so overjoyed to be released from the clutches of this unpleasant excrescence that she appeared to accept the conditions of service -

namely, death on departure, and no nonsense about days off - without demur, and only the smallest, barely perceptible shudder. But I wonder... There is a look about her of suppressed resentment, which might well mature to mutiny, given half a chance. And her name, which is Barbara, has - well - Barbarian overtones, so to speak.

I was mulling over these and related matters, whilst simultaneously instructing her in her duties, when Nero entered the room on the pretext of wishing to speak to me.

But as usual he had nothing to say, and merely sat there, idly flicking a frenetic plectrum across his lyre with such petulance as to snap the G-string.

In itself this might have been nothing. However, since the catastrophe occurred as he was regarding Barbara with a look of licentious lasciviousness on his fat features I could only suppose the incidents to be somehow related.

My suspicions were almost immediately confirmed, when on my sending the girl from the room with a tray of tea-things, he made some spurious excuse about feeling a poem coming on, and followed her into the corridor. Only seconds later my ears were pierced by the crashing of smashed crockery and a semi-stifled scream. I glanced rapidly after them to find the girl had disappeared about her business, leaving my husband ankle-deep in fragments of priceless Etruscan cups; which, on becoming conscious of my presence, he tried vainly to conceal beneath the hem of his toga. In one hand he held a dented tray, and in the other a bent buttered scone; and, alas, ‘twas with the latter that he attempted to blow me an ingratiating kiss, to the ludicrous detriment of that gesture.

But in any case, I am no longer to be disarmed by such elephantine gallantry.

Was ever an Empress so wronged and humiliated?

Heigh-ho!

Fourth Extract from the Journal of Ian
Chesterton

My premonition of impending doom has proved to be correct! The galley foundered when almost in sight of Ostia! Strange how often these inexplicably instinctive feelings come from nowhere to warn us, when it’s far too late to do anything at all about them. Science cannot explain the phenomenon; and neither can I, not being sufficiently interested perhaps.

At all events, no sooner had a bolt from the black flattened the main-mast – which, happily, collapsed on the galley-master, spattering his odious remains impartially about the bilges – than a rain of splintered spars from above, and a lancing of fanged rocks from below pierced the already straining and complaining hull in so many water-spouting places that some sixth sense told me we were about to sink!

Which we forthwith did; to the accompaniment of the sighs of the dying and the whingeing of the injured.

Then how, you may ask, have I survived to continue my action-packed narrative? Well, Headmaster, if you have been paying attention, you will perhaps remember that my last entry in this journal told of the giant Greek, Delos; whose interminable and vainglorious tales of his prowess in the field of amateur athletics have subsequently abominably bored me? I mean, if it hasn’t been flogging, keel-hauling, or short rations, it’s been ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I won the...’ whatever it was! No, simply not on, that sort of thing, in my opinion. However, as the ship disintegrated about our very ears, this loutish loud-mouth was inspired to whisper into one of them that now was our chance!

I looked at him blankly - rather in the manner of Jack Benny regarding Rochester - the ‘slow burn’, I think it’s called - for try as I might, I could detect no chance at all of any outcome to our present predicament other than dismemberment in the wretched wreckage, or drowning in the foul and furious foam. If asked to express a preference, I would probably have opted for the latter, and I said as much. But really, I told him, the matter was of little consequence; and my only serious concern was that, whatever the cause of death, I trusted that the Fates would find it convenient to expedite the business, as there seemed no further point in hanging around.

At this he asked me if I would mind standing up for a moment; and on my complying, somewhat grumpily I fear, with his request, he gripped our rowing bench in his spatulate hands, and wrenching it from its protesting sockets, sprang sideways through a convenient newly-opened hole in the woodwork, muttering sepulchrally

‘Follow me!’

I could do little else, being chained to this particular ship’s timber by every limb; and presently found myself floundering in his wake as he ploughed through the fish-infested elements towards the dimly visible, far distant, surf-encrusted coast-line in what I took to be a gentleman’s freestyle breast-stroke.

I mention fish, because in next to no time I was bitten painfully by a marauding specimen of the filthy brutes - a mackerel, possibly, or a hake, but I have little knowledge of icthyology - at which, I fear, I fainted; although mercifully maintaining buoyancy by virtue of the afore-mentioned thwart.

So, once again, I knew no more; until, this time, I found myself lying on a beach, half smothered in sand and seaweed, the claws of a lobster or some such crustacean protruding from a hole in my toga, while my moronic rescuer snapped the links of our fetters between his terrifying teeth! Or so I supposed in my semi-conscious condition - but it does appear, Headmaster, that metal-bending
was
one of his optional subsidiary subjects in the Pentathlon.

He then suggested that we should head north; pointing out that in the event of recapture, the statutory penalty for escape from a galley was - you’ve guessed it, Headmaster -

death. As, I would like to know, what other penalties
are
there, in this Godforsaken country?

But I am made of heavier mental mettle than he; and have insisted that, no matter what the consequences, we hold our course for Rome - where I pray that I may yet be in time to rescue your history mistress from whatever awaits her in that renownedly degenerate city.

I would also, as you can imagine, like a word or two with the Doctor, whose inane eccentricities have heaped these inconveniences upon us.

I remain - or at least such bits of me do as have been neglected by the Denizens of the Deep - your vilely abused, Ian Chesterton, B.Sc.

First Selection of Jottings from Nero’s
Scrapbook

Fair Barbara! When with fluent pen

I write a poem once again

In praise of Barbara, (
Good!
) I wish her trisyllabic name

Were Doris, Ann, Irene, or Jane

Or even Martha, (
?
)

So that my lost

And tempest-tossed (
Excellent!!!
) Unhappy Muse could flout the frost

And storm and form of

(
What? There must be a word.. Anapaest? Perhaps... must
look it up
)

And enter harbour (
Oh, the tyranny of rhyme!
) As though embalmed within my arms

Like pigeons perched in potted palms (
Where?
) Upon the Costa Brava! (
Of course!!!
) Not bad! No, not bad at all, really! I bet Ovid couldn’t have written that! All a question of imagery really. Damn! Wait

- I am not entirely sure whether the Costa Brava is part of my Empire at the moment. Bother! If it isn’t I shall have to send some general or other to capture it at once, as I do not intend to alter a rhyme so perfectly suited to the delicacy of the sentiments I wish to express; nor, of course, could I ever tolerate the bestowing of such immortality upon a location not under my Imperial aegis.

(
Note for future reference
‘Aegis’ would rhyme well with

‘Bognor Regis’, but I cannot remember if I have invaded Britain recently. I must look at the coloured map on the bathroom wall. If not, then perhaps ‘sieges’ would serve as an alternative; or is it too obvious?) Oh, but how can I be expected to remember
anything
, when I am in the grip of such an ecstatic passion as that which inflames my bosom at the time of writing?

(
Is
it passion, or have I been poisoned again by some ill-wisher? The symptoms of love and arsenic are in many respects identical, and never susceptible of easy analysis.

The loss of appetite, the dull coat, and the palpitations.

The general listlessness... yes, I must consult my toxicologist, Locusta, when I’ve got a moment. She is sure to know; and with her for a friend one hardly needs an enema. Good joke that! Must try it on Juvenal at my forthcoming symposium of the Arts - and if he doesn’t laugh, the fellow’s for it! Ask him how his Juvenilia’s coming along - he hates that!)

But returning to the inflammation of the pectoral region (see above), I am reasonably sure that it must be love this time; for seldom in a life devoted to the gratification of my base desires and unbridled lusts have I met so sensual-seeming a seductress as the slave-girl, Barbara. And what is more, I dare to hope that the feeling is mutual; for why otherwise should she have greeted my first attempt to embrace her with such a provocative scream? Or indeed, crowned me with a tea-tray, the fiery-tempered little rogue?

Oh, how I admire a woman of spirit! It makes their eventual conquest so much more agreeable, and their subsequent death so satisfactory all round.

In fact, that is what first attracted me to my present wife, Poppea - although so long ago that it now seems unreal. Must be all of twelve months, I suppose, since I first resolved to make her mine. She had a certain shark-infested beauty in those days, and I used to call her

‘Poppy’. Well, I still do, of course, but not with much enthusiasm. No, she seems to have gone soft, and devotes herself entirely to good works. She’s always ready to put up a Praetorian guard who’s forgotten the curfew. In fact, I have even known her to visit the barracks at all hours of the night, just to see if there might be any young recruit feeling the cold.

This sort of thing is getting her a good, albeit, short-name; and it must stop before my own authority is undermined. She is becoming altogether too popular with the men, and if I cannot depend on their loyalty I am lost; because for some reason nobody seems to like me much...

Later: I was right - I can depend on no one! Tigillinius, the deaf-mute slave I keep around for laughs, has just informed me in his impeccable sign-language that the Corinthian musician, Maximus Petullian, craves an audience of me! How can this be (and why, incidentally, can’t he attract an audience of his own?) when only yesterday I despatched my most trusted centurion and the assassin Ascaris, of whom he spoke so highly, to make an end of the fellow? Have I been betrayed, or are they simply inefficient?

Well, I suppose I shall have to see the man if he is still alive, or my reputation as a patron of the Arts will surely suffer. But this meeting is one I have been anxious to avoid, as I detest being bearded in my lion’s den (now, there’s a happy thought!) by the competition.

Oh, the loneliness of power...

Fourth Letter from Legionary (Second
Class) Ascaris

Dear Mum,

The Fates have smiled upon me in my sewer, and about time too, wouldn’t you say? Towards dusk I emerged briefly for a breath or two, and was about to sink my scruples once more, when who should I see but my recent victim and late assailant, the apparently indestructible Maximus Petullian! He appeared to be lecturing some bit of a girl on the architectural heritage in which we all take a pride; and as he seemed to be off his guard for once, I resolved to follow him with the stealth for which I am a catch-phrase, and was in time to see him enter your actual palace, bold as you please!

Well, he is going to regret that, I can tell you; for just as soon as I can purchase another dagger, I shall be about his person with it, and so redeem my fallen fortunes.

There being a queue at the armourers, I take this opportunity of letting you know my intentions, and remain Your resourceful boy,

Ascaris.

PS.
Why do you never reply to my letters? Have I offended you in some way?