Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘H e can’t read Hebrew, did you know that?’

‘I’m sorry?’ They were in the library, speaking softly. Pantera bowed, as befitted a pupil who has recently found his master.

Shimon favoured him with an imperious gaze. ‘The Apostate. The one who wishes to destroy Rome and then Jerusalem. The man I have been hunting since we last met. He preaches the word of our god but he can’t read it in the language in which it was written. He relies instead on this-’ He jerked a disparaging thumb at the open scroll before him. ‘The Greeks have never understood our language. Why they thought they could render holy scripture into their godless tongue is beyond me. He uses it in his ministries, and so his lies are based on a falsehood at their start.’

Shimon of Galilee, zealot in the service of his god, leaned his elbows on a table in the library of the Serapeum and glared at Pantera, daring him to answer.

He had aged since Pantera had seen him in Gaul. Soft, slanting light angled kindly down from the tall, narrow windows and domed roof of the library, but even so, the lines about his eyes and mouth were more deeply scored and his eyes did not hold the humour they had once done. His voice, when not livened with anger, was flat.

In his guise as a junior scholar, Pantera picked up a scroll from the pile lying on the table at the old man’s elbow and began to untie the thongs. Around him, oak shelves lined every part of the interior, with sections for the scrolls and papyri that were the library’s gold. The benches and tables were of cedar inlaid with ebony, amber and silver. The smell of resin mixed with the dusts of ink and learning and the sweat of many men, reading.

He smoothed open the scroll and weighted down the corners with small stubs of lead. ‘Why are you telling me this,’ he asked, ‘when we are hunting Akakios?’

‘ You are hunting Akakios. I told you in Gaul that the only man who would light your fire was the Apostate. No one else loathes Rome and Jerusalem equally.’

‘Akakios doesn’t loathe Rome, but he might conceivably want to rebuild parts of the ghettos to the greater glory of the emperor. Currently, people are living on the land he wants to use. The fire will clear it for his architects, in the way it clears a forest for the plough.’

‘You have proof of this?’

Pantera pinched his lip. ‘No, but I have heard it often enough now, from sufficiently reliable sources, to begin to believe it.’

‘Does Nero know?’

‘I hope not.’

A short-sighted scholar walked past, reading from a parchment held close to his face. Pantera cocked his head towards Shimon and ran his finger along a line on the scroll, as if underlining a particularly difficult passage. ‘Akakios is seeking the prophecy,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt about that. Have you proof that your Apostate is doing the same? Is he even in Alexandria?’

Shimon bent low over the scroll. ‘He’s here. I haven’t found him, but I can feel him the way you can feel another spy in the room.’

‘Is he preaching?’

‘No. He’d be easier to find if he were. He hasn’t preached since he was excommunicated two years ago and the synagogues won’t let him through the door. Any honest Hebrew has a duty to kill him if he reveals himself. He’s keeping himself hidden somewhere. I have no idea where.’

‘So to achieve anything, he’ll have to work through others? That should slow him down.’

‘Not noticeably.’ Shimon pulled a face. ‘He has no shortage of followers. Even now, there are men who prefer his imaginary covenant to the one given by God. Poros of the Blues, for instance.’

‘ What? ’ Heads jerked in their direction. The parblind scholar half turned on his heel. Pantera hissed, ‘Poros barely leaves the compound and then only to source fodder for the horses. How can he have turned into a follower on the basis of one meeting a month, if that?’

‘The Blue team are from Galatia. The Apostate has preached often in the synagogues of the eastern sea coast. Poros was suborned long before he came to Alexandria, and to good effect. Until Ajax arrived, the Blue team was going to Rome with nothing in its way.’

‘And Akakios with them. Are they working together?’

‘Poros and Akakios? I don’t know. I don’t have access to the compound.’

‘Whereas I do.’

‘Exactly.’ Shimon tapped the table for emphasis. ‘Which is one of the reasons I thought we should meet.’

Thoughtfully, Pantera re-rolled the scroll, tied the calfhide thong about it and set it with the others. He took a moment to make the stack neat, like a pyramid with even sides. The morning’s amber light slid along each one, setting them in honeyed sun against the rich wood.

He said, ‘I was sent here by Hypatia, from the home of Ptolemy Asul. You have found him also, evidently.’

‘I received your letter. Of course I found him. The question is whether Akakios, too, has done so.’

‘I killed one of his men in the alleyway outside Ptolemy Asul’s house, so we can safely say that he has. He’s here, did you know?’

‘How could I not? The entire Roman world knows that the emperor’s spymaster is in a compound in the desert taking care of the emperor’s racehorses — and the golden-haired boy who may one day drive them.’

‘No, here,’ Pantera said. ‘In the temple of Serapis, less than a hundred paces from where we stand.’

‘ Why? ’

‘I have no idea. He didn’t follow me. And I assume you didn’t let anyone follow you. I imagine he’s here to meet someone although, as far as I know, Poros is still in the compound. It may be one of his agents?’

‘Or the Apostate?’

‘If he dares show himself.’ Pantera’s left arm lay on the lectern in front of them. He eased back his sleeve a fraction; enough to show the tip of the knife he kept there. He said, ‘Akakios has at least four men who guard his life wherever he goes. When I lived amongst the Dumnonii, we spoke an oath to our shield-mates as we prepared for battle: My life for yours in the face of the enemy. If I were to offer that oath to you for today, for the duration of whatever we find when we track Akakios, would you take it?’

‘Your life for mine?’ Shimon eyed him thoughtfully. ‘And so mine for yours?’ He had already wrapped the last of his scrolls. He took a moment to hang it correctly, tags out, in its ordained position on the shelves.

When he turned, the colour had returned to his face. ‘My life for yours,’ he said. ‘I accept.’

The dome of Serapis’ temple was the highest in Alexandria, and still the god’s head nearly touched the top. Sunlight came in from all sides, glancing off polished marble, off silver, off gold. Mosaics of sapphire, topaz and lapis gave colour to the light, casting a blue glow about the god’s head that then danced in reflected glory down his raiment to his feet.

His feet were human feet, rooted in the earth. His hands were human hands, pulling down the light of heaven and directing it in brilliant shafts from each of his fingers to enlighten his worshippers below.

Around his feet, set far enough back for those within to see up to the god’s crown without doing themselves undue harm, were open-fronted cubicles, with seats running round the three edges and, in some, a bed whereon the petitioner might lie the better to incubate a dream. A wealth of incense fogged the air, so that men and women sneezed in the silence.

‘There.’ Pantera’s voice was barely a whisper. ‘Waiting to go into the second booth from the end. He carries his knife in the right breast of his tunic.’

‘The one haggling with the incense-seller? There are three others similarly armed in neighbouring booths. And to the left of the bronze door to the library, affecting an interest in the soothsayer, is the Galilean’s daughter. It would do us both a service if you stopped pretending not to have noticed her.’

As befitted petitioners in the presence of their god, they approached Serapis’ right foot. Each reached for it, as if in pious awe. Shimon’s fingers brushed the air just above, not quite touching.

Pantera said, ‘I’m not the reason Hannah didn’t go with you to Judaea.’

‘Not entirely, no. Ajax was an equal reason. And the boy, Math, of course, who is a child in need of a mother while Hannah is a grown woman who has never conceived a child. Among our people, she would be considered an abomination. Did you know that Hannah’s mother was a Sibyl and she herself was raised by them?’

Pantera said warily, ‘Ptolemy Asul was raised by the sisters, too, I think. His mother was one of them.’

‘Indeed. He and Hannah will have known one another from the moment of her birth.’ Shimon nodded to a priest in a far alcove. He clasped his hands and his lips moved as if in prayer. ‘Akakios has given his incense. He is speaking to someone on the far side of the screen. I can’t tell who, but he’ll leave soon. If you wish to speak to Hannah, you should do so swiftly.’

‘I can’t leave you.’

‘Ha!’ Shimon laughed, quietly, then knelt and placed a fragment of incense on the god’s foot. He spoke the name of his own god as he did so, that he might not be guilty of idolatry. ‘Go. Speak with her to the ease of your soul. I will leave marks so that you will know which way we go.’

Pantera gripped his shoulder, briefly. ‘Keep safe. If Akakios is going to Ptolemy Asul’s house, don’t go in without me. I’ll catch you up soon.’