A Song For Nero Read online

  Turned out that the man having the slanging match with the pomegranate woman owned the next stall down, and the real stallholder, the one whose apple I was pinching, had had his eye on me right from the start.

  So there I am, first day in the big city, lying on the floor of the market district lock-up and wishing I'd stayed in Phyle and starved to death, because if you're going to die horribly you might as well do it among friends. By this stage I'm feeling rather sorry for myself, not to mention distinctly pissed about being left in the lurch by my dear brother, who'd somehow managed to make himself invisible as soon as the trouble started. I was keeping myself occupied thinking of all the rude names I was going to call him when we finally met up again on the other side of the Styx, when the guard sergeant — long, thin Corsican type, as I recall — looms over me and tells me I've got a visitor.

  Of course, the visitor is Callistus, only you'd never have recognised him. He was wearing this absolutely stunning green and orange tunic, embroidered seams, the lot. He had fifty-drachma sandals on his feet and his head was dripping with that really expensive oil that smells like violets and stale armpits. Anyhow, he thanked the sergeant in a loud, grand voice and gave him a drachma.

  'This him?' the sergeant said.

  Callistus sighed. 'I'm afraid so,' he replied, and it was enough to bring tears to your eyes, the sadness and disappointment in his voice. 'Really,' he went on, 'I can only apologise. It's the third time since we got off the boat at Corinth . I keep telling him what'll happen to him if he keeps this up, but he won't listen. It's like some kind of illness, really.'

  The sergeant pulled a face. 'You want to sell him on,' he said, 'before he gets you in real bother.'

  'I know' Callistus clicked his tongue, just like the rich people do. 'But I can't, and that's all there is to it. You see, he was my poor dear father's favourite, and I promised him, during his last illness, that I'd look after the wretch, try and keep him under control.' He shook his head, spraying little drops of oil on the deck. 'The least I can do is give that poor stallholder something for his trouble. Do you think ten drachmas would be enough?'

  The sergeant grinned. 'You bet. That Mnester'd sell his own father for ten drachmas, if only he knew who he was.'

  'Splendid,' Callistus said. 'Look, would it be all right if I gave you the money, to give to this Mnester person? Only, I'd be rather embarrassed having to face him myself.'

  From the way the sergeant smiled, I knew for sure that if Mnester got to see any of that ten drachmas ever, it'd only be because the sergeant was at his stall buying fruit. 'Sure,' he said, 'no bother at all. Right, you,' he called out to me, 'on your feet. It must be your lucky day.'

  There you go, you see. Callistus didn't look like a thief. Callistus looked like a gentleman — well, he looked just like the emperor, though of course we didn't know that then — so nobody ever dreamed of suspecting him. Which meant he could just stroll into the bathhouse, take off his clothes, go for a nice swim and a splash about, have his hair done, get a massage, the whole bit. Then he wanders back into the changing room, starts putting on the smartest-looking kit he lays his eyes on, and if the attendant comes up and says anything, all he needs to do is look down his nose and the poor bugger slinks off to avoid getting whipped for annoying the gentry. Mind you, it was a stroke of luck there being a nice fat purse along with the clothes, because it made getting me out of there a damn sight easier.

  'Shut up,' he hisses to me as we're walking out the door, 'and for God's sake try and look like a slave.'

  Well, that wasn't difficult. We kept it up as far as the next block, just in case someone was watching, then we drop down in the shade and both started shaking like leaves.

  'That does it,' Callistus said. 'From now on, we're going to be honest. My nerves can't hack this.'

  'Bullshit,' I said. 'You were flicking brilliant. But where the hell did you get all the clobber from?'

  So he told me what he'd done, and immediately I knew, like some god had appeared out of the sky and told me in a vision: no more thieving for us, we were going to be swindlers. Far grander, and a much better living, too.

  'You must be out of your tiny mind,' Callistus said when I explained it to him.

  'Just that one time was bad enough. It's taken years off my life. I was so scared I nearly shat myself.'

  Well, that was my brother all over. I looked him in the eye and said, 'Don't be so pathetic. You strolled through it, you're a natural. You even had me convinced, and I've known you all your life. Sure you were nervous,' I went on, 'that's perfectly all right. You're a performer, an artiste. All artistes get nervous before they go on, it's a well-known fact. Hell, I'd be worried if you weren't nervous. But you'll get used to that, I promise you — and when have I ever let you down?'

  He narrowed his eyes. 'How much time have you got?' he said.

  That wasn't a very nice thing to say, but I'm bigger than that. 'The trouble with you artistes,' I told him, 'you don't have any confidence in yourselves.

  It's the same with all the world-class flute-players, they never believe they're any good.'

  'Really,' he replied. 'And how many world-class flute-players do you know?'

  'One,' I told him. 'Chrysippus, who used to come to our place when we were kids.

  I remember him saying once, he always threw up every time just before he went on to play. Nerves, you see.

  He frowned. 'Chrysippus used to throw up all the time,' he said, 'mostly because of drinking neat wine on an empty stomach. And he was hardly world class.'

  'He played in Naples once,' I pointed out, 'and Antium, and once in Capri , in front of the emperor Tiberius himself. If that isn't world class, you tell me what is.'

  Callistus shook his head, like a dog trying to get water out of its ears. 'Fuck Chrysippus,' he said. 'You're trying to change the subject, like you always do.

  The point is, I'm not doing it. And that's final.”

  'You don't mean that.'

  'Yes I do.'

  'No you don't.'

  'Shut up, Galen, for crying out loud.' He rubbed his eyes. He always did that when he couldn't make his mind up about something. 'Anybody else would have learned his lesson,' he went on. 'The first and only time you try breaking the law, you get caught. Not only that, you get caught straight away, faster than a dog with a rat. Doesn't that tell you anything?'

  'Of course it does,' I said. 'It tells me that thieving stuff off market stalls is a mug's game, while conning people is as easy as treading in cowshit, especially,' I pointed out, 'for a naturally gifted artiste such as yourself.

  Surely you can see that. It's as obvious as a hornet up your tunic.'

  'For the last time,' he said, and by now he was almost whimpering, 'I'm not going to do it, and that's that. Getting you out of stir was one thing, but doing it for a living is something else, and I don't want any part of it.'

  'All right,' I said. 'Fine. So what else can we do?'

  I'd got him there, of course, and he knew it. He didn't say anything, just sat there looking miserable, but he knew I was right. Two young lads from the country, no money, didn't know anybody —well, there was our cousin Antyllus who always reckoned he'd give us a job, but would you fancy spending your life scraping down the insides of tanning vats? The way I saw it, we had two choices: a life of crime, or join the army And when you put it like that, it's not really a choice, is it?

  Oddly enough, I got a chance — years later, of course — to talk about this with the wisest man in the world, and I asked him what would he have done if he'd been in our shoes, and he told me, probably exactly what you did. Well, that cheered me up no end, as you can imagine, because I'd thought a lot about it over the years and there were times (mostly when I was sitting in condemned cells or waiting my turn in the queue for the gallows somewhere) when I wondered if I'd made the right decision, that hot afternoon in Athens. But apparently I did, and that's always meant a lot to me. It's one thing deciding something off your own bat and
hanging on grimly hoping it'll turn out that you were right, but getting it confirmed by the wisest man in the world is another matter entirely.

  In case you were born in Britain or your dad kept you locked up in the stables till you were thirty, the wisest man in the world was Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the philosopher, and I met him back when Callistus and I were hanging round the imperial court after that day when we first met Lucius Domitius. In those days, as I'm sure you remember, Seneca was pretty much running the empire, on account of having been Lucius Domitius' tutor when he was a kid. Needless to say, Lucius Domitius was supposed to be in charge, he was the emperor and all that kind of thing, but he was still only a young lad who didn't know what time of day it was, except he had the common sense to leave all the important stuff to people who knew what they were about, and who he could trust. Mostly this was Seneca — after all, he was the wisest man in the world — and he did all the paperwork and the money and negotiating with foreign kings and what-have-you, while the military side of things was left to the guards commander, a miserable old bruiser by the name of Burrus. Anyway, that's beside the point, and I'm only telling you about it because you need to know how come a low-life like me found himself talking to a fine gentleman and a scholar like Seneca.

  It was one of those lazy afternoons around the palace when everybody was either sleeping off lunch or doing something they didn't want anybody else to know about. On days like that you could walk up and down and round and round through all the corridors and courtyards and cloisters for hours at a time and never meet a living soul. I was at a loose end — nothing unusual there, of course — and there was nobody about apart from a few clerks scuttling back and forth with their arms full of scrolls and tablets, and I was just wandering round looking for someone to talk to. Eventually I ended up in a courtyard by a rather pretty little fountain and I'd been there a while, just sat there with my mouth open thinking of nothing much, when this old, sad-looking type flops down next to me on the seat and starts cleaning out his ear with his fingernail.

  I knew straight away who it was, so I stayed perfectly still and kept my face shut, looking down into the little pool under the fountain. He didn't say anything either. Soon as he'd finished cleaning out one ear, he started on the other one, and I guess he was concentrating on the job in hand, which is what you'd expect from the wisest man in the world. Then quite suddenly out of the blue he turns to me and he says, 'So, which are you?'

  I thought I understood what he was going on about. 'I'm Galen,' I replied. 'I'm Callistus' brother.'

  He frowned, then laughed. 'No, that's not what I meant,' he replied. 'I meant, which are you, a Stoic or an Epicurean?'

  I hadn't got a clue what he was talking about. 'Neither,' I said, 'I'm from Phyle, in Attica .'

  You could see it cost him a lot of effort not to laugh. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I was miles away, thinking about something else.'

  I may not be the sharpest razor in the box, but I'm not stupid. If you find yourself sitting next to the man who runs the world and he looks like he's in the mood to chat to somebody, you chat. Also, like I said, I'm a Greek, we don't need a reason. 'That stuff,' I asked him, 'what you said just now — what does it mean?'

  He smiled. 'Stoic and Epicurean?'

  I nodded. 'That's the ones.

  He leaned back, clasped his hands round his knee. 'They're the names of the two main schools of orthodox moral philosophy,' he replied, then he must've realised that everything he'd said had gone whistling over my head like the geese flying south. 'Ways of looking at life,' he explained, 'of figuring out right from wrong, good from bad. The Stoics think that everything that happens to us in life is already decided, even before we're born. They hold that each of us has his destiny and we don't really have any say in what happens to us. The only thing that matters is our intentions, whether they're good or bad. We can't change what we do, because it's already been worked out down to the smallest detail, but what we can control is our own attitudes.' He stroked his beard for a moment. 'Look at it like this. Suppose you're an actor in a theatre. You haven't got any choice about what you're going to say, because all the words come direct from the playwright, and you aren't allowed to change so much as a syllable. Your job is to say those words as well as you possibly can. That way, it can be a truly rotten play, but you can still shine and excel because you said the truly rotten lines but in a clever and interesting way Well, that's what the Stoics believe.'

  'I think I see,' I lied. 'So what about the other lot? Ep-something, wasn't it?'

  'Epicureans,' Seneca replied. 'They believe something quite different. They reckon that everything in life is random, nothing's got any meaning apart from what you bring to it. That being so,' he went on, 'the rights and wrongs of everything we do rest fair and square with us, and the only valid or sensible reason for doing anything at all is because you enjoy it, or because it's to your advantage.'

  Well, right up to the point where he said that last bit, I was pretty sure I was a Stoic, because of nothing I did being my fault. But as soon as he got on to the part about enjoying yourself, I realised I was definitely with the other lot, the Epicureans. Odd how easy it is to make a mistake over something so very basic and straightforward. 'Right,' I said, 'got you. Thanks for explaining.'

  'That's all right,' he replied, smiling, and I thought, this is a case of the old nut and sledgehammer. Here you've got the smartest thinker in the world, and he's wasting his time telling me something that any street-corner lawyer could've told me. Like sending for the Prefect of Aqueducts to bring you a drink of water. 'I get the impression,' he went on, 'that you aren't a student of moral philosophy.' He paused, and looked at me. 'Did I say something funny?' he asked, and I realised I was grinning like a thirsty dog.

  'Sorry,' I said, 'private joke. You see, for a long time, before I lucked into this courtier lark, I was a full-time thief. Well, no, that's not true, we tried thieving and we were bloody awful at it. No, I was bloody awful at it, let's be accurate. So instead we did scams.

  He looked puzzled, so I explained (my turn to be the teacher). 'You know, the bathhouse dodge and the three nutshells caper and the Spanish silver mine sting and the old stolen necklace fiddle—'

  'How absolutely fascinating,' Seneca interrupted. 'You know, I've met a lot of interesting people in my time, but never someone in your line of work.'

  'Oh, we don't do that stuff any more,' I said quickly 'Honest as the day's long, we are now,' I added, not bothering to mention that the day in question was the first of January in Caledonia. 'But the point is, if it's moral philosophy you're after — well, you've come to the right stall, because that's exactly what my brother and me have been studying ever since we got slung off the farm.'

  He raised a snow-white eyebrow 'Really? How's that?'

  'Obvious, isn't it?' I said. 'Morality's all about good and evil, isn't it?

  Right and wrong. Truth and lies. That's right, isn't it?'

  He nodded. 'Broadly speaking, yes.

  'There you are, then. We're professional liars — were professional liars, I mean. These days we're as pure as a mountain stream. But you can't spend your working life telling twisters and not get to know a thing or two about the truth.'

  'I see what you mean,' Seneca said, rubbing his chin. 'I'll confess, I wouldn't have seen it in those terms myself, but your position is essentially valid. Do go on.

  I shrugged. 'Not a lot more to it than that. Thing is, where does the truth end and the lie begin? Here's an example. If I tell you an out-and-out whizzer, like I'm the King of Armenia, you aren't going to believe me for a moment. So I don't do that. I try and trim my lie as close to the truth as I can get it. All right.' I went on, 'suppose I wanted to make you believe I'm really the King of Armenia, right? This is how I'd go about it. I'd make out like I'm the king, only I'm going round in disguise for some reason, and I'm frantically trying not to get recognised. So I drop a few hints —inadvertently, if you get my drift, say some stuff that makes
it sound like the king talking, but sell you on the idea that it just sort of slipped out because I was careless, or smashed, or whatever. Then I pretend like I've just realised what I've done, so I rabbit on about how I'm not the king. I'll say that now and again people have been known to mistake me for the king, since we look a bit alike. Then I'll stop myself, and make a big fuss about how I don't think I look anything like him, it's just that some people — quite a lot of people, actually — somehow get the impression that I look like him, or our voices are a bit alike. You see what I'm getting at? Most of the time I'm telling you the solid gold truth — I'm not the king, I don't look like him one little bit — and the clever bit is that by telling you the truth, I can make you believe my lie much better than if I came straight out with it. That's what we call drawing the lie out of the mark, rather than trying to stuff it in. I guess the idea behind it is that everybody's full of lies — the honest folk, I mean — and that what you've got to do if you want to con someone is to charm one of their own lies up to the surface, like tickling a fish. Which means,' I went on, 'that nobody's really honest, when you come down to it. See what I mean?'

  Seneca sat there for a moment looking like he'd just had his head stuffed full of new wool, then he burst out laughing. 'Exactly,' he said. 'You're absolutely right. You're saying that it's no good you telling me a lie, because I won't believe it. You've got to make me tell myself a lie, by telling me the unblemished truth.'

  'You've got it,' I said.

  'Wonderful.' he replied. 'And, taking that argument to the next level, we can say that it takes two men to make a lie: one to suggest it and one to believe it, and both of them are equally at fault.'

  I wasn't sure I followed that. In fact, that sounded to me like he'd got the whole thing arse about face. But you don't go saying that to a man who can get you top billing in the circus just by clicking his fingers. 'You betcha,' I said. 'That's all there is to it, really.'

  Anyhow we had a long talk after that, and gradually I ended up telling him all about our adventures, Callistus and me, from when we left home, when I was sixteen, through our nine years together on the road right up to the point five years ago where we were about to die and Lucius Domitius showed up. Well, that seemed to tickle the old bugger no end. He laughed, and said, 'So what you're telling me is, precisely because everything you did was wrong, everything turned out right in the end. In other words, you're a stone—cold Stoic.'