Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1

by M C Scott

  ‘Is that true?’ Two officers stood behind Pantera. Nero’s gaze raked them both. When neither of them answered immediately, the Germanic guards broke through the crowd, ran up the steps into the forum and came back again.

  Pantera closed his eyes. Math thought he saw his lips move in prayer.

  ‘Calpurnius is there, lord. His throat is cut.’

  ‘Who did this? You—’ Nero used the war-horn as a pointer, stabbing it at Pantera. ‘Answer me. Who did this?’

  Pantera raised his head. ‘Saulos the Idumaean, lord. When Seneca trained him, he was known as Herodias. In Judaea they know him as the Apostate. I tried to kill him. As you can see, in this, too, I failed, although only within the last moments.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He was with us on the steps beneath the father Augustus. He vowed to testify before your majesty as to the cause of Calpurnius’ death. Anyone within earshot will attest to that.’ Men in the crowd agreed, vocally, and then stopped, blanching, at Nero’s bellow.

  ‘Where is he?’

  The horses flinched. The officer who had arrested Pantera stared at the ground and would not answer.

  Levelly, Pantera said, ‘I believe he chose to leave before your majesty arrived here.’

  ‘You did not hold him prisoner?’

  Nero spoke over his head and the tribune, directly addressed, could not avoid giving an answer. ‘Lord, this man bore a knife in the sacred hallway. He refused to submit to us and fought when we tried to detain him. We thought he alone was guilty. There was no need to arrest—’

  ‘Take them.’

  The tribune’s sword was already turning as the Germanic guards stepped forward. They didn’t see his face from the angle Math did, and so were not fast enough to stop him from falling on to his knees, and from there on to his own blade.

  It pierced him just below the breastbone and came out at the top of his back, by his shoulder blades. His breath frothed red at his mouth and nose and his blood flowed black on the pavings.

  Nero licked his lips, watching the man die. It took longer than Math had expected. By the time the man’s eyes turned up, he had thought of Ajax and Constantin, and his father. He was not sick, and thought that each of them would be proud of him in their own way.

  Nero nodded as the German guards took the body away. ‘He failed us. He deserves this. Take the centurion. Find out if he was bought by Akakios or was acting in good faith. You will remain kneeling.’ His eyes raked Pantera’s bruised and bloody face. ‘What have you done?’

  Pantera blinked once. He was clearly in considerable pain, so that Math thought he might faint there, in front of the emperor, and knew without doubt that if he did the German guards would be ordered to kill him where he lay.

  Surprisingly, his voice rang clear, as if the pain belonged to someone else. ‘I have prevented the utter destruction of Rome, lord. No man could have done more.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘The first cohort was loyal to you: we were sure of that. Calpurnius and I divided the centuries among the water towers and across the city, to protect the vital sites. In this we succeeded. Four districts out of fourteen are aflame. No more.’

  ‘Calpurnius is dead.’ Nero’s eyes were flat, like a fish.

  ‘And Saulos still lives. In that I have failed you. But I thought it more important to save the city of Rome than to hunt down one man within it.’

  ‘We do not consider this to be saved!’ Outraged, Nero flung out his left arm, letting his toga slide from his shoulder so it took on the shape and style of a stola. Like that, he turned a full circle, showing his palm to the audience.

  On the stage, the move was known as ‘the woman’s revolve’. Good actors played it slowly, while their musicians sounded a particular note of the horn, the better to underline the woman’s anguish after the loss of her husband or son.

  In this setting, surprisingly, Nero did not look effeminate, but rather gave voice to an otherwise unspeakable pain. The crowd sighed with him in a long, ululating note that mirrored his grief with theirs. The fire stood behind them as a backdrop. The moment was perfect.

  ‘Lord, may I speak?’ A centurion of the Watch pushed untimely through the crowd, shattering the spell.

  Nero jerked round, his face aflame. Math recognized Mergus, the small, dark centurion who had been at Antium, and uttered a prayer for his life; few men interrupted Nero’s play-acting and lived to see another dawn.

  Out of instinct, the Germanic guards stepped back a wary pace, leaving Mergus to stand beside the kneeling Pantera at the foot of the chariot. The flashing uniform of one contrasted greatly with the torn and filthy tunic of the other.

  Caught in the open, focus of a thousand eyes, Mergus saluted with military precision. ‘I would speak for the sake of the city,’ he said.

  Nero’s right brow danced high. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Our prefect is dead. The tribune of the second, his successor, has just died at his own hand – rightly so, for he was a traitor. But the fire grows apace and we need an officer to lead us. May I ask that one be appointed with all celerity?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My lord, that is not for me to say.’ As he spoke, Mergus took a single pace to his left and Math’s jaw dropped.

  Perhaps later than the men and women on the steps, certainly later than Nero, he saw what Mergus had done. For the man was, if not an actor, then at least an aficionado of the stage, and, exactly as Nero had made of his chariot a pulpit, so he had made one of the space at the foot of the chariot. Now Pantera was at its centre and anyone who had ever seen a play would have recognized the kneeling man as the hero of a tragedy.

  Pantera was staring at the ground. Math, who sat now at his horses’ feet, saw his eyes flare wide in surprise as he, too, understood what had happened. The crowd held its breath.

  Nero ran his tongue round his teeth. A life, perhaps two lives, hung on his whim. Quietly, he said, ‘What would you advise that we do?’

  ‘Me, lord?’

  ‘You. The Leopard. My oath-sworn spy. The man who failed to keep Calpurnius alive.’

  Pantera looked up slowly. ‘Evacuate the city to the Field of Mars. Throw open the gates to your gardens on the crest of the Capitoline nearby. Order the Watch to make the saving of life their first priority and the saving of property a distant second. Thereafter, promote the tribune of the sixth cohort to the prefecture and have his men follow their standing orders in case of a fire out of control; use the water to saturate buildings ahead of the fire and where that cannot be done, order thirty feet ahead of the flames brought down to make a firebreak. Beyond these things, there’s nothing any of us can do.’

  ‘We can pray.’

  There was a hidden meaning to that and everyone heard it. Pantera bowed his head. Linear bruises on the side of his neck showed where someone had tried to strangle him. Nero’s gaze rested on him, waiting.

  At length, struggling for words, Pantera said, ‘Your excellency holds in his hand that which is most dear. What more could a man ask but that it is held gently and with due care? I pray for that to the god who holds most power.’

  The crowd thought he was begging for his life. As they might have done in the circus, men here and there began to hold their fists at an angle with thumb out, to show that he should live. Some kept their thumbs hidden, for death, but they were few; they had heard him argue a good case against Saulos, and a better one for saving Rome.

  Math knew that they were not discussing Pantera. The skin beneath his armpits prickled nastily and hot blood flushed his cheeks.

  Nero said, ‘We always hold such a thing gently.’

  Math shivered with a cold nausea.

  Pantera murmured, ‘I know, lord. And yet it would show great compassion if—’ A building fell then, and the crash of falling masonry drowned out all other sounds, but Math saw Pantera’s lips frame a question that looked more like a statement. There was a brief flurry of haggling that no one else could possibly hear.
To Math’s eyes, it seemed that Nero capitulated, and was not happy with it. None the less, as the noise of falling masonry abated, he ordered Pantera to stand.

  ‘My lord has orders?’

  ‘You offered us a strategy,’ Nero said. ‘We accept in its fullest with one exception. We will not yet promote the tribune of the sixth to be prefect.’

  ‘Who then, lord?’

  ‘You. The strategy is yours. Its success or failure rests on your head. You promised us a city saved to the best of your ability. Make it so.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  ‘With Math’s help, we shall protect the children.’

  Thus, standing at the porticoed entrance to the Forum Augustus, with flames lighting his face and great black crow-feathers of soot falling softly about his shoulders, did Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, emperor of Rome and all her provinces, announce his part in the night’s drama.

  Math had no choice but to play the part allotted to him. He, too, was caught in the fire’s flare, as much the focus of the crowd as Nero whose hand rested on his shoulder. Children were already flocking towards them. Their eyes had fed on Math’s face, as if, having magically appeared, he and Nero could now magically extinguish the fire, or at the very least lead them all to safety.

  Pantera stood nearby, gathering information and issuing a steady stream of orders to the men newly under his command. Someone had given him a helmet and cloak marked with the signs of the Watch. He held both in the crook of his left arm and even so, dressed as he was in a torn tunic, with his right shoulder crooked, not taking all his weight on his left leg, he commanded more respect than any of the officers who stood around him awaiting their orders.

  At Nero’s new pronouncement, Pantera abandoned his conversation with a short, wiry guard and bowed to his emperor.

  ‘Your excellency shows his greatness,’ he said. ‘A nation’s children are its future. If I might offer a suggestion, it might be prudent to—’

  ‘Lead them up the Capitoline hill to the imperial gardens that stand adjacent to the Field of Mars.’ Nero gave an acid smile. ‘We are aware of that; you have said so already. We shall take our own guardsmen and as great a detachment of the Urban Guard as you can spare. We shall organize a route to the gardens. There, we shall provide food and water for all who take shelter. History shall record that this emperor did everything possible for his people in their extremity.’

  ‘My lord has the wisdom of all great Caesars,’ Pantera said. ‘If he wished to mount, I believe the grey gelding ridden by the water engineer is the most fit of the riding horses and, given its pale colour, will be most readily seen by my lord’s people as he leads them to safety. Math, perhaps, could hold the beast?’

  At a nod, Math left his own beleaguered colts and walked back to take the reins from one of the guards. Faustinos the water engineer had already gone, taking two aquarii and their detachments to see if the broken cisterns could be repaired.

  The horse was exhausted. In Antium, it had been given everything it could need and more. Here, there wasn’t even water, certainly no feed.

  Math let it lick the salt sweat from his hand, feeling the tightness of its lips across his palm. He scratched it behind the ears, in the sweaty place where the bridle lay, and it rested its forehead on his shoulder so that each shuddering breath reached down to his feet.

  Pantera’s shadow fell across the horse’s neck. Math said, ‘He’s not fit to be ridden. You can’t let—’

  ‘He’s the best we have. Nero rides well enough and you’ll be at his side to see he goes no faster than a walk. There’s a water trough in the garden and stables at the side of the Field of Mars. Collect your colts next time you come down. The guards that came with Nero will take care of you.’

  All of that was said loudly, for the benefit of anyone listening. Under the fire’s crackling, Pantera breathed, ‘Where’s Ajax?’

  ‘In Antium.’

  ‘But held prisoner against your good behaviour?’

  ‘Did Nero tell you that? When the building fell?’

  ‘No. But Ajax is his best lever to use against you. It’s what I would do if I were Nero. Did Seneca reach you? He came to Antium earlier in the evening.’

  ‘I didn’t see him.’

  ‘Then he and Ajax are beyond our help.’ He gripped Math’s arm at the elbow, as he had once gripped Ajax’s in a pool in Gaul, with an inn blazing nearby and a dead man beneath an oak tree in the meadow. ‘Get through tonight alive,’ Pantera said. ‘Nothing else matters.’

  ‘We are ready to mount.’ Nero approached with three of his guards and a wake of small children behind him.

  ‘Lord, your horse awaits.’

  Pantera released Math’s arm and made a stirrup of his looped hands. Nero swung himself lightly up and settled in the saddle, waving the gathered children to follow them.

  Nero did ride better than Math had expected; he was fully sober, and sharply aware of the children stumbling in his train. Twice, he instructed Math to bring one to him who had fallen faint from too much smoke. Both were lifted up to ride in front of their emperor as they paced at a slow walk up the hill, away from the flames.

  Six men of the Watch ran ahead, keeping the route clear. At the hill’s top, they threw open the bronze gates to the imperial gardens, where, among the flowering trees and frantic trills of the caged birds, was a water trough for the horses and the children.

  Nero passed down the silent, owl-eyed child he had been holding. His toga was stained with saliva, tears and blood. It made him more regal than he had ever been, a credit to the Caesars who had gone before.

  He gave sensible orders to the nearest watchmen, and then said to Math, ‘See that each child has enough water. Food will be brought. You need not go down the hill. The Watch will bring your horses up. You will remain here and care for the weakest of the children. We believe you have the skills for that.’

  ‘Lord.’ Math bowed as he had seen Pantera do. ‘I will do my best.’

  It was the last sane conversation he had that night. The rest was conducted in hoarse shouts where three words threaded together was a long sentence and more often than not his orders from Nero came as a nod, or a meeting of eyes or, once, a single shout of his name, in time to catch a falling girl-child who had breathed too much smoke and had toppled off the emperor’s horse.

  Math carried her at a run to the imperial gardens, spat water from his own mouth between her blue lips until she choked, and breathed and came alive again, stark-eyed and screaming.

  He spat life into a great many children over the course of the next few hours. Very soon, his existence had narrowed to a dash from the gates to reach the nearest of the incomers, seeking out those who could no longer walk, carrying them back to the place kept clear beside the horse trough under the olives where the scent of foreign flowers was lost beneath the stench of smoke and blood and death except once in a while when, breathing in, he found a sweetness that made him want to weep.

  He became skilled at scooping water into his own mouth, savouring the sudden splash of cold in the hot night, then spitting it quickly in a sprayed rush into the waiting mouth in the hope that the cold and wet might restore life that the fire’s heat had taken.

  Not all of them came back to cough on his shoulder. Three were lost that he knew of; two boys and a girl. Their deaths pierced his heart. Each one dragged him down until the next half-living child was brought, and he must leave the dead to their own fortunes and run and run and lift and run and drink and spit … and wait to see the first flutter of the eyelids, and the choke, and then turn them over and bounce his balled fist between their shoulder blades, to push the water out again and let them live.

  With Nero and the Watch, Math worked through the night. Somehow, somewhere, a nameless watchman kept count of the hours, sounding each one with a trumpet. The brazen notes cut the night into manageable parts, so that Math began to look forward to them, counting down to each one as he had once counted down the clamou
ring water clock in Alexandria.

  He saw Pantera barely at all; the newly appointed prefect of the Watch spent the night traversing the city across and across, marshalling his men to ever greater feats of endurance and courage. Word amongst those sent back to Nero’s gardens said that he had personally led the centuries of the first cohort to the inferno’s edge to hack new firebreaks.

  The men were full of his praise and it seemed for a while that Pantera had made of himself a god, able to be in more than one place at a time, Once, at the sixth hour of the night, when all was darkest, he brought up half a dozen children, carrying one of them himself. He was lamer than Math had ever seen him.

  Of the one he carried, he said hoarsely, ‘This is Libo’s daughter. Her name’s Sulla. I don’t know how— She should have been safe. Care for her well.’

  Libo was the big, bluff guard who had gone to get the colts and bring them to safety halfway through the night. He was weeping now, but less wildly than he had been earlier when his son and daughter were lost.

  The child was barely dressed and not breathing. Mute, Math showed where she should be laid on the woollen cloak beside the horse trough and spat water into her as he had done with all the others. After, when she had choked and begun to breathe, he sat down, taking her head on his lap, and began dribbling water in the corners of her lips.

  Pantera crouched down beside him. ‘You’re doing well,’ he said. ‘I’m proud of you.’

  Around them, guards were listening. Pantera pulled Math into an embrace. Into his ear, he said, ‘Hannah and Shimon are at the goose-keeper’s cottage on the Aventine. It’s clear of the fire so far. If you need help, go there.’

  ‘What about you?’

  From behind, Libo clapped him brusquely on the shoulder. ‘Never worry, boy. Pantera will save us all from the fire and come back to you safe and well.’

  Libo believed it, because he needed to believe that his daughter might live. But Math was close enough now to see Pantera’s face, to read the deadness about his eyes and the line etched between his brows that had grown deeper with each hour of the night. Not even in Gaul, when the two of them had sat through the nights together without sleep, had he seen such exhaustion as he saw now.