TYPICAL
I didn't need to look about to know I'd been marked.
What's the point?
A man can only run from his crimes for so long. As was usual, I'd got myself into a bind. So I answered as enthusiastically as possible.
“Just off for a nice morning walk, Baebius, how about you?”
“Don't toy with me boy…I see a mule load of stolen wine and someone adverse to learning their lines. You weren't about to run out on the troupe were you?”
Like he cared. If I up and evaporated into the ether right this instant, my boss' eyes were only for the big amphorae dragging Merdius down.
I cast mine around and gave careful consideration to my plight – and Gavius' weak-kneed wobbling beside me. At this point I have to admit I did not expect to see what I did. There they were – Baebius, Curtia, their tired cart ponies Pops and Mops, all eating varied breakfasts from chaff bags and bowls – ordinarily I shouldn't have to identify which ate from what, but these were a many and varied times.
The leading lady was gobbling down pickled eggs and wearing another new dress of red Arabian silk. Baebius filled in around a silver tasselled belt – probably some cheap copper dipped for pillocks like him – and a skin-tight green tunic.
And he'd stolen a carrot from Mops.
That these luxuriously beautiful inbreds knew where to wait for me to make my escape came as the greater shock.
They'd been expecting us.
For there the partners in crime sat under the awning of a dubious looking chop shop enjoying the first meal of the day in the full expectation that the remainder of their troupe would find them. And it seemed they were quite right to make such an assumption. For sitting sullenly silent with them was my most evil nemesis.
Porcia.
“Hello petal,” I blew her a kiss.
“Sod off tosspot,” she bleated none too politely.
“But I'm touched, you waited for us to catch you up.”
“Leave it git face, Baebius and Curtia know the story and they want their cut,” she growled in such a way that suggested she wasn't joking.
Fortunately I knew she was.
“Well, don't delay then my flaming rose,” I chided her with my biggest toothy smile, “take your chit to the bank and cash it.”
“Bollocks I will,” she said rather pensively.
The girl was acting odd or playing a grand game. She was sitting with her hands between her knees, hidden in the folds of her cloak – the same as the one she had worn last night.
“Don't toy with them,” she eyed our company evilly, “You know very well you swapped the fish.”
“Now come on, petal, don't pull this fast one on old Baebius and me,” I said, not too certain I was going to convince them of anything until me and Merdius were subjected to some gross indecency to be sure.
Still, I tried to impress on Porcia my only evidence, “I saw you with the catch last.”
“Not quite, blossom,” the girl shot back, flicking her hair to reveal a russet set of bruises swelling around her right ear and temple, “you saw me with your flounder, good for dinner but a gullet as empty as your head.”
“Well, that's,” suddenly my poor slow turning brain caught on to the gist of the moment, and my legs went to mush, “You what?”
“Look, dimwit,” Baebius filled in the blanks, “between you and Porcia there were two fish. I can well attest that the one I caught Porcia with…”
I saw her look away in complete disgust.
Just what the cuss had done to coax the flounder from her steely grasp?
“…was the empty one. You and Gavius got the winner, so stop being so smug. I'm easy going. Give me the bonds and we'll be square about this whole subject.”
I looked at him aghast.
The gangster – as most acting troupe managers are or were purported to have once been – wanted in on something I was out of.
That I wanted to fall down and pound the paving stones to dust in abject disgust – pretending it was Baebius' round grinning swarthy face – would have been an understatement.
I couldn't believe it. Just an hour or so ago I'd let the richest fish in the Republic slide back to the bottom of Claudius' shoebox.
“You do know what all this is about?” I whispered leaning closer to his perfumed black hair.
“It seems a simple enough job – maybe we'll do it ourselves,” he replied none too miffed.
“You…You…You want to what?” I managed – after all – this was just a simple dalliance to bring down our entire government.
“Well, it only seems fair to do our bit – no sense in having every proscripted runaway Populist chasing us about to reclaim their payment,” he rebuffed my doubts that he wouldn't be capable of such a minor misdemeanour.
“Now don't lets worry about them,” I heard Curtia purr an interjection as she sauntered closer to my wide-open eyes.
It seemed Arabian silk lost nothing in colour but was thin on fabric – she could have caused many a man an injury with the way those drapes clung today.
For someone who had let several fortunes slip through his fingers – and then been fingered for holding out on the said fortunes whilst being invited to assist in autocraticide – I was surprised a part of me could still react to this blonde vixen's nearness.
She drew me into her arms and pressed me against those ample mounds over which strands of silk were struggling to retain their confinement.
Into my ear she whispered the most wonderful of sweet nothings, “Now you should know better than most, Calvus, that dead men don't collect their debts.”
Never had I heard such a threat trickle around me like honey. I knew I was in love. Like a little spider trying to serve his great hairy Queen. Curtia would eat me up and spit out the bones when the job was done – and I'd enjoy every moment.
“You slack-jawed pillock,” one part of me yelled at the other.
She was nothing but a Siren, calling me to my doom.
I peered over Curtia's pleasant lavender scented shoulder towards Porcia. The brilliant glare of the girl's damaged skin shocked me. Only by complete surprise could someone sneak a blow on her. And still the Second Lady was hiding her hands.
But this time I spied the flaxen cord binding her wrists.
So this was the trouble, eh?
My humble leading actors had knobbled the girl with a broken baton after her escape last night – trussed her up – patted her down and then waited for me.
“Let Porcia go,” I murmured to Curtia, “and I'll see what I can rustle up.”
“The money, Calvus,” Baebius growled.
“Its in a safe place…”
I shivered at that prospect, but I was in need of buying time and running off.
“…we do the job first. No point giving you the chit and showing up at the luncheon by myself. We can use Porcia…She's good with her hands.”
“I don't like it,” Curtia breathed to Baebius.
He shrugged in a way Greek men are wanton to do, “They're pillocks…We'll need them all to keep the plan on track.”
It was the leading actor's telling wink to his scarlet bed-warmer that gave the game away. Baebius wasn't the daft git I'd thought he'd been. He'd known about the fish, the Dictator and me all along. And I hadn't said a word.
Between him and old Claudius, I'd been made the fall guy for whenever the Dictator's very upset friends came to hunting down a criminal – any would do.
Well, that wouldn't do – not for me.
That's just the reason I kept on such friendly terms with Gavius. And as if my good friend had just figured the former or the latter, I noticed him eyeing me in rather peculiar fashion as Curtia kissed my cheek.
Then she brushed me aside as another victory needing little more effort.
