by Doctor Who
10
Further introductions were put on hold as a nearby door slammed open. An angry-looking red-faced man glared down at the depleted pile of pottery at his feet. ‘Here! What’ve you done to my amphorae?’
‘Er – it was them!’ Rose said mendaciously, pointing after the three muggers.
The man started after them, yelling ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ as the Doctor and Rose beat a hasty retreat in the opposite direction, carrying Gracilis between them. ‘You all right?’ Rose asked him, as they reached a safe distance and came to a stop. ‘Did those blokes nick anything?’
The man shook his head – but the effort seemed to make him lose his balance.
The Doctor stepped in and caught him. ‘Whoops!
Steady there. I don’t think you are all right, are you? Are you hurt?’
‘No, no,’ said Gracilis. ‘Just the worry, you know. . . And I must confess I feel slightly dizzy.’
The Doctor frowned. ‘Really? Can you remember what day it is?’
‘Ah, I am not so weak as all that,’ said the man. ‘It is the Ides of March.’
Rose nearly choked. ‘You’re joking!’
Gracilis looked startled. ‘Am I, then, wrong? Am I suffering from fever of the brain?’
The Doctor frowned at Rose but gave Gracilis a great big reassuring smile. ‘No, no, quite right. I’m assuming you know what year it is as well, though?’
‘The year?’ said the man incredulously. ‘Of course I do. Really, sir, I appreciate your concern, and of course your brave intervention, but I assure you I am fine. There is no need for this.’
‘Absolutely! You’re fine,’ said the Doctor, slapping Gracilis on the back and grimacing at Rose. He mouthed ‘Worth a try’ and then ‘I’ll work it out later’ to her. ‘Well, clean bill of health on the memory front. Excellent. But tell me, when did you last have anything to eat?’
Gracilis looked thoughtful. ‘Do you know, I have no idea. Yesterday perhaps. Or possibly the day before.’
‘Then before you do anything else, a bite to eat and a sit-down are on the menu. Come on.’
11
‘But hadn’t we better beware?’ said Rose happily. ‘You know, of, er, food poisoning. . . ’
The Doctor frowned again.
‘All right. Let’s go get something to eat,’ she said. ‘Could we find a nicer bit of town, though?’
But Gracilis was shaking his head again. ‘No, no, no. There’s no time! I must continue my search!’
The Doctor was gentle but firm, almost as if he was a real doctor.
‘Food and rest. You’ll be no good to anyone till you’ve had those. And then – well, Rose and I are fond of a good search, aren’t we, Ro e?’
‘Love ’em,’ said Rose.
‘So you tell us what you’re looking for – and we’ll look for it with you. Deal?’
‘Er. . . ’ said Gracilis. But the Doctor had already grabbed his hand and shaken it. ‘Deal.’
Once they got into the main part of the city the streets were much more crowded. ‘It’s like Oxford street at Christmas!’ gasped Rose, as the tenth or eleventh person shoved her out of the way.
‘Rome’s got a population of one million,’ said the Doctor.
‘Really?’ said Rose.
‘Yup.’ He started counting off passers-by. ‘One, two, three –’
‘Yeah, all right, I believe you. But I think every single one of ’em’s heading in the opposite direction to us!’ She hopped out of the way of a particularly persistent pedestrian. ‘And they’re all drunk!’
‘It’s a festival day,’ the Doctor explained.
‘It is? Lucky us!’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘It’d have been more surprising if it wasn’t. To the Romans, almost every day is a festival of something or other.’
Rose grinned. ‘Lucky them!’
Finally the Doctor managed to forge a path towards what Rose would call a small cafe, although it probably had some fancy Latin name. Most of its customers were buying food to take out, but there were a few tables for those who wanted to sit down.
12
‘Sort of like Starbucks,’ said Rose. The Doctor fetched a pile of fruit pastries and three cups of spiced wine – which turned out to taste like boiled vinegar with cloves – while Rose led Gracilis to a bench.
Rose hadn’t realised how pale the old man was until she saw the colour coming back to his face with the wine and the pastry. ‘Thank you,’ he said to them for about the thirtieth time. ‘How can I ever I repay you? You must let me give you a reward.’ He began opening a pouch on his belt; there was the sound of coins chinking.
‘Oh, we don’t do rewards,’ said the Doctor, putting up a hand to refuse.
‘Really, we do this sort of thing for fun,’ Rose told Gracilis, seeing his puzzled expression. ‘So, what’re you searching for, then?’
The old man’s face blanched again and Rose felt quite alarmed.
But he steadied himself and took a deep breath. ‘My son,’ he said.
‘My handsome, clever son, Optatus. He has gone missing. A boy – I should say, a man – of just sixteen!’
‘And you reckon he’s in Rome somewhere, then?’ asked Rose.
Gracilis sighed. ‘I do not know. My family is currently residing in our country villa, but it has been searched, and the lands all around.
I thought of Rome – you know what boys are, always far too keen for their own good on the wild ways of the city. But I have looked and I have asked and I have begged in a manner quite unfitting for my position, and not a trace have I found.’
The cafe’s proprietor, a tubby man with food stains down his tunic, hadn’t troubled to hide the f t that he was listening to their conversation with interest. ‘Here, I know what you can do,’ he suddenly interjected.
Gracilis jumped from his seat. ‘You can help me find my son?’
‘Well, no,’ said the man. ‘Not find him exactly.’ Gracilis sank back down again. ‘But I reckon I know who can.’
He came out from behind the counter and flopped down on the bench next to Rose. His fishy odour overcame even the vinegary wafts from the wine and she had to make an effort not to flinch.
‘Well, don’t keep us in suspense,’ said the Doctor.
13
The man gave a loud sniff. ‘There’s this girl, see. They say she can tell the future, anything, just from looking at the stars.’
‘An astrologer?’ asked Gracilis.
‘That’s the very thing,’ the chubby man replied. ‘I heard she predicted that Hadrian was going to rebuild the Pantheon. And he is!’
‘That’s nothing,’ put in a customer from the next bench, through a mouthful of bread and cheese. ‘She told me that I was going to have a big row with my wife – and it came true!’
‘Well, yeah,’ said the chubby man, ‘but you’d just been trying to chat up the girl in front of your wife. I could’ve predicted that. Anyway, I heard she’s said the Empire’s going to fall in a few centuries. I’m thinking of moving the family, just to be on the safe side.’
Rose tutted. ‘Oh, come off it,’ she said. ‘Who are you trying to kid?
Astrology’s a load of rubbish.’
‘You would say that,’ said the Doctor. ‘Typical Taurean.’
She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Come on. You’re not telling me you believe in that stuff. . . ’ But the Doctor shushed her as Gracilis pushed himself from his seat.
‘Tell me, where is this famed woman? How can I find her?’
As the cafe owner gave directions, the Doctor and Rose got to their feet too, the Doctor cramming in the last of his pastry as he made ready to leave.
Gracilis turned to them. ‘My friends, I am truly grateful for your assistance, and would be glad to offer you hospitality in my villa if ever you happen by, but I will trespass on your goodness no longer.’
‘You must be joking,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re not going to miss an opportunity to meet a lady who can te
ll the future, are we, Rose?’ And he looked at Rose and grinned.
She grinned back. ‘Not a chance.’
14
The Doctor, Rose and Gracilis made their way to the Via Lata, passing by Trajan’s Column itself, which pierced the sky with its carved tales of Trajan’s victory over the Dacians. It looked even morer impressive close up – marble panels spiralling away from a sort of temple thing at the bottom (‘That’s got Trajan’s ashes in it,’ the Doctor said). This nearby, Rose had to crane her neck right back to see the emperor’s statue standing on the top, over 100 feet above her. There was a viewing platform at the top of the column and she could see the Doctor just itching to climb up to it, but Gracilis was a man on a mission and so they were forced to hurry on too.
Eventually they came to the place named by the cafe owner. An apartment in a block, it was not the most salubrious of locations, but it was a great deal better than the area in which they’d first arrived. Really, it wasn’t all that different from the Powell Estate – several blocks of apartments were built around a courtyard, and there were even some shops on the ground floor, but selling olive oil and kitchenware rather than cigarettes and Chinese food.
They climbed up the stairs to the apartment in question, where the Doctor took the lead and knocked on the door.
15
After a moment it opened slightly and a narrow-eyed man in a grubby tunic peered out at them. ‘Well? What do you want?’
The Doctor smiled at him. ‘We’d like to see the young lady who lives here. You know, the prophet? Astrologer?’
The man’s demeanour changed instantly. Suddenly he was obsequious, gushing, as he pushed the door wide and stood back to let them in.
‘Ah, my pleasure, gentlemen and lady, my very great pleasure. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Balbus, and you shall see the lady, the reader of the stars, the interpreter of planets, she who knows what is to come. For only the smallest of small fees, you shall see her.’
‘Cross her palm with silver,’ muttered Rose. ‘Nothing changes.’ She expected Gracilis to haggle at the sum mentioned, but he was obviously too anxious about his son to quibble over money, and he gave the man a handful of coins without protest.
The scruffy man led the way into a back room, where someone was sitting huddled in a corner. ‘Visitors for you, Vanessa,’ he said, rubbing his hands avariciously in the manner of someone who’d got a good bargain. ‘Tell them what they want to know.’
The figure looked up, and Rose was taken aback. She’d unconsciously expected a fairground gypsy type, elderly and rosy-cheeked, a knowing smile on the face as she told of tall dark strangers and voy-ages across the sea. But this was just a girl – a thin, dark-skinned girl with haunted eyes,
‘Yes, master.’
Rose turned to the Doctor, looking quizzical. ‘She’s a slave,’ he mouthed back silently.
Gracilis sat down in front of the girl. ‘You must tell me where to find my son!’ he implored. ‘I can give you his time and place of birth, all you need to know.’
The girl looked scared.
‘Answer the gentleman, Vanessa,’ said her owner, his grin like a wolf’s.
In a soft voice, she began to ask Gracilis questions about Optatus, then reached out for a piece of parchment and began to work out 16
calculations. They didn’t mean much to Rose – she was never that keen on maths at the best of times, let alone trying to understand it upside-down – but she noticed that the Doctor’s attention had been grabbed. He stared at the figures in a sort of frozen way for a few moments, before shaking his head as if to clear it and turning back to Gracilis.
Gracilis was looking eager, expectant. Rose felt sorry for him –not just because of his son, but because he was so desperate he’d been driven to ridiculous measures like this. The girl might seem nice enough, not the type to take advantage, but Rose couldn’t say the same for her owner. Preying on the weak and wretched, that was obviously the game here – as if working out where a few stars were at the time of someone’s birth could tell you where they’d gone off to sixteen years later.
Balbus’s smile was getting more and more forced. ‘Answer the gentleman,’ he said again, after several more minutes had passed.
‘Come on. Let us have our money’s worth,’ the Doctor told him.
‘Can’t calculate the movements of the heavens in two minutes, you know.’
The girl looked grateful and began scribbling down a few more sums. Suddenly Rose realised something. The girl was playing for time! Of course she couldn’t give Gracilis a true answer, so she was trying to think of what to say to him.
Perhaps the Doctor had realised that too. He sat down opposite the girl. ‘Obviously I’m not dismissing your abilities, but I expect it’s quite hard to work out something like this with so little information. You need to find out more about the boy, Optatus. And you need to see the place where he disappeared, I bet.’
She nodded desperately, her eyes seeming to plead wit h them. ‘Yes, yes, I need to see the place where he disappeared.’
‘Well, I’m sure your –’ the Doctor paused, the word distasteful –
‘owner won’t mind you popping along with us for a bit. Not in aid of such a good cause.’
But strangely her owner didn’t seem that happy about the idea. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t consider –’ he began, but he got no further.
17
Gracilis thumped his fist on the table, causing the girl’s pen to blot ink all over her calculations. ‘Then let me buy her from you,’ he said.
‘Don’t you understand, man, she’s my only hope!’
‘What, give up my little goldmine – I mean,’ Halbus said, obsequious smile coming back into play, ‘give up my sacred duty to protect my charge?’
‘Oh, we can protect her, no problem,’ said the Doctor breezily. ‘I think this sounds like a jolly good idea all round. Gracilis here is a rich man. I’m sure you’ll have no problem coming to some arrangement.’
Balbus shrugged.
‘It is the Quinquatrus coming up.
All those
women, the tourists, they love to hear their futures. If I do not have Vanessa I will lose much money. . . ’
Rose’s toes curled in discomfort as she listened to them discussing a price for the girl – a human being was being bought and sold as if she was a table or a bag of apples or a jumble-sale coat.
Vanessa didn’t seem that horrified, though; she seemed happy, eager, unable to believe her luck. Her life here couldn’t be much fun and she obviously envisaged a better time serving Gracilis.
Finally, the negotiations complete, Gracilis, the Doctor and Rose left the apartment with Vanessa in tow.
‘So, what now?’ asked Rose.
‘Just what I said,’ replied the Doctor. ‘I think it would help us all if we went back to Gracilis’s villa and examined the spot where Optatus was last seen. If the invitation’s still open, of course?’
He turned to the old man, who nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, yes, if you think that’s best.’ He sighed. ‘I could look in Rome for a year and never find him, even if he is here.’
‘Yeah, it’s not as if you’ve got photos of him you can hand out,’
said Rose without thinking. The Doctor shot her a look. ‘I mean –something to show people what he looks like,’ she said hurriedly.
Gracilis smiled sadly. ‘Ah, if you wish to see what my beloved child looks like – well, just wait till we arrive at the villa.’
Gracilis’s carriage was waiting outside the city gates and they all climbed in. The Doctor indicated by gesture that he wanted Rose to stick closely to Vanessa, but she would have done anyway. The girl 18
had hardly said a word since they’d left the apartment, but Rose was determined to engage her in conversation.
“So, d’you come from Rome?’ she tried, as a nice easy question to start with. But it seemed to alarm Vanessa, who stayed silent. She bad another go. ‘How old are you?’
/>
This time the girl answered. ‘Sixteen,’ she whispered.
‘And how long have you been doing this astrology lark?’
Again Vanessa didn’t answer, but Rose was shocked to see tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. She impulsively grabbed the girl in a hug. ‘Hey, don’t cry! I’m sorry, I won’t ask you anything else, not if you don’t want to tell me.’ But now the girl had started crying, it seemed she couldn’t stop. Rose held her as the sobs heaved through her body, rocking her gently, comforting. Wondering just what had happened to this girl to make her so very scared.
The journey was slow and Rose thought longingly of trains and cars. Still, she supposed a horse-drawn (well, actually donkey-drawn) carriage was a lot more environmentally friendly, even if it was a long and bumpy ride. She’d been surprised to learn they wouldn’t get to the villa that day and would have to stay the night at a guesthouse along the way. She hoped it would at least give her a chance to speak to Vanessa with no one else looking on, but slaves went in a different part of the building. Rose wondered what the slave quarters must be like, considering how grotty the bed she was given was – she spent the night half sleeping, half lying awake having worrying thoughts about Roman hygiene and potential infestation, trying to tell herself that any itching was entirely in her imagination. . .
They left the next morning when the sun was barely up. It would probably take them the whole day to get to the villa, so Gracilis wanted to make an early start. Rose was happy, though, if it meant they wouldn’t be spending another night at a way station.
The old man showed no interest in breakfasting, but as the sun started to climb in the sky the Doctor jumped off the vehicle and picked them all early figs from a tree growing wild by the roadside.
‘Worked out the date. It’s AD 120,’ he whispered to Rose as he handed her some fruit. ‘Hadrian’s the emperor. Don’t worry. I’m picking up 19
all the goss.’
Gracilis was obviously eager to get back and let Vanessa start to track Optatus. Rose felt the girl shiver at that – she was as convinced as she could be that Vanessa had no gifts, no mystical powers, and she wondered what the charming old Roman would do if he discovered he’d spent all that money on a slave for nothing. For now, though, he seemed sweet-tempered, if worried, sitting over the other side or the carriage talking quietly to the Doctor. Still, Rose began to plan rescue strategies in her head. Just in case.