by Tom Holt
If anything it was getting worse and worse, and still nobody had mentioned money or anything vulgar like that. On the other hand, I kept telling myself, at least I was eating regularly, and I hadn't had to hide from a half platoon of soldiers ever since I'd arrived in Italy There wasn't much in it, but on balance I reckoned I was better off, just about.
On the tenth day, we were still clodbashing. By this point, I was pretty certain that I'd done something nasty and permanent to my back, and my arms and shoulders weren't all that wonderful either. Also, the boredom was starting to get to me in a big way At first I hadn't minded it so much, since you can have too much excitement in life, but when you've been used to keeping your wits about you, living on your nerves and your instincts — well, it's like a bloke I once got talking to in a bar somewhere. He said he'd been born and raised in a big city in Asia Minor somewhere, and then he'd moved for some reason and wound up in the depths of the country, on his own all day, and he told me the peace and quiet was slowly driving him round the bend. All his life he'd been used to noise — people in the streets in the day, carts rumbling and creaking through the streets all night, having to dodge and weave in and out of the crowds and the traffic just to get from one side of the market square to the other.
Standing in the middle of a wide open field all day, no sounds except the tweeting of the larks and cows farting in the distance, it was sheer torture to him, he said. Well, I guess it was the same with me and excitement, or, if you prefer it, danger. My brain was going numb from not being used, and I was getting so bored during the day that I couldn't sleep at night, even though I was completely shattered. Crazy, of course. I mean, whoever heard of anybody pining away because they weren't in mortal peril all the damn time? But then, I never pretended I was right in the head.
So there's me, on the tenth day of my new career in agriculture, and we're in our usual line belting great big lumps of caked dirt with the ponderous fucking hoe, when who should turn up but that doddering old pest Syrus? Hadn't seen hide nor hair of him since the first day, not that I'd missed him, but there he was, still twittering on into space, and behind him there was this other bloke. Big man, broad shoulders, enormous neck like an ox, reddish-brown hair starting to go thin on top. Lucius Domitius.
Well, I didn't know what to make of that. First thought was, he must've come looking for me; and though I was still very angry indeed about the stuff he'd said, really bloody angry, I found myself thinking, Well, that's all right, then, as if everything had just been put straight. But he didn't seem to be looking for me, or anybody much. He was just stood there, looking at the double-tine hoe in his hands like he was trying to figure out how you made it work, with a look on his face like he'd just woken up after being bashed over the head down a dark alley Then I tumbled to what had really happened. He hadn't come looking for me after all. He'd just happened to show up here looking for work, and it was all sheer coincidence.
Needless to say, breaking line or wandering over to chat to someone was definitely not on, not while the overseer was about, so I had to wait till knocking-off time before I could hurry across and say hello. By that point, he looked like he'd been tortured for military secrets by the Parthians: his mouth was hanging open, and he was shaking slightly all over. At least I'd done farm work before. Don't suppose he ever had.
I came up behind his left shoulder and said, 'Hello, Lucius Domitius,' in a quiet, everyday sort of way He stopped dead, then swung round so fast he nearly lost his balance.
'Galen,' he said. 'What the bloody hell are you doing here?'
I grinned at him. 'Earning a living,' I said. 'Good, honest work, you can't beat it. How about you?'
'What?' He looked like he hadn't understood the question. 'Oh, me too. I mean, I've been wandering about since I got off the ship, trying to make my way to the city, but this is, well, as far as I've got, and I hadn't eaten for two days, and someone said there was work going here, so .. .' He shook his head. 'Galen,' he said, and his eyes were going all red like he'd got dust in them, 'you've no idea how glad I am to see you. I — oh God, this is stupid.' And he flung his arms round me and gave me a hug that came close to busting all my ribs.
'Leave off, for fuck's sake,' I gasped, 'you're killing me. And the other blokes are staring.'
'Huh? Oh, right.' He let go, and suddenly we were both grinning like complete fools. 'I thought I'd never see you again,' he said.
'Me neither,' I replied. 'So, when you jumped ship, what happened?'
We started walking. 'Oh, nothing much,' he replied. 'I climbed down the anchor rope when nobody was watching, then I swam underwater as far as the next ship down, came up, caught my breath, and so on right into the harbour.'
'That's what we thought you must've done,' I said.
'Oh.' He frowned. 'Oh, right. And I was thinking how clever I'd been. Well, no matter. So, how long have you been here?'
'Ten days,' I said. 'And in case you hadn't noticed, this is a fucking awful way to live. I wouldn't wish it on a dung beetle.'
He lifted his head. 'I'd sort of got that impression myself,' he replied. 'I mean, is it always like that?'
'Today was one of the better days,' I told him. 'The master wasn't about, the overseer's been in a relatively good mood.'
'Oh.' He frowned. 'So, who does this place belong to? I asked the old, mad bloke, but he didn't seem to be listening to me.
'Marcus Ventidius Gnatho,' I replied, and told him all about the poetry and Virgilius Maro and the overseer getting smacked in the face. He looked very thoughtful.
'Ventidius Gnatho,' he repeated. 'Oh God, I remember him, he was a right creep.
Very boring, but with a vicious streak.' He frowned. 'Came to all my readings and recitals,' he added. 'Didn't even need to be invited, he came of his own accord.'
'Well, that proves it, then,' I said. 'Obviously he's completely mental.'
'Quite. Always looked like he was enjoying it, too; or at least, I don't ever remember him falling asleep or sticking pins into his hands to make himself stay awake. I remember one incredibly long evening where he started telling me why he liked my use of the double caesura in trochaic hexameters, and it was dawn before I managed to get him to shut up. I think he hated me as much as the rest of them, but he was a genuine virtuoso when it came to crawling: never let his personal feelings get in the way of his work.'
I pulled a face. 'You're thinking he might recognise you, then?'
He shrugged. 'I wouldn't have thought so. It'd never cross his mind that someone working in his fields could be a dead emperor. But it's not a risk I'd want to take, all the same. Does he hang round the workers very often, or is it just once in a blue moon?'
'I've seen him three times in ten days,' I replied. 'From what I gather, he likes to spend a couple of hours each afternoon riding round making a pain of himself, but it's a big place and there's loads of other field gangs beside this one. So long as you keep your head down and your mouth shut...'
But he was frowning. 'I don't like it,' he said. 'I mean, just my rotten bloody luck, I wind up on the only estate in Italy that hasn't got an absentee landlord.' He stopped, and looked at me. 'If I move on,' he said, 'will you stay here, or what?'
I hadn't given it any thought. I mean, as soon as I saw him again, I must've automatically assumed we'd stick together. After all, it seemed meant. We'd been apart eleven days, and then the gods scoop us up and shovel us back together again. Not that I go a lot on the destiny stuff, but it's hard to ignore the subtle machinations of fate when a giant hand descends from the clouds and rubs your nose in them.
'Maybe,' I said. 'I mean, this is a really shitty place, but I've sort of got used to not having soldiers chasing me all the time.'
He started walking again. 'Well,' he said, 'maybe it'd be safer if we did split up — for you, I mean. After all, nobody's after you in Italy, you've got a clean slate. But if someone recognises me and you're with me, it'd only take one person from the old days ... I mean, you two weren
't very popular around the court.'
This was news to me. I mean, I didn't think anybody even knew who I was back then. 'Really?' I said.
He nodded. 'All my friends — my hangers-on, they called them, and that was the polite term — the senators and the army people hated the lot of you, because you were with me. I suppose they blamed you for me going to the bad, or you made a convenient scapegoat for people who'd supported me or Agrippina in the early days. I don't know; the point is, so long as you're with me, you're running a risk you don't need to run.
Even at the time I was pretty sure, deep down, that it was genuine concern, that he really was worried for me. But I didn't want to take it that way I wanted it to be an excuse for ditching me. 'Well, fine,' I said. 'If that's the case, maybe we would be better off if I stayed and you slung your hook. Like we said, Gnatho's probably not bright enough to recognise you, but if you think it's dangerous for you here, then you'd better clear out while you can.
He looked at me. 'You think so?'
'It's your decision,' I said. 'I don't like it much here either, but it's not like I've got a lot of choices of places I can go.
'Nor me.' He sighed. 'Another thing,' he went on. 'If I do leave here, I'm definitely heading for the city. It's important to me, I've set my heart on it.
And Rome's hardly a safe place for me, so.
Suddenly I didn't want to talk about it any more. 'Whatever,' I said. 'You decide. After all, every single decision I ever took for the two of us landed us in the shit.'
'That's not true,' he said. He was lying, but I liked that he said it. Ten years is a long time. I defy anybody to go around ten years with a person and not get used to them being there. 'We were just unlucky a lot of the time, that's all,' he said, rather lamely People didn't tend to make friends in the barracks. It wasn't the kind of place where people talked to each other a lot, and we were making ourselves conspicuous chatting away like that. So we kept our distance that evening. We sat apart during the evening meal, and he took his blanket to the other side of the barracks when it was time to go to sleep. To be honest with you, when I woke up the next morning I was half expecting to find he'd buggered off during the night, but he was still there when we lined up for the work detail. When we stopped work at midday, I went over and sat next to him.
'You're still here, then,' I said.
'Yes, well, I haven't made my mind up yet.'
'You sounded pretty definite about it yesterday'
'There's no desperate rush,' he replied. 'Rome'll still be there this time next week, probably'
Sounded to me like he was changing his tune again, but then, being decisive and resolute weren't exactly his strong suit at the best of times. Which made me think: if he stuck around for a while, maybe he'd forget all about the going to Rome nonsense, and we'd both be better off.
Just my luck, we were three days into a heatwave, and no sign of it ending any time soon. Apparently Virgilius Maro never considered putting in a bit about how important it is to give the field hands plenty to drink when it's hot, or else he couldn't get it to scan or something. Anyway, we got a cup of water at midday, and that was our lot till we returned to barracks at night. This was a fucking awful arrangement. Every day we'd have a couple of blokes keel over in the heat, and two or three more pretending to keel over so they could skive off for an hour and go sit in the shade while the rest of us got on with it. Lucius Domitius and I couldn't do that, of course, on account of not making ourselves conspicuous. Bummer.
The next day, it was even hotter, and the day after that was hotter still. On the good side, though, we hadn't seen anything of Marcus Ventidius Gnatho, and if it was the heat that was keeping him indoors, I reckoned it was a small price to pay Not that I was really worried, of course, but it'd have freaked Lucius Domitius out, and then he'd start banging on about leaving again, and what with one thing and another — well, you can put up with having a dry throat and being all sweaty.
A curious thing I've noticed about life. The longer you stay in one place, no matter how shitty it is, the harder it gets making your mind up to leave. In my experience, about the only places this rule doesn't apply to are prisons, but as luck would have it, I've never been in a prison long enough for the effect to set in, so maybe it's the same with them too. Not that I'm in any tearing hurry to find out, mind.
So we'd been there a month, maybe a month and a half— hard to say exactly, because each day was pretty much like the others, though some were better and some were worse — and oddly enough, it was starting to get easier all round. For one thing, we'd been taken off busting clods, which was good, and put on levelling the ground between the rows by sitting down hard on the newly turned earth and wriggling about (see On Farming by Virgilius Maro, book two, line three hundred and fifty-seven for details. I have an idea that whoever Virgilius Maro paid to copy out his poem for the bookseller made a spelling mistake there, and what the poet really wrote was 'and straining bullocks roll the earth full flat'. Easy mistake to make, and all that). On balance, I reckon I preferred the ponderous hoe, but at least we weren't on our feet all day long. After that we skipped down to lines three-fifty-nine to sixty, which was building trellises, and that was no bother at all.
It was late afternoon on a day that wasn't much different from any other day, and we were all in a pretty good mood, because the overseer had told us that come knocking-off time, we were finally going to get paid. He hadn't gone into details, like how much we were going to get, but we didn't mind that. Not knowing just stretched the treat out longer.
And then the bloke showed up.
I remember looking up from the vine prop I'd just tied in, and there he was, just like that, sudden as a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky, or a chamber pot emptied out of a tenth-storey window just as you're passing underneath.
He was sat on a huge black horse, and he was talking to the overseer, very quiet and discreet, like he didn't want anybody to hear what he was saying. Behind him were about a dozen men; by the looks of them they were either ex-soldiers or gladiators, big ugly bastards, all muscles and scars.
They weren't the same ones he'd had with him the first time I saw him, so my guess is he'd hired local talent when he arrived in Italy Not that that mattered worth a damn.
By sheer fluke, Lucius Domitius was standing next to me in line. I leaned over and prodded him hard in the back. He turned round, asked what the matter was.
'Over there,' I whispered. 'No, don't turn round. Just move your head slowly, like you're stretching or something.'
'Oh for crying out loud, Galen,' he grumbled, 'don't be so bloody melodramatic, it can't—' He stopped, froze for a moment or so, then looked back at me. 'Shit,' he said.
I nodded. 'It is him, isn't it?' I said. 'That lunatic from Sicily The one who blocked the road when we were being taken to the quarries, and killed all those soldiers—'
'Keep your voice down,' he barked, so loud that a couple of the other men on the line turned to see what was going on. 'Yes,' he said, 'that's him, all right.
Bloody hell, Galen, what's he doing here?'
'Search me,' I replied. 'But something tells me he isn't here to give us large sums of money or introduce us to his daughters. Get your head down,' I hissed, as the bloke on the horse looked up and started casting his eye over the line.
Could be he was stretching his neck, or wondering idly why in hell's name we were building our trellises two months later than every other farm in Italy, but then again, could be he was looking for someone.
I haven't got a clue how long he stayed there nattering with the overseer. I kept glancing sideways out of the corner of my eye to see if he was still there, and eventually he wasn't. I straightened up, and saw him and his blokes riding off down the track in the general direction of the house (though it was also the way back to the main road). 'It's all right,' I said, 'he's gone.'
Lucius Domitius stood up, and made a groaning noise as he straightened his back.
'May be you
r idea of all right,' he said, 'but it sure as hell isn't mine. What do you think all that was about?'
I lifted my head. 'No idea,' I said. 'I mean, it could all be perfectly harmless. Maybe he's on his way to the city on business and got lost, and all he was doing was asking for directions.'
'Don't think so,' Lucius Domitius muttered. 'How long does it take to say, back the way you came, left and left again, then follow your nose? They were stood talking there for at least half an hour.'
I frowned, trying to get my brain to work (but after however long it was, it was slow getting started). 'Well,' I said, 'if he was looking for us, he didn't look very hard. Just sat there jawing with the overseer. If he was looking for us, all he had to do was ride down the line.'
Lucius Domitius bit his lip. 'Yes, all right,' he said. 'I don't know Unless he simply wasn't expecting to see us in a line of field hands. But if he goes up to the house and asks, have you seen two men, a big sandy-haired type and a little bloke with a face like a rat—'
'You know what?' I said. 'I'm really not interested. All I'm concerned about is being some place he isn't. Don't know about you, but as soon as work's over, I'm for slipping away quietly and making a run for it.'
But Lucius Domitius lifted his head. 'Not sensible,' he said. 'Think about it, Galen. Can you think of a better way of drawing attention to ourselves than skipping out half an hour before we finally get paid? Half an hour after, maybe, that's perfectly reasonable, but before — well, there could only be one reason for that, couldn't there?'
He had a point, the awkward bugger. 'Sure,' I said, 'all right. But I really don't fancy marching back to the barracks and finding him waiting there for us, with the blacksmith standing by to rivet down the fetters on our ankles. If we push off right away, we'll have a half hour's start on him and his muscle. And I've got a lifetime's experience in being chased by armed men telling me that half an hour's start is a perfectly good business proposition.'