A Song For Nero

by Tom Holt

  Instinct, instinct; it says so much about you, doesn't it? My instinct is, when I see a face I recognise, to get away from there as fast as I can without making myself conspicuous. This time, though, I managed not to, purely and simply because I was able to put a name to the face before the instinct (in this case, indistinguishable from panic) kicked in. Instead, I stopped dead in my tracks and slowly turned round, to make sure I hadn't imagined it.

  No, I'd been right. I have the knack of being able to recognize someone from a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I'm told pigeons can do the same thing. They can tell the difference between a man with a slingshot and a bloke out walking his dog at a range of half a mile, when they're facing in the opposite direction. Well, in that case, I'm an honorary pigeon.

  The question was: what was the evil bitch Blandinia, last seen in a burning mews in Rome, doing standing on a platform on Delos, while a huge bald fat man was telling the people a whole lot of lies about how sweet-natured and docile she was?

  Well, I thought, it does no harm to listen, so I went over and stood at the back of the crowd, tucked in behind a tall bloke so I could see over his shoulder with precious little chance of being seen myself.

  Yes, I'm a liar, been one all my life. But there's little white lies, such as, Yes, I own this mule, or, I inherited this handsome silver-gilt dinner service from my auntie; and there's great big steaming whoppers, like what the fat man was saying about Blandinia. To hear him talk, she was this sweet little moppet, slave-born, brought up nicely in a quiet, respectable house, unexpected tax liability forces sale. Let that be a lesson to you: never trust an auctioneer, even if he tells you your mother was a woman.

  Just looking at her, you'd be forgiven for taking the fat bloke at his word. She was looking down at her toes, all bashful modesty and droopy shoulders, picking at a loose thread on her cuff with her tiny, dainty little fingertips. It made you want to wrap her in a warm blanket and feed her bread and milk, like a sick hedgehog; proof, if you're stubborn-blind enough to want it, that you can tell fuck-all about a human being just by looking.

  And then I thought: Well, why not?

  Part of me wasn't keen on the idea; in fact, it reckoned I wanted my head opening up and the bits of dirt and crud cleaned out of the works, because only a complete idiot would want to be on the same continent as that murderous little waif, let alone pay good money to get her back in his life after two narrow escapes. But another part of me was saying, This can't be a coincidence, the gods dragged you out here on purpose so you could buy her. There was a certain amount to be said for that line of argument: I mean, what'd possessed me to come all this way, getting my guts shook out of me on a boat, when I could've stayed home, waited a month, and got a perfectly good lady's maid in Athens?

  There was no reasonable explanation, it'd just been a sort of impulse thing — or some god had put the idea in my head, for this express purpose. Furthermore, I had a score the size of Euboea to settle with Blandinia, and offhand I couldn't think of a nastier thing to do to any female person than hand them over to my mother to be her personal servant. In fact, the idea was so utterly evil and nasty, I was sticking up my hand and bidding before I realised what I was doing; and by then it was too late, the other interested parties had dropped out and the auctioneer was singing out, Sold to the weasel-faced gentleman at the back.

  EIGHTEEN

  Fuck, I thought, but it was past helping. They do really horrible things to people who make successful auction bids on Delos and then don't want to pay It did cross my mind to turn her loose, or knock her on the head during the journey home and shove her over the side. Nobody would suspect anything if I did. True, Roman law says you can't go killing slaves, even your own, just because you feel like it. But what kind of aedile's clerk would suspect a bloke of killing his slave when said bloke's just forked out a grossly inflated price for her? No, if I wanted to kill Blandinia, so long as I was reasonably discreet about it, my chances of getting in trouble were practically nil.

  But then my inner voice said, Don't be stupid, you wouldn't do a thing like that, you aren't the killing sort. True enough. Which meant that as soon as I handed over my letter of credit from Laberius' bank and got the paper title, I'd be lumbered with her until one of us died. Talk about holding a wolf by the ears; if I let her go, she'd know I was still alive and race off to tell her gangster friends; if I sold her on to someone else, there'd still be a chance that she'd find some way of getting word to the bad guys; and if I kept her, it'd be like sharing the house with an invisible scorpion, waiting for the disgusting thing to sting you to death. Wonderful; and to think, I'd just parted with good money for the privilege.

  The auctioneer's clerk came over and looked at me, like I was something he'd found floating wrong way up in his wine. The sight of Gnaeus Laberius' seal on my bit of parchment changed all that. For what little it's worth, the Laberius seal showed Mercury in flight, looking back over his shoulders at his own rather overdeveloped bum. Still, it impressed the hell out of the clerk. He scuttled away, leaving me to brood on my stupidity for the rest of the auction.

  Afterwards I went up to the desk and did the paperwork — they got a bit snotty when I told them I hadn't got a seal of my own, being a working farmer, not a gentleman; in the end, one of the auctioneer's people lent me his, and I used that to counter-seal the draft. I don't suppose it was strictly legal, but I had other things on my mind just then, and couldn't be bothered with meaningless details.

  After that, there was nothing for it but to step up and claim my property.

  As I think I mentioned a while back, this wasn't the first time I'd bought a person. But when I got my two Syrians, it was all quite different; more like a proper hiring fair than something involving taking possession of another human being. When I got the Syrians, all I did was look at them, make my mind up, hand over the money and sort of beckon, and they followed me quite quietly, like well-trained dogs. It was a bit awkward starting a conversation with them on the way back home — I wasn't even sure they spoke Greek — but at some point I think I said something about the right way of forcing fennel seedlings, and one of them said, That's not how we do it where I'm from, and after that we just talked about farming and stuff. It's easy when it's men. We can always find something to talk about, activities or objects or places we've been. After all, men work (unless they're senators or rich bastards) so the chances are they've always got something in common; and I've never come across two women who haven't had something to say to each other; in fact, the trick is knowing how to make them shut the hell up. But when it's a bloke and a woman, it can be really hard at the best of times, and when you mix in other ingredients, like the fact that the man' s just bought the woman, or the woman's to blame for a whole bunch of horrible things that the man's only just managed to get out of alive, it's no wonder if the ice is hard to break.

  Best thing, my old mother told me once when she was sober, when you can't think of anything to say, is not to say anything at all. Like most of my mum's pearls of wisdom, it's a lemon. The longer you go on not saying anything, the harder it gets. I didn't say anything when the clerk brought her over. I just grunted awkwardly when he handed over the rather pathetic, tatty little cloth bag that contained her one change of clothes — the fact that he handed it to me rather than her wasn't lost on either of us — and after he'd shoved off, I couldn't think what to do. So I didn't say anything; I just sort of beckoned, like I'd done with the Syrians, and started walking towards the docks.

  Well, she followed, just like a well-trained dog; only she wasn't a dog (a bitch, yes, but not a dog), she was a human being, Plato's featherless biped.

  All sorts of dumb ideas skittered across my mind. I could pretend I hadn't recognised her (yeah, as if); or I could be stony-faced and hard and cruel, so she'd be too scared to look at me (only I'm about as scary as a plate of endive salad); or I could start talking loudly about the weather. I was turning this shit over in my mind when she said, 'Ga
len.'

  I turned round. 'Yes?' I said.

  She wasn't looking at me. 'Galen,' she repeated, 'where's your friend? Nero Caesar, I mean. Is he all right?'

  Couldn't make out what was behind that; she made it sound like she had to know, but that could easily have been play-acting. Still. 'He's dead,' I replied.

  'Oh.' She didn't say anything for a bit, then went on, 'What happened?'

  'Drowned,' I said. 'In a shipwreck.'

  'Oh.' Another pause. 'I'm sorry,' she said.

  'No you aren't,' I'd replied, before I realised it. 'That is, unless you reckon drowning was too good for him. Anyhow, he's dead, so I hope you're satisfied.'

  Rather cruel, yes; but I can be like that, a bit short and churlish when I'm feeling awkward. Anyhow, why the hell should her feelings worry me? Even so, I felt the need to say something else, to plaster over the crack, as it were.

  'So,' I said, 'what's the story with you? Last I heard, you were a free woman, Or were you telling lies when you told me that?'

  She made a sort of snorting noise, not at all what I'd expected. 'Oh yes,' she said, 'I was free, for a while. Only, there's a law in Rome, when a man's declared a public enemy and all his property's confiscated by the Treasury, that includes all his slaves he's recently set free. I was two days inside the limit, would you believe.'

  'I never knew that before,' I said, just for something to say. 'Well, that sounds like just the sort of thing the Romans'd put in a law But hang on,' I added. 'Where does all this public enemy stuff come in? Your old master — god, what was his name? I can't remember.'

  'Licinius Pollio. When you started that fire, it did so much damage there was an enquiry, and somehow they got the idea it was a gang war thing and he was one of the gang bosses. So they rounded me up, and next thing I knew I was in Delos .

  Funny,' she went on, 'when Pollio gave me my papers, I really thought I was free and clear, and all my troubles were over. Should've known better, really, shouldn't I?'

  I didn't say anything. No doubt about it, she'd had a raw deal. Quite apart from being born a slave, and whatever it was Lucius Domitius did to her when she was a kid, she'd definitely got cause to complain about so-called Roman justice. But then, she had been responsible for a lot of deaths, just out of malice and greed. A bit like Lucius Domitius himself, don't you think, except that he'd been thoughtless rather than vicious or greedy. All comes down to the same thing in the end, though; him, me and her, none of us were what you'd ever call nice people.

  'Anyway,' she went on, 'it looks like things must've worked out well for you.'

  'Can't complain,' I said. 'Actually, I had a slice of good luck, for a change.'

  'Good for you,' she said.

  We walked on in dead silence for a long time. It was only when we were in sight of the dockside that she asked, 'Excuse me, but where are we going?'

  Of course, I hadn't told her that. ' Athens ,' I said.

  'Oh.'

  'Actually,' I went on, 'it's not Athens proper. Phyle; it's a village up in the hills 'I know,' she interrupted. 'Where you were born.'

  Should've guessed she'd know all about me, after all her careful research and intelligence—gathering. 'That's right,' I said. 'And now I've moved back there.

  Is that all right by you? Or would you rather I sold up and moved somewhere else?'

  That seemed to hurt her, God knows why. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'I know it's none of my business, but I was just curious. I didn't mean anything by it.'

  I shrugged. 'That's all right,' I said. 'It's only fair you should know where you're being taken.' She lifted her head. 'Actually,' she said, 'it's not. But you're new to all this, so you wouldn't know You don't have to tell me anything;

  I mean, we could get on a ship here and off again the other side somewhere I didn't recognise, and I could live there the rest of my life without even knowing what country I was in, if you didn't feel like telling me.

  That made me feel bad, but I tried not to let it show. 'Anyway,' I said, 'we're going to Phyle. It's a nice place, if you don't mind the simple life.'

  'Thank you,' she said.

  I looked round till I saw the ship I'd come in on, and headed for it. And I was thinking of something I'd heard Seneca say, at some party or gathering or whatever. He'd said that when you buy slaves, you should always look at them naked before making your mind up. When you buy a horse, he said, you tell the bloke to take off the horse blanket so you can look at it properly; same thing, he said, with a slave. And at the time I'd been a bit surprised, maybe even just a little shocked, because Seneca had always made a point of chatting to slaves like they were people, listening to what they had to say instead of just ignoring them or telling them to shut up. But then, he was a Roman senator. If senators didn't ever talk to people who they reckoned were totally inferior, the only people they'd ever speak to would be each other. So, to him, a slave or a soldier or a farmer or even a Roman knight were all pretty much the same: all human beings, all more or less equal with each other, just not with him.

  We got on the ship, and I found the captain and said, This one here's with me; and he asked how much, and I told him a figure that was about half of what I'd really paid, the way you do, and he said I'd got a bargain there; also, if I wanted a bit of privacy on the way back, he could have the men curtain off a bit of space in the hold, where he had a load of wool bales.

  Straight up, it was a moment or so before I figured out what he was on about.

  Honestly, the thought hadn't crossed my mind. Not that she wasn't nice-looking, in a crab-apple sort of a way; but she was also a murderer, or next best thing, and it wasn't so long ago that I'd had to talk Pony-tail and Alexander out of killing me on her orders. The truth is, I was still more than a bit terrified of her; and that isn't my scene, really But I thanked the captain anyway, said it was a kind thought but not to bother; didn't give him any reason why not, just left it at that. He shrugged, and said we'd be ready to sail soon as they'd got the last of the cargo on board. Then I found a bit of deck that didn't have sailors all over it, dumped my bag so as to have something to lie on, settled down and tried to get comfy.

  I wasn't sick at all on the journey home. She was. I don't know what they'd fed her on in the slave compound, but there must've been a fair amount of it, judging by what she sent over the side. At least it solved the problem of what to talk about, since when she wasn't leaning over the rail making revolting noises, she was curled up on a pile of ropes groaning and clutching at her guts.

  It was probably as well I hadn't planned on taking the captain up on his thoughtful offer; it'd have been a right Hercules' breakfast, the state she was in. But sitting there on the deck, fairly comfortable in the warm sun, watching her chuck her guts up into the wine-dark sea, it was hard to believe I'd seriously considered killing her, not all that long ago. You can't really take someone seriously as a threat when they're bright green in the face, with bits of sick dribbling down their chin.

  By the time we made landfall on Tenos she was over the worst of it, though she wouldn't eat, just sipped a little water straight from the ladle. We were talking by that stage, too. It'd started cautiously enough — 'Are you feeling any better?' 'No.' — but we'd gradually got beyond that, though none of our chats lasted very long, mostly because she had to keep breaking off in order to sprint to the rail. Little by little, though, we both loosened up a bit; the awkwardness had gone, though we still didn't have a lot we could talk about safely For my part, I couldn't see any harm in just talking; I'll talk to anybody, pretty much, assuming they can bring themselves to talk to me. True, she was a murderous bitch who'd tried to sell Lucius Domitius and me to the gangsters like we were beef cattle. On the other hand, I'd just bought her, which sort of evened the score, if only because it dragged me down to her level.

  Besides, there was a case for saying that since it was my best buddy Lucius Domitius who'd been responsible for her ending up all savage and twisted — and he was a monster of depravity
and a matricide, and that had never seemed to bother me much — I couldn't very well come over all snotty where she was concerned. Most of all, though, it was just nice to have someone to talk to.

  That may sound rather strange; after all, I was back living in Attica , where everybody talks all the damn time. But there's talking and talking. I'd had to face the fact that I'd been away for a long time, and since I'd come back I'd found it strangely hard to get back in tune with my neighbours, even the ones I'd known since I was a little kid. Not so strange, maybe. I'd been places they hadn't even heard of, done things they couldn't have understood (and probably just as well, though of course I never said anything about that sort of stuff, I'd come home from the army, remember, after twenty-four years blameless service, never been drunk on parade or absent without leave). So all right, I didn't really want to talk to anyone about those places or those things. But I missed having someone who'd understand what I was going on about if ever I did feel the need; put it another way, someone who spoke my language, because it wasn't pure unsullied Attic Greek any more. Often I'd caught myself using a word my neighbours didn't know, or having to stop and think, How do they say this in Attica , rather than Cappadocia or Cilicia or Italy ? It wasn't just the dialect, mind you, I could've put up with that until I'd picked up decent Attic again. It was all the stuff that lay behind the strange words, ideas and experiences, a way of life — one I was bloody glad to have left behind me, but even so. That's who I really was, not Sosistrata's boy from Phyle who'd never been further from home than Athens City . You can do a lot to change who you are; you can even pretend to die, and then make believe you're someone completely different. But you'll never convince yourself.

  So anyway, once we'd got on speaking terms, I found I enjoyed talking to her.