In the Shadow of Heroes Read online

  Cadmus waited in the darkness, thinking nothing. There was only the sound of his pulse, the sharp pain in his ribs. Beyond the huge doors he could hear just one voice, echoing around the amphitheatre’s empty seats.

  A lonely trumpet blared. There was a shuffling of shadows at his feet and doors opened. Epaphroditus shoved Cadmus forward, and he wandered blindly into the arena. He entered to the sound of a single pair of hands applauding.

  Behind him the doors slammed shut.

  Cadmus had never been to the amphitheatre before – Tullus had always said that gladiators were a pastime of the uneducated. The space was an enormous oval, lit with torches and braziers on the end of poles. The games weren’t usually held at night, so Nero, in his impatience, had obviously improvised while Cadmus had been locked in his cell. The only audience members were the emperor himself and his entourage – Polydamas on one side, slaves on the other. Epaphroditus eventually joined him.

  When Cadmus hung back against the wall, the men who had opened the gates dragged him into the middle of the sand. Nero’s giant guards stood in a ring around the perimeter.

  ‘Here he is!’ jeered Nero, laurels upon his head, goblet in one hand. ‘Descendant of Jason! Descendant of the gods! What a heroic figure he cuts!’

  Cadmus didn’t move. Couldn’t move.

  ‘What is this?’ Nero gestured around the amphitheatre as though in outrage. ‘Too arrogant to even salute his emperor? A poor omen, wouldn’t you say, Polydamas?’

  Even from where he stood, with his blood pounding in his ears, Cadmus could hear the soothsayer’s wheezing.

  The emperor settled back in his chair. ‘Well, we shall see where his defiance gets him. Let’s show him his adversary.’

  He drained another cup of wine, dried his fingers on the hair of the slave standing next to him, and gave the signal. The trumpet sounded once more, and the doors opposite him opened. From the darkness within came a young woman, as tall as the other guards, hair like moonlight tumbling down her back.

  Cadmus dropped his sword in disbelief.

  ‘Tog,’ he said, the name barely making it out of his mouth.

  She didn’t reply. She looked tired. Or was that bruising beneath her eyes? She still held her sword tightly, he noticed. Her knuckles twitched on its hilt.

  By now Nero was laughing so hard he had nearly fallen out of his chair.

  ‘Now,’ he said, voice echoing around the empty seats, ‘the rules of these games are as follows. Obviously I would like to see each of you slice the other into tiny pieces. Perhaps you think you will not fight? If this is your choice, my heroidai will kill you anyway, so you will gain nothing. If you win the fight, however, I will spare you. Free you. Honour you, even. Perhaps, my girl, you would like a corner of Britannia to rule yourself? Perhaps, boy, you would like your master to live out his life in peace and comfort? Hmmm? I can make all these things so, you understand.’

  Cadmus looked into the deep, blue pools of Tog’s eyes and found her as placid and unreadable as ever. He realized, his stomach falling away from him, he had no idea what she was going to do. She had always been wilful, headstrong, self-reliant. She didn’t need him. It probably seemed like a good deal to her.

  For his own part, he knew that, whatever he did, Nero would kill him. He didn’t trust a single drunken word he said.

  ‘Tog,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’

  She blinked very slowly, as though she were trying to master a pain inside her. Then she shook her head fractionally. Cadmus didn’t know what that meant.

  ‘Well?’ screamed Nero. ‘What are you waiting for? Pick up your sword, you coward!’

  Cadmus heard the sound of bows being drawn. Around the arena, half a dozen guards aimed arrows at him and Tog.

  He pulled his blanket up around his neck. There was only one way that they could both come away from this alive. He had to believe, with his whole heart, that he had the Golden Fleece upon his shoulders. After all of the strange things he had seen and heard, after all the hours spent in intellectual contortions, trying to rationalize, to prove, to disprove – all his questions could be answered right now, in this very moment. He either held the real fleece, or he didn’t. It held all the powers that the stories said it held, or it didn’t. He would die, or he wouldn’t.

  He found himself unexpectedly calm. A hint of a smile pulled at the side of his mouth.

  ‘Just do it, Tog,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  He bent down to pick up his sword, and when he came up he took a step closer. Nero began a slow clap.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Cadmus whispered. ‘This is the fleece. The real one.’

  Tog frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  He tried to make it true just by saying it. But he didn’t know. He couldn’t know, until she had struck him. His whole body was shaking, he realized.

  ‘Come on!’ Nero shouted. ‘I’m getting bored!’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Tog said again.

  ‘You have to. Just try not to miss and cleave my head in two.’

  A series of expressions passed over Tog’s blank face, like clouds across an empty sky. Then she stepped backwards and made a couple of experimental strokes with her sword. Nero clapped again. The guards relaxed at their bow strings. Cadmus closed his eyes, tensed, and thought of nothing at all as Tog raised the weapon over her head.

  He thought someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  The amphitheatre went quiet. Cadmus turned and looked behind him. There was no one there. He turned again to look at Tog, feeling foolish. Her sword arm hung limply at her side, and in her hand was only the hilt, which smouldered slightly. The blade lay in glittering fragments upon the sand.

  When he looked into Tog’s face, he saw her skin had regained some of its colour. It was radiant, even.

  It was reflected light. The blanket around his shoulders glowed golden. Silence spread around him, around the fleece, slow and warm as sunrise.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Tog.

  ‘I don’t believe—’

  Nero came stumbling down the tiers of seats with Polydamas behind him.

  ‘He has it! He has the fleece! Take it from him, you cowards!’

  But the guards didn’t move. They stared at Cadmus in awe. One of them nocked and loosed an arrow at him. The iron head tinkled like shattering glass as it struck Cadmus’s arm, and again Cadmus felt as though someone were touching him gently with their finger.

  ‘You!’ Nero snarled. ‘You useless creature!’ Cadmus thought the emperor was shouting at him, but he had turned to Polydamas. ‘You assured me that he was lying! You told me the boy would die tonight!’

  In his rage, he seized the soothsayer by his grubby robes and hurled him from the tiered seating down on to the sand. Polydamas’s ancient bones fell in a heap, and there was a sound like twigs snapping beneath his robes. He didn’t get up.

  ‘And you . . .’ Nero turned around to look for Epaphroditus, but the secretary had already fled. The emperor whirled around on the spot, until he almost tottered into the arena himself. He leant over the edge and snarled at his guards.

  ‘I did not free you from gladiator school for your mercy! He is just a boy! Take what is mine, or you will be the ones illuminating the arena at the next games!’

  They moved slowly, uncertainly.

  Cadmus flung the Golden Fleece so it covered both his and Tog’s shoulders, and together they ran across the arena, leaping over Polydamas’s broken body. They made for the gate Tog had entered from, and disappeared into the darkness.

  They ran back the way they had come, the glow of the fleece gradually fading. Cadmus’s thoughts matched his feet, rushing and tripping over themselves. He wanted to say more to her, but he was completely out of breath and his broken rib hurt like a dagger in his side. Crossing the River Tiber he sprained his ankle, and Tog had to drag him to his feet like a dog on a leash. He hobbled on as fast as
he could, but knew he couldn’t go much further.

  Rome’s respectable population were in their beds by now, safe behind their slaves and gates and high walls. The streets had been given over to a different kind of citizen, who whispered and snickered and cracked their knuckles in the shadows. Cadmus felt pairs of narrow and greedy eyes watching them from corners and alleyways. He didn’t feel much safer here than he had done in the amphitheatre, even with the fleece around his shoulders.

  When they reached the shops alongside the Circus Maximus, he fell to his knees and grunted in pain. Tog pulled him upright again and they huddled in the doorway of a taberna.

  Then she said suddenly: ‘Someone’s still following us. Don’t turn around. They’re at the end of the street. We need to keep going.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Cadmus, wincing. ‘Please . . . can we rest a moment?’

  Tog sighed. She helped him to his feet, led him into another, smaller alley and went around the back of the taberna. She threw her shoulder against the door once, twice, until it gave way. They fell over the threshold and scrambled out of sight, hiding themselves behind some stacked bags of flour.

  Cadmus panted in the darkness.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Cadmus asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nero said they . . . questioned you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they hurt you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Some,’ she said.

  ‘You seem . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, better than I’d expect for someone who has been interrogated by Nero.’

  She suddenly looked embarrassed. ‘He didn’t interrogate me.’

  ‘He didn’t? Then how did he know about me? How did he know we were going back to Tullus’s villa?’

  She scratched the side of her face. ‘I talk in my sleep. I’d told them everything before I was even back in Rome.’

  Cadmus couldn’t help laughing. His rib sent a jolt of pain through his body.

  ‘What?’ said Tog. ‘Aren’t you angry?’

  ‘Not in the slightest,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’

  She took the edge of the fleece in her thumb and forefinger. It had lost its glow by now. An old, thin sheep’s hide, curling at the edges. There was nothing remarkable about it.

  ‘It’s not what I expected,’ she said.

  Cadmus nodded. ‘It’s not what Nero expected either.’

  ‘Will you keep your promise, now I’m here?’

  ‘What promise?’

  ‘To give it to me?’

  He thought of the heroidai, waiting for him at Antium. He had sworn to bring the fleece back to them. How could he get around that, and keep his promise to Tog?

  Suddenly the light of a torch spread across the wall of the storeroom, distorting the hard edges of things and filling the space between them with living, malevolent shadows.

  ‘Come out, little mice,’ said a voice. ‘Come out, come out.’ A giggle.

  Nero had come looking for them personally. The emperor himself, skulking around the backstreets like a common thief.

  ‘There is nowhere to hide in this city. It is my city. It is my empire. There is nowhere, no nation on earth where you will be safe. I have as many eyes as Argus, and they see everything.’

  He stood in the centre of the room, where the shop owner’s table was piled with scrolls and tablets. He turned his sweating face slowly. Tog was preparing to launch herself at the emperor, but before she could Cadmus caught sight of that familiar brown blur darting out from their hiding place and crossing the room.

  Nero saw the dormouse before he saw Cadmus or Tog. He squealed with terror as the little animal raced around his feet, and there was a clatter as he dropped his torch to the ground. Tog lunged forward – more to save the mouse than to attack the emperor, Cadmus suspected – and they collided. Nero grunted as the breath was knocked out of him and he fell into the table and the piles of accounts.

  Then another sound, which reminded Cadmus of the Argo’s sail catching the wind, as the torch’s flames lit the dry papyrus that had fallen to the floor.

  Tog had already chased her mouse out of the door, but Cadmus was trapped. The fire greedily claimed the table and the chairs and the sacks of flour, and the tips of the flames were already reaching for the wooden shelves above them. Through the thick smoke Cadmus could see Tog outside. She was shouting something but at the same time one of the bags of flour exploded and her words were lost in a rain of burning debris.

  Nero rolled around on the floor, semi-conscious. The mouse scurried away through the destruction and disappeared.

  Cadmus had convinced himself that this was the end, when the Golden Fleece began to shine again – not with the red of the fire, but with a cool divine light of its own. He pulled it around himself tightly, and walked calmly through the flames, and over Nero’s twitching body.

  Tog grabbed him as soon as he emerged from the burning storeroom.

  ‘He’s gone!’

  ‘Who has?’

  ‘My mouse! He’s run away!’

  She looked miserable. Cadmus didn’t know how to console her.

  ‘We need to go, Tog.’

  They heard the emperor getting to his feet within, and set off down the network of alleys, Tog looking over her shoulder.

  They came out at the foot of the Palatine, in front of the Circus Maximus. Here, a crowd had gathered to watch the smoke billowing out over the shops and the cheap blocks of flats, and when Cadmus looked back he could see that the fire had spread between two, possibly three buildings. The wind was strong, the shops were tightly packed, and the flames licked from roof to roof quicker than he could follow.

  His sister’s baleful words came back to him. The flames. Everywhere. How many times, he wondered, had her memories in fact been visions of the future?

  Cadmus worried about the poor souls trapped in their tower blocks, but there was nothing they could do. They set off towards the Caelian Hill, to the villa, to Tullus – or whatever was left of him.

  When they arrived, they found a bruised and frail figure lying on a couch in the master’s bedroom. The other slaves were attending to him. Cadmus approached his master slowly, wordlessly. The others turned around, and it was only then that he saw it wasn’t Tullus who was laid out on the bed. It was Bufo. Tullus was helping the other slaves to clean his wounds and bring him water.

  Tullus turned as Cadmus and Tog approached. The old man looked less surprised than terrified, as if he was seeing two shades returning from the Underworld. He experimentally laid a hand on Cadmus’s shoulder, and then pulled him into an embrace.

  ‘You . . .’ he said, stepping back and looking him over in disbelief. ‘And she . . .’ He pointed at Tog. ‘How . . . ?’

  ‘I might ask you the same question, Master. Where are Nero’s men?’

  Tullus smiled briefly through cracked and swollen lips. Then his face fell and he turned to the figure of Bufo.

  ‘Your fellow slaves decided to take matters into their own hands. Bufo here fought fiercest, but, ah, came off worst . . .’

  Cadmus suddenly felt a huge surge of pity for the old toad. Loyal to the last.

  ‘Will he survive?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I have sent for a doctor.’

  Cadmus came forward and laid the Golden Fleece over Bufo. Immediately his leathery face seemed to soften.

  ‘Master,’ said Cadmus, ‘we need to leave. Something terrible has happened.’

  Tullus gave a wheezing laugh. ‘I know something terrible has happened. Something terrible has happened on an almost daily basis for the last four months.’

  ‘More than terrible. Catastrophic.’

  He led his master out of the villa, and showed him the huge cloud of smoke, a dirty orange against the night sky, spreading like an umbrella pine over the city. The great fire was like a fierce, unnatural sunrise. The far end of the Circus Maximus had now caught, and the flames were making short work of
its wooden frame. The roar of the conflagration was matched by the cries of the citizens as they watched their livelihoods being devoured.

  ‘Oh, dear, Cadmus,’ Tullus said. ‘Your doing? Or hers?’

  ‘Neither, technically. We can thank Nero for this.’

  ‘Where is the Divine Caesar now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere out there. I think.’ Tullus stared at the burning city.

  ‘If he is still here, then we cannot be, boy. Your sister is waiting for us. And the others.’ He took a deep breath and coughed quietly. ‘I think it is time for us to say farewell to Rome.’

  The old man went back inside, crossed the ruined atrium and returned to his bedroom. Charis was chatting to Tog when they entered. The slave raised an eyebrow at Cadmus when she saw him, and grinned. Still playing matchmaker, in the midst of all of this.

  ‘My friends,’ Tullus began, in Latin, as though he were addressing his peers in the Senate. ‘Due to forces beyond our control, Cadmus and I must take our leave of my family home; indeed, we must take our leave of the city we love so much; perhaps of the country too.’ He surveyed their faces. ‘But I will not be asking you to come with us. The path ahead may be a dangerous one, and I would not want you to endure any more misfortune than has already befallen you. But nor will I leave you here to be slaves to another man or woman.’

  The group exchanged mute glances. Cadmus’s heart swelled to hear his master speak like this. He looked at Tog, but she understood no Latin, and besides still seemed to be quietly grieving her lost mouse.

  ‘I have stipulated in my will,’ he continued, ‘that you shall all be freed upon my death. Now, you may have realized, I am not dead. But in the circumstances, it is to my advantage to have the world believe I am a dead man, and I would ask you to believe it too. I am sorry there is no magistrate here, no ceremony to make the deed official. But I have something that will perhaps make my words feel a little more concrete.’

  The slaves began talking excitedly. Tullus turned around to his strongbox, pushed into the corner of the room and, despite the evidence of being attacked with several blunt objects, unopened.

  ‘I know you always thought me a terrible miser,’ he said, producing a key from beneath his toga. ‘But I never saw the need to spend my money on such trivial and fleeting things as ornaments and paintings and marble columns.’ He opened the lid. The strongbox was full to the brim with thousands and thousands of gold coins. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, turning to the slaves, ‘you might find a better way to spend it.’