by M C Scott
Amoricus was the Egyptian scribe, from Memphis; he wasn’t old either, perhaps in his mid-twenties, but he walked strangely, as if he had a pole up his arse, and it wasn’t until the next morning’s latrines that I realized he’d been gelded.
It turned out he’d been a priest of Isis and had committed some heinous crime, spat on the altar or some such, and they’d cut his balls off and sold him into slavery and he’d been forced into writing because he couldn’t do anything else.
But he was a good scribe. He had ink on his fingers that morning and came with his own writing kit, blinking in the sunlight as if he never usually saw it and trotting along the middle of the road behind Pantera like a faithful hound. He’d been on the bright end of that smile, too, I’d wager, and wanted to see it again.
We went down to the river, through the cattle markets, and crossed over the bridge there, to a tavern on the far side called the Retiarius. It wasn’t nearly as well kept as the White Hare – when you’ve lived in a place for eighteen years, you learn what it takes to keep a good bar – but it was busy, which meant nobody paid us any attention and we could sit down out of the public eye.
Pantera stopped us outside and told Amoricus to pretend he was a scribe and we were his slaves, himself included. Pantera had never looked more disreputable than he did when we shuffled in after the little man from Memphis to the table in the corner where Pantera was directing him by tugs at his sleeve.
He sent me to the bar with silver and I came back with passable ale and some cheese and olives and we ate together in a kind of wonder that grew greater as he spoke to us all in the language of western Britain. And we all understood.
To this day, I don’t know how he did it, but he had found three slaves who were of the right temperament and ability to do what he wanted, to be what he wanted, and each of us had a mother or a father or had been reared by a grandmother who had come from Britain. And he had lived there, loved there, fought there in the wars for freedom. That was what bound us in the first place, the language, and all it meant to us.
Then he told us what he wanted.
‘From today, each of you is a free man. Amoricus has paper, pen and ink and will write your manumission papers when we are done. I will sign them, you will each keep your own. If you wish to go, you are welcome.’
‘And if we wish to stay with you?’ asked Felix. He was the quiet kind, who only spoke when necessary, but when he did it was to the point. ‘You sound as if we might wish to do that. What are you offering us?’
‘Gold, in the end. And a position as Vespasian’s freedmen if you wish to stay. Freedom to leave if you wish to go, and land where you want it.’
Felix said, ‘Vespasian is not emperor yet.’
‘We shall make him so. We four, sworn as brothers, my life for yours. There will be some killing. There may be some dying. We will be hunted by Lucius, brother to the upstart Vitellius, and the one thing we must all pledge each other now, in a binding oath, is that if one of us is captured, the others will do all in their power to kill him cleanly before he is taken to Lucius’ questioners.
‘I will teach you to be spies. You will almost certainly have to kill men of Vitellius’ army, perhaps others. You will live roughly, in many guises. You will be nameless and unrecognized, except by me. It will be dirty and hard and painful and at worst will end in a death so slow that crucifixion will seem like a blessing. Will you do it?’
Felix said, ‘There are men calling your name through the whole of Rome today. For eight hundred sesterces, I could sell you to Lucius now.’
Pantera said, ‘I fought at your mother’s side in the battle of the Fallen Oak. She was one of the most fearless warriors I have ever met. I do not believe a son of Cunava would willingly sell out one who fought with his mother. Or you—’ He looked at Amoricus. ‘Your grandfather held a bridge alone against half a century of men for half a day. You are his grandson in looks as well as heart. I don’t believe you would sell me either, but if I am wrong you are welcome to try.’
He was like that, full of quiet confidence. If any one of us had stood up in that bar and said who he was – we’d all worked it out by then – we would have been rich. To a slave, six, seven, eight hundred sesterces was a lifetime’s silver. Pantera was offering gold, but there was no real promise we’d ever see it. What else he offered, though, was more important to each of us than gold: he offered us dignity.
We were in a tavern, so I could not stand up and grip his arm, but I laid my hand flat on the table, palm up, and waited until he laid his on top of it.
‘My life for yours,’ I said. ‘And if you are taken, a clean death if I have to die to make it happen.’
They say that swearing to give his life is the greatest thing a man can do, but we knew, who had lived as slaves with the threat of crucifixion always hanging over us, that a clean death was the greater boon.
I gave my oath willingly, the first thing of my own I had ever given anyone, and the newness of it was like the first flush of love.
I wasn’t alone. I watched the faces of the other two as they swore, saw tears prick their eyes. We were strangers and we were brothers. And we were free.
It was afternoon by then, heading to evening. Pantera drained his beaker and nudged Amoricus to stand so that we could all follow.
‘We should get to work,’ Pantera said. ‘We’re going to a hiring fair, to see if we can get ourselves taken on to carry the litter of a lady. You three go first. I’ll come last and we’ll see if it can be done.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Rome, 4 August AD 69
Trabo
I SAW THAT hiring fair; it was the best entertainment I’d seen in months.
It was the evening after the fight in the alley, and I had returned to the Inn of the Crossed Spears after a day of getting to know the city after seven months away.
I had no real reason to go back there, but the courtyard had a clear view of the widow’s house on the Street of the Bay Trees – I still had my letter to deliver – and, better, it was packed with off-duty Guards who were talking over the day’s news.
Most of it was about Pantera. The better parts were about me.
‘… four, all from the Macedonican, they say …’
‘… crushed to pulp. Looked as if they’d been beaten by a bear …’
‘… no claw marks. Must have been human, but Quintus Saturninus says …’
‘… only the Guard, so far. Lucius says …’
I turned away, as if studying the lithe, dark-haired girl who carried the drinks and who I thought might sell herself to me if I bid right. Just then, though, I was more interested in the trio of Guardsmen sharing their miseries three tables along, but I couldn’t appear to be listening.
‘Lucius says he’ll flog any man he hears spreading the rumour that it’s a bear. He thinks it’s one of Vitellius’ Guards come to take his revenge, that he’ll cut us down one by one if we aren’t careful and that we ought to have caught him by now.’
‘Is he making threats? Lucius, I mean, not the bear-Guard.’
‘Not yet.’
‘He will.’
‘He always does.’
The three Guards ran out of words and sat staring into their drinks. None of them was known to me, none was substantially different from any of the thirty or forty others drinking there, but I was hunting again, and all it took to make men my targets was that I notice them, that I pick them out from the crowd.
How many had I killed the night before?
That’s difficult to say. Four of them had come on me as I killed the last of the bandits. Yes, they were all dead: once men begin to run, if they can’t turn and regroup and perhaps set an ambush, they are finished.
The four Guards had seen the bodies and tried to question me. Two of them died there, with the last bandit. The other two tried to run.
At the end of the alley, they separated, thinking to lose me in the winding streets of the ghetto, but I was a hunter before I
became a tribune of the Guard, and in tracking the bandits I had discovered that hunting Vitellius’ Guards fed my need for vengeance in ways I had never imagined. I had stood over the crushed and bleeding bodies of the dead and commended their wandering souls to Otho, to join his retinue in the lands of the dead.
Now, in daylight, bruised, exhausted, stiff in limb and fist, I knew a peace I had not known for five months, and presented with the possibility of another night’s hunt … I can’t tell you how good that felt.
I knew they would catch me eventually, of course: Lucius was right about that, but long before then I planned to have cut such a swathe through their ranks as would be spoken of in whispers for generations.
I leaned back and did not look again at these three I had marked for death. I knew their faces by then and could not safely be seen to stare.
So I turned my attention instead to the far side of the courtyard, where Scopius, the little silver-haired innkeeper, dream-teller and father, apparently, of the small dark serving girl who might therefore not have been as available as I had thought, was organizing a hiring fair with the same quiet calm he brought to everything else.
The women were hired first; eight of them, from a girl not yet at puberty, offered by her mother, to a bent crone, seeking work washing linens. The bidding was fast and quiet and everyone knew everybody else. The old woman and the girl went to a tall, brisk steward from a house on the Quirinal, which seemed to please them both.
The men came next. There were more of them, and of greater variety. None so far as I could see was selling his body for sex, but all for brute work.
The inky-fingered clerks were hired first, and then the labourers with their shovels or pickaxes on their shoulders, to show they could dig, even now, in the height of summer when the ground was like stone. The fruit-pickers followed, late in the season, having come in from nearby towns.
A dozen litter-bearers, some spectacularly unkempt, were just lining up when a wizened, black-skinned Berber ancient skipped in, sweating and loudly apologetic. He was unsound on his left leg: if he had been a horse, I would have had him poleaxed on the spot.
I watched, laughing, expecting Scopius to send him away, and certainly there were some hard words, some waving of hands, some pleading, but no summary eviction.
Everyone was watching now and we all cheered as the grandfather was admitted to the group of men at the auction, shuffling backwards to take his place in the ragged line-up.
It was only when he turned to introduce himself to the man on his left that I realized there was something about him, something in the lift of an arm, the tilt of his head … When you have fought back to back with a man, you come to know him as well as if you had slept with him, perhaps better.
I left my corner bench and went to stand behind the bidders. Two stewards were hiring for their separate households; one litter each, four men per team.
They were looking to match their purchases in height and bearing and basic hygiene. The bidding was swift and decisive. Truly, there were only eight men whom anyone would have wanted to hire and they were divided evenly between the two buyers. Neither wanted the half-lame, wholly mad Berber or any of the other four ill-matched men who were still standing there.
The bought teams were ushered away. Ever the optimist, Scopius raised his arms high and called out his wares once more. ‘Litter teams for hire! Best on the Quirinal! Fit, strong …’
He was an honest man, Scopius. He ran his eye along the line and saw men either too old, too deformed or too unsavoury to carry a litter for anyone.
He let his arms drop; there was nobody left who might have bid for them anyway, except there was, suddenly, a slim, balding steward shoving his way through the dwindling crowd. He was flustered, with the manners of a man who was used to doing everything in timely fashion and did not like to rush.
He hurried to Scopius’ shoulder. ‘Litter-bearers? I need four, swiftly. What have you?’
Scopius pulled a face, took his elbow, turned him aside. I only caught half a phrase, lifted on the sultry air: ‘… tomorrow. Nothing of worth …’
The mad little Berber heard that, too. He leapt up, an animated bundle of rags, and caught the steward’s arm.
‘One denarius, nothing more. Just one, and I will carry your litter on my own!’
He was pitiful; the kind of idiot you would ride past in the street and ignore, but he had his claws in the steward’s arm and Scopius could not prise him off.
‘One silver coin, to carry your master’s litter!’
‘It’s for my mistress and it will need more than you.’
With wary distaste, the steward viewed the other four men. They were not particularly even, but none was as wizened, as old, as veritably mad as the Berber. He was about to take those four when the little man rushed forward and grabbed three, apparently at random. One was a tall and bulky British slave who looked as if he’d rip your head off in your sleep; another was smaller, with the look of a eunuch who had ink on his fingers and had lately been a scribe. In my experience, men who can read and write do not, on the whole, carry litters, so this one had almost certainly been dismissed for forgery or larceny or worse.
The last was the most disturbing: a lean, scruffy blond boy with a squint, who gazed vacantly at the sky with one eye and me with the other as if he were wondering how soon he could cut my throat; he made my stomach heave, I tell you. The mad Berber dragged him forward, leaving the fifth, a Gaul who kept staring at the clouds and pointing, as a child might, and looked at them now as if he might weep.
This was first-rate entertainment. All about me, Guards were laughing, clapping the steward on the back, telling him to shout for their help when his mistress was robbed and he had need of the Guard to stop worse from happening.
It had all been so cleverly done. It was seeing it, understanding what underlay it, that first made me think this man at whose side I had fought might be the spy the Guards had spent all day hunting for across the city, raising the price on his head with every hour that went by.
There’s nothing like hiding in plain sight and they’d all seen what he wanted them to see: a mad little Berber grandfather, small and wizened and lame, and none of them had thought that if he stood upright he’d have been their height or taller, and if he let his face grow smooth he’d have been half the age he looked. If he had been olive brown, not black, he’d have looked Roman enough to sit in the senate.
If you looked closely, there were signs on his body of the beating he had taken the night before; not nearly as many as there should have been, but they were there, if you knew what to look for.
Nobody did, though. That was the point. They all saw what Pantera showed them, and he let them make fun of him, and what man suspects that the object of his derision is making a fool of him in return?
I caught his eye and gave the smallest of bows. He ignored me, but I expected that, and settled back into my corner, grinning, as the steward ushered his uneven crew out of the courtyard and up the street, looking for all the world like a man who had set out to tend his herd of goats and had come home with a flock of tigers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rome, 4 August AD 69
Caenis
I DIDN’T KNOW where Matthias had gone; but I knew something was going to happen.
Earlier in the day, I had put pebbles in my shoe against the possibility that I might forget I was too lame to walk up the hill to see Sabinus. By the evening, the pain in my foot was becoming tiresome. Leaning on Matthias, I hobbled out of the front door of the cottage on the Street of the Bay Trees and out to the waiting litter. Four Guards watched me do it; they had been there from midnight to midnight without cease and there are few things more irritating than knowing that four men are watching your every move. It was tiresome, of course it was, but what could we do?
I was running a little late, and the litter was already up on the shoulders of the bearers. They lowered it for me and scooped it up again swiftly enough, f
or all that they looked exceedingly ill matched.
Scopius at the Crossed Spears was known to provide a clean, swift service, with graded men. Today, though, a dust-strewn Egyptian shared the rear poles with a blond boy of not more than fifteen who had one lazy eye and a slight leer. If that were not bad enough, the boy was taller than the man so that the litter would have listed to the left had not the disparity in their heights been counter-balanced by that of the front bearers, a bulky Briton and a wizened old Berber who looked ancient enough to be his grandfather.
We progressed in our uneven way up the hill. Sabinus was waiting for us outside his big, gilt-roofed villa on the upper elbow of the Quirinal hill. No Guards openly watched him; he was prefect of the city, commander of the Urban cohorts and the Watch: his power in the city was almost as great as the emperor’s and Vitellius had to treat him with a degree of respect.
Nevertheless, he was elder brother to the man who had named himself imperator and on my three previous visits I had seen the same bearded thug guarding a nearby villa where there had never before been a guard, and two others working to rebuild a wall which had not progressed so much as a hand’s span in the past nine days.
Sabinus gave a fractional nod as he moved in to embrace me.
‘Sister, are you well? Your leg is improving?’ All solicitude, he took my arm. ‘You must let me call for the bonesetter. Aescetidorus is exceptionally skilled in these things. He would have you walking sound as a horse in no time.’
‘Thank you, I have no wish to walk like a horse.’
I waved a hand at Matthias and, as all the stewards do, he took the litter down the street a little way to where a neatly favoured inn served the servants of the senators who lived on the hill.