Trade Secrets

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Fascinating things, babies. So long as you keep a respectful distance, that is, because the little buggers can be really devious. Witness the existence of projectile vomiting.

Which was currently relevant: as of the evening before, we’d got Marilla and her doctor husband, Clarus, over on a visit from Castrimoenium, plus of course the grand-sprog, young Marcus Cornelius, born at the start of the Winter Festival so now pushing five months old, as promising a little bruiser as ever dirtied a nappy and presently ensconced on the atrium couch opposite snoring his socks off against his grandmother’s shoulder.

‘You want to hold him for a while, Marcus?’ Perilla said. ‘I have to go upstairs to change. They’ll be here in an hour.’

True; it was the lady’s monthly poetry-klatsch morning, when her literary pals met to juggle their anapaests, and this time she was hosting. Not exactly my scene. By the time the cultured hordes rolled up for their cakes and honeyed wine I’d be long gone.

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