To Sleep, Perchance to Scream

by Mary

Years ago, a friend who lived in the Middle East at the time mentioned she had met another expat who worked for the BBC. who observed they were not getting as many submissions as they would like for the Short Story spot on the World Service.

Well, of course I had to have a go at it! Thus was born Aunt Ba's Story, partly inspired by a dream and Arthur Hughes' painting Home From Sea. It was my first sale.

Lately we have been watching supernatural films created in the spirit of the season (no pun intended) and reckon the actor who provides that shadowy outline so often seen crossing quickly just in front of the camera and not noticed by anyone else must make a goodly salary, given all the work he has done. In passing, let me mention I have noticed so far at least the silhouette has always been male. Perhaps it is him or his brother I seem to see occasionally when waking up from dreaming, convinced a dark silhouette is standing nearby. It feels real at the time, even though I gather experts say the phenomenon is caused by the mind trying to make sense of shadows.

But what sense can be made of a serial nightmare that has been a night-time visitor to me over many months?

It began when an already deceased family member was murdered and buried in a cupboard in a house in which the family once lived in the old country. Unlikely though it sounds, every now and then I dream a bit more of the unfolding story, including a pursuit closing in on the culprit. In the last episode dreamt the story had reached the point where a detective looking around a well-lit room opened the door to the adjoining room, revealed to be the one with the fateful cupboard. Looking over his shoulder, I could see the other room was dark but there was enough light spilling in to show it was littered with broken toys and other rubbish. So I am supposing the unmasking of the culprit is doubtless not far off, at which time the blue-clad long arm of the law will be reach out to grab them.

Unlike the detective, I already know the identify of the dream murderer. It was me.

Skunk Cabbage Dreams

by Eric

Dreams are funny things. Or maybe not. I never wake up laughing. Screaming is another matter. I'm not sure why I never have funny dreams. Is it just me?

Some say humor is based on incongruity. What strikes us as funny is the perception of something incongruous — something that violates our mental patterns and expectations. This theory was set forth by several philosophers including Arthur Schopenhauer, whose favorite joke was purportedly: "What is the angle between a circle and its tangent?" Which kind of makes one wonder if Arthur had any business philosophizing on humor.

Still, tangents and circles aside, were this theory true it would follow that dreams can't be funny. Where could we find incongruity in the dream world where the expectations of our waking lives don't apply and we accept the irrational as a matter of course?

Well, I do anyway. While I'm experiencing them, dreams are absolutely real to me. So real that they can spill over into wakefulness, coloring my thoughts during the day. Dreams are like a second, alternative life. I remember being impressed by a science fiction story I read as a child. One night a man dreams he is an alien skunk cabbage on another planet. Soon his friends have the same dream, Yes, as it turns out, humans are actually alien skunk cabbages who were only dreaming of being human. (No, they don't write them like they used to.)

I am leery of describing my dreams for fear people might draw psychological conclusions. (Unflattering ones at that) But as Freud said, "sometimes a dream is just a dream" or was that Jung, or neither?

The first dream I can recall had me perched precariously on the steps of a high porch. The gaps between the steps were wide enough for a four year old like me to fall through. The ground below, so clearly visible through the gaps, lay hundreds of feet below. This was an only slightly exaggerated description of the porch on my parents' second story apartment. Heights have terrified me ever since. I still dream of ladders in the sky with missing rungs, swaying bridges without railings and bizarre, skeletal skyscrapers which must be climbed by eroding staircases open to the clouds.

The only time I don't fear falling is when I fly. Haven't we all dreamt of flying? I don't power my way through the air like Superman or soar like a bird. I levitate. What a wonderful feeling! And as I levitate hither and yon I am thinking how cool it is and how it seems like a dream but-- wow -- it's real! Even asleep I'm a sucker.

My nocturnal imaginings are seldom so pleasant. As a child I had nightmares which I rather miss because they were entertaining as a Saturday matinee. I thrilled to Martian war machines looming over the houses on my street, shuddered at the unseen horror lurking in the shadows of the attic, gasped when I opened my closet door to reveal an endless twilit plain littered with skulls.

These days my dreams mostly lack the tropes of science fiction and horror. They are not frightening, merely muddled and disturbing, populated by people long gone or dead. And I can't tell you how many times I've found myself on the wrong bus, racing through unfamiliar countryside, headed God knows where. The story of my life perhaps?

Now, finally I see gray light through the office blinds. It's time for me to stop typing. I got up in the middle of the night to write this because I couldn't sleep for some reason.

Not Even a Gravestone to Point a Finger

by Eric

Not to give too much away, but in our Byzantine mysteries the murderer is rarely turned over to the authorities. Rather, our detective, John the Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian, usually finds some way to bring justice to the miscreants himself. This isn't merely an artistic decision on the part of the authors. In fact, for much of its history the Roman Empire lacked the criminal justice apparatus we take for granted. There were no official police forces, or prison system, and as for murder...well, there was no general law against it.

That surprising fact is one of many aspects of murder, broadly defined, dealt with in A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Emma Southon discusses assassinations, murder within the family, murder by magic, and murder in the gladiatorial arena among other subjects. Although the book covers only the Republic and early Roman Empire the laws involved are not much different from those of Justinian's time.

And very strange they appear to us. Who in the twenty-first century would inscribe the following on a child's gravestone?

"To the spirits of the dead and to the most unfortunate Julia Restuta, murdered at the age of ten on account of her jewelry. Her parents, Julius Restutus and Statia Pudentilla, [set this up]."

This and other such epitaphs were likely the only "justice" average murder victims were likely to receive. Since murder was for centuries not a crime in the Roman Empire the responsibility for investigating, prosecuting and punishing a murder was entirely on the family and friends of the deceased. Unless a family was wealthy it had no way to pursue a murderer. The poor couldn't even afford a gravestone pointing a finger.

Roman law, at its inception in the Twelve Tables, was largely concerned with property rights. Perhaps because of the Ten Commandments we expect laws to have a moral basis but the Romans didn't think that way. Nor were they interested in interfering in family affairs. As Southon puts it: "The Roman state, at least until the dawn of the Imperial period, did not consider itself to be harmed, threatened or challenged when a man strangled his wife or stabbed a rival. That was their personal business."

Although we tend to think of the fellow on the library floor with the knife stuck in his back as the victim, technically the victim in a murder prosecution is the state. The state is the plaintiff. The state has suffered a challenge to its power to control the behavior of its citizens via the laws it has passed and thus it is the state that brings the case.

The Roman state was more interested in protecting private property than in protecting human life. Thus, while the family of a child killed in a mugging had no recourse, a man whose slave was murdered -- the slave being property and no more a human being than a table -- was at least reimbursed for his loss at market value just as he would have been for the destruction of cattle.

To the extent that Roman law dealt with murder it was through a hodge podge of provisions designed to deal with specific situations without apparent reference to any general concept of morality. For example, the father had absolute control of his family. Therefore infanticide was legal, however there was a law against parricide. This killing of any ancestor must have struck the Romans as particularly heinous -- as opposed to leaving an unwanted baby on a rock -- because the miscreant was put into a sack with a dog, a cockerel, a monkey and a snake. And then the sack was thrown into the sea. Did the phrase cruel and unusual spring to mind? (And where was the ASPCA?)

Many authors like to draw parallels between past events and today based on the supposition that human nature hasn't changed through the ages. And yet, looking at history from a modern perspective it is easy -- too easy -- to interpret the past in light of the present, to assume that people long dead had exactly the same motivations and goals and thought processes we do. Given our prejudices it is sometimes more difficult to see the differences between us and our ancestors than it is to see the similarities. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is not only a fascinating look at murder in all its forms during the Roman Empire, it is also an excellent antidote to the tendency to describe the past as the present but without cell phones.

Where There's a Will There's Usually Trouble

by Mary

We've never written a legal thriller. However, it could well be said Five For Silver took us as close to contributing to that particular sub-genre as we've ever been, since the focus of the plot revolves around our Lord Chamberlain's labours to locate witnesses to a wealthy man's will.

Given our protagonist's position and power, this would seem an easy task for him to accomplish but it was one of the most difficult he has had to tackle, given this entry in the series is set during the Justinianic plague, which has been estimated as causing between five and ten thousand deaths a day. Nobody was safe and as a result Constantinople became a ghost city, largely deserted between the mounting number of deaths and the flight of residents deserting it for what was regarded as the safer countryside. The pandemic played no favourites -- Justinian himself was infected but managed to survive its deadly touch.

Since a will is the key to the plot, our preliminary research necessarily involved taking a plunge into Justinian's Institutes, a fascinating collection of laws. Glancing through it, certain situations give the modern reader pause. For example, it was illegal to engage in abusive language in an attempt to cause a crowd to form. Another provision concerned what would nowadays be considered stalking, in this instance defined as "following a matron, or a young boy or girl below the age of puberty", Meanwhile, writers faced punishment for "writing, composing, or publishing defamatory prose or verse." Compensation due to an injured party depended upon their social position, so as a result an aristocrat was entitled to greater pecuniary compensation than "a mere stranger, or to a person of low condition".

We'd never think of Peter, John's elderly servant and like his master a former slave, as one of low condition although doubtless he would have been considered such -- if he was thought of at all -- during his period of enslavement.

It is in fact Peter whose vision of an angel visiting him to announce "Gregory. Murder. Justice" starts the engine of the plot after John undertakes to find out if Gregory, Peter's oldest friend, has indeed been murdered. This in turn leads to John's need to search for witnesses to a deathbed will made by Nereus, a superstitious and wealthy shipper, in order to disinherit his wastrel son Triton.

But as we all know, where there's a will, there's often trouble.

Another dip into the Institutes provided most useful information. Oral wills were valid, provided the intent to make one and its provisions were declared before an assembly of seven witnesses. Slaves, lunatics, and those with certain disabilities or who were under the age of puberty were among those not permitted to serve in this capacity. Women were also barred from witnessing a will.

The task presented to John seems impossible given Peter, despite his long friendship with Gregory, does not know where the latter lived or his occupation. However, when John's friend Anatolius turns out to be one of the last to see Gregory alive, this sliver of information, scanty though it is, serves to enable John to begin tracing Gregory's movements.

As John pursues his time-consuming and increasingly urgent daisy chain of finding and interviewing witnesses, he is ever aware the plague could carry off any or all of them at any moment, not to mention the distinct possibility of one or more having fled the increasingly deserted city. As he discovers, there were indeed seven men present when Nereus made his will, a motley band who by a combination of circumstances happened to be in the right place at the right time to serve as witnesses.

The septet in question included Peter's friend Gregory as well as a seller of dodgy antiquities, a morbidly lugubrious court poet, the assistant to Nereus' house steward, a holy fool notorious for dancing in the street with the dead, a rustic carter, and an archdeacon.

The Institutes declares "The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give every man his due" and when John's winding path finally leads him to the culprit, he administers justice both terrible and appropriate -- without shedding blood.

Mystery Readers Journal

Mary's essay, Talking Snakes and Other Mysteries, appears in the summer issue of Mystery Reader's Journal. She talks about the roles played by animals in our Byzantine mysteries. The issue can be ordered online. Historical Mysteries II.

Head of Zeus Special Editions

We don't often write about our fiction being as interested parties will find a bibliography and reviews on our website, but given Rodgers and Hammerstein tell us June is busting out all over, this must surely to be the appropriate month to burst out with a shout-out to British publisher Head of Zeus' editions of John's adventures with their really striking covers. We like how the covers emphasis the fact that what some refer to as the Byzantine Empire was simply the continuation of the Roman Empire which survived in the east, untouched by the fall of Rome.

We'd also like to point out some special bargain priced editions published by Head of Zeus. Three Great Historical Mysteries is a collection featuring fellow Poisoned Pen Press authors Bruce Macbain with Roman Games and Priscilla Royal with Wine of Violence. John's debut One For Sorrow makes up the set. Together these span classical Rome, later Rome and the Middle Ages.

https://headofzeus.com/books/9781781855393

In addition to individual single titles Head of Zeus also offers a boxed set of the first four John novels in the Murder In Byzantium collection.

https://headofzeus.com/books/9781781859063

Finally there is a 48 page mini-book featuring one of John's early adventures, The Body in the Mithraeum.

Head of Zeus: https://headofzeus.com/books/9781781858394 Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/tmvwcsu8

In Praise of Tubbies

by Mary

When I mentioned my intent was to talk about "tubbies" this time round, Mr Maywrite asked me if the word was a Britishism or a Maryism. I cannot say either way, but will confirm right off the bat that the following is not about the colourful Teletubbies inhabiting the world of the popular British TV show for young children.

No, this essay is devoted to coffee containers and came about because only a couple of types of plastic bottles and jars are accepted locally for recycling. This means items without the appropriate magic numbers on their bases branding them as unwanted types of plastic must perforce be disposed of in the weekly bag of rubbish. However, not all of our numerical undesirables disappear that way, because we have amassed a collection of various sizes of coffee tubbies. Not surprising really, since being devotees of Satan's brew we generally get through even the largest sized container in about six weeks.

A quick survey of Casa Maywrite reveals several tubbies currently in use. A medium sized example in this very room holds spare light bulbs, an excellent way to store fragile items of that kind. Why light bulbs are sold in flimsy cardboard packaging when it takes a hacksaw to get into certain plastic-wrapped items is a mystery for the ages.

More of these lagniappe storage units lurk in three rooms and a porch. The tubby in the latter location houses sundry small garden tools as well as drop cloths and paintbrushes. Another office example holds small odds and ends of the type that tend to be found lurking in desk drawers. Unfortunately neither of our desks include that most useful feature, so items such as envelopes, stamps, spare pens, and scissors are kept in their own tubby. There is the disadvantage that tubbies do not seem to spontaneously generate rubber bands and paper clips as desk drawers do.

There's another tubby in the bathroom housing the loo brush, and assorted hoover attachments lurk in the pantry tubby. Last summer one of the bigger containers proved really handy when carrying out a controlled pouring forth of wood stain, rather than attempting to wrassle with large tins reminiscent of British petroleum containment units, as Mr Maywrite put it. Which, he observed, in this country are still known as gas cans despite being made of plastic.

One of a procession of plumbers whose retirement accounts we have enlarged significantly the last couple of years asked if he could have one of our smaller tubbies, and we were glad to oblige. My guess is it will serve as a mini bucket in tighter plumbing spots. We have used one as a temporary bucket when the kitchen sink sprang a leak and of course they are also useful when dealing with other tasks involving water.

Leading subscribers further around a grand tour of the premises, observe the fine example of the largest type of tubby residing on the kitchen counter. We pressed it into service some time since to store wet rubbish such as coffee grounds, fruit peelings, and eggshells. Its capacity is large and keeping it tightly lidded until it the time came to dispose of its contents has proved particularly useful during east coast heat waves.

Another attraction of these handy items: stores expect you to pay for specialised containers for various sorts of clutter, but tubbies are free. Which reminds me there's one containing loose change in the kitchen but their use extends further: they serve as the subject for an essay when the idea fairy goes missing.