A Song For Nero

by Tom Holt

  And then someone moved in front of me. I looked up, and it was Blandinia.

  'Did you get— oh.' She stopped dead still. Stupid bitch had taken me for one of the gladiators.

  I grinned at her mistake; and then I realised, something wasn't right, suddenly the books didn't balance any more. But first things first; I jumped up and went after her, and I caught up with her after six paces. First, though, I pushed her to the ground and put my boot on her neck.

  'You told him, didn't you?' I said.

  'The governor? Yes,' she answered. 'I wrote him a letter, sent it by the carrier's cart to Athens . He promised me a reward, money and freedom. But I didn't do it for that.'

  'I'll bet,' I said, and I held her head steady with my boot as I swung the hoe.

  And that really was murder, and I couldn't give a damn.

  As I straightened my back, I was figuring again. Maybe there'd been a sixth man; quite likely Someone they'd left outside as a guard, or just to hold the horses.

  At any rate, I probably ought to find out. So I went back to the barn and looked for the body Couldn't find it, of course, in the dark; so I went over to the corner, found the senator and the two gladiators, then retraced my steps from there. Found it that way, eventually, and dragged it over into the light of the burning stable, where I could see.

  It was Lucius Domitius.

  TWENTY-ONE

  So there I was, stood in the middle of my yard. Dead people all over the place.

  My stable burnt to the ground, with my horse in it. Just lucky I'd turned the donkey and the mules out onto the bolted vetch to graze a day or so earlier, or they'd have been roasted too. Well, you've got to look on the bright side.

  Could have been worse. The barn and pighouse could've caught fire too, and quite possibly the house, with all those sparks and hot embers flying about. The governor and his men could've trampled my vines and slaughtered my poultry, out of spite. I could've been killed. In fact, it was nothing short of a miracle that I'd survived, considering what I'd done — odds of four to one, not counting the governor, and them all trained fighting men. If I hadn't done what I did, we'd all have been dead anyhow. Looked at that way, it was like saving one piece of furniture out of a burning house, or one jewelled gold belt from a lost hoard of buried treasure; everything you get away with is pure profit.

  Well. You can see why I never managed to make my fortune telling the tale. My old mother used to say, how can you fool other people if you can't fool yourself?

  I went back inside the house. Smicro and Ptolemy were still where I'd left them, hanging by their thumbs from a rafter. Poor buggers. Weren't they ever surprised to see me? They were sure I'd been killed, along with everybody else. I cut them down and they flopped on the deck looking miserable and scared, hugging their wrecked hands under their armpits like cold children.

  'It's all right,' I told them, 'they're dead, the Roman and the gladiators.'

  Smicro stared at me like I was crazy 'What happened?' he said.

  'I killed them,' I answered. Couldn't be bothered with long explanations just then. 'Mum's dead, though, and Blandinia, and my friend. How are you feeling?'

  'All right,' Ptolemy replied. 'My hands hurt.'

  I nodded. 'Look,' I said, 'we've got work to do, and we can't afford to waste time. I know you're hurting, but I need you two to help. We've got to get rid of the bodies, or we'll all be in the shit. It won't take long,' I lied, 'and then I'll set you two free. Is that a deal?'

  They looked at each other. 'All right,' Smicro said. 'What needs doing?'

  So I told them what to do. While they hunted round for the bodies in the dark, I went out and caught up the mules (contrary bloody animals; did I tell you I've never had much luck with them?) and backed them into the shafts of the farm cart. Then we loaded up. A real performance, that was. I was completely knackered by that stage, only keeping going because I knew I had to. Smicro and Ptolemy couldn't use their hands at all, and their arms and shoulders weren't a hell of a lot of use, so lifting the bodies up on to the cart was a right old pantomime. We managed it, though, in the end, even if it took us the rest of the night; the light was just starting to seep though when I goaded up the mules and we set off for the mountains; me up on the box with all the dead people in back, Smicro and Ptolemy walking along beside the wheels.

  A man in a cart and his two slaves on the road in the early morning; most natural thing in the world. Walk down any road in Attica and you'll see something similar, a farmer off to market with a load of olives or corn or wine or pigs, live and dead stock. So nobody took any notice. You hear in stories about the heroes with their helmets and cloaks of invisibility, magical gifts from the gods, but who needs stuff like that? There's nothing on earth as invisible as an ordinary bloke going about his business; nobody sees you, nobody cares. Makes you wonder why the heroes bother with all that enchanted hardware, when all they really need to do is stick a bashed-up old leather hat on their head and slouch down on the box of a ratty old two-wheeler behind two thin mules. I guess the kit doesn't really matter, so long as the job gets done — like, for instance, who needs a gold-hilted blue-steel magic sword forged by Vulcan himself when you can smash someone's head in with a plain old hoe?

  The going gets rough north-west of Phyle, as you head towards Boeotia . It's useless country, only fit for sheep and skinny goats to wander about on. The roads, if you can call them that, wind round the sides of mountains that fall away sheer into canyons and goyles, and it doesn't take much for a cart to go tumbling over the side and get scrunched into splinters on the rocks before it reaches the bottom.

  Or so you'd have thought. Don't you believe it. We picked a likely spot, where a fat lump of road had crumbled away, with a sickening drop below I stopped the cart and jumped down, and we tried to get it to go over. Could we manage it?

  Could we hell as like, mostly because of those miserable, ignorant bloody mules.

  Never had any luck with them. Soon as they figured out we were trying to edge them off the road, they started backing and stalling, making a hell of a racket and refusing to budge an inch. Smicro and Ptolemy weren't a lot of good, not being able to use their hands. All they could do was kick and swear, while I got on the inside and tried to nudge the wretched animals sideways. Eventually, after what seemed like for ever, we contrived to get one wheel of the cart over the edge. Then I fetched a long bit of branch, and with all three of us heaving on one end, we managed to lever the cart sideways bit by bit, till suddenly it started to go. The mules got stroppy and tried to pull it back onto the road, but the weight was more than they could handle; it pulled them backwards off the crumbling path, very slowly and gradually, until at last they were dragged off their feet and sent tumbling down the mountainside in a flurry of broken limbs.

  We watched them all the way to the bottom, as the cart broke up, scattering bits of timber and wheel, dead people and dying animals, all eventually coming to rest among the rocks and scrubby rubbish of the canyon floor.

  'Well,' I said, 'that's that done. Let's go home.'

  On the way back, I explained, best as I could. I told them about how I'd figured my best chance was surprise, in the dark; how I got the other two gladiators out of the way by posting them round the back of the stable; how setting fire to it bought me the precious extra moments I needed; how I had the wit to call out in Latin, so the last two gladiators thought I was the senator. I told them the cavalryman had killed Mum, and I'd killed Blandinia for selling me out (though I didn't give any reason why the senator should want to harm me, a respectable ex-soldier with twenty-four years' blameless service). I didn't say anything about Lucius Domitius. It'd have complicated the story, and I've always found it's best to keep it simple when you're telling the tale.

  I was dead on my feet by the time we got home, but there wasn't any time to rest. We had the yard to clear up. There was stuff all over the place that shouldn't have been there; swords and hats and boots to be gathered up and buried deep in
the shitheap, the governor's sedan chair to be smashed up into firewood (fuck, I thought; we could just as easily have pitched that bloody thing off the cliff, and in fact it'd have been more convincing, a senator and his escort travelling in a chair rather than a peasant's cart; and then I wouldn't have had to waste a perfectly good wagon and two expensive mules), a funeral pyre to be built and lit for Mum and Blandinia — at least we were able to use the busted-up chair for that, instead of good lumber, which is never cheap. When at last we'd done everything, and been round three times checking just in case there was something we'd overlooked, I yawned till I nearly broke my jaw, and staggered towards the house to get my head down.

  'Just a moment,' Smicro said, sounding a bit embarrassed.

  'What?' I muttered.

  'Our freedom,' he said. 'Remember?'

  I'd forgotten; genuinely forgotten, not trying to cheat them or anything. 'Oh, yes, right,' I said. 'Look, can't it wait till tomorrow? I'm shagged out.'

  They looked at each other. 'We'd rather do it now, if it's all the same to you,' they said.

  I couldn't blame them, of course. After all, I could have died in my sleep, and then they'd have been really screwed. So I did the business, mumbling the words with my eyelids feeling like lead weights, and then I went into the house, and they went off to the bunkhouse. Normal sort of thing; except that now, of course, they were free and clear, and all their troubles were finally over.

  And I — I'd just killed seven people, watched my mother being murdered, cold-bloodedly staved in the head of a girl I thought I was in love with, accidentally slaughtered my best, my only friend —I dropped down on the bed like a sack of charcoal and was fast asleep before my back hit the cords.

  Oddly enough, I dreamed about the captain of the grain freighter. I dreamed that I was him, and that I was in charge, like a captain always is. What I was in charge of, I'm not sure; at times it was the ship, taking Lucius Domitius and me away from Sicily, with millions of sesterces' worth of gold plate and bullion crammed in the hold; at other times, we were back on that clifftop in Africa, that temple where we'd found Dido's treasure, and we were trying to load up a huge consignment of dead bodies we'd discovered down in the crypt — hundreds and thousands of them, there were, all people we'd killed at some time or other, and how we were meant to pack, ship and embark all those thousands and millions of dead, stiff bodies without any carts or cranes or derricks or winches, I just couldn't begin to imagine (all we had to work with, I remember, was one coil of rope, a ponderous hoe and a sedan chair), and then it struck me, it was obvious what I had to do: I reached inside my satchel, where I'd got all the provisions I'd bought for Lucius Domitius' journey, and fished out a copy of the collected works of Virgilius Maro, because it was all in there — complete instructions, everything you needed to know about ploughing and harrowing and planting, shifting heavy loads, lading ships and transporting dead bodies. It seemed to take ages to find the right place — I kept scrolling down through the roll and missing the bit I wanted and having to go back to the start — and when at last I finally found the bit I was after, it was all in some weird language and I couldn't read it. Then Amyntas and Tityrus and Smicro and the governor of Sicily and all the rest of the crew started muttering, and I knew I had to come up with something fast or I'd be in real trouble, they'd kill me and share out all the bodies among themselves; so I turned to Seneca and asked him what I should do, but he just shook his head and said I was the emperor, it was up to me and nobody else could help me. All this time, of course, the fire was getting closer and closer; I could hear the crackle of the flames, and the screaming horses.

  So I made up my mind, we'd have to go with the collapsing ship idea, even though I knew it probably wouldn't work; but it did — at least, it sank like a stone, but everybody managed to get out and swim to shore, and there we all were, standing naked and alone on the beach on Scheria; and we were all free and clear, and all our problems— And then I woke up.

  First thing I did was wander across the yard to the bunkhouse. I wasn't even sure those two would still be there, now they were free men and could go where the hell they liked (and I was free too, once, and I went all over the world, but never found anywhere I liked). But there they were, sitting at the table looking quiet and subdued, with their hands all wrapped up in cloth.

  I couldn't help grinning. 'It's all right,' I said, 'you're still free, it wasn't a dream or anything.'

  We had a chat. Upshot was, they were quite happy to stay on indefinitely, having nowhere else to go, and carry on working for me same as before. In return they'd get board and lodging, plus basic wages — which worked out at a few drachmas a year more than I'd been giving them anyway, since I'd been fairly generous with their peculium (there isn't a Greek word for it, Greeks don't usually pay their slaves, it's a Roman custom, mostly I guess all those years going round with a Roman must've turned me soft, or something). To be honest, I couldn't really see it made any difference to them being free, but they seemed to think quite highly of it.

  There wasn't any question of them being fit for work for a while, after what the governor's men had done to them, so I told them they might as well take it easy, and left them to get on with it. That left me in a fix, with just me to do all the work. In a way, I was lucky. Between the setting of the Pleiades and the rising of Arcturus, there's not a great deal that needs doing around the place.

  You've got your late ploughing, of course, and there's always the pruning to be done, though you can usually fit that in to suit. Otherwise, there were just the usual daily chores: milking the goats and the ewes, mending and ditching, a new cart to be built to replace the one I'd shoved off the cliff, all boring stuff that's got to be done whether you like it or not. I'd probably be able to cope, so long as I didn't mind starting early and finishing late. Comical, in a way; for the next month or so, I'd be working my guts out to support my two ex-slaves in comfortable leisure, like they were Romans or something. But that's farming for you. The idea that you just stick stuff in the ground and come back when it's finished growing is all very well, but it never seems to work out like that, somehow Anyway, once I'd made sure I still had a household of sorts, I went out to the barn and put my hoe away; then it was off to town, to buy a couple of mules, and the nails and tyres I needed for the new cart. No horse any more, I had to walk.

  Oddly enough, the mountain hadn't got any less steep while I'd been riding around like a gentleman.

  I've never done any good with bloody mules. At first, I thought I wasn't going to be able to find any at all, not even for silly money; the army buyers had been round, scooping up everything on four legs that brayed. But someone I knew slightly in town told me about some bloke out the other side of Phalerum who'd come in to the city a day too late and missed the buyers; he might still have a pair of mules for sale, if I was lucky. So I trudged out to Phalerum and found the bloke; he reckoned he'd never even considered selling his mules, but he did have an uncle at Halinus who might still have a pair, if I felt like taking a chance that he hadn't flogged them to the army after all. Well, I'd come that far, and Halinus was only just down the long, rocky, dusty road, so off I went again. When I got there and asked, they told me the bloke's uncle had died a month or so back; however, his son-in-law, who'd had the mules, already had a pair of his own, so it might be worth my while paying him a visit and seeing if he was minded to sell them. By this stage I'd made my mind up that I wasn't going home without a pair of mules, even if I had to walk to Sparta to get them; also, the son-in-law lived a short distance outside Eleusis, which was practically on my way home (assuming I'd lost my way, or was wandering round in circles like a drunk after a festival). So I dragged myself down the road to Eleusis , found the place where the bloke lived, and bashed on his door.

  Obviously I wasn't expecting to find him at home during the day, but his wife ought to be able to tell me where I could find him.

  No answer; either he wasn't married, or his wife was in the inner roo
m with next door's houseboy, and didn't want to be disturbed. Screw it, I thought; and then it occurred to me that it was getting late, and there was no chance at all of getting back to Phyle before dark, or even as far as the city. Also, even if I could find space at an inn ( Eleusis was jam-packed with visitors for the Haloa Festival; just my bloody luck), I didn't have any money on me, aside from what I'd need to buy the mules. Choices were to hang around on the doorstep until the bloke came home, buy his mules (assuming he had mules to sell, of course) and then beg a bed for the night by way of luck-money, or bugger off and try and find a barn or a ditch fit for sleeping in while there was still enough light to see by Miserable choice, whichever way you care to look at it. I opted for the barn or the ditch, since by now I'd come to the conclusion that mules were entirely mythical beasts, like centaurs or hippogriffs, and the bloke would probably regard a stranger turning up out of the blue asking to buy them as a dangerous nutcase, and set his dogs on me. I walked away, head bowed, feet dragging, and headed in the general direction of Eleusis .

  Barns and ditches are a bit like the market police: ten a penny when you don't want one, impossible to find when you do. For two pins I'd have stretched out on the side of the road and gone to sleep, I was that tired, but the month of Posideon isn't a good time for sleeping rough if you value your health, so I kept going until I found myself in the town.

  I said the place was heaving because of the festival; I wasn't kidding. It'd been bad enough during the day. Darkness seemed to have drawn them out like bats; there were people everywhere, torchlight processions gumming up the streets, good-time drunks smashing things up wherever there was enough room to get a good swing with a walking stick, vomit underfoot and the sound of music everywhere. As far as kipping down in a doorway or a portico went, it was hard enough standing still, without getting swept along in a crowd. Eventually I found myself in the market square, where I got wedged into a crevice behind a statue, with no prospect of getting out again. So there I stayed; and I was weighing up the chances of getting some sleep standing up, like a horse, when I happened to look up and see a face I knew In Attica, of course, that's always a possibility; there's neighbours and friends of neighbours and relatives and neighbours of relatives and friends of neighbours of relatives, so the odds on bumping into someone you know are generally pretty good. But I couldn't place this bloke straight away; I knew him, but I wasn't sure who he was, if you follow me. Still, there was a chance that if he was local he might have a hayloft or a pighouse I could doss down in, so I pushed and heaved my way through the mob towards him. Might as well have tried to swim through the current off the reef round Scheria; all that happened was that I lost my comfy little nest behind the statue, and found myself out in midstream, so to speak, at the mercy of other people's feet and elbows. The bloke I knew, whoever he may have been, was long gone by this point. I stopped trying to control my destiny and let the crowd shove me around. My natural condition, after all. I just wished I'd trained as a pickpocket rather than a con man when I was young. I could've nicked myself a fortune in that crowd.