A Song For Nero

by Tom Holt

  Sure, there's nothing much else you can do on a ship except talk, and a cleft-palated German would've been better than nobody at all. It was more than that, though. Hard to explain, really Twenty-four years on the road; I'd always had someone I could talk to free and easy, without having to think before I opened my mouth — first Callistus, then Lucius Domitius — but since I got home (the one place on earth you'd have thought I could loosen up and be myself) I'd been going around feeling like it was all a scam, a con, a part I was playing in order to deceive and defraud the honest folks of Phyle. It'd started to get to me, to the point where I was spending all day lurking out in the fields, hiding not just from my loathsome mother but from my loathsome self.

  What all that'd got to do with Blandinia, I couldn't tell you. But coming across her again, it was like being in a foreign place, where they don't even talk Greek, and suddenly running into someone from your home town, when you least expected it. Or whatever. In any event, I don't have to justify myself to you.

  So I'm the sort of bloke who'll chum up with nasty horrible people. So what? I never said I was perfect, or even halfway decent.

  By the time we got to Piraeus , then, we'd sort of made our peace, if only on the basis of a mutual exchange of insult and injury; we were quits, and there didn't seem any point in fighting any more. Not that I trusted her at all. No way, she was still a wolf by the ears, and I knew that if she got half a chance to get her freedom or any advantage at all by turning me in to the Romans or selling my severed ears to the sausagemaker, she'd do it easy as sneezing. But we both accepted that, it was out in the open, lying on the table between us, as it were; so, somehow, it wasn't a problem.

  All right, I'll own up, because you've guessed anyway, and what have I got to gain from lying to you? Hands in the air, I admit it; I was falling in love.

  Falling isn't the right word. Think of what it feels like when you're out walking in the wet, and you go to jump over a steep ditch and you almost make it but not quite; you balance for just a moment, and then you feel yourself slipping backwards, out of control, and you slowly slide down the bank and end up in the mud up to your knees. I was gradually slithering down into love; probably because, well, living my kind of life you don't get to meet many nice girls, or many girls of any description, and then only long enough for them to tell you to drop dead, or yell for the watch. And, like I said, she was sort of nice-looking in a sparse kind of a way, and twenty years younger than me; and, most of all, she was there. When, over the course of twenty-four years, you only find one girl who'll hold still long enough for you to say more than a couple of dozen words to her ... and yes, I'm not forgetting Amyntas' sister Myrrhine, but I think that proves my point. I fell for her in the time it takes to peel an onion; not because we had loads in common, or we were the two halves of one soul severed before birth, like in Plato, but simply because in my life, when it comes to quality time with the opposite sex, as long as it takes to peel an onion is practically for ever.

  Right, we've got that sorted, now maybe we can get on with the story.

  We got off the ship at Piraeus , and I went round to the livery and collected my horse. This presented me with a problem straight away The way I'd seen it when I left for Delos, on the way home, I'd ride the horse, leading my new slave behind me on the end of a piece of rope. Now that I was in love, of course, that didn't seem appropriate. If things had been otherwise, needless to say, I'd have let the object of my affection ride the horse, while I walked. But I wasn't so far gone in daffyness to risk letting Blandinia get on the horse, because of the very real danger that she'd kick me in the face and ride off in the general direction of Thebes and points north as soon as her bum hit the horse blanket.

  So I compromised. We both walked, and I led the horse.

  She can't have grasped the subtleties of the position, because she asked me after a bit 'Why aren't you riding?'

  'Oh,' I said. 'I just feel like some exercise after being cooped up on a ship, that's all.'

  'I see,' she said. 'So let me ride the horse. I've only got these thin sandals on, and my feet are killing me.

  I lifted my head. 'You wouldn't like my horse,' I said. 'Very bony back, he's got. I'm used to him, but you wouldn't like him at all.'

  She shrugged. 'Suit yourself,' she said. 'Only, I'm not used to walking — well, not in the country at any rate. Inside buildings, up and down stairs, in streets, yes; you spend all day on your feet when you're a slave. But all these stones and ruts and things hurt my ankles.'

  I didn't say anything to that, and she let the subject drop, which was just as well. Instead, she asked, 'When we get to your place, what've I got to do?'

  I felt like an idiot; I hadn't told her. 'Lady's maid,' I said. 'For my mother.'

  'Oh.' She seemed pleased, the poor fool. 'I've never been a lady's maid before.

  But,' she went on, 'I've seen enough of them, God knows, back at the Golden House. Always struck me as a good life, for service. Mending clothes, helping the mistress do her hair, reading to her in the evening sometimes — is that what you mean?'

  I thought about my dear mother, drinking unmixed straight from the jar and spilling soup all over the floor. 'That sort of thing,' I said. 'And a bit of general housework, now and again.'

  'Sounds all right,' she said. 'Better than a lot of things, anyhow You know—'

  She stopped, and I stopped too, though the horse carried on walking till I pulled him back. 'I suppose I ought to say thank you,' she said. 'I mean, after some of the stuff I did, back in Rome . Some of it was pretty mean.

  You could say that, I thought. 'Well,' I said, 'that was then and this is now I think it'd be better if we didn't dwell on all that.'

  'No,' she said, 'maybe not. But some people would've wanted to get their own back. And really, I'm not a horrible person — oh, I know it's easy for me to say that, and there's no reason for you to believe it, but I don't think I'm a horrible person, anyway I've always just done what I could to get away from all the bad stuff— at the Golden House, you know what I mean. I've had this idea that unless I could be free and clear, completely on my own, not answering to anybody, there'd always be the chance I'd end up back there, or somewhere just as bad. It's just because I'm scared, I guess. But — well, I know now that you aren't like that, and if you're prepared to give me another chance and believe me, I promise you, I'm through with all that stuff. I want to be somewhere I can do my work, whatever it is, and know that if I carry out my side of the deal, nothing bad's going to happen. That's all, really Sorry,' she added, 'that sounds totally dumb and pathetic. But for what it's worth, I do mean it.'

  There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the horse having a piss.

  'Like I said,' I told her eventually, 'far as I'm concerned, all that stuff's behind us, so why don't we just carry on as though it'd never happened? Better for all concerned, if you ask me.

  I still didn't let her ride the horse, though.

  It was nearly dark by the time we reached Phyle. For the last mile or so she'd been asking, 'Are we nearly there yet?', and I'd been saying, 'We'll be there soon,' and she'd been saying, 'Is it soon yet?' —at any rate, she'd been telling the truth about not being used to walking on Attic roads, because the closer we'd got to home, the slower she'd gone, dragging herself along like she was dying of exhaustion in the trackless Libyan desert. So, when the farm was no more than a hundred or so yards off, and she asked again, 'Are we nearly there?'

  I nodded and said, 'Sure; only about ten miles to go, we'll be home well before dawn.' She was still making whimpering noises when I pushed open the gate and headed down into the yard.

  'Is this it?' she asked.

  'Yes,' I said.

  'Oh,' she said.

  Smicro, one of my two Syrians, happened to be coming out of the stables just then. He said, Hello, have a good trip? and I replied, Not so bad, and gave him the horse to see to. He looked at Blandinia but didn't say anything. Don't think she noticed him.
>
  There was light showing under the house door, which meant either Mother was still up, or she'd zonked out with the lamps still burning. Fortunately it turned out to be the latter, because I wasn't in the mood to do the necessary introductions after a long walk up the mountain. Mother was lying on the floor in a pool of red stuff when we walked in. Blandinia tried to jump out of her skin and made a loud squealing noise. Luckily, it took more than that to wake Mum up when she had a load on.

  'My God,' Blandinia was gibbering, 'oh my God, she's been murdered.'

  I shook my head wearily 'That's not blood, it's just booze,' I said. 'She'll be all right. Either she'll wake up around midnight and drag herself over to the bed, or else she'll just stay there till morning. You'd think at the very least she'd crick her neck, but it never seems to do her any harm.'

  It was fun seeing the look of surprise and, yes, disgust on Blandinia's face.

  'You mean she does this a lot?' she whispered.

  I nodded. 'Every day, practically,' I said. 'That's not to say she always fetches up on the floor. Some nights she passes out in her chair, or on the couch. Some nights she manages to put herself to bed. One time I went out at dawn to feed the pig and there she was, face down in the pigshit, snoring like a boarhound.' I yawned. 'Since you've only just got here,' I said, 'we'll say you don't start work till the morning, so don't bother cleaning her up or putting her to bed tonight. There's a spare mattress in the corner, look, you can sleep on that. Goodnight.'

  To be honest with you, when I woke up the next morning, I wasn't sure she'd still be there. Judging by the look on her face the night before, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to find that she'd snuck out while I was asleep and legged it, and the hell with the horrible tortures prescribed by law for runaway slaves. But when I opened the door of the inner room and looked out into the main house, I was amazed to see it was looking — well, near as dammit clean, and neat, and tidy Mother was still fast asleep on the floor where we'd found her, and the space around her hadn't been touched, it was a little island of squalor in a sea of hygienic order. Blandinia was down on her hands and knees with a bucket of water, scrubbing a stubborn mark off a flagstone. Amazing, I thought; it was like walking in and finding a wolf darning your socks.

  You've got yourself a little treasure here, I told myself. 'Morning,' I said.

  'Sleep well?'

  She turned her head and snarled at me like a snared fox. 'Lady's maid, you said,' she growled. 'Nice light work looking after a dear old soul who'd be no bother at all for a year or so, then die and set me free in her will. I've been at it since before dawn, scouring five-year-old vomit off the furniture.'

  I smiled. 'You're doing a grand job,' I said encouragingly 'Only,' I added, pointing, 'you missed a bit.'

  She didn't throw the scraper at me, but probably only because she preferred to close in hand to hand, like the Roman army 'I should have guessed,' she said.

  'Vindictive bastard like you. And all that stuff about let's forget about the past, make a fresh start.' Words seemed to fail her, which was probably just as well. I edged past her and got my hat off the hook.

  'When you've finished that,' I said, 'how about fixing us all some breakfast?'

  I left before she'd finished replying. Some of the words she used I hadn't even heard before, but I think I got the gist of it.

  I spent the morning terracing with the Syrians. They were curious about the new addition to the household, but too polite to ask outright. I said I'd got a maid for my mother while I'd been away on business, and left it at that. At midday , I said I thought I might wander back down to the house for something to eat, since I'd missed breakfast. The Syrians looked at each other, but didn't say anything.

  Well, naturally I'd been dying of curiosity all morning, wondering how Mum and Blandinia had got on with each other. As I pushed open the door, I expected to see smashed furniture, bits of potsherd all over the place, maybe even a pool of blood. Not a bit of it. The two of them were sat round the table — Mum on her chair, Blandinia on a little three-legged stool I didn't even know we had —and there were two winecups beside the jug. That aside, the place looked neat and tidy, Mum's hair was combed and she was wearing a clean dress. She was pissed as a rat, of course, but no worse than usual; and she was smiling. I didn't think she knew how 'And then,' Blandinia was saying, 'I rolled him over and stuck a sprig of parsley in his ear, and then the watch arrived.' Mum burst out laughing, did the nose trick with her wine. Neither of them seemed to have noticed I was there.

  'Hello,' I said.

  Mum looked up, realised it was me, and scowled. 'What do you want?' she said.

  'Nothing,' I answered, 'just wondered if there's any food.'

  Mum glowered at me as though I'd just asked for a quart of her blood. 'There's bread and cheese,' she said, 'and if you want olives, you'll have to fetch in a new jar.'

  I lifted my head. 'I'm not bothered, thanks,' I said. 'So, you two've been getting to know each other, then?'

  Neither of them seemed to think that was even worth replying to. Instead, Mum poured out two full cups of unmixed, and said, 'So then what happened? Did you give him his clothes back in the end?'

  I got a bit of cheese and the stale end of the loaf, and went and had my dinner in the barn.

  Over the next month or so, we got a hell of a lot of work done on the farm. It was just as well I'd chosen a couple of good workers in Smicro and Ptolemy They stuck at it and didn't complain, even when we started and finished in the dark, and had to walk home from the fields by moonlight. All right, you can call me chickenshit if you like, but after Blandinia had been there two months, I took to sleeping in the bunkhouse, and kept clear of the main house altogether. Well, I was getting home so late and starting work so early, there didn't seem any point, there was plenty of room in the bunkhouse for one more, and Smicro and Ptolemy always fixed up a good breakfast of fried oatmeal and sausage, which they were perfectly happy to share with me. Oddly enough, I felt much more comfortable that way, like it hadn't been right for me to kip down in the main house, like a gentleman or something. Believe it or not, I was quite enjoying the farm work, even the ditching and earthing up and the clodbashing. It's different when it's your own dirt, after all, and doing something constructive and honest for the first time in my life was so much less hassle than conning or thieving, and when you count in the time I used to spend hiding in haylofts and under market trestles or running down alleys, the hours were better, too.

  Add in a dry place to sleep and all the food I could eat, and I was as happy as a jarful of crickets. I only wished Lucius Domitius could've been there to share the pleasure; only he'd have moaned like hell about the long days in the searing heat, and how his hands were getting calloused all to buggery.

  (And once or twice I thought, This is a better ending than the one in all the books. Far better this way than the big fight scene, stringing the great bow and shooting down the noble lords of Ithaca like stray dogs. So much more sensible, if you will insist on coming home, to settle down in a quiet way, do an honest job of work, raise a good crop of corn and grapes and beans, and not worry about who rules over who, or what the right and wrongs of it all are. It's as if Lucius Domitius had come home after his ten years' wandering among the savages and the seat monsters, and got himself a job teaching the harp, maybe singing at tables in the evenings. But the trouble with Ithaca is, when you finally get there, you find out it's moved on, and the place where it used to be is called something else now, and strangers live there who don't hold with your sort.

  Different in my case; I'd been lucky, amazingly so. It'd taken a whole skyful of gods, not to mention a vast hoard of buried treasure, a secret island and a perfectly timed floating coffin to win me my corner of the bunkhouse and my two square meals of bean porridge a day Most people don't have that kind of luck. I guess there simply isn't enough of it to go round.)

  So there I was, from worthless parasite to blameless peasant in one roll of the dice.
Better still, Mum seemed to have taken on a new lease of life, thanks to my thoughtfulness in supplying her with a congenial companion, which got the Furies off my back and meant I'd probably turned into a Good Son. Oh, she was still on the booze, more or less permanently zonked, but at least she seemed to enjoy it more than she'd used to. Often when I passed the house I could hear her roaring her head off laughing, presumably at one or other of Blandinia's dirty stories about her time in the cathouse. Quite why the two of them were getting along so well I didn't know, or care. Obviously they had something in common other than a really piss-poor opinion of me, but whatever it was they didn't say and I couldn't be bothered to ask.

  I once heard someone in a barber's shop say that the lives of mortal men are nothing but a story the gods tell each other across the dinner table up on Mount Olympus; they call us up out of the empty darkness to serve some purpose in the story, and when we aren't needed any more, they send us back where we came from, and start the story off in some new direction. Well it sounds clever enough, like so much of what you overhear when you're having your hair cut, but I don't believe it. For one thing, if our lives were meant to be entertaining enough to keep a bunch of gods from falling asleep over their wine, there'd be more comedy and sex in them, and not quite so much farming or weaving baskets. More to the point, the theory was true, there'd be some kind of shape or pattern to the way things happen, not to mention a damn sight more happy endings. Take my life, for instance. There's me: I'd been away, done all sorts of adventures and stuff in the big world, gone around for ten years with one of the most famous, hated people in history, found this amazing stash of Carthaginian gold, come home again rich. Now, wouldn't that be the right place to end, with the Blandinia bit tacked on at the end as a sort of comic tailpiece, showing how what goes around comes around, or whatever? Damn straight it would, if it was you or me making it up. No need to go on any further. Or suppose that the story was really about Lucius Domitius, and I was just a supporting role, a sidekick or a funny servant or whatever; fine, that'd fit well enough, with all the roles being reversed, neat as a daisychain, even down to me rescuing Blandinia from Delos, just like Lucius Domitius rescued Callistus and me off the cross, the first time we met him. Only difference would be, Blandinia would've fallen in love with me, like Callistus did with Lucius Domitius; that didn't seem to be happening, but then again, I'm not one of your literary types, so maybe I'm missing a point somewhere. I couldn't care less, actually What I'm trying to say is, this ought to have been where the story got neatly tied up and put to bed, or at least petered out, and the gods who'd been listening to it should've yawned loudly, drunk up and staggered off to bed. Everything had fallen more or less into place, like the wards of a key in a lock: Lucius Domitius had escaped the death he deserved through Callistus, just as Callistus had escaped the death he deserved through Lucius Domitius; because of Lucius Domitius, I'd had the ten years of misery and aggravation I deserved, and at the end of it I'd been paid back, also all because of him, with my gold belt and my nice little farm. All the other bad guys had been dealt with in the way they deserved — Amyntas, Strymon, even Blandinia, reduced to being the drinking companion of my unspeakable mother — and our Ulysses (that's me) was back home again, everything bolted down tight, job done. That's all for now, folks.