The Roman Conspiracy by Jack Mitchell

Author:Jack Mitchell [Mitchell, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77049-070-3
Publisher: Tundra
Published: 2005-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

The Unlikely Magician

nfortunately, my lack of sleep caught up with me on the way back. They carried me, fast asleep, to a guest bedroom in Cicero’s house. I remember dreaming that I was trapped in Volturcius’ house, with all the conspirators pointing up at me. And then I was flying over the Market like a bird, gazing across the sprawling city.

“Master Spurinna? Please wake up. Sir, please wake up,” came the voice of another bird flying beside me, but it was only the steward shaking me awake. He was much more friendly than before, for he was under the impression that my javelin had saved the house he guarded so jealously.

“Yes?” I asked groggily.

“I’m afraid we need you, sir. Very sorry to wake you up, but there is rather an awkward situation in the garden.”

I stumbled beside him toward the garden, where I had found Tullia the evening before as she was sitting with Marrucinus and Fulvia. The place was empty now, except for a waiter holding a tray of boiled eggs.

“You woke me up to feed me eggs?”

“No, sir, over there,” whispered the steward, pointing to the dense planting of ferns in the far corner. At that moment there came a shout of wild laughter from behind them, and the voice of the philosopher Pantolemos calling, “You there! More, more of those eggs!”

Confused, I picked a couple of eggs off the tray and walked round the clump of ferns. There, to my still greater confusion, sat Pantolemos, who seemed to be drunk; and the man he was slapping on the shoulder affectionately was my own slave, Homer. He seemed to be even more drunk than Pantolemos, and he was busy smashing hardboiled eggs against the elaborate mosaics on the garden floor.

“Homer!” I cried. “What are you doing here? And what on earth is going on?”

“Oh, there, sir, it is you! Very glad you’re alive, I may say. Heard all about it, I did, from this gentleman, this learned gentleman here. We are proving the theorems of that great mathematician from Alexandria who – extraordinary insight – look now, if we double the angle …”

I saw that they had arranged the eggs into various triangles. No doubt each egg diagram illustrated some profound point of philosophy.

“Homer,” I said sternly, “it is clear that you have had too much to drink. There have been complaints. Your philosophy is making a lot of noise, and the steward tells me the kitchen is running out of eggs.”

To his credit, Homer was instantly sober, or just about. He and Pantolemos postponed their speculations, and he told me how he had come to be here. It seemed that he had waited in the street outside Volturcius’ house for a long time the night before – had even heard the thud in the alley when I fell off the vine – but decided he should report back to Tullia. Then he went to the apartment he had rented, where he fell asleep. When I had not

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