The Time Machine Ch. 02

“It’s that mad bastard Caligula,” one told us. “All the bloody Christians moved out years ago but he wants to keep the league going so the bloody Lions can win the series again. Anyone he doesn’t fancy ends up here on the Christians’ team. It’s so humiliating!”

Just then, there was a huge roar from the crowd and I didn’t have to look round to know the lions had made their entrance. But I looked round anyway. Five large dun-coloured beasts were making their way into the arena. They didn’t prowl, they didn’t bound; they minced. I tell you no lies, those lions wafted into the place in a sort of limp-pawed way that would have made me laugh out loud if I hadn’t been the first course on their menu.

As they got closer, I became aware of something very odd indeed. They looked distinctly moth-eaten and really quite un-feline. The biggest of them approached me and I gesticulated with my dinner fork.

“Oooh, you’re the butch one! Look at this one, Hideus. Don’t wave your thing at me like that, ducky.”

My chin hit my chest. It’s not everyday that you get spoken to by a lion but a camp lion? Incredible.

“Oh, I know! They haven’t let you on the secret have they, sweetie? The real lions disappeared years ago. The Emperor’s bodyguard, Bilius sold them to a travelling circus from Barnum. Old ‘Little Boots’ up there is as blind as a bat and can’t see anything more than a couple of paces away from the end of his big nose. So we got rounded up to stand in for the big pussies. He doesn’t know the difference”

“What?”

“Oh, yes, it’s quite true. Me and Hideus and the rest of the girls were on our way to a Saturnalia fancy dress when we got grabbed by the beast-master. Didn’t we, Hideus?”

There was a grunt of acknowledgement from the lion’s back end.

“Hideus is sooooo lucky! He always gets to be at the back. Anyway, don’t you be a silly girl and watch what you’re doing with that trident. All you have to do is scream in pain and panic when Hideus and I jump on you. The beast-master’s assistants will come and drag you away to the dressing rooms and the Emperor will go home to his supper feeling lovely all over.”

I didn’t have to simulate my screams of panic as the ‘lion’ jumped on me. Hideus and his mate were altogether too free with their paws for my liking. I don’t like being groped in public at the best of times but by a gay pantomime lion? Leave it out, Guv!

I took extreme care not to drop the soap in the showers afterwards, I can tell you. As it happened, the gay lions turned out to be decent enough blokes and they helped us scurry back to the T.I.T as soon as it was dark. Another orgy was in full swing as we crept from pillar to pillar across the palace. The head guard, Bilius, spotted us and went white to the roots of his hair. He shot over towards us flapping his arms like he was trying to pre-date the Wright Brothers by a couple of thousand years.

“What are you two doing here? If the Emperor sees you, he’ll have my guts for a toga!”

I got the Prof to translate for me.

“We won’t give away your little scam if you help us get into that machine we arrived in.”

Bilius looked pissed off but agreed and we were back inside the T.I.T before you could say ‘Circus Maximus.’ The Prof, still badly shaken by his first ever encounter with the Roman counter-culture, whizzed around like a demented horsefly and before I had even had time to fasten my seatbelt, the T.I.T. gave its familiar lurch and wobble. The old boy was still a bit green about the gills when we stumbled out into his workshop.

“Well, Jonty my boy, we made it home!”

“That we did, Prof. Have you had enough adventures now?”

“Oh, I think not. We might, perhaps, leave the ancient world to its own devices for a spell, though, what?”

“Suits me, Prof. By the way, which continuum was that little lot in?”

The Prof consulted the read out on the Q.U.I.M.

“Bless my soul, Jonty. We stayed in our own reality all the time.”

“So you mean, the Christians never really got thrown to the Lions, then?”

“Black propaganda, Jonty, or so it seems.”

“Same time tomorrow, Prof?”

“Of course, my boy. I’ve a mind to see the New World.”

I suppressed a groan as, like Elvis, I left the building.