Doctor Who_ The Romans - Donald Cotton [7]
Let me try to put events into some sort of rational order while I still have a clear mind; and indeed, the strength to do so, for I fear I cannot survive much more of this!
‘Of what?’ you ask, Headmaster, with your quite understandable end of term brusqueness? All in good time, I promise you - but first you must permit me a preamble, or you will be lost in the convolutions of the subsequent narrative.
Hardly had the Doctor and Vicki departed on their ill-advised expedition, when two strangers arrived at the villa.
I regarded them with some apprehension; for in spite of the Doctor’s confident assertion that the owners of the property are obviously on an extended vacation, I have never been happy in my mind about the terms of our dubious tenancy, and have been awaiting the return of the ground landlords with an anxiety not unmixed with a tendency to jump like a jerboa at noises in the night.
However, although rather rough-looking, the newcomers addressed us in a civil enough manner, asking if our holocaust - I think that’s what they said - if our holocaust was functioning effectively; being, they claimed, from the under-floor heating maintenance department in Assissium.
We assured them that since the installation of the system we had used no other; having, in fact, even gone so far as to tell our friends about it. And this having been established to their satisfaction, we invited them to join us in a goblet or so of Sarnian wine, for it was a warm day; and they accepted with what appeared to be pleasure.
Oh, why did it not occur to me then, Headmaster, that on a warm day the heating apparatus might reasonably have been expected to be off? But you can’t think of everything, can you?
For a while the conversation circled round various small-talk and gossip topics, such as the inadequate provision of bread and circuses by the municipal authorities; and whether in our opinion, they wondered, Nero really had killed his mother. Things like that. And then, out of the blue, the elder of the two - Sevcheria by name - asked Barbara if she had any news at all from Londinium these days?
She had the quick wit and intelligence to look blank -
for which I gave her full marks - and, adopting a mentally retarded expression, asked him why he should ever suppose such a thing?
At this the younger, and obviously subordinate artisan -
one Didius - grinned offensively - mind you, he’d had a couple by then - tapped his nose with a grimy forefinger, and said that she and her pretty little friend - yes, and where was she, by the way? - had not only made a generally favourable impression on the market traders of Assissium yesterday, but had incautiously enquired the current exchange rate as between pounds and lira, when purchasing a dress-length of white samite (Oh, mystic, wonderful, Barbara!) in the shopping precinct. So come on, now - they were Britons, weren’t they? Natives of that off-shore island where the good times are, and the girls know a thing or two, ha, ha!
I groaned inwardly - feeling that an outward manifestation of my horror at their indiscretion would serve no useful purpose at this time - and tried unsuccessfully to kick Barbara on the ankle; unfortunately knocking Sevcheria’s stool from beneath him in the process. At this he drew himself up to his full height, albeit with some difficulty, produced from beneath his toga one of those nasty looking, twisted daggers that Arabs use in films – you must have seen them – and said that if that was the way I wanted it, I could