The Spook Who Spoke Again: A Flavia Albia Short Story by Lindsey Davis Read Free Book Online Page B

were married, did that mean Davos was my father? Faustus replied, not necessarily. Then he assumed a kindly expression, adding that Flavia Albia was bound to say, he was almost certainly not. My sister Albia is famous for her wise experience of life.
    ‘You mean, Albia will ask, was any handsome wine-seller passing by, ten months before my birth?’
    ‘That would be like her.’
    ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t here.’
    ‘And that,’ said Faustus, ‘sounds like the punchline of a joke about the man from Kyme.’
    I said I hoped then that the man from Ostia would be funnier. He laughed easily.
    The actors performed a scene, which I found dull. It had a lot of talking and nothing happened. Afterwards Faustus took me down to Thalia and Davos on the race track. He gave orders that the full script of the play they intended to perform must be sent to him tomorrow at the aediles’ office so he could try to get to grips with it. Then they would not be allowed to vary a word after he approved it. He said he liked the acrobats, but he had to view several companies, so would only confirm whether Thalia’s were chosen for the Games once he had seen the others.
    He gave some money to his slave Dromo, a sneery, spotty young man, who I could see was jealous of me being on such friendly terms with his master. Faustus told Dromo to run to the sweetmeat-seller and buy me a cake.
    ‘Can I have one?’ demanded Dromo; he was like the cheeky slave in Falco’s play.
    ‘All right. Just one; no more, Dromo.’
    I think Faustus intended me to go along with Dromo on the cake errand but I stayed behind. I didn’t like the look of Dromo and I was hoping to hear what his master said to Thalia if it was about me. It was. The magistrate stood with one hand on my shoulder like an uncle. He suggested that Thalia should consider how I was a boy with potential, but if at some point in the future it ever became known I had worked with entertainers that would be a certain career impediment. She knew the legal situation.
    Thalia gave him a nasty look but said quietly she would bear it in mind. Dromo came back and gave me a cake he had bought with the aedile’s money. He tried to pass me the smallest, but I pointed out that I had seen what he was doing so he had better swap them over.
    After they left, Thalia changed her attitude. She told me in private that maybe Faustus was right. If I wanted to be a big rissole one day, I had best stop mucking out the menagerie animals. I asked what kind of rissole I could be. Thalia said, sounding less cross than before, that since Didius Falco was an equestrian and Helena Justina’s family were senators, the menu was mine to choose. As a Roman, I could be any kind of exotic rissole I wanted, with whatever fancy gravy I liked on it and a side dish of radishes. And I was not to worry because Falco knew what he owed me so he would pay for it. With fish pickle on the radishes.
    From what I knew of Falco, that seemed a rash claim. He often said to his children that we shouldn’t raise our hopes because he intended to spend everything and only leave us his good wishes and a pair of old boots.
    Thalia did not know about me taking visitors’ money for the menagerie. I decided not mention that, because I was halving the new increase in the ticket price with her, in case I needed any petty cash for my enquiries into Ferret’s disappearance.

7
    I felt that my enquiries were bogged down. People in my family say this happens. You have to go home and rave about, groaning like an ogre, while everyone keeps out of your way. If you start throwing your boots at the walls too noisily, Helena comes in and settles you. She says, calm down, darling, you don’t frighten me but you are scaring your poor innocent children. Tell me what the matter is, please. Nothing is the bloody matter. I know, just tell me about it, sweetheart. You growl that the case is impossible, you wish you never took it on, why don’t you ever learn, you are