Doctor Who_ The Romans - Donald Cotton [11]
How would you and Dad feel about buying me out of the legion, and the sooner the better? I have made enquiries, and find that by a happy coincidence the sum required is exactly equal to your life savings, and would be money well-spent in my opinion.
I will not trouble you with all the details which have led me to decide on a change of career, but execution comes into it, and I naturally don’t want that at my age.
I have no fixed address at the moment, but a reply dropped down the first grating of the main sewer, just after it leaves the Temple of Minerva, is almost certain to reach me, if you follow?
Wish you were here.
Oh, and please keep the news that I am back in Rome to yourself for the present, and oblige
Your undone son,
Ascaris
DOCUMENT IX
Third Extract from the Journal of Ian Chesterton
To think that in my previous existence I should ever have contemplated spending a summer holiday cruising these turbulent waters, the tempestuous reality of which is so very different from what the travel brochures lead one to expect! I have yet to see a sunlit vista, and pine-capped promontories escape me.
Instead, the restricted visibility offered by the neighbouring slimy and barnacle encrusted oar-port affords me a cheerless view in which rotten rocks and an apparently bottomless swirling vortex feature prominently
- Scylla, possibly, and Charybdis, perhaps; but I fear I have neglected my classical studies in favour of scientific principles; and a fat lot of good those are at the moment, I must say! Archimedes’ hare-brained hypothesis provides no comfort whatsoever in my present situation. In fact, I would rather not know what volume of water is likely to be displaced by a falling body; since I gather from the galley-master that the body in question is likely to be my own, if I do not make even more strenuous efforts to synchronise my strokes with those of my fellow oarsmen, The tyrant in question is a sadistic brute of no perceptible intellectual endowment, whose goodwill I have forfeited by a vain attempt to bring him low by another of my rugger tackles. I was, of course, hampered in this endeavour by the safety-belt of salt-corroded iron which secures me to my seat; but the obscene expression which escaped his lips when I later cracked him across the shin with a water-cask warned me at once that these solo escape attempts are probably misguided and doomed to failure.
But escape I must if I am ever to rescue Barbara from whatever unthinkable fate awaits her in the Roman slave-market, and I therefore need an accomplice.
To this end I have made the acquaintance of my colleague on the thwart, a giant, bearded Greek called Delos, who claims to have been a winner of the Pentathlon at Olympus in his youth.
As I myself have some small experience as a deputy games master at Coal Hill - you may remember, Headmaster, that I took over at a moment’s notice when Farthingale lost an ear during a hockey scrimmage - I fancy that together we shall be able to give a good account of ourselves, should fortune favour us with an opportunity to strike back at the beastly bully. But I confess I do not quite see how such an occasion can possibly arise; for since my last ill-fated attempt the man appears to be very much on his guard, and has - quite literally - the whip hand!
Thank God for a sense of humour!
To add to our discomfort, the weather has worsened even while I have been writing this: and am I right in recollecting from my somewhat scant knowledge of Ancient History that, on one occasion, Nero’s entire battle-fleet foundered when almost in sight of Ostia? If so, then I fear that I may well drown before I have a chance to be born; and in that case you, Headmaster, will never have a junior member of staff called,
Sincerely,
Ian Chesterton.
PS. If you have not, then please disregard this letter.
DOCUMENT X
Fourth Extract from The Doctor’s Diary Another myth exploded! Not all roads lead to Rome by any means, and Vicki and I have had much ado to find the place: our false friend and guide, the centurion, having left