In the Shadow of Heroes

by Nicholas Bowling

  He’d nearly reached the kitchen before he realized that she’d stopped following him. She was standing next to the fountain, her eyes closed, breathing deeply. In the sunlight he saw how pale Tog’s hair was – like silver and gold thread, in a ponytail that reached her shoulder blades. He rarely saw anything like it in Rome.

  He was still staring when she finally turned and blinked at him. She smiled briefly and came over to where he stood in the shade of the peristyle.

  ‘I can’t remember the last time I could just stand and listen to the birds,’ she said.

  Inside the kitchen, it soon became clear why Bufo hadn’t heard them breaking into the house the night before. He was slumped in the corner, cradling an amphora of wine, sleeping off a hangover. It was well known that he liked to drink on the job, but the absence of Tullus had obviously encouraged him to really push the boat out.

  Cadmus put a finger to his lips, laid the tablet down next to the stove, and began to gather fruit and bread from the shelves.

  ‘Oh, hello!’ said Tog in a voice that wasn’t even close to a whisper.

  Bufo gurgled like a baby, then went back to whatever wine-drenched dream he was having. Cadmus turned around. Tog had her finger in the bars of a tiny cage resting on a work surface, in which a dozen or so small furry bodies were wriggling.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ she asked, still too loud, her face a mask of concern. ‘Poor things.’

  ‘Dormice,’ Cadmus whispered, in an attempt to encourage her to lower her volume. ‘For dinner.’

  ‘For dinner?’

  Bufo stirred again.

  Cadmus pointed at the door. ‘Go!’ he mouthed, a bag of provisions in one hand, the tablet in another.

  ‘You mean, you eat them?’ She wasn’t even trying to keep her voice down any more.

  ‘Can we discuss this some other time?’ he hissed, and made to leave.

  Tog didn’t move. She looked so sad all of a sudden. ‘The poor things.’

  ‘They’re just mice.’

  ‘What do you mean, just mice?’ she said loudly.

  Bufo’s eyes opened. For a moment he seemed unsure of where he was. He frowned and slurped at the saliva pooling around his lips. He looked at Cadmus, then at Tog, then at Cadmus again. Then at the food he’d pilfered. The toad’s face and neck swelled.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he slurred. ‘Who’s she? And who let you in?’

  He spoke to them in Latin, and Tog frowned in incomprehension.

  ‘Calm down, Bufo,’ said Cadmus. He could hear a quiver in his voice. Perhaps this wouldn’t be as entertaining as he’d hoped. The old slave was unpredictable when he was drunk. Tog, meanwhile, seemed unconcerned by the whole situation, and was still trying to find a way to open the cage.

  ‘I’ll have you whipped!’ he said. ‘When the master comes back, he’ll beat you black and blue! Thieves!’

  ‘He’s not coming back,’ said Cadmus, feeling like the soles of his feet had melted and stuck him to the spot. ‘I told you that. But she might be able to help us find out what’s happened to him.’

  Bufo laughed and got unsteadily to his feet. Cadmus watched his cheeks and forehead turn the colour of raw meat. ‘Well, if you’re so sure Tullus has gone, I suppose I’ll have to discipline you myself . . .’

  He seized a rolling pin from the bench next to the stove, and lurched forward. At exactly the same time, Tog opened the cage.

  The dormice scattered in all directions in twos and threes. Tog smiled, her face transformed again. Bufo tried to stop himself mid-lunge, but he already had too much drunken momentum. His legs buckled and he fell to his hands and knees, swiping wildly at the grey smudges as they raced away to freedom. He was far too slow. In the space of two heartbeats, all of the mice had disappeared.

  Tog clapped and muttered a word of triumph in her own language. She turned to follow Cadmus out of the door, but hadn’t noticed Bufo groping for the rolling pin again and picking himself off the floor. He was growling like an animal.

  ‘You useless . . .’

  ‘Look out!’ Cadmus yelled, but it was too late. The old toad staggered into her and brought his club down heavily, clumsily, on the back of her neck. Cadmus’s feet still didn’t want to move.

  Tog didn’t go down, though. Instead, she turned, as though someone had tapped her on the shoulder. Bufo tried to swing the rolling pin again, but she caught his hand in hers, and squeezed. He dropped the weapon.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ she said in that calm, deep, undulating voice.

  Bufo winced, his face now almost the same shade as the wine he was pickled in. Cadmus remembered, with some satisfaction, when he’d been in the same position as Bufo, his hand crushed, after the old slave had caught him eavesdropping.

  ‘Who are you, monster?’ Bufo snarled, creased in pain.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Tog asked.

  ‘He wants to know who you are.’

  ‘Then tell him. I am Togodumna, daughter of Caradog, granddaughter of Cunobeline, King of the Catuvellauni. And I am asking him nicely to go back to sleep.’

  Cadmus saw her knuckles flex, and Bufo made a wet-sounding cry. Then she released him and he tottered backwards, holding one hand in the other.

  ‘You’ll pay for this! Both of you!’

  She left him whimpering, pushed past Cadmus, who was still standing frozen on the threshold, and returned to the atrium. When Cadmus finally tore himself away from the scene, he found Charis, Clitus, the other slave girl and two of the other cooks peering into the kitchen. He couldn’t decide whether their expressions were of admiration, or disapproval, or fear, or some mixture of the three. He didn’t waste time trying to explain. He turned, smiled weakly, and followed Tog – although, as she’d just revealed, she was so much more than just Tog – back into the house.

  When he reached the atrium, the front door was wide open, and she was standing in the white sunlight with her hands on her hips.

  He stepped through after her.

  ‘It’s probably not wise for us to stay here,’ he said. He chewed on his lower lip. Masterless, now homeless.

  ‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the food, though, haven’t you?’

  ‘A little, yes.’

  ‘We should look for your master.’

  ‘Yes.’

  An awkward pause. One of Tullus’s wealthy neighbours bobbed past them in a litter, carried by two slaves. She leant out of the window and ogled them. Halfway down the hill, she was still craning her neck.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Cadmus said at last. ‘About who you were?’

  ‘You didn’t think to ask,’ Tog said.

  VI

  The pair of them sat on a pontoon on the banks of the Tiber, legs dangling, the yellow waters lapping at their feet. Tog was eating her third fig from the satchel, juice dripping from her chin. Cadmus chewed morosely on a piece of stale bread, his broken sandal on the floor next to him. A little further down the bank he could see the waste from the Cloaca Maxima sluicing into the stream, and when the wind was in a certain direction all he could smell was raw sewage. In the exact same spot he could see men fishing with nets. He grimaced.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Tog said, with her mouth full. The stench apparently didn’t bother her.

  He didn’t reply. Her large head came looming into the corner of his vision.

  ‘Hey. What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you were just bored.’ She went back to eating, and there were another few moments of silence. ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘What we should do. If Tullus doesn’t come back, then both of us are homeless. And I’m worried about this message from Silvanus. He was trying to tell Tullus something, I’m sure of it. Like you said, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of sending you all this way if the message was really that simple.’

  ‘Then we go looking for him.’

  ‘But he could be anywhere!’<
br />
  ‘Then we just look really hard.’

  ‘I don’t think even that would help. If he’s been recruited by Nero, then he’s either in the imperial palace – ’ Cadmus flapped his arm behind him at the Palatine Hill – ‘or he’s already left for Athens.’

  ‘If that’s where you’re headed, you’re on your own. I’m not going back there.’

  Cadmus shuffled on the pontoon to face her. ‘What exactly were you doing there?’

  Tog inspected her half-eaten fig, and then put the remainder on the edge of the pontoon. She’d done the same with the others. Three morsels of fruit in a neat row.

  ‘Well,’ she said, wiping her hands on her tunic, ‘I was working in the mines, to begin with. I’m good at digging. I suppose that’s why they picked me. Important people. A few us were taken away to the other side of the city, to dig for something else. I didn’t really understand what. From listening to Silveranus—’

  ‘Silvanus.’

  ‘Him. From what he was saying it sounded like some treasure. Something made of gold?’

  ‘The Golden Fleece,’ Cadmus murmured.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. That’s what they called it. Fleece. Strange word.’ She seemed lost in thought for a moment. ‘Anyway, we didn’t find anything while I was there. Then suddenly your man fell ill. He called me back to Athens with him. That was when he told me I had to deliver the message. He didn’t look so good. I wonder how he is.’

  Cadmus cleared his throat.

  ‘He’s dead,’ he said. ‘The fever took him. That’s why Tullus was asked to replace him.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Shame.’ She took a radish out of their bag of provisions and bit it cleanly in half.

  Cadmus scowled into the currents of the Tiber. The matter of the tablet still didn’t make sense. He might not have expected Silvanus to mention the expedition if it was a secret project, but why agree to a dinner party when he was racked with fever?

  ‘What even is this treasure?’ asked Tog. ‘Something you wear?’

  ‘It’s from one of our myths. A Greek story, not Roman. A man called Jason, a hero, went on a quest to claim the fleece of a sacred golden ram. His uncle had taken his kingdom from him, and gave Jason the task of finding the fleece to win it back – but he knew the task was impossible, and hoped it would get Jason out of the way. But Jason agreed. He built a ship called the Argo, and he collected together a group of famous heroes to be his crew, the Argonauts. Then he sailed to Colchis, in the far east, and had to complete three trials to win the fleece back from the king there, called Aeëtes.’

  Tog yawned.

  ‘He had to plough a field with some fire-breathing bulls; then he had to defeat a field of warriors who had grown out of the ground; and then he had to find a way past a giant serpent who was guarding the Golden Fleece itself. He was only able to complete the task with the help of the king’s daughter, Medea, who was a sorceress. She gave him the potions that allowed him to get the fleece – the flames of the bulls didn’t touch him, and he was able to put the serpent to sleep.’

  ‘What’s a sorceress?’

  ‘Like a priestess. Or a witch. Do you know what I mean by a witch?’

  She nodded. ‘Sounds like she is the hero of the story. Sounds like Jason didn’t really do anything, apart from sail a ship around.’

  Cadmus thought for a moment. ‘I suppose you could look at it that way. But there’s more to the story. They fell in love, and she came back to Greece with him. Jason got, um, embarrassed because his wife wasn’t quite normal.’

  ‘I know what that feels like.’

  ‘He went off with another woman, and abandoned Medea in a country where she wasn’t welcome.’

  ‘Bet she didn’t stand for that.’

  ‘Absolutely not. To get her revenge, she killed their children.’

  ‘Oh. Fair.’ She yawned again. ‘And the treasure. The fleece. What happened to it?’

  ‘No one really knows. There are lots of different accounts.’

  ‘And now your emperor wants it?’

  ‘The emperor,’ he corrected. ‘Not my emperor. But, yes, he’s trying to find where it’s got to. The fleece has always been a symbol of kingship. Of divine power. They said it had healing properties. That it protected its wearer. Even made him invulnerable.’

  ‘Hm. Sounds good.’

  Cadmus gave a low, humourless laugh. ‘It does, doesn’t it? But then all bedtime stories do.’

  ‘You don’t believe it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Cadmus said. ‘Myths are fascinating things, and they can tell us a lot about ourselves, but we mustn’t believe any of these things actually happened.’

  He shook his head. Ridiculous, that people should be dying for the sake of something that never existed. People like Silvanus. Perhaps people like Tullus too.

  He looked at the heel of bread in his hand, so hard it was inedible, and threw it into the water.

  ‘Hey! Don’t do that.’ Tog got on to her knees and stretched out into the yellow-brown ripples to fetch it back. ‘That’s perfectly good food.’ She placed the waterlogged crust next to the other bits of fruit. She’d also balanced the other half of the radish on the edge of the boards as well.

  Cadmus rubbed his brow, his brain already too overwhelmed to make sense of this extra bit of strangeness. She seemed to be leaving offerings for some tiny god or goddess. ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

  ‘I’m preparing a little feast.’

  ‘You’ve already eaten half of our supplies, Tog. These were meant to last longer than today.’

  ‘It’s not for me.’

  Cadmus closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘It’s for him.’

  When he opened them again, she was holding the tiny body of a dormouse in one of her hands. It explored the edges of her huge palm, nose twitching, and then ran up to the crook of her elbow.

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘From the kitchen.’

  ‘I know that, but how is it here?’

  ‘He is here because he took a ride in the sleeve of my tunic.’

  ‘I thought you said you wanted to set them free!’

  ‘I did. But this one jumped on to me and hasn’t left me since. It’s his choice. I’m not forcing him. Here you are, friend . . .’

  She plucked the mouse from her arm with thumb and forefinger and set him down next to the meal she’d arranged on the edge of the pontoon. The creature ran from one piece to the next, with steps so fast and small it looked like he was on tiny wheels.

  ‘How do you know it’s a he?’

  Tog shrugged. ‘Just a feeling.’

  The dormouse settled on a piece of fig and began nibbling.

  ‘Great,’ said Cadmus. ‘Another mouth to feed.’

  Tog didn’t bother replying to that. She just watched her new companion tucking in and smiled, smiled like she had in the garden. She so rarely made any expression, it was like the sun clearing storm clouds.

  While she was preoccupied, Cadmus reached into his satchel and took out the wax tablet. When he opened it again he groaned.

  ‘Oh, no . . .’

  Tog looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘The wax. It’s melted. I must have left it too close to the stove in the kitchens. Damn it!’ The yellow sheet was twice as thick at the bottom as at the top, the text was warped and sagging and in some areas had been swallowed up completely.

  ‘Why is that a problem? It was only a couple of lines. You can remember them, can’t you?’

  ‘Of course I can remember them, it’s just—’ Then he saw something. In the top left-hand corner of the wax tablet’s wooden frame. A pale, stained corner of papyrus, exposed where the wax had melted and thinned.

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ Cadmus laughed. ‘Of course. I’m so stupid.’

  ‘Well. I didn’t want to say so.’

  ‘It’s the oldest trick there is!’ He looked up at
Tog, beaming. ‘Make sure you clean the tables! He’s hidden his real message under the wax. He wanted Tullus to clean off the top layer.’

  He began to pick at the smooth, hard surface, but it just came off in tiny chunks and got stuck under his fingernails. He tried using the edge of the pontoon, the edge of his sandal, but nothing would take the wax off cleanly, and he was afraid of damaging the papyrus underneath.

  ‘We need to get it melted again,’ he said. ‘We need heat. A fire of some kind.’

  ‘Here, use this.’

  From a fold in her grubby tunic, where it was cinched around the waist, she produced a razor; a broad, flat piece of iron with a wolf’s head as a handle. He recognized it immediately.

  ‘By Heracles, Tog, what else have you stolen from my house?’

  ‘What? Is your master going to miss it?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘I liked the wolf. Reminds me of home.’

  That word again.

  ‘Right,’ said Cadmus.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll give it back when we find him. I just thought it would be useful. And looks like I was right, doesn’t it?’

  He eyed her warily, suddenly aware again of how little he knew about her. How little he could trust her.You didn’t just steal things that you liked the look of from your master. That sort of thing could get you killed. He looked at the scars on her arms and caught himself wondering how much they were her own fault.

  No, he had to reprimand himself. None of it is her fault.

  Tog proffered the blade and he took it from her carefully. She went back to fussing over the mouse, and he began to slowly scrape the wax from the tablet. It peeled off in thin, pale curls, until the entirety of Silvanus’s secret message was revealed. He removed the square of papyrus from the frame and unfolded it. The letters were cramped and half-formed, written by a hasty or a failing hand.

  ‘Well?’ said Tog, lifting the mouse and the fig he was gorging on back into her palm. ‘What does it say?’