I ran through the arch on the far side of the room and out onto the balcony. Nero grabbed a sword from one of the guards and took off after me. “Come back here with my instrument!” he howled.
I climbed to the railing of the balcony and jumped to an adjoining one. “Never!” I yelled back. “You’re not going to fiddle tonight!”
“Why not?” He leaped after me. “What have you got against my playing?”
“I’m a music lover,” I told him nastily. I scrambled over the balcony and down the wall, half climbing, half falling.
“Be careful with that instrument!” Nero followed me. “It’s priceless!”
On the ground, I ran alongside the building. Nero was closing the distance between us, his sword slicing the air, the tip perilously close to my retreating backside. As I ran, I looked frantically around for something with which to defend myself.
I latched onto the only possibility. The patio alongside the building was lit by slow burning torches. I grabbed one of them from its holder and wheeled to face Nero.
He braked to a halt as I thrust the flaming torch at him. Momentarily confused, he backed away from its heat. I took advantage of his reaction and started running again, the torch held high in one hand, the fiddle clutched under my other arm.
I rounded the corner of the building. There were some bushes there. I darted behind them, intending to try to hide from Nero. There was an open window there and I thrust the torch inside it. This way the flame wouldn’t give me away, but I kept my grip on it just in case I needed it to defend myself again.
Crouching there, I watched Nero turn the corner on the run. He passed me, then halted. My maneuver hadn’t worked. He guessed I was hiding in the bushes. He began stabbing at the shrubbery with his sword, coming closer to my hiding place with each stab.
Finally, he came too close for comfort. I swung the torch out from behind the window where I’d been holding it and poked it through the bushes to where Nero was standing. He jumped back with an oath and I took off again.
“Fire!” Somebody screamed behind me. “Fire!”
I took a quick look over my shoulder. Evidently in pulling the torch out from behind the open window, I’d set the draperies ablaze. Also the shrubbery where I’d been standing was crackling away. Together they were merging into a nice size blaze.
With Nero still behind me, I jumped through an open window and back into the palace in an effort to shake him off. Oops! The torch I was carrying connected with the window hangings and they burst into flame. Nero came through the flames screaming. “You’re setting my palace on fire!” he yelled. “It’s a Christian plot!” he concluded. “You’re trying to burn down Rome.”
“It was an accident,” I hollered back at him.
“Watch what you’re doing! There! You’ve done it again. Now you’ve set the divan on fire! And be careful of my instrument!”
“If you hadn’t waved that sword in my face, it wouldn’t have happened,” I told him.
“I’m going to do a lot more than wave it in your face,” he promised grimly.
We were racing down the hallway now. I was swinging the torch behind me in order to make him keep his distance. Unfortunately, this had the effect of setting quite a few other things afire. Eventually I reached the end of the hall and ran out the front door of the palace. Nero was still chasing me as I started racing down one of the main streets of Rome. Behind us, his palace was an inferno shooting flames towards the sky.
Nero caught up with me, forcing me to turn and once again face him. We were in front of a stable. He hacked at me with his sword. I swung back at him with the torch.
“Look out!” He ducked. “Now look what you’ve done!” The torch had ignited a haystack and the stable burst into flames. “Klutz! Oh, no! The granary’s in back of the stable. It’s catching! There goes a year’s supply of wheat. It’s a Christian plot! You’re trying to burn Rome down! That’s what you’re trying to do!”
I didn’t stick around to argue. Nero was punctuating his outrage with sword-thrusts aimed at severing my golden uglies from my torso. Once again I turned tail. Behind me the granary was shooting off fireballs. Several other structures sprang into flames as they landed.
I bypassed the Colosseum and it wasn’t until I reached the soldiers’ barracks on the other side of it that Nero once again caught up with me. This time his fury was almost too much for me. His sword sent the torch spinning from my hand. It landed inside one of the barracks. Within moments, all of them were aflame and the Colosseum was ringed by fire.
I got away from Nero again and ran inside the Colosseum. I clambered over the bleachers, stepping on people, but not stopping to apologize. Behind me I could hear Nero climbing and cursing.
The view from the top row of bleachers was impressive. All Rome was ablaze. The entire city was going up in flames. Far from preventing Nero from setting fire to the city, I’d put it to the torch myself. Oh well, I thought, you can’t win them all.
Nero had me cornered now. Some of the guards had come to his aid. There was just no place left for me to run. As a last futile gesture, I chucked his fiddle at him with all my might. Nero had quick reflexes. He dropped his sword and caught it. Then four brawny guards had me and I realized it was useless to struggle.
Nero crowed over my defeat. “A Christian plot,” he announced. “Rome is in flames and you’ll pay. All you Christians will pay. But most of all you! Yes! You’re going to play your part in the finale of the pageant. You’ve arranged for this magnificent fiery background and now your death will be part of it.”
I was taken down to the center of the arena. Four horses were brought out. My legs were tied to two of them, my arms to the other two. Then they were pointed in four different directions.
“When I reach the climax of my song,” Nero instructed. The four soldiers standing in back of the four horses with their whips raised nodded their understanding.
Nero tucked the fiddle under his chin. “Do you have anything to say?” he asked me.
“Play ‘Melancholy Baby,’ ” I suggested.
He shrugged and started to play. It wasn’t “Melancholy Baby.” What it was was a pretty square tune. As music-to-be-drawn-and-quartered-by, it definitely lacked the appropriate grandeur. As a fiddle player, Nero was a great tyrant. But then there are those who think Senator Murphy14 was a second-rate tap-dancer and that as an actor Governor Reagan15 rated next to a pair of eggs, sunnyside up. There was not reason to be surprised that Nero had a long way to fiddle before he’d match Jack Benny16 . Still, his efforts did build to a crescendo of sorts.
Rome burned. Nero fiddled. And I waited for each of my arms and legs to start out on independent journeys. An impossibly high-pitched squeak from the fiddle and four whips cracked simultaneously. The taffy-pull was on, and I was the taffy. There was an agonizing pain, an indescribable strain, and then—
A puff of smoke, the odor of sulphur and brimstone, and the horses changed into four naked witches stationed at my limbs while a Spanish warlock stared at my golden genitals with his jaw hanging open in astonishment. His look seemed to say he’d gone through this ritual many times, but he’d never conjured up anything like this before!
CHAPTER FIVE
Look at it this way. You’re sitting around the ouija board holding hands, never figuring anything’s going to happen, and all of a sudden the ghost of your Uncle Herbert pops out of the woodwork. Or you’re skipping along the sidewalk silently chanting “step on a crack, break your mother’s back,” and you walk in the house and find Mumsy in traction. Or maybe it’s as simple as wishing your boss would drop dead and immediately he has a heart attack.