In the Shadow of Heroes

by Nicholas Bowling

‘We’re going,’ he said. ‘I think it would be better if only my master and I return to the city. It won’t be safe for you.’

  Her blindfold twitched.

  ‘The flames,’ she said.

  ‘The flames? What about them?’

  ‘I see them everywhere. All the time. More and more, every day.’

  The Argo creaked in the pause.

  ‘Maybe I have brought back the memories?’ he suggested. ‘Or you’re thinking of what happened on Mona?’

  ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘It bodes ill.’ She grabbed his arm and squeezed. ‘Be careful, my brother. All I see is fire. Destruction. Death.’

  And with that, she went back to talking with the dog. Cadmus withdrew slowly, trying not to set too much store by her words – but, as usual, they clung like burrs to his skin.

  The last leg of the journey was strangely serene. Sitting in the back of the cart, enjoying the broken shade of the cypress trees and watching boys training horses in the hot, yellow fields, it was almost possible to imagine that nothing had changed. Here he was, Cadmus the slave, accompanying his master back from his country estate; perhaps transcribing a letter to be sent upon their return; perhaps discussing who might win office this year, which province should be governed by whom.

  But then Cadmus looked down at his blistered hands and feet. He could see the sinews beneath his pale skin, taut and strong from his days at sea. He had calluses on his fingers and palms from helping with the sail. And he looked at the boys and their horses and knew that he had seen things that they couldn’t imagine in their wildest dreams.

  He was changed, he knew. He even had a new name, if he wanted to reclaim it.

  While he ruminated, they crested a hill and the magnificent heap of Rome came into view. It shimmered like a vision in the heat, its colours bleached by the sun. More carts and carriages and teams of slaves joined them on the road. Tombs, and the faces of their inhabitants, began to appear on either side.

  ‘Here we are, Cadmus,’ Tullus said. ‘Home at last.’ Cadmus nodded and smiled, but for some reason this didn’t feel in the least like a homecoming. After all he had been through, the place felt completely foreign. As the crowds grew, he felt like he was sticking out just as much as one of the heroidai. And then there was the added discomfort of Eriopis’s ominous words.

  He wished Tog were with him.

  ‘Something wrong?’ said Tullus.

  He shrugged. ‘I feel strange. Anxious.’

  Tullus managed a little chuckle. ‘Come now, my boy. We have travelled to the edge of the world, crossed wild, barbarian lands, and now you’re getting anxious? Rome is the centre of civilization.’

  ‘That,’ said Cadmus, ‘is exactly why I’m worried.’

  XXXI

  The Vicus Longus was seething with bodies, the washed and the unwashed, the sweat-drenched and the perfumed, every one of them in such a hurry they never gave Tullus or Cadmus a second glance. But then there was no reason why they should. Rome was full of young Greek slaves and old Italian men. Cadmus’s only distinctive feature was his eye, and he kept it half-closed as though squinting against the sun.

  They passed through the Subura, along the bottom end of the Forum and under the shadow of the Domus Transitoria. Cadmus’s escape from the palace seemed to belong to a different age, and certainly to a different Cadmus. He wondered if the emperor was inside, and hid on the opposite side of Tullus as they passed one of its many huge entrance halls.

  Walking up the Caelian felt very strange indeed. They had made this trip so many times before, every paving slab, every coloured marble facade, every trickling water fountain was familiar to Cadmus. And yet it felt like he shouldn’t be there – like they were foreigners in their own city. The whole environment fitted him like a badly made tunic. The ground felt too hard under his feet, the noises of scampering slaves and hollering craftsmen too loud in his ears.

  Arriving at Tullus’s front door was stranger still. Nearly three months gone, and nothing had changed. It looked like it had on the day Cadmus had escaped the drunken Bufo with Tog.

  Thinking of her made him suddenly unspeakably melancholy.

  Tullus knocked on the door. There was no answer. He looked at Cadmus and raised an eyebrow. He knocked again.

  Eventually the slot at eye level opened. It was no surprise when Bufo’s bloodshot eyes appeared in the gap. It was a surprise, though, when Cadmus felt pleased to see him.

  ‘Bufo, my old friend!’ said Tullus. ‘We have returned. I hope you’ve kept the place spick and span?’

  Cadmus knew something was wrong when Bufo didn’t reply – only his eyes gave anything away, and they spoke of something like fear.

  The slot closed and the door opened. The grizzled old slave, face like a dried and salted olive, bowed as they entered.

  ‘I’m glad to see you, Master,’ he mumbled. He didn’t even look at Cadmus.

  They stepped over the threshold into the cool darkness of the atrium. Cadmus smiled at the familiar smells of burning lamp oil, incense from the household shrine, and somewhere underneath, faintly, pumice and papyrus. The wax faces of Tullus’s ancestors glowered down at them from where they hung on the wall. Everything looked exactly as they’d left it. Apart from the slaves themselves. The Syrian, Clitus, looked thin and unwashed. Charis hovered somewhere behind a bust of Apollo, her tunic torn.

  ‘What is it, old thing?’ said Tullus. ‘Aren’t you going to complain about something? You’re making me nervous, being so quiet!’

  Bufo’s dry lips parted, but he said nothing and hung his head.

  ‘Of course he has no complaints,’ said a voice that sounded like someone trying to tune a broken lyre. ‘He’s going up in the world!’

  Cadmus saw the silhouette of a man with a thick neck and oiled curls appear in the doorway to the garden.

  ‘Yes, what an honour! You must all be beside yourselves with excitement! Telling all your little slave friends – you’ll never guess who we had to dinner.’

  It was the man’s wild, jangling laugh that confirmed Cadmus’s suspicions.

  ‘Caesar, I, ah . . .’ Tullus gibbered, and the emperor cut him off.

  ‘Quiet, please.’ The quietness and steadiness of Nero’s words unsettled Cadmus deeply, more than if he had been spitting with rage. ‘You took your time, both of you. Were you carrying him on your back, boy? Like Aeneas and his father?’ He laughed again. ‘You rather fancy yourself a hero, don’t you?’

  Cadmus looked at his feet. Nero stepped into the centre of the atrium, followed by his shadow, Epaphroditus. The huge forms of his guards – the false heroidai – appeared from the other rooms. How many there were, Cadmus couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Forgive me, Caesar—’

  ‘When I first came here, I was intent on ransacking the place. Tearing it to pieces. And then I saw what a beautiful house you have. Such wonderful, old-fashioned Republican charm to it! So I thought I would simply move in and wait for you. Thankfully your old slave has been most accommodating of me and my guests. Day and night he has tended to us, hasn’t he? Day and night!’

  Tullus shifted from one foot to the other.

  ‘We have only now returned from Britannia, Caesar. We were, ah, separated from the group.’ Cadmus still didn’t look up. His master was not a good liar. ‘We found the grave of Medea, but there was no fleece. Perhaps you heard? A setback, certainly, but no need to, ah, give up hope . . .’

  Nero smiled, and his features disappeared into his blotchy face.

  ‘I have heard as much,’ he said. ‘But there was some good news to come from the expedition.’

  ‘Good news, Caesar?’

  Again, Cadmus shivered with a black premonition.

  ‘We captured the girl. Perhaps you remember her, Tullus? The fiend who stole the fleece from me in my very own home?’

  ‘It was not the real fleece, though, Caesar,’ Tullus began to protest, but Nero continued.

  ‘Of course you remember her. You put
her up to the task.’

  ‘I did no such thing—’

  ‘Silence!’ The emperor’s voice became shrill and birdlike. ‘You, and her, and the boy, all working together. I’m not an idiot. You have been working to undermine this project from the very start. But it is of no matter now. Like I said. We captured the girl, after she helped you escape from Britannia. And she told us everything.’

  ‘Where is she?’ said Cadmus, fear for Tog outweighing his fear of the emperor’s wrath.

  Nero clapped his hands. ‘You really are quite extraordinary, boy. Defiant until the end.’ He came forward and brushed his fingers over Cadmus’s cheek with strange affection. ‘Don’t worry. I specifically asked for her to be brought to me, here at Rome. I have shown her just the kind of hospitality she deserves.’ He withdrew his hand and put it over his mouth like a coy young girl. He giggled.

  Something inside of Cadmus collapsed, and he staggered where he stood. He couldn’t bring himself to think of what Nero might have done to her.

  ‘She revealed some remarkable things, with a little persuading.’ The emptiness inside Cadmus became a kind of roaring sickness. ‘About your lineage, about the location of the real Golden Fleece. If I hadn’t seen you and your sandal, I never would have believed it. But now it all makes sense. Jason’s heir. A little Greek worm like you.’

  Without thinking, Cadmus launched himself at the emperor, his small fists flying. He heard Tullus cry out, but nothing, not his master, not his reason, could prevent the cauldron of his rage from boiling over. Nero’s flesh was soft and spongy, and Cadmus hardly felt like his knuckles were making contact. The first few blows he struck seemed slow and weak, as though he were underwater – and then he felt the enormous, bronze-clad arms of one of Nero’s guards wrap around his waist and pull him away from the tottering emperor.

  The man squeezed, and Cadmus felt a rib crack. His vision darkened.

  Nero watched him for a moment, and calmly wiped away the sweat that had erupted on his brow.

  ‘As much as I enjoy seeing the life leaving your body, you’re no good to me dead.’ He nodded. ‘Not yet anyway.’

  The giant dropped Cadmus to the floor like a sack of olives. Nero stood over him and rolled him on to his back with a shove of his foot.

  ‘Where is it?’ he said, saliva cascading from his lips. Even if Cadmus had wanted to tell him, it was agony to draw breath.

  ‘Perhaps you won’t say,’ said Nero. ‘But your master is made of weaker stuff.’

  One of the guards unsheathed his sword and put it to Tullus’s throat. The old man closed his eyes.

  ‘You’re very close, aren’t you, for a master and a slave? Rather too close. Perverse, I think.’

  ‘I am prepared, boy,’ Tullus said. ‘I already feel as though I have lived more days than my fate allows. You needn’t tell him on my account.’

  Nero drew a thumb across his neck. Cadmus cried out.

  ‘Stop!’ He got to his feet. He had already lost Tog. He wasn’t going to let them take Tullus as well. ‘I’ll tell you where it is. Don’t harm him.’

  His master protested, but Cadmus was already making his way across the atrium to the tiny cubiculum where he had slept every night since Tullus had brought him over from Athens. The heroidai followed him with their weapons drawn.

  His bedroom was just as he’d left it: his stilus and writing tablets laid out on the little desk, next to them the oil lamp in the shape of a fish, and his one spare tunic folded neatly at the foot of the bed.

  It was there, lying on top of the mattress. His old blanket, a wrinkled, soft, almost hairless piece of sheep’s hide. Cadmus had slept underneath it every winter night, had tossed it aside when he was late waking, had trodden upon it when the floor tiles were too cold for his bare feet. He had spilt food upon it, had worn it over his head when it was raining heavily. Even now, when he held it in his hands, he found it hard to believe that this was the relic that had driven Jason to the ends of the earth. It seemed such a pitiful old thing.

  The guards shifted silently under their armour as he returned to the atrium. Nero’s face contorted with rage when he saw him.

  ‘What is this?’ he screamed, pointing at the blanket. ‘Are you trying to fool me, or merely to hasten your death?’

  ‘This is no trick,’ said Tullus. ‘This is the thing you seek, Caesar. Passed down from Medea, through the generations. Cadmus is the last of her children. Medus, his mother called him.’

  Nero inspected the sheepskin for a moment, then seized it from Cadmus’s hands and hurled it at the wall. It struck the shrine of the household gods and sent the little clay figures of the penates tumbling to the floor. They shattered where they fell.

  ‘You seek to make a sport of me, do you? How dare you? Worms. Less than worms. Are you entertained? Does this amuse you?’ His rage ended abruptly and his smile returned. ‘Well. You have had your bit of fun. I cannot begrudge you that, now you are facing certain death. But now it is my turn to be entertained. Take them to the Campus Martius. Let’s see how much of a hero’s blood you really have in you.’

  He turned to Epaphroditus.

  ‘The fleece is hidden somewhere here. I’m sure of it. Keep questioning the old man and his slaves until it is found. By any means you see fit.’

  XXXII

  Evening was drawing on when Cadmus was led out of the house. As the door to Tullus’s villa closed, he could hear the sounds of furniture and ornaments shattering. The sickness of fear had reached such an intensity that it had become a numbness. He couldn’t feel his hands and feet. He couldn’t even feel his broken rib. He walked with a hypnotized trudge.

  Nero had whispered something to his guards and gone ahead with his head shrouded, so he wouldn’t be recognized. It was a favourite trick of his – to move unnoticed among his people, to search out sedition and treachery, or to enjoy the baser pleasures of the city.

  They left the Caelian Hill, made their way past the crowded Circus, under the Palatine and the Capitoline hills, where the river bordered the plains of the Campus Martius. It soon became clear, though, that they weren’t heading to the Campus itself. Nero was taking him to the amphitheatre.

  The great stone arena had been hemmed in by other building work in recent years, and rose in front of them unannounced. In the twilight it was a dark, imposing hulk of a building. The Games of Apollo had finished the previous week – gone were the pipe players and coloured flags and garlands of flowers. Now it was silent and empty. The arches on the lowest level were black as the mouth of hell.

  Cadmus had lost sight of Nero. Alone, he was hauled through the gates of the amphitheatre, down a flight of steps and imprisoned in a pitch-dark cell.

  He didn’t know how long he was kept there. Certainly long enough to cry himself to sleep, over Tullus, over Tog, over his sister, alone on the boat among men who hated her.

  He thought of his own impending doom, imagined the agonies that Nero was even now preparing for him, and knew that whatever he imagined probably wouldn’t be half as bad as the real thing. He thought about how bizarre the last few months of his life had been. The stuff of myth. Only, for it to be a myth, someone needed to remember it and to pass it on. No one would remember Cadmus. No one would write stories about him. He would slip through the cracks of history.

  He was woken from his uneasy half-sleep by a key rattling in the lock of his cell, and the strong, sweet smell of myrrh in his nostrils. The gate groaned on its hinges and Epaphroditus entered with a torch in one hand and an item of clothing in the other.

  ‘The stage is set for your final labour,’ he said. ‘Nero has asked me to bring you this.’

  He threw the material at his feet. Cadmus picked it up. It was his old blanket.

  ‘He wants to give you a fighting chance,’ Epaphroditus continued, unable to keep the smirk from his face. ‘So he has agreed to give you your fleece back. If it is as powerful as you claim, you have nothing to worry about.’

  Cadmus took it f
rom the floor and folded it carefully. The feeling of the hide next to his skin calmed his nerves a little. But the longer he held it, the more absurd, the more hopeless his situation seemed. How could this be the Golden Fleece? It felt ready to disintegrate in his hands.

  ‘You know,’ said Epaphroditus, ‘it is not too late for you. Just tell us where the genuine article is, and Nero might consider a pardon.’

  ‘But this is the genuine article.’ He paused. ‘I think.’

  ‘You and Tullus are as stubborn as each other,’ the secretary sighed. ‘Very well. If what you say is true, then it will save you, and you have nothing to fear. If it is not, then your trick will be revealed and you will be punished as you deserve. Rather neat, I think.’

  ‘May I ask,’ Cadmus said slowly, ‘how the emperor intends to punish me?’

  Epaphroditus laughed. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise!’

  He stood to one side and gestured down the row of cells.

  ‘Follow me, please.’

  Cadmus got to his feet and wrapped the fleece around his shoulders. Fear and fatigue had hollowed him out, as though he were a bronze replica of himself. He walked without feeling, without seeing, without hearing. The passageway led around the circumference of the amphitheatre, up some stone steps and stopped at a large double door, three or four times his height. Through the crack he could just see the sand of the arena, red in the firelight.

  Epaphroditus disappeared and emerged carrying a short, military-style sword. He handed it over, hilt first.

  ‘Here you are. I’m afraid they don’t make them any smaller than this.’

  Cadmus took the sword in one hand, surprised he was able to lift it.

  ‘He wants me to fight?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the secretary. ‘A chance for you to show your heroic credentials. When Nero gives the sign, the gates will open. Give them a good show, eh?’ He patted Cadmus on the back and grinned. ‘I’m sorry it had to end like this. I always rather liked you. But you didn’t take my advice. You’re a slave. All you had to do was play the game.’