A Song For Nero

by Tom Holt

  And that's more or less how I felt, I guess; because that was when it dawned on me that Lucius Domitius was most likely dead, drowned, lying somewhere at the bottom of the sea. Everything he'd been, everything he was, all his education and upbringing and experiences, all the bloody aggravating things he used to do, the way he could be so stupid and so gullible, the way that sometimes he could be brilliant, but never quite got anything right, the way he'd at least always been there, surviving one horrible mess after another, getting so far — but not, apparently, any further. It didn't make sense to me, because why would the gods fish him out of death's mouth so many times, like those birds in Egypt who live by picking the teeth of crocodiles, just to let him drown in a sudden, unexpected storm on the way to buy groceries? I could see them snuffing me like that, because damn it, I've never mattered; but to save me, send a bloody floating coffin to save me, and let him drown, it'd be like setting fire to your house and taking nothing out of it but one odd slipper.

  So, after I'd been shown into the house and sat down in a very posh-looking chair on the high table in this one enormous long room. 'Excuse me,' I said, 'but does that mean I'm the only one who escaped? You haven't found any more of us, from the shipwreck?'

  The boss-man looked very grave. 'I'm afraid not,' he said. 'Let's say, our reef is very thorough; it's the main reason we're here, in fact. Unless you know where the gap is, you'll never find it, and your chances of getting through the rocks — well, you're only the fifth man to be washed up alive in two hundred years, to my certain knowledge. That's why nobody knows about us, see,' he went on, though I wasn't really interested, not then; I couldn't feel what he was saying, like you can't feel a needle stuck in a numb toe. 'Ships do come this way from time to time, but once they're close enough m to see the island it's too late, they're in the current that draws down onto the reef, and that's the end of them. For what it's worth,' he continued, 'the name of this island is Scheria. Ring any bells?'

  I tried to think, because the name was vaguely familiar. But it was so unimportant; like I was a carpenter, and someone had called me away from my wife's funeral to see to a stiff hinge.

  'Well,' the man went on, 'if you have, it's because we're mentioned in the Odyssey — not us, of course, we've only been here a few generations, but the people who lived here before us, or strictly speaking, the people who were here before the people before the people before the people before us — Homer calls them the Phaeacians, and he says Ulysses got washed up here after his ship was wrecked and he was nearly killed getting through the reef. Anyhow,' he finished, because he could see I wasn't in the mood for literary history, 'that's us, and that's where you are. And,' he added, taking a deep breath, like a doctor breaking bad news, 'here's where you're going to have to stay, I'm afraid; either that, or we're going to have to knock you on the head, because we do rather value our privacy, in our line of work.'

  So I'd been right after all. 'You're pirates,' I said.

  The man grinned lopsidedly 'Best in the trade,' he said. 'In fact, we're about all that's left of a fine and noble tradition, thanks to the Romans. They don't like pirates, see. Never have. My family came here first back in the time of Pompey the Great, when he chased us out of Cyrenaica; and the Romans've been trying to wipe out the profession ever since, on and off. It's getting so bad, we have to hide ourselves away here, daren't even live up on the coast for fear of being seen, just in case a ship did manage to get through the reef in one piece. In fact, we're seriously considering giving the whole thing up and taking up farming instead; it'd be less work, easier living, and we wouldn't feel like we were hiding under a table while the soldiers run by all the time.'

  I shrugged. Didn't matter, did it? Besides, who knew more about running and hiding than me? Living here, it'd be next best thing to normal. 'All right,' I said. 'Only I'd better tell you, I know fuck all about ships and sailing and stuff, so I don't suppose I'll be any use to you. Truth is, there isn't anything I can do, except maybe mend sails, if someone shows me how to do it.'

  The man smiled. 'Don't worry about that,' he said, 'we'll find a way for you to make yourself useful, you'll see. Fact is, we don't get to pick and choose the people who join us here. We take them on because they're all we can get, and we've got to keep our numbers up somehow. There's two hundred and seventy-nine men on Scheria, and five women — and you wouldn't fancy any of them if their fathers were senators, if you see what I mean. No, you crack on and make yourself at home, we'll be glad to have you.

  And then they brought me stuff to eat and drink: some very nice soft wheat bread, sausage and cheese and two apples, and a jug of pretty drinkable Greek red wine sweetened with honey and nutmeg; and they looked at me for size and fetched me a virtually new wool tunic and probably the best pair of boots I've ever worn in my life, and someone knelt beside me and washed out all the cuts and scratches in my hands and knees, and put some sort of ointment on them that stopped them hurting, and dressed them up as neat as you like with clean wool bandage. I've got to say this for them, they had no need to go doing that, all they knew about me was what I'd told them, and they didn't seem in any hurry to ask anything more. At any other time I'd have sworn I must've drowned after all and got into the Blessed Islands by mistake. You could say it was typical of my stinking bloody luck. First time in my life anybody's been really nice to me, just for myself, not because they were after anything from me, and I'm too wrapped up in other stuff to enjoy it or pay proper attention.

  I don't know how long I was sat there, being waited on and tended to, but by the time they were through with me, people had started coming in for dinner.

  Apparently they all ate together in this one huge room — it was long and narrow, with a row of tables and benches running the length of each wall, and this extraordinary fireplace that went all the way up the middle. They laid a place for me right where I was sat, on the top table, which was at right angles to everybody else, on a little raised platform. I guessed that this was a great honour, me being a new recruit and all. Excellent food and wine — plain and simple, but all good stuff and masses of it, bread and cheese and a whole lot of different dried and preserved meat. Anyhow, when we'd been eating for a while, I thought it was about time I told them something about who I was, because otherwise it was just going to be embarrassing when they found out. So I nudged the boss-man's arm and just came right out with it, the whole deal (only I didn't say anything about Lucius Domitius being who he was, or how I'd come to be with him). While I was talking, I was expecting any moment for them to grab me by the scruff and sling me outside, or bar me up in a pigshed or something, but not a bit of it. You hear people talking about someone hanging on a bloke's every word; well, that's what the head man did while I was telling him the tale (only I told it pretty well straight). He sat there with his mouth open, staring at me like I was something wonderful, except for when he interrupted me to ask for details of some point or other — how many soldiers did Strymon kill on the mountain road in Sicily, what was it Alexander and Pony-tail cooked us for breakfast, excuse him but why did I keep talking about the ponderous hoe, is that some special sort of hoe they use in that part of Italy — which only went to show how closely he was following what I was saying. Well, naturally, once I realised he was interested, I spun it out a bit, put in bits of talking, made a performance of it generally By this time, pretty well everybody in the building was crowded round where we were sitting. They'd finished their food, and crouched on the floor or craned over each other's shoulders, with their big silver-gilt winecups in their hands; and when I got to the part about the coffin, you could have heard a gnat fart. You'd have thought I was two dozen performing monkeys and a pantomime act, but all I did was tell the truth. If I'd known people liked it so much, I guess I'd have tried it years ago.

  When I'd finished, there was this eerie long silence, with nobody hardly even breathing. Then the boss-man sort of shook himself, and said, 'Well, if that doesn't beat cock-fighting. And to think, you said j
ust now that you're just an ordinary bloke, nothing special, not particularly good at anything.'

  I frowned. 'Well, that's right,' I said. 'I am, and I'm not.'

  The boss-man lifted his head. 'Oh, sure,' he said. 'I don't think. Why, if only a third of that lot's true, you're the biggest hero we've had in these parts since Ulysses himself.'

  He'd lost me. 'I'm sorry,' I said, 'but I don't follow What's heroic about what I just said? I'm a thief, and a pretty crummy one at that.'

  Boss-man gawped at me for a moment, like he couldn't believe I was serious, then burst out laughing. 'Dear God, man,' he said, 'you're the very essence of hero.

  I mean, what makes a hero, if it's not resourcefulness, enduring endless desperate trials, leaping from fire to frying pan to fire like someone crossing a river on stepping stones? And if you're seriously asking us to believe that you managed all that without at least one god guarding you night and day, snatching you out of the snares of death and pitching you into something even more terrifying and demanding — well, we're simple folk here, but not that simple. No, it's plain as snot on your beard that you're the darling of the gods, and they're taking extra-special trouble with your thread, spinning it out long and thick. Just getting through the reef proves that. Didn't we tell you, nobody gets through the reef alive, not even if Neptune 's sleeping with his sister?' He shook his head, and sighed. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but whether you like it or not, clearly you're a very special and important person indeed; a hero, there's no other word for it, and it's an honour and a privilege to have you here with us.'

  Well, I thought, fuck me; but I couldn't let it pass, somehow, not with Lucius Domitius lying in the mud on the seabed. 'Yes, but it wasn't me,' I said. 'What I mean is, even if there really was anything special about all that stuff, I couldn't have done it on my own, I wouldn't have lasted an hour.'

  The boss-man smiled. 'You're thinking about your friend,' he said. 'Well, that's understandable. He was obviously a fairly exceptional person too, no doubt about that. But when push comes to shove there's only one way to decide these matters, and it's really very simple. Which one of you made it, and which one of you didn't? Answer me that, and I'll tell you who's the hero of the story, and who's just the sidekick.'

  He made it sound so straightforward. But of course he was wrong. Any fool could see the flaw in his argument, because the best of us, the only one out of the trio who was worth a day's feed, was the one who died first, my brother Callistus. Only, I realised, I hadn't mentioned him at all, so how was the boss-man to know? Still, I knew; and that was why I couldn't go along with what he said. I mean, suppose everybody's life was an adventure, a fairy tale, an epic poem. You tell me, how would you pick out who's supposed to be the hero?

  The way I'd told it, Lucius Domitius, emperor of the Romans, most hated man in history, was just some bloke I went around with. But I hadn't explained to boss-man why he was important, so once again, how was he supposed to know?

  That's one of the reasons Life sucks. Unless someone tells you, you don't know all this important behind-the-scenes stuff, and you can end up thinking the shepherd's daughter is the princess, through no fault of your own.

  Even so, I thought I'd have one more stab at explaining. 'Maybe I told it badly,' I said. 'Because really, it was him, my friend, who .. .' I was stuck; what I wanted to say was, all the adventures were because of him, who he was, or who people thought he was. I'd sort of muffed round this when I was telling the story. I'd said we were the only ones who knew where Dido's treasure was, and I'd sort of given him the impression we'd got the lowdown from that old knight, the one who told Lucius Domitius. Maybe that's where he went wrong, and as I said just now, you can't blame him for it.

  'I know what you're thinking,' boss-man said. 'It's because —well, I'm going to be blunt about it, because sooner or later you've got to face up to it. Your friend is dead. Naturally enough, but wrongly, you feel guilty about it — you're thinking, you should have been the one to die, and he should have survived. And you're laying this feeling over the way you're remembering the things you did together. But the facts speak for themselves. I'll say it again. He's at the bottom of the sea. You're here. That tells me all I need to know about who's who in this story.'

  I was getting fed up with this conversation. 'Well, anyway,' I said, 'that's who I am, and how I got here, so now you know, and you can make up your mind what you want to do about me. I know this sounds pretty bad, but I'm not really bothered one way or the other. I'll join your gang if you want me to, or if you like you can tie a rock to my ankle and chuck me back in the sea. I'd rather you didn't do that,' I added, 'but I won't make a fuss, if that's what you decide.'

  Once again, boss-man was peering at me like he thought I was kidding him around.

  'But it's obvious what we're going to do now,' he said, 'surely After all, we've got ships, we know the way in and out of the reef, and you're the only living soul on earth who knows where to find this island where the treasure's buried.

  As far as I can see, the only thing left to sort out is how we divide it up once we've recovered it.'

  The treasure, I thought; that old thing. 'I'm really sorry,' I told him, 'but I couldn't find that island again if my life depended on it. I don't know spit about sailing and navigation and stuff, and I spent the time while we were getting there from Africa hanging over the rail puking. And if you think I'm just saying that because I want all the treasure for myself, and I'm planning on sneaking back there on my own to get it, then it strikes me you weren't listening when I told you what happened to Amyntas and his family The treasure's completely useless to one bloke on his own, and — no offence — the only man I'd have trusted enough to help me go and get it was Ahenobarbus' — I'd nearly said Lucius Domitius; remembered just in time that I'd been calling him by his family name — 'and he knew about it anyhow, and he's dead. I'm sorry,' I repeated, 'but that's how it is.'

  Dead silence. Boss-man was looking at me like I'd just risen naked from the sea foam with a sprig of holly stuffed up my nose. 'Just a moment,' he said. 'You're saying that you know about a vast fortune in gold and jewels, nobody else in the whole world knows where it is, and you can't be bothered to go back and look for it?'

  I nodded. 'Yes,' I said.

  That threw him. 'Really,' he said. 'That's — well, please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm having trouble believing it. I mean, you've actually seen all this stuff—'

  'Seen it.' I grinned. 'I've helped shift it, twice. Three tunes, if you count loading it off the beach.'

  'Fine,' boss-man said, a bit nettled at being interrupted. 'And it's all there, for the taking; it's just a matter of finding this little island and showing up with enough ships and men to cart it away Please,' he said, rather more urgently, 'think what you're saying.'

  'Oh, I know it sounds crazy,' I told him. 'But I think — in fact, I know, it's got a jinx on it. Everybody who's had anything to do with it is dead — the Roman knight, the gangsters in the city who wanted to know where it was hidden, Amyntas and his brother, the grain-freighter crew, my friend; all of them, dead, except for me. Wouldn't you call that a jinx?'

  He lifted his head. 'I'd call that inheritance,' he said. 'You know, what happens to property when everyone else with a claim to it has snuffed it. Look,' he went on before I could say anything, 'I know it's hard to expect you to trust us. We've only just met, and besides,' he added gravely, 'we're pirates. But be practical. Where are you going to get ships and men from? You said it yourself, a man on his own'll never be able to get it home. Tell you what, we'll split it with you, straight down the middle, half for you and half for us.'

  I lifted my head. 'No fear,' I said. 'No disrespect, but that'd be like sealing my own death warrant. Look, here's the deal. I've told you absolutely everything I know about where that island is. If you want to go sailing around looking for it, you bloody well carry on, and good luck to you. But don't ask me to come along.' He narrowed his eyes at me, as though he was trying to
figure out whether I was crazy, lying, or both. 'First,' I told him, 'I haven't got the faintest idea about navigation, and even if I had, I wasn't looking where we were going. Second, I'm too scared. I've seen what that stuff'll do to people.

  I'm quite happy to have got out of its way with my life,' I concluded, fingering my rag-wrapped belt under the table. 'If this experience has taught me anything, it's that all the good things in the world won't help you if you're dead. Now, if you want me to stay here, have you got a job scrubbing floors or mucking out horses? I might be able to manage that, so long as you aren't particularly fussy But if you want to help me, put me on the next ship you send out, and dump me on the first inhabited bit of dry land you come to. I swear by the River and any twenty gods you'd like to name that I won't tell anybody about this place. And so what if I can't be trusted to keep my word, I'd never be able to find it again or tell anybody where it is, and nobody'd believe a low-life like me if I told them fire was hot. In return, I solemnly bequeath you all my share and interest' — good, stuff, that; I remembered it out of an old legal document, from my very brief career as a forger — 'in Dido's treasure, free and clear of all encumbrances, in front of the witnesses here present. Can't say fairer than that, can I?'

  Long, long silence. Then the boss-man stood up. 'Deal,' he said; then he spat in his palm and grabbed my hand with a grip that'd have cracked walnuts. 'God forgive me for taking advantage of a lunatic, and God forgive you for giving away your birthright, like the man who swapped Cyrene for a bowl of bean soup.

  Now, you go with Niceratus here, he'll find you a blanket and a place to sleep, and in the morning we'll go over everything you remember about this island, while we're getting a ship ready' He paused, like he'd just remembered something. 'Any place in particular you want to go?' he asked. 'You name it: Britain , India , the Clashing Rocks, Thule ? Least we can do, in the circumstances.'