by M C Scott
The fire moved on and the colours faded until only the spectrum of reds and paler golds remained, like a hearth fire, but so vast that it roused its own wind, growing ever fiercer until a fire-made gale seethed through the rafters loud enough to overwhelm the crash of tumbling masonry and falling beams in the street outside.
Which was how three people used to subterfuge, trained to hear the sounds beneath the murmur of the world, did not hear the guards who came to find them until six armoured men began to break down the oak gate with their fire axes.
Hypatia reacted first. ‘That’s not Pantera. Go!’ She shoved Hannah ungently in the small of the back. ‘We can hide in the goose-house on the island.’
Hannah ran across the meadow towards the bridge. Hypatia kept by her side all the way, urging her on, catching her elbow when she fell, hauling her up, pushing her ever faster, as if they were young again, running from some shrill Sibyl bent on revenge.
With her nose and throat full of gritty soot and her hair grey with smoke, Hannah stumbled across the bridge and under the weeping alders towards the mossy stone goose-house.
The stone hut was cloaked in darkness, hidden from the firelight by a fringe of hanging branches. Hypatia could see in the dark, it seemed. She reached forward and twisted and a door opened, dark on dark. The mellow smell of sleeping geese feathered out, thinning the smoke and soot.
‘Inside.’ Hypatia’s mouth was next to Hannah’s ear. ‘There’s a space to your right by the perches. Try not to tread on a gosling. They scream like wounded deer.’
Hannah squeezed in on her hands and knees, feeling ahead of herself for anything living. She touched hot goose faeces and an old, cold egg, and the scrawny leg of an adult goose that snibbed at her ribs, and then there was only the stone wall, old with cobwebs and dust.
She felt for the corner and turned round slowly, cramped by the stone on two sides and a wooden perch on the other. The door to the goose-hut swung shut, cutting off the fire and the smoke and the sounds of axes crashing on wood, and men committing violence.
Hannah’s eyes began slowly to find fragments of light and to build from them images of geese and wood, stone and flesh. Hypatia was very close. Her breath smelled pleasantly of wood smoke, as if the charnel house stench outside hadn’t touched her. Her elbows rested on Hannah’s knees. Nobody else was in the small space beyond her; there wasn’t room. Which meant …
‘Where’s Shimon?’ Hannah whispered.
‘Fulfilling his oath to your father.’
‘Hypatia! Where is he?’
Hypatia kept her eye pressed to a gap in the door, from which she could watch the garden. She said, ‘He’s doing what the gander would do if the geese were attacked; he’s sacrificing his life that we might— No! – Your death won’t stop his, or make it any swifter, or— Hannah, will you be still and listen?’ She grasped both of Hannah’s wrists, and physically prevented her from leaving the goose-house.
Cramped, scared, still whispering, Hannah was furious. ‘Why must he die for me? We despise Saulos for pretending that my father gave his life in sacrifice for people he could never know, why is this different? Hasn’t there been enough blood?’
‘He believes you are worth saving.’
‘But I don’t—’
‘Hush.’ Hannah felt Hypatia fumble to reach and lift her hand. Her cool, dry lips pressed briefly to the heel of her thumb. Her mother used to kiss her like that, a way to restrain, to hold, to keep Hannah quiet and safe at times when hot blood and youth might have caused her to speak or act out of turn. In all their time together, Hypatia had never kissed her thus. ‘This is his choice. Let him make it.’
Outside in the meadow, men shouted, one of them in pain. Hypatia dropped Hannah’s hand and pressed her eye to the gap in the door. Presently, easing back, she whispered, ‘He’s lied to them, told them we’ve gone. It may be enough to stop them searching any further. Sit very still.’
They sat crushed together in the dark with the fidgeting geese, holding cramped hand to cramped hand, barely breathing, with their hearts loud enough for each to hear the other and their tears dried with terror.
It wasn’t enough.
Whatever Shimon had said, he was not believed. Orders were shouted and on that command six men searched Juno’s garden, a place they defiled by their mere presence.
Hannah, who couldn’t see, heard their voices sweep ever closer. She found Hypatia’s sleeve in the dark and gripped it.
‘What do we do if they find us?’
‘You sit still and let the geese keep you safe.’
‘What will you do?’ Suddenly, horrifyingly, Hannah knew the answer. ‘No. No. No, you mustn’t—’
‘My love …’ Hypatia turned to face her. The kiss she gave then was a lover’s kiss, full of memories and hope and promises for the future. ‘I have to go now. They’re hunting for a man and a woman and they must find them. I asked for this time with you and it was given. For that we should be grateful.’
There was a scuff of nails on wood, not unlike the scratch of a mouse, and a brief, billowed draught as the door opened and shut.
‘Hypatia!’
Her first instinct was to hammer, screaming, on the door until someone – anyone at all – came to open it and let her out. But the geese had shifted in the dark and got in her way, so that she couldn’t reach the door in time to stop the bar settling down to keep it shut.
Stuck, she had no choice but to crawl forward on her hands and knees, reaching blindly ahead until she felt the change in texture that was stone giving way to wood.
‘Hypatia?’
Childlike, Hannah whimpered aloud to the dark. Fast, hot tears washed her face clean and made her head pound with the same unstable rhythm as her heart so that her pulse surfed in her ears, washing out the muttering geese, and the fire, and the distant shouts of the guards rising over a woman’s single scream.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
‘That’s Hannah! Go!’
Seneca heard Pantera’s voice clearly over the demolition of the fire and, as if it spoke to him, launched himself forward.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ Ajax jerked him to a halt, his fingers iron-hard on Seneca’s forearm. They were hiding under a broken cistern at the foot of the hill. The river mumbled sullenly behind, outdone by the majesty of the fire ahead. ‘Saulos is between us and Pantera. What we heard, he has heard. He loves Hannah. What will he do?’
Seneca blew out a breath. ‘If he truly loves her, then I think he won’t kill her or let her be killed, but he will certainly kill Pantera if he has the chance. His only regret will be that it can’t be done slowly, over days.’
‘And he will want to gloat before he kills. He hasn’t the strength of mind not to.’ Quiet as a ghost, Ajax had risen to his feet. Near naked, with the firelight sharp on the first new growth of his hair, with his scars like living silver across all parts of his torso, he looked barely human. Seneca was terrified of him. He had denied this half the night. Now, he allowed himself the honesty.
He drew a sharp breath. ‘You’re right; Saulos won’t throw his knives from a distance. We can follow him and Pantera as they both ascend the hill.’
‘Then we shall do so.’ Ajax smiled, grimly. ‘This time, you don’t have to run, but you do have to follow exactly where I go, and make no sound.’
If the whole of the night had been a preparation for this, it was inadequate, but still Seneca succeeded in the tasks that were set him, and exulted in them. He was burned across his forearms and face, his scalp was singed, he trod on glowing embers so that his sandals burned through to his feet. His nose was clogged with noxious many-coloured smoke and his eyes streamed red raw. He wormed under dangerously unstable walls, stepped past pools of liquid pitch and clambered over dead men and hounds, and was as happy as he could ever remember being.
Always, Ajax was ahead, finding the best path. And always Saulos was ahead of him, and Pantera ahead again and his wiry companion ahead of both, all three of t
hem visible now that Seneca had the art of seeing them.
And because he had the art of seeing, he saw the detachment of the Watch emerge from the gate in the whitewashed hall. And he saw their two prisoners.
Ajax was a half-seen glimmer of pale skin lying prone beneath a fallen roof beam. Gathering his courage, Seneca crawled forward to join him.
‘That’s—’
‘Shimon and Hypatia, I know. But not Hannah.’ Ajax watched a moment, then said, ‘The centurion’s stoking up the fire at the next-door shop.’
‘He can’t burn the goose-keeper’s house – Juno keeps it immune to fire.’
‘Does she? If I were a Roman, I’d worship her ahead of Mars. The centurion’s doing his best to make it burn, though. Either he thinks nobody’s left inside …’
‘Or he’s trying to make sure that whoever’s in there doesn’t come out. Pantera thinks that. Look.’
Pantera had caught up with the wiry, dark-haired officer who was his companion. Both were watching the centurion as he stoked the new fire. They were animated in their conversation, pointing, gesticulating, shaking their heads.
The centurion leapt back smartly. A smouldering beam fell, as if at his command, and blocked the gate in the whitewashed wall. He stayed a heartbeat longer, to be sure the fire had caught, and then left at a run, following the route his men had taken.
In his hiding place, Pantera made a point, with emphasis. The small, wiry man saluted and followed the centurion at a discreet distance. Pantera waited, fidgeting, until they were out of sight, then ran to the gate.
Seneca said, ‘We have to unblock the gate. He’s going to try to—’
‘He’s going to try to climb the wall and he won’t succeed.’
‘You could go in his stead. You’re fitter than he is.’ Even in the half-dark, with the fire making the shadows jump, it was obvious that Pantera was at the limit of his resources.
Ajax was looking somewhere else. ‘Where do you think Saulos has gone?’
‘He’s over there.’ Seneca pointed to his left.
‘Not any more.’
Blinking his eyes clear of the smoke, Seneca looked up the hill to the place where Saulos had been tucked discreetly behind a broken wall, and found it empty.
In his ear, Ajax whispered, ‘There.’
Up ahead fresh fires blazed, men shouted and smoke billowed thickly. Through it, Seneca saw Pantera trying to find a way past the smoking beam to the blocked door in the whitewashed wall.
And there, too, less than ten yards further on, Saulos was crouched in a doorway, a knife in either hand.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
The only route in to find Hannah was over the wall. To that end, Seneca gave him a leg up. Feeling for handholds, he discovered that the top was not covered in spikes, as he had feared it might be.
On the far side, he dangled for a moment, hanging by his hands. He had no idea how far he was from the ground. On a prayer, he let go. The fall was just far enough to jar his ankles, but not so far as to break them. He landed hard on the paved path below, rolled a little and pushed himself up to standing.
The gardens were not as fire-bright as the street outside; the same walls of the neighbouring houses that kept the meadow safe also shaded it from the flames. Neither were the moon and stars any use for light; the entire sky was blurred to bloody mess by the smoke.
He stood still, breathing the cleaner air. Had he been asked earlier in the day – by Seneca, say, or Math – he would have said he knew exactly, to the nearest heartbeat, the limits of his own exhaustion; that he had plumbed his own depths so often that he knew when it was impossible to push himself further.
The night had proved him clearly wrong; several times he had thought he must stop and rest, and had found the necessary reserves to continue. In the cold light of sanity, he permitted himself the honest appraisal that climbing the wall had been a push too far.
He thought he had enough left to walk to the cottage, and perhaps lie down. Except that he had to find Hannah first. If she was alive. If the Watch hadn’t slaughtered her out of hand.
He thought he should know if she were dead. He wasn’t certain of it.
He walked slowly towards the cottage, feeling the warm grass underfoot, then cool paving stones and more grass and—
He spun towards the dark, drew the knife that he had carried through the night, jerked his arm back to throw …
And let it down again.
I am too tired for this.
He blinked the sweat from his eyes and still he couldn’t tell if the shape coming at him across the meadow was a ghost from his past, or the first of the night’s dead come to find him.
The ghost stopped in the centre of the meadow.
‘Ajax? Ajax of Athens?’
Hannah’s voice. Her living voice. He sank to his knees on the hot, cindered grass.
‘Ajax?’ She flowed across the grass, jerkily.
Something more painful than loss blocked his throat. He tried to speak her name and it came out as a wordless croak of the kind he had heard too often through the night from inside burning buildings.
Rising, he met her coming down to him. They stumbled together to kneel on the grass.
Pantera said, ‘Not Ajax. I’m sorry.’
Light fingers strayed over his face, his eyes, his hair, feeling things he could not see. Her face was almost dizzily happy. He didn’t understand why.
She said, ‘Don’t be sorry. Please, please don’t be sorry. At least one prayer this night is answered. But you’re weeping. Who’s died? Is it Math?’
‘No. Math’s well.’ He caught his breath and coughed and said, ‘You. I thought you were dead. Not true. Obviously.’ And then she was kissing his neck over and over, saying his name. Her hands wrapped his body, her fingers dug in tight. Suddenly, entirely unexpectedly, probably hopelessly, he wanted other things, too, and wasn’t sure how to ask.
He found her chin and brow by feel, framing her with his hands. As his eyes cleared of tears and smoke, he found her face by sight, and he was able to kiss her cleanly, on the cheek, in greeting, in offering, asking the question he dared not speak aloud.
‘I’m covered in ash,’ he said, and he was laughing now, but only a little, and then he had to stop because she had found him at last, lip to lip, nose to nose, brow to brow, and her answer left him no air to breathe, or mind to think, or heart to grieve.
He felt her fingers lock in his hair, drawing his head back. ‘I think that’s just as well. If you weren’t, you’d be able to tell that I’d just spent part of the night hidden in the goose-house.’
He leaned back a little, so he could see her properly, and make sense of the smears on her arms.
‘The Watch took Shimon and Hypatia,’ she said.
‘I know. Mergus has gone after them. He has Nero’s ring. If they can be saved, he’ll do it.’ And then, closing his eyes, ‘Saulos was outside.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘He might be by now. Ajax has gone after him. Either one of us could have come over the wall to you. I was here first, so he chose to let me.’
This time he could not read her face, only that whatever warred within her was complex.
‘I’m sorry. If you’d have preferred—’
Her fingers stopped his mouth. ‘Tell me Saulos won’t kill him?’
‘He won’t kill him. He might escape, but he hasn’t got what it takes to kill Ajax.’
‘Or you?’
He looked down at his hands that she might not read the shame in his eyes. ‘Tonight, he might be able to kill me. He came close once already. I think that’s why Ajax chose the way he did.’
She let her gaze fall. ‘What now?’
Dawn was coming. Even had the distant trumpeter not marked the passing hours, Pantera had sat through the sunrise often enough to know the earliest signs of day: the growing contours in the grass where it was no longer a black velvet carpet, ripples on the pond that allowed a first tinge of silver,
a shape under the trees on the island that must be the goose-house, the first colour to Hannah’s eyes.
He tugged his hand through his hair. ‘We can’t leave here yet. The gate’s blocked and the centurion set fire to the house next door. What was it, a bakery?’
‘A carpenter’s.’
He nodded. ‘It’s burning hard. We’re stuck here until the worst of it dies down.’
Hannah lifted his fingers, and kissed them. ‘Hypatia always said this was the safest place in Rome.’
‘And Hypatia, as we both know, is always right. And …’ he kissed her hand in his turn, and let his gaze meet hers, still testing what he thought he saw there, ‘you’re here, and alive, and I would like us to have time to celebrate that. Might we go into the cottage?’
They lay crushed together on the narrow bed beneath the window. The shutters hung open to the dawn. The gander was out on the water, but not yet the geese. The fire still cast its glow in the west, to rival the eastern sun.
Pantera lay on one side, propped on one elbow, with his back to the cold wall and Hannah’s breasts soft on his chest. His lower lip was swollen. He tasted blood where she had bitten it, or he had. He had thought himself too drained for anything but sleep, and had been powerfully wrong. Neither of them had slept yet.
The world was a new place, and he had not yet found his way in it. He had forgotten what it was to lay himself bare to another’s view, to be given freedom to discover the contours of another’s body. He had forgotten the soul-blinding beauty of a woman, freely given, and what that could do to him.
He explored every part of her even as she studied his scars, the misshaped shoulder, the flat white mess that had once been a brand of Mithras. He wanted to believe she wasn’t looking with a physician’s eye, or at least not only with that.