Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Ten

‘ Go Sweat! Go Thunder! ’

The fifth lap marker fell — another tumbling dolphin that spun and arced down a water slide on the spina to bob in the pool at the base. By the time it settled in its place, the teams were halfway down the far straight, running against the sun, with the Green ribbons lying in third place of four. The Parthians were in the lead for Red, but not as far as they might have been if they had really raced. The magistrate’s four matched grey colts had barely broken sweat and were not being pushed by their driver.

Behind them, Blue, Green and White, in that order, were straining in a tight pack, bunched together, the drivers leaning steeply into the turns, each vying for the place on the rail that gave them the best chance into the bend. Ajax’s bald head was a beacon in the middle, with the coloured ribbons flowing past his ears. Sweat and Thunder were running their hearts out, low to the ground, stretched flat and hard with every stride.

Through the sweating gap under another boy’s elbow, Math watched a space appear between the rail and the inner wheel of Blue’s chariot. Ajax had seen it before him. He always did.

Math watched Ajax shift his weight to his inside foot, felt in his own body the pull of the traces shift a fraction inside, saw the crack of the whip high above Sweat, but not Thunder, pulling him just a step to his left, and then — wait, wait, wait another stride… on! — aiming for a space that was barely wide enough for a single horse, never mind two and a chariot behind.

Math thought his heart might stop with excitement. Ajax was his hero, Pantera forgotten. He grabbed Lucius’ shoulder and jumped high in the air, fighting to see.

What he saw was near-disaster. Thunder broke stride, a thing that never happened.

‘ Nooooo! ’

Ten thousand men, women and children groaned as one. Math jumped again, but Lucius jumped in front, blocking the view, and by the time he could leap a third time and look, the disaster had been averted. There was no crash, but Ajax was still caught in behind the Blues and now the Whites were coming up on the outside, four sweat-streaked black colts, stretched flat to the floor with a thread-fine whip above, moving smoothly into place to box Ajax in.

The boys of the Blues and Whites jumped in unison, cheering. ‘ Go! Go! Go! ’

‘ Unfair! Foul! ’

Math was screaming himself hoarse. So unfair! Everyone knew the Reds were going to win, but it mattered to come second. It had not occurred to him as he walked with Nero that the other drivers would see it, and mark the Green team as the one to beat.

‘Foul! Unfair! They can’t combine, it’s not legal! Foul! Fou- oof!’

A boy from the Blue team slammed his elbow in Math’s gut. He sank to his knees, retching. Hannah jumped down from the rails and pulled him up before he was trampled.

‘One of the other drivers made Thunder break stride. They must have done!’ Math shouted over the havoc around them.

Hannah cupped her palm to his ear and shouted back. ‘The White driver spun his whip at Thunder’s eye. Ajax saw it and pulled him back in time. In Alexandria, even in Rome, the driver would have gone for the gap, and risked a blind horse. Ajax is better than that.’

Math heard the thread of pride in Hannah’s voice, and jumped again. The teams were nearing the bend. The track began its smooth angle to the left and the Blues’ driver lost control of his outer lead stallion, and so lost his tight line to the rail. The chariot swayed out again, leaving the same gap as before. This time, Ajax leaned in over his four, bald head flashing, using voice and whip and reins to ask more speed of them.

Math’s heart hurt; he had never seen the horses strain so hard, or so valiantly. Still, when asked, they dug deep and gave more. Ajax pushed forward and slid neatly through.

‘ Go! Go! GO GREEN! ’

The roar of the crowd became a constant, deafening scream. The last of the leaping dolphins tipped and fell at the end of the track. Math pushed on Lucius’ elbow and saw the grey Parthian team flash past, way ahead of the rest. They had three lengths on the others by now, if not four; an almost unassailable lead.

There was no point in jumping; a dozen of the older boys had gone to stand on the low rails at the front of the enclosure, blocking the view. Math had to duck down and squint under Lucius’ elbow to stand a chance of seeing anything at all.

Through the sodden angle of the boy’s armpit, he saw a smear of white hides and black harness, of red, flared nostrils, of pitted eyes and the white rims around them, then the nearest chariot wheel, so close he could have reached out to touch it. The whine of the wheel-rims on the sand was the sing of angry wasps in summer. The crack of the whip was a lazy breaking branch, no urgency in it at all. They had no need to hug the inside rail, these horses, they could afford to take the corners wide and still win. Their charioteer was relaxed, braced easily against the leathers that held him. The reins were wound round his waist and he barely bothered to touch them with his hand. He, too, was Parthian. He might have known all the legal and illegal manoeuvres ever raced, but he needed none of them.

They were gone, red-ribboned tails flagging the wind. The group of three struggling for second place were not yet at the bend. Math counted four thundering strides, then executed his own manoeuvre, planned in the night.

The mass of boys around him swayed forward, straining their necks hard left to see. When they were at their most precarious, leaning forward on tiptoe, he stuck out his arm, levered up Lucius’ elbow and squirmed in through the gap before the older boy noticed. In a swift, wriggling move, he made it through to the rail and stood up. Nobody tried to knife him.

He and Hannah stood crushed together, in an intimacy of shared excitement that went beyond anything Math had found in his dockside encounters. He grinned for her, shouting, ‘They’ll do it! They’ll come second!’

Then he saw her face.

‘ What? ’

‘Lucius has gone.’ She was white, strained, worried. ‘And the emperor’s man has left the imperial box. Pantera. The one who gave you the denarius.’

‘He finds it more pleasant down here amidst the sweat of the apprentices,’ said Pantera’s quiet voice from his other side. ‘If I were you, I’d watch the harness. If Ajax pushes them hard round one more bend like that, it’ll break.’

Math twisted round. Where a moment before had been a heaving pack of boys, now Pantera leaned on the rough-sawn rail. And there was space on either side of him. Space. At the rails.

Math gaped at him, caught in a turmoil of joy and resentment. Then the meaning of what he had said sank home. ‘My father makes the harness!’ He had to scream it over the crowd. ‘It never breaks!’

Pantera pulled a face. ‘I know, but it will this time. Your lanky friend shaved the traces with a knife as you were tacking up. They’ve held this long, but they won’t stand up to the stress of another hard turn.’

In all the noise, they stood then in a bubble of bewildered silence. ‘Ajax will kill Lucius,’ Math said, with utter confidence.

‘He has to live long enough,’ Hannah said softly. ‘The Blue driver knows about the harness. Look.’

Not wanting to look, unable to look away, Math tore his gaze round in time to see the team of roan colts that ran for the Blues sweep past Sweat and Thunder and cut in hard across the track, slewing their chariot sideways so sharply it nearly tipped over.

It was a dangerous move for both teams, and nearly illegal. In Rome, such things happened all the time. In Gaul, Math had never seen anything like it. A great aching groan rolled across the spectators, deepest among the Whites, who were cut to the back. Even the Blues gasped.

Amongst the small group of Greens around Hannah, there was silence. Very quietly, Pantera began to curse.

Ajax was left with no choice. Math saw the flash of the sun on his shaved and sweating head as he threw himself sideways, wrenching his own team out of the way, spinning all four on their hocks in a turn as sharp, as hard and as desperate as any ever executed.

They almost made it. Sweat and Thunder reared high, screaming anger and defiance. The two geldings behind took the brunt of the quadriga’s weight and turned it bravely to the outside, arcing out beyond the Blue’s team. Then Ajax howled a new order, throwing himself and his whip forward, as if, by his own two hands, by the power of his command, by sheer force of will, he could move his four horses out of the way of the White team.

He came so very close to succeeding.

For months afterwards, taverns across Gaul were packed with men who had never driven a team of four in their lives describing in detail how they would have wrenched the four White colts to a halt in time to stop them surging at full speed into the back of Ajax’s chariot.

Because the White driver was only human, he tried to do exactly that — and failed. His horses slowed, but not enough. Ajax’s team strove with all their strength to cut outwards and away to safety, but not enough.

The crash happened slowly, with too little noise, tumbling out along the track like a mosaic spread by the gods.

Fragile wicker and wood, bone and flesh and fury — and a man caught between, who was all three.

Math was over the rails at the front of the enclosure before the first of the colts had crashed, screaming, to his knees. Hannah was with him.

Pantera caught his shoulder and pressed a gold coin into his palm. Pantera’s voice said in his ear, ‘Get Ajax to the Roan Bull tavern and pay the keeper for the upper room. Leave quickly, before the riot starts. The Reds have won, but nobody will care. The local team has been damaged and tempers are running high; they’ll be fighting as soon as the emperor leaves the stadium.’

In the gathering, clamouring crowd, he was gone.