The very idea that they might be here for anything other than violence was ridiculous. Especially as the man before him stepped forward and his cloak billowed out to reveal a heavy Gallic sword at one side of his belt and a sickle – a sickle! – tucked into the other.
‘You and I, Roman,’ gurgled a voice like boiling pitch bubbling up from Tartarus, ‘are going to have a talk. And if your words please me, you will die quickly.’
Plautus sighed as he shouldered his saddle, buffed to a gleaming state of which even his father would have approved. It was not that he hated his lot in life. After the carnage he’d taken part in at Alesia, this duty was a pleasant rest, really. It was just Decurion Vincentius’ attitude and bad temper that got him down. No matter what Plautus did to try and improve matters, the officer just didn’t seem to care. Or even to notice.
Still, despite the man’s attitude, Plautus had managed to strike up a reasonable rapport with a few of the locals, who, he had discovered, if you treated them as equals, returned the favour. He knew an inn at Decetio where the owner kept a stock of not-unpleasant wine, and was even happy to extend him credit if Vincentius was slow with the pay. And there was a very friendly girl in Decetio, too. He decided that the decurion had pissed him off enough already today that he would be inconveniently late back from the city, giving him plenty of time to enjoy the local comforts. He could spin out any old tale of delays to Vincentius. The man never listened to him anyway.
Taking a deep breath and preparing for more scorn, boredom and insults, he rapped on the decurion’s door and walked inside.
His saddle hit the floor, raising a cloud of dust and goat-hair as he stared at the tableau before him.
Decurion Aulus Vincentius sat before him next to the fire. All around was a pool of gleaming dark liquid in which he sat, unmoving. His feet and hands had been removed – Plautus realised suddenly what was causing the smell of roasting pork, and vomited copiously – and the officer’s torso had been opened up with a razor-sharp implement and ravaged, so that his innards were strewn before him on the floor.
Plautus shivered and stared, panicked and sickened, and barely even registered the dark shapes detaching themselves from the shadows at the room’s edge and converging on him.
Fronto shuffled in his seat, the cold marble surface barely improved by the single threadbare cushion the brusque attendant had sold him, at a price that had made him mutter and chunter all the way through the corridors and stairwells until he arrived in the stands and at his assigned seat. He glanced left and right. Lucilia seemed perfectly happy, riveted to this performance and with a small smile of satisfaction playing about her lips. Balbus, his father-in-law, ageing and with more white hair on his eyebrows than his head, seemed quiet and content. But then he’d been asleep for the past ten minutes, so he had every right to look relaxed.
Down in the circular orchestra area a man with a ridiculously over-balancing fake bosom tottered around on huge wooden-heeled shoes shrieking out in a ‘feminine voice’ that sounded like a cat being punctured. The chorus hovered at the edge of the stage, their masks permanent frowns of dismay.
‘From the mountains I brought this tendril of freshly cut ivy,’ honked and warbled the excruciatingly unfeminine actor. ‘Our hunt was blessed!’
The chorus thrummed their response, which Fronto missed, submerged beneath his unstoppable yawn which raised a flash of anger from his wife. It wasn’t his fault. Well, it was partially his fault, admittedly. He never did like tragedies. Miserable, bloodthirsty tales that whiled away a few hours in pointless tedium. Not like a good ribald Roman comedy full of bouncing breasts and humorous misunderstandings and slaves who kept falling over things. But the Greeks really did love their tragedy. In fact, Greek comedy was usually more depressing than Roman tragedies. There was always someone who didn’t deserve it getting their eyes put out or being hacked to pieces. Only a few moments ago in this dire rubbish, some messenger in a smiley mask (he’d obviously picked up the wrong prop!) had wandered onto the stage to tell the chorus and the crowd how old Pentheus had been torn limb from limb by ravaging maenads.
Lucilia was always telling him off for relating true stories of the campaign across Gaul that had been so much a part of his life for the last decade, telling him to watch what he said in front of the boys and that he could try and tone down the blood and guts in his stories. Yet while his leisure pursuits tended towards the humorously hedonistic, Lucilia was more than content to sit through hours of Greeks with bad fake boobs ripping pieces off each other and tearing out tongues. If he lived to be a hundred, Fronto swore he would never understand women.
He was aware that his attention had now entirely drifted from the play.
He’d have loved to see some good Roman comedy, but that was one problem with living on the edge of Massilia. Though the land his villa stood on had been claimed as part of the province by Rome, the boule – the council – of Massilia still claimed it as theirs. And Massilia was Greek. It may be surrounded by the republic, and there were a number of Roman business concerns in the city, along with a large number of Roman citizens, but the place was still an independent Greek city, and proud of the fact. Consequently there were no uplifting Roman plays to be seen here – just the endless soul destroying tragedies of Greece. There were no bouts in the arena… there was no arena. And even the narrow defile that served as a stadium was only used for horse racing at best, far too narrow and tight-cornered for chariots.
Thank Fortuna that the city was seething with thermopolia. The small bars and eateries that lurked in most of the city’s central streets served a very cosmopolitan array of food and drink and Lucilia had been surprisingly lax in terms of keeping him under control all winter. He kept waiting for the noose to tighten, and had begun to suspect that she was allowing him his one solid bad habit in an attempt to limit the number of lesser habits in which he could have been indulging.
And perhaps she was just being kind, in fairness. Since Alesia, his sleep pattern had been erratic at best. Something deep inside had been triggered during that nightmare of blood and bodies, and he could count on one hand the number of full, uninterrupted nights’ sleep he’d had over the winter. In fact it had now gone far enough that he’d begun working on the principle that three to four hours a night was his norm. He knew it wasn’t doing him good, too. The black smudges beneath his eyes were evidence of that, as was the fact that some time last week he had dozed off with so little warning that he’d fallen face first into his stew. Only Lucilia’s quick reactions had stopped him drowning in mutton gravy.
‘Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!’
Fronto flinched. What was it with these Greeks? The ‘woman’ was shrieking again now, his/her awful voice given terrible reach and strength by the excellent acoustics of this Greek-style theatre that formed a horseshoe shape around a circular performance area. He blinked as he realised that she was actually screaming now, not singing some drivel about Pentheus and perverts hiding in trees. And he could see why. The white front of her dress was soaking through with a blooming circle of dark red as blood gushed out into the fabric. The screeching shifted up a tone as something happened and a steel point, gleaming with the crimson of fresh blood, emerged from the front between the fake breasts. The actor shuddered and gurgled as the strange cloaked figure behind rammed in the sword point and twisted for a confirmed and most agonising kill.
Fronto stared in horror and turned to Lucilia, who was applauding slowly, her face sombre but pleased. What in the name of…?