Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Twenty-Two

Alexandria in spring: a youthful place, caught in self-delight, dancing between the bright ocean and the gilded mirror of Lake Mareotis. Intoxicated by its nearness, Hannah left the emperor’s training compound in the relative cool of the morning’s third hour with Saulos on one arm and Math at the other, and felt as if she were coming home and nothing could assail her.

Math was the song of her heart. He had left Brass and Bronze in Ajax’s care as if no mention had been made of his fitness to race, and walked out through the postern gate with his hand happily in hers. Out on the paved granite track that led to Alexandria, with the city itself still lost in the morning’s haze, he tugged a little against her, like a hound at the leash. She let him loose to run across the sand. He ran away and came back to her, laughing.

On her other side, Saulos, at his most charmingly accommodating, took on the role of tutor, declaiming Alexandria’s history to the high circling hawks as much as to Hannah, who had been born there and knew its past as well as any man, or Math, who did not yet know why he should care for the pasts of other places.

‘This was a swamp stuck behind an island when Alexander saw it could be great,’ Saulos said, and his fast, clever hands sketched out the birth of the city. ‘He had his men lay out the grid lines of the streets with bread flour for want of chalk. Flocks of birds feasted here for days after, but the lines were not lost, so that even when Alexander had died, Ptolemy Soter, best of his generals, was able to return and give life to the vision. Men say that Alexander was the greater of the two because he became a god, but I would ask, who worships him now?’

‘Alexander was known from one end of the empire to the other even while he was alive,’ Hannah answered. She was watching Math, who was a speck in the distance running out across the sands with his arms spread wide in the wind and his gold hair bannered behind. He had no idea who Alexander was, nor cared if the man was a god. He ran towards the hippodrome, so much bigger than the one in Coriallum. It had been closed for winter, dusted by the late season’s storms so that it hunched down into the desert like some sleeping sphinx, waiting for a new prey.

One gate hung open. Inside, teams of slaves were beginning to clean the stands and their gilded handrails, to brush dust from the marble dolphins atop the central spina, to sweep and rake and level the track, wide enough for ten teams abreast.

Hannah saw Math plough to a halt as he caught sight of the wonders inside. He spun round, pointing and laughing. She waved for him and he sprinted back, a blaze of life burning across the sands to hurtle, chattering, into her arms.

‘Did you see it? Did you see the colt cut from bronze? Did you see the way its mane flies? And the white dolphins at the ends? There are three! Did you see them?’

‘I saw, I saw… Aren’t they a wonder?’

He was joy made manifest; hers. His arms were clasped round her neck and his ankles at her hips and she could feel his pounding heart and the sweat of his palms and smell horses and sand and excitement billow from him in a mix as headily exhilarating as any bazaar-sold drug.

She grinned at him, carefree, and he beamed back and dipped his head down and planted a cheerful kiss on her forehead, then tumbled backwards like a gymnast, using her abdomen as his board, arcing out to spring off his hands on the sand.

It was a new trick, and not one Hannah had seen before. She applauded, loudly. He flashed her another grin and was gone again to examine the bleached bones of a camel cluttering the side of the track.

‘He does that to men,’ Saulos said conversationally.

‘I’m sorry?’ She had forgotten he was there.

‘Math. He steals men’s hearts with that smile and that kiss. And women’s too, now, it seems.’

‘One day he’ll know what he does.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘You were talking of Ptolemy and Alexander, asking which was the greater. I would say the man who first had the vision soars over the one who came after. Even now, Alexander’s name is a watchword for courage and honour. Few of us will have that kind of fame when we die.’

‘But what worth is fame?’ Saulos asked. ‘Who worships Alexander now?’

Every boy over the age of five worshipped him, but for his skills as a general, not as a god. Hannah shrugged. ‘Nobody worships Ptolemy Soter, either.’

‘But they gather daily to give thanks, to raise their prayers, to present their offerings, at the temples of the god he made.’

‘That was his genius? To make Serapis?’ It was Hannah’s turn to break stride, to turn sideways in the sand, to walk backwards, staring at the man at her side. She was caught again, drawn into the web of his philosophy.

Saulos spread his hands. ‘What better thing could a man do than make a god? Ptolemy Soter melded the best of Greece and Egypt, took all that people loved of the all-father, Zeus, and welded it to Osiris, who died and was raised on the third day. And to take the sting from death, the god-maker wove in the life-joy of Dionysius, and Aesculapius, both healers in their way.’

Out in the desert, Math had abandoned the camel bones and was practising handsprings across the sand. ‘But in Egypt,’ Hannah said absently, ‘death has no sting. Even the untutored know that death is another doorway that leads to the journey they left at birth. Ptolemy knew that; he wanted his new god to- There’s something ahead. Can you see it?’

Math had stopped his handsprings, and was standing absolutely still. Ahead, near the Canopic Gate with its carved eagle and the Eye of Horus above the keystone, a vulture erupted from the sands, and another. Three others wheeled in the sky.

Five vultures. Uneasily, Hannah glanced at the shadows to see if it was noon yet; one of her tutors had taught her the Etruscan augurs by which bird-flight might be read. Finding it still morning, she strove to remember the lines as she had been taught them.

If five are they who circle ’neath the fore-day sun

Bring forth the witness who with clearest heart may Saulos caught her arm. ‘There were five,’ he said. ‘Now there are nine. That changes the meaning.’ Always, he surprised her with the things he knew.

‘Nine. Number of ill-omen.’ Hannah’s head snapped round to count. Nine. In three groups of three, circling sunwise. She knew the meaning of that without needing the couplet; some things are never forgotten. She said, ‘Someone will die this afternoon, before sundown.’

‘We could turn back now if you’re worried,’ Saulos offered.

‘The danger’s not for me,’ Hannah said, ‘or for Math. Nine signals death for a grown man. If you like, certainly we could return to the compound.’

Saulos looked up at the dense blue sky, as if instruction came from it. ‘There are many grown men in Alexandria,’ he said presently. ‘If I am to die, turning back will make no difference. And each of us can only do his best in the eyes of his god. The best I can do, I think, is to go on in, although-’ He turned a frank, clear gaze on Hannah. ‘The gate takes us through the Hebrew quarter. You’re an unmarried woman and Math is neither your son nor mine.’

‘We will meet with disapproval?’

He grinned. ‘At the very least. And if we’re unlucky, disapproval might lead to stones being thrown. I love this place, but the people are hotheads, prone to over-zealous action. I hesitate to say this, but I think we might attract less notice — less opprobrium — if we were temporarily family: you as my wife, and Math as my son.’

Despite the vultures, Hannah laughed. She let her gaze rest on Saulos’ lank hair and unremarkable eyes. ‘I might reasonably be taken for your wife,’ she said, ‘but only a blind man would think Math was your son.’

‘Of course.’ Saulos shrugged. ‘But then it will seem as if I have been told by my unfaithful wife that he is my son, and that I have not had the courage to confront her. Men see what they want to see, and they delight most in feeling scorn for others. It renders them blind to many things, which can be a boon at times. They will not, for instance, question why a woman of your beauty would choose to marry a man of such little distinction.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘If you will let it, we can make this happen. I believe it will be safer.’

‘I’m sure it will, as long as we- what is that?’

Something bloody lay on the sand. Math had stopped and was backing away. The hesitant breeze brought a first scent of blood, and pain and terror. Hannah said, ‘Somebody’s dying.’

‘Ah.’ Saulos bit his lip. ‘We are under Roman justice, after all. Will you wait here while I look? For Math’s sake?’

For Math, Hannah waited, and for Math’s pride, she didn’t go out and gather him from the desert, but stood and watched him, and he her, so that they seemed each stranded on a spit of sand, unreachable.

Saulos returned faster than he had gone, with the news she expected. ‘The baker,’ he said quietly. ‘Flayed and pegged out. And the boy of the Blue team who sold him the information on Poros’ third colt that has strained its tendon.’

Hannah quelled a surge of bile. ‘Dead?’

‘The boy is. His throat is cut. The baker… may not be dead yet. A man can’t live long under the sun without his skin, but I think he’s breathing still. The guards are watching, so we can’t go close, but we must go past to enter the city. If you don’t want Math to see it, I suggest we walk past swiftly and he doesn’t look to his right.’

They passed subdued, averting their eyes. The baker was not yet dead, but there was no way to hasten his passing. Eight legionaries watched from the city walls, to be sure nobody interfered with the emperor’s justice.

Math was sick before they reached the gates. Hannah held his shoulders while he fell to his knees and vomited thin bile and the remains of the morning’s bread. She had no cloth to wipe his mouth and would have given him her sleeve, but he used desert dust and smeared it, so that his whole mouth was darkened.

After, she picked him up and carried him for a few paces, but he wanted to walk and she set him down, and kept hold of his hand as they entered Alexandria.

The Canopic Gate loomed ahead, the height of four men and three across. The Eye of Horus gazed down at them, and an eagle hovered over with outstretched wings, mirror to the wheeling vultures.

‘Math?’ Hannah pulled him to a stop. ‘As we pass through the Hebrew quarter, you’re our son, mine and Saulos’. Can you be that?’

His quick, scornful glance said that he was a spy, trained by a spy, and he could do anything. She watched him shrug on the new mantle, and the change it brought to his eyes.

‘I can try,’ he said, with a child’s solemnity, so that she and Saulos laughed a little and then more, and like that, laughing, their small family left behind the heat of the desert and passed under the Canopic Gate with its welcome in three languages carved across the keystone.