David Wishart - Nero

As the flask hit the floor Lucius made a tutting noise.

'This is dreadful,' he said. 'Simply appalling. Whoever owns this place is an absolute boor.'

Mentally I agreed. Five separate wines, and none of them drinkable. The vintner would have been better employed selling lamp oil.

'Move on?' Paris suggested.

'Yes, darling. But first' — Lucius giggled — 'a little quality control. Pass me the crowbar.'

Paris reached past me and set the heavy metal bar down on the counter. Lucius picked it up and hefted it.

'By the power vested in me by the Senate and people of Rome I hereby revoke this wineshop's licence to trade. The stock, such as it is, is forfeit. Mind your heads, darlings!'

I ducked; just in time. The iron bar came back and swept along the shelf of jars. In the narrow confines of the shop the noise was terrific. There was suddenly wine everywhere, the air was full of wine, drenching us and filling our noses with its stench. We began laughing like maniacs, stamping in the puddles and generally making adolescent fools of ourselves. How long that would have gone on for I don't know, because someone suddenly shouted, 'The Watch!'

I'd forgotten about Otho. He had stayed outside, either because he couldn't get in or because he'd wisely decided we needed a look-out. Whatever the reason, I blessed him. Without him we would've been caught like rats in the cellarage; and that would have been too embarrassing for words.

We poured out of the shop and ran, dodging down an alleyway and then several more at random and in quick succession, until we had lost them. Then Lucius slipped on a pile of dog shit and the rest of us piled on top. We picked ourselves up and dusted each other down. I was not feeling proud of myself, and besides I had twisted an ankle. Otho was cursing and holding a bruised shoulder, but the others were giggling uncontrollably.

Then Senecio saw the drunk.

He'd propped himself against a tenement wall by one arm and was being violently sick on to the pavement: a middle-aged man, greying at the temples, no purple-striper but reasonably well-to-do by the quality of his mantle. He had a pair of party slippers tucked under his other arm, and a wilted garland of flowers over one ear. God knows what he was doing alone and torchless in this maze of alleyways, but whatever the reason it was his pure bad luck.

As we walked (or in my case hobbled) towards him he gave one final retch, raised his streaming eyes from the ground, and saw us. He tried to run, but his mantle caught round his legs: not enough to trip him, but enough to prevent escape.

Senecio gripped the sleeve of his tunic. Paris grabbed him from the other side.

'Hey, pal!' Senecio was grinning. 'What's the hurry?'

The man stared at us, his vomit-flecked mouth slack with fear. He tried to pull away, but Senecio and Paris held him fast. Paris was already feeling for his purse.

'Been to a party, eh? Must've been a good one.' Senecio shifted his grip and thrust the man hard against the wall. Between the drunk's feet urine trickled on to the pavement. Paris leapt aside to avoid the spreading pool, and Senecio swore.

'You're a filthy little bugger, aren't you, pal?' he said.

''leathe,' the man said. ''leathe.' Half his front teeth were missing, and his mouth was badly bruised; obviously he'd been rolled already that evening.

Paris's hand came out from the tangled folds of his mantle. It was empty.

'The larder's bare, darlings,' he said. 'We just haven't been lucky at all tonight, have we?'

'Come on, Senecio.' Otho stepped forward and took hold of the Spaniard's free arm. 'Leave the poor bastard alone. He's plastered.'

Senecio sniggered but didn't let go. 'Poor's right. Poor and plastered and pissed. All the p's. Hasn't much going for him, has he?'

Leave him,' Otho said again. 'Let's get on to Mammaea's. The first one's on me.'

Senecio shook his hand off. 'You go ahead. I'll catch you up once I'm done.'

So far Lucius had stayed in the background. Now he came forward. The hat he'd been wearing when we set out had come adrift in our dash through the alleyways, and he was bareheaded.

The drunk looked up and saw him. His bleary eyes widened.

'But you're the — ' he said.

He never finished. Senecio's hand reached under his cloak, his arm came back and thrust forwards once, twice. The man gave a gasp, his eyes opened even wider and fixed themselves on something behind Senecio's shoulder. Then his mouth opened and he vomited blood.

Senecio stepped to one side and the dead man slid to the pavement.

'Look at that,' he said. 'All over my cloak.' He kicked the corpse. 'Bastard!'

The rest of us stood frozen, too shocked to move. Paris was the first to recover.

'It serves him right,' he said. 'He should've kept something back for us. A few silver pieces wouldn't've killed him.'

Senecio laughed as he bent down and wiped the blade of his dagger on the dead man's mantle.

'Filthy bastard,' he said again, this time almost lovingly.

'You didn't have to stab him.' I noticed, even in the half-light of the moon, that Otho's face was grey. 'A beating's one thing, but murder…' He made a curious gesture with his hand, like the sign to ward off bad luck. 'Murder's different.'

'I'd no choice.' Senecio straightened and put the dagger away. 'He recognised the emperor. That's right, isn't it, Nero?'

I glanced at Lucius. He was staring at the corpse, his eyes bright and fixed, and he was breathing heavily.

'Nero?' Senecio said again. His voice had lost its certainty.

There was no response. We might not have existed, as far as Lucius was concerned.

'That's enough excitement for the night, Senecio,' Otho said quietly. 'Sod Mammaea's. Let's go back.'

Paris was looking at the emperor.

'Perhaps we should,' he said.

We were already turning when Lucius let out a yell. He raised his foot and began kicking the dead man — ribs, face, head, back and groin. Even Senecio, I think, was appalled by the sudden violence of the attack. It was as if Lucius intended to kick the corpse into a lump of anonymous flesh.

Paris and Otho grabbed him and wrenched him away. By this time Lucius was screaming obscenities at the top of his voice, and any moment I expected — half wished for — heads to appear at the tenement windows, or the Watch to come charging round the corner; but tenement-dwellers mind their own business after dark, and the Watch has more sense than to patrol the alleys.

'Get that cloak round his face!' Paris hissed.

Otho wound Lucius's cloak round the emperor’s mouth and nose and pulled it tight. The muffled curses gradually died away, and Lucius slumped against the other man's chest. Otho slackened his grip and made sure Lucius could breathe normally again.

It took us an hour to get him back to the Palatine. He said nothing all the way, not one word; made no sound at all, in fact. His face looked as slack and empty of life as the dead man's had, and he stumbled from foot to foot as if he had been drugged.

You can't, as the saying goes, hide good scandal or bad tunny-fish. Before the month was out Lucius's nocturnal escapades were public knowledge. I didn't go with him again myself: after that one disastrous occasion I kept my head down despite frequent invitations.

Scandal wasn't the worst of it. Under cover of the emperor's name, other youngsters began roaming the streets beating up and robbing innocentcitizens. A lone pedestrian — or even someone in a litter — was asking for trouble if he went out even in the better districts after dark without a hefty bodyguard. The Watch were overstretched and martial law seemed inevitable. With Lucius himself one of the worst offenders, however, that was out of the question.