Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1

by M C Scott

  ‘Wait!’ Seneca sprang through the curtain after him. ‘You mean you don’t think you can stop the fire?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Pantera was already at the door, framed in the candle’s pale light. ‘I have to try. There’s a chance … If I can find this man and keep Rome from burning, Nero might let me take Math from Antium.’

  There was too much uncertainty in that. ‘Is he working alone?’ Seneca asked.

  ‘He has ninety men with him, maybe more by now.’

  ‘So even if you stop him, you’ll never—’

  ‘Stop the fire completely. I know. We can minimize it, save lives, save property. If possible, we can save the best part of Rome. It may be enough.’

  ‘It may not.’

  ‘I know.’ Pantera dragged his hands through his hair, leaving it in wild disarray. ‘If I were to ask you … If I begged another favour? Something that might put you at personal risk? Would you consider …’

  To be asked twice in one night, when he had never been asked before. To be trusted enough. ‘Sebastos …’ Seneca took a single step forward. His heart hurt. He had to clear his throat to speak. ‘Whatever it is. You have only to ask.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Dawn broke quietly over the goose-keeper’s cottage, as it had done for nearly six centuries.

  Here, generations of keepers had bred the geese for Juno’s sacred temple since before Rome was a republic. It would have vanished along with those around it in the centuries that followed but for the fact that Juno’s geese had warned the besieged Romans of a Gaulish attack, for which service their keeper’s cottage had been preserved unchanged while Rome grew around it.

  Since the beginning, the keeper had always been a woman. For the past twenty-seven generations that woman had been a Sibyl, and now, in the month of July in the tenth year of the reign of the Emperor Nero, that Sibyl was Hannah.

  It was a peaceful place and she had thought she could rest here. Instead, she found the living ghosts of her present followed her from the cottage to the meadow, to the goose house on its alder-shrouded island in the pond, back to the cottage, giving her no respite.

  Math was there always: Math flying from the chariot, Math on the scarred sand, dead and then not-dead, Math sick on the ship from Alexandria to Antium and hating it, Math’s face as she left him in the care of the Greek physician.

  In the gaps between Math, she was met by Ajax in the places she would not have thought to look: his shaved head reflected in the smooth perfection of a recovered goose egg, the sharpness of his glance in the first prickle of sunlight on the water, his fast, boyish smile in the fire she lit in the evenings to read by. She read a lot, in the days of waiting.

  In between reading, Shimon came to visit, an intruder from the world of the living who, daily, brought her no news at all of Math and Ajax, but endless detail of Pantera …

  ‘Pantera is in Rome, I have met him. Pantera is stalking Akakios as a hunter stalks a boar in deep forest. Pantera has followed Akakios to three meetings, each with a different man. Pantera has intercepted a letter from Akakios to Poros. He copied it and sent on the copy, keeping the original to show to Nero; you couldn’t tell them apart.’

  ‘Then how do you know the original was authentic?’ Hannah had asked.

  Shimon had shrugged amiably. ‘If Poros and Akakios both come to the meeting place tomorrow, then it was authentic. Pantera will be at the cattle market in the morning. We’ll know then.’

  ‘I want to come,’ Hannah had said, and she had gone and had met Pantera and he had sent her back to the goose-house, and she had waited until late in the afternoon before Shimon had come to the gate.

  ‘Is he alive?’ She had sat half a day on her terror that he might not be.

  ‘He’s alive. Akakios is dead. Pantera has gone to deliver the news to Nero. If the emperor doesn’t hang him for his presumption in killing Akakios, he will come here tomorrow.’

  Tomorrow fast became today and now it was Pantera who filled the uncertain moments as Hannah slid from sleeping to waking and back again, Pantera’s river-brown eyes that became the tunnel she could not walk down, Pantera’s calloused hands that held hers as she washed her face in the basin on rising, Pantera’s voice that greeted the geese with her, each by name.

  Pantera still stood in her mind’s eye an hour after dawn when she heard someone rap an uneven tattoo on the oak gate at the far end of the wall.

  Bees followed her down the path and under the honeysuckle arch. White geese stretched their necks to watch her pass. Goslings in yellow fluff piped and chirruped and were sleepily admonished.

  She had wanted Pantera, but it was Shimon’s shock of old-snow hair that greeted her, and his staff that was raised ready to knock again. Hannah stepped back and welcomed him in. ‘Have you seen Pantera?’

  ‘Here,’ said the voice of her mind and she heard the latch fall on the gate and spun back to it, smiling.

  And then not.

  He didn’t fill the space around the gate as he had done in her imaginings and his eyes drew her nowhere except to his face, which was lined with exhaustion and the weight of bad news.

  He said, ‘I saw Seneca last night. He gave me a name.’ And then, ‘Could we go in?’

  He shook his head at the questions in Hannah’s eyes and would say no more. Heartsick, she shooed the geese from under their feet and led the way down the path and under the low lintel into the single room that was her home.

  Stone walls a yard thick and a flagged floor kept the cottage cool in the day and warm at night. A window at one end gave out on to the meadow, the pond, the somnolent geese. Inside, a bed, a table and a bench occupied most of the small space. A vase of blue meadow flowers stood on the table, filling the room with a delicate scent; it seemed a lifetime since she had picked them on rising. A fireplace, a well and a basin for washing made the rest of the ornament.

  Hannah filled a ewer from the well, poured into three beakers and set them on the table.

  ‘What name did Seneca tell you?’ she asked.

  Shimon leaned against the door. His quiet voice spoke before Pantera’s. ‘It’s the Apostate, am I not right? The man who would burn Rome. Is he an agent of Seneca’s?’

  ‘He was once. Not any more.’ The bed lay under the window. Pantera sat on it with his elbows on the window ledge, looking out at the garden. All Hannah could see of him was his back.

  ‘It’s someone we know.’ She felt her heart strike a hammer-blow on her sternum, hard enough to knock her cold. ‘Ajax?’

  ‘No.’ Pantera turned at the sound of her voice. ‘Ajax is a bear-warrior of the Eceni. He might not grieve Rome’s loss, but he isn’t trying to burn it.’

  A bear warrior? She had to let that pass. ‘Then who?’ she asked.

  ‘Someone more dangerous, because he’s less obvious. He’s a cousin of Herod the Tetrarch, an Idumaean by birth. He served his apprenticeship mending tents and progressed to cutting harness, until he was recruited by Seneca and became an agent of Rome. He’s a small man of no consequence, who could walk into a room and not be seen, but his arrogance gets the better of him, so that he craves crowds who adore him. Until these last days, he has been with the—’

  ‘Green team in Alexandria and then Antium,’ Hannah finished for him, hoarsely. ‘And is presently in Rome, having been dismissed by Akakios, who claimed to be acting in Nero’s name.’ She held her mug with whitened fingers. ‘Saulos is the Apostate. Saulos. I took him in to the Oracle to learn the date when Rome must burn.’

  ‘And before that, I led him to Ptolemy Asul’s house,’ Pantera said. ‘I suggest we not compete in our guilt.’

  ‘Saulos tortured Ptolemy Asul?’ Hannah said. ‘Not Akakios?’

  ‘Of course he did.’ In agitation, Shimon paced the length of the small room. ‘The Apostate used crucifixion and hot irons exactly like that in Judaea. I saw the bodies so often, and yet in Alexandria I believed what I was led to believe without question. That shame is mine.’
>
  ‘Then we are all at fault.’ Hannah raised her eyes to Pantera’s grey-tired face. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know. The first cohort of the Watch has been searching the city since the second hour after midnight. They are searching still.’

  ‘They won’t find him,’ said Shimon. ‘If Seneca trained him, a cohort of men is not enough. The entire Roman army could comb Rome and not find him by tonight. Do you even know where to look?’

  Pantera shook his head. ‘Only that he needs an alternative to the barn that Akakios had found: big enough and safe enough to hold ninety men. He’ll want it downhill from a water tower if he can, and within reach of the river, which narrows it down a little, but not enough. We’re searching the ghettos, but we’re not getting any help: the Watch isn’t popular there and the men can’t say there’s going to be a fire or there’ll be riots. He’ll need a source of food and water for at least ninety men, which means—’

  Hannah said, ‘He’ll also need a source of spikenard or something else very close to it and he’ll need to find a physician who’s competent to treat chronic ulcers. There are very few of those and I know which markets they work from.’ And then, as they stared at her, ‘Did you not know about his wound?’

  ‘What wound?’ they asked together, staring.

  They continued to stare as she told them, and when, somewhere partway through her description of the ulcer and how it must be treated, and by whom, their minds caught up with hers, they spoke over themselves to stop her.

  They were too slow and too late.

  Hannah said, ‘I’ve stayed here tending geese while you two have been hunting Akakios across the city. This I can do. You can’t. Saulos trusts me, as a physician and as the Sibyl who guided his path to the Oracle. If anyone can get near to him, it’s me.’ She was already moving round the cottage, packing a satchel with things she might need. ‘I dressed the wound before we both left Antium, but if he hasn’t seen someone else before now, it’ll stink. He won’t risk going to his death with a suppurating wound; he’ll be looking for an apothecary and a physician. If he sees me, he’ll think I’ve been sent by his god to help him.’

  Pantera rose from his chair. ‘If we follow you at a safe distance, we can—’

  ‘No!’ Hannah hammered her palm on the table. ‘If he sees either of you, he’ll kill you, or me, and disappear. We don’t have time for that. Let me do this. The markets are open and the apothecaries all know me. I’ll find out where he’s staying and where his men are, and I’ll get news back to you here. Don’t speak.’ She laid a hand on Shimon’s arm. ‘I have the right to do this, for Ptolemy Asul. And for my father.’

  ‘I know.’ Shimon’s eyes carried all kinds of concern, but he didn’t speak any of it aloud. ‘I was going to wish you well. And to say you are truly your father’s daughter.’

  No one had ever said that before. Her eyes began to sting. Before she could weep, Hannah reached for her cloak, which hung on a hook on the back of the door.

  ‘Hannah …’ Pantera stood and opened the door, so that she must pass him to leave. Exhaustion scored lines across his forehead. ‘This is the man who crucified Ptolemy Asul. I think it’s likely he set the fire at the inn in Gaul that killed Caradoc. He is without mercy. Please don’t underestimate him.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The grubby girl thief appeared out of the early morning mist, holding her hands out, palm up. Her clothes barely covered her nakedness. If she had washed in her life, it was not this year. Her eyes were bright as a jackdaw’s and her instincts as sharp.

  Hannah said, ‘Where?’

  The girl jerked her head roughly northwards, uphill, into the chaos of the Palatine market where the dawn mist rising from the river draped itself wetly over the stalls, saturating them all in the Tiber’s morning bouquet of drowned rats and duck shit and mud. Already, the aisles were too crowded to see more than a few paces in any direction.

  ‘You’re sure it’s him?’ Hannah asked.

  The girl rolled her eyes; they were blue, like the Gauls’, though her hair was black. She never spoke. Hannah had no idea if she could.

  Hannah said, ‘Show me,’ and the girl vanished, fast as a rat, and then came back to find her because Hannah couldn’t push a way through the crowd quickly enough.

  They moved swiftly enough once they were together. Hannah worked doubly: first to keep an eye on the flash of greasy black hair ahead of her and second to get her bearings so she could find her way back.

  In fast succession, they passed a baker lifting trays of flat bread from the oven, a stall selling olives at one end and olive oil at the other, another selling fish sauce in vast amphorae, another offering mushrooms, picked this morning and driven by fast cart into the city. Men and women stepped aside as Hannah passed, thinking her on the way to a woman in childbirth, or some other like emergency. She wore the green cloth of her calling wound round her upper arm and carried her bag and they pressed bread into her hand as she passed them by, or olives or cheese, for luck and for the novelty of seeing a healer in the slum market.

  The girl thief stopped. She had more sense than to point, but she drew a line in the dust with her foot and Hannah looked along it, between a wine merchant and a pair of Gaulish brothers selling black olives and garlic to where a man leaned against a stall, haggling over a barrel of cheese.

  His head was out of sight, but a buzz of flies attended his back and, over the warm, ripe bouquet of grape and garlic, olives and veined blue cheese, Hannah caught the sweet-sick horror of rotting flesh.

  ‘Thank you.’ Hannah dropped the promised piece of silver into the waiting palm. The girl did not leave. Hannah said, ‘I need to speak to him alone.’

  The girl looked at her a moment, then, in perfectly acceptable Latin, said, ‘If you need help, raise your arm.’

  ‘He’s dangerous,’ Hannah said. ‘You shouldn’t be close to him.’

  The girl shrugged, her eyes lit with scorn. ‘He’s only one man,’ she said. When Hannah looked again, she was gone.

  Hannah walked past the cheese stall and on to the potter who sold small clay jars for salve, and the beeswax to seal them. The vendor recognized her and even as she reached him had produced the box with medical jars for her to examine. She lifted one up, testing its weight.

  ‘Hannah!’ A man called her name. Hannah set the pot aside and asked the price for a dozen wax seals, folded in dried oak leaves. ‘Hannah, it’s me! Wait! Don’t go!’

  She paid for the pot and the seals and turned away, sliding them into a pocket of the bag hung from her shoulder. Saulos caught up and tugged at her sleeve, holding her back. ‘My dear! I never thought I’d see you in Rome! What are you doing here?’

  She turned in evident surprise. He was dressed as a merchant, with a skein of wool at his belt to show his interest in all things woven. His hair was oiled and newly washed. Flies hung about him but dared not settle on the wound; a smear of camphor kept them at a distance.

  Hannah backed away. ‘Math has another physician. I am no longer welcome at Antium.’

  ‘No more than I was.’ Saulos grimaced. ‘You left Math with Nero?’

  She looked stricken and it was not only an act. ‘I had no choice. I was told a Greek physician would care for him, but I’ve heard nothing since. Nero’s men won’t speak to me and Math himself can’t write to send a message.’

  Saulos’ eyes were fixed on her face. ‘And Ajax? He would send you word, surely? In his solicitude …’

  Hannah looked away. ‘Ajax is … That is, I no longer seek succour from Ajax. He and I …’ It took her a moment to find the right words. ‘We see the world differently. He seeks Roman citizenship. It’s all he desires.’

  ‘Citizenship?’ Saulos barked a laugh. ‘I thought he despised Rome and all it stands for?’

  ‘He resents what he cannot join. And he has not the learning of the Sibyls, to see how Rome’s decadence is a rot that endangers all we have built, all the beauty and the know
ledge, and …’ Hannah’s gaze snapped back to Saulos. A sharp wind swept between them. She shivered, sending away ill-said words, and drew her cloak around her. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘Perhaps another time …’

  Saulos clutched at her arm. ‘Don’t leave. Please. Not yet.’

  She had a list of things to buy. She let her eyes fall to it and then looked up the aisle, to see where she must go. ‘Really, I didn’t mean to hold you. You must be busy.’

  ‘No! That is, I have things I must … Hannah! Please!’ He caught the front of her cloak and backed away, drawing her with him, coaxing as if she were a frightened child. ‘Come with me. We should talk somewhere … safer. I won’t keep you long, I swear it.’

  Hannah let herself be taken to the edge of the market, where a Lusitanian wine merchant sold poor Falernian in jugs, but also by the beaker. Saulos bought one, and brought it to share with her on the shaded benches set nearby for the clientele.

  ‘We can talk safely here,’ he said. ‘This man is mine.’

  Hannah let her eyes widen a fraction. ‘What need have you of a man such as this?’

  ‘He has boys throughout the markets who tell me when the Watch search parties are near.’ They were on a slope and Saulos on the uphill side of it. His eyes were level with hers, flat and calm and sure. He spoke briskly, with no trace of a stammer and with a certainty that the Saulos of Gaul and Alexandria had lacked.

  He read confusion on her face and smiled. ‘I have something to tell you,’ he said. ‘After it, you may wish to leave, and may do so freely; it may be best and safest if you do. But I would ask that, whatever you think, whatever you do, you not betray me. For our friendship, would you do this?’

  ‘For our friendship.’ Hannah agreed.

  He leaned back, kneading his brow with his knuckles. The wind curved around them, bringing her the smell of his wound.