The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina scroll I

The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina
excerpt from Scroll I

Flavia knew that Nubia was used to the dry desert heat, not damp Italian winters. And this winter was particularly damp and cold.

Everyone blamed the weather on the volcano which had erupted at the end of August.

Flavia's nurse Alma said it was just laziness: 'They'll be blaming Vesuvius for everything that happens over the next twenty years,' she had grumbled. 'I've known colder winters.'

But Nubia obviously hadn't. She was still shivering.

'You should wear more than one tunic,' said Flavia, putting her arm round Nubia's shoulder and rubbing briskly. 'Like the divine Emperor Augustus. He used to wear five tunics in the winter.'

'Yes. I will do that.'

'And we'll go to the baths later,' promised Flavia. 'After we've been to the market.'

'Good,' said Nubia. 'I will sit in the steamy sudatorium.'

Flavia laughed. Nubia had learned most of her Latin through listening to Virgil's Aeneid and she still tended to use a poetic turn of phrase.

A loud knocking on the front door brought Scuto to his feet and Nipur in from the garden. They skittered across the study and into the atrium.

Flavia heard Caudex grumbling in the peristyle, so she called out, 'We'll get it, Caudex!'

Leaving the blanket on the chair, she and Nubia went into the atrium and past the rainwater pool to the oak door with its heavy bolt. Scuto and Nipur were scrabbling at the wood. They could smell their friend Tigris on the other side.

The door swung open to reveal two boys and a puppy standing in the shelter of the porch. They were dripping wet and their breath came in excited white puffs.

'Just come from shopping in the forum...' Jonathan, the taller of the two, suffered from asthma. 'You'll never guess... what happened!' he gasped. 'The whole town is... talking about it! Ship from Alexandria... delayed by storms... carrying animals for the games...'

Lupus - the younger boy - was making marks on a tablet, nodding as he wrote. He had no tongue and a wax tablet was his main form of communication.

'Animals... ' Jonathan was leaning on the door frame. 'Wild, ravenous beasts... the lion knocked the trainer... off the gangplank and... all the animals escaped!'

'A lion?' breathed Flavia. She and Nubia exchanged wide-eyed looks.

'Other animals, too...' Jonathan was still breathless.

'What animals?' asked Nubia.

'You tell them, Lupus,' gasped Jonathan.

This was the moment Lupus had been waiting for.

He held up his wax tablet and Flavia squealed as she read what he had written:

ESCAPED ANIMALS!!!

LION
CAMELOPARD
ELEPHANT
AND A GIANT MAN-EATING BIRD!!!

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