A Song For Nero

by Tom Holt

  'Anyhow,' Pony-tail said, 'you don't have to worry about them any more, or at least not for now. Licinius Polio isn't a gang boss, if that's what you were thinking.'

  'Fine I said. 'So what does he do, then?'

  'Slaves, mostly,' Alexander said. 'All honest and above board, mind. Mostly he leases building workers to the government. He's got half a dozen brothels as well, and he deals in the better grades as a sideline, houseboys and clerks and pages, that sort of thing. Wealthy man, by all accounts.'

  Somehow, that didn't make me feel any better about Licinius Pollio. But Lucius Domitius said, 'You know, now you say that, I think the name's vaguely familiar.

  Didn't he start out in a small way about twenty years ago, buying and selling gladiators?'

  'That's him,' Pony-tail said. 'And that's how we got to know him, of course. It was him sold us to the tribune when we started off in the fight game.'

  'Practically family,' I muttered, but nobody took any notice of me.

  'Talking of Licinius Pollio,' Alexander yawned, 'where the hell's he got to? Not like him to be so late, usually he's really punctual.'

  Pony-tail shrugged. 'Got held up somewhere,' he said. 'Busy man like that. Or I suppose Scyphax or Strymon could've caught up to him, but I doubt that, he's too sly Got to get up with the shepherds to pull one over on Licinius Pollio.'

  He didn't seem particularly worried at the thought, so I decided I wouldn't worry about it either. After all, if I wanted to worry (which I didn't) I was pretty much spoiled for choice. If I felt like it, I could worry about why not one but two Roman street gangs were fighting over our worthless carcasses, or why in hell Licinius Pollio had appointed himself our personal defender and welfare bureau, or whether Lucius Domitius was too hopelessly smitten with hero-worship to take a chance to escape if one presented itself, or where our next meal was coming from. Stuff like that: ordinary, humdrum concerns. I expect you lie awake at night fretting about much the same thing. But I was buggered if I was going to worry about the well-being of some rich Roman nutcase I'd seen twice, even if he had bought me a skinful of disgustingly bad wine that night in Ostia . Life's too short.

  'Anyhow,' Pony-tail yawned, 'doesn't look like he's going to show up tonight, so we might as well turn in. Afraid we didn't think to fetch along any blankets, didn't think we'd be spending the night here.' He glanced at Lucius Domitius.

  'You can have my cloak if you like,' he said. 'I don't feel the cold much.'

  Lucius Domitius said he wouldn't dream of it, he'd be perfectly comfortable as he was; and, since nobody seemed inclined to offer me anything, that was that.

  The two uglies sort of propped themselves up against the wall, like trestle tables when dinner's over, and started snoring in counterpoint. The door, I noticed, didn't seem to be locked.

  Well, I thought. Mercury helps them as helps themselves, as they say in the thieves' guild. Both of them looked like heavy sleepers, we'd be well away by the time they woke up. Go for it, I thought. So, like a fool, I crept over to the corner, where Lucius Domitius was trying to make a pillow out of his boots, and nudged him in the ribs.

  'Time to go,' I whispered.

  He lifted his head and looked at me as if I was a mosquito who'd just bitten the tip of his nose. 'What?'

  'The door's open. Your two pals are asleep. Let's get the hell out of here, while we can.

  He yawned. 'Why would we want to do that?' he said.

  There were times when I could've strangled him, if only my hands weren't too small to fit round his big fat neck. 'Don't be bloody stupid,' I said. 'We're prisoners. Escaping is what prisoners do.'

  'No we aren't,' he replied, a bit too loud for comfort. 'We're guests. Something like that, anyway Besides, it's late and I'm knackered.'

  'You moron,' I hissed, 'what's happened to your brain since we got here? Or did your gladiator chums knock it out your ear when they kidnapped us?'

  He clicked his tongue. He could click his tongue more annoyingly than anybody I've ever met. 'You aren't still going on about that, are you? Weren't you listening when Julianus Bolius explained? It was the only way to get us out of there without attracting attention.'

  I could've screamed, only I had more sense. 'This is crazy,' I said. 'Just because these two bruisers were your pin-up boys back in the old days—'

  'Rubbish.' He scowled at me, and even though the light from the lamps was getting dim I could see he'd gone a sort of Tyrian purple colour. 'Just perfectly ordinary straightforward admiration for two great sportsmen. It's one of the finer things in life, so naturally you wouldn't understand.'

  Well, they say owners get like their pets over the years, but for the life of me I couldn't remember Lucius Domitius ever keeping a tame idiot. 'Let's not argue about that now,' I said. 'The point is, we're free to go. So let's go.'

  'No'

  What I should have done is left him there. God knows, that's what I ought to have done. Wouldn't you? I mean, suppose you and your brother are being chased by a pack of wolves, and suddenly your brother stops dead and turns round and walks towards the wolves saying, 'Hooza good doggie, den?' Surely that's where brotherly love and family duty stop, and you can walk away without any risk of the Furies coming and nagging at you in the wee small hours. I never got around to discussing the point with Seneca — pity, really — but I'm sure he'd have been right behind me on this one. We all have an obligation to look after our family and our friends, but not when they're acting like stupid arseholes.

  But I didn't. Instead, I said, 'Why the hell not?'

  'Because,' Lucius Domitius replied, as if he was explaining something simple to a backward child, 'these people are on our side. I can feel it, in my bones.

  After all, if they'd wanted to kill us—'

  'Balls,' I said. 'They could just as easily be taking us to be horribly tortured by some noble git who hates you from the old days. There's enough of 'em, God knows, the sort who'd reckon that you burning to death or getting stabbed by mobsters'd be the next best thing to giving you a free pardon.'

  He wrinkled his nose at me, the bastard. 'Bit far—fetched, isn't it?' he said.

  'I think it's much more likely that this Licinius Pollio's someone I did a good turn for in the old days, and he's repaying the favour. Everything I've heard so far makes me feel sure he's a friend.'

  'You haven't got any friends,' I said. 'Nearest thing you've got to a friend is me, and I hate you. Now stop pissing about and shift your useless bum, before you wake up the gladiators.'

  He sniffed. 'Nothing stopping you going,' he said, 'if that's what you want to do. You bugger off out of it, and try not to get caught next time you try stealing purses, because I won't be there to rescue you.

  I ask you. Why would a man, an ordinary bloke like me with no great pretensions at being good or brave or any of that shit, why would a normal bloke like me stick with such an ungrateful, mean, stupid arsehole? Because Callistus told me to, maybe. But if Callistus himself had talked to me like that (he never would have, so it's a had example), I'd have turned on my worn-down little heel and left him standing there. Honest, I would. I'd never have forgiven him. So why — why, for crying out loud — didn't I take my chance and go, right then, without another word?

  Beats me. I guess I must be really, really, really, really, really stupid.

  'Fine,' I said. 'We'll stay here. And when they're hanging us upside down over a roaring fire and beating us to death with thin sticks, maybe you'll say you're sorry, you should've listened to me. It'll be something for me to look forward to.'

  He sighed. 'Really, Galen,' he said. 'You do go on sometimes. Look,' he added, in a thoroughly offensive attempt to make up the quarrel, 'it's all very well being cautious, we've had to be very careful who we trust, I know that. But give me some credit for being able to judge human nature. These two are all right, take my word for it.'

  'You,' I said. 'A judge of human nature. Now I've heard everything.'

  'Well,' he replied, 'I didn't wa
nt to bring this up, but I'm not the one who was mooning around like a lovesick calf over some gangster's moll.'

  Gangster's moll — where did he pick up an expression like that? 'Sure,' I said.

  'And whose word have we got that that's what she is?

  Your two bosom buddies over there, and that's all. Personally, I wouldn't believe them if they told me cowshit stinks.'

  He yawned, and stretched. 'If you're going,' he said, 'go. If not, push off and let me get some sleep. It's been a long day'

  It was either clear off and leave him, or crawl away into a corner and keep my face shut. And I thought, all right then, Zeus, you made me the way I am, you sent me into this world with a face like a rat and enough brains to fill half a walnut shell. Presumably you had your reasons, and I'm not going to try and guess what they were. Now it's up to you, Zeus. I've done my best. I've been doing my best with this shit you gave me for forty bloody years. It's time for you to mind the store, Zeus, and I'll just cruise along for a while and see how well you get on, and maybe after a bit you'll realise what rotten bloody hard work it is being me, and what I've got to put up with. And maybe then you'll stop emptying your chamber pot of horrible adventures over my head every time it gets full.

  I don't suppose Zeus was even listening. I've been talking to him on and off ever since I was a kid, and I've never seen or heard anything to suggest he's listened to me even once.

  So I snuck away into the opposite corner, wedged my back into the angle of the wall, drew my knees up in front of me and sort of half-closed my eyes, so I could go to sleep without taking my eyes off the door. Sounds difficult, but I must've managed it somehow, because the next thing I remember was sunlight streaming in through a hole in the roof, and a strange smell I hadn't come across in years. A really good cooked breakfast.

  TEN

  Straight up. Would I lie to you about a thing like that?

  We didn't go in much for cooked breakfasts back when I was a kid. For one thing, for a cooked breakfast you need to have something to cook, and usually we didn't. For another, we were always up at the crack of dawn, out in the fresh air weeding the vines or leading the goats up the mountain, with a little wicker basket with the stale end of a loaf and a small onion in it, if we were lucky But they had cooked breakfasts in the Golden House, back when Callistus and I were living there as honoured guests of the emperor Nero, and I can't say as I remember them smelling anything near as good as what was wafting in through the door.

  Well, I thought, if I'm going to cross the River today, might as well do it on a full stomach. So I got up and wandered over to the door, limping because of the cramp and the pins and needles. You try sleeping hunched up in the corner of a derelict dining room some time, and you'll see what I mean.

  'There you are.' Lucius Domitius was standing in front of a big brass tripod, stirring something in a fat round copper pot. 'Just in time for the food, as usual. You must have a little voice in your head, like Socrates, to tell you about meal times.'

  'Fuck you,' I replied affably 'Where have your friends got to?'

  'Alexander's fetching water from the pump,' he replied, 'and Julianus Bolius has nipped out to the market for some fenugreek. Won't be long.'

  'And what do you think you're doing?'

  'Stirring the fish sauce,' Lucius Domitius replied, as if it was crazy to imagine he could possibly be doing anything else.

  Bizarre. No other word for it. Because the crazy fool still hadn't tumbled to the fact that we'd been kidnapped by those two —snatched, abducted, taken prisoner, whatever. He seemed to be under the impression that this was some kind of house party, and that any moment now this Licinius Pollio would come tripping in through the door and ask us if we fancied joining him and the others for a quick game of handball in the courtyard. So there he was, helping the two thugs to fix breakfast. And to think, a complete shit-for-brains like that was once in charge of the entire Roman empire . There's got to be a better way of running things than that.

  'Right,' I said. 'Fish sauce. Great. And I suppose there's sweet and sour pork and honeycakes to follow'

  'With fish sauce? For breakfast? You're weird.'

  On the other hand, I thought, the fish sauce did smell rather good, and my stomach felt like I hadn't eaten since Theseus grew out of bedwetting. I guess Seneca would've called it pragmatism: if you're stuck with a madman cooking up a fish breakfast waiting to be horribly killed, you might as well eat the fish breakfast as not. Well, it's a philosophy. Everybody needs a philosophy, after all.

  Then Alexander came in with the water jug. He didn't seem to notice me, which suited me just fine, but he peered over Lucius Domitius' shoulder to see how the fish sauce was getting along, and nipped a pinch of some yellow powder out of a little wooden chest lying on the floor. To see him sprinkling it over the pot, scientific as a Cretan doctor opening a bloke's head, you'd have thought that getting the fish sauce just right was the only thing that mattered in the whole wide world.

  Pony-tail came breezing in with a basket of greens and stuff, and Lucius Domitius was relieved of duty while the two bruisers fussed over their creation.

  Actually, it wasn't hard to believe that they really were cooks first and hired killers second. I've been in enough market squares in my time to know that if you're after a cook, look around until you find the biggest, toughest, most evil-looking blokes present, and they'll be the cooks. There's something about the profession that attracts large men with violent dispositions, apparently It's the big knives, if you ask me.

  It seemed to take them for ever to get it just right; but in all fairness I've got to say, those two were good at their job, and if I'd been a senator's steward organising a big dinner party, I'd have had no hesitation about hiring them. Tuna steaks on wheat bread with a rich cream sauce, garnished with stuffed songbirds and crisp garden vegetables, as good as what we'd been used to up at the Golden House, if not better.

  Well, we'd eaten the meal and were finishing up the sauce with the last of the bread, when the door opened and a girl walked in. Come on, Galen, you can do better than that. Just because something you say is more or less true, doesn't mean to say it's really true, because simply reciting the facts is sometimes not enough. For instance, I could say, there was this bloke who got lost on his way home, but he got there in the end, but it wouldn't be the Odyssey. It'd be true, because that's what happened, but I'd have left so much out and done so little justice to the story that it'd be misleading.

  Let's try that again.

  The door opened. Right, that's fine, it didn't fly open or slowly drift open with a sinister creak. And yes, a girl came in. Short, dark complexion, hair piled up on top of her head, about nineteen years old. And yes, this girl wasn't spectacularly beautiful or anything like that, she was nice-looking in a cutesy sort of a way, no more than that. And she didn't come in dancing or balancing a blazing torch on the tip of her nose, she just sort of walked through the door, the way people walk, until she was about three feet from where I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and then she stopped. That's a pretty accurate description of what happened, but it's still not really true, because you could read that and think to yourself, Well, a girl's just walked in, so what, big deal. If you've been eating fried food and smudged the page with your greasy fingers, you could miss the whole thing; or maybe the rats have got into your cupboard and nibbled holes in your book. You could pass the whole incident by without really taking any notice, and then, when the important stuff starts happening later on, you wouldn't have a clue how or when or where it started.

  Well. I'm no artist, I'm not good with words, so I can't think of a way of doing this subtly All I can do is tell you that a girl walked in, and it's a really big deal, so pay attention.

  'There you are,' she said.

  Alexander looked up. 'Hello, Blandinia,' he said. 'Where's Pollio got to?'

  She looked at him and clicked her tongue. 'He's been waiting for you all night,' she said, 'over at the old house, wh
ere you're supposed to be. He's not happy'

  'But this is the old house,' Pony-tail interrupted.

  She sighed. 'No,' she said. 'This is the old ruined house. The old house is two doors down from the temple of Luna , five minutes north of here. You've screwed up again,' she said.

  Alexander and Pony-tail looked at each other.

  'Fuck,' said Pony-tail.

  'I thought so,' the girl went on. 'We've all been hanging around the old house like a flock of geese waiting for the spring. There's flute-players and harpists and actors and cooks and waiters and a couple of exotic dancers, on time and a half, the lot of 'em, and all this time you've been here. Next time you're given your instructions for a job, you might try listening.'

  'I'm sure he said the old ruined house,' Alexander said lamely, though his heart obviously wasn't in it. 'I guess I must've got the wrong end of the stick.'

  The girl grinned spitefully 'You'll be lucky if that's all you get when Pollio gets hold of you,' she said. 'And usually he's such a nice, easy-going man.

  Don't know when I've seen him so upset. Now then,' she went on, turning to look at Lucius Domitius in a way that suggested that the two gladiators had suddenly ceased to exist, 'you must be Nero Caesar. My name's Blandinia, I'm Licinius Pollio's freedwoman. If you're ready to leave, we really ought to be getting along.'

  Something hurt my toe. It was only some time later that I figured out it must've been the heavy red earthenware dish I'd been holding in both hands. And if I was poleaxed, you can guess how Lucius Domitius reacted. He sort of shimmered from head to foot, like a reflection in water when someone throws a stone in the pool. 'Excuse me?' he said.

  The girl Blandinia frowned ever so slightly 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'You are Nero Caesar, aren't you?'

  There were a lot of things Lucius Domitius could've said at that moment, but instead he chose 'Yes.'

  'I thought so,' Blandinia replied. 'You're just how Licinius Porno described you.' Then she turned her head and looked at me. 'And you must be Galen,' she said. 'Are you ready?'