Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1 (36 page)

‘Is that what I think it is?’ Her face carried the strain he had heard in her voice.

He inclined his head. ‘An honouring of your courage.’

‘Not courage. Did you think it was courage that caused Ptolemy Asul to remain in his house, knowing what was to come?’

‘Could he have left?’

‘Of course, but they would have tracked him wherever he went. He didn’t want to spend a life in hiding, but rather preferred to die where his friends might find him. Also, he wished to give you … what he gave.’

The candlestick shaped as a golden dancer remained beneath the elephant in Ptolemy Asul’s house. He believed she must know that. He said, ‘I will honour her.’

‘You will reclaim her and pass her one day to your daughter.’

His only daughter was dead. Pantera looked down at his hands, which, by the god’s grace, did not shake.

Hypatia gave a small, husked laugh. ‘Thank you for not asking more. I have had enough, today, of helping people with their futures.’

Suddenly ungainly, as if the strings that held her up had been severed, she sat on the floor with her arms balanced on the points of her knees and her head bent between them.

From there, muffled, she said, ‘At dawn on the day of the new moon, Hannah will bring Saulos into the Temple of Truth and I will bring you. You must be in your place amidst the rubble before he gets here. Can you do that?’

‘I can be here through the night if it will help.’

‘I think it might, although we can’t enter before dawn. You must not eat for two nights and the day between them. You must take no wine from henceforth, only water. You must come clean in bowels and bladder. You will need the customary gifts for the Ferryman and the Oracle. Take care how you come by them. If Akakios comes to hear that you are searching the markets of Alexandria for frankincense and myrrh, it will bring danger to all of you, not least Hannah.’

She stopped, her gaze searching his face. He saw her reach a decision. ‘If you want one piece of advice from me, it is this: from this moment on, cultivate with every fibre of your being the ability to hear the voice of your god. And make sure that it is the voice of truth that speaks to you, not the lure of power. Men make their own gods, and not all of them lead to the heart. Remember that, when the time comes.’

‘I have met the truth hanging on a cross. I know it.’ Pantera stood. ‘I will do my utmost to bring it alone into your domain.’

B
ronze was ready to race. Fat veins pulsed on his skin in the rising heat of the morning. His ears were funnels, scooping up the sounds of birds on the dormitory roof, of mice in the feed stores, of distant gulls at the harbour, of clouds traversing the sky and the soft song of the sun’s motion: he heard everything, and knew the meaning of each part.

Never had the colt been so well. Never had Math loved him so much. He led him out of the stalls into the cool evening. The other three horses were already harnessed, all three in the same traces, ready for the one horse, inside at the front, who led the team.

After two days of agonizing indecision, that lead space had been kept for Bronze. He was the best: Math knew it and Ajax had come to accept it. He alone had the power of character, the strength of bone and sinew, the towering mind to lead the other colts and bend them to his will, which was Ajax’s will, so that they might win.

And yet it had to be tested. Ajax would have left it to the day of the race and taken the risk, but Nero had let it be known that he wished a report to be given him of the team’s progress under its new driving regime and so, with exultation from Math and deep misgivings from Ajax, they were here, on the eve of the race, ready to try out Nero’s idea.

Hannah had taught Math how to breathe to keep himself calm, but now, in the heat of the moment, he didn’t need it. Stepping out into the full sun, he walked on air, beside a colt who danced in the light of the gods. The rope was a thread of silk between them, charged with lightning. As one, they turned the corner and walked on to the training track. As one, they saw the four geldings harnessed to the spare racing rig and smelled the presence of the other colts and knew it was time to race properly.

Bronze did not scream, or rear or strike. The smell of his sweat did not turn rank with the need to kill. He danced forward in the wide arc Ajax had marked out in the sand that brought him out past the four geldings held steady by Nexos, the loriner’s wall-eyed son, and only after that did he see his enemy harnessed in behind his brother and still he did not fully understand.

He screamed briefly, but more in confusion than true rage, and Thunder answered, but did not fight free of the harness. Math let out a long-held breath and uncramped his hands.

Bronze’s place was next to Brass, in front of Sweat, as far from Thunder as it was possible to get and still be in the same team. The big colt backed in like a green and innocent yearling with only a roll of his eyes to show he was uncertain of the new situation. With Math’s prayers streaming into his ears, he accepted the harness without a fight, did not try to bite or kick, opened his mouth for the bit as a child accepts the breast.

Math buckled tight the racing rein that had been his father’s handiwork and was still better than anything Saulos could make.

The marks of the Osismi were tooled on every thong and thread. Curl-necked birds and lean hounds ran along, giving their flight and fleet passage to the horses. He saw each one with the sharpness of new making and first seeing. He felt them as if he had never touched anything before, as if the pads of his fingers were sucking in the luxury of lightly oiled leather for the first and only time, leaving his skin tingling to the roots of his hair.

The buckles lay flat. The traces were straight, with no twists. Finished, Math wiped his oily fingers on his tunic that he might not blemish the colt’s perfect hide as he gave Bronze his last caress.

A wafting breeze carried the sharp smell of pine resin over the oil and horse-sweat. Ajax was there, naked to the waist, oiled as the horses were oiled. The aged alabaster jar of pine resin had been a gift from a merchant in Coriallum, presented with much bowing on the docks before they boarded the ships.

Ajax held it out. ‘Would you …?’

To put the resin on the driver’s hands was the last anointing, the culmination of the weeks, months, years of training that led to any race. Always before, Ajax had done it himself. Now, Math accepted the jar in his cupped hands. The sides were warm, and the resin inside was soft, like honey. Taking the leather pad from inside the lid, he swept it round and round on Ajax’s palms as he had seen the other do so often.

When he was done, Math turned the pot over and took the smaller lid from the base and the cotton pad that was in it and swept the powdered chalk between the driver’s fingers. Like that, with his palms able to hold the reins against all the slick horse-sweat and his fingers chalked to wick away any sweat of his own, Ajax was ready.

Handing back the jar, Math made a stirrup of his hands and Ajax used it to vault neatly up on to the chariot.

The colts knew the ritual as well as anyone. Scenting the resin and the chalk, they grew taller, brighter, sharper.

Math looked up. Ajax was speaking to him. ‘Will they do it?’

‘Run?’ Math asked.

‘Fight.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Let’s see then,’ Ajax said.

Math stepped back, taking the looped rope with him. Bronze watched him go, showing the whites of his eyes, but still the volcano of his rage did not erupt. Math breathed again, deep in, slowly out, needing to do it now.

‘Well, that wasn’t too bad, was it? Can we move now, do you think, you four-legged lumbering oxen?’

Speaking obscenities gently, Ajax lifted the reins and clucked his tongue. Walking in step as they had been trained to do, the team stepped out on to the empty track. Nobody fought. Over his shoulder, tersely, Ajax said, ‘Math, get mounted.’

Math took moments to chalk his own hands – he didn’t need resin for the geldings – and let Nexos give him a leg up into the spare racing rig. The geldings were kind horses, and tried their hardest; he had never been afraid when he drove them.

He set them out on the track. Ajax was waiting for him, holding his team to a slow walk. Watching him was like watching the first moments of a fire in bundled straw, when the flames lick and spit but have not yet roared to life.

‘Walk your team alongside mine,’ Ajax said. ‘See if we can hold them slow and calm for the first half,’ and they did, passing side by side towards the imperial box, as they must if the emperor was there.

Feeling the changed mood, the colts allowed the geldings alongside, watching them, but not racing. Math let his mind stretch beyond them, tentatively, and found the Green team gathered silently along the track’s edge.

A handful of Blues stood further out, pushed back to the margins because this wasn’t a race and it wasn’t their team and they were not supposed to be showing an interest. Poros remained where he had always been, at the western bend, standing on a bench halfway up to the back wall with his arms folded and his face a mask of boredom.

They passed the podium above the eastern bend and saluted their absent emperor. On the back straight, Ajax leaned over a little, testing and altering the lie of the thongs that held him. He practised once with the small knife, to make sure he could cut himself out. The horses flicked their ears, but held to a walk.

Looking down at their rumps, Ajax said, ‘I met Pantera this morning. He says they’re going tomorrow into the Temple of Truth that lies beneath the Temple of Serapis. Hannah will take Saulos. Hypatia, who was Ptolemy Asul’s cousin, will take Pantera secretly by another route. I thought you should know.’

Bronze tossed his head. The whites of his eyes showed. His walk lifted almost to a trot. Math breathed as Hannah had taught him, in and out, slowly, freeing the cold knot in his abdomen. The big colt settled.

Math said, ‘You’ll go, won’t you? You’ll follow Hannah?’

In profile, he saw the flash of Ajax’s teeth. ‘Lean forward and talk to the horses. People are watching, and some of them may know how to read a word by its shape.’

The kind geldings listened to him, fluting their ears back and forth. To their chestnut tails, Math said, ‘But will you?’

‘I’d have to be back in time for the race, of course, but she’ll be going in at dawn.’

‘Does Pantera think you’ll be back in time?’

‘I didn’t ask him.’

‘So why …?’

They were heading west along the straight. Ajax pushed his team up to a cautious trot. With the horses blocking him from Poros’ view, he said, ‘Hannah thinks she doesn’t need protection. But Akakios is not to be trusted. He’ll kill her simply to prove he can. If you stay on the inside for this bend, and let me move half a length in front of you, we could race three circuits from when we pass the line. Try to let me win. Poros will think it’s a set-up otherwise.’

‘Let you win? Ha! With those four to handle, you’ll be lucky to make one circuit. Are you ready? Go! Go!
Go!
’

They raced, slowly. Math handled the four geldings as well as he had ever done in his life. Ajax won easily. The colts did not fight.

Math slept in the drivers’ room in the Green dormitory that night. As second driver, it was his right. He woke before dawn, and lay listening to the slide of linen on skin and then of iron on leather as a knife was taken from its sheath and slid back again. The smell of newly honed metal caught at his throat. Beyond the small knife that cut him free from the traces if he fell, he had never seen Ajax go armed. He didn’t know he carried a knife.

‘Ajax?’

‘I’ll be back before the race.’ A shadow leaned over Math’s bed. Cool, dry lips pressed on his temple. From the dark, Ajax said, ‘Get the colts harnessed and ready. You know everything we need by now. I’ll be back to race them. We all will. I promise you that.’

T
he rising sun carved a thin red band across an ochre sky as Hannah watched Saulos feel his way down the road leading to the Temple of Serapis.

She waited for him at a small, anonymous doorway along the temple side. Behind her, a long, sloping corridor led down into the room in which she had met Hypatia which led in turn to an underground maze of tunnels and rooms in which an untutored man – or a forgetful woman – could become fatally lost. In her youth, she had seen the cluttered grey bones of those who had done so, left where they lay.

Death by thirst was not the worst way of passing, but still not one to invite without cause. And so, because she was bound by the same rules as Saulos – more so because she knew the penalties – she hadn’t slept, or eaten, and had drunk only water in the time since she was last here. In addition, she had spent the previous night laying her mind open to the gaze of the stars, making of herself the empty vessel, cleared of all loves and hates, thoughts, cares and terrors.

Saulos saw her and veered off course.

‘This is it?’ He was expecting something larger, greater, more imposing; everyone did. In its very understatement, the entrance to the Oracle’s temple was intimidating. ‘I thought the lamps would be lit.’

‘I’ll light them when you come inside and we can let fall the hide that covers the door.’

Already, Hannah’s voice was changing. She heard it clear as a flute, and cold as a frosted morning. She had no idea what Saulos heard, but his eyes showed white at the rims and he avoided her gaze. He was afraid of her.

‘What must I do?’ he asked.

‘Have you fasted?’ It was the necessary question. Everything now was prescribed.

He ran his tongue across his teeth. ‘For a night and a day and a night I have taken no food and drunk only water. I have passed dung and urine and have no need to pass either again. I am dressed only in linen, with neither wool nor silk nor leather, nor anything of animalkind about me. My hair is combed with water and my cheeks are freshly shaved. I am as pure as any man can be who was not given to God at birth and has not spent his life on his knees in prayer.’