Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1 Page 3

  He thought of his father as he hugged the wall of a tavern, letting the noise from inside cover the sound of his movement, and then the lack of it as he stopped. Up ahead, Pantera had paused and was asking directions of Cleona, the baker’s wife.

  The Roan Bull tavern was a large, sprawling affair set at the top edge of the town, with a main room surrounded by sleeping bays and stables and a second storey upstairs, left wide open for feasts and meetings of the town’s council. Inside, three men were singing a battle song, sending the notes low and deep in their throbbing, incomprehensible dialect.

  The language was foreign. Its words and rhythms caught at Math’s guts and tugged him back to long nights of his childhood when his parents, believing him asleep, had talked in this lilting foreign language around the night’s fire. Those were the nights when they invited in men and women Math never saw clearly, who spoke softly in their sing-song voices.

  The visitors had always left before daylight, bearing with them food and gold and knives and swords that Math was not supposed to know had been hidden in the thatch. Even in winter they took food, leaving none behind, and always they left his parents talking in the heart of the night, speaking riddles in a foreign language.

  Then one night a man had come who did not stay long, and in the morning Math’s mother had fallen sick with grief and she had stayed sick until the burning fever took her away from him, robbing him of love and his family of its only whole adult.

  Math knew that his father had been a warrior once, of the kind whose praises were sung in the taverns; the kind who went to war as a hero and came back as a cripple, unable to earn enough to keep a man and a child fed through the hard days of winter when the woman who had kept them both was gone.

  In the Roan Bull, the war-lament ended, dying away to quiet words and the occasional tight sob of a man who had drunk too much. The hanging hide that served as a door was flung back and two men staggered out, arm in arm, still humming.

  Less than an arm’s reach away from them, Math spat with venom into the gutter and named it for all the heroes of all wars in all countries. They didn’t see him. He closed his eyes as they walked past, that they might not be drawn to the contempt in his gaze.

  Turning his head back after they had gone, he saw the baker’s wife walk past. Of his mark, there was no sign.

  ‘Shit!’ He said that aloud, pushing himself to his feet. The woman let out a small squeal, then saw it was only Math and flapped her hands at him, hissing annoyance like a goose. He was already away, soft as a shadow, hugging the dark lees of the houses, casting left and right for a sense of where Pantera had gone.

  Or a scent. He caught a snatched whiff of the sea and turned left into a dark, stinking, blind-ending alley that was barely wide enough to take a hound, still less a boy or a man. He was running now, ducking low, trying to dodge the puddles of urine and dog turds. He never saw the hand that caught his throat and brought him to a choking halt.

  He couldn’t breathe. There was no light at all. In perfect darkness, Math felt a knife shave a sliver of skin from under his ear and hot, wet blood ooze after it.

  Snoring like a pig, he struck out with both heels, hoping to catch the soft parts of the man’s groin. He failed. To prove it, the hand slammed downward, crashing his feet painfully hard into the packed earth.

  ‘Three mistakes,’ said a quiet voice in his ear. ‘And calling out now would be a fourth. Without doing that, can you list for me what the previous three were?’

  He is prone to bouts of untrammelled anger … Math felt his bladder squeeze on and off, like a horse taking a piss. He was afraid of Pantera, but more, was terrified that he might soil himself and earn the man’s contempt.

  He squeaked and hated himself for it. The hand at his throat shifted a fraction. Drinking great gulps of air, Math said, ‘Watched … men leave … tavern. Lost you. Mistake.’

  ‘That was what killed you,’ the voice agreed. ‘But I had seen you already by then. Three things drew me to you. What were they?’

  In absolute darkness, Math could see the river-brown eyes perfectly, and their promise of death. He said, ‘I looked at you. I let your eyes meet mine.’

  ‘Good.’ The hand at his throat loosed its grip. ‘But I already knew you before then, or our eyes would never have met. So two other mistakes before that.’

  Math could breathe normally now, and think more clearly. Screwing shut his eyes, he searched back through his memory to the boat’s arrival, to everything that had happened from when it was a speck on the far horizon to the point when Pantera’s gaze had met his.

  ‘Something to do with the clerks?’ he asked, eventually. ‘I shouldn’t have looked at them?’

  ‘No, that was neatly done. You looked, you saw nothing you liked, you put them off. I was already watching you, so the mistake was earlier.’

  The hand that held him moved from his throat to his shoulder. Hard fingers dug into his collar bone. The knife still rested at his other cheek. With a lesser man, Math might have tried to wriggle free.

  He shook his head as far as he dared. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Fish are shade-lovers; they shun direct sunlight,’ said the voice. ‘You were fishing in the sun’s full glare when all you had to do was make half a turn to your right and you could have dropped your line in shadow among the shoals that live there. A genuine fisher-boy would have done that, but it would have meant turning your back on the boat which you didn’t want to do. So you weren’t a fisher-boy, and then, when the clerks came, you spurned them, so you were also not a whore. That only left two things: a cutpurse, or a spy. You cut no purses on your way through the crowd and so, today at least, you are a spy. Am I right?’

  There was no point in denying it. Math said, ‘That’s only two mistakes. What was the third?’

  ‘This.’ Pantera bent his head and sniffed. ‘Your hair stinks of horse piss. The wind was coming off-shore to the ship; that’s why the master rowed us in. I was already watching you before the boat made dock. Why would a fisher-boy reek of horse piss?’

  ‘Because I sleep in the horse barns!’ Too angry to care for the risk, Math threw his arm up and wrenched himself free and did not care about the knife at his cheek. ‘Because my father was a warrior’ – he spat the word with all the pent-up fury of his own failures – ‘and now he is old and crippled and can’t make harness fast enough or well enough to earn good money and someone has to feed us both and I’m not a good enough cutpurse or whore to do it yet!’

  His voice echoed shrill from the walls. There followed a stretching pause, during which the knife disappeared and the hand fell away from his shoulder. The first sharp edge of the moon rose over the wall at the end of the alley. By its light, Math was able to look for the first time into the face of the man who had caught him.

  Pantera’s nose had been broken and set a fraction off centre, destroying any symmetry his face might have had. He had broad, strong cheekbones, and fine brows that were a shade darker than his hair. A scar notched one of them, giving him a look of wry surprise, barely contained. Lines of wind and sun etched the corners of his eyes. The latter held amusement, Math thought, but under it a storm of passions too powerful and too complex to be let loose without bloodshed.

  Math realized he was staring and looked away. Pantera leaned back on the nearest wall and folded his arms. ‘You don’t like warriors?’ he asked mildly.

  Math shrugged. ‘My mother was a warrior,’ he said. ‘And my father.’

  ‘I see.’ He rubbed the bridge of his nose, where the break was. ‘Did your mother die in battle?’

  ‘No. But she would have liked to have done. Like my father. He was wounded in battle and survived when he would rather have died.’

  He didn’t know what shadows the moon put on his face, or what Pantera might have heard in his voice, but the silence was longer this time, and thicker, and ghosts whispered within it.

  ‘Why do you sleep in the horse barns?’ Pantera asked. ‘Your father
isn’t there, surely?’

  There were too many answers to that. There was the past, which was his mother, and Math didn’t want to speak of her yet, perhaps ever. There was the future, which was Ajax the charioteer and so might never happen; Ajax was a dreamer of wild dreams and had not been around long enough for Math to know if he was the kind of man to make them happen. So he gave the answer that grew from the present, which had the benefit of truth, and didn’t hurt.

  ‘I work for Ajax, the charioteer who drives Coriallum’s horses. I help to look after the lead colts in the reserve team. My mother bred them, so they know me, which makes them easier to handle. They like it best if their groom sleeps nearby. And it’s warm in winter,’ he said, which was truest of all.

  ‘Of course. Your father must be proud of you.’ A bright thread of pain ran through Pantera’s voice, then.

  Math looked up, searching for its reason, but Pantera glanced away down the alley, avoiding his eyes.

  He said, ‘You could try washing your hair in citrus juice. It gets rid of the smell and makes the gold shine better. The clerks will see you all the sooner at the docks, and they’ll like you better without the smell.’

  ‘They like me well enough as I am.’

  ‘I’m sure they do.’ Abruptly, the warmth left Pantera’s voice. His whole attention was directed at the shadows at the end of the alley. ‘You should go now,’ he said, and took a step back.

  Math felt himself released as suddenly as if a key had been turned in a lock. He stole a glance over his shoulder, to where the light of the tavern’s torches lit the alley’s mouth to amber. The way out was clear. The night had barely started. A world of drunken purses waited to be cut for a boy who knew how to run back down the hill to the richer taverns at the dockside.

  Math did not want to run down the hill.

  He wanted very badly to do whatever he could to heal the raw hurt he had just heard in Pantera’s voice and he knew how he might do it, if only temporarily. He reached forward, confident in his own skill.

  ‘No!’

  Math’s wrist was snatched away and held. Danger surrounded him again and he did not understand why. He struggled briefly, then fell still. With a visible effort, Pantera loosed his grip.

  ‘Who told you to do that?’

  Math felt himself flush. ‘No one. I just …’

  ‘Whoever paid you should have known better than to send—’

  ‘A whore?’ Math spat the word. He had never been ashamed of it before.

  He heard Pantera hiss in a breath. The man crouched. His dangerous, fascinating gaze came level with Math’s.

  ‘I was going to say a boy as naturally good at following as you. Anyone else would have lost me, and so been safe. You have a gift that grown men would give their last coin in the world to buy. And somebody bought you, obviously.’

  It was not a question, but Math nodded anyway.

  ‘Who was it?’ Pantera said. ‘Who paid you to follow me?’

  ‘I don’t know his name,’ Math said truthfully. ‘I would tell you if I did.’

  ‘You would, wouldn’t you?’ He saw Pantera soften, saw the planes of his face change, saw him close his eyes, and close off the volcano of his rage until he could smile, and lay his hand on Math’s arm, and say, more steadily, ‘If you stay a moment, you’ll learn something. After that I want you to leave. Will you do that?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do.’

  Standing, Pantera turned his face to the alley’s firelit mouth. Distinctly, he said, ‘Are you happy now? Will you come out where you can be seen, or must we come to you, like dogs to a whistle?’

  ‘If you know I’m here, what need is there to stand in the light?’ The scrawny Roman, who had offered Math more than he had ever earned for a task that had seemed as if it would be easy, stepped away from the shadow of the alley’s wall and stood in the open, cast in hazy silhouette by the torchlight from the tavern behind.

  He looked much as he had in daylight, but that his thistledown hair – what was left of it – was cast in gold rather than silver by the flame’s kinder light. His head was too big for his body. His neck made the ungainly mismatch between head and body and was ill fitted for both, so that the skin hung in wattles and his larynx stuck out sharp as a stone.

  One might laugh at such a man, but for the fact that he had tracked Math for a good part of the afternoon unseen, which was, at the very least, disconcerting.

  His attention was all on Pantera now, although he spoke of Math. He said, ‘The boy will be as good as you when he’s older, if not better. I haven’t paid him yet. He earns his coin only if we speak, you and I.’

  In a voice that made Math’s guts ache, Pantera said, ‘Then he has succeeded. You have spoken. I have replied. Pay him.’

  ‘Soon.’

  The scrawny Roman was Pantera’s senior by at least a decade, more probably two, he had a bad hip and his hearing was less than perfect, but even so, he carried an authority in his dry, harsh voice that left Math wondering whether he could actually best Pantera in the way he seemed to think.

  When he said, ‘Will you come with me? I have lodgings not far from here. We could talk properly there,’ it seemed inevitable that they should follow.

  Pantera ignored him. He opened a purse that Math had neither heard nor seen at any point on the way up from the docks.

  ‘How much did you promise the boy?’ he asked.

  The scrawny Roman did not answer fast enough. Math said, ‘One sestertius.’

  He had thought it a fortune. Pantera clearly did not. He swore in a language that was neither Latin nor Gaulish but ripe with the force of his scorn.

  ‘You were Rome’s richest man and still you pay pennies to those who would risk their lives for you?’

  The old man shrugged. ‘I am no longer rich by any measure. Nero has my fortune and I must live on my wits. And Math did not risk his life. You are not yet so damaged that you would kill a boy for following you in the street.’

  ‘Really?’ Pantera bent down to Math. ‘Have you eaten?’

  That was a foolish question. Math stared at him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I mean tonight. Have you eaten since sundown?’

  Math shook his head.

  ‘Then take this.’ From his purse, Pantera produced a roll of white goat’s cheese, thick as his thumb and as long. ‘My father taught me this and so now I teach you. Always carry cheese in your purse – it stops the coins from chiming so the cutpurses can’t hear it, and it means you have food when you need it; you never know when you might have to stay awake until dawn. A hungry stomach craves sleep in the way a fed one may not.’

  Math’s experience was otherwise, but he had learned long since that the man holding the food was always right. With the spit already flooding his mouth, he watched wide-eyed as Pantera led him to the mouth of the alley, and in the full glare of the tavern’s torches took the roll of cheese and cut it into four pieces.

  He gave the first one to Math. ‘Eat it now. Then keep the rest in your purse. Divide the night into four by the arc of the moon. See – it’s just up above the houses, so this is the first quarter. When it’s high, at midnight, eat the next piece. At half-set eat the third and at dawn, when the moon is down, eat the fourth. That way the night seems less long. Do you understand?’

  Not understanding at all, Math said, ‘Yes.’ He had no purse. He slipped the precious cheese down the front of his tunic until it lay at his waist, above his belt, feeling the warmth of another’s body through it. The fragment in his mouth was rich and ripe and exploded on his tongue.

  Pantera was already walking away. ‘Good. We’ll come with you some of the way home. Will you show us which way we go to the horse barns?’

  Math hadn’t planned to go home yet, but there wasn’t the slightest chance he was going to leave Pantera before he had to. He nodded, and walked between the two men away from the light of the tavern and into the dark thread of streets that made the upper part of Cor
iallum.

  They were in full dark, with only the moon to light them, when he heard the footsteps behind them and knew they were no longer alone.

  His own steps faltered. Pantera caught him a brief shove in the small of his back and dipped down to breathe in his ear. ‘Only one. He’s in the shelter of the tannery to our left and behind. Don’t stop.’

  They walked on, talking together softly, like son to father, with the scrawny Roman trailing behind. The chunks of cheese in Math’s tunic began to sweat.

  They came to the end of the town, at the top of the shallow hill half a mile or so along from the magistrate’s residence. Here, the villas and workshops stopped and the great flat grassy plain began, in the middle of which was the wooden hippodrome and the complex of paddocks and horse barns around it.

  The moon was high now, flooding the plain with silver ghost-light. Making sure they were in profile to the watcher, Pantera knelt before Math and ruffled his hair, taking his leave as any other man might of the boy he had hired and might wish to see again.

  ‘Seneca was right,’ he said. ‘You were not risking your life when you followed me this evening, but then you were not paid enough to do that. If I offered you a denarius, would you risk your life for me – really risk it – now?’

  Seneca. A denarius.

  The two facts collided in Math’s mind. A denarius: a silver coin four times the worth of a brass sestertius, sixteen times the worth of the copper that Ajax paid his grooms for a month’s work.

  And Seneca. The scrawny old Roman was Seneca: the man who had ruled Rome in all but name for most of Math’s short life. Seneca, who had been deposed, and permitted to retire when all around him had died in a bloodbath of Nero’s making. Seneca, who had paid him in brass, when Pantera was offering silver.

  A denarius. Math would have risked his soul for Pantera for nothing at all.

  Swallowing, he said, ‘You want me to follow the man who is following us?’

  He said it more loudly than Pantera had done. Hearing him, Seneca’s head snapped round.