Doctor Who_ The Romans - Donald Cotton [22]
(Memo: Ask Max. P. if Christian.)
I had reached this point in my reflections when the adorable Barbara entered the room, saw me, blanched provocatively, squeaked enticingly, and went out again.
I at once forgot all but my, by now, routine pursuit of the beautiful houri; and, snatching up some golden gew-gaw from my wife’s dressing table, I chased her lithely about the endless corridors of my palatial love-nest, along which she fled me like some shy gazelle; and I am reasonably confident that she would have allowed me to catch her on this occasion, had not my winged feet encountered a loose, leopard-skin draught-stopper, which brought my subtle courtship to a premature and undignified close, and left me spread-eagled on the floor of the very room from which I had started out with such high hopes!
I remarked, ‘Whoops!’, or some such expletive; and rose laboriously to my feet before the astonished gaze of my musical rival, Maximus Petullian, whose impending visit I fear I had quite forgotten in my excitement.
Hardly the entrance I would have chosen; nor would it have been my wish to find the soporific Poppy amongst those present! For, as I have confided in these pages previously, if a marriage is going to last, it will never be my fault. I have, in fact, already written her obituary, and cannot wait to publish. But for the moment she is still Empress, I suppose, and must be accorded as scant and grudging respect as I can contrive; at any rate, in public.
So I waved her graciously to a foot-stool, and taking my place on the malachite and carbuncle encrusted catafalque I keep for emergencies, I asked my visitor his business.
I had intended the question to be rhetorical, at most, as I had not the slightest interest in learning the answer; but to my utter annoyance, he at once produced a sheaf of closely written documents, and informed me that he had taken the liberty of preparing an agenda for this, and possibly subsequent meetings, should we not have time to cover every point he wished to raise during the course of this one evening.
I explained, with as much self-control as I could muster on the spur of the moment, that I was a very busy Emperor
– at which Poppy laughed nastily – and that he should consider himself damn’ lucky to have the privilege of seeing me at all, never mind any nonsense about ongoing and open-ended discussions, thank you!
In fact, the only reason he was here, as far as I was concerned, was so that he could give me a tune - preferably short - on the box, there; which would give me an opportunity of judging whether he met the high standard necessary to participate in the ‘Nero Caesar in Concert’
concert, billed for the banquet tomorrow.
I was pleased to see that he faltered slightly on hearing this; but rapidly, confound him, recovering his impertinent composure, he declared that there would be plenty of time for all that sort of nonsense later; but first he was anxious to hear my proposals for the relieving of traffic congestion on the Appian Way, the amelioration of slum conditions in the inner city areas, and for the gradual phasing out of slavery in favour of the principle of ‘one man, one vote’, so popular during the Republic! Oh yes, and one other thing: why did people keep trying to kill him?
Well, on the evidence available, I could have answered his last question then and there - a justifiable homicide it would be, if ever there was one; but being anxious to preserve the reputation for Sweet Reason which I have to insist on, I contented myself with saying that there was a lot of assassination about just now, so he mustn’t think he was being discriminated against unfairly. As to the Appian Way, I had already decided to abolish pedestrians in order to facilitate free-flow; the slums were certainly