Free Doctor Who: The Romans by Donald Cotton

him in a more amenable mood. For I still maintain that, back to back, against whatever odds, we might well hold off our adversaries for long enough to make good our escape.
    But will the dawn never come? And if it does, as seems likely, then what will it bring? These and a hundred other rhetorical questions flood my brain; but no time for more now, as I must get a spot of shut-eye myself, if I’m to be anything like on top form.
    Your very sincere, but often apprehensive, Ian Chesterton DOCUMENT XXII
    Third Extract from the Commonplace Book of Poppea Sabina
    I am more than ever convinced that unsteady is the head which sports a crown, or some such; and it is quite right to be so under the circumstances. Which are that my unsought consort will shortly qualify for the laughing academy if he carries on like this!
    Today when I visited our cosy old throne-room, expecting – not unreasonably, I think – to catch him at it with the demon Barbara, I found instead another nutcase (What is it about the lyre which does this to people?) who proceeded to lecture me on the hydrostatic principles of the aqueduct, if I understood him correctly.
    I was backing away to summon assistance on the alarm gong, when my husband entered – on his stomach, for some reason – and immediately engaged the man in a totally incomprehensible conversation, bearing, I think, on aspects of political economy; culminating in a lyre obligato of such dissonance as to set me swooning, swan-like in a dream of sudden screams in saw-mills.
    I was roused from this temporary inverted coma by the entrance of yet another new slave-girl, bearing two drinks on a tray; at one of which I clutched, in an unusually palsied paroxysm of the dipsomania which has troubled me from infancy, when I was given pause by her murmuring as she curtsied, ‘From the lady Locusta, ma’am;’ upon hearing which I shrank back from the proffered cordial as a cobra does from a mongoose, and offered it to my husband, saying, ‘Nero, my god, to thee!’ or some similar spontaneous quip.
    However, he had already raised the other glass halfway to his unpleasant lips, when our visitor, the gnomic musician, addressed the serving wench as ‘Vicki’, followed by an exclamation mark.
    ‘ Veni, vidi, vici! ’ she agreed, with a saucy wink, before he could continue, but too late to dispel the impression that they had somewhere met before; and Nero, who is sometimes as quick on the uptake as the only slightly insane, lowered his own goblet thoughtfully, saying that for some reason he no longer felt thirsty, and perhaps I would like it? An offer I declined with an amused sneer.
    Whereupon, having been through this ‘Pass the Poisoned Chalice’ routine together so often on long winter evenings, we both extended our toxic what’s-its in the general direction of Mad Max and his young confederate; who confirmed our dawning suspicions by rejecting the blue and bubbling beverages, the former accompanying his refusal with a lecture on the evils of strong drink, which was overdoing things rather, I thought, unless he really did know what was in it!
    So, as usual, we put the matter to the test by summoning an independent arbitrator, the wretched Tigillinius drawing the short straw on this occasion; who shortly thereafter expired in a cloud of steam, and with what I’m sure would have been a strangled scream on his lips, had the poor fellow ever been capable of speech.
    Although shocked by the occurrence, Max was clearly mollified to some extent by this immediate justification of his temperance principles, and later the conversation became general, as far as I remember. It was soon revealed that the suspect serving wench was in fact, Petullian’s ward, who had only been helping Locusta out below stairs to fill in the time, so all misunderstandings were resolved –
    or as nearly so as they ever are in this abode of love and trust: and we invited them to join us in watching a gladiatorial contest