In the Shadow of Heroes

by Nicholas Bowling

When he opened his eyes, a real hand emerged from the darkness and shook him.

  ‘Hey,’ someone said.

  Cadmus squinted. Two meaty calves were planted in the dust in front of him. Above them, silhouetted against the starlight, was a tall, broad-backed figure. The sort of figure forged by years of hard labour. Soldier, it looked like, although there was also the glint of an iron collar around the neck, which suggested they belonged to somebody.

  ‘Hey, wake up.’

  The voice didn’t match the body, though. It was deep, but unmistakably belonged to a girl.

  ‘Wake up.’

  The girl shook him so hard he felt his arm almost pop from its socket.

  ‘Ow!’ he cried. ‘All right, I’m up! Niobe wept, what’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Whose house is this?’

  She spoke Greek, but her accent was unlike anything Cadmus had heard before. Not Thracian, not Near-Eastern. A little like Gaulish, but more clipped, and without so much saliva involved.

  He shivered, and not from the cold. Maybe she was working for Nero too. She was nearly the same size as the figure from the library.

  ‘It’s my master’s house,’ he said, trying to stall her. He had little hope of fending off the intruder any other way. Words, words, words, he scolded himself. That’s all you have, Cadmus.

  ‘Don’t waste my time, friend,’ the girl sighed. ‘I’ve had enough trouble getting here.’

  ‘If you tell me your business, I’ll try and help you.’ His voice didn’t sound half as steady as he wanted it to.

  ‘I have a message. For Gaius Domitius Tullus.’ She said the name like she had been rehearsing it for days. ‘From Athens.’

  Cadmus got to his feet, suddenly flushed with warmth. Even when he was standing upright, she towered over him.

  ‘Athens?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who sent you?’

  ‘The man.’

  ‘Which man?’

  ‘Silveranus.’

  ‘Silvanus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A long pause.

  ‘And?’ Cadmus prompted.

  ‘And he gave me a wax tablet. To bring to your master.’

  ‘A tablet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not a scroll?’

  ‘No.’

  The girl was obviously not in the mood for talking. In the darkness her face was a vague, expressionless circle. The silence was broken by the sound of dogs barking down in the city.

  ‘Can I look at the tablet?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Are you Gaius Domitius Tullus?’

  ‘No, I’m Cadmus—’

  ‘Then, no. It’s only for him.’

  ‘Tullus isn’t here. He’s disappeared.’

  The girl’s huge shoulders sagged. ‘Are you joking? Do you know what I went through to get here? You don’t get any special treatment for carrying an important message. Just chained up in the ship and beaten like all the other slaves, thanks to this.’ She pointed at the collar.

  Cadmus looked at the tag. These things were usually reserved for runaways. Slaves with a history of disobedience.

  ‘That’s funny,’ he said, reading the words etched into the wood. ‘I don’t remember you belonging to Gaius Domitius Tullus.’

  ‘He really isn’t here?’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘Someone’s taken him away,’ said Cadmus. ‘But that tablet might help him. Or help us to help him.’

  ‘I don’t understand how it can be so important. The message is very short.’

  ‘You looked inside?’

  ‘Might have done.’

  ‘I thought you said it was for his eyes only?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. I can’t read anyway.’

  Cadmus didn’t know what to make of her. After his initial trepidation, he felt strangely calmed when she spoke. Her words were slow and rhythmic, rising and falling, tinged with that odd, lyrical accent. It was like listening to waves breaking on a shore.

  ‘Can we go inside?’ she said. ‘I need a rest.’

  There was something frank and direct about the way she spoke too. Most slaves didn’t just ask for things outright.

  ‘You and me both,’ said Cadmus. ‘But we’re locked out. I had, um, a disagreement with one of the household.’

  ‘Wife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Son or daughter?’

  ‘No, my master isn’t married. It’s just him living here.’

  ‘So then who have you been arguing with?’

  ‘One of the other slaves. Thinks he owns the place.’

  ‘Another slave? You need to stand up for yourself, friend. Come on.’

  ‘Come on what . . . ?’

  The girl walked to the entrance of the villa, Cadmus trailing behind her. She ran her fingers over the bronze handle, and pushed at it gently. She hummed. Then she took two, three, four paces backwards, dropped her shoulder and threw all of her weight at the door.

  The whole house seemed to vibrate like a struck drum. The door swung inwards, shuddering on its hinges, as though it had never been locked in the first place. The draw bar on the other side clattered to the floor. A piece of oak, thick as Cadmus’s forearm, split neatly into two. He looked at her and gaped.

  ‘Wait, you can’t—’

  She didn’t even turn around. She pushed again at the swinging door and strolled calmly into the atrium.

  The house still seemed to be ringing when he followed her inside. The rest of the slaves had their lodgings at the back of the garden – another reason for them to hate Cadmus, since Tullus had offered him a cubiculum at the front, near his study – but it was highly likely that the echo of the intrusion had reached their ears.

  He listened carefully for shouts or footsteps. Nothing yet. He closed the door behind him and tried his best to secure it with the broken stub of the bar.

  The girl looked around, hands on hips. ‘Hmmm. Very nice. What about your master?’

  ‘What about him?’ Cadmus wrung his hands. What was he going to do about her? Why couldn’t she just hand over the tablet and leave?

  ‘Is he nice?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘The old man said your master would look after me. In return for delivering the message. I’m wondering if I’m going to be happy here.’

  Cadmus was lost for words. And that never happened.

  ‘You seem nice,’ she continued. ‘And a lot of the time that’s because of the master. Slaves are nicer if they’re treated right. And the other way round. Although that doesn’t follow in my case. Ow!’ She stubbed her toe in the darkness.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Cadmus said. ‘Let me get a lamp.’

  A small flame was flickering in the shrine to the household gods, its feeble light barely reaching the floor. Cadmus used it to light the wick of an oil lamp, and brought it over to where she was standing. She rubbed her foot vigorously, and then stood up. That was when he saw her properly for the first time.

  ‘Gods above,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yes. You don’t know how lucky you are being so small. They’ll never put you to work in the mines, not with those arms.’ She pinched his bicep.

  The girl’s skin was a fibrous mess of scars. They criss-crossed in pale, white ridges down from her shoulders to her hands, and arced across one side of her face.

  ‘Did this . . .’ Cadmus swallowed drily. ‘Did this all happen on the journey here?’

  ‘What? Oh. No. I’ve just not been very lucky with masters, last few years. You always get the worst jobs when you’re my size. Even if you’re a girl.’ She paused. ‘Especially if you’re a girl, sometimes.’

  ‘Your masters gave you all these?’

  ‘Yes. Apart from this one,’ she said, pointing to a puckered line along her collarbone. ‘Got that at home. Got into a fight with a
wild boar. You should see what he looks like now.’

  The girl chuckled, and then looked strangely distant. Cadmus knew what she was feeling. He’d understood from the moment that she mentioned ‘home’. There was a moment when he thought he might like to sit with her the whole night, to find out who she was, to tell his story and to hear hers. But then he saw the wax tablet in her hand and remembered there was more pressing business.

  ‘You need to give me that tablet.’ He directed a finger at her, and she slapped his hand away.

  ‘Ow!’ The sharp sting turned to a deep throbbing. Cadmus tried to soothe the pain by putting his hand under his armpit. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘Don’t point at me.’

  He looked at her. She was deadly serious.

  ‘And ask more nicely,’ she added.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, frowning. What a peculiar creature she was. ‘May I please have the tablet?’

  ‘You’re sure your master isn’t coming back?’

  ‘Not any time soon. But whatever’s in that message could be very helpful to him.’ And to me, he thought. If it was vital information, if might give him a reason to go with Tullus on whatever expedition Nero had planned.

  ‘I told you, it’s only a couple of lines. I don’t know why the man thought it was so urgent. Maybe I’m wrong.’

  She paused, but made no move to hand over the message.

  ‘So . . .’ said Cadmus. ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘I suppose. But seeing as your master isn’t here, you have to make good on the promise the man made.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I want to a place to stay. And things to eat.’

  Cadmus looked over her huge frame in the flicker of the lamplight and wondered just how much she would eat.

  What was he supposed to do? He almost missed having Tullus make all his decisions for him. Bufo couldn’t claim to be in charge, but then again neither could Cadmus. He couldn’t just allow another slave into the household. He couldn’t throw her out on the street again either – quite literally, since there was no way he would be able to manhandle her out of the house, and he suspected she wouldn’t go without a fight.

  Then he imagined what Bufo himself would say or do when he saw her, and he felt a tingle of rebellious excitement. He’d pay good money to see Bufo try and wrestle the girl across the threshold.

  ‘Fine. As long as you don’t mind sleeping on the floor.’

  ‘I’ve never slept anywhere else.’

  As she handed over the tablet Cadmus heard the sound of something being knocked over in the kitchen. He froze, both of their hands on the wooden frame.

  ‘Quick, through here!’

  He ran into his bedroom, expecting the girl to follow. She did eventually, but not quite as urgently as he’d hoped. He watched her duck under his door frame, her face a picture of broad bemusement, and then pulled the curtain across behind her. He was poised to blow out the oil lamp, but they heard nothing else. No footsteps, no voices. The house sank into silence again.

  Cadmus handed the lamp to the girl and sat on the edge of his bed with the tablet. He untied the string holding the frame together, opened it on his lap, and read the message.

  From Quintus Aemilius Silvanus

  To Gaius Domitius Tullus, Senator

  Greetings, friend,

  I hope all is well at Rome. Thank you for your invitation to dinner, I would be delighted to attend. Make sure you clean the tables!

  That was all it said. He turned it over in his hands. There was no postscript. Nothing written on the back.

  The girl had been right. She’d risked her life crossing land and sea just to arrange a dinner party.

  V

  As tired as he was, Cadmus hardly slept for the second night in a row. The girl snored like a bear and seemed to speak more when she was asleep than when she was awake. Sometimes in Greek, sometimes in her own language. He stared at the ceiling and tried to piece together everything that had happened. Images rose and fell before his blind eyes: the giant’s vividly coloured face and clothes; the ruin of Silvanus’s library; the distraught Drusilla; the mystery of Epaphroditus’s box. In the dark their strangeness only became more vivid. When he wasn’t thinking of these, he was looking at the wax tablet again, tracing the inscribed letters with his fingers. There had to be more to it than just Silvanus’s reply to Tullus’s invitation. Some other meaning lurked behind its simplicity. And why the request about cleaning the tables? Some kind of in-joke?

  He’d snatched a couple of hours of uneasy sleep when he was woken by the patter of feet outside the room. The other slaves were up. Dawn, maybe later. They were talking in low voices near the front door, and had obviously discovered the evidence of the break-in.

  Below him, the girl rolled over heavily and muttered something in her native tongue, the words seeming to resonate through the floor and into his mattress. He watched the vague outline of her back rising and falling as she breathed. Now that the dust of the previous evening had settled, he knew in his tired bones that letting her stay had been a bad idea. He knew nothing about her. What had he been thinking?

  She suddenly sat upright and yelled something into the darkness, more foreign sounds that Cadmus didn’t understand. They poured from her lips, terrified and terrifying.

  ‘What? What is it?’ hissed Cadmus.

  She didn’t even realize he was there. Her hands thrashed and groped in front of her face. Cadmus scrambled from his bed and on to the floor, cupping a hand over her mouth. He tried to grab both her wrists, then just one of them, but even using all his strength and all his bodyweight she swatted him back against the bed frame. Eventually he pinched her neck hard, and that seemed to wake her up. Her mouth closed and her shoulders slumped.

  She turned slowly where she sat. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What am I doing? Your screaming’s going to bring the whole house in here!’

  ‘Screaming?’ She looked into her lap. ‘Hmmm. Sorry. Bad dream.’

  The curtain behind them twitched. Cadmus could see two pairs of bare feet shuffling in the gap at the bottom. He got up off the floor and threw it open, to find both of the slave girls loitering guiltily outside. Charis looked over his shoulder and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Don’t start with your gossiping,’ he said, relieved that he hadn’t been caught by someone else. ‘This is none of your business. Go and find something useful to do.’

  ‘You sound like Bufo.’ She tutted, barely able to conceal her delight. ‘He’s not going to be happy when he finds out you broke the door down just so you could bring your girlfriend in.’

  ‘She’s not my—’

  ‘Don’t worry, we won’t tell him, unless you give us a reason to.’

  ‘Are you blackmailing me? You’re the one who sounds like Bufo now.’

  At that, the girl got to her feet. Cadmus watched Charis’s and the other slave’s eyes widen as they fully appreciated her size.

  ‘Maybe I will tell him, after all,’ Charis said. ‘She looks like she’d put up a bit of fight. The old toad won’t know what to do with himself.’ She looked the girl up and down and shook her head as if in wonder. ‘I’ll tell you what, Cadmus, you’ve got strange taste in women.’

  ‘I told you, she’s not my—’

  But before he could finish protesting, Charis and her friend had scampered away laughing. When he turned around, the girl was less amused.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.

  ‘Embarrassed by me, are you?’

  Cadmus blinked. ‘No. Not at all. If anything I’m rather proud of you.’

  ‘Oh, right. Proud of me. Proud to show me off.’ The girl’s displeasure was all the more unsettling for the fact that she hadn’t moved her face, or raised her voice, since she started speaking.

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. I know when I’m being made fun of. I’ve been up for auction twice. You don’t know what it’s like.’

&
nbsp; ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘You don’t know how it feels to be the youngest slave in the line-up, but also the tallest. To have hundreds of men gasping and pointing and laughing at you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he meant it. He was ashamed.

  The girl humphed, and fiddled with the metal collar around her neck. She’d broken off the tag, he saw, but the collar itself was locked shut.

  ‘How shall I introduce you in future?’ Cadmus asked. ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘I have a few,’ she said quietly. ‘They gave me nicknames after they captured me.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Everyone in the camp just called me Ursa.’

  The bear. Cadmus imagined the slave dealer who’d given her the moniker, thought of his grinning face. He didn’t find it funny.

  ‘Well, that won’t do,’ he said. ‘What’s your real name?’

  She sighed. ‘I can tell you, but you won’t be able to pronounce it. No one can.’

  ‘Try me.’

  She opened her mouth, and out fell a jumble of syllables. They sounded like the noises she’d been making in her sleep.

  ‘Tog . . . what?’

  ‘I told you,’ she said. Then she spoke very slowly.

  Her tongue seemed to be working incredibly hard as she enunciated the name again: ‘Tog-o-dum-na.’

  ‘Togidubina.’

  ‘Close enough.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll just call you Tog.’

  She shrugged. ‘Fine. That’s more effort than most people go to. And your name is . . . ?’

  ‘Cadmus.’

  ‘Is that your real name?’

  ‘I suppose it is now. I can’t remember what I was called when I was born.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. There are plenty more like me, plenty more like you. Can’t be sorry for everyone. There’s not enough sorrow to go around.’

  They shook hands, Cadmus’s slim fingers disappearing completely within hers.

  ‘Right,’ he said decisively. ‘Seeing as Charis is now probably spreading the secret through the house, there’s not much point in hiding in here any more. Let’s get something to eat, then I want to ask you more about this tablet, and about what happened in Athens. I want to know everything.’

  They stepped out into the atrium, which was now deserted, Cadmus taking the tablet with him. From there he led Tog into the garden. The sun was beginning to coax the dew from the grasses; flowers in terracotta pots were opening themselves to the day, their petals warm like flesh. Thrushes hopped from branches to bathe in the fountain. The edges of everything seemed softened.