by Tom Holt
'Oh, shut up.
All this time we'd been carrying on down into the valley, until we reached the fiat plain where the farmland started. We still didn't know where we were, of course, and my instincts were telling me we should stay up in the rocky bits, away from where people lived and we'd stick out like pimples. Actually, my instincts were bickering like an old married couple, because they were also telling me that up in the rocky bits was where the soldiers would expect us to be. What we needed to do was get out of those clothes, stop being runaway quarry slaves and become something else. That's one of the good things about not being anything at all: you've got flexibility.
Pretty soon we found ourselves on a dusty little road between small, stone-walled olive groves, with a little river chortling along somewhere close on our right. This wasn't good, since anybody seeing us would know we weren't local. I was wondering what we could do about this when we heard voices coming from a little patch of beech trees dead ahead. Bugger, I thought; I grabbed Lucius Domitius by the sleeve and pulled him down behind a wall.
'Now what?' he said.
'Voices up ahead,' I told him. 'Shut up, I want to listen.'
So I listened, and then I started to grin. There were two of them, a young man and a girl, and it was pretty obvious what they were doing; no threat to us, anyhow Lucius Domitius started to get up, but I pulled him down again.
'Oh for pity's sake,' he muttered. 'You might get off on eavesdropping on young lovers making out in the fields, but now isn't the time. We're running for our lives, in case you'd forgotten.'
I sighed. No attention to detail, you see. You've got to pay attention in this life, or you'll walk past all your golden opportunities and never know they're there. 'Listen,' I said.
I don't have many talents, but I can place people by their voices, it's a knack I have. The girl was easy enough, some local farm kid; probably she'd been doing the family laundry down by the river when she met the boy. He was rather more interesting. Admittedly he wasn't saying much, she was the one making all the noise, but when he did say anything, he said it in Latin. It's my experience that in these moments of high passion, people don't tend to muck about with foreign languages. What we'd got here was a genuine, twenty-carat Roman.
The rest of it was easy enough to figure out. Personally, I blame the schools.
If you send your kid to one of those fashionable places where they set them reading Theocritus and all that stuff, all about handsome young noblemen out hunting who run into lovely, willing peasant girls in idyllic pastoral settings, what the hell do you expect? It's always worse the closer you get to a big city, of course. Where I come from, near Athens, it's getting so you can't duck in behind a bush for a quick shit without tripping over a Strephonand-Amaryllis act in among the daisies and buttercups.
So, there we were, and what I needed most of all, of course, was a bathhouse creeper's hook.
Sorry, I'm getting technical. You know what a bathhouse creeper is, right? Just in case you don't, think of one of those low-life characters who make their living stealing things from the changing rooms of the public baths. It's an ancient profession with a rich heritage of tradition, though I've never done much good with it myself. The principal tool of the trade is your small bronze hook mounted on a long, thin, flexible shaft, which you stick through the bathhouse window and use to fish out purses, cloaks, hats, whatever. I'm told they make the best ones in Alexandria, with three prongs and a shaft that folds up so you can stash it under your cloak, but any old hook will do, and if you haven't got a hook, you can always use a suitably shaped branch off a tree.
That's assuming you can find one. The nearest trees were the beeches where the Sweet Young Things were still hammering away at it (which reminded me, I had to get a move on; they couldn't keep going for ever), so I crept up as quietly as I could and had a snoop round for a fallen branch. No joy, but they didn't seem to have heard me, so I took a chance and broke a long, whippy shoot off a sapling.
Just the job, right down to the handy little fork near the tip, which would do just as well as any fancy three-tined Egyptian bronze hook.
Another thing I've observed about your young Roman buck: when he goes al fresco bonking, he always takes his clothes off— so they don't get dusty and covered in grass stains, I guess. Wouldn't do for everybody to be able to tell at a glance where he's been or what he's been up to. Amazing streak of prudery in the high Roman character, which is a real blessing for a bloke in need of a change of clothes.
Like I said, I've never really done much with creeper's hooks. The real artists — ticklers, they call them in the trade — can winkle out a ring or a brooch though a narrow window with their eyes shut, standing on their mates' shoulders.
I'm not in that league, but I'm good enough to snag a tunic and a belt on the flat. For some reason, the bastard had kept his sandals on, but there wasn't anything I could do about that.
'Right,' I whispered to Lucius Domitius, once I'd got safely back behind our wall. 'Time we weren't here.'
So we hopped it, back up the road in the opposite direction for a hundred yards, then across the river on stepping stones, up the other side and into a handy stand of fir trees. Only then did we have a chance to examine our haul.
'Nice,' Lucius Domitius said, fingering the cloth. 'Good weave. Mainland Greek wool.'
I nodded. 'And get a load of the buckle on the belt,' I said. 'That's ivory, not bone. Let's see what's in the purse.
Less than I'd expected: fifteen in silver and some copper, but every bit you get makes a little more, as my old mother used to say. 'Right,' said Lucius Domitius, 'I'd better try them on.'
That wasn't what I'd had in mind. 'You?' I said. 'Don't give me that. You want a change of threads, go steal your own.
'Don't be stupid,' Lucius Domitius replied. 'Think about it for a moment, will you? We've got one high-class tunic between the two of us, right? So one of us is going to be the master, and the other one's his faithful slave. Do you really think anybody's going to believe in you as a smart young city type?'
He had a point, unfortunately You don't get Greeks swanning round with Italian slaves, not even in Sicily 'All right,' I muttered. 'But just till we get to a town with a tailor's stall. Understood?'
He grinned. 'We'll see,' he said, pulling his tunic off over his head. 'Now then,' he went on, putting on the nicked tunic, but he got half of the way in, then stopped. It was way too small for him.
'You were saying,' I said.
He tried again, twice, and only gave up when we heard the ominous sound of stitching giving way under the strain. 'All right,' he conceded, 'you try.
Though it's probably too small for you, too.'
Fitted me like a glove. Well, like a small glove, but at least I could get my neck through the head hole without ripping it to shreds. 'There,' I said, 'how do I look?'
'Like a Greek tickler who's just stolen a Roman's shirt,' he replied. 'I suppose you'll pass as an ex-slave who's come into money though the ear's a bit of a giveaway' Valid point, and it just went to show he could pay attention to detail when it suited him. It's a good tip for telling your genuine ex-slave, by the way: look for the mark on the ear lobe where the piercing's healed over. A bit of free advice for you, to help you when dealing with rogues and unscrupulous characters.
'It'll do,' I said. 'All right, I'm a wealthy freedman on a business trip, and you're my personal attendant. What line are we in?'
He thought for a moment. 'Dried fish?'
'This far inland? Not likely What else have they got in Sicily?'
'Wheat,' Lucius Domitius said, trying to remember his geography lessons, 'wool, figs. Cheese. Sicilian sheeps' milk cheese, those big cartwheel jobs with the thick plaster rinds.'
'That'll do,' I said. 'All right, I'm a Mauretanian cheese merchant—'
'Oh for pity's sake.'
'Well, everybody's got to be from somewhere. I'm a Mauretanian cheese importer, my name's Pittacus — our neighbour next door but
two down the valley at home,' I explained, before he could ask me where I'd got the name from. 'You're a slave, obviously Galatian, you'll pass for a Celt with that hair — know any Celtic names?'
'No,' he said. 'Let's just stick to Lucius, or we'll get confused. That's the trouble with you, always making it too elaborate, so we forget or muddle ourselves up, and then—'
'Yes, all right.' I took a moment to get myself into character. 'Fine,' I said.
'Now, let's get some more space between us and the owner of this shirt, just in case. An extra mile never hurts, as my brother used to say'
I can't say as I like Sicily much, but one thing it's got going for it, you never have to walk terribly far before you get to somewhere. It may not be anywhere exciting, or the place you want to be, but so long as you keep going you'll find yourself in a village or a town. Other places I've been, you can walk all day and never see anything but rocky mountains, or desert, or moorland; and one place I was in, I remember walking for three days and seeing nothing but row upon row of beans.
The place we fetched up in was either a fat village or a thin town. Anyhow, there were a couple of dozen houses, a smithy, a wheelwright's shop and a tower, all perched on a hilltop like a pimple on a Roman's nose. It was a bit like the poxy little towns in Attica where I grew up, except that you got the impression that people only went there if they had a reason, or couldn't avoid it. Oh yes, and there was a little thatched shrine to some minor local hero or other (but then again, there always is, isn't there?).
Obviously, we headed for the smithy as being the place where the local deadheads and time-wasters would be likely to hang out. Village smithies in predominantly Greek communities are remarkable things. You can spend your life going from one to another and I'll bet you ten drachmas you'll never ever see any work getting done. But they must make a living somehow, and if you want your hoe straightened or your ploughshare faxed, the man'll give you a long, cool stare and tell you he might be able to get round to it at some point in the second half of the month after next, with a following wind and barring a plague of locusts. What you will see, on the other hand, is half a dozen old-timers with five good teeth between them, a bloke with a wooden leg who talks to himself all the time, three or four farmers who look at you as if you're something they've tracked into the house on the sole of their boot, one blacksmith sitting on a stump drinking, and one skinny twelve-year-old boy leaning on a fifteen pound sledgehammer. The moment you show up, of course, they'll all immediately stop talking, except the guy with the wooden leg, and they'll stare at you for a very long time, and then the smith'll say, 'Right, then,' or something like that.
Now, this is where you need to be careful. If you come right out with it and say what you want, like, 'The wheel's come off my cart, can you possibly fix it for me?' or, 'Is there anywhere I can get a bed for the night?' or, 'Where the hell is this?' or whatever, they're all going to look at you like you've got six heads, and a four-year-old girl you hadn't noticed before's going to burst into tears and run into the house yelling for Mummy No; what you want to do when the smith says, 'Right, then,' is stand there leaning on your walking stick and nod your head just the tiniest bit, with a little upwards flick. If you've done it right, there'll be a silence that lasts about as long as it takes a cat to throw up a furball, and then they'll carry on with their conversation where they left off, and you're in. It's all right, they've accepted you, and sooner or later someone's going to pipe up and ask you what you want. Just follow these simple rules, and there's no reason why you can't get yourself an overpriced dinner of sausage and leek broth and a night's sleep in a hayloft in any village in the Eastern Mediterranean .
Anyway now that you know the drill, I don't need to take you through it step by step, so let's skip to the bit after the smith says, 'Right, then,' and on to where one of the old farmers says, 'And what'll you boys be after?'
The good thing about this ritual is that it gives you time to get yourself together, which is handy if you're being someone else for the first time. 'Just a bite to eat and somewhere to doss down for the night.' I said, 'And could you tell me if we're on the right road for Leontini?'
The old farmers looked at each other. The kid with the hammer sniggered.
'Leontini,' said the smith, as if we'd asked him if he'd seen any pink-winged hippogriffs lately 'Nope. Can't say as you are.
'Oh,' I said. Not that I cared a damn, you understand, I just wanted to find out where we were. 'So where are we, then?'
'Heracleia,' said one of the farmers. That was a fat lot of good. It's a fact that nine out of ten villages in the Greek-speaking world are called Heracleia, and the ones that aren't are called Aegae.
'Right,' I said. 'So where does this road go, then?'
Short pause. 'Syracuse,' said one of the old men.
'Yes, we just came from there. What about in the other direction?'
'In the other direction.' The shortest and stockiest of the farmers frowned, like he was doing long division in his head. 'Well, if you keep going long enough, reckon you'll wind up in Camarina.' And serve you right, he didn't add, but it was all there in his tone of voice.
'Ah, right,' I said, like I knew where the hell Camarina was. 'We must've taken a wrong turn back at the ford.' It's always safe to say that. Well nine times out often, anyway 'That'd be right,' grunted the smith. 'You want to get to Leontini, your best bet'd be to go back the way you just come, then head west where you went east and carry on up over.
I shrugged. 'Camarina's just as good to us,' I said. 'See, I'm just going round looking for places where I can buy good quality Sicilian cheese. That's my business. Actually,' I went on, 'maybe you gentlemen could help me out here.
Does anybody make cheese in these parts?'
Stunned silence, then they all shuffled half a step closer. 'Best cheeses in Sicily,' croaked the oldest of the farmers. 'Known for it, in fact. You won't get a better bit of cheese this side of Acragas.'
It all went like a dream after that, of course. Somehow, about half an hour later, the whole village knew that there was some lunatic stranger in town willing to pay actual silver money for anything round with a plaster rind on it.
Never been so popular in all my life. Of course, I had the wit to play it cool.
Gnarled old men came bustling up shoving cheeses under my nose, but I kept on frowning and sucking my teeth, and saying, 'Well, I did hear they do a pretty good strong cheese out Lilybaeum way,' whereupon they'd out with their knives and hack off huge great wedges and practically shove them down my throat. Pretty good cheese it was too, though personally I prefer the stuff they make back where I was raised. It's got that light, delicate flavour, and what you don't eat you can use to sharpen chisels on.
So it was all working out pretty well. Quite apart from all the buckshee cheese, there wasn't any nonsense about having to pay for a place to sleep or kipping down among the cows and goats. Some fat bloke with a lot of cheese to get rid of insisted that we go on home with him, and I got an actual bed, with a pillow and sheets, while the family slept on the floor with the dogs. Lucius Domitius didn't do quite so well — he had to muck in with the livestock — but, as I explained to him afterwards, it would've been totally out of character for me as a major cheese baron to give a toss about where my slave got billeted for the night.
Next morning, after a leisurely breakfast and a refreshing dip in the river, we set off on the road to Camarina. I explained that since I'd come so far I might as well press on a bit further, but it was almost a stone-cold certainty that I wasn't going to find anything even half as good as their cheese, and I'd be back in a day or so with a cart, ready to load up everything they could possibly spare, payment in cash on the spot. They seemed genuinely sorry to see me leave, which was a rare treat for me.
'Which just goes to prove what I was telling you,' I explained to Lucius Domitius, as we lost sight of the village behind some mountains. 'The vicissitudes of fortune, and all that. In the space of one day, we wen
t from being condemned men on our way to the quarries to honoured guests of the village, nothing too good for us, help yourself to another plate of biscuits.
That's what life's all about,' I went on, 'bad fortune, good fortune, down one moment, up the next; and the mark of your wise man, your true philosopher, is treating the rough and the smooth like they're really all the same thing. Which of course they are,' I pointed out, 'essentially speaking.
'Oh, shut up, Galen,' he replied. 'You're making my head hurt.'
Of course he was just snotty about having to sleep with the dogs while I had the bed, but I didn't say anything. It was a nice day, for Sicily, and I wasn't in the mood for bickering. We were walking down a good, level road with cornfields on either side, the sun was shining and we had a quart of drinkable wine the farmer had given us for the road. There was even a woman singing somewhere in the distance, probably some old bat doing her washing or fetching water.
Pleasant little tune, too.
Lucius Domitius stopped dead like he'd just stepped in a cow turd. 'Do you hear that?' he said.
'Hear what?'
'That woman, singing,' he said. 'There, listen.'
I shrugged. 'Yes, I can hear it,' I said. 'So what?'
He had this look on his face. 'That's my song,' he said. 'I wrote that.'
Oh God, I thought, here we go. 'Nah,' I said, 'I don't think so. Probably just sounds a bit similar, that's all.'
He scowled at me. 'That's my bloody song,' he said. 'Niobe, among the wavy reeds. You think I don't know my own music?'
'Oh well,' I said. 'If you say so. Can we get on now, please? Or have we got to stand here like a couple of prunes till she's finished?'
Now's probably a good time to tell you about Lucius Domitius and his music.
Well, I'll do my best, anyhow, because I'm damned if I understand it, the way he used to carry on. Me, I can't ever see why people make such an almighty big deal about music and poetry and stuff. It's just something that people make, the way I see it, like furniture or pottery or hardware. Sure, it comes in lots of different grades of plain and fancy, just like everything else. Same goes for cutlery or shoes, only you don't get people drooping about in raptures of ecstasy about a beautifully crafted pair of boots. But really what difference is there between a boot and a hendecasyllabic ode, except that a good pair of boots keeps your feet dry? It's just stuff that people make, and if they're really lucky, they get paid money, though as far as I can see most poets and musicians and the like end up giving the stuff away to their friends, assuming their friends hold still for long enough.