by Tom Holt
'You reckon?'
'I don't reckon,' I told him, 'I know Oh, you think you've had it hard because you can't ponce around in silk dresses playing the harp any more. Big fucking deal. I've had it hard because I never had anything, not even enough to eat. I didn't wind up stealing and cheating for a living because I pissed off a whole empire so they couldn't stand the sight of me any more. I wound up this way because I was born. And you talk to me about having it hard.'
He pulled a face. 'You said it,' he said. 'You were born to this life, because it's all you're fit for.'
I don't know how 1 kept myself from decking him. The only thing I can think of was knowing he was right. But that's got nothing to do with it, has it?
'Listen to you,' he went on. 'You tell me how incredibly hard it is for a slave to escape, and then you stand there telling me that if I stick with you, you're clever enough to figure out how to do it. You honestly want me to believe that you're smarter than all those millions of people. For crying out loud, Galen, don't you ever listen to what you say?'
I'd stopped being hot angry, I was cold angry now 'All right,' I said, 'that's up to you. From now on, you're none of my business. If you can manage to get away from this ship and stay loose long enough to go back to Rome, then bloody good luck to you. I mean it,' I added, 'I wish you all the luck in the world, I really hope you'll make it. I owe you that,' I went on, 'because finally, after all these years, I'm free of you, free and clear. It's wonderful. Ten years, I've had this grindstone the size of a cartwheel hanging round my neck, because Callistus wanted me to keep you alive. And now you turn round and tell me I don't have to do that any more. You know what? It's better than all the jailbreaks and the last—minute reprieves, because I haven't just saved my life, I've actually got it back. My life, Lucius Domitius. Thank you.
He looked me in the eye. 'My pleasure,' he said. 'We should've had this talk years ago.
'I wish we had.' Suddenly I felt cold all over, because this wasn't just a row, like we used to have all the time. This meant something. It was like having a tooth pulled — hurts if you do, hurts if you don't, but you know deep inside that you're better off without. 'Goes to show, doesn't it, how dumb you can be.
That's ten years of my life I'll never have again. But it's worth it, to put things right.'
He nearly said something, but he stopped himself, and his face was all stiff, like he'd been dead for three days. 'Good luck, Galen,' he said. 'I hope we never see each other again, but good luck anyhow'
'And to you, Lucius Domitius,' I said. 'Hope the music and stuff come together somehow'
'Thank you.' Suddenly he looked at me. 'Galen.'
'What?'
'Just tell me one thing, will you?'
'All right.'
He took a deep breath, like he was nervous. 'Tell me,' he said, 'is my voice really that bad? Or is that just another piece of shit they say about me?'
I paused before I replied. 'It's really that bad, Lucius Domitius. Sorry, but you did ask.'
He lifted his head. 'That's fine,' he said. 'I don't mind. Just so long as I know And you're the only person who wouldn't lie to me about that.'
'Well,' I said, 'I'm glad you realise that. I may have done some shitty things to you over the years, but I'd never lie to you.
I turned and walked out of the galley, and it must have been those awful bloody onions, because my eyes were hurting. Or maybe I really did feel bad about something, I don't know It was almost enough to make me wish I'd told him the truth about his singing.
Time went by, and the brown splodge on the right-hand side of the ship stopped being Sicily and turned into Italy, and I found myself having to face up to the fact that this journey wasn't going to last for ever. In spite of my falling out with Lucius Domitius and everything else, it had been one of the most relaxing times in my life (which gives you some idea of the complete mess I've made of it) and the thought of having to go back to work — starting at the bottom again, with a completely empty purse and nothing but the clothes I stood up in, etcetera — took the shine off the last few days of the cruise. For two pins and a clove of garlic, as my old mother used to say, I'd have asked the captain if he had a job going, only he'd have wondered why a supposedly prosperous merchant like me suddenly wanted to join the crew of a grain freighter.
I don't think I said more than a dozen words to Lucius Domitius from the time we had that fight until the day when the lookout told us that we were coming up to Circei, next stop Ostia and Rome . I went to the galley to get my meals, held out my plate, and walked away without saying anything. Silly, really, but my anger had turned septic, and even looking him in the face made it ache. In the back of my mind, I was worried sick about how he was going to get off the ship (assuming he still wanted to, and hadn't made up his mind to stay on board and cook bacon and beans for the rest of his life; and somehow the fact that he had that option and I didn't made me resent him more) but I tried not to think about it. Not my problem any more.
One day out from Ostia , the sea got crowded. Nobody else thought anything of it, but to me it was a sight to see: dozens of grain freighters, as big as ours or bigger, sitting in the water like giant ducks as they waited their turn to put in and unload. When you see something like that, it makes you realise how enormous Rome is, the sheer number of people who must live there.
About midday we dropped anchor and settled down to wait. There wasn't any of that buzz you sometimes get on a ship when it's about to put in after a long journey, as the crew start talking about what they're going to do when they hit town. Grain freighters aren't like that. As soon as they're unloaded they're off again, time is money, a quick turnaround makes all the difference between profit and loss when you're shaving your margins to the bone. As far as our crew was concerned, party time was at the other end, at Camarina, where the ship would have to lay over two nights waiting for the next load to be put on board. I wished that I could be with them, but I knew I couldn't risk showing my face in Sicily ever again. No, by the time they were getting slung out of taverns in Camarina, I'd already have been back in my own personal slate quarries for a fortnight: back to the daily grind of pulling scams, snatching stuff off market stalls, running like hell from the guard. What a wonderful life, I thought.
And then it struck me, as we sat there on the water with nothing to do but look at the scenery: actually, I don't have to do that any more, I can do something else. It hit me like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky What I could do, I had no idea, but what the hell, it wasn't possible that I could be the only man in my position in the greater Roman area, home to millions of the world's poorest people. There had to be thousands like me, and they managed somehow I'd never heard anybody talking about carts going round the streets of Rome picking up the emaciated bodies of down-and-outs who'd starved to death during the night. No way It was simple: all I had to do was go into town and get a job.
Of course, I'd never done anything like that before. Twenty-four years since I left home, and all that time I'd watched people working in countries all over the world, but I'd never walked up to someone and asked him for a job of work, or hung around at a hiring fair, or anything like that. I knew how it was done, in theory, but I'd never done it myself. But, I reasoned, it can't be difficult, or how would all the deadbeats and brickheads manage to do it? If they could do it, a resourceful bloke like me ought to have no problem, surely The more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. In my mind's eye, I started picturing myself, ten years, fifteen years on. There I was, in a nice wool tunic, standing in front of a busy workshop with a dozen or so blokes beavering away in the background, and I could hear me saying, When I first came to this town, I had nothing but a ragged old shirt and the boots on my fret. Of course, I had my back to the workers, so I couldn't see what it was they were doing, which was a pity, since I'd have liked to know, it might have given me some ideas. Still, at the time it didn't seem important. Didn't matter what work I set my hand to so long as I worked. I
t was all so blindingly simple: put the effort in, and at the end of the process out pops a comfortable, stress-free old age. A bit like making sausages, really And (I couldn't help pointing out to myself) none of this would have been possible — already I was thinking of it as safely in the jar —none of it would've been possible if I hadn't finally got rid of Lucius Domitius. Sad to say, but the fact needed to be faced. It was him who'd been holding me back those last ten years, the worry and aggravation of looking after him, keeping him out of harm's way Without him on my back like a sack full of stones, I could finally crack on and live my life, I could finally find out what it was I was supposed to be doing in the world, I could finally be me. Maybe I'd miss him, a bit, to start off with, but there comes a tune when you've just got to turn your back on the past and start looking at the future. So there.
Well, you get like that when you're stuck on a ship going nowhere for hours on end. It's like when you wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, you start thinking too hard about things, and before long it feels like your brain's itching and you can't scratch it. Then all the crazy stuff starts seeping out from wherever it is you keep it stashed away the rest of the time, and the next thing you know, you've made up your mind to do something really crazy and stupid. When this happens in the wee small hours it generally doesn't matter, because eventually you fall asleep and when you wake up it's all gone.
But on a ship in the Ostia roads, absolutely still on the water and no way off if you can't swim, there's a very real danger of taking some of this dogshit seriously Well, that was the frame of mind I'd managed to work myself up into. At some point, not quite sure when, I realised that one of the things I'd have to do before I could draw a line under my useless, wasted past and press onwards to my bright new life was make my peace with Lucius Domitius — not that I wasn't still mad as hell about some of the things he'd said, but I didn't want to wake up one night and lie there fretting because we'd parted enemies and I'd never said goodbye. Besides, there was nothing else to do, and I'd been sitting on a big coil of rope for several hours, and my arse was going numb. So I got up and went looking for him.
Grain freighters are big, but there's not much room on them. All the space is filled up with jars of corn. Usually, you can find anybody you're looking for in less time than it takes to eat a bowl of soup. But he wasn't in the galley, he wasn't on deck or down in the hold, and he wasn't sat out back in the shitting chair; it was a pretty safe bet that he wasn't in the captain's cabin.
So where the hell was he?
I asked around, but nobody had seen him for ages. Eventually, one of the guys I asked must've got to thinking, and asked the captain, because suddenly he was charging round in a blazing temper, searching under empty sacks and up in the crow's nest and prodding about in the huge man-sized grain jars with a spit — and no sign of Lucius Domitius anywhere.
'Bastard can't have gone overboard,' he was muttering, 'because he was still cooking breakfast when we dropped anchor. Anybody remember hearing a splash?'
Then it dawned on me. At some point that morning, while we were lazing around with our brains turned down, he'd taken his chance and buggered off.
'Must've sneaked off over the side, nice and quiet,' the captain said. 'Probably swam underwater as far as the anchor rope of the next ship down, then made his way ship to ship as far as the shore. Well, I hope he got a stitch and drowned.'
He kicked a pile of old sacks. 'Serves me right for being too bloody soft-hearted, I guess.'
For some reason, the captain seemed to blame me — not that he came out with it and accused me of helping him escape, or anything like that. I think he was just extremely angry at losing a slave, and I was the one who'd put him in the position of having a slave to lose, so it was all my fault. As usual, the crew took their mood from the skipper, and by the time we finally tied up at the dock, I was only too glad to get off the ship and away from all those scowling faces. I was so upset and pissed off at being hated for something I hadn't done that I'd walked the length of the pier and started up into the town when suddenly it hit me.
Damn, I thought. He'd gone, and I'd missed him.
I didn't know what to do, so I sat down with my back to a wall, and for some reason I suddenly burst into tears. I was squatting there, bawling my heart out, when I noticed there was someone standing over me. Short, round bloke with a bald head and a scrubby white beard.
Face like a full moon, with a little piggy snout for a nose.
'What're you making that filthy row for?' he asked me, in Latin. I looked up at him. He was all blurry round the edges, because of the tears.
'I just lost the only real friend I ever had,' I said. 'He up and buggered off, and never even said goodbye.'
The round bloke frowned. 'Oh,' he said, 'right. Well, there you go. Have a drink, it'll make you feel better.' He fished about in his purse and flicked a coin at me. I caught it one-handed without even looking. It turned out to be a good silver denarius, which'll buy you a really bad hangover any day of the week in Rome, with enough for a good meal left over, so that was all right. Of course, it had to be an old coin, with the Goddess of Fortune carrying a Horn of Plenty on one side, and the head of the emperor Nero on the other.
SIX
So there I was, down and out in Ostia, without a copper to my name — actually, that's not true, because when I woke up the next day, after my denarius' worth of debauchery, as well as a real classic of a sick headache I had precisely one copper farthing (and I damn near swallowed that; never been able to get out of the Greek habit of carrying my small change in my mouth, see). Somehow, that one completely useless coin — there's nothing you can buy with a single farthing — made it even worse.
Anyhow there I was, with a bad head and a stiff neck after a night's sleep in a temple portico. Wonderful way to start off the rest of my life. Still, it was my own silly fault, and I had no sympathy I sat down on the temple steps and tried to figure out what I was going to do.
Well, I could stay in Ostia . Always plenty of work around a grain terminal, if you don't mind ending up a cripple after a year or two. Or I could stroll up the military road to Rome ; or I could pick a direction, head out into the countryside, and see if I could get a job doing farm work.
Maybe it was the hangover and the stiff neck, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the third option. After all, I told myself, deep down where it matters I'm a farm boy, and if it wasn't for the cruel vicissitudes of fate (Seneca's line, not mine) at that very moment I'd be home in Attica, sitting down under my own fig tree with my breakfast in a basket before putting in an honest day's work hoeing between my vines. A city wasn't the place for me, I told myself; in a city I'd get into trouble, have the guard chasing me down narrow alleys in no time flat, and I was done with that kind of thing, thanks all the same. Good healthy farm work, though — of course, I knew farm work from nothing, ploughing and sowing and pruning and all that stuff, nothing anybody could teach me about growing things in the bosom of our mother Earth. Screw cities, I told myself. Give me the feel of newly turned soil under my feet, the sweet smell of apple blossom in the evening, the quiet, friendly chatter on the way home from the fields, and a fat hunk of cheese and a wodge of fresh home-baked barley bread in front of the hearth before turning in for a refreshing night's sleep. That's the way people were meant to live, after all, not cooped up in brick boxes like pigs in winter.
Once you get away from the docks, Ostia's not a big place. Just keep walking for an hour or so and you're out into farmland. As the fresh air cut my hangover and the exercise loosened up my aches and pains I realised that, for once in my life, I'd made the right choice. On either side of the road I could see people working at that slow, unstressed, enduring pace you get once you leave the town behind. Just occasionally, a big cart rolled by, piled high with greens or fruit or winejars, off to feed the insatiable maw of Rome. Hah, I thought, how pathetic; all those millions of people who can't even feed themselves, h
ave to pay someone else to do it for them. The hell with all that, I thought. That's the joy of farming. You just put stuff in the ground and go away, and when you come back there's a tasty meal, sitting there just waiting for you to pick it and take it home.
Well, all this time I was keeping my eyes open for a village or a big farmhouse, somewhere I could go and ask if they had any work going. Of course, I knew that Italy wasn't quite the same as my part of the world. I'd heard all about that, many times; how the small farmers bad all been conscripted into the army or put out of business by the rich senators and their big, slave-run estates. Yeah, I thought, sure; I'd heard all that from ex-soldiers and other low life, blokes who'd never done a real day's work in their lives. If they'd lost the family farm it was because they were basically no good. There'd always be plenty of real farmers, men who ate what they grew and grew what they ate. You can't just sweep them all off the face of the land, and sooner or later I'd find one, and he'd give me a job. Or even if I didn't, well, all these rich absentee landlords, they'd need men to do their work for them, and the blokes in the fields I could see from the road didn't look like slaves. I couldn't see any chain gangs or overseers with stockwhips, just blokes in homespun tunics and broad leather hats, quietly getting on with the job in hand.