A Song For Nero

by Tom Holt

  I frowned. 'I thought you said this Dido was queen of Carthage , not Phoenicia .'

  'The Carthaginians were Phoenicians, idiot. Which meant,' he went on, 'that the stuff he had with him was exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to find in Dido's treasure. Well, I was pretty excited, as you can imagine. For one thing, I was still finishing off the palace, and money was getting short. And beside that, nobody can resist buried treasure, it's human nature.'

  'So, you let this bloke off?'

  'Certainly not,' Lucius Domitius replied. 'He murdered seven people, out of sheer greed. No, I handed him back to the judges and let them get on with the trial, and he got what was coming to him. But I didn't tell him that, of course.'

  'You didn't.'

  'Course not. I said we'd have to let the trial run its course, but then I'd see to it that he was smuggled out of jail and given a new identity somewhere a long way away, so he could start a new life.'

  I raised an eyebrow or two. 'And he fell for that?'

  'No problem. It's one of the advantages of everybody thinking you're a bit simple, they don't expect you to double-cross them. Anyway, he gave me very detailed directions how to get there, drew me a map, all the rest of it.'

  'But you never collected? Why the hell not?'

  He sighed. 'Well, to begin with, I wanted to go myself, you know? Silly, really, but I wanted to be the one to find it. Also it'd have been good publicity — me finding this huge fortune, historical links to the founder himself, and then nobly handing it all over to the exchequer and not keeping any of it for myself.

  The way things were at the time, I needed something good like that to stop people hating me so much. And then, of course, things started to come apart all over, and what with practically all my generals and provincial governors setting their sights on being the next emperor, obviously I couldn't trust anybody to go and fetch it for me. All I'd have done was hand some wannabe emperor the money to pay his troops for seizing my throne. And then, of course, I had to leave in a hurry, and that was that.'

  It was quite some time before I could manage to get a word out, and when finally I did, it was 'Bastard!'

  He looked surprised. 'What?'

  'Bastard,' I repeated. 'You stupid, selfish, shit-for-brains bastard. You're telling me that all these years we've been rattling around, starving hungry and the guard chasing us, and all along you've known where there's this vast hoard of treasure, just waiting to be scooped up.

  He grinned feebly 'To be honest with you,' he said, 'this is the first time I've thought about it in years. I mean, the stuff from the old days, it's got so it's all like something out of fairy stories. But yes, I guess it probably is still there, unless someone's beaten me to it. What're you puffing that strange face for?'

  'Never mind,' I groaned. 'You were saying.'

  'Oh, right. All I was going to say was, you were talking about someone possibly being after me because of some secret or other, and that made me think, Dido's treasure.' He shrugged. 'That is, it's possible. I can't think of anything else that'd mean someone would want to catch me alive without letting anybody else know'

  I didn't really want to talk to him any more, not for some time, for fear I'd lose my rag completely 'Well,' I said, 'there you go. It's a possibility, yes.

  Did a lot of other people know about this treasure thing?'

  He nodded. 'Only people around the palace,' he said, 'people I was sure I could trust with my life. But you know as well as I do, I was very wrong indeed about most of them. And come to think of it, of all the people who were in on it, I made sure I was the only one who knew all the details, the directions and so on.

  I learned them off by heart, then I burned the map. So, yes, I guess I'm the only person in the world who knows, unless Viniculeius told anybody And I doubt that, he wasn't a very trusting man.

  I shook my head. It was all too much for me. 'I told you we ought to go to Africa ,' I said, 'I bloody told you, but—'

  'You said Mauretania ,' he interrupted, 'and that's the other side of the province, nearly a thousand miles from Carthage .'

  'Just shut up, will you?'

  We spent the rest of the day getting deliberately lost.

  Logical thing to do, when you think about it. After all, if you haven't got the faintest idea where you are, how can anybody else be expected to? Luckily, getting lost in Rome isn't exactly difficult. We just headed north-east till we hit the Subura, and dived into the maze of funny little streets and courtyards and whatever. No problem.

  By the time we'd done that, it was getting late, we were both exhausted, not to mention starving hungry. In the end, we ducked in under the portico of some horrible scruffy little shrine, lay down and went to sleep, along with about a dozen other tramps and lowlifes. I can't remember what I dreamed about, but I do remember waking up, because when I opened my eyes there was this bloke with a knife standing over me.

  I hate it when that happens.

  Fortunately I had the presence of mind to kick him in the nuts, which made him fall over. Then, as I was jumping up, something heavy fell off my chest onto the deck and went chink. There's only one thing in the world that goes chink when you drop it.

  The bloke started to get up, so I kicked him in the ear, and that sorted him out. By the looks of him he was just one of the tramps, anyway, he was out of it now, and I wasn't minded to hang around there till he came to again.

  Talking of which, Lucius Domitius chose that moment to wake up, in mid-snore. He sat up sharpish, and I heard another chink just like the first one.

  Now there's weird, and there's just plain bizarre. I picked up the thing that had gone chink and loosed off the little bit of string tied round the neck, and peered inside. There had to be at least forty denarii in there.

  Which meant that during the night, while we were sleeping, surrounded by all those street people, someone had crept up nice and quiet and, without disturbing us or them, had tucked a fat purse of money inside my shirt.

  EIGHT

  A lot of stuff you can learn to cope with, such as being hounded by the authorities, or thrown out of taverns because they don't like the look of your boots, or pelted with stones because you talk funny Move around enough in this world and you'll come up against something of the sort, unless you're incredibly lucky or a Roman senator. You come to expect it. You get the knack of starting to dodge even before the punch gets thrown.

  But this one took me completely by surprise. I mean, what kind of sick bastard tracks you halfway across the known world, sneaks up on you while you're asleep and gives you money? You could drive a man crazy doing stuff like that. It's inhuman.

  Lucius Domitius looked at me. He was holding something in his hand. 'You too?' he said.

  I nodded. 'I say we get out of here,' I told him. 'Quick.'

  'Good idea,' he replied.

  Eighty denarii we had between us. That's good money We weren't used to lugging that sort of weight of coined silver around with us. The really bizarre thing was that it was eighty denarii we hadn't nicked or swindled, or even (God help us) earned. As we hurried through the streets in the general direction of the Ostia gate, I turned over in my mind the various possibilities. Like, maybe it was forged money — death penalty in Rome for passing off duff coinage, it'd be a crafty way of getting us crucified — only I can sense a bad coin five hundred yards away, in a thick fog, and the stuff in our purses was the genuine article.

  So, I thought, maybe the coins are marked in some way that shows they're the loot from some robbery, maybe where a guard or a servant got killed. But I looked at the coins and I couldn't see a damn thing, they were just money — some old ones, with Tiberius' head on them, right down to shiny new jobs with Vespasian's ugly mug squinting sideways at you through the Latin. All right, I thought, maybe the wise guy's a Greek, and he assumes that everybody carries their money in their mouth; maybe the coins have been smeared with poison. . .

  At that point, I decided I'd better stop thinking, before
I sprained my brain.

  'You realise,' Lucius Domitius said to me as we passed the Bona Dea, 'they're probably watching the gates for us.'

  I shook my head. 'Listen,' I said, 'this has gone way beyond that kind of shit.

  If they wanted to nab us or cut our throats, they could've done that last night.

  Talk about your perfect opportunities. If they wanted us dead, two more murdered tramps in the Subura, nobody would even have noticed. No, there's something else going on here, and I don't know what the hell it can be, but it's making my guts pucker.'

  He thought about that. 'So you reckon it'll be all right, then,' he said, 'going through the gate?'

  'Search me,' I said. 'Probably not. But unless we're planning on staying inside the city for the rest of our lives, we've got to go through a gate sooner or later. The way I see it, our best bet is to get on a ship going somewhere a long, long way from here, and Ostia 's got to be the best place for that.

  There's ships leaving Ostia every day for every country in the world, and unless they see us get on board, how can they know which one we've got on and where we're going?'

  'I like that,' Lucius Domitius said. 'That's a smart idea.'

  'Don't sound so bloody surprised. I do get good ideas occasionally.'

  So we kept going; and the further we went, the more I realised how perishing hungry I was. Now in all honesty I don't think you can blame me for that, since the last meal I'd had was the usual greasy soup and wilted greens back in Gnatho's barracks, and that seemed so long ago that it might as well have been cooked by Hercules, with Achilles washing the dishes. We'd gone hungry all the while simply because we'd been broke, but now we weren't, and I couldn't see the point in saving our skins by running away if we starved to death in the process.

  Needless to say, when I mentioned this to Lucius Domitius he was about as sympathetic as a stone adder. But I made it clear that unless he gave in and we stopped for a quick bite of something, I was going to keep on moaning at him till his eyes started popping out.

  'All right,' he sighed eventually. 'We'll pick up some bread or something off the next stall we come to. Will that do you?'

  'No,' I said, 'it bloody well won't. At the very least I want bean soup and chickpeas with a hunk of bacon and a pint of wine. God only knows where our next meal's coming from after that, so we'd better stock up while we can. It's basic common sense. A fat lot of escaping we'll be doing if we're too weak to move.'

  He wasn't impressed by that argument, I could tell, but he also had the wit to realise that it'd be quicker to give in than argue. Luckily we came across an open tavern before he had a chance to change his mind.

  The house special of the day was a sort of grey slop with hard bits in it.

  Unfortunately, it was also all they'd got, apart from bread with the texture of army boot soles and some dry, crumbly cheese. You wouldn't feed it to a dog. We had seconds.

  'The next question we've got to consider I said, with my mouth full of bread, 'is where we go from here. I was thinking, Africa .'

  He whimpered. 'Not again he said. 'Oh, I get it, you've set your heart on Dido's treasure. Well, don't you think it'd be a good idea to get shot of whoever this loon is who's tailing us first?'

  I didn't like his tone, but I couldn't be bothered to make an issue of it.

  'We'll do both,' I said, 'at one stroke. I mean, we've got to go somewhere, and Africa 's a long way from here.'

  'Yes.' He nodded, spilling grey slop down his chin, 'and to get there, you've got to go via Sicily , or had you forgotten that? There's one place I never want to go back to.'

  'The ship's got to go to Sicily ,' I said, 'but we don't have to get off it. In fact, it'd be a sight better if we stayed on the ship till we get there. Less chance of being seen, and all.'

  He lifted his head. 'Forget about Africa ,' he said. 'There's a whole world Out there, places we've never heard of, places that've never been discovered, or where nobody's been for so long, everyone's forgotten how to find them, like the land of the lotus-eaters in the Odyssey.' He frowned. 'I was thinking of Gaul or maybe even Germany I mean, who in his right mind would ever choose to go there? It's the obvious place, really.'

  ' Germany ?' I repeated. 'Are you out of your tiny mind? I'd rather stay here and get crucified.'

  'Anyway,' he said, 'I don't suppose it'll be up to us. What we need to do is get on the first ship to leave, and screw where it's going. I just want to get out of Rome as fast as possible.'

  'Isn't that exactly what they'll be expecting us to do?' I said craftily 'Whereas if we bide our time a little, hang around the docks keeping our heads down—'

  'They'll find us, and we'll be screwed. No, first ship out of here, it's the only thing to do.'

  I thought about it for a moment or so. What the hell, I told myself, that treasure's been there hundreds of years, it can hang on a bit longer — assuming there really was any treasure, which I didn't believe for a moment. If all the buried treasure I've heard rumours about over the years was to fall out of the sky, it'd cover Rome like a snowdrift. And he was right, of course. Given the spooky way they'd been able to find us, even after we'd gone to all the trouble of getting lost in the backstreets of the Subura, getting out of town as quickly as we could was the only way 'Fine,' I said, 'we'll do that then.' But we didn't, because immediately after I'd said it, a house fell on me.

  Sorry if that sounds a bit melodramatic. People tell me it's one of the hazards of living in Rome, where half the buildings are so old they're only standing up through force of habit, and the other half have been slung together in the last few years by slum landlords who don't give a damn. If that wasn't bad enough, it doesn't help to have endless processions of huge great carts rumbling past all night, every night, literally shaking the buildings to bits. Shocking, really, and if I was the emperor of Rome I'd do something about it, you can bet your life. Light a bloody great fire, probably, and start again from scratch I'd like to make a big thing about this, because it must've been pretty thrilling stuff, and I love telling the tale, as you've probably gathered by now. Unfortunately, I missed the whole show, on account of being bashed on the head by a chunk of falling masonry Typical of my luck, that: something really spectacular happens, and I sleep through the whole thing.

  So you'll have to make do without my keenly observed eyewitness account, and do the best you can with what Lucius Domitius told me later. He said that the front wall of this building — one of those horrible tenement blocks that are gradually filling the place up — suddenly started to bulge, like a frog's chin. He reckons he stood there watching only for a heartbeat or so, trying to figure out what on earth was going on, and then, when he finally tumbled to it, there wasn't time to yell and tell me to get out of the way I suppose I've got to believe him, though I can't help thinking that anyone with the gumption of a small piece of stale bread could've reached out, grabbed me by the arm and yanked me out of the way Wouldn't have taken much. After all, he was stood right next to me, and he didn't get so much as a bruised toe.

  Anyhow, the wall sort of bellied out and went pop, like a mud-bubble in a swamp, whereupon whacking great big slabs of brick and stuff fell off the upper stories — which by some miracle didn't come down, it was just a patch of wall the size of the sail on a merchant ship that fell in — and it was one of these slabs, rather than the wall itself that nailed me. Caught me a glancing blow on the side of the head, apparently, just above the left ear, and if it'd been a finger-length over to the right it'd have smashed my skull like an eggshell.

  Well, some of us were just born lucky, I guess.

  I know what happened next without Lucius Domitius having to tell me. I can picture him, standing there like a huge stuffed olive, in the middle of all the dust and stuff, while I'm pinned down by a damn great chunk of wood (which fell on me after I'd been knocked out, apparently). So much for comrades through thick and thin, it was a couple of strangers who went in and pulled me out.

  Rather a brave
thing to do, since obviously they had no way of knowing the rest of the building wasn't going to come down on their heads while they were at it.

  But I get the impression that your long-term resident Roman learns how to handle this sort of situation, what with falling-down buildings being such a common thing. Whatever. These two men who just happen to be strolling past dive in, grab my wrists and drag me out, well clear of the building just in case it decides to finish the job, and there I am. We heard later that a couple of other people weren't quite so fortunate: one killed outright, the other had his back broken, paralysed from the neck down. Horrible, really, when you think of it.

  Like I said, Rome sucks.

  Anyhow.

  Back to what I remember, and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was this gorgeous-looking bird leaning over me with a worried look on her face. That frightened me, a lot, because I'm a realist, I've got no illusions about myself, so the chances are that if I wake up out of an unexpected sleep and see a cute female looking down at me, the only probable explanation is that I have died and gone to the Elysian Fields. And — well, I'm sure it's really great in paradise, you're free and clear, all your troubles are over and there's nothing to do all day but stroll about on the grass eating fruit. Me, though, I'd rather be alive, thanks all the same.

  But this theory of mine turned out to have a flaw in it, thank God, because it specifically says in the book of words that the blessed souls in the Elysian Fields feel no pain, and I had a headache so monumental that they were probably going to have to draw it in on all the maps. This took some of the shine off the being-stood-over-by-luscious-women thing, but it made me feel a whole lot better. If you see what I mean.

  Besides, when I looked at her again, I realised she was more in the nice—looking category, rather than the classic all—time greats. Nice eyes, very big and round and dark, but she had a nose on her like one of Hannibal 's elephants. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but it was a hooter and a half, no two ways about it. Smaller than an Egyptian obelisk or the ram on a warship, but that was the most you could say for it. That aside, she was about nineteen, very pale skin, like fresh milk in the pail, wearing a plain old dress that'd probably belonged to her big sisters and her mum before that.