Romans on the Rampage

by Jeremy Strong

  ‘You never think anything I do is a good idea,’ Perilus grumbled. ‘I’ve had a rotten day. Why can’t you say something nice for once?’

  ‘All right, I shall. Perilus, this is not a good idea – you might fall and die.’

  ‘That’s not NICE! It’s HORRIBLE!’

  I shrugged. Surely it was kind of me to warn him. After all, I didn’t want him dead. Where would all my biscuits come from?

  ‘I don’t want you to be hurt,’ I explained. ‘And fallin’ from a great height on to your noddle is goin’ to be rather painful.’

  The daredevil fastened his blazing eyes on me. ‘I am not going to fall. I am going to see the Emperor, Croakbag. I’ll be fine. Trust me.’

  I groaned. ‘Trust me.’ That’s the last thing a person says before they do something REALLY STUPID. I once heard a gladiator say it just before he went into the arena at the Colosseum to face twenty starving lions. Needless to say, the lions weren’t starving for long and the gladiator never came back out. Hurr hurr hurr. That’s the kind of joke that gets us ravens cackling like crazy! Toc-toc-toc!

  Next thing, Perilus has started to let himself out of the window on the end of his toga-rope and he’s lowering himself down, bit by bit. That was when the clothes chest started to move towards the window, being pulled by Perilus’s weight at the other end of the rope.

  The chest goes sliding across the floor faster and faster and suddenly it comes up BANG! against the wall, then gets pulled UP the wall until it reaches the window. The lid flies open and the rest of Perilus’s clothes fall out of the chest and rain down on him below, not to mention half a dead squirrel I’d stashed away in there several weeks earlier.

  Perilus loses his grip on the toga-rope and the next minute he’s hanging bottom up and swinging from side to side, looking like some weird washing line invented by Maddasbananus. Half his clothes are draped round him and his upside-down bare legs and pants are on display to everyone in the dining room.

  Everyone, including the Emperor, was staring at Perilus, slowing swinging backwards and forwards with half a dead squirrel peering out from beneath his left armpit. Finally, a knot in the toga-rope slipped undone and Perilus fell – PHWEEEEEEE – SPERLASSHH! – straight into the atrium pool.

  Which was a Good Thing if you ask me. If that had been the ground, poor Perilus would have been well and truly hurt. As it happened, the water broke his fall and all he got was a couple of bruises, a complete soaking and a goldfish stuck in his right ear. What with that and the dead squirrel, Perilus was rapidly turning into a zoo on legs.

  ‘It’s that funny boy, Mater!’ cried Clumpia. ‘Oh, I do think he’s such a hoot. Can we live here and make him our clown?’

  While Clumpia was asking for a clown for Saturnalia, (otherwise known as the Roman Christmas), Krysis was growling orders at Flippus Floppus and Fussia, Hysteria’s maid. The two slaves hurried out to the pool, bundled up Perilus between them and hastily took him back to his bedroom. The togas were removed and Perilus was left locked in his room.

  Flippus Floppus whispered to him quickly as he left, ‘I’ll get some food to you later, master, don’t you worry. I’m glad you’re all right. Just stay put for now and please don’t try anything else.’

  I was touched. A mere slave was expressing concern for my floppy-haired friend and I could not help but have a word with Flippus myself. ‘Flippus,’ I said. ‘You are a good, kind man. Thank you for lookin’ after Perilus and, when you bring him some food, do you think you could also manage a few biscuits? Thank you very much. Kraaarrk!’

  8. The Beak Squeaks

  Poor Perilus. It’s tough being eleven. I should know. I’m only twelve myself. Of course, in human years, that’s about – well, a bit more. So, moving on swiftly, hurr hurr, poor Perilus. First of all he’s been mistaken for a slave by the Emperor of Rome no less and then he falls out of the sky, goes swimming in the atrium pool and completely ruins Pater’s dinner party.

  Now he’s in Krysis’s study and he’s getting such a telling-off. The study door was firmly shut and I could hear Krysis working himself up into a rage, but I couldn’t make out EXACTLY what he was saying. That was a trifle annoying so I padded over to the study door and leaned my feathered earhole against it.

  ‘But, Pater, how was I to know the peasant was the Emperor? That’s cheating!’ wailed Perilus.

  ‘You know perfectly well that you never, ever pretend to be a slave. It’s so – common!’

  ‘But the Emperor can pretend to be a peasant!’ Perilus shouted back, which was pretty brave of him.

  ‘It’s different for an Emperor, Perilus. Emperors can do anything they like! Besides, you are my son. I have friends in high places. If they knew you’d been pretending to be a slave, I’d never live it down!’

  Ah, I thought, nodding my beak, friends in high places, eh? I’m only a lowly raven and I’ve got lots of friends in high places. Trees mostly. Kraaarrk! There’s another one. What a cracker! But back to the door – or rather ear to the door.

  ‘You behaved abominably, Perilus. And at dinner too! What on earth were you doing? Hanging upside down from your window, looking like some awful bit of roadkill that wretched raven of yours might have brought in. It was hideous.’

  Hmmm. What was he going on about? Roadkill? I’d been saving that squirrel for weeks, if you don’t mind. And it was VERY tasty, thank you very much!

  ‘I only wanted to see the Emperor,’ I heard Perilus mutter.

  By this time, I could hear Krysis pacing up and down the room and I really wanted to find out what was going on so I poked my beak beneath the door, trying to see what was happening.

  Now then, things I must tell you. Us birds have very clever necks that can twist in all directions. In fact, we can turn our heads upside down, which is very useful when you’re trying to see beneath something low down, like the bottom of a door. However, I have to admit that my honker is on the larger side of big and unfortunately it got wedged beneath it. Uh! Ee! Oooh! I tugged and tugged, but I couldn’t get free. I’d been trapped by my own beak! This was insane, not to mention embarrassing.

  At this point, I was upside down with my claws planted firmly against the door above me and my wings flapping about uselessly like bits of old wrapping paper, and me tugging away and making muffled squeaks and squawks.

  ‘Go to your room!’ Krysis bellowed at Perilus. ‘I don’t want to set eyes on you all day. And next time I bring an emperor into this house you’d better not behave like that again or you’ll be out on the street with no home at all. Go on! Get to your room!’

  I heard Perilus padding my way. HELP! Any moment now he’d try and open the door and there’s me with my hooter still jammed under it. I’d be scraped to bits, dragged beyond deadness. All-powerful Diana, Goddess of All Creatures, save me!

  ERRRRRKKKKKK!

  The door was yanked inwards.

  ‘Aaaarrrgh! My deak!’

  ‘Croakbag?’ Perilus stared down at me as I struggled to my feet. Ungainly. That’s the word for it. I was completely lopsided owing to my neck having been twerked and twisted beyond neckability.

  ‘My deak!’ I repeated.

  ‘Your – deak?’

  ‘Yed! My deak!’ It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t speak properly. It felt as if my hooter had been squeezed until the top bit had got stuck to the bottom bit and I could barely move it at all.

  ‘Get that blasted raven out of my office!’ yelled Krysis.

  ‘I think he’s hurt his deak, Pater.’

  ‘Jupiter! Save me from this madhouse!’ Krysis yelled, but more worryingly he was now eyeing me with increasing suspicion. He was trying to work out how this situation had come about.

  You know that awful feeling you have in your stomach when you think you’re about to be found out? That’s what I had. Rumblings below.

  ‘Croakbag,’ Krysis began. ‘Were you listening at the door?’

  I pulled my wings together, gave my feathers a quick preen and slow
ly raised my head until I was peering at Krysis with one bright and beady eye.

  ‘No,’ I said. It wasn’t a very good ‘no’. It came out as a sort of half-croak, half-squeak – what you might call a squoak.

  Krysis frowned. ‘So what were you doing down on the ground with your beak stuck under the door?’

  ‘Peckin’,’ I said. Aha! See, I was going to talk my way out of this one. I’m not just clever, I AM SUPER-RAVEN! My beak was beginning to loosen up at last.

  ‘Yes,’ I went on. ‘I was peckin’, for food. I was walkin’ this way and just happened to be strollin’ past when I spotted some escaped crumbs of the biscuit variety, to which I am quite partial, as you well know. So I bent down and started peckin’, followin’ the trail of crumbs as it were, and the next thing I knew my beak was stuck beneath the door and Perilus opened it, freein’ my beak, and for that I thank you both. And now, if you don’t mind, I shall go and wash all this floor dust off my feathers. Good mornin’.’

  How do you like that then? I just walked away, a free raven, as innocent as a raven could be, which is not a lot. Am I clever or am I clever or am I SUPER-RAVEN? Kraaaaarrrkkk! Go on, give us a biscuit!

  Anyhow, it left Perilus in a bit of a pickle. Krysis seems determined to keep the boy shut away in his room, staring across the road. As was big sis Hysteria. You know why she was staring, don’t you? Scorcha was out in the courtyard, sorting all his charioteer bits and pieces and getting ready for his big chance to race with the Green Team. Hysteria’s heart was full of dreamy love for the young charioteer. Ah! Sweet!

  And, of course, it’s Perilus’s dream too and I don’t mean he wants to marry Scorcha, but he does want to be a charioteer. Well, we all have our dreams, don’t we? Mine are mostly about biscuits and sitting down.

  Whaddya mean, birds can’t sit down? That’s exactly the point! You humans can’t fly, no matter how much you flap your puny little featherless arms, but flying is what you often dream about. Unlike you lot, birds can’t sit down, so that’s what we dream about: sitting around in armchairs.

  Anyhow, Perilus wants to be a charioteer and you’d think there was nothing wrong with that. But Krysis? Oh no, being a charioteer isn’t good enough for Pater. Pater’s got his dreams. Krysis sees his son following in his footsteps and becoming boss of the Imperial Mint like him.

  It’s a very important, high-up job. That’s why he’s got such a big villa and so many slaves. But there’s a problem, see? People in high-up jobs mostly like to be with other people in high-up jobs. When you’re one of the high-ups, you start feeling special, like you’re above everyone else ’cos they’re not as high-up as you are.

  I’ll tell you what, though, none of you humans can get up as high as me because I can fly! Kraaarrk! Ah, I crack myself up. I am just SO clever sometimes. Corvus brainus giganticus – that’s me!

  Anyhow, charioteers are definitely NOT high-ups, even though some of them earn fantastic amounts of money. You ask Krysis and he will tell you that more than half the charioteers here in Rome are actually slaves, or used to be slaves until they were freed. Definitely NOT high-ups.

  Now Krysis – he’s not a bad dad and he’s not a bad man either. He looks after his slaves. He always frees them after they’ve been with him for ten years, and some of them choose to carry on working for him. Maddasbananus, across the road – he used to be one of Krysis’s slaves. Krysis helps his slaves get educated and find good jobs. But that’s as far as it goes. They’ll always be slaves as far as Krysis is concerned.

  Do you think high-up Krysis wants his son Perilus to become a charioteer? Big NO-NO. But Perilus is only eleven and boys will be boys, so perhaps he’ll grow out of his dream. On the other hand (or should I say ‘the other wing’?), I haven’t grown out of mine. I still dream about sitting in an armchair. Kraaarrk! Get over it!

  9. Life Starts Throwing Stuff

  But life goes on. That’s a saying we ravens have: ‘Life goes on.’ We’re stoical creatures, see?

  Whaddya mean, you don’t see at all? Oh, you don’t know what ‘stoical’ means, do you? Like I said before, GO TO SCHOOL! But back to being stoical. It means, quite simply, that we take things as they come – the good, the bad and the in-between. Life tends to throw things at you sometimes and it doesn’t always throw things that are nice. Sometimes it throws young lads into pools and sticks goldfish in their ears. Kraaarrk! Toc-toc-toc.

  Anyhow, today I was having a lovely time going through one of my hidey-holes. Us ravens are always stashing our stuff away somewhere. I’ve got hiding places all over the place: under rugs, behind chests and so on. So, I was enjoying myself no end, putting stuff in, taking stuff out, putting it back in again. I even found a small lump of dead rat stashed away. That was a tasty surprise. So there I was, up on the roof chewing away on the old rodent when I spotted what looked like a ghost with itching powder down the back of its neck hiccuping across the road at high speed and heading for the house opposite.

  I hastily rammed what was left of the rat under a roof tile and floated across the road myself.

  ‘Your pater won’t be very pleased,’ I told the ghost.

  The ghost threw back his sheet angrily. ‘How did you know it was me?’ Perilus asked.

  I sighed. Sometimes it’s not much fun being as wise and world-weary as me. ‘I could just tell,’ I told him. ‘It’s the way you walk.’

  ‘I’ve got to help Scorcha,’ Perilus declared. ‘It’s his big day tomorrow. He’s going to race and I’ve got to help him prepare. He’s got some new way of practising.’

  ‘I see. Does that mean you’ll be borrowin’ Crabbus’s goat again? Is that sensible?’

  ‘They’re out. I saw them go. Scorcha is getting the goats already.’

  That much was true. I could hear an almighty clamour of bleating and blathering going on and I hoped Crabbus and Septicaemia were well out of earshot. Then Scorcha himself appeared, grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘I’ve got them!’ he cried. ‘Time for a final practice. Croakbag, salve!’

  (Salve. ‘Hello.’ Try and remember. ‘Goodbye’ is vale. Aren’t you coming on well?)

  Scorcha grinned at me. ‘How are you doing? Have you come to watch?’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  ‘Good. I’ve got a great plan. Perilus, help me with these two planks. We’re going to tie them across the goats.’

  I studied the goats carefully. They were now joined together by two short planks lying across their backs. I tried as hard as I could, but I failed to see how a pair of goats with two planks was going to help Scorcha win his place in the Green Team.

  Scorcha tightened the ropes holding the planks in place. ‘Just think, by this time tomorrow I could be a fully paid-up member of the Green Team, with a real chariot and real horses, thundering round the ring at the Circus Maximus. It would be a dream come true.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘But what is this new contraption of yours?’

  ‘Aha! Brilliant, isn’t it? You see I had this idea in the night.’

  ‘You haven’t been talkin’ to Maddasbananus, have you? You do realize that some of his ideas are, well, unusual?’ I suggested.

  ‘No, no. This came to me in a dream. It’s brilliant. You see chariot racing is so much about balance.’

  ‘Balance?’ I repeated, and I remembered Perilus walking on the washing line.

  ‘Yes. The track is rough. The chariot gets thrown all over the place so what I’ve tried to do here is to imitate the roughness of the road.’

  ‘Ah! So you’re tryin’ to get the goats to throw you all over the place?’ Light was dawning in my brain, like the sun rising from the obscuring mist of the early morn, allowing its radiant beams to burst forth upon the world. Oh, I really should be a poet.

  ‘Exactly, and I must keep my balance while standing on these planks. That’s the trick of it. If I can stay on my feet while these giddy goats do their best to throw me to the ground, then riding a proper racing ch
ariot will be easy.’

  Perilus grinned at me. ‘Isn’t Scorcha brilliant!’

  Hmmm. I can’t say I was completely convinced about Scorcha’s brilliance or the goat-balancing idea, but one thing was quite obvious: Scorcha was going to go for it and go for it he did.

  I have never seen so much dust. Scorcha and the goats set off at breakneck speed, with the planks bouncing about like two crocodiles having a wrestling match.

  ‘I am the champion!’ Scorcha grinned back over his shoulder at us as he lurched from one foot to another, standing upright on the planks while the two goats carried on thundering round and round, faster and faster. It was a blur of frantic fur, flapping tongues and one wildly whooping, would-be charioteer. Huge clouds of dirt and grit rose from beneath the pounding hooves of the two goats and settled on all the washing that had just been hung out to dry by The Ghastlies’ slave, Putuponn.

  The poor girl screamed with dismay. ‘NOOOOOO! MY WASHING!’

  She came tearing out to try and rescue it all and ran right across the path of Scorcha’s thundering plank-tank. He yelled in horror, swerved violently to avoid her and just missed the terrified girl. Unfortunately, Scorcha was now heading straight for The Ghastlies’ home at high goat-speed, with no time to stop. He plunged headlong through the front door that had been left half open by the slave. I covered my ears.

  KERRUNCH! BANGG!

  The door came off its splintered hinges.

  SKRUNNKK!! OW! THUDDD!! OUCH! OOH! SPLANNGG!

  Assorted bits of broken furniture came tumbling out through the door and into the yard. Just as the dust began to settle, who should come yelling into the yard, waving their arms as if it was the end of world? Crabbus and Septicaemia, The Ghastlies themselves.

  Poor Scorcha. There was no escape this time. Crabbus found the young charioteer half buried beneath a broken table, two chairs and a pile of smashed pottery, including the olive jar. Scorcha had olives and olive oil plastered all over his head and chest. Meanwhile, Trendia’s white goat, quite unharmed by it all, was busily eating Septicaemia’s best rug.