Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [48]
'So different from the other men of Byzantium.’
Ì should say that I am a man of Byzantium now,' Ian noted with a tinge of regret in his voice. `There are worse places to be, I suppose.'
'Do you think so?' the noble woman asked with a haughty laugh as she moved closer to him. 'I would suggest that of all of the benighted, godforsaken and depressing holes in the backwaters of the great empire, this is by far the worst. And I have seen Antioch.'
Ian suspected that this should mean something to him and he nodded accordingly. 'At least the weather's better than London,' he mitigated. He felt Antonia place her hand on his bicep and pulled away from her, sharply. 'If you want to talk geography, darlin', then fine,' he said as his face flushed with embarrassment. 'Not my subject, but I'll give it my best shot.
But if you're looking for somebody to warm your bed for you then you can think again.'
Antonia was either amused or outraged, Ian genuinely couldn't tell which. 'Do you not find me pleasing to look at?' she asked.
Actually, and considering that he had been told she was in her early forties, he did. But that was not the point. 'That is not the point,' he confirmed. 'It would be impolite of me to take advantage of the praefectus's hospitality...’
Ànd yet you seem to have no qualms about bedding his wife's handmaiden?' shouted Antonia accusingly.
'Felicia?' Ian asked, bemused. 'Who on earth told you that?'
'It is the talk of the city,' Antonia announced grandly.
'Everyone knows it.'
'Then everyone is wrong,' Ian said as though he were explaining some complex physics theory to a class of fourteen-year-olds. 'I'm sorry, but I'm not really in the mood right now. I've got a headache...’
He turned, walked a few paces and then broke into a sprint down the corridor. He could hear for a dozen paces the clip-clop of Antonia's sandals on the floor tiles behind him until she gave up the chase. At the corner he glanced back and saw the woman, her shoulders hunched in defeat, walking angrily away in the opposite direction. ‘That was hard work,' he decided, as he walked straight into Felicia coming out of one of the servants' rooms.
‘Ah, I want a word with you,' said Ian, grabbing the girl by her arm and dragging her into a quiet and poorly lit corner of the corridor.
'Sir,' said the wide-eyed slave girl with a saucy and eager grin. `Not here. It would not be proper.'
`Not anywhere,' Ian announced. 'I'm just about sick to death of getting offers of casual hanky-panky. Do me a favour and put the word out, will you? I am not interested.’
Felicia struggled free of Ian's clamp-like grip and backed off from him into the light. Ùncircumcised eunoukhos; she shouted. `Stultissime maialis, Are you a man, or...?'
'A mouse?' Ian asked, smiling. 'Give me a bit of cheese and I'll give you a definitive answer on that one.' He was glad that at least one of them was finding humour in this bizarre situation. 'There is absolutely no need to get all discombobulated about it,' he said. 'Now, do you want me to ask the praefectus for protection from you and his wife? And his ex-wife, come to that?'
'The praefectus?' Felicia asked anxiously 'You wouldn't!'
'Mice can do amazing things when they are cornered, my girl,’ Ian remarked. 'Survival of the sneakiest. It's a well-known fact. Now, get off with you, and make sure you tell your mistress and your ex-mistress and anyone else that's interested about what I've said.' When he was finally alone, Ian reflected on what his friends back home would be making of all this.
'They'd probably be calling me a stupid twerp,' he noted as he went off in search of something to eat.
Vicki awoke late in the morning, hungry and alone in the Georgiadis house. The fire was cold and the Greek family were nowhere to be seen.
On the otherwise-bare table there was half of a loaf of stale bread which Vicki broke and began to gnaw at, easing her hunger slightly. When she had finished she looked around to see if she could find anything else. In the base of the still-warm