A Song For Nero

by Tom Holt

  —And then I heard a familiar voice, shrill and loud enough to be heard above my caterwauling and the sudden eruption of applause from the victims' reunion: of all the weird things, it was my mother, calling me in for dinner. Just a minute, Mum, I was yelling back, I'm in the middle of a concert. It's on the table, she shouted back. Get in here this instant or it goes on the back of the fire. I sighed, right down to my toenails. Coming, Mum, I answered sadly and I took my hand off the strings and turned to go. The audience weren't having that. They were booing and hissing, telling me to get on with it and finish the song, but I knew what'd happen to me if I didn't come in when dinner was on the table, and it didn't bear thinking about.

  So we went in, Lucius Domitius and me; we washed our faces and hands in the big stone basin and sat down at the table, me opposite Mum and Lucius Domitius opposite Grandad. There wasn't any dinner after all, because as Mum explained, times were hard; if we reckoned we wanted to eat, then why didn't we get up off our bums and do some work, especially since Grandad had bought Lucius Domitius that beautiful harp, so there really wasn't any excuse. We sat there quietly while Mum and Grandad ate their nothing (we didn't get any because we'd been late, and it'd gone on the back of the fire, along with the city of Rome, twice), and then Callistus leaned across and whispered in my ear, I thought I told you to look after your brother; and I said, Well, I did my best; and he replied, Well, that clearly wasn't good enough; look at him, for crying out loud, he's dead. He wouldn't have got in that state if you'd done as you were told. And then Mum brought in Dido's treasure in a brown pottery dish for pudding, and said that since I'd been bad I couldn't have any, served me right, and she'd given my share to the dead people. And then (about bloody time, too) I woke up.

  Never thought I'd live to see the day when I'd be happy to wake up and find I was in a cave along with a load of pirates. They were all starting to wake up, and there was the captain, walking up and down with the last torch in his hand, kicking feet and telling us to get up and get a move on, we had work to do. I guess there were still bits of dream stuck in my head, because I muttered, Coming, Mum, and closed my eyes, ready to go back to sleep; only Lucius Domitius elbowed me in the ribs, the cruel bastard.

  As I told you just now, the plan was that we'd all go over to Calatha to pick up food and water for our long haul out to Massilia. Someone, it could've been Tityrus the helmsman, not that it matters a damn who it was, said he reckoned we ought to leave a couple of blokes here, to guard the treasure. The captain wasn't having any of that. Two blokes couldn't defend a pot of onion soup, he said, let alone a cave full of gold; furthermore, though he was prepared to trust each and every one of us with his life, that was beside the point, since his life was worth something in the region of a hundred and seventy denarii, with his tunic and boots thrown in; he wouldn't trust his own mother on her own with Dido's treasure in case a ship happened to call at the island while we were away and some half-baked notion of screwing the rest of us out of our shares happened to float into her addled old head. No; the treasure was well hidden, there was Sisyphus' chance of anybody stumbling over it who didn't know it was there, and if we all stuck together, there wouldn't be any risk of misunderstandings and temptation, which tend to be serious problems where there's large sums of money involved. Like I said, he was smart, that captain.

  Maybe the prospect of ending up like Amyntas if he put a foot wrong was making him act smarter than usual, but that doesn't take anything away from him, if you ask me.

  So we piled back on board the ship, all eager to be off, because the sooner we left, the sooner we could get back and make a start on the long job of melting all that fancy artwork down into boring old ingots. A stiff wind got up almost as soon as we were under way and that pleased all of us, at first. Better still, it was shoving us along in exactly the direction we wanted to go, as though the gods were mucking in to help us out. Good feeling, that.

  But the wind kept on blowing. Now I haven't got a clue when it comes to boat stuff, which can get pretty technical and complicated; it's all tacking into the leeward sou'westerly and taking in sail to bring her about when you see Sirius rising on the starboard bow Nautical types understand all that kind of thing, but you might just as well stand there barking at me like a dog for all the sense I can make of it. So when the crew started muttering about the wind, I couldn't figure out what the hell the problem was; whether we were going the wrong way, or the wind was slowing us down, or whether the boat was about to tip over and drown the lot of us. Besides, I was too busy trying to keep down what little there was in my stomach — since we were so short on supplies, it struck me it'd be a criminal waste if I puked everything I'd eaten recently over the side. Lucius Domitius was looking pretty green as well, so we decided the best thing for us to do would be to crawl away somewhere we wouldn't get under the feet of the professionals, and hope the wind blew itself out before it turned us over or sent us to India .

  I've got to say, I don't like the Mediterranean very much. Most of the time it's all right, as seas go, but when it has one of its temper tantrums, it can be a real pain in the bum. Pretty soon it was scooping the water up into big fat waves and dropping them all over us, soaking us to the skin and giving the crew something else technical to jabber about. To begin with, though I was worried (and anybody who goes out on the sea in a boat and doesn't worry is either simple in the head or asleep), I kept telling myself that this was probably the sort of thing sailors have to put up with all the time, just another day at the office as far as they were concerned, and there wasn't any danger, just a certain amount of discomfort; and anyway, I wasn't made of salt, so getting drenched wasn't going to kill me. But it did seem to be going on for rather a long time, and the crew were sliding and falling about all over the place and shouting, and quite a bit of sea was coming up through the bottom of the ship, and we didn't seem to be going sideways much, just up and down in the air, like kids on a see-saw Then I saw a great big wave swell up and come rushing at us, like an angry pig in the yard.

  It gave the ship a ferocious shove, which sent me sprawling against a rail, and when I looked up, I saw Tityrus the helmsman sliding on his face across the deck and over the side into the water. I shouted —I believe the right thing to say is, Man overboard, but at the time I couldn't remember that, so I yelled, 'Here, Tityrus just went in the sea.' Nobody answered or did anything, so I yelled it again. I knew they'd heard me, because one or two of them turned their heads and looked at me, but they just carried on with what they were doing, which was mostly hanging on to ropes and rails, or skating about the deck. Then it sunk in that we were in real trouble, and that scared the shit out of me.

  Don't ask me to tell you what happened next, because I wasn't paying attention to the big picture, just my small, desperate corner. Either the ship hit something, or something hit us; anyhow, it was like when you're walking along in the dark and you march straight into a tree or something you didn't know was there. I'd hooked my elbow round a post, but I guess it must've given way, because I found myself slithering across the deck on my right thigh. My shoulder slammed into something hard, and then I felt that something snap off too, and I was in the air, and then the surface of the water hit me, and I was under it, flailing and kicking with my hands and feet. Part of me was saying, stay calm, they won't just leave you in the sea to drown, they'll turn round and come back for you, or lower the boat or something. But I knew perfectly well they weren't going to do any such thing, because when their colleague and friend Tityrus went over the side they hadn't been able to do a damn thing, just glower at me for pointing it out.

  So there I was.

  I wonder what they say about me, down there in the kingdom of the dead. As you might have noticed, I'm no stranger to what you might call certain-death situations — condemned cells, crosses, tumbrils, armed escorts en route to gallows, gibbets, prisons and the like, the wrong end of other people's weapons, burning buildings, all that kind of stuff. So what's the deal, I ask mys
elf, as far as King Pluto and his people are concerned? Each time I find myself on the spot, do they rub their hands together and mutter, This time we've got the bugger, for sure? Or do they fly into a panic, terrified that if I weasel my way past the Ferryman and the three-headed dog, I'll lower the whole tone of the neighbourhood and drive them up the wall with my incessant chatter? That might be it, you know They might be saying, Fuck, not him again, do something quick; and suddenly there's the unexpected amnesty, the cell door left carelessly ajar, the inexplicable massacre of a platoon of cavalry by someone who later turns out to be a notorious city gang boss, or the personal intercession by the emperor of the Romans. The way I look at it, I've never been exactly what you'd call the welcome guest anywhere I've been, so why should it be any different in the palace of Tartarus ? Stands to reason, really Most people freak out at the prospect of having to put up with me for a day; once I'm down there, they'll have me on their hands for ever. Doesn't bear thinking about, really So anyhow, there I was in the water, trying to work out how to swim. I managed to scoop-and-kick my way back up to the surface, just in tune to see a massive great wave hitting the side of our poor old ship. It was like watching a man in a bar fight getting punched on the chin by someone he hasn't even seen; one moment, the ship was upright and sort of level, and the next it was sprawling and rolling in the water, tipped over just that little bit too far, to the point where it's never going to be able to bob up straight again. Then another wave crashed down on it, and I got the feeling that King Neptune, having knocked it over, was getting in close to kick the shit out of it now it was down. That was when I changed my mind and decided I was probably better off where I was.

  Oh well, I thought, that's that, then. Not just for me, but the crew and Lucius Domitius. Seemed silly, really After all, we'd just found Dido's treasure, every single one of us was now officially rich — not just comfortably set up for life, but seriously Roman senator rich. A cock-eyed way of carrying on, I thought. I mean, why go to all that trouble of letting us find all that gold, and then snuff us all out five minutes later? It wasn't even as if the gods were using us to send humankind an eloquent message about presumption and greed and the vanity of worldly possessions, since we were the only living creatures on earth who knew the story That was all very well, but there's a time and a place for everything, and I had a lot of rather urgent swimming to attend to. First things first. I spat out about a gallon and a half of sea, which I'd swallowed at some point. Then, remembering to keep my little froglike legs kicking so I wouldn't sink, I looked round just in case there was something I could grab hold of— a bit of busted mast or a plank or whatever. No chance; and I was on the point of giving up (because my arms and legs were so weary I couldn't move them any more to save my life, quite literally) when something bashed into the back of my head, and under I went again.

  Odd, how you've always got a little bit of effort left in you, even when you're sure you're completely played out. I scrabbled my way back into the air, and when I came up, there bobbing along next to me was, of all the crazy things you ever saw in your life, a coffin.

  SIXTEEN

  I have my faults, but I'm not picky Even though this coffin was obviously some god's idea of a really funny joke, not to mention the fact that the bloody thing had just belted me over the back of the head and damned near killed me, I made a grab for the side and hauled myself up on to it. Thinking about it, I don't know why I was surprised to find there was a dead body in it; after all, what else would you expect to find in a coffin, apart from dead people? Very dead, this one was, with skin like dried leaves and bones the colour of pottery, poking out through the remains of some old bandages, and as a rule I'm a bit squeamish when it comes to such things. This time, though, I managed to get over it pretty quick, in roughly the time it'd take you to sneeze, in fact; I clamped both hands on the side of the coffin, lined myself up as best I could and sort of jumped-flolloped in, landing with my nose in the dead guy's mouth.

  Something in the way the coffin lurched and wobbled told me that there wasn't room for both of us on board; so I got my fingers under his shoulder and ribs, and boosted him overboard into the sea. He went quietly bless him, leaving nothing but a few toes and some bandage behind, and I snuggled down in my beautiful cedar-wood ark and threw up with extreme force over the side.

  About that coffin. You probably don't need me to tell you that crating people up for their journey to the Other Side isn't the Roman way or the Greek way, either. For choice, we like our dead cooked, not raw But other people see these things differently, and it wouldn't do if we were all alike, I guess. Anyway, this coffin was rather a splendid thing, once I had a chance to give it the attention it deserved. For a start, it was painted, inside and out, and in places there were patches of gold leaf, about the size of my hand. Whoever made it was a damned good carpenter; the boards were lovingly grooved together, close enough to make the thing watertight. Furthermore, it was sort of rounded underneath, which made it a pretty efficient boat on stormy waters, rather better suited to rolling with the waves than our poor old flat-bottomed grain freighter. On one side you could see where hinges had been, so my guess is it was made with a lid, like a fine lady's jewellery box. I'm only telling you this because I'd actually seen something quite like it once before, when Lucius Domitius and I were in Halicarnassus . In one of the temples there, they've got a coffin just like my one, set up on trestles. It's a real work of art, with the lid carved like a man's body, with a head wearing a great big wig, and a face and everything. The one I saw in Halicarnassus was painted and gilded, too; and I seem to remember someone telling me it came from Egypt —it'd been fetched out to Asia by a Persian governor, hundreds of years ago, and he'd robbed it out of a king's tomb, along with a whole load of gold and treasure. He'd planned on taking it back home to Persia when his term was up, but he died and the family must've decided to leave it there. Anyhow, I think my coffin was Egyptian, just like that other one. Don't ask me how it came to be floating about in the sea, because I haven't got the faintest idea. Nor, to be honest, do I care. I'm just grateful it happened along when I needed it most; and if it really was an Egyptian king I rolled out into the sea, I'm grateful to him too, and I hope he's happy and contented in wherever Egyptian kings go to, because he did me a good turn.

  Well, that solved one of my problems, in the short term. Even so, I was still comprehensively flicked, as far as I could see. True, I wasn't in the water; but I was being swept along in a storm in a small wooden box, bouncing up and down on the crests of huge waves, surrounded on all sides by water, with the nearest land I knew anything about being a very long way away, in an unspecified direction. It still added up to certain death, whatever way you looked at it, and the best you could really say was that if the bloody thing kept from turning over or springing a leak, I'd enjoy the privilege of crossing over to the next world stylishly, in a mode of transport that was uniquely appropriate and genuinely fit for a king. Probably this should have cheered me up; but guess what, it didn't.

  One thing I will say for being adrift in a coffin in the middle of a terrible storm, it's relatively undemanding. You don't have to do very much, because there's nothing you can do, apart from cowering, and prayer, if you're so inclined. I'll be honest with you; I'm not really very religious. Seems to me that a god who gets his jollies from beating up on a poor, miserable little sod like me isn't the sort who'll be likely to stop just because I ask him nicely; and I've never been rich enough to be in a position to bribe the gods with offerings and sacrifices and statues and shrines and all. Now, you might say that this probably accounts for why I keep landing in mortal peril; or you could look at it another way, and argue that it's why I keep landing in mortal peril and surviving, depending on whether you think the gods like listening to a whole lot of snivelling humans all day long. Be that as it may; I lay there on my back in the coffin with my eyes shut, on the grounds that anything I did was more than likely to make things worse, and I waited to see what'd hap
pen.

  I waited a very long time, and it was no fun at all, but eventually I got the impression that I wasn't heaving and diving about nearly as much as I had been, and so I risked opening my eyes and taking a look.

  What I saw was stars. That, I felt, had to be good, because if I could see the stars, chances were that the storm was over. I closed my eyes again, and believe it or not, I think I fell asleep, in spite of everything, because the next time I opened them I found myself staring up at a cloudless blue sky, and listening to the distant thunder of waves on rocks.

  That was good, and bad. You don't get rocks out in the middle of the sea, only close to land. On the other hand, rocks do horrible things to boats, and most likely coffins as well. I remember thinking, it'd be a bloody shame if I'd come all this way, kept company for ten years with the emperor of the Romans, found Dido's treasure, been miraculously saved from a watery grave by some god with a coffin, all that, just to get smashed into sausage meat on some rocks. Any fool could do that, I thought, without going though any of the preliminary stages.

  You ever tried steering a floating coffin? Not easy All you can do is trail your hands in the water, and for all the good it does, you may as well not bother. I could see the rocks quite clearly They made up a reef (I think that's the right word) round an island, and I was being shunted along straight at them at a hell of a lick. It wasn't looking good. Beyond the rocks, which stuck out of the sea like teeth out of an old man's jaw, I could see an ugly great big cliff, with the waves pounding against it; so even if I missed the rocks, I wasn't going to be much better off. I could only think of one thing I to do, though it struck me as bloody stupid: hop out of the coffin and see if I could swim for it. So that's what I did. Of course I went straight under — only just missed being brained by the coffin as it rushed past me — but when I came up again, I was just in time to see my coffin slamming full tilt into a rock and flying apart, like chaff blown upwards from the threshing floor. Well, it's nice to be proved right once in a while.