Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [21]
Maximus's former wife was now remarried to a usually absent local senator, Germanicus. Not that the long and frequent periods when the master was not about his house seemed to have dulled Antonia's insatiable appetite for the company of men. Any men. A hugely promiscuous woman even when she was married to the praefrctus, Antonia was, even now, boasting about her latest dalliance.
`Centurion Castus Pilaigus is a handsome man, do you not think so?'
Òh Antonia,' said a shocked Agrinella, 'you haven't?'
Antonia nodded, like a dog eager to please its owner. 'Five times. He rode me like he would ride to the moon and back in a flying chariot'
Àntonia, you are so wicked,' Agrinella giggled like a schoolgirl as her friend dismissed the adventure with a shrug of the shoulders.
Ì was starved of true affection for so long. A woman has many and certain needs. Speaking of which, have you seen that new slave whom Germanicus picked up in Egypt? The black one?'
Though it was difficult, Agrinella ignored the question and turned her attention to the real reason for her visit, as if the prospect of sharing sexual secrets was not cause enough.
‘Antonia,’ she said quickly. 'What can you tell me about any history between Maximus and that vulgarian general Gaius Calaphilus?'
If Antonia was surprised by the question she was asked then she did not show it. 'Byzantium is not, and shall ne'er be, a space enough to hold both these men,' she noted.
Chapter Seven
Cephalic Symbol
What therefore God bath joined together; let not man put asunder.
Mark 10:9
I still don't fully understand how we're able to converse with everyone so fluently. I don't speak Latin, and I've only got a very basic smattering of Greek,' Barbara noted. 'I took it at school, but I used to get my diphthongs mixed up with my past participles…’
This was something that had bothered Ian on several occasions too but, as so often on their travels, the Doctor had casually dismissed such trivialities with a neo-gobbledygook explanation that left neither of his companions any the wiser.
'I was taught Latin,' replied Ian with a half-remembered look of horror on his face. `Now that was all Greek to me! My teacher was called Mr Dumbie, I remember, which was a name positively crying out for a bit of Boys Own innuendo. It's funny the daft things that stick in your mind about school, isn't it? My form tutor was a man named Quibbs and there was a Jewish lad in my class called Goldfinkle. I picked on him mercilessly.’
‘Bad boy,' Barbara said, wagging a finger at him
‘I was thirteen, what can I say? I was discovering all sorts of things. Irony, sarcasm, the fact that the world didn't revolve around rugby... Hormones: now that was shocking, the day I woke up and found the world had girls in it. With breasts and everything…’
Barbara Wright tried hard not to laugh. Which only made things worse.
Ì can still remember a few phrases,' Ian continued. 'Mainly disgusting. Foetorum extremae latrinae was a good one.'
`What does that mean?' asked Barbara.
‘”You stink like the worst toilet”.’
Barbara looked disgusted. Ànything more useful?'
'Paella meretrix,' Ian replied. ‘”Nymphomaniac whore",' he informed Barbara before she could ask. ‘And deformis anusque oblatratrix means "ugly old bag who can't keep her trap shut". Came in handy quite a few times, that one. Now there's a funny thing. How come when I just spoke Latin to you, it sounded Latin, but when someone else speaks in Latin to us, we understand it like it was English? And how about the fact that whatever it is that translates all of this for us uses words and phrases that are anachronistic to this time?'
Barbara shrugged. 'One of life's great mysteries, I suppose,' she said.
Several days had passed and the Doctor and his companions had spent their time living close to the market-place in the centre of Byzantium in rented accommodation.
They had enjoyed themselves