Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1 (32 page)

Coming back, he found that Hannah had lifted Math and was holding him close. ‘I know you hate Gaulish singing,’ she said. ‘But will you go with Pantera and Shimon back through the back rooms of the Gaulish inn? I’ll change clothes here and follow you when the pyre is burning well. We can meet in the market, near the nightingale-seller. Then we have to find Saulos and pretend that none of this has happened. It’ll take every part of your learning, but I know you can do it.’

Math hadn’t spoken since the mouth of the alley. Hannah waited until he had nodded, then kissed his brow and sent him gently to Pantera.

‘The Oracle will speak on the day of the new moon,’ she said, ‘which is nine days from now. We have a lot to do between now and then.’

N
ero’s ship, the
Hera
, made harbour at dawn two days after Ptolemy Asul’s death.

On his arrival, the great lighthouse of Pharos burned multicoloured fires through the night in celebration. The following night, at the emperor’s command, the fire shone through a tinted lens, splashing a pale green light across the entire city of Alexandria to honour the spring.

Under that unworldly cast, Pantera contrived to deliver a message to his emperor, and received a response. Shortly before midnight, after several hours spent watching one of the two doors, and with Shimon watching the other, he entered the comfortable, intimately lit bar of the Black Chrysanthemum tavern.

The light came from reed candles set at careful intervals along the walls. Mottled shade spilled over the spaces between, so that it was possible to navigate round the small round tables or the three-legged stools that stood around them without intruding on the commerce that took place there. The clients may have come for their host’s miraculous drink, but they stayed for the chance to conduct their business in discreet company, away from the city’s rumour mill.

To protect their anonymity and their purses, the windows were shuttered and the two doors were protected by Germanic tribesmen hewn from the same rock as the emperor’s Ubian guard, but taller and broader, with arm rings fashioned from human knuckle bones and hanks of red-dyed, tallow-dipped horse hair fixed at their temples as visible proof of their killing power.

The guards had removed Pantera’s two most obvious knives at the door. In a brief exchange of glances, it was made clear that they knew about the third, and that any attempt to use it that did not have their agreement would be unfortunate.

Pantera avoided catching anyone’s eye while he ordered two mugs of foaming iced sherbet water and carried them to a corner where a cluster of stools embraced a low table. A charcoal fire glowed dully behind him and a wall kept his left flank safe. Three tables of busy merchants filled the space between him and the nearer door-guard. Even so, when he looked up, the guard was watching him.

He turned his back to the wall and let the shape of the room order itself in his mind: the men who might fight if pushed to it, those who would try to run and so block the exits; those who were engaged in matters that might lead to arrest or death if they were overheard; those who were simply there for peace and a particular drink that could not be had anywhere else in Egypt, and so the world.

Nero entered as the Watch called the hour. The guards showed him no deference, but searched him as they did everyone else – and found nothing. Pantera could not tell if they knew who he was.

The emperor was dressed as a merchant; not flashy, but wealthy enough for nobody to question the manicured nails, the oiled hair or the scent of rosewater that followed where he walked. Two groups of three men trailed in behind him, not obviously bodyguards, except perhaps to the Germans, who searched them with particular thoroughness. They bought small beer and took up stations near both doors while their master pushed his way through to the fire and warmed his hands against the night’s chill.

It was surprisingly well done. Nobody looked up, no man nudged a neighbour, or nodded and turned away. The six bodyguards were close enough to be useful, but not suffocating, and nobody had linked them to their master.

‘Welcome.’ Pantera raised his mug in greeting and kicked a stool into place. The emperor sat down, leaning his arms on the table. Like Shimon, he, too, had lost weight over winter. The skin around his eyes was pulled taut as a drumskin and the ink wells beneath were filled with lack of sleep. Even so, he looked briskly alive, out here, away from the court.

‘Rome is a place of much intrigue,’ Pantera said, by way of greeting. ‘Has it been hard leaving Akakios in Alexandria over winter?’

‘Harder than I had imagined.’ Nero gave a tired smile. ‘The senate hates me, and yet must appear to love me. Without Akakios at my side, the veneer of their care wears thin.’

‘Do you hate the senators?’

‘Most assuredly I do.’

‘Enough to burn Rome to be rid of them?’

The emperor’s face lost all its life. His wearied eyes regarded Pantera flatly. ‘That is treason. You will apologize.’

Pantera said, ‘My lord, I apologize. An emperor never desires the harm of his subjects.’

‘On the contrary.’ Nero leaned his shoulder against the wooden wall. ‘As we both know, an emperor frequently desires the harm of his subjects. We have arranged the deaths of several ourself. What we do not – and never shall – desire is that those who love us should die. And while the senate plots our downfall, the men and women of the suburra and the ghettos still love us as their father and protector. Answer me this: if a fire was lit in Rome tonight, where would suffer first and most?’

‘The ghettos and the suburra, as you just said.’ Pantera stared into his mug. A froth of sherbet still laced the top. He dipped his finger into it and drew a rough circle on the barrel top. ‘This is Rome. The hills are set around. The forum is in the centre. The devastation would depend on where the fire was started and how the wind hurried it, but the ghettos of the palatine, the Circus Maximus, the suburra, are all dry as tinder. The dwellings are made of wood and muddy straw and are too close together. They’d burn like pitch torches.’

‘While the granite and marble of the senate houses up the hill will survive with ease.’ Nero leaned forward, his mug held between both hands. Bands of white skin showed on his fingers and thumbs where rings had been removed for this foray into Alexandria’s underworld. He said, ‘Know this: if Rome burns, it will be without my blessing.’

‘But there are men who work for you who may think they know what is best for your future, even for the future of Rome.’

‘They are mistaken. I expect you to stop them.’

A name hung between them. ‘There may come a time,’ Pantera said cautiously, ‘when I need to use your authority to gain control of men notionally sworn to you. I have your turquoise ring, but it may not be enough.’

‘We had considered this.’ Nero pulled a belt pouch from his waist and slid it across the table. His every move telegraphed a merchant making an underhand deal. Men at neighbouring tables turned away out of instinct, that they might be able to say they had not witnessed anything.

As Pantera took the purse, it fell open, spilling on to his palm a reproduction of the royal seal. He hoped it was a reproduction. To hold the real thing was not given to ordinary men. Even to hold a facsimile without Nero’s express consent was a capital offence.

Nero raised a brow. ‘With that, you have absolute authority,’ he said. ‘There is not a man in Rome or the provinces who can stand against it.’

‘Save yourself.’

‘Of course. And so there will be an accounting if you use this. We will require to know the detail of what was plotted against us.’

‘I have nothing to give you yet, but on the night of the new moon I hope to learn the date on which Rome must burn. If I don’t die in the attempt, I will also know who else is trying to find that out. Besides Akakios.’

‘He may seek it to save us.’

‘Indeed.’ Pantera finished his drink, slapped the mug on the table and rose. He grasped Nero’s hand, one merchant taking his leave of another.

Nero’s fingers closed on his, holding tight, so that he could not easily slide free. A new passion haunted the bleak eyes.

‘You care for us,’ he said. It was not inflected as a question, but was one none the less.

‘I care for a boy called Math,’ Pantera said, truthfully, and then, surprising himself, ‘but yes, I care, too, for my emperor.’

Nero’s lip curled. ‘Out of pity, or duty?’

‘Neither, my lord. Out of understanding for one forced to act against his better instincts by petty men who would bring him down. Out of respect for his courage and his care for his people.’ Pantera could have lifted his hand free now, but did not. The fingers that held it trembled. ‘Seneca told me you could scent a lie in a man from a hundred paces. I will not lie to you. You must know that.’

‘I do. You would not be alive were it not so. But I know, too, that you do not tell me all of the truth.’ Nero lifted his own mug for the first time. His eyes closed as the first explosive taste hit his palate. ‘Leave us now. We would enjoy our evening in peace.’

F
or Nero’s visit to the training compound, Akakios demanded that the three teams demonstrate the quality of their improvement since the emperor had last seen them.

To that end, three heavy parade chariots had been brought out of storage, stripped of their cobwebs, polished and garlanded with ribbons. They were larger than the practice rigs, made of oak and iron inlaid with ebony, ivory and copper, and were so heavy that a full team of eight horses was needed to pull them.

And because there were eight horses, pulling a chariot of three times the weight and twice the size of the practice rigs, the driver required a second man on board to help keep the balance on the corners.

For the Green team, Math was that second man and, standing on the thin planking high above the start line with the four pairs of horses strung out ahead, he knew without doubt that he was staring death in the face. The air was wet with rank, sour horse-sweat and heavy with the threat of a dust storm.

From outside the compound, a single brass trumpet sounded. At its signal, the gates eased open. Bronze stamped at the sand, sending a judder back through the team and up into the chariot.

Math felt it faintly through the soles of his feet. A brief swirl of wind sifted desert sand into his mouth. He hawked and spat without ever taking his eyes from Akakios, who stood ten paces away at the trackside with his arm raised.

At his side, Ajax murmured, ‘A hundred heartbeats till we start.’ Math swallowed the rest of the grit.

The air became less heavy. A slow, hot wind raised the sand in sluggish dust demons. Brass bit the air as if he hated it. His every muscle twitched.

Ajax said, ‘Fifty heartbeats. Less. It will only seem like a lifetime, but— Gods alive! Close your eyes,
now
!’

Math clamped his eyes tight shut. The chariot’s floor bucked twice beneath him as a blinding spray of sand scoured his face.

More followed, driven by a withering wind that destroyed in its first careless flurry the five days of washing, polishing, oiling and grooming that had stripped away the shabbiness of winter and transformed the compound into a place fit to greet an emperor.

Out beyond the gates, the lone trumpet was joined by others and others until the wind’s howl was drowned under the raging brass and even the horses were still. It was deafening. Math clamped his teeth and kept his eyes shut and dug his nails into his palms and knew that around him men and boys were doing the same, or more; whatever it took not to scream against the murderous noise and so bring disgrace on the team.

The horns stopped all at once, with the finality of a fallen blade. As if by imperial order, the wind, too, fell away, taking the dust devils with it. In the crushing silence after, a boy coughed and was hushed.

Math opened his eyes. Ajax’s hand on his shoulder kept him still which was as well because Nero was nearly on them, hovering ten feet above the ground, a god floating on a cloud of gold with white-robed boys parting before him, strewing pink and gold flower petals in his path. The tamed wind tossed them lightly skywards, mixing them with the sand.

‘Look again,’ Ajax said. ‘He’s on a cart taller than ours. And not as close as he looks.’

Math blinked and peered through the settling dust and found that the emperor was not possessed of magic, but instead stood on the platform of a parade chariot filmed in gold leaf and laced about by foamy cloth of gold, and that he was not within reach, but stood framed between the pillars of the gate.

Two dozen chestnut horses drew him forward, each with a fountain of gilded ostrich feathers fanning high above its head so that they were no longer mere horses, but the fable-beasts of childhood tales.

‘This is it,’ Ajax said.

He lifted the reins. In front of him, four pairs of horses tensed. On either side, the Blue and White teams did the same. Eight horses in each team. Eight. It was madness.

It became hard to breathe, to think, to swallow. Math clamped his hands on the hard oak edge of the chariot rail. Hannah was somewhere in the crowd, with Saulos. Her burns were healing quickly and the haunted look in her eyes was less wild than it had been at Ptolemy Asul’s house. Best not to think of that. Math stopped trying to see where she was.

Ajax whistled a long low note. Brass and Bronze pushed forward to take up the slack in the harness. Ajax flipped back his whip. From his place inside the gates, Akakios’ arm fell.

‘Go!’

‘Go!’

‘
Go!
’

Three drivers shouted together. Three long whips flicked far, far out over the waiting teams to the powerful colts in the lead. Twenty-four horses erupted from the starting line. Three big, beribboned show chariots sped flat out down the full length of the track.

Math was placed behind Ajax at the point of balance from where he must lean his weight either way on the corners to keep the whole rig from tipping over.