Cerberus Takes a Break

 

As old dogs go, there won’t be many – if any - who are older than me. The name’s Cerberus, and I’ve been the guard dog of Hades for eternity. I have my den on the bank of the River Styx, right next to where Charon the boatman lands the shades of the departed. I am well aware that there has been much speculation up top about exactly what I look like, namely how many heads I’ve got and whether or not I’ve got serpents coiled round my neck, but I know what I am and you lot can just carry on guessing – until such time as you meet me for real, that is.

I really enjoy my work, which is basically letting the departed know what they’re in for down here. If you’ve led a decent sort of life, you just get a growl or two, but the real nasties are in for a somewhat less pleasant experience. The word “shade” should not be taken too literally – when my jaws are fastened round your ankle the pain is far from imaginary! I just love hearing the screams when my teeth crunch on bone, and I’ve crunched some real beauties in my time.

Let me see, there was Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Donald Trump – oh no, that last one’s not dead yet, is he? Don’t worry, I’ll be ready for him when he is. And the same goes for Nigel Farage.

I really love it when an American tele-evangelist comes my way. Do you know the type I mean? These are the guys who con vast numbers of people into parting with their cash so that the evangelist can live a life of luxury and buy a fleet of private jets, by promising their “flock” that they will have their diseases cured and take a short-cut to Heaven when they pop their clogs. You should see the expression on the face of the average tele-evangelist when Charon deposits one at my side of the River Styx – you might almost think they had other ideas about where they would end up.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this note is to tell you that I’m about to take my annual leave. Charon decided some time ago that letting me nip upstairs to your world every now and then was in his best interest. Although, as I said, I love my work, the diet of nasty people’s ankles is ever-so-slightly monotonous and I can get a touch crabby without a bit of variety. It was when he found me chewing a hole in his boat that he suggested I take a break every now and then. So this is fair warning that Cerberus, the dog from Hades, is about to get some fresh air.

I will confess that I tend to gorge myself when I’m on my hols. I apologise to the world’s foxes for the blame they get for raiding hen houses and slaughtering the inmates – half the time that’s me having an extended chicken supper.

And all that extra food produces masses of extremely sticky and smelly dog poo. I tend to perform wherever I can guarantee the presence of a human foot within the next half hour.

But my chief delight on being free to charge all over the place is to make the acquaintance of as many lady dogs as I can and leave them in the family way. I tend to choose partners that look a bit like me to start with, so my genetic material stands a good chance of producing pups with a similar attitude to mine. All those dogs that people describe as “hell hounds” are usually exactly that - their daddy was the original hound from hell.

Did you ever wonder how Arthur Conan Doyle got the idea for the Hound of the Baskervilles? One of my offspring gave him a nasty shock one night down a back alley in Edinburgh, that’s how!

I try not to make these trips into a busman’s holiday – scaring people to death is an occupational hazard, and I’m sorry to say that one look at me quite often has that effect. That is why I try to stay out of sight as much as possible, and I always prefer it if people get their first view of me when I’m on duty down below. On the other hand, I have been known to deliberately seek out the occasional tele-evangelist for the sole purpose of hastening the inevitable.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a deputy in Hades, so my holiday absence means that the work tends to pile up and I have a really busy time of it when I get back. That is why these breaks, necessary though they are, have to be on the short side. No matter – there’s still plenty of life in the old dog, as many a lady rottweiler can testify!

 © John Welford

Should She Open It?

 

Queen Cleopatra had a problem. Her birthday was coming up in a week’s time and a host of presents had already arrived at her palace in Alexandria. She knew that most of them would be from Mark Antony, who was away fighting various battles, and she also knew that it would be a pity to spoil the surprise by opening them early.

On the other hand, she was curious and excited beyond measure, knowing that the love of her life was always both generous and original in his present giving. Last year he had excelled himself with the do-it-yourself pyramid-building kit, consisting of all the stones individually wrapped, together with at least three slaves per stone to do the actual shifting and lifting. Shouting at the slaves counted as do-it-yourself as far as the average Egyptian monarch at that time was concerned.

But this year there was one box that excited her curiosity more than any other. Like most of Mark Antony’s presents it had come courtesy of the Nile delivery service, and it always amazed her just how much spare papyrus the people at Nile would cram into all their crates whatever the size of the object within. One year she had received a crate that was an exact cubit cube that contained an exquisite lapis lazuli jewel in the shape of a scarab that fitted into the palm of her hand. She sent all the spare papyri to the Alexandria Library in case they could put them to any use.

But she was sure that this box now in front of her was making a noise. She had given Mark Antony a few hints along the lines of giving the palace a complete makeover – maybe a fresh coat of paint, a new set of hieroglyphic inscriptions and the occasional pot-plant on a stand for the room corners. Could this crate possibly contain some sort of water feature, and could it be leaking? That was the best guess she could arrive at, given that it sounded like water escaping through a small hole. It was definitely a hiss.

So that was her dilemma – should she open the box or not? She hated to spoil the birthday surprise but on the other hand if water was hissing out of a crack it would soon make a mess all over the floor. The decision was made. She opened the box.

It turned out to be the last decision she ever made, and it was easily her worst of many. As soon as it was free, a huge cobra snake sprang from the box and fixed its jaws in her neck. The venom did its work quickly and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, was no more.

 

A Few Weeks Before

 

Mark Antony was having a very busy day. One problem with fighting battles, apart from the distinct possibility of getting yourself killed in the process, was all the planning they entailed. Orders had to be sent to all quarters to make sure that the various aquiliferae, signiferae, optii, and tesserariae were in place and doing their jobs properly. He was so glad that he had learned plenty of Latin at school so that he knew what he meant even if nobody else did, and his cases agreed whether or not his underlings did so.

One added complication this time was Cleopatra’s impending birthday. It would be very bad form to forget, and at least he was sure that Nile would deliver everything he ordered on time. If only he could use them to order victory in battle – presumably the troops sent by Nile would have to fight their way out of a papyrus bag before they fought anyone else.

At least he knew what to order from Nile, given the broad hints that Cleo had been dropping for months past. He had a mental list of everything, from several gallons of magnolia paint to all the various houseplants. Being a Roman, he obviously knew them all by their Latin names, but he had to assume that the people at Nile might not and thus dictated his orders to his scribe accordingly.

He therefore had to translate Pennisetum setaceum to fountain grass and Chlorophytum comosum to spider plant. It did not come naturally to him, but it would be terrible to get this sort of thing wrong.

The scribe was having an awful time. As messengers flew in and out of the office, bringing news of troop movements and equipment shortages that had to be sorted out yesterday, he was being given orders by his boss that had to be written out in double quick time. Almost as soon as he started on one message he had to break off and grab a new piece of papyrus to scribble away at another one.

It also did not help that the messages seemed to alternate between instructions to a Praefectus Cohortis relating to troop displacements and to the Nile delivery service for a maidenhair fern to be sent to Queen Cleopatra.

And that was where things came unstuck. The scribe had only just started on a Nile order for an aspidistra when Mark Antony barked out that he was to drop that and write out an urgent requisition for extra dolabrae to be used for digging trenches. Thus it was that when the postal clerk arrived to collect the completed messages he left with one that was far from complete. Unfortunately, the scribe had only written the first three letters of the word aspidistra, and the result was what did for Queen Cleopatra – according to William Shakespeare, anyway.

 © John Welford

William Shakespeare Seeks a New Direction

 

It was early in 1593, during one of Will Shakespeare’s frequent home visits to Stratford after he had based himself in London, that the subject of his ongoing career came up in the conversation.

“So how’s the playwrighting going?” asked his wife Anne.

“It could be better”, Will replied. “I’ve done four history plays, to wit three Henry VIs and Richard III, and I’ve just tried turning my hand to comedy.”

“That sounds promising,” said Anne. “Everybody likes a good laugh.”

“I agree”, said Will, “but they seem to get more giggles watching Richard III than The Comedy of Errors”.

“Bit of a flop then?”

 “Could be. And then there’s the fact that it needs two sets of identical twins – finding one set of twin actors in London is bad enough, but two?”

“So what’s your plan, Will?”

“I’m thinking of jacking in the theatricals lark”, Will replied. “I need a new direction for my talents, so I’m planning on retraining for a completely new career.”

“Which is?”

“Hitman.”

“You what?”

“Hitman. Paid assassin. There must be plenty of opportunities with all the plots against Queen Elizabeth. Her spies are very good at tracking down the baddies, but they need people to do the actual job of bumping them off. I could do that.”

“But you’ve never killed anyone”, said Anne.

“I've had a few murders in my plays”, said Will. “Richard III was full of them. But you’re right – I need a proper training course in dagger skills and that sort of thing. I’ll have a word with some of my fellow playwrights when I’m next in London – I’m sure they could point me in the right direction.”

So that was what he did. A few weeks later he was to be found at a pub in Deptford, knocking back the ale with Thomas Kyd, Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe. This was a regular get-together when they were all in town. They quite often took part in the pub quizzes and played a game or two of darts before they got too drunk to aim properly and were a danger to any passer-by.

They were all a bit surprised that Will Shakespeare was proposing to give up writing plays, as they all reckoned that he could make a proper go of it if he really took it seriously, but saw no problem with him becoming a paid assassin. Tom Kyd and Kit Marlowe had both written plays that contained a vast amount of violence, not to mention many and various ways of doing somebody to death. If Will wanted a few tips, he had come to the right people.

“Mind you”, said Kit, “You’ll probably want to be a bit less imaginative than some of my characters were. The red-hot poker up the backside technique, as in “Edward II”, although doubtless highly satisfying – for the hitman that is, not the victim – might be a trifle impractical for real purposes. I recommend sticking with daggers – in both sense of the phrase.”

“As it happens,” said Tom, “I just happen to have one of my stage daggers with me. You know – the sort that has a retractable blade. They look so effective when combined with copious amounts of pig’s blood. If I don’t get half the front row passing out with shock I always reckon I’ve failed.”

“You could practice on Kit”, said Ben. “Suppose he’s your target. Just creep up behind him and stab him in the neck. You OK with that, Kit?”

“No problem”, said Kit. “That’s a really good stage dagger, by the way. It looks just like the real thing.”

So Will followed Ben’s instructions and duly plunged the dagger into Kit Marlowe’s jugular. Kit’s response was immediate. He gave a loud cry and slumped forward, with blood spurting all over the place.

“Wow!” said Ben. “That’s just brilliant. I never realized you were such a good actor, Kit. And where did you get all that pig’s blood from? It’s very realistic!”

“Just one little thing, Tom”, Will said. “Didn’t you say that the blade was supposed to retract into the handle? I’m not completely sure that it did.”

“Whoops”, said Tom. “I think you’re right. I might have to take this dagger back to the shop I bought it from. They seem to have sold me a dud. It’s a shame about Kit, though”.

“How can you tell a stage dagger from a real one?” Ben asked.

“Easy”, said Tom. “Stage daggers always have a green band round the handle.”

“This one has a red band.”

“You sure?”

“Certain”, said Ben. “That band is red.”

“Well, what do you know?” said Tom. “I always wondered if I might be red/green colour-blind. Now I have the answer.”

“Might I suggest”, said Ben, “that we put off any further discussion for the time being? I have an inkling that it might not be good for our health to be found in a pub alongside the dead body of a renowned playwright, so let’s make ourselves scarce.”

Once they had done precisely that, and after a few days’ reflection, Will decided that the hitman idea was probably not such a good one after all, especially after he had seen a performance of Thomas Kyd’s “The Spanish Tragedy”, with its constant portrayal of hangings and stabbings, plus a character biting off his own tongue.

The audience reaction was so enthusiastic that Will determined to go one better, which was why he returned to playwrighting and produced the graphically grisly “Titus Andronicus” not long afterwards. The rest, as they say, is history.

© John Welford