by M C Scott
I had tried this out; I knew it was true. The climb was terrifying with four storeys offering certain death on the pavings below if you lost your grip and fell, but if you used the wall to hold your feet, and eased your hands down the iron rails, you could find a second platform below the first, with just enough space between for a man to slide in, feet first. The result, of course, was that the same man, if discovered, was trapped.
‘Pantera?’ I knelt on the balcony, head thrust between the uprights. ‘If you speak, if you call out, if you fart, you will be heard and found, and if you are found, we will both face Lucius’ inquisitors. I say this not as a threat, but as the truth. Believe me, he is not one to cross.’
‘I know.’
‘So you need to stay silent.’
‘I know.’
‘But will you?’
He gave an exasperated sigh, quite a feat given the evident fear on his face. ‘Yes, Horus, I will. Go now, let them in. I will stay silent here all day and all night if need be. Just go! And thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me yet.’ With one last nervous nod, I went back to open the door to my room.
I had no time to change, to wash. I dragged a comb through my hair, and checked myself in the mirror. My eyes were rimmed in black and it had smeared; I must have shed a tear without knowing it. I picked a scrap of linen from a pouch in my sleeve and scrubbed it away before I opened the door.
Two men stood on the threshold: Lucius, whom I had been expecting, but also another man, with a broader, more open face, and kinder eyes, whom I know now to be Geminus, but then did not know at all.
I bowed, anyway. ‘Gentlemen, come in. Lord Lucius, be welcome. Let me move Cerberus first. He does know you mean me no harm, but …’
My voice was a hoarse rasp. I thought of saying I had a throat fever, but Lucius could smell falsehood the way Cerberus could smell meat.
I unhooked the hound’s collar and led him in to chain him at his kennel, but Lucius, brave, or foolhardy, did not wait; he was already in the room, sweeping back the beaded curtain and straight through to the balcony. I had been right; if Pantera had tried to escape …
‘We nearly had him. He was seen coming in here. Where is he?’
Lucius: brusque, brisk, abrupt, was running to the end of his temper. I did not know him before his rush to power, but what I saw in him then was a man overhorsed by the glory fate had handed him, riding by sheer force of will, knowing he must be thrown sometime, and that it would hurt.
In my experience, men who find themselves in receipt of unasked-for luck become either benign, believing themselves unworthy, or dangerous, believing everyone else sees them as unfit. Vitellius, by all accounts, leaned towards the former. Lucius, quite evidently, was the latter.
I said, ‘My lord, Pantera has gone. He heard you downstairs and he fled.’
‘Fled? How? Where to? We have men at front and back.’
‘Down two flights of stairs and out on to the rooftops of the Street of the Tanners. He never comes into any house without at least two exits.’
‘And you never thought to tell us about that?’
‘Lord, you never asked. You said you would never come while he was here. I thought you wanted to know what he knew, not to catch him.’
‘Nevertheless …’ There was a pause, some pacing. ‘No matter. He was here. What did he want?’
‘To send a dove to Vespasian. He – that is Pantera – is going south to the marines at Misene. The message was to tell the gen— the usurper that the base will be his by the end of December as long as he sends gold enough to cover the next month. The dove didn’t go. We had not the time to send it.’
‘South?’ He stared at me as if I had spoken Mauretanian, or impugned the chastity of his mother. ‘South?’
‘So he said, lord.’
‘South. South. South!’ He was pacing, speaking the word on every step. His face split in a wide grin. ‘And he tried to send me north. But I have him now … When will he leave?’
‘Soon. He seemed in a hurry. He may be going there now.’
‘When will he next come back here?’
I thought, not ever; he will never come here again, but I said, ‘I have no idea. He said I would need to know enough to manage in his absence, but he left before he could say more.’ I let the silent reproach on my face show: see, lord, how much more useful I would have been had you not barged in here?
Lucius ignored me. He was pacing, thinking, frantic. ‘Could you summon him?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Certainly! You told us of the ways you have of reaching him if you need to: a message left with the date-seller; a mark made on the base of a fountain; a stone weighting down cloths of a particular colour in the Tiber. We have men watching them, and yet he has not been to check them in three months. Why?’
‘Perhaps because you have men watching them?’
‘Fool!’
He struck me! Granted it was open-handed, and not a fist, but he hit me, hard, across the left cheek. I had been too waspish. And Lucius, too impatient, had hit me.
He really, really shouldn’t have done that.
There was a scrabble of claws on wood and Cerberus was on his feet. He was silent in his fury, which was, I promise you, a deal more frightening than if he had snarled.
Lucius grew very still.
‘How long is that chain?’
‘It reaches the length of the room, lord. He is here for my safety. It would be foolish were he not able to defend me in my need.’
The moment crystallized around the understanding that Cerberus could reach Lucius in one bound. And Lucius had bolted the door behind him as he entered; it had seemed a wise precaution at the time.
A question hung between us. Do you want to be found dead in a brothel, Lucius? In this brothel?
You could have anchored a ship off the weight of the silence.
Swiftly, I said, ‘My lord, I tell only the truth. Pantera was a silver-hand until his skill was seen by Seneca and he was trained beyond anything the gutter could allow. Who trained your men? Are they invisible? Do they blend with the landscape so that you don’t see them even if you are looking? Can they step into a doorway as one man and emerge moments later as another? If not, he will have seen them.’
‘Fuck.’ A pace. Two. Three. Lucius came to a halt by the tall Greek vase. Have I mentioned how much it cost? ‘And yet he still comes? Does he know you have betrayed him?’
‘If he did, he gave no sign. He will know now, though.’
‘But if he were to believe you a victim, rather than a willing traitor, he might continue to believe you loyal. Would you agree?’
‘Possibly. I have never known how his mind works.’
‘Still …’ The gap was shorter this time, a single pace, and then all peace was lost in the explosive splinter of the vase, crashing to the floor. Afterwards, very softly, Lucius said, ‘Geminus, you will kill that hound.’
He was a good man, Geminus; he didn’t want to do it and it wasn’t all fear for his own safety; he didn’t want to kill in cold blood, even a hound.
But the order came from Lucius, who could have had him flogged to death in an instant, and so the moment’s hesitation was no longer than that before Geminus drew his blade.
‘Cerberus!’ I hurled myself across the room, thinking to throw myself in front of my friend, to save him with my own person, but Geminus was fast and I was too far away and all that I achieved was that my hound, my beloved great black monstrous friend, was looking at me, puzzled, as he was struck.
I reached him before he died. The brute of a soldier had slashed his blade across his throat, and the blood! So much blood. More than at a pig killing, and you know how much that is. It drenched my floors, sprayed up my walls, soaked into my tunic as I cradled his poor, dear head in my arms. I wept like a child; I was broken.
I heard Lucius walk to me and if he had cut my throat then, and sent me to be with Cerberus, it would have been a mercy.
All I heard was his voice by my ear. ‘You are mine. You will remain mine. If Pantera returns, you will let me know as soon as he walks in the door. If you fail, I will make your death last so many days it will be longer than your life was before it. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘How will you get word to me?’
‘Tell your men to watch the front of the house. When he comes here, I will have Marcus open the blinds to let in the sun. Your men will notice that, I imagine?’
I was angry, but there was nothing left he could do to me and I was one of the few who might have led him to Pantera. He was desperate, but he could not, yet, afford to kill me.
He left then, without another word, taking his swordsman with him.
A long time later, I looked up, and Pantera was standing in front of me, holding a beaker of water and a strip of linen.
‘You have to let him go sometime.’ He knelt, held the cup to my lips, supported my head as if I were a child. He said, ‘Horus, I’m so sorry. I know what Cerberus meant to you.’
He was my friend. My only true friend. I could not believe that he was gone.
Pantera prised my fingers free from his poor ruined body, drew me up to standing. At my stuttered direction, he found me wine and I drank it. I wanted to die. I could think of no reason not to and a great many reasons why it would be a good idea. I still could not meet Pantera’s eye.
He tried to clean up, but the room was beyond cleaning. He gathered the shards of the pot that had cost half a talent of gold and laid Cerberus out decently, with his chin tucked in, closing the wound, so that it looked as if he was sleeping, if you didn’t breathe in the blood and see the mess.
Eventually, he came to sit opposite me. ‘I did know,’ he said.
‘Did you?’ I couldn’t focus on him properly for tears. ‘How?’
‘I watched here for three days after the first time I came. I saw you go to him.’ I believed him at the time. Now, I think the Marcuses told him; that from the first they were his, and not mine.
He said, ‘Can I know why?’
‘Oh, Hades, do you need to ask? He was torturing men to death for word of you! It was only a matter of time before he found out we’d been close as children. If I hadn’t gone to him, he’d have come to me and … I couldn’t have held silent for long when the knives came out. You know that.’ I can’t take pain. We both learned that a long time ago, when we were children. He can, you see. It’s one of those things that makes us so different.
‘I know.’ He took the wine, set it down, dipped a cloth in it and cleaned my face. ‘Horus, I’m not angry.’
‘You should be. Or at least you should be afraid.’ I was weeping big, bitter tears for more than the loss of Cerberus now. ‘He will break you. He has sworn it by everything he holds sacred. It’s all he thinks about. Why do you not leave Rome?’
‘You don’t think I can break him? Or at least, best him?’
‘Best the emperor’s brother? The man who is emperor in all but name? I think you’re insane to even consider it.’
‘And yet you protected me. One glance on your part and he’d have sent Geminus over the balcony to get me.’
‘And then? Do you think the likes of Lucius would pat me on the head and pay me in gold? I’d be in chains with you and the men with hot irons would draw my soul from my living body to find out how much more I knew. Trust me, if it were different, I’d have sold you. I am only safe while you are free. Which is why I wish you would get out of Rome. Are you really going south?’
‘I am really going south.’
‘Lucius will come after you.’
‘Yes. And we’ll finish this away from Rome, where fewer people will be hurt. But only if I can get out of here. I take it that there is a route out on the third storey, but it’s no longer safe to use. So there must be a different way. If you’ll show me, I’ll go.’
He was hoping for something he didn’t know about, I could see that in his eyes: a back door on the ground floor, or in the cellars, a tunnel, a secret passage; anything, but not what he knew in his heart to be true.
‘There.’ I nodded towards the balcony opposite.
His eyes flew wide. ‘Horus, I can’t jump that.’
‘Of course you can’t; no man could. That’s the point. Watch.’
At the back of the balcony, set against the wall, was a stand on which bird cages sat. It was made of bricks with planks laid across; roughshod, but fitting with the rest of the balcony’s decor. And, because it was fitting, it was not immediately obvious that the second shelf up was made of two planks.
‘Help me.’
Together, Pantera and I lifted the songbirds down, and set them on the floor, muttering and shuffling in their cages. Together we lifted the spare plank down. Alone, I eased it out across the gap until the far edge rested on the balcony opposite. It slipped snugly between two heavy vases, each holding a small, wind-shorn shrub.
I turned to the man who had once been a brother to me. ‘Just don’t look down.’ He has never been good with heights.
‘And if I don’t? If I make it across alive, when I step on to the balcony on the other side who is going to scream?’
‘Nobody,’ I said. ‘Callius and Clytemnestra are silk tailors; they never look up from their work. Should they chance to, they will say nothing. Their son’s name was in the lead lottery when Geminus picked yours. They know Lucius ordered it. They hate him more than he hates you, which is saying something.
‘From their house, doors lead through two more to a final door that exits on to the Street of the Weavers. Nobody will ask your name. Nobody will ever remember you have been there. Nobody will talk about it afterwards.’
‘Until Lucius offers them gold for information?’
‘No. I’m not stupid and this has been coming for a long time. Each of these families has lost husbands, brothers, sons, who followed Otho and died for it when Vitellius took power. They won’t sell you to Lucius. To Vespasian they might, but he has to win first.’ I set my foot on the plank’s end, steadying it. ‘Don’t come back unless you must. If any messages come, I will leave them with Cavernus at the White Hare. They don’t know of him yet.’
‘Not from you, anyway.’
My stomach turned over. ‘Has he—’
‘No. But tread carefully. I have never known Rome so dangerous as it is now. Only make contact if you absolutely have to, and make sure any message can be read in at least three different ways.’
We didn’t embrace; we never had done. But our parting felt more permanent than any that had gone before it.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Rome, November, AD 69
Borros
‘COME. FAST!’
Pantera was running when he got to us. We’d been waiting where he left us, within sight of the entrance to the brothel where his friend worked.
We’d never been that close to the House before – it was always somewhere he went alone – but this time, because we knew Lucius was coming, he left us close. It was a trap, of sorts, but he was using himself as the bait and there was always a chance they might have out-trapped him, in which case our orders were clear: we were to kill him, and get out of there. I was going to Britain; I knew the ship, I knew the master’s name, I had a berth booked: he was that unsure he’d get out alive.
Then he came out alone, and ran to us where we hid in the salt-grinder’s hut with the air making our noses itch and he had a look on his face I’d never seen before. Wild. Not quite in control. Not like him at all. ‘Where’s Lucius?’
He asked this of Felix, our scout. Felix could go places a shadow would not slip through, hear conversations meant for no one, kill a man in a crowd and walk away. He had been closest to the House while we were in a room three doors away, armed and ready. I had a shortened spear stolen from a dead guard that looked like a carrying-pole if I reversed it and hung a pack over the butt end.
Amoricus, we had discovered, was a dead sho
t with a sling. He could split a hair held out between two hands at twenty paces and a man’s head at fifty.
Felix was our knife man. He held one now, idly picking the dirt from under his nails. He said, ‘Lucius hasn’t come out yet. His three men are still watching the front door and five others at the street’s end.’
‘He left before I did.’ Pantera closed his eyes, seemed to marshal himself, then took Felix’s knife – which in itself was an achievement; that he could do it for one, and that he did it without thinking – and drew a swift map on the dirt floor.
‘There’s a route out of the House on the second floor that gives on to the tanners’ street. The street bends round and makes a junction with the Street of the Lilacs about three hundred paces east of where we are. If they’ve gone that way, then all our easterly routes are blocked. A dozen men at the junction here – and a handful at the far end of the Lilacs, here’ – he marked crosses on the rough rectangle he’d drawn on the ground – ‘could block off all escape. Our only safe route is to cross over the Lilacs and into one of the alleys that lead back into the depths of the hill. If they know about that, if they’ve blocked it, we’ll have to fight our way out.’
‘They’ll see us.’ Amoricus sat back on his heels. Already he had three small pieces of lead shot in his hand, ready for the sling. He wasn’t Felix, who lived to kill, but there was a part of him that relished the promise of combat. Funny, that. I’d have thought if you cut the balls off a man, he’d give up wanting to fight, but Amoricus was living proof to the contrary.
He said, ‘The Lilacs is one of the widest streets on the Capitol. You could drive three chariots abreast and they wouldn’t rub wheels.’ He rose, more fluidly than I’d seen him move all summer; no sign he was sore from his scars then. ‘You’ll need a diversion. Wait until you hear the shouting and then just wander over as if you’re coming to see what the fuss is about.’ He threw a shy grin at Pantera. ‘I’ve been wanting to do this for months.’