by Tom Holt
This was getting silly 'Fine,' I said. 'We can't make one, chances are we can't buy one. That leaves stealing.' I paused. 'We can do stealing,' I said.
'Fine. Who were you planning on stealing one from?'
Good point. You don't see many harps in the course of a day's walk. 'Yes, but we're in Rome ,' I pointed out. 'Biggest city in the world. Stands to reason, there must be more harp-players to the square foot here than anywhere else. We just go where harp-players hang out, I guess. The market square, probably'
'I don't know' He was coming over all foggy again. 'I thought the whole idea of this was so that we wouldn't have to do stuff like that any more.
'It'd just be one last time,' I said.
'No'
'Fine.' I shrugged. 'You'll just have to sing for a living, then, instead of harp-playing. Broad as it's long, really'
So we set off to steal a harp. Now it sounds like something you ought to be able to do if you set your mind to it. After all, when you think of all the things human beings have managed to achieve over the centuries — building the pyramids, say, or melting glass out of sand — stealing harps should be a piece of cake for two grown men on a warm day Well, it probably is, in Plato's Republic or some such place, where everything's as it should be and all is for the best. In the cesspit where the sons of Romulus hang out, on the other hand, it's almost impossibly difficult. I mean, you remember the old stories, where the hero wants to marry the wicked king's daughter, and the wicked king sets him three apparently impossible tasks, which he manages without breaking into a sweat.
Just goes to show how dumb those wicked kings really were. Instead of all that buggering about with killing dragons and fetching three-headed dogs from the Underworld, all they had to do was say, Go steal a harp, and the hero would've have died an elderly bachelor, if he was that lucky Well, eventually we found some harp-players, after we'd tramped round the squares and the temple yards and all the other places where day-labourers hang out in the city: about a dozen of them, to be precise, along with twenty-odd flute-girls, eight or nine drummers and two rather alarming-looking Cilicians who did noisy things with bells. Presumably they were waiting for someone to hire them, though they didn't seem to be in any hurry; not like the poor sods at the hiring fairs we used to have out our way when I was a kid, where you'd find thirty or forty sad-looking blokes scrambling all over you if you hinted you might have a day's trench-digging to bestow on some worthy candidate. Maybe it's a musician thing, I don't know; anyhow, they were sprawled all over the paved court in front of Juno-on-the-Subura, passing round jugs of toothstripper wine and combing each other's hair, and when we strolled up and sat down on the temple steps, a few of them turned round and smiled, while the rest ignored us.
I guess they could tell by our appearance that we weren't hiring, and they had us down as either fellow songbirds or general loungers.
The harp-players were easy enough to spot, because they had harps.
Unfortunately, separating them from same looked like it was going to be beyond us. For one thing, carefree and bohemian they might have been, but every one of them kept his pride and joy right up close, either with his hand resting on it or tucked under the crook of his knee, so there wasn't any chance of just sidling off with one. Even if we'd had the brass balls to snatch a harp, we wouldn't have got two paces, since the musicians were bunched so up tight you'd have had trouble threading your way past them at the best of times. Lucius Domitius looked at me and sighed, and we were about to get up and walk away when we noticed that there was a game of dice going on.
Clearly, we were in no position to start gambling, since we didn't have any money, or very much of anything else, except dust and fleas. On the other hand, what could they do to us if we lost and couldn't pay up? Well, they could smash our faces in, but what's mere physical pain when you're down and out anyway?
Besides, Lucius Domitius was no slug when it came to rolling dice; he'd learned from one of the finest dice-players of his age, his uncle, the late Claudius Caesar — it was the one thing they had in common, and the only time old Claudius could stand to have Lucius Domitius in the same room with him was when they were throwing the bones. Now, for all that he had this wonderful gift, we tended to shy away from games of chance after a nasty experience we had after we'd been together on the road for about six months; I won't bore you with the details, but it involved a disputed throw of Venus, two very large Cypriot market porters, and a cesspit. We'd learned our lesson after that, and got into the habit of being somewhere else whenever a game started up. But here we were, with nothing to lose except our teeth, where a lucky fall of the dice might result in money, or a harp, or both. I nudged Lucius Domitius in the ribs, and for once he seemed to be on the same wavelength as me; he gestured to me to stay put, then got up and wandered over to where the game was.
'Excuse me,' he said, 'but that looks like fun.'
A harp-player looked up, and said, 'Fun?' like it was the last possible word he'd have thought of in that context.
'That game you're playing,' Lucius Domitius said. 'I seem to remember we used to play a game something like that when I was a boy, and we went down the mountain to visit my aunt and uncle.'
All the gamblers were looking at him now 'Is that so?' said one of them, in a nice, clear, piss—off—we're—busy voice. 'Small world, isn't it?'
'Mind if I watch for a moment?' Lucius Domitius went on. 'I'd like to see if I can remember the rules.'
'Sure,' said one of them. 'Just keep your face shut, all right? We're trying to concentrate.'
So he sat down on his haunches and watched them for a while. Then, in a break between points, he said, 'Sorry to butt in again, but where does the money come into it?'
A drummer craned his neck and frowned at him. 'You what?' he said.
'I couldn't help noticing,' Lucius Domitius said, 'you keep handing round coins while you're playing. Is it like counters, so you know whose turn it is? Or is it something to do with keeping score?'
Me telling you what he said, it must sound pathetically corny, and you're thinking, what kind of nitwit would fall for an obvious spiel like that? Well, that's because you're not getting the delivery —which, all credit to him, was superb. Pure genius. It was so good, even I was ready to believe that here was some buffoon up from the country who'd never heard of playing dice for money If they had their doubts, my guess is that greed overrode them, they wanted him to be what he seemed, the biggest natural mark in the history of the world, so much that they refused to listen to the nagging little voices in their heads.
Amazing.
'Well,' said a harp-player, after a short silence. 'It's like this.'
Now obviously, there was a problem, and I'm sure you're way ahead of me and you've figured it out for yourselves. Just in case you haven't: before they'd let him play, mug or no mug, he was going to have to ante up the price of a call, and of course he didn't have any money, not one solitary copper farthing.
I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting him to do. In his place, I expect I'd have tried to palm a few coins off the pot when I thought nobody was watching (and I'd have got caught, sure as winter, and there'd have been a nasty scene and quite probably violence). What Lucius Domitius did was far smarter. He listened patiently while the bloke explained the basic theory and practice of gambling, then he said, Thank you, that's very interesting, and stood up to leave.
'Where are you off to?' one of them said in dismay 'Aren't you going to stay and try your luck for a point or two?'
Lucius Domitius looked terribly, terribly sad. 'I'd love to,' he said, 'but I can't. You see, I haven't got any money General despair; all the worse because they'd all got their hopes up so. 'Oh,' one of them said. 'Pity, that.'
Lucius Domitius nodded. 'All I've got is five donkeys loaded with salt, down at the cooks' market — that's what we do, my brother and me, we pan for it down on the coast this time of year, when there's not much doing on the land. It's an interesting sideline and we ma
ke quite a good thing of it, especially when the price holds up, like this year. I think—'
The gamblers didn't actually want an insight into the workings of the salt trade right then. What they wanted was to fleece a sucker. 'Five donkeys,' one of them interrupted. 'So, how much salt can a donkey carry, then?'
Lucius Domitius shrugged. 'Depends,' he said. 'We don't like to overload them, they're getting on a bit, like we all are. So we keep it down to somewhere round one and a half hundredweight.'
You could see them all doing the figuring in their heads; five by a hundred and fifty, times five sesterces. The click when they all arrived at the same answer at more or less the same moment was so loud they probably heard it at Veii .
'Tell you what,' one of them said, trying not to quiver, 'why don't you bet us some of your salt against cash money? We don't mind, it'd be like the army Lucius Domitius shook his head. 'Oh, I couldn't do that,' he said. 'What'd happen if I lost? My brother'd get upset if I go giving away our salt.'
'Ah yes,' said a harp-player, 'but think how pleased he'd be if you won.
'Not much chance of that,' Lucius Domitius said. 'After all, it's the first time I've played in a long, long while. And this — gambling, did you call it? Funny word — this gambling's all new to me. I know,' he went on. 'How'd it be if we just played for stuff that isn't worth anything? Bits of gravel, or beans? That way, we could have all the fun, and I won't have to worry about my brother shouting at me.
They weren't happy, but the thought of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slipping away was too much for them. 'Good idea,' one of them said mournfully 'We'll play a point or two like that, until you've had a chance to see how easy it is. Then maybe you'll change your mind.'
Don't get the impression that I'm a great expert on dice-playing, because I'm not. But a child of three could've spotted they were cheating, doing every damn thing they could think of to make sure they lost. Goes to show how completely Lucius Domitius had em foxed, because they were concentrating so much on losing to him that they didn't notice the pretty raw strokes he was pulling to make sure he lost to them. No; all they saw was that in spite of the very best they could do, the mug was such a dead loss dice-roller that he couldn't help losing every third point. So, when finally Lucius Domitius (eyes shining like a bride on her wedding-day, cheeks rosy with excitement at this wonderful new game) said, All right, then, I think I've got the hang of this, let's play for stakes, they were hard put to it not to bust out grinning, like dogs who've slipped into a sausage shop when the owner's forgotten to put the catch on the door.
'Wait there,' Lucius Domitius said, getting up off his knees, 'I'll go and fetch some salt. I won't be more than an hour.'
That panicked them. An awful lot can happen in an hour, they were thinking. You could see them picturing the scene in their minds — Here, brother, where are you going with all that salt? Oh, I met some people over on the Subura, and we're going to do gambling. Not with our salt you aren't, you gullible clown ...
'That's all right,' one of them called out in a rather hoarse voice, 'we'll trust you for it. Sit down and let's get on with the game, while you're on a lucky streak.'
Since Lucius Domitius had lost four out of the last seven points, 'lucky streak' was taking poetic licence a bit far, but he said, 'Oh, all right then,' in a cheerful voice and sat down again. They handed him the dice, and he proceeded to lose.
Boy, did he lose. By the time they'd been playing for an hour, he was down a nominal one thousand sesterces, or nearly a third of our mythical stash of salt.
Then it was as if he'd just woken up out of a dream, to find he'd wet the bed.
'This is dreadful,' he said. 'What's my brother going to say? We were going to use that money to dedicate an altar to our stepmother, rest her soul. He'll kill me.'
Genuinely distressing to hear him, so much so that all the gamblers but one looked away and didn't say a word. But the one who'd been doing all the winning, and held most of Lucius Domitius' markers, grinned hungrily and said, 'Tell you what. I'll give you one chance to win it all back. The whole lot. What do you say?'
Lucius Domitius bit his lip. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I think I've done enough damage for one day'
The gambler wasn't having that. 'Here's the deal,' he said.
'Double or quits. One point. You could get it all back. Go on, it's a wonderful chance.'
Lucius Domitius handled it well. At first he wouldn't hear of it. Then, as the gambler upped the stakes, he let himself get talked into it, one step at a time, until finally they reached a deal: the markers plus another five hundred sesterces' worth, against what was in the pot — two hundred sesterces, 'and I'll even throw in my harp. There, I can't say fairer than that, can I?'
Lucius Domitius went through all the torments of Sisyphus before he finally nodded and said, 'Go on, then.' The gambler beamed like sunrise over the Adriatic , and handed him the dice. There was dead silence. Lucius Domitius scrunched the dice together in his hand, and then he threw He lost.
'Oh well,' the gambler said, 'never mind. Better luck next time.' Lucius Domitius was staring at the dice like he was Orestes facing the Furies. 'All right,' he said, 'one more throw All the rest of the salt, against what you've won already Just one more point,' he added pitifully 'Please.'
But the gambler shook his head. 'Sorry,' he said, 'I can't do that. It'd be tempting Fate, and I'm very religious.'
There was a moment of dead silence; everybody staring. Then Lucius Domitius nodded, once. 'Fair enough,' he said. 'You wait there, I'll get the salt.'
The gambler scowled mustard at him. 'Oh no,' he said. 'Not likely I'm coming with you.
'Please yourself,' Lucius Domitius said with a shrug. 'Doesn't matter to me, one way or the other. Follow me.'
So off he went, with the gambler tight at his heels, like a well-trained hound.
As they passed me, I waited a moment or so, then quietly got up and followed. As luck would have it, there was a dark, narrow alley quite close by I tried not to hit the gambler harder than necessary; he was a greedy bastard, but it was us who set him up, not the other way round.
'Fine,' I said, straightening my back, 'now we've got a harp. Let's get out of here, before his mates come looking for him.'
We dragged him over to a handy midden and dumped him, then set off for the Praenestine Gate. 'We ought to remember that one for another time,' I said, jogging along to keep up with Lucius Domitius, who was putting in big, long strides. 'I mean, there's other things beside harps.'
But he lifted his head. 'We're giving up on all that,' he said, 'that's the whole point. Now I've got this,' and he hugged the harp like it was his baby son, 'we won't have to do this stuff any more. Free and clear; isn't that how you put it?'
If there was anybody watching out for us at the gate, they were subtle about it; we didn't get that hairs-curling-on-the-back-of-the-neck feeling as we left the city (though that's not a reliable warning sign, believe me; one of these days I'll tell you about that time in Noricum, when the bloke we'd spent an evening bragging to, thinking he was the head of the local thieves' guild, turned out to be the military prefect's batman).
The plan was to stroll the thirty-odd miles to Praeneste along the straight, level military road. Praeneste's the sort of place where a jobbing harp-player has his pick of engagements — plenty of knights and businessmen trying to act like knights have houses or villas there, handy for the city but countrified enough to play at being Cincinnatus in; failing which, there were inns and taverns where we could pass the hat round and be likely to find something in it afterwards, aside from apple cores and a few stray hairs. Comfortable, affluent Middle Italy God's own country As we walked along, feeling those precision-cut military cobbles under our thin-soled feet at every step and dodging out of the way of speeding chariots and huge rumbling cabbage wagons, Lucius Domitius got in some serious harp practice. It'd been ten years, he said, and he hadn't so much as picked up a harp in all that time. Not that it was
something you could forget, he was at pains to point out; but the fingertips get soft and the muscles get complacent.
He was right, at that. To begin with, the only noises he could get out of the thing were tinny plunks, like the sound of a silversmith working over a cracked anvil. But he fiddled with the strings and the pegs for a bit, and eventually produced something that a deaf man might mistake for music, if he wasn't paying attention.
'Right,' he said (plunk, plink). 'So what do you think I ought to include in my repertoire? Nothing too grand or fancy, enough for an hour's set, with encores.
I scratched my chin. 'How about “The Spanish Centurion's Daughter”?' I suggested. 'We always used to laugh at that when I was a kid.'
He frowned at me down his nose. 'I don't think I know that one,' he said. 'And anyway, I was thinking of something a bit more upmarket than taproom ballads.
Some Heliodorus to start with, perhaps, and then maybe something a bit more meaty: Phrixus or Strepsiades. “The Tears of Niobe” always goes down well in the provinces.'
I yawned. 'Do me a favour,' I said. 'People don't want culture when they're sitting all cosy at home in the country, they want something they can sing along to, or hum. The old favourites, you know: “Such A Man” or “I'll Hide My Sword”.'
'Oh, please.' He looked as if I'd just farted in his face. 'All right, if the only gig we can get is in an Egyptian brothel, where they want something to drown out the screams. But if I'm going to be playing for gentlemen...' He frowned. 'Well, rich people, anyway I mean to say, if you're entertaining a few friends over a quiet dinner, you want something a bit refined, to set the tone.'
'Balls,' I argued. 'What they'll want is something with a bit of a beat to it, not all that long-haired stuff. Tell you what,' I added, when I saw him puffing himself up like a bullfrog. 'Practice a bit of both. Then when we get there, you can gauge the mood of the house and adapt accordingly'
He pulled a face, but it made obvious sense, so that's what he did: For every precious little hendecasyllabic morçeau, a good old-fashioned vaudeville number with lots of choruses. By the time we stopped for the night at a nice-looking roadhouse, I felt a bit like Ulysses and the sirens, when his men tied him to the mast while the nasty women sang at him. Well, at least Lucius Domitius didn't sing. Just as well, or there'd have been blood on the cobbles before we reached the eighth milestone.