Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1 Read online

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Oh.’ Math closed his eyes and wrinkled his face. ‘Tall. Tall and lean and bitter-faced with no hair on the front half of his head, but straight black hair behind and a high brow and a nose like a hawk’s. There was a triangular tear in the left elbow of his tunic and he wears his knife to the right, so that his left hand can draw it. He spoke Greek and Gaulish and Latin.’ Math opened his eyes. He looked from Pantera to Seneca and back again. ‘That’s all I found out.’

  There was a weighty pause. Pantera looked past the boy to Seneca. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what? Aren’t you going to tell him well done?’

  ‘I might when I know who it was.’

  Seneca frowned. ‘Tall, bitter-faced with a high brow setting off straight black hair, left-handed, prone to tearing his clothes, speaks eight languages that I know of and kills without a second thought? That would be Akakios. Notionally, he’s a tribune in the Praetorian Guard. In practice, he’s Nero’s unseen hand in the outside world: if someone threatens the emperor, Akakios sees them dead first; quite often they die before they’ve had a chance to make their threat. He’s more dangerous than a nest full of scorpions. If we’re all still alive this time tomorrow, then Math did immensely well. I told you he’d be better than you one day.’

  ‘Then he should be paid.’ Pantera took a silver denarius from his purse and spun it high, catching the candle’s light. ‘Thank you, Math. That was well done.’

  Math snatched the coin deftly from the air. Aglow with pride, he followed at Pantera’s heel while the man found a bowl on the table and filled it with water from the well, then, crouching, used the sleeve of his own tunic to wipe away the filth from Math’s face, cleaning the edges of the graze underneath.

  He moved slowly, tenderly, as he might with a wounded hound. Finishing, he said, ‘You did truly do well, but you know that. And now you have two pieces of cheese to give back to me?’

  There was a short, difficult silence.

  ‘You ate it?’ Pantera asked.

  ‘I was coming back.’

  ‘And you were sure there was nothing else to be done for the night. In which case—’ Pantera stood, dusting his hands. ‘You’re right, there is nothing else. You may go.’

  It was as curt a dismissal as any Seneca had heard. Math’s face flashed from white to scarlet and back to white. His eyes became great grey pools, filled to the brink with swimming tears. He opened his mouth to speak and shut it again.

  Too fast, he turned on his heel and ran for the doorway, leaving yet another muddy trail across the immaculate floor. A short while later, the outer door was flung open but not shut. A dog snarled in a gateway and fell silent.

  Pantera absorbed himself wringing out his soiled sleeve over the bowl. Seneca glared at him, waiting.

  ‘What?’ Pantera asked, without raising his head.

  ‘Did you think to stop him loving you?’ Seneca threw up his hands. ‘You won’t do it with harsh words alone.’

  Pantera abandoned the effort to clean his sleeve. Wandering over to the table, he picked at a small curl of pickled herring the size of a hazelnut and popped it in his mouth, chewing reflectively.

  ‘He doesn’t love me,’ he said. ‘He’s looking for a man he can respect who will take the place of the father he despises. His father was a warrior. When he finds I was the same in Britain, he will despise me too.’

  Seneca laughed bluntly. ‘If you think that, then five years among the Dumnonii has made you a fool, for you were not one when you left Rome. Take him in, what harm is there? If you treat him well, he’ll work for you with all his heart.’

  ‘The spymaster’s philosophy?’ Pantera’s face hardened. ‘Take the boy and you can mould the man?’

  ‘I didn’t take you,’ Seneca said. ‘I never touched you, in fact. You’d have killed me if I’d tried.’ And still might. That fear was always there.

  ‘I was never a whore.’

  ‘No, but you would have been within a month if I hadn’t taken you in. You couldn’t have gone on thieving for ever.’

  ‘You may choose to believe so.’ Pantera ate an olive, wiping his lips neatly afterwards with the edge of his sleeve. ‘But we were talking of Math, who is both a whore and a thief and successful at both. He needs no help from me.’

  ‘You think? For all his bravado, that boy’s been plying his trade for less than six months and he’ll die a whore’s death within the year, as well you know. With a face like that, and the spirit to match, it’s only a matter of time before he’s taken by someone who finds pleasure in another’s pain – and when he fights back, he’ll die.’

  Seneca stopped. Always before, he had kept his composure while others ranted around him. His final words rang in a leaden silence.

  ‘None the less, I prefer to leave him to his own fortunes,’ Pantera said, coldly. ‘I have one child’s death on my conscience. You’ll forgive me if I choose not to add another.’

  He was already leaving. ‘Wait!’ Seneca snatched at his sleeve. ‘What do you know of the Phoenix Year?’

  Pantera stared down at the offending fingers distastefully. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Nero will ask you of it tomorrow. If he does – when he does – will you find a way to see me that Akakios cannot follow? There’s a man you should meet who is asking the same question and has more of the answers.’

  ‘If I’m alive, I’ll give it thought.’

  Twisting out of Seneca’s grip, Pantera followed Math’s line of muddy footprints towards the door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘Math? Are you all right?’

  Hannah found him; dark-eyed, still-souled Hannah, the healer from Alexandria, who was Ajax’s new woman. Not yet so much his woman as he wanted, perhaps; in the month she had been among them, Math had not seen her let Ajax so much as lay a finger on her, but his interest had been clear from the start. In this, she was the due opposite of the other women who hovered on the fringes of the team who would have given themselves to Ajax in a moment, had he but asked.

  He had never asked any of them, and Math had thought that women were not his interest until Hannah had arrived, carrying stillness as a gift that gave ease to the driver and his team in a way no one else could do.

  It was for this, her gift of tranquillity and the way she lit Ajax’s eyes, that the team had loved her first. Soon, though, it became clear that Hannah was a healer of a different stamp from those who customarily served the citizens of Coriallum.

  Not ten days before, she had tended one of the younger colts who had gone down with colic, giving him a drench that brought him right within the day. Since then, the entire team had wooed her, not just Ajax, hanging on her every word, running to answer her every need, in the urgent hope that she might cleave to them and not the other teams, that she might keep their horses and their driver in racing fitness at least until the emperor’s contest had been won.

  They wouldn’t win, of course, they all realized that as soon as they saw the magistrate’s new horses, but they all knew, also, that a good second would do. It was Math’s heart’s dream to race a chariot before the emperor – and win – or it had been before he met Pantera. Now, he needed to think about that, to weigh his heart and its dreams, and to do that he needed to be alone.

  Hannah was there, close and warm and still, like a forest pool on a summer’s river. The barn was lit only by the stars, and those were faint. Math could barely see her; no more than a wave of black hair falling like smoked silk from her high, clear brow, and the straight nose beneath it.

  Her face was near his, peering in the dark.

  ‘Math, what’s the matter? What happened to your cheek? Did one of your men hit you? Did you cut a purse and someone caught you?’

  Hannah was a breath of fresh air in many ways, not least of which was her quiet acceptance of what he did and why. And she was good with the horses, too, nearly as good as his mother had been. Nobody else, except possibly Ajax, could have crouc
hed down now as she was doing, almost between Sweat’s two back feet, to look into the warm nest Math had made for himself in the straw. The colt fidgeted, stamping his foot, but he did not try to kick her head to a pulp, or rip her scalp from her skull with his teeth.

  She was close to Math now, sharing his huddle of straw. Her forefinger had stroked once down his cheek, feeling the wet, and she had said nothing. His mother would have done such a thing; noting the tears but not having to name them.

  Thickly, Math said, ‘You shouldn’t come in here. Your hair’ll smell of horse piss when you go.’

  ‘Really?’ She took his hand and squeezed it and he saw the flash of her smile in the warm, damp dark. ‘I’ve probably smelled of nothing else since I first came to look at your colt ten days ago.’

  She didn’t. She smelled of wood smoke and warm hair, of wool and belt-leather and woman-sweat that was quite different from the sweat of men. The temptation to bury himself in her arms was like a thirst on a hot day. He supposed Ajax felt the same. The thought gave him strength to resist.

  She felt the change in him as he edged away, and the clenching of his fist. Tentatively, her two hands wrapped round his one.

  ‘Math, what have you got? Can I see?’

  After a moment’s hesitation, he uncurled his fingers. She picked up the coin by feel.

  ‘It’s a denarius,’ he said, but she already knew that. She wasn’t rich; she might have hailed from Rome’s breadbasket, but if she had brought any of its wealth with her when she left, it was all in her head. Like everyone in the team, she owned the tunic she wore every day and a silver belt buckle. Beyond that, and the linen sack with its bandages and unguents, dried herbs and the five nested copper bowls for washing of wounds, she had come to the race barns with nothing and likely would depart with as little. Anyone who lived hand to mouth as she did knew the feel of a denarius without needing light to look.

  Quietly, she gave it back to him, wrapping his fingers closed again. ‘Did you steal it? Is that how you scraped your face?’

  ‘I earned it.’ He could hear the stubborn pride in his own voice and hated it. ‘I didn’t steal it, I earned it.’

  ‘Oh, Math …’ She pulled him close again and this time he let her. ‘Please be careful.’

  They sat in silence for a bit, breathing in each other’s warmth while the horses moved around them.

  She was so like his mother. He made himself think of the differences, so that he would never confuse the two: Hannah was dark-haired where his mother had had hair the colour of ripe corn. Hannah’s eyes were a deep brown, his mother’s had been blue-grey, like a mackerel’s back. Hannah was, he thought, maybe ten years younger than his mother, more Ajax’s age, ten or fifteen years older than Math. Hannah spoke Greek first and then Latin and a faulty Gaulish while his mother had spoken three different dialects of northern Gaul for preference, Greek when she must and Latin only under sufferance. Hannah was trained in philosophy and medicine; she spoke to Ajax of Isis and Osiris and of Socrates and Plato, Pythagoras and Demetrius as if they were all alive, gods and men alike. Math’s mother had told him tales of the heroes of Britain who were dead for the most part, and had taught him the daily rituals by which the gods of oak and river were remembered. He chose, for the most part, to forget those now that she was dead.

  But one thing the two women had in common was that their time in his life was short. His mother had already gone and Hannah, he knew, would leave soon, Ajax had said that she wasn’t the kind to stay long in one place, or with one man; that it didn’t do to fall in love with her. He had been speaking, it seemed to Math, largely for himself.

  Hannah moved a little, and Math caught a brief scent of something else in the wood smoke.

  ‘What were you celebrating?’ he asked. He felt the searching quality of her look and said, ‘I can smell roast lamb.’

  ‘Ajax said you were quick.’ She looked down at the straw. ‘It wasn’t me. Someone was celebrating on my behalf.’

  She was less still, suddenly, as if a stone had been thrown into the pool of her soul, ruffling the surface. Math sat, waiting.

  In a while, she said, ‘A friend of my father’s has searched for me for over half a year. Today his journey ended. He gave a feast to show his gratitude.’

  Math said, ‘You don’t like lamb.’ Hannah didn’t ever eat meat; it was another way she was different from his mother.

  She nodded, ‘He doesn’t know that. My father died before I was born. My mother returned to Alexandria to give birth to me and see to my childhood. I have never met any of my father’s friends until today.’

  They were quiet a while, listening to the horses’ slow eating. Hannah said, ‘His name is Shimon. He wants me to go back with him when he leaves.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘But you might?’

  He thought this was the first time she had considered that. She reached up and teased a tangle of hair from Sweat’s mane. ‘I might.’

  Math picked a piece of straw and sucked on the end, tasting the flavours of autumn and frost. He thought of how Ajax had changed when Hannah came and would change again if she left.

  He said, ‘Ajax says everyone who comes to Coriallum is running from something. It’s as far away from Rome as a man can get.’

  ‘Or a woman?’ Hannah’s eyes were sharp in the grey light. ‘Might we not be running towards something?’

  ‘He didn’t say that.’

  They were quiet a long time after that. Math stared up to the dark roof space.

  ‘If we win the race tomorrow, Nero will send us to Alexandria to train,’ he said eventually. ‘All his horses go there first, then he picks the best to race for him in Rome. They say it takes two months by sea, or three by road, but that would mean taking the horses over the mountains and they don’t want to do that. We’d have to go by the end of next month or the sea-lanes will be closed. If we win,’ he added. ‘But we won’t.’

  Hannah’s hand moved to his shoulder. Math felt her come back from faraway thoughts. ‘Is that what’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘You think you might be stuck in Coriallum all your life? You won’t. The emperor will notice your horses, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Ajax still thinks he can win.’ He let his voice show how stupid that was.

  Hannah shook her head. Her silk-smoke hair brushed his cheek. He felt her smile. ‘No, he doesn’t. But he doesn’t want the entire team to decide that second place is good enough. “Good enough” is how you lose.’

  ‘Did Ajax say that?’

  ‘Yes, and he’s right. You need to keep aiming to win if you want to catch the emperor’s eye. It’s the fire in you all, the need to win, that’ll do it. Ajax said he’ll get you to Rome to race for the emperor if it kills him. He promised it on the shade of your mother.’

  ‘I know, I was there, but he can’t promise what’s not in his gift.’ Math shook his head. ‘He drew the Green ribbon this afternoon. The gods are against us.’

  ‘Just because you’ve always been the Red team before doesn’t mean—’

  ‘Nero hates Green, he thinks it’s unlucky.’

  ‘Then you’ll just have to show him it’s not.’ Hannah took his head in both her hands and kissed his brow. Her lips were cool and dry, as his mother’s had been except at the end, when they had been hot. ‘And to do that, you need to sleep. You’ll never be a race-driver if you spend the night before a race wide awake. You could come and sleep with me in the healer’s booth. I’ve got a straw pallet and hides. It’s warmer than here.’

  The part of Math that stood apart watching others knew that Ajax would give a month’s food for an offer like that. It was almost worth accepting just to see his face in the morning when he found out.

  The smell of cheese on his fingers reminded him that he needed to be alone. He shook his head. ‘I need to stay with Sweat and Thunder. They get upset the night before a race.’

  ‘But, Math, they’re not racing tomorrow.
Only the first team goes in the traces.’ Her voice was gentle, not to upset him.

  ‘I know that,’ he said crossly. ‘But they don’t. They just smell the axle grease and know there’s a race coming. If I leave them now, they’ll keep everyone awake kicking the walls. I need to stay here. And I want to. I’m fine, honestly.’

  ‘You’re crying, Math. I’ve never seen you cry before.’

  ‘I was thinking of my mother. She bred Brass and Bronze, who are in the first team. She’d have wanted to see them race.’

  ‘Then I’ll leave you with her memory. Thank you for telling me.’ Hannah kissed his hair and didn’t comment on its smell. Standing, she said, ‘My mother’s dead, too. She was a healer, far better than me. When I bring a woman to childbirth and both dam and child are healthy, or set a bone and know it will mend, I cry too, out of pride at her memory. It’s not a thing to hide.’ She squeezed his hand again and began to worm her way back between Sweat and the edge of the stall to the passageway.

  At the big open doorway, she paused, a black shadow lit by the starlight behind. Raising her head, she sent her voice back to find him. ‘Ajax says you’ll be a race-driver one day if you want it enough. Better than him if you put your mind to it.’

  ‘I know. Thank you.’ Math made his voice sound true, even if the rest of him knew that Ajax had told Hannah only so that she would pass it on as part of his plan to save Math from himself.

  He lay in his straw hollow, listening to her quiet footsteps across the grass, and the splash of urine as she squatted to relieve herself, then the press of straw on straw in her pallet as she lay to sleep.

  Her booth was not far from the end of the barn, set at the front of the newly named Green team’s huddle of tents and stalls with the white linen rag hung on a pole outside to show her profession. He waited until he could hear the sound of her sleep-breathing before he got up and moved through the warm, horse-filled dark to talk to Sweat first, who was his favourite, and then Thunder.