by Tom Holt
That shut me up for a moment or so. 'I am?' I said.
'Absolutely. Think about it rationally for a moment. Nature, or the gods, never wastes effort; everything happens for a reason. If we accept that — which is what the Stoics teach — then your destinies were set cold in the mould the instant you were born. Why else would Nature go to all the trouble of creating a spitting image of his majesty, and then weave a web of circumstances that brought that facsimile — against all the odds, mark you — to the one place and time where the copy and the original could be brought together to interact for their greatest mutual advantage? To claim that it wasn't predetermined would be like acknowledging the existence of the elephant and the intricately carved ivory scent bottle, but denying the existence of the ivory carver; and insisting, furthermore, that the scent bottle is a natural rather than an artificial thing, owing its shape to the random erosion of wind and weather.' He reached out his hand and clamped me on the shoulder. Where I come from we bust people's noses for that, but he was a Roman senator, so I guess he couldn't be expected to know better. 'Thank you, my dear friend. That must be the most compelling piece of evidence in support of the Stoic argument that I've heard in thirty-five years. I'm most deeply obliged to you, and your admirable brother.'
Goes without saying — as soon as he got started on all those long words and big beetlecrusher sentences, I stopped trying to understand and let it all wash over me. Oh, I remembered it all right, because coming from him it was obviously the good stuff, the real onion gravy, but it struck me that the sensible thing to do would be to tuck it away in my mind, like sneaking a couple of cutlets into your hanky at a posh dinner party, and see if I could crack it open later, as and when I had the time. So I did.
Anyhow, after that we nattered back and forth for a bit, till suddenly he realised what the time was and had to scurry off to some departmental briefing or whatever. And after he's gone I'm sitting there thinking, yeah, right.
Clearly he's been funning with me, puffing my tail, spouting a whole lot of camel feathers and making me believe it actually made sense —just the sort of thing that'd tickle a smartarse Roman, conning a conner. But then I got to thinking, so what? Doesn't matter if he's having me on and he's so far up himself he's practically poking out through his own ears if what he said does turn out to make a bit of sense. And the more I've thought about it over the years (and for some reason I've never managed to flush it out of my head), the more I reckon he smacked the peg square on the head, and what he told me wasn't far off being the truth—
—And you can't go planting stuff like that in the head of a Greek without expecting something to come up out of it. Because, think how it'd be if there was this poor fool who went through his life telling the truth and everybody thought he was lying? And wouldn't it be even worse if there was another poor fool — maybe even the same one — who went around trying his very best to tell lies, and it always turned out that everything he said was actually true?
TWO
So there we were in Syracuse , hiding under a table.
Sorry: You can tell I'm new to this storytelling business — an amazing confession for a Greek, but like I told you just now, these days I make a point of only telling the truth — it's just dawned on me that I've been talking for half an hour and I haven't even started the story properly.
We were in Syracuse , Lucius Domitius and me. Syracuse is in Sicily , in case you didn't know. Sicily is a terrible place: it's all big estates worked by chain gangs, and everybody knows everybody else, which makes it really hard for people in our line of work. Anyway, we were in Syracuse, and we'd just tried the old one where one of you pretends to have discovered a load of buried treasure but you've had a bang on the head and lost your memory —you know about that one, I'm sure, it had whiskers on it when King Priam was getting chased out of orchards for stealing apples —and it hadn't gone very well, which was why we were hiding under this table, which was the front of a cheese merchant's stall in the market. I think it was the soldiers who were after us, them or the rich senator's bodyguard — anyway, we were being chased, and it was only a matter of time before we got caught and dragged off for a chat with the magistrate.
Lucius Domitius was wetting himself, as usual. He never got the hang of handling stress. What bothered him was the thought that the magistrate or the rich senator or one of those people would recognise him for who he really was. Now I wasn't too fussed about that. It's been my experience that people only ever see what they're expecting to see, and nobody would be expecting to see the former emperor Nero Claudius Caesar because everybody knew he'd been dead for ten years. It might just possibly occur to someone that one of the prisoners looked a bit like the late unlamented emperor, but the thought that it might actually be him wouldn't cross his mind, and even if it did he wouldn't dare mention it for fear of people thinking he was nuts. No, what was making me feel uncomfortable was the prospect of being found guilty of obtaining money by deception and being sentenced to twenty-five years in the slate quarries. Now it's a fact that nobody's ever actually done a twenty—five—year stretch in the quarries, and you might think that's reassuring, until you find out that the reason for this is that most people tend to die after five years down there, and the really tough old leatherbacks only make it to fifteen.
'So this is it, then,' he was saying, as we watched the sandals of our pursuers tramping backwards and forwards in front of our noses. 'This is where it finally grinds to a halt. What a bloody stupid way to go.
'Don't be so miserable,' I told him. 'We'll get out of this, don't you worry.
And when we do, we'll go to Africa .'
' Africa ?'
'Should've gone there years ago,' I told him. 'Wonderful place, by all accounts.
Glorious weather, beautiful cities, loads of money about, and the people are all overfed and dumb. Inside of a couple of years, we'll be so rich we can retire.'
'What the hell makes you think that?' he asked.
'Oh, I keep my ears open. Remember that wine shop in Massilia, where you had those bad olives? Well, there were a couple of Spaniards in there, just off a ship from Cyrenaica . and they were going on about how great it is out that way and how it's toe to heel with gullible rich silphium growers. Did you realise that nine-tenths of the silphium grown in the empire comes from Cyrenaica ?'
He shook his head. 'I'm not sure I even know where Cyrenaica is.'
'You should do,' I replied. 'You used to own it.'
'Maybe. But you know perfectly well I never went anywhere in those days. Anyway, that's beside the point. What the hell makes you think we'd do any better in Africa than here? You told me the Sicilians were gullible, but it didn't take them long to figure us out.'
I sighed. 'All right. If you don't fancy Africa , there's other places.
Lusitania , for instance. They have huge great silver mines in Lusitania .'
'No doubt,' he replied gloomily 'And if I'm stupid enough to listen to you, we'll end up down one of 'em, with a pick and a crowbar and half a mouldy loaf a day between us.
'Don't talk like that. You know what your trouble is?'
'Yes. I allow myself to get talked into things by bad people.'
'Your trouble is,' I went on, 'you're an Epicurean. You can't see that everything is part of a vast prearranged plan, and every little detail was figured out and set in stone centuries before you were even born. Now, if you were a Stoic, like me, you'd realise there's nothing at all else we could've done, we'd still have wound up here m the end. It's not what happens that matters, it's how well you cope with it. Which means,' I explained, 'staying calm and together, and not pissing down your leg every time you hit a rough patch.'
I expect he'd have said something downbeat and depressing only he didn't get the chance, because that was when the soldiers found us and winkled us out from under the table by prodding our legs with their spears.
I could have told him there was no fear of us being recognised by the magistrate. He s
carcely even looked at us. He just listened to what the prosecutor had to say, and passed sentence — which may be your idea of the due process of justice, but it definitely isn't mine.
'Fifteen years hard labour in the slate quarries,' he said. 'Next case.
Well, I told Lucius Domitius, it could have been far worse. I was sure we'd get at least twenty years, maybe even twenty-five, and we'd got off with fifteen. He must have liked our faces, or something.
Be that as it may. There we were, huddled in back of a rickety old mule cart, bumping along a narrow road winding its way round the side of a horribly steep mountain. The cart was so packed with poor bastards on their one-way trip to the quarries that we could hardly breathe, though since most of our fellow passengers didn't smell very nice that was something of a blessing. Nobody said much. We were all too miserable and the soldiers got nasty if we tried to chat.
There were five Gaulish cavalry troopers in front of the cart and another five following on behind, and we were all chained together just in case we took it into our heads to jump off the side and make a run for it, though they needn't have worried about that, since there was nothing over the side except a bloody great drop. The best you could say for it was that it was better than walking.
It's hard keeping track of time when you're in that kind of situation. You're cramped and uncomfortable and every time the wheels go over a rut or a pothole you feel like your spine's just been broken, but after a while you find yourself drifting off into a sort of trance, just to take your mind off your troubles. So I don't know how long we'd been on that road, and I certainly haven't got a clue where we ended up. The best I can manage is somewhere between Syracuse city and the quarries, which isn't very precise, I know But wherever it was, that's where it happened.
First I knew that something was up was when the cart suddenly jinked drastically over to the right, and all of us sitting on the left side found ourselves tumbled into the laps of the poor fools opposite. It was a wonder nobody got shot out and over the edge, and because we were all chained up together, it's a fair bet that if one of us had gone, the rest would've been dragged out too, and that would've been a bloody mess. I heard the cavalrymen yelling at the carter, and he shouted back something about the right front wheel going over the edge.
Anyhow, the cart stopped and one of the cavalry troopers from behind shouted at us not to move or we'd all be dead. We'd figured that one out for ourselves, but it was nice of him to care.
What had happened was the edge of the road had got a bit crumbly and come away, damn near taking the cart with it. As it was, we were perched there, half on the road and half dangling over the drop. One of the troopers had the wit to draw the linchpin and get the mules clear: if they'd spooked and started backing up we'd have been over in a flash. But thanks to those damned chains there was no way to get us off the cart — we were all too close together and couldn't move — and they didn't dare try dragging the cart back off the edge, it was too finely poised. All in all, we couldn't have been more delicately balanced if we'd hired a top-flight Alexandrian engineer to draw it all out on paper and do the calculations.
No disrespect to you, but if you'd been in our shoes you'd have been pissing yourself, but it was different for us, we were all dead already as far as we were concerned, and when you've got sod all to lose you can afford to see the funny side. I was finding the way the soldiers were scatting about distinctly amusing, and Lucius Domitius was grinning like an idiot.
'I was just thinking about what we were discussing under that table,' he said, when I asked him what we found so hilarious. 'About Stoics and Epicureans, and predestination and all that. I was thinking,' he went on 'if everything is predetermined down to the smallest detail, like you were saying, that must mean this mess was, too. And I thought, Destiny must be pretty damned smart to be able to balance a cartload of condemned men so absolutely precisely on the edge of a precipice. Getting it inch-perfect like that, and first time, too. With a talent like that, she's wasting her time being a goddess. She should be raising triumphal arches or building pyramids.'
'You can mock,' I said. 'But this is exactly what I was talking about. I knew when we were under that table that it wasn't over quite yet, and the same when we were in the dock. Whatever happens next, it won't be what was supposed to happen, that's for sure.'
'Shut up a minute,' he interrupted. 'I want to hear what they're saying.'
The troopers had come up with a plan. They were thinking about putting a rope through the spokes of the back wheels and making fast to a stumpy old thorn tree, and then passing a second rope through the nearside front wheel and hauling the cart up off the edge that way It wasn't a bad idea at all, and it might've worked if only they'd had two ropes, or even one. As it was, all they had was a long steel chain, and that wasn't a whole lot of good to them because of all the people attached to it. The best they could do was send one of the troopers back down the road as fast as he could go for some rope, and take a chance on him getting back before somebody sneezed and we all got smeared across the valley floor like birdshit.
Our part in this jolly adventure was to stay absolutely still, and to do us credit, we took to it like we'd been apprenticed seven years in the trade. Mind you, I don't suppose there was a single one of us in that cart who wasn't trying to figure out how to turn the situation into a chance to escape. Luckily for all of us, we were smart enough to realise that it wasn't on, not for us or Archimedes or Pythagoras or the clever men who make those moving bronze statues powered by steam. Nevertheless, it was something cheerful to think about, and kept us from getting restless.
Some time later (again, don't ask me to be precise), we heard voices up ahead.
Nobody tried to take a look and see who it was, since that would've meant moving, and we were wise to that. But luckily the voices carried well in the air — still day, no breeze — and we could hear what was going on.
'Hey,' someone said in Greek, 'what the hell do you jokers think you're playing at? Get that bloody cart out of the way' Typical landlord's voice: loud, confident, didn't give a damn about all the emperor's legions if they happened to be blocking a road he wanted to ride along. Did me good to hear it just then, that tiny faint suggestion that there are other powers in the world besides the senate and people of Rome , and very occasionally, on their own turf, they win.
Long pause, which I put down to the cavalrymen being savages and not understanding Greek. Same thing must've occurred to the mystery voice, because he repeated what he'd said, only in Latin.
'We can't,' called back one of the troopers. 'Cart stuck on edge of cliff. We trying to move, fall off bump, everybody die.'
'Bloody hell.' The voice sounded amused. 'What've you got in there, anyway?
Slaves for the quarry, is it?'
'Ya, ya.' The trooper again. 'Criminals, bad people, going to quarry. Only getting stuck in the cart, and not to be moved.'
'Poor bastards,' replied the voice, and neither of them said anything for a while. Then the Greek said, 'You know, if you passed a rope through the back wheel—'
'This we thinking of,' interrupted the trooper irritably, 'but not have rope.
The Greek laughed. 'Shows you aren't from round here, then. Nobody takes a cart out on these roads without rope.'
Pause, while the trooper thinks about it. 'You got rope?'
'I got rope, sure. I got brain, so I got rope. You not got rope, go figure.'
'You give rope.'
'I not give rope. Me give anything to the government if I don't absolutely have to? Not bloody likely.'
The trooper made an angry sort of noise. 'We soldiers. You give rope.
'You Roman soldiers. I not give rope. You fuck yourselves.'
'Oh, for crying out loud,' muttered Lucius Domitius. 'A patriot. The gods must hate us.'
'Seems that way,' I agreed. 'Mind you, your uncle Claudius is a god now, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised.'
'That settles it. then. If Uncle's in Heaven,
give me the other place any time.'
The trooper was gabbling away to his mates in Foreign, and they sounded pretty upset about something. Then a different trooper called out. 'You give rope. It is the law. We requisition.'
The mystery voice answered back in Greek. What he said is pretty well untranslatable, and probably just as well, but the troopers seemed to have got the message anyhow. 'If you not giving rope, we take.'
'No fear of that,' the Greek replied. 'You take one step in this direction, the rope goes over the edge, and you can go and fetch it from the bottom of the valley. If you get a move on, you could be there by this time tomorrow.'
Wonderful, I thought. Talk about your equipoise of opposing forces hovering in space. There was the cart, teetering on the edge of the gorge, and there were the troopers and the Greek, equally delicately poised. One tiny shove anywhere and the whole lot would go down. It was turning into an interesting day After a long quiet spell — I could hear the buzzing of the bees and the steady sound of horses chomping their bits — the first trooper piped up again. 'We buy rope,' he said.
'Now we're getting somewhere.' The Greek sounded positively cheerful. 'Giving to the government is one thing. Selling to the bastards is something else. Twenty drachmas.'
Pause. You could almost hear the graunching sound as the troopers calculated drachmas into sesterces in their heads. 'Too much. We give five sesterces.'
'You know what you can do with your five sesterces. If you don't, ask a good doctor.'
'Five sesterces,' the trooper repeated, only louder. 'Fair price for rope. Same as market.'