In the Shadow of Heroes Page 24

  XXXIII

  For the first time since landing in Italy, the sky was overcast. Rome burnt, and the blanket of smoke had spread miles to the south, turning the beach at Antium to a deathly grey. The air was acrid, the breeze strong.

  Cadmus waited with his sister on the quayside, blinking tiny flecks of ash from his eyes. Tog was standing by the Argo. The heroidai came and went, loading the ship with provisions. She watched them like a stern, imperious quartermaster, and then picked up a crate herself and followed them below decks. Cadmus rubbed Orthus behind the ears, more for his own reassurance than for the dog’s.

  Tullus returned from bribing the harbourmaster.

  ‘All set,’ he said. ‘We’re allowed to go as soon as we’re ready. And I’ve paid him enough to forget our faces.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that,’ said Cadmus.

  Tullus shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to trust he is as god-fearing as he claims,’ he said, and set off for the Argo. ‘Come on.’

  Cadmus gritted his teeth. In the last few hours he had hoped, secretly, that Tog would decide to join them on their ship and sail into exile alongside him. But of course she would never have agreed to that. Almost as soon as they had left Rome, she had taken him to one side and told him she was going home. For good, this time. Her mouse’s escape had been a sign, she’d said. She had saved him. They had helped each other on their adventures. But now it was time for him to return home.

  Cadmus still hadn’t worked out if she was talking about the mouse, or about him.

  On the journey from Rome to Antium they had finalized their plan. No one else knew about it, of course. Unless his sister had found out through some means of her own.

  Tullus made his slow way across the harbour, Cadmus close behind. Eriopis came last, guided by Orthus. When she had the dog with her, she hardly seemed blind at all – and she hated it when Cadmus tried to lead her like an invalid. Cadmus still found it difficult to think of her as family, but he had grown protective of her and her strangeness. After all he had seen, strangeness was something he had come to embrace. But others didn’t know better. Sailors began to mutter and hiss and make signs at her as they passed, and Cadmus’s blood boiled.

  When they reached the Argo, Thoas was waiting for them but Tog had disappeared.

  ‘The fleece is safely stowed,’ he said formally. ‘And we are provisioned for the journey back to Corinth. The wind has changed. It is time we left.’

  Cadmus nodded briefly. ‘Ready when you are.’

  ‘You know,’ said Thoas, ‘you might still be welcome among the heroidai. You have proven that you have more of Jason’s blood in you than the witch’s.’

  Cadmus shook his head and smiled. The fact that Thoas had to say ‘witch’ instead of ‘Medea’ was itself a reason why he could never go with them. And they certainly wouldn’t take his sister in.

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ he said. ‘But we will make our own way once we get to Corinth.’

  Thoas shrugged. ‘As you wish.’

  Tog suddenly emerged from below decks and stood between them, oblivious to their conversation. Her tunic looked a little more snug than usual. Cadmus hoped no one else noticed.

  ‘I’m ready too,’ she said, and coughed. There was an odd pause.

  Thoas looked at her suspiciously for a moment, and then went to see to the ship and his crew. Tog leapt on to the quayside in a single bound.

  ‘Where will you go?’ she said.

  ‘To Athens first,’ Cadmus answered.

  ‘Aren’t you worried about Nero?’

  ‘Nero has more pressing concerns right now.’ He nodded to the pall of black smoke hanging on the horizon to the north.

  ‘He will still come looking. Later.’

  ‘Perhaps. But we’re not going to Athens to settle.’

  ‘You’re not? But it is your home.’

  ‘Not really. I’m starting to realize, Tog, that a home doesn’t have to be a particular place.’

  Tog frowned. ‘Then where are you going? Eventually?’

  ‘We’re going to look for the others,’ Cadmus said, with a flush of excitement he couldn’t conceal.

  ‘What others?’

  ‘The other artefacts. The other heroes. Tullus may have left all his notes behind in Britannia, but we think we can piece it together from memory. And we have my sister to help us now. We’re going to get them before Nero does.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Keep them safe.’

  ‘I see.’

  Tog never gave much away at the best of times, but he could see she was trying to hide something. Perhaps Tullus could see it too.

  ‘How will you get home?’ said Cadmus quickly.

  ‘Not by boat,’ she said. ‘Not again. I’ll take the roads. I can buy a good horse with your master’s money.’

  She made a curious little bow in Tullus’s direction, and the old man smiled back.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, suddenly straightening up. ‘I have something for you.’

  She reached beneath her tunic and brought out the wolf’s head razor she had stolen from their house months ago. Through everything – the journey to and from Britannia, her enslavement in Greece, her capture by Nero – she’d somehow looked after it. Cadmus shook his head in wonder.

  ‘Please be careful,’ he said. ‘Roads aren’t much safer than a rough sea, especially once you’re out of Italy.’

  ‘She’ll be safe,’ said Eriopis. She was wearing the strangest expression, somewhere between dismay and delight. ‘I think you both know that.’

  Thoas began yelling, and Cadmus was glad for the distraction. The wind was up. The rowers were beginning to take their seats behind the oars. It was time to go.

  Tullus laid a hand on Cadmus’s shoulder.

  ‘Come, Cadmus. We are not far from Rome, and Nero may well be sending his spies after us as we speak. We must be gone while we can.’

  He climbed aboard with Eriopis, and after a few moments Cadmus could hear the old man fighting with the dog for a space on the prow of the boat.

  Cadmus turned to Tog and finally did what he’d been meaning to do for months. He put his arms around her and squeezed. It was like embracing the trunk of particularly stout oak tree.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  When it became clear that she didn’t know what to do, he stepped back and saved her the embarrassment.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? What for?’

  ‘For everything. For getting you involved in all of this. For lying to you. For taking you to Athens.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘For that hug, just then.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be sorry for. What has happened has happened.’

  He swallowed. Of all the things he had suffered, this was the most difficult to endure of all. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  Tog shook his hand.

  ‘Go well, Cadmus,’ she said. ‘I will think of you.’

  Before he could reply, her broad back was to him and she was walking to the other end of the harbour as though she’d already forgotten he was there. He raised his hand in a feeble wave, which she didn’t see.

  As he climbed back on to the deck of the Argo, his eyes burnt uncomfortably, and his body felt two or three times heavier. He looked again and again over his shoulder, but Tog was lost in the forest of masts, looking for her own way home.

  There was a chorus of shouting and a creak of timber. With a heave the sailors levered the boat away from the dock and began rowing the Argo out to sea. Cadmus went and stood on the prow of the ship, a little apart from Tullus and Eriopis. Sick to his stomach, tears drying on his cheeks, he certainly didn’t feel like a hero. But then, even the heroes wept. They loved, and they lost. Indeed, it was their loving and the losing that made their stories worth the telling.

  The sailors put up the Argo’s mast and pointed the ship south, keeping close to the coastline. It wasn’t long before the stench of
smoke began to clear, and the sky along with it. Cadmus looked to either side of him. Tullus had closed his eyes and was breathing the sea air deeply, the sun bringing a little colour back to his face. Orthus was stretched out on the deck, nose on his paws. Eriopis whispered to herself, an enigmatic half-smile playing around her lips.

  A strange family, Cadmus thought. But they were his family.

  Tullus saw him, nodded, and came over to speak.

  ‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘your British friend made a good point.’

  Cadmus looked at his old master. His hair was so thin it looked as though it might blow off the sides of his head at any moment.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When – rather, if – we find the rest of these relics, what are we actually going to do with them? How do you propose we keep them safe?’

  ‘Well . . . we can cross that bridge when we come to it, Master.’

  ‘Not “Master”. Tullus.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Sorry.’ It still didn’t feel right.

  ‘We already have come to one of those bridges, though, my boy.’ He lowered his voice so the heroidai would not hear him. ‘Are you sure we should be just handing over the Golden Fleece to this lot? I know they’re god-fearing and all that, but they don’t seem entirely . . .’

  ‘Sane?’

  ‘Exactly. At any rate, I’m surprised that you’re happy to just give it away. It is your inheritance, after all.’

  Cadmus said nothing for a moment, listening to the clap of the waves on the sides of the ship.

  ‘You don’t need to worry, Tullus,’ he said. ‘The Golden Fleece is in safe hands.’

  The old man’s head loomed into the corner of his vision.

  ‘Whose hands?’ he said.

  Cadmus looked to the western horizon and found himself grinning.

  ‘Whose hands?’

  EPILOGUS

  Shin-deep in seawater, rain-lashed and wind-scoured, the girl manoeuvred the remains of her rowing boat towards the cliffs. The vessel should have been under the control of four grown men, but the chance to steal it had come before she’d been able to recruit a crew, so she decided to be captain, helmsman and rowers all in one. Halfway through the crossing, she’d leapt forward to save the chest from rolling overboard, and in doing so had lost one of her two remaining oars. From then on, she’d had to paddle on both sides, and the exertion had nearly killed her.

  As the boat slipped into the cliffs’ deep green shadow, the waters became still and the wind ceased whistling around her ears. It was as though the land were drawing a blanket over her as she returned. The keel struck the sand. The girl leapt from her bench into the shallows and began hauling the boat up on to the beach.

  She rested for a moment, tasting the salt on her lips, listening to the gulls. Her palms were bleeding and she hadn’t even noticed. She looked at the battered chest, still lying in the corner of the boat, and couldn’t help thinking of the strange, pale boy who’d been with her last time she’d made this landing. She hoped he was safe. He deserved to be. She was indebted to him for a great many things – not least for the contents of that box.

  The sun was beginning to set by the time she felt she had the energy to go on. Great billowing columns of cloud mounted overhead, lit orange, pink, gold.

  She went to the chest, undid the clasps and threw back the lid. The chest itself was soaked and salt-stained, but its contents were still dry. It looked so tatty, so unremarkable, folded like that. An old sheepskin, hardly a scrap of wool left on it.

  She unrolled the Golden Fleece and threw it over her shoulders. Then she found the cliff path and, singing quietly to herself, began to climb.

  Acknowledgements

  To my editor Kesia, primus inter pares, who found this a story of brick and left it a story of marble; to the sagacious Barry Cunningham for his faith and foresight; to Rachel Leyshon, Rachel Hickman, Jazz Bartlett, Laura Myers and all of the Chickens for their support, their guidance, and their extraordinary care for both author and idea; to the other Chicken House authors, for welcoming and helping me with open hearts; to Erica Williams, for another cover beyond my wildest dreams; to my eagle-eyed copyeditor Jenny Glencross; to Jane Willis, my agent, confidant and tireless champion; to all of the Highgate School Classics Department for being kind and funny and helpful when I needed you to be; to the High Priestesses of Classics, Heather Isaksen and Steph Melvin, who were far more generous with their time than they had to be and brought some much-needed scholarly rigour to the book; to all my students, and my young readers, for being a constant source of surprise and joy and inspiration; to Sophie Lynas, for the title suggestions, for the encouragement, and for everything else I didn’t thank you enough for at the time; to Will Dollard, whose humanitas and liberalitas as both friend and critic knows no bounds: in perpetuum, maximas gratias ago.

  Text © Nicholas Bowling 2019

  Illustration © Erica Williams 2019

  First paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2019

  This electronic edition published in 2019

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