The Last Hour: Relentless, brutal, brilliant. 24 hours in Ancient Rome

by Harry Sidebottom

  The river surged past, its surface bright and shining in the starlight. There was no other way. If he could find something to help him stay afloat. There were barrels stacked on the quayside. But he had to get across to the far bank. Clinging to the hoops of a barrel, he could not swim. He would be at the mercy of the flood. Tiber Island was not far downstream. Even if he could make landfall there, it was only halfway across. The bridges from the island to the city would be guarded. He needed to get beyond the cordon of the City Watch, reach the huts of the fishermen, somehow get his hands on a boat.

  ‘Open for the City Watch!’

  Searching in numbers, the bucketmen were making good time. Ballista heard the firemen beating on the next pair of doors, and inspiration struck.

  Bent over, scuttling like a vagrant in the gloom, he searched among the rubbish littering the alley. Smashed amphorae, broken roof tiles, a mouldering pile of unwanted sacks, other fouler detritus. It was very dark in the firebreak between the tall granaries. At last his hands found something more useful. A half-brick. Wherever there were buildings, inexplicably there were always discarded half-bricks.

  Which door to choose? The street away from the river was clear; you could look from one end to the other. Along the quayside there were cranes, barrels, stanchions, all sorts of things blocking the line of sight. It was an easy decision.

  Before committing himself, he paused in the mouth of the alleyway, checking both directions. A hundred paces or so upstream, the torches still burned along the bridge. By their light, in the gaps between the lumber of the dock, he could see the City Watch. They lolled on the rails of the stock pens, secure in their numbers. To the south, four warehouses down, there were fewer in view. Most would be combing through the building.

  Despite the pain in his ribs, the stiffness in his back, Ballista stood up straight. Anything furtive would give him away. A deep breath – catching in his chest – and he walked purposefully out onto the quayside. There was no immediate outcry. He turned north, and went up the ramp to the door of the warehouse.

  With the half-brick, he rapped on the boards.

  ‘Open in the name of the City Watch.’

  Nothing happened. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the men up by the bridge. He had never felt more exposed.

  Again he knocked on the door. ‘City Watch, open up!’ He forced himself to call louder this time.

  Now there were faint noises from inside the building.

  Downstream, one of the firemen was pointing him out to his colleagues. Allfather, let them take me for an overzealous one of their own. Don’t let it occur to them that the fugitive might be standing brazenly in the open. Don’t let them notice that his feet were bare.

  The sounds behind the door were getting louder; echoing footsteps, muffled talking. At least two men, damn them to Hades.

  ‘Who is there?’ The voice was sullen and welcoming.

  ‘The City Watch.’ Despite his apprehension, Ballista made his words loud and peremptory. The watchmen had the right to enter any premises in the City.

  As the first bolt could be heard being drawn, another voice came from inside. ‘All they ever want is to come in from the weather, drink our wine, stink the place out with the tallow of their torches.’

  A second bolt scraped free. Ballista stared at the boards, willing them to work quicker. At any moment a shout might ring out down the quayside, or someone might come to investigate.

  The sound of a key in the lock, tumblers turning. Infernal gods, get a move on. Finally there were grunts of effort, and the noise of a bar being lifted.

  The door opened inward, little more than a crack. A thin face, half hidden by a hood, peered out.

  Ballista put his shoulder to the door, and pushed passed the man into the cavernous interior.

  ‘You are not . . .’

  Ballista swung the half-brick. Completely unsuspecting, the man had no time to defend himself. The blow struck him on the temple. There was a sickening thud. The man’s head snapped sideways, and his legs gave way. Dropping the half-brick, Ballista caught the unconscious man as he fell. In the light of a hanging lamp, the other nightwatchman stood open-handed, mouth hanging slack. The unexpected violence had rooted him to the spot. Ballista lowered his victim to the floor, and pushed the door shut with his foot. The other man, gradually comprehending what his eyes saw, hesitated. Would he run or fight? He turned and ran. Ballista was after him in a moment.

  The second nightwatchman only had a couple of paces start. Ballista hurled himself forward, tackling the man around the thighs. They both thumped down onto the wooden boards, skidded along the floor. Chaff and spilt grain grazed Ballista’s elbows. He felt a splinter or raised nail tear his right shin.

  Releasing his hold, Ballista scrambled to his hands and knees. Beneath him, the man at once was half up, boots fighting for purchase as he tried to resume his flight. Ballista punched him hard in the kidneys. The man exhaled in pain, but continued to rise. Ballista brought his weight down, his knees landing in the small of the man’s back. This time the man stayed down. Ballista got up, stood over him. The man was curled into a foetal position, whimpering in agony.

  ‘Don’t make a sound.’

  Ballista went back to the door, pulled it open, glanced both ways. Torches still burned up at the bridge, others downstream. The dockside nearby was still dark and empty. No one was coming. No one seemed to have noticed. He shut the door again, shot home two of the bolts. He considered the key and the bar, but given what he planned to do, left them unlocked.

  The second nightwatchman started to crawl away as he returned.

  ‘Take off your cloak, belt, and boots.’

  ‘Don’t hurt me.’ The man sat still, looking up at him, eyes frightened.

  ‘Do as I say, and you will soon be out of here. Take off your things.’

  Painfully the man shrugged off the cloak, and began to fumble with the buckle of his belt.

  Suddenly Ballista realised there was something he had overlooked in his plan. ‘Where is the key to the other door?’

  ‘In the lock, the second one on the ring.’

  As the man removed his belt, Ballista went and took the keys.

  ‘You have killed poor old Marcus. He never did anyone any harm.’

  ‘Keep going.’ Ballista came and crouched over the unmoving body. There was a gash on his head, a nasty swelling, blood seeping through his hair.

  ‘We haven’t got any money on us.’

  ‘Don’t talk.’ Ballista touched a finger to the man’s neck. There was a pulse, and he was still breathing, if shallowly. Ballista unbuckled the belt of the prone figure, shifted the dead weight to slide it free.

  ‘All this for some old clothes.’

  ‘Your friend will live.’ Ballista had seen men in similar cases never come round, but he wanted the conscious nightwatchman cooperative. ‘Now your boots.’

  The man tugged at his boots. ‘I think you have broken my back.’

  ‘You can move. It is just bruised.’

  When the boots were off, Ballista took the two belts and tied the nightwatchman’s arms behind his back with one, secured his legs with the other. Then he sat next to him almost companionably, and tried to tug on the boots. They were far too small.

  ‘Do not make a sound until they come to rescue you.’

  A look of cunning came over the nightwatchman’s face. ‘You will not get away with it.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but if you do not stop talking, you will not be leaving here alive.’ Ballista got up, and went to wrestle the boots off the unconscious man.

  ‘They crucify your sort. Your only chance is to run now.’

  ‘Enough talk.’ Ballista looked across hard-eyed. ‘I have already killed three men tonight. One more will not weigh heavily on my conscience.’

  That made the nightwatchman fall silent.

  The new boots were too tight as well, but Ballista managed to get them on. They would soon pinch and blister his alre
ady tender feet, but he had to wear them for a time if his plan had any chance of working.

  Ballista stood, and put on the cloak. He went back to the door, took down one of the lanterns hanging there, and picked up a crook.

  ‘Make a sound, and I will return and kill you. I do not want to, but that is the way things are.’

  The nightwatchman said nothing.

  ‘You understand?’

  The man grunted.

  Ballista walked deeper into the warehouse.

  When he came out into the central courtyard, it seemed very bright after the corridor. In the starlight, the inner walls of the granary stretched up far above his head. By day the arcades would be full of noise and bustle – merchants talking, overseers shouting, stevedores and porters whistling and joking, inured to the weight of the endless sacks of grain they carried – but now the warehouse was as quiet as the grave.

  The heels of Ballista’s boots clicked on the pavement as he crossed the shadowed, blue-white expanse. The partly shuttered lantern in his hand emitted just a thin beam of yellow light.

  The colonnade on the far side, which led to the door which opened away from the river, was in deep shade. Ballista heard nothing as he walked into the darkness, but he sensed a movement in the still air. Automatically he dropped into a crouch. Something hit him hard across the shoulders. The force knocked him to his knees. The things he carried clattered to the floor.

  Ballista heard his assailant regain his balance, gather himself for another blow. He rolled away. He saw a dark, bulky shape. Something heavy swished down, and cracked onto the flagstones, where his head had been a moment earlier.

  Ballista kicked out. The man leapt back.

  The beam of Ballista’s overturned lantern shone away from them, but there was enough light for Ballista to make out the cloaked figure holding a cudgel. Hades, there had been a third nightwatchman. That accounted for the crafty look on the other one’s face.

  Stooping, the man righted the lantern.

  In the moment’s grace, Ballista scrambled to his feet.

  The man advanced.

  The wall of the passageway was at Ballista’s back.

  The man jabbed with the club. Ballista sidestepped. The wood smacked into the brickwork. Ballista was cornered, but there was an open doorway off to the left. He ducked into it, and immediately realised his mistake.

  A big, gloomy storeroom, filled with sacks of grain, piled two high. No other door, just a ventilation window to the next room, high up. The light dimmed almost to nothing. The man was blocking the entrance. Without hesitation, Ballista climbed up the cliff of sacks. The man was hard on his heels. The grain shifted and gave under Ballista’s boots. The neck of one of the sacks split open as he floundered to the window. The man was close behind. No time to wrench open the woodwork. Ballista turned to fight. His right foot slipped between two sacks. He wrenched his leg, and went sprawling on his back.

  ‘Got you, you fucker.’

  The cudgel was at his chest. The homely smell of harvested corn was strong in his nostrils.

  The man drew back the cudgel.

  Trying to push himself up, Ballista’s hand sank into loose grain.

  The man tensed himself to strike.

  Ballista closed his fist, and threw the handful of wheat.

  Instinctively, the man flinched as the grains flicked up from the darkness into his face.

  Ballista hooked his free leg around the nightwatchman’s ankle, twisted, and the man went down.

  With no more thought than a cornered beast, Ballista swarmed up and over him. His hands found the other’s throat. The man clawed at Ballista’s wrists, scratched at his face, sharp nails seeking his eyes. Ballista had the longer reach. He leant back, face averted, his grip unbroken. With all his strength, Ballista throttled the man, strong fingers deep in his flesh, crushing his windpipe, choking out the fragile life.

  Time slowed. It was as if they had been locked in this macabre embrace forever. Then – a final convulsion – and it was over.

  Ballista collapsed on top of the corpse, panting like a man spent by the act of love. The stench of the man’s loosened bowels tainted the sweet smell of the wheat. There was a horrible intimacy to killing with bare hands.

  Ballista rolled off his victim. The fresh scratches on his forearms and face smarted, and his shoulders throbbed. The pain in his ribs had returned, sharp and insistent.

  Fighting off a childish desire to crawl away and hide, Ballista clambered down from the piled sacks, limped out of the storeroom, and retrieved his lantern and crook, and after a few moments search, the keys.

  ‘Titus.’ A voice was calling through the quiet warehouse.

  Ballista retraced his steps.

  ‘Titus, is that you?’ At the sound of approaching footfalls, the bound nightwatchman dropped his voice to a whisper.

  ‘Unfortunately for you, no,’ Ballista said.

  ‘What have you done with him?’

  ‘Titus is finished.’

  The man’s eyes were wide with fear.

  ‘I warned you what would happen if you made a noise.’ Ballista hefted the crook. Yet somehow he could not do it, could not beat to death a bound, helpless man.

  ‘One more sound, and you will be waiting with him by the Styx. You will not get a second reprieve. Not another sound.’

  Ballista knew he was blustering. Any more words, and the nightwatchman would realise too. He turned, and went back the way he had come.

  There were no empty sacks in the storeroom where the corpse of Titus was sprawled. Ballista opened two of the full ones. The knots were tight, and the twine was rough and cut into his fingers. Laboriously, he heaved them up, and emptied the grain out onto the floor. Kneeling in a cloud of dust, he poured most of the oil from the lantern on the corner of one. When he was satisfied that the sackcloth was soaked with the inflammable liquid, he arranged it between some full sacks, where he could feel a draft on his hands.

  Ballista felt no guilt about Titus’ body. The Romans often gave their dead to the pyre.

  Standing, Ballista applied the flame. The material caught immediately. He placed the second empty sack over the burning one. Blue tongues of fire licked up through the sacking.

  At the door of the warehouse, Ballista inserted one of the keys into the lock. He turned it, but the tumblers did not move. He jiggled it. Nothing. He pushed the key further in, then not so far. Still nothing. He tried turning it the other way. The lock remained obstinately closed.

  Tendrils of smoke were coiling out from the storeroom.

  It must be the other key on the ring. Inserting it brought no better result.

  Now the smoke was rolling out, billowing up to the ceiling.

  Feverishly working the key, Ballista cursed himself. Why had he not thought to unlock the door first? He was a fool.

  The smoke now was hanging lower, catching in his throat. He could hear the crackle of the flames. The grain was tinder dry. The whole building could go up at any moment.

  Ballista leant against the door, desperately fumbling with the key, and then – above the noise of the fire, above his own harsh breathing – heard the most wonderful sound. The tumblers clicked open.

  Shooting back the two bolts presented no problem, but then there was the bar. Belatedly Ballista saw the sheer size of the thing. Solid metal, slotted into a pair of L shaped hooks, it was designed to be lifted by two men. By all the gods, he was the biggest fool that had ever walked the earth.

  Coughing, almost blinded by the thick smoke, he seized one end of the bar, and heaved. The monstrous band of iron lifted; a finger, two, then half a hand’s breadth. Just a fraction more, and he could slide it out. But the weight was too great. He had to let go. The metal clanged back down into the retaining hooks.

  The roar of the fire was deafening, like some malignant daemon. Its baleful light flickered in the corridor. Ballista had to get out now. Planting his feet wide, bending his knees, he summoned every ounce of strength. Aga
in the bar raised. Not quite far enough to slide it out. He would not be defeated. One last effort. Almost to the tipping point. And then, with a rasp of metal on metal, it went.

  The clatter of the bar on the floor ringing in his ears, Ballista wrenched the door open, and stumbled, choking, half-retching into the night.

  ‘Fire!’ Ballista tried to shout, but he could not.

  He staggered down the ramp, and across the street. Clouds of smoke, backlit by the inferno, roiled out in his wake.

  The City Watch were by the next warehouse.

  ‘Fire!’ Ballista doubled up, racked with coughing.

  True to their training, the firemen grabbed their buckets and axes, and ran pell-mell to the conflagration. Their cordon was broken, all thought of the fugitive forgotten.

  Bent over, Ballista pulled the hood of his cloak over his head.

  Officers of the Watch were shouting orders, getting their men into action, calling for ladders and pumps.

  Ignored amid the furious activity, Ballista moved to slip away down the street. He had gone no more than a dozen steps, when one of the Watch grabbed his arm.

  ‘Are you the nightwatchman?’

  It was easy to feign another coughing fit. Ballista kept his head down, obscured by the hood.

  ‘Marcus and the others are still in there. They are at the river end. You have to get them out.’

  The Bucketman told him to stay where he was, and rushed to find an officer.

  As soon as he was unobserved, Ballista moved off. He went past the next warehouse, and left into the alleyway which ran down to the river beyond. Coming out on the quayside, he turned right away from the fire and towards Transtiberim. Behind him the firemen were already busy wielding their axes to break down the door of the warehouse. As if summoned out of thin air, idlers come to gawp at the disaster were filling the dockside. In moments Ballista was beyond the crowd, safely out of sight.