Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Fifteen

Pantera had been asleep in the Striding Heron tavern when Goro knocked on his door.

He woke sharply from dreams of dead youths and poorly mended nets. The first hint of smoke filtered through the shutters to his room even as the boy stuttered his news. Outside, the cries of a few voices multiplied in the brief time it took to rise and throw on some clothes. He felt Goro staring at his scars and passed him another denarius, destroying even further the economy of the dockside where far greater intimacies were bought and sold for copper.

Outside, the fire lit the sky. Men were forming half-built chains, trying to commandeer buckets, to shout orders at one another. All along the row of whorehouses, fishers’ hovels and taverns, men and women in various stages of undress began to spill out on to the dockside.

Goro was watching them, alert for a loose purse. Pantera caught his shoulder, ‘Get word to the emperor,’ he said. ‘The Ubians will tell him.’

‘Tell him what?’

‘That someone has tried to burn his new race team to death,’ Pantera said grimly.

He waited to see the boy forge his way through the swelling crowd, then elbowed his own way to the front and ran.

He reached the tavern as the first trickle of men and boys was dragged out from under the smouldering thatch. He looked for Hannah, or Math, and saw only the wainwright, who stumbled close enough to be caught and hauled clear of the morass.

‘Who of the Greens is still inside?’ Pantera asked.

‘All… they’re all upstairs.’ The man stared wildly about, as if they might appear at any moment as ghosts.

Pantera shook his shoulders. ‘Not all. Your apprentices are out. And some of the others.’ They were crouched not far away, with their heads between their knees, choking. ‘Who’s left? Is Hannah in there? Or Math?’

‘Math.’ The man snatched at the word. ‘And his father.’

‘And Ajax?’

‘I think so.’

Letting the wainwright go, Pantera had pushed through the gathering throng, counting heads of those who had soot-smeared faces and singed eyebrows. Math was not among them, nor his father, Caradoc.

A white-haired Gaul with soft eyes caught his arm. ‘You’re the emperor’s man? The boy’s still in there. Best get him out.’

He had no idea how he might do that. The door in front of him was no longer a door, but the searing mouth of a furnace. On either side, the once shuttered windows belched flame.

Three more men barrelled out, falling over each other in their haste to escape. A lone youth staggered after with a weight over his shoulder, calling aloud that he had Ajax, the Green driver, and needed help. Others rushed forward with water and rags to beat out the fires on his hair and clothes.

Pantera pushed his way to the threshold and stood there in the wash of flame and smoke, staring in.

Hannah was there, crushed between two Germanic warriors, as big as any of the emperor’s guards, trying to get back up the ladder.

‘Hannah!’

She couldn’t hear him. At that distance, she couldn’t hear anything but the fire. Even from the doorway, the heat was driving him back. Turning, Pantera grabbed a bucket of water from a man in the useless chain and upended it over his head, soaking his tunic, his hair, his shoes.

‘Hannah…’ She was trying to get up the ladder. ‘Hannah, no.’

He caught her shoulder and held her back and was about to speak when Math tumbled down the ladder sobbing that his father was upstairs, trapped under a fallen beam.

And so, against all reason, for a child, for a man, for the memory of a woman, or for the woman herself, Pantera hauled himself up into an inferno that was eating the ladder even as he climbed.

Caradoc was at the top, lying where he had fallen, with his head near the trapdoor in a slipstream of smoke-free air. Flames lit up a blooded burn across his forehead and the same ash-smeared features as everyone else. Smoke shadowed the rest of him. There might have been a roof beam near his legs, but in the gloom nothing was certain.

Pantera came up through the trapdoor so that their heads were level. Gratefully, he breathed the small pocket of smoke-free air that allowed him to speak. ‘Let me take you down.’

‘No.’ Caradoc caught Pantera’s wrist. ‘My back’s broken. There’s… bleeding inside. I’ve seen men die; I know the signs. This is my time. Not too soon.’

It did him no honour to argue with the truth. Pantera said, ‘I can still take you down. You can be with Math at the end.’

‘No. There’s not time. And there’s a thing you must know. Only you.’

His drenched tunic was steaming hotter than Rome’s hottest baths. Even so, the small hairs came erect on the back of Pantera’s neck.

‘Why me?’

‘You have been a warrior. There are few others in Coriallum.’

‘Ajax is one, I think?’

Caradoc gave the ghost of a smile. His hair was lit to gold by the fire. They could have been at a riverside, or in a roundhouse on a winter’s evening, waiting for the children to sleep. ‘Who were you?’ he asked.

The question caught at Pantera’s throat. Hoarsely, he said, ‘I was-’ He shook his head. ‘I am Hywell the hunter, heart of Aerthen, father of Gunovar. Both of these are dead. I fought with the Dumnonii at the end-battle. We had defeated the Second legion, but Paullinus came on us and we were trapped.’

In the swirling fire, Aerthen and Gunovar were beside him. They were real here, in all the smoke.

Caradoc’s gaze searched his scars. ‘The legions caught you,’ he said. ‘But you escaped?’

In the face of death, Pantera could not avoid the truth. ‘Not escaped,’ he said. ‘Let go. I was Roman first.’

The dying man nodded, and closed his eyes against the pain of the movement. ‘So you have lived a lie also. Not an… easy thing.’ His eyes opened. They fixed on Pantera with the same intensity as had his son’s. Only the question they asked was different. ‘And now you have a debt to pay?’

Their gods breathed on Pantera then. ‘I have a debt to pay,’ he agreed, and felt the same sense of hope he had felt on the rooftops with Seneca and Shimon. ‘I would gladly give my life for yours now in the warriors’ way to pay it, but we both know that hope is gone. Is there another way I might pay?’

Caradoc’s cold hand squeezed his wrist, briefly, and let go. With an effort, he reached round and brought a knife from the sheath at his belt.

‘Swear,’ he said. ‘And then take it for Math.’

Pantera laid his hands on hilt and blade. ‘I swear to the ends of my life and the four winds to do your bidding.’ He took the knife. ‘What must I do?’

‘Tell Math…’

The voice was almost gone. Pantera had seen men die and knew how fast it came at the end. He brought his face closer. ‘To know himself truly, Math must truly know who his father was. I’ll tell him if you tell me. Quickly. It matters.’

Pride warred with pain on the dying man’s face. ‘I am Caradoc, son of Cunobelin, scourge of Rome, heart of the Boudica, father to Cygfa, Cunomar, Graine — and Math. Cartimandua betrayed me to Rome. Claudius pardoned me. Nero ordered me slain.’

‘And you have lived, and under his nose this last half-month.’ The sheer audacity of it was breathtaking. Pantera exulted that such things could still happen. He had thought them all gone when Britain was crushed.

Caradoc grinned tightly. ‘Nero believes me dead. Men attested to it, swearing that they had seen my body; good men. So Math has been…’ His words dried. His eyes fell shut.

Pantera said, ‘Math has been kept safe. You did that for him. I’ll see he understands.’

Caradoc coughed. Bright blood spewed on to the oak beneath him. His grip on Pantera’s wrist tightened at the closeness of death. ‘Keep him safe. You were right this morning. Math is safest… with his family.’

‘Then hear my oath,’ Pantera said.

In the smoke and the searing heat, he found the formal ceremonial language of the tribes. Laying his hands on the blade that had been offered, he said, ‘In the name of Aerthen and of Gunovar, my daughter, I will keep Math safe and see him joined to his family. I swear it by my heart and my soul. While I live, my life is given for his.’

It was enough, and in time. Caradoc of Britain, scourge of Rome, smiled his relief. With a last, long-hoarded breath, he said, ‘My… son. Proud. Tell him I am… very proud.’