A Song For Nero

by Tom Holt

  I clicked my tongue. He could be a bit dense sometimes. 'You fancy swimming out that far, be my guest. Me, I'd rather row So, the next thing was, find a small boat. Luckily for us, that's not too hard when you're right next to the sea, in an area that's so dirt-poor they eat fish all the time. The first one we came to had a little prune-faced old man in it, fooling about with a fishing net.

  I walked up to him. 'Sorry, mate,' I said, 'we're requisitioning your boat.'

  He looked at us, took in the armour and uniforms, didn't seem all that impressed. 'No you bloody well aren't,' he said.

  'Sorry,' I repeated. 'But it's a military emergency, we need that boat. You'll get it back when we've finished with it, don't worry about that.'

  'I'm not worried,' he replied, turning his back on us. 'You're not having my boat. Now fuck off.'

  It wasn't going the way I'd expected. Where I come from, you see, if a soldier comes bouncing up and tells you he's taking your cart or your mule, answering back will get you a thick lip, and that's if you're lucky, so people don't tend to do it. Obviously the Roman garrison in Sicily wasn't quite so straightforward when it came to military procurement.

  'Hey, you.' Lucius Domitius reached out and clapped the little guy on the shoulder. 'We're talking to you. Now, get your arse off this boat, or I'll do it for you.

  He winced and turned round. 'What d'you want my boat for, anyhow?'

  Thanks to the delay, I'd had time to think of an answer to that. 'See that big grain ship out there? We have reason to believe there's two wanted criminals on board. Our orders are to search the boat and arrest the scumbags. All clear?'

  The old boy scowled at us. 'Why've you got to have my boat, then? Haven't you wankers got a navy for that sort of thing?'

  'Yes,' I said, 'but not here. Last I heard, it was saving civilisation from the Parthian menace. Which doesn't make any odds,' I went on, 'because we don't need a couple of squadrons of battleships. All we need is your boat. All right?'

  He'd probably have carried on arguing the toss, but Lucius Domitius slowly started drawing his sword, and in the right time and place the sight of a couple of inches of Spanish steel is worth a few thousand words.

  'It's all right,' I called back to him, as Lucius Domitius pushed us off and then scrambled in behind the oars, 'we'll have it back to you by nightfall.'

  I think the old boy may have shouted back a reply, but I didn't hear it. I could guess what it was.

  'Here,' said Lucius Domitius, after we'd gone a couple of dozen yards from the shore, 'have you got any idea how you set about driving these things?'

  'What, boats?' I said. 'Dead easy piece of cake. You just sort of dip the oarblades in the sea and pull on the handles. Nothing to it, really'

  'Ah,' he replied, shooting a bucketful of water up my nose, 'that's all right then. You can row, since you seem to know so much about it, and I'll sit in the back here and steer.'

  'Me? I don't know spit about rowing.'

  He frowned at me, the git. 'Don't be silly,' he said, 'you're an Athenian, proud descendant of the victors of Salamis, rowing's in the blood. You know perfectly well—'

  'I do not,' I replied, straight off. 'Rowing in the fleet was what the poor people did. My lot were upper crust, cavalry class. We were riding into battle on thoroughbreds when your lot were still hoeing turnips in Latium.'

  'Really?' He grinned at me. 'How are the mighty fallen. Now get rowing, or I'll push you in the sea. You can swim, can't you?'

  'Of course I can swim,' I lied. 'All right, you get hold of the steering thing, and I'll see what I can do.'

  Like I'd said, nothing to it, rowing a boat. It's like skimming the shit off a vat of newly fermented wine, only the spoon's six feet long. I don't know why Lucius Domitius made such a fuss about it.

  'Right,' I said, as we skimmed across the water like a great big beetle. 'Get that armour off, and dump it over the side.'

  He looked at me as if I was crazy. 'You what?'

  'Get rid of it,' I said. 'Quick, before we get there.'

  'After all the trouble we went to getting hold of it in the first place? No way I sighed. 'For pity's sake, why is it you've got to moan and whinge about every damn suggestion I make?'

  'I don't know,' he said. 'Maybe it's something to do with the way you keep landing us in the shit. Or perhaps I'm just an old fusspot.'

  'The armour,' I said. 'And the cloak, and all that stuff. Get rid of it.'

  He gave in, and started ditching metalwork into the sea. I did the same — bloody awkward, since I was trying to keep the boat going at the same time. Here's a tip for you, by the way If you try and row a boat with one hand while unbuckling a helmet strap with the other, the boat goes round in circles.

  Lucky for us the grain freighter was just wallowing along. Even so, I had to stretch my back to get us up next to it. By that time, we'd dumped all the army stuff except the swords and belts. 'Hey,' I shouted, loud as I could manage, 'you there in the ship.'

  Just when I was sure they hadn't heard, or they were pretending they hadn't seen us, someone stuck his head over the rail. 'What do you want?' he called back.

  'Where are you headed?'

  The bloke on the ship shrugged his shoulders. 'Ostia,' he replied. 'What's it to you?'

  'Can you give us a lift?'

  'No.'

  That caught me a bit by surprise. 'Oh,' I said. 'You sure about that? We'll pay'

  'That's different,' the bloke shouted back. 'Thirty drachmas each. Forty with food,' he added.

  I smiled, though I don't suppose he could see me very clearly at that distance.

  'Actually,' I said, 'I thought we could trade.'

  'Trade?'

  'We have valuable stuff,' I told him. 'Worth a lot more than forty drachmas.'

  'Have we?' Lucius Domitius muttered. 'News to me.

  'Shut up,' I told him. 'Well?' I said to the ship bloke. 'What do you reckon?'

  'Depends. What've you got?'

  Good question. 'Well,' I said, 'for a start, we've got two really nice swords, with scabbards and belts, top of the range stuff.' The bloke didn't say anything, so I went on, 'Best Spanish steel, lovingly crafted by dedicated artisans, absolutely guaranteed—'

  'No,' said the bloke.

  'What?'

  'No. Not interested.'

  'Oh.' I looked around quickly 'Well, how about a nice, tight little rowing boat?

  One owner from new, lovely handling, throw in a pair of oars absolutely free.'

  'No, thanks.'

  This was starting to get desperate. 'All right,' I said, 'and this is my final offer. How about a best quality, home-bred, fully certified male field hand?

  Excellent condition, prime of life, turns his hand to anything.'

  'What? Where?'

  'Him,' I replied, pointing to Lucius Domitius. 'Here, look at the shoulders on him, just the thing for lugging great heavy jars of corn about. You interested or not?'

  'You bastard—' Lucius Domitius started to say I kicked him on the shin, and he shut up.

  'I dunno,' said the ship bloke. 'Shirt and boots go with him?'

  'Yeah, go on,' I said, 'why not? But I'll want wine with the food.'

  He was still thinking about it. 'Teeth?' he said.

  'What do you mean, teeth?' I asked.

  'What're his teeth like?' the bloke said. 'Has he got them all, or what?'

  'Sure,' I said. 'Loads of teeth. Look, you want to deal, or do I wait for the next freighter?'

  The bloke hesitated for a moment or so, then nodded. 'Deal,' he said. 'But you sleep on deck with the crew, right?'

  'Suits me,' I said. 'I like the fresh air.'

  The bloke disappeared, and somebody threw a rope over the side of the ship.

  'Looks like we've done it,' I said cheerfully 'Next stop, Italy'

  But Lucius Domitius didn't seem pleased at all. In fact, he was pulling the most horrible faces at me. 'You shit,' he hissed, 'You total arsehole. You just sold me to that man.'r />
  I shrugged. 'So what?' I said. 'Look, don't worry about it—'

  'Not worry about it? Are you out of your tiny mind?'

  'Calm down, will you?' I said. 'It's quite simple. It just means we leave the ship a bit early, that's all.'

  'No way,' he whined. 'Have you any idea what they do to runaway slaves?'

  'Sure,' I said. 'More or less the same as the soldiers'll do to us if we don't get the hell out of Sicily Now shut your face and try to act like a slave.

  You've done it loads of times, it shouldn't be a problem.'

  'Yes,' he whimpered, 'but then I was just pretending.'

  'Well, now it's for real, so that ought to make it easier. Come on,' I said — I was reaching for the rope — 'it'll be all right. Like, when have I ever let you down?'

  He may have said something, but I was scrambling up the rope and didn't hear.

  FIVE

  I have to say, it's not bad, travelling on a grain freighter. They're not like most ships, where everything's cramped and if you sneeze everybody on the boat gets wet. You've got room to stretch your legs, and freighters don't sway about as much as your little merchant ships. They're still pretty basic, mind — if you want to take a shit you've got to squat down in this chair arrangement at the back end, with your bum hanging out over the ocean — but there are worse ways to get about, believe me.

  Lucius Domitius wasn't so keen, of course. Once they'd stripped his clothes off and had a good poke about to see if he was all there and so on, they made him ship's cook, on account of the real cook had jumped ship in Camarina and they hadn't had time to find another one. I tried to tell them he hadn't done much cooking before, but they didn't seem too bothered about that, and I got the impression they didn't care who did the job so long as they didn't have to. As we went along, I figured out why that was: it's no fun looking after great big cauldrons of hot oil and boiling water when a ship starts rolling about. Still, he got the hang of it quite quickly, with nothing more than a few minor scalds and such like. What really pissed him off was having to be chained up at night, but the captain insisted on that, since we were so close to the shore and all, and he didn't want him jumping overboard in the middle of the night and swimming for it. I told him there was no danger of that —which was true, so long as we were in Sicilian waters — but he said he'd rather be safe than sorry, and I didn't want to make a big thing about it.

  At first sight, the crew struck me as a bunch of pirates, but it turned out that they were all right, more or less. About half of them were Greeks, and they never stopped gabbing; the other half were a mixed bunch, Spanish and Egyptians, a couple of Italians, and they never said a word. Most of the time they were busy puffing on ropes and scrambling about up in the rigging, like sailors do, but of an evening they'd all squat down on the deck next to the galley and gobble down their bacon and beans and have a natter — or at least, the Greeks nattered and the rest listened, or not, as the case may be. The first couple of nights out, when I went over to join them they all shut up and stared at me, even the Greeks; but then I guess the strain of keeping their faces shut got too much for them, and one of the Greeks asked where I was from. I said Phyle, in Attica, and of course that was enough. Two of the Greeks were Athenian, and next thing they were asking, did I know so-and-so, and it didn't take them long to decide I was an off-relation, twelfth cousin nine times removed, like everybody is in Attica. Of course, I hadn't been telling the truth when they asked me all these questions, because the last thing I wanted was for anybody to tumble to who I really was, but of course I knew enough people in Phyle to lie so they'd never know the difference. Once they'd made up their minds that I was all right, they even started talking to Lucius Domitius, which made life a bit easier all round. He'd had the sense to figure out who he was going to be in advance, so he had all his answers pat. He was always smart that way.

  'I'm from Galicia,' he said, when they asked. It was a good answer, because he could pass for a Celt with his reddish hair and enormous neck, though he was a tad on the tall side. 'Back home I was called Brennus, but nowadays I answer to pretty well everything.'

  They laughed at that, but one of them frowned a bit and said, 'You speak pretty good Greek for a Celt. Actually, I'd have put you down for an Italian, myself'

  Lucius Domitius pulled a very sad face. 'Ah, well,' he said, 'that's a long story.'

  'So?'

  'Well,' he said, as he scraped out the bean pot, 'if you must know, I come from one of the best families in Galicia. In fact, by rights, I should be a prince in my own country. But when I was just a kid, the Romans came round taking up hostages for good behaviour, and I was chosen, so they packed me off to Rome, and I got raised there, along with all the other hostage kids. Went to Roman school and everything.'

  They were impressed. 'Is that right?' one of them said. 'So how come you ended up here?'

  Lucius Domitius shrugged. 'My folks back home must've screwed up somehow, because when I was fifteen, one day when we were in philosophy class, these soldiers came in looking all grim and solemn, and all us Galician kids were stood up and marched off. Half of them, I never did find out what happened to them, but I guess they got the chop — they were all the really important ones, the king's sons and nephews and so on. The rest of us wound up in the slave market and well, no offence to you folks, but it's been sort of downhill ever since.'

  Obviously they reckoned that was really sad, because they looked at him and nodded gravely, and one of them poured him a drink. 'That must be a shitty thing,' one of the Athenians said, 'being born a genuine prince and ending up a slave. Makes you think, really.'

  Lucius Domitius shrugged. 'It was a long time ago,' he said. 'And I've been a slave much longer than I was a prince, so I've had time to adjust. It's just the way things go, that's all.'

  I think they were impressed with his courage and modesty. I know I was, and I knew full well he was just bullshitting. 'Maybe you were well out of it, at that,' piped up another of the Greeks, an Illyrian with a nose busted two ways.

  'I mean, at least you're still alive. Them other kids weren't so lucky.'

  Lucius Domitius sighed. 'You said it,' he replied. 'Whenever I catch myself thinking about the old days, I tell myself, it's better to be alive and be someone's slave, even if your master's just a small-time chiseller, than to be the Lord High Emperor down among the dead men.'

  That really got to them, and a couple of them started nodding like billy goats and saying, that's right, that's very well put. I reckoned so, too, at the time. Since then, I found out it was straight out of Homer's Odyssey, with a few of the old-fashioned words taken out. Should've guessed, I suppose.

  So we carried on, nice and quiet and peaceful, pottering along the Sicilian coast; and then one day, a small boat comes alongside and it's an old man and a couple of women selling stuff, and while they're trying to kid the sailors into buying their junk, they're telling them this really exciting news.

  I could tell it was something pretty hot by the way they all acted when they heard it. Now the old man and his outfit were giving me a pretty wide berth, since they'd somehow figured out just by looking at me that I didn't have any money, so I had to creep up on someone else and eavesdrop.

  'Straight up,' the old man was saying. 'Heard it the night before last in town from a mate of mine, he'd heard it off a carter who'd had it off a bloke in the market, who'd heard it off a barber who'd given a shave to a bloke off a ship from Rome; and this bloke, the sailor, he'd left the city the same day as the news broke, so it's fresh as apples.'

  The sailors were shaking their heads, like something bad had happened. 'And he was no great age,' he said. 'I mean, he was getting on, but he wasn't that old.'

  'Sixty-nine,' said the old guy 'That's six years younger'n me, and I'm still going strong. Still, it's the lift they lead, all that boozing and whoring. Does them in while they're still in their prime.'

  There was a bit more stuff like that, and then the captain showed up and
told the old bloke to piss off out of it, so I didn't get to hear any more till that evening when they were all discussing it, even the Spaniards and the Egyptians.

  Like I'd thought, someone important had died. In fact, it was about as important a someone as you could get: the Emperor Vespasian.

  Soon as I heard that, of course, I looked across at Lucius Domitius, to see how he was taking it, but he just stood there stirring the beans, like he didn't understand what they were all talking about.

  'He was all right,' one of the two Italians was saying. 'Sure, he wasn't perfect, he had his faults like the rest of us. Basically, though, he was all right.'

  'You can say that again,' one of the Greeks put in. 'At least, when you think of who we could've wound up with.'

  'Too right,' said one of the Spaniards. 'I mean, think what it'd be like if that arsehole Galba'd stuck around.'

  'Or Otho,' said one of the Greeks. 'He was a really nasty piece of work, Otho was.

  'Or Vitellius, come to that,' someone else said. 'He was the worst of the lot, by all accounts. Old Vespasian did everybody a favour when he knocked that creep on the head.'

  Behind them, Lucius Domitius cleared his throat. 'Forget about Vitellius,' he said. 'And the rest of that lot. If you're looking for a really evil bastard, what about Nero?'

  That set them all off nodding and muttering, that's right, he was the worst of the lot. Of course, I was sat there speechless, thinking he must've gone off his head, but he didn't look like he was throwing a crazy fit. Quite the opposite.

  Just goes to show, you can't judge by appearances.

  'I mean,' Lucius Domitius went on, 'that other lot, they weren't around for more than a day or so, there's no way of telling what they'd really have been like.

  They might even have settled down, turned out all right in the end. Unlikely, I'll grant you,' he added, as some of the crew started shaking their heads and puffing faces. 'But anything's possible, they could've reformed, turned over a new leaf once they'd got their backsides on the curule chair. But Nero — well, we had fifteen years of that bastard, so we know for sure exactly what he was like.' Lucius Domitius sighed, like he had toothache or something. 'I'd like to see someone get up and try and make excuses for all the stuff he did, as if anybody'd try.'