UNPLEASANT COMPANY
ONE TO THE IDES OF JUNE
TEN O'CLOCK – give or take a half-hour or two – sodding cheap sundial
I'd like to think of our troupe as being the modern interpreters of old hashed up tripe. We can give any Greek twaddle a new spin. In fact, with complete modesty, we're pretty good for actors better trained in the arts of pickpocketing and pimping.
So I happily thought us ready for the big time after we'd spent just about a month performing in the back streets of the Subura – that less sewered part of Rome not to be underestimated for the quality of theatregoers.
Reviewing the fifteenth performance and sixteenth beating, our critic savvy Baebius decided the time had come for a tour of Latium and Etruria, where he claimed the audiences might be less responsive – physically.
Yet the moment we took our first tentative steps outside Rome the rot set in.
I mean giving-up the safety of lawlessness and foreseeable violence of our marvellous capital for the dangers of rural rustics was a shocking reckoning – even for me.
For someone born three parts Roman and one part Macedonian – we don't talk about grandma much – I was still quite ill prepared.
Suddenly we were inhaling air not smelling of a blocked latrine – though being so close to Baebius, I couldn't tell at first. And with the fear of a bite from a rabid sheep – or the herder – why only the Fates and cheap wine kept our nerves sober.
“But Quintus,” I told myself again and again, “you're a far finer actor outside of Rome than in it.”
Now the road to Arretium is the Via Cassia – not the Via Clodia as we found out after fifty miles – and it's a long winding affair that marks every place of interest with a road sign saying 'Somewhere over there'. Still, despite the land, people, road, mules and sheep, our first four-day leg – bless country brothels and all varieties of lice within them – was completed in a fortnight.
Not surprisingly, having left Rome with a bag of stale bread and camping under the stars every night, Baebius had still managed to squander all our money – the eight coins I got for my Macedonian Grandma's urn.
He'd spent it on a map of Greece after the Via Clodia debacle.
Still, by the Fates and Fortuna we came upon bustling – the street sweeper and us – Arretium quite by accident.
It was ten in the morning – long after we should have had breakfast and long before we were likely to miss lunch – so our esteemed commander, plus his girlfriend took themselves off in our props – shagging – wagon with Pops and Mops the wheezing cart ponies.
They meant to find the darkest, nastiest and well-patronised den of inequity for us to perform our best – and occasionally funny – comedy, Helen's Trojan Eunuch. If they had even found a cabbage farmer fond of pickled eggs, garlic and confined spaces I would have been happy for the coinage.
In anticipation of the usual trouble I was left in charge of the rest of the troupe, riding my fine animal as witness to my authority. As you might imagine, every successful travelling actor should have a well fitted-out mount. My mighty steed was Merdius Parvis. Don't be fooled by his size – a vertically challenged mule is well suited to this kind of work, and what's more, if things go sour – as they normally do – his teeth will be worth a fortune to any Patrician wanting a new set of dentures.
So when this darling-soon-to-be-glue decided it was time to stop in the middle of a busy road underneath a set of city gates, it was just my never-going-to-use-it stallion's way of telling me, “Sod off slacker you smell worse than me.”
My response was simple.
“I need a drink and a knackery.”
And, as it turned out, it did just so happen Arretium was one those few towns to have discovered that the pleasant atmosphere for sipping fine wine was indeed beside a mule-rending factory.
I soon spied one of these fine establishments off in the very direction Baebius had taken my lifesavings – now conveniently converted into a handy poplar cartograph of a far distant foreign country that doubled as my washboard.
Announced grandly by a carefully crafted billboard – a broken door nailed to the overhanging batons of the wildly leaning brick terrace house – was “Martha's Chew and Spew, No We Don't Serve Bloody Pork You Religious Ingrates.”
Obviously a genteel location to satisfy my urge to discover cultural diversity, I stepped from Merdius – its not the falling, but the recovery that counts – and headed over to experience new things.
Fortunately I was snapped about by a flash of red hair and a sudden and urgent kneeing where no man should suffer such extraordinary violence.
Ah, yes, Porcia Minor, how could I forget.
I've not yet made her appropriate introductions to you, my good readers – so perhaps as I fell down, I should.
Our Second Lady is a nice girl really – just a little highly strung. You know the type. Five-feet-of-freckles, sweet, gentle, too young to know the world, but with green eyes that say they've seen a lot more than you. She also has a right hook to take out any practiced pugilist, so I'm fairly certain she had some virtue left to defend.
It had actually been her turn to be on the mule, but until now I had been too frightened to get off. Fear is a powerful intuitive force – just not as strong as Porcia.
So as I laid myself down for a short rest in a puddle suspiciously close to Merdius, my out of reach companion in art and poverty leapt upon me as some crazed tigress going for the kill.
“Why you flaccid flocculating flibbertigibbet,” she announced as her blue summer travel dress fell down about me in the most alluring way.
Ordinarily a part of me may have been interested in this close embrace, but as her hand was already giving a most unkind squeeze to the object in question, I quickly gathered her advances were of another kind.
In my best manly shriek I comforted her with the words, “I wasn't holding out on you Porcia, honest, I've a Denarius hidden in my sandal.”
“That's not what you said at the last chop shop,” she reminded me of who hadn't chosen to climb out the back window.
“I was saving it for a rainy day,” popped out of my mouth in much the same way as I could feel other parts popping.
With a smile that seemed to suggest she enjoyed larceny, Porcia clenched her fist just that little bit more, “Well, my dearest Calvus, is it raining?”
“A little? A Sestercii sun shower perhaps?” I offered a quarter of my fortune – whilst struggling not to pass out.
Of all the passing shoes, clearly none were pausing to consider my rescue – nor were any stopping to assist the robbery either, so I'd ought to have been grateful.
Evil knows no bounds to a woman – her fingers gathered a better grip. As a born negotiator, I knew my work was cut out for me, so I offered a little spice to the deal.
“All of it…Inside my left shoe…Take the sodding lot.”
Managing to find a free hand – and stretch outwards my other delicate property in the process, the tiny wench loosened the leather thong about my ankle and shook my foot until I thought something had fallen off. In relief it was only my coin, the lovely silver head of our great Dictator, Lucius Sulla – himself – spinning on the cobblestone beside me, polished to a sheen by my love – and smelling a little of cheese.
Comforted by my likely permanent loss of various bodily functions, my tormentress snatched up her winnings, gave me a wink and gathered up her skirt. I had never been so relieved to be mugged and to see the so and so off. If I lived another few minutes I promised myself to enjoy life to the fullest.
“I hope you choke on the stew of the day,” I shouted bravely after her – even if it sounded more of a tweet.
Things couldn't really get any worse.
I was skimp; humiliated in public – not that the public seemed to care as much as me; and abandoned to empty-belly-suffering in the middle of the Via Cassia.
Then I saw them. Hovering overhead as some final nemesis to see me through. A pair of eyes, bulging so far from their sockets they seemed better suited to a snail.
“Now what are we going to do?” came the always whining and completely unhelpful question that typically followed any of my altercations with attractive women, highway robbers or mothers looking for ten weeks' back rent.
Carefully disguised as a thin gangly weed, with the same dreamy eyes of a frightened gecko, was my best friend Marcus Gavius – I always measure friendship by the ratio of money owed and time taken for it to be retrieved from me.
Gavius was a graduate of Atticus' Academy of Authentic Athenian Actors, the only one of us with a piece of paper to prove he had performed somewhere for someone and had possibly been paid for it.
He rather seemed to enjoy wearing whatever ill-fitting fashion was about at the time, though being an actor he always had to wait until these clothes arrived in the ragbag two seasons too late. I'd like to say he was good at his job, but I know for a fact his guild spent more time discussing the upsides of sexual experimentation. He played the Eunuch mostly.
At this point I should have you know that we two get on quite well. After all, both of us had been stodged by Baebius – several times over – so we had a lot of debts in common.
We were a team and went back along way. More than a year in fact. He'd got me out of a tricky spot and even found me an acting troupe that didn't make talent a prerequisite. Obviously, while I tried to haggle with Porcia, Gavius had thoughtfully been keeping his eagle gaze out for any other travelling acting troupes passing through town. Preferably one populated entirely by earthy young wenches suffering of the many various hysteria's – all of who enjoyed pillow-fights every night.
As if I'd be so lucky.
“Did it ever occur to you I might have needed some help – between the two of us we might have nearly taken her.”
Gavius just shrugged, “I didn't want to get involved…You know what happened last time.”
“Last time? Last time,” a very unpleasant memory was springing to mind, “was a dark night in a bordello out of lamp oil. I could not have got out of that window by myself.”
“That's what Senator Caecus thought as well.”
Why does the victim always have to defend himself, “It was dark Gavius, how was I supposed to know he was walking into the room? I recall it being left to you to give the warning signal.”
“I did.”
“A red winged warbler sounding like a bullfrog?”
“It was blue winged chuff actually.”
If he was going to say something else I'd want to throttle him.
So I held up a particular finger to his face in deferential warning. Anyway, lifting rich men's purses doesn't pay as much as it used to, not since the Dictator took over things. And here I was just the same, ego crushed, empty handed and not likely to stand straight for sometime.
After carefully testing my feet and other parts, I tightened my sandal straps, brushed myself down, and looked Gavius in the eyes – which took considerable effort. My lips were dry and parched, and over my friend's shoulders I spied Porcia ordering up an oversized bowl of pottage – and I still needed a drink.
“Lets find a bar,” I announced our solution.
“What's the point,” Gavius whined again, “We're in a fickle pickle.”
“Always the pessimist,” I slapped him on the shoulder, “See the stage before you and act your part.”
So off we marched, ignoring Merdius now trailing behind as a pet dog, and wound our way deeper into the wallowing ruins of the city.
Now in this way, Arretium isn't too different from Rome. Up on the Acropolis, with all the temples, live the wealthy. Down its slopes cling the middle class of “Higher Town” and much further down in the shadows where light and fresh air are hard to find, is “Lower Town” – no guesses who lives there.
This was the part of the city where four left turns took you into places where even a cashed up Centurion who hadn't seen a woman in six years would run away in fright from. And if he had been accompanied by his eight headhunting Gallic friends, just arrived for a spot of slaughter and plunder – each would have converted to Mithraicism and sworn abstinence and poverty for life in a nice quiet part of Asia Minor just with the shock of it all.
Not being ones to be so easily shaken though, we pressed on. Sauntering into the depths as soldiers in command of destiny itself. And then destiny arrived. I clutched Gavius and pointed to the plaster facade ahead. There upon those walls – painted in every shape and colour was such a bevy of naked women my mouth hung open in distress of not knowing which one to look at first. The business had but a simple name.
CLAUDIUS'
Clearly Claudius was a man of taste and finesse to own such artwork for public view. He was ripe for the picking then. So I dragged Gavius for several steps, half lifted him for the rest, and inside we went.
