David Wishart: No Cause for Concern

I got to the theatre just after noon. Obviously, the actors had arrived: I could see their wagon in the field next to it, and there were two or three leather tents pitched. The doors of the theatre were open, and I went inside.

There was a rehearsal going on, or at least the guys were going through a few key passages and bits of business on the stage sans masks and costumes. I slipped in as unobtrusively as I could and parked myself (painfully) at the end of one of the rows.

I knew what the play was, because it had been advertised on one of the walls in the market place: Maccius Plautus’s ‘Ghost’. Not the world’s greatest comedy, but Old Flatfoot always goes down well with your average lowbrow audience just out for a good time, and I reckoned Sextus Luscius knew his Sutrians. The plot’s simple: old father arrives home from abroad unexpectedly, interrupting his young son’s romantic idyll with his no-better-than-she-should-be girlfriend. Desperate to keep him out of the house until the youngsters can tidy things up and the lady can make herself scarce, the smart-as-paint slave (there’s always one of these) intercepts the old man and tells him he’s got ghost problems: the house is haunted and has had to be shut up for the duration. Cue complications and a story line that’s about as believable as a whistling rhino with feathers. Ah, the magic of theatre.

We were at the bit where the young hero’s best pal reels in stewed to the gills and propped up by his own lady-friend. Occusia hadn’t given me a description of her son, but the guy playing the male part of the duo looked a distinct possibility: right age, at least, early to mid twenties, and from what I could see of his face from this distance – I was right at the top of the house – there might even be a family resemblance. I sat up and took notice.

He’d got about half a minute into his scene when the older man standing in front of the stage watching things and making the occasional comment – Sextus Luscius himself, I assumed – waved his arms in a ‘Stop, stop, stop!’ gesture.

‘Titus, you’re supposed to be drunk, lad!’ he shouted. ‘Pissed out of your bloody skull! Come on, boy, let’s have a bit of acting here! Start again!’

Titus, eh? Yeah, well, that was enough for me: we’d found our stray lamb right enough. I waited until the lad and his ‘girlfriend’ had gone through their scene to the boss’s satisfaction, then stood up and came down the walkway.

I don’t think anyone had noticed I was there up to then, certainly not Luscius, who’d had his back to me all the time. Now he turned round scowling.

‘This is a private rehearsal,’ he said. ‘Come back in three hours with everyone else.’

I’d reached the VIP seats in the front row. I held up a placatory hand. ‘Marcus Corvinus. And I’m sorry for interrupting. This won’t take long, and it’s no big deal. You’re Sextus Luscius, right?’

‘That’s so.’

‘And you’re’ – I looked up at the young guy on the stage – ‘Titus Luscius?’

He nodded. He looked puzzled, and just a bit wary.

‘I’ve come from Rome,’ I said. ‘Your mother sent me. She was anxious about you and she wanted to know where you were. She told me to tell you she wants you back.’

‘But -’ Sextus Luscius said.

‘Also, there’s a private message from someone else. She says she’ll meet you any time, anywhere, to, ah, do what you were planning to do before you left. Okay?’

‘“ She”? What she?’ The kid looked down at Luscius Senior. ‘What’s this about, Dad?’

Dad?

‘This is ridiculous,’ Luscius snapped at me. ‘My wife knows perfectly well where we are, so her being anxious about Titus is nonsense. And what’s this business about a private message?’

I was feeling seriously adrift here. ‘Hang on,’ I said to the kid. ‘Ah…your name is Titus Luscius, right?’

‘Right.’

‘But you’re not Occusia’s son?’

‘No. Of course I’m not. She’s my aunt.’

Oh, bugger. Yeah, it made complete sense; there was no reason why both the Lucrii brothers shouldn’t’ve named their respective kids Titus. Even so…

‘Look,’ I said to Luscius Senior, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve obviously made a mistake. Your nephew Titus disappeared from home a few days ago, and his mother thought he might’ve gone to join you. You haven’t seen him?’

‘No. No, I haven’t seen him.’ He gestured round at the other four members of the group: two middle-aged men in the wings, the prepubescent kid on the stage playing the girlfriend, and the fluteplayer. They were all standing gawping at me, even the fluteplayer, who’d been well off to one side practising his arpeggios. ‘What you see is what you get. You’ve had a wasted journey, pal.’

‘So it would seem.’ I gave young Titus another look. ‘Well, I can only apologise again and ask you if he does turn up to pass on the message.’

‘I’ll do that.’ Luscius didn’t sound too friendly. ‘Can’t say he’d listen, though, and I’ll tell you now I won’t be twisting any arms. Titus is his father’s son, and he’s old enough to make up his own mind. If he’s decided to get shot of that crooked bastard up on the Pincian then good luck to him. You tell Occusia that from me, right? Now. The show starts mid-afternoon. You’ll hear the trumpet. Meanwhile if you don’t mind I’ve got a rehearsal going.’

He turned away.

That was that, then. I went back to the inn.

‘He could still be our Titus,’ I said.

Perilla shifted on her couch. ‘Oh, really, dear!’ she said. ‘Isn’t that needlessly complicating matters? Why should the boy lie to you? More to the point, why should his uncle? If he is his uncle, not his father after all. From what you told me Sextus Luscius made it quite clear where his sympathies lay, and that he was quite willing to shelter his nephew. He need only have said, “Yes, this is my nephew. He’s a responsible adult and he’s decided where he wants to be. Now go away.”’

I sighed and topped up my winecup. ‘Maybe they – he and the youngster – were the ones who wanted to complicate matters.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, Luscius obviously has no time for Eutacticus, but he must know that the guy swings a lot of weight, one way and another. I know our Titus left a note saying his stepfather’d never see him again if he set his people out to look for him, but what’s that worth? Particularly if his whereabouts aren’t a secret any longer. What’s to stop Eutacticus from using strongarm methods? Send his boys to lift him, take him back to Rome by force, then threaten to be very unpleasant to his uncle and mother if the youngster doesn’t co-operate?’

‘He wouldn’t do that! Surely!’

‘Believe it, lady. Besides, he’d have nothing to lose, would he? So why should Luscius go through all that hassle? All he has to do is convince Eutacticus’s messenger that he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of young Titus and he’s off the hook. Said messenger has to look somewhere else. And Titus isn’t anywhere else, so the search can go on forever.’

‘Surely it all depends whether there’s actually another Titus Luscius who’s Sextus’s son.’

‘Yeah. Of course it does. That’s the only bit of light I’ve got here. If I go to Occusia – as I will tomorrow – and ask her if she has a nephew Titus the same age as her son, and she says no, then that’s the game over and me out of things because my job’s finished.’

‘Wouldn’t it all have been a little pointless then? I mean, as far as Titus and his uncle are concerned?’

I shrugged. ‘They’d’ve had some time to think and plan, which is more than they had yesterday when I walked in on them out of nowhere. Apropos of which, if that young guy was our Titus then switching things round convincingly on the spot like he did was a pretty neat move. On Luscius’s part as well.’