A Song For Nero

by Tom Holt

  Wait, it gets better. The fourth night, we got pig's trotters, and the seventh night we were invited to move our stuff from the hayloft down into the coachhouse. I did some rough figuring and reckoned that at that rate, after a year we'd be running the place. Five years, and we'd be provincial governors.

  'So what does he do?' the landlord asked my harp-player, as we munched our onion on the tenth night. 'I mean, you play the harp, pretty well if you ask me, and the customers like it. But I haven't seen him do anything, except sit around.'

  'He's my manager,' Lucius Domitius answered, with his mouth full. 'Manager, personal trainer, harp coach. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be where I am today'

  'Is that right?' The innkeeper shrugged. 'Well, you wouldn't think it to look at him. Still, whatever works for you guys. Anyway, I was thinking. Instead of playing out in the yard, why not come in the bar? At least, we could try it out for a day or so, and if it doesn't work out, you can go back to how you were, no harm done.'

  Lucius Domitius lifted his head. 'I like it in the yard,' he said. 'Good acoustics. A bit like the theatre at Tarentum. You ever been there?'

  'Me?' The innkeeper looked mildly shocked. 'I don't go anywhere,' he said. 'Too much to do here. Never been further than the village in my life.'

  'Really?' Lucius Domitius raised an eyebrow 'You've never been to Rome ?'

  ' Rome ? God, no.'

  'But it's only a day or so down the road. Less, if you ride.'

  'When can I spare a day or so, busy man like me? This place doesn't run itself, you know'

  Lucius Domitius clicked his tongue. 'The greatest city in the world, on your doorstep, and you've never been. Aren't you even curious?'

  'No.'

  That seemed to settle that. 'Fine,' Lucius Domitius said. 'Why should you be, after all? It's just a lot of houses and shops, and a few temples and things. No big deal, at all.'

  The innkeeper nodded. 'That's just how I see it,' he said. 'And anyway, if ever I want to see the world, I just look in my bar. Everybody comes here, see. I've had all sorts stay here. Merchants, business people, knights, foreigners even.

  Had a senator, once. I don't have to travel, they all come to me sooner or later.'

  'Quite.' Lucius Domitius smiled gravely 'You never know, one day you might have the emperor of the Romans, right here in your bar.'

  'Wouldn't that be something,' the innkeeper said. 'Though I don't know as I'd fancy that. Good for trade, people coming to see where Caesar himself stopped the night; but he'd want everything the very best, and I don't suppose he ever pays for anything. When we had that senator, he made me send out for vintage Falernian and Hymettus honey and we never saw any money off him. Bastard,' he added sadly 'This whole place wouldn't keep his boyfriend in white lead for a week. Still, there you go. Doesn't do any good complaining.'

  So there we were; and to tell you the truth, I've been in worse places. After a while it got a bit boring, with nothing to do all day but sit around. There were plenty of people to talk to, of course, and that helped. Found out a few things, too. The new emperor, Titus Caesar, was doing a grand job; likely to turn out better than his old man, they reckoned, him having been born a gentleman, while Vespasian Caesar had been nobody when he started out. There had been a lot of excitement in the city lately: open war between two street gangs, with a whole neighbourhood set on fire, loads of people killed — a fine gentleman hacked to death in his own house, even, though obviously he must've been involved with the rackets in some way Of course, the guards had been down on the lot of them like a ton of bricks after that, and that'd put them in their place, because you can't have pitched baffles in the street and fires and stuff, and Titus Caesar wasn't the sort of man who'd stand for that sort of thing. By all accounts, the biggest of the gangs, Strymon's lot, had been rooted out like bindweed, though they hadn't got the man himself (still, it was just a matter of time); and the other one, Scyphax, nobody'd seen him for a while, so chances were he'd done the sensible thing and got out of town. Anyhow, it was a good thing, cracking down hard on crime, and it just went to show how important it was, having a strong man for an emperor. Not like the bad old days, they all agreed.

  I had mixed feelings about that. All in all, I reckoned, it was just as well Lucius Domitius and I were dead because otherwise, if I was Strymon or Amyntas, I might be feeling a bit hard done by, and in the mood to share my bad luck with someone. In fact, if I was still alive, I'd be thinking seriously about moving on, maybe heading for India or Hiberia or the Island of the Lotus—eaters, instead of loafing around the yard of an inn no more than a day's ride from the city. But when you've died and been burnt to ashes, probably had a building or two fall in on top of your charred embers, you don't have to fret about stuff like that. You could say it was probably the smartest move I ever made, dying.

  Couple of times, I caught myself thinking about Dido's treasure. Well, quite; but I had loads of time on my hands and not much else to do. I thought, sure, it sounds like a load of centaurs' feathers, but men like Strymon and Amyntas don't go around believing in dumb old tales. If they set so much store by it, there had to be something to it, maybe something Lucius Domitius or his knight who told him about it didn't know Maybe there was a huge pile of gold and silver parked in a cave somewhere, at that; and if so, it wasn't doing anybody any good just sitting there. Of all things, it set me to thinking about Ulysses again, how he'd been washed ashore on that old beach, and come away with more gold and silver and treasure than he'd had when he left Troy with all his plunder. I thought about what Lucius Domitius had said, how if he'd found this Dido's treasure, it'd have paid all the debts of the empire, put him right back in the black, and all his troubles would've been over. And I thought, What if Lucius Domitius and I happened to get washed up on that beach, with nothing but our skins and the dirt under our nails, and we happened to find that treasure? At one stroke he'd be every bit as rich as he'd been in the old days; more so, even. I thought, What if we were to happen to find Scheria and that lucky beach?

  (Only we'd have more sense than to go home after that. I may not be the sharpest razor in the case, but I'm not dumb, like Ulysses. We'd stay in Cloud Cuckoo City , between this world and the other one, like men who've died but not stopped living. Yes, I thought, I could get used to that. I mean, what's the point of travelling around, or even going home, when all the places I go to are horrible anyhow?)

  The morning of the fourteenth day, I was sat on the mounting block in the yard, trying to figure out how two men would set about shifting a thousand tons of gold ingots out of a cave and up a cliff (I was thinking: block and tackle, mule-powered winches, how about those swinging crane jobs they use in Mesopotamia for pumping water?), when I heard a voice I recognised. I'm good at voices — had to be, over the years, for obvious reasons connected with my profession — and besides, this one wasn't hard. It was distinctive, you could say; and not so long ago I'd been putting myself out to get chances to listen to it.

  I thought, as I slid backwards over the mounting block and cowered behind it, not daring to move, that maybe Lucius Domitius wasn't so dumb after all, with his endless fretting about people hearing him sing and recognising him. Voices are easier to tell apart than faces, if you ask me.

  It was that bloody woman, Myrrhine; you remember, the sweet, caring, angel-of-mercy sister of Amyntas, aka Scyphax, the gangster. She was talking to one of the grooms, a nice enough bloke by the name of Marcus Mezentius. I'd played a few games of knuckle-bones with him over the past few days, he was pleasant company and a good loser. Anyhow, Myrrhine was asking him to take special care of her horse, because the poor thing hadn't been well lately; at least, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with him that she could put her finger on, but he hadn't been eating as well as he usually did, and sometimes when he looked at her, she got the feeling something was bothering him. Straight up, I'm not exaggerating, that's what she said. My pal Marcus was playing along, because it doesn't do to go telling guests they
're off their rollers; he said he'd keep a special eye on Honeysuckle (that being the name she'd seen fit to lumber the poor creature with) and yes, he'd make sure he remembered to comb his mane from the left, the way he liked it.

  Weird, how quickly your opinion of someone can change. Not so long ago, I'd have wanted to knock Marcus' eye out with a stone for daring to talk to her. Now, I just hoped he'd be able to put up with her idiotic babbling long enough to give me time to sneak across the yard and warn Lucius Domitius. I guess the way you see people depends on where you are, when you are, and what their brothers really do for a living.

  My luck was in. Either Marcus liked listening to drivel, or he was so used to being polite to guests that he couldn't break the habit, or he reckoned a pretty girl is worth spending time with, even if she won't stop talking and you're unlucky enough not to have been born deaf. Whatever; I didn't know, didn't care.

  I was too busy pretending to be a tiny little mouse scuttling across the courtyard, and I did it pretty well, at that. Once I was inside the coachhouse, of course, I quit scuttling and went storming through the place like a drunken German, till I found Lucius Domitius, darning a hole in his shirt.

  'Get up,' I snapped. 'They're here.'

  He looked at me. 'Who's they?'

  'Amyntas,' I said, and he did the sitting high-jump, stabbing himself with his needle and not noticing. 'At least, his filthy bitch sister's outside, nattering at Marcus the groom.'

  'You sure it's her?'

  I didn't bother answering that.

  Lucius Domitius shuddered from head to foot, like a wet dog. 'It's just not fair,' he said. 'You know what? I'm getting sick of this. Everywhere we look, there's some creep after us, and we haven't even done anything wrong, for once, apart from stealing the harp. All right, what's the plan?'

  'Plan? I haven't got any damn plan. You think of something for a change.'

  'All right.' He stood up, looking round for something. 'We'll climb up in the loft, swing down on the bale hoist into that overgrown culvert down the other side, and cut across the paddock to the road. If we get a move on, we can be in Praeneste in a couple of hours.'

  Sounded good to me. 'Let's go,' I said.

  'Just a bloody minute, will you?' He was still looking for whatever it was. 'Did she look like she knew we were here? I mean, was she asking that groom if he'd seen us, or anything?'

  I shook my head. 'She was talking about her horse,' I said.

  I could see him deciding not to bother thinking about that; then an idea plopped into his mind, like birdshit dropping in your drinking—water barrel. 'Horses,' he said.

  'What about them?'

  'We'll steal their horses,' he replied, pulling his shirt on over his head. The needle and thread were still dangling off his shoulder, where he'd forgotten all about them, but I couldn't be bothered to mention it. 'Two birds, one stone. We get to ride, they have to walk. Got it.' He picked up a little home-made satchel he'd been sewing out of unwanted sacking. 'Come on, follow me.'

  He didn't give me a chance to say what I thought about that for a plan of action. As I followed him up the ladder into the hayloft, I could see all the things that'd be bound to go wrong, like I was watching the gladiators from the top row of the circus: they'd see us crossing the yard; while we were wasting time saddling and bridling, Amyntas and his men would catch us; the horses would bolt and get loose, and we'd be trapped in the stable while the whole household rounded them up; my horse would throw a shoe two miles down the road, and I'd be leading it along when Amyntas and his thugs rode up in a hired cart and caught us. I could see all these disasters happening right there before my very eyes. I wanted to warn myself not to be so bloody stupid, but I was too far back to make myself heard. Too bad.

  We made the culvert without breaking any serious bones, and scampered across the yard like hares clearing out of the corn when the men start cutting it. Nobody about that we could see, so we headed for the stables. There were five horses standing in the stalls; no clue, goes without saying, as to which ones belonged to Amyntas and his party. Didn't think of that, did we?

  'Bugger,' said Lucius Domitius. 'I know We'll take the two best, and turn the others loose.'

  You ever tried turning horses loose when they don't want to go? Can't blame them, really Probably they'd all had a long day, clomping along the paved military road; all they wanted to do was stand still and eat. They were like elderly house-slaves, they didn't want to be set free; too much like hard work.

  We tried hitting them with brooms, but that just got them good and mad, neighing and kicking the partitions and carrying on generally Too much noise.

  'Screw this,' Lucius Domitius said. 'Let's just—'

  He didn't get any further, probably because Amyntas walked up behind him and put a razor under his chin.

  FOURTEEN

  'Hello, lads,' said Amyntas. 'Not dead, then?'

  Time to run away, I thought, but I didn't. Partly because I wasn't going to leave my friend in deadly danger, partly because some bastard was sticking a knife in my back. Couldn't be bothered to look round and find out who it was.

  Once you've seen one bastard, you've seen 'em all.

  'Just as well my sister isn't here,' Amyntas went on. 'That's her horse you were clobbering with that broom handle. If there's one thing she can't be doing with, it's cruelty to animals.'

  I remembered Seneca telling me once that, according to Plato, man is just a two-legged animal that can't fly I suppose I could have mentioned this point, but I didn't. Slipped my mind, I guess.

  'I don't know,' Amyntas went on. 'You people, you're something else. You start a fire, burn down six blocks, just to make us think you're dead; and then what do you do? You come out here and start passing your hat round, in public, on the main road, in an inn owned by me. Short of hiring men to walk up and down the streets shouting out your new address, I don't see how you could've made yourselves easier to find.'

  Oh well, I thought. At least we've given the gods a good laugh, so maybe they'll go easy on us. Or maybe not. I reckon the gods are like the audience in the circus: they enjoy a bit of comic relief, but what they really get off on is the sight of blood. You know, a lot of the time, the gods remind me of Roman senators. Or the other way around. Whatever.

  'You aren't going to kill us,' Lucius Domitius said, and if I hadn't known better I'd have reckoned he meant it. 'You know perfectly well my brother and I are the only ones who know where the treasure is.'

  Amyntas laughed. 'Do me a favour, please,' he said. 'Do I look like the sort of moron who'd go for some kids' story about buried treasure? And as for that dogshit about you being rat-face's brother, don't insult my intelligence. I know perfectly well who you are,' he said. 'Your majesty,' he added.

  He let that sink in for a moment. No point arguing, of course. As the old country proverb has it, when they've got your nuts in a vice, it's better not to struggle. 'All right,' Lucius Domitius said. 'So what are you going to do?'

  'Actually,' said Amyntas, 'I'm not sure. It's difficult to know what to do for the best. Selling you to the senate and people of Rome ought to be the obvious course, but for that I've got to make them believe you really are Nero Caesar, and the truth is, I'm not sure how to go about that. On the other hand, I could get a small fortune for you from Strymon. He'd be really pleased to see you both, I know that for a fact. But,' he went on, 'I don't think I'll go down that road just now, even though it's tempting. The point is, why settle for a small fortune when you can get a big one? From, say, his excellency the governor of Sicily .'

  Bugger me, I thought. There were so many people after our blood, I'd clean forgotten about him. In case you've forgotten too (though you haven't got the same excuse), he was the poor bastard Lucius Domitius had sent to the stone quarries back in the old days, for falling asleep during one of his recitals; the same man whose son's clothes we stole, that day we escaped from the quarry cart, and the same man we ran into on the road, the one who was sure he knew me
from somewhere. Well, yes, I thought; he might well want to see us, too. So many people keen to get a piece of us; definitely a seller's market. Pity there weren't a few more of Lucius Domitius and me, really. We could have taken Amyntas into partnership and made — well, a killing.

  So there we were, Lucius Domitius and me; trussed up like the goat at a society sacrifice, slung in the back of a cart under a load of smelly old blankets, on our way to make one man happy and another man rich. At least Lucius Domitius didn't moan at me as we bumped along the road back to Rome, but I think that was mostly because Amyntas' people had gagged him with a strip of old rag soaked in stale vinegar. Back in the shit again; it was almost like coming home, after being away for rather too long. What with all the earning an honest living and not having to hide from soldiers, we'd got soft, both of us. A few more days, and we'd have been spoiled rotten.

  I think the idea was to take us to Ostia and charter a ship for Sicily Well, we got as far as Ostia , because that was where we were turfed out of the cart and stacked up against a wall in some warehouse like so many bundles of vine props.

  But then the plan changed.

  I must've been asleep when the debate started, because it was the sound of their voices that woke me up: Amyntas, that brother of his — Scamandrius, or something of the sort — and Myrrhine, sounding just the same as ever and starting off every sentence with 'Oh', but this time she was chattering away quite cheerfully about how to dispose of us for the best possible return.

  'After all,' she was saying, 'if it doesn't work out and there's nothing there, we don't have to kill them. We can just get back on the boat and go to Sicily , like we'd planned. It's virtually on our way there.'

  'It's not,' Scamandrius objected. 'Three or four days out of our way, at the least.'

  'Well, there you are, then,' Myrrhine said. 'I mean, what's three or four days?