Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Twenty-Six

M ath caught the eye of the small dark-haired boy with the scarlet silk thread tied at his throat. He was young and very thin with bright, sharp eyes. He flashed Math a wary look but edged sideways under the fruit-vendor’s stall and past the man selling carobwood jewellery boxes until he crouched nearby under the shelter of an empty donkey cart.

Math took off the cap he had stolen, which was covering his hair. ‘I want the one with the nose like a knife and no hair on his brow,’ he said to the silk-boy. ‘Only him. I won’t look at any of the others, I swear.’

A boy’s oath was worth nothing, they both knew that, but the law of the street — of any street in any city in any province or nation of the empire — said that promise must be given and taken, as if it had true value.

The silk-boy looked where Math pointed. Akakios was not overly fast, but he brooked no delay and even merchants about to seal a bargain stepped briskly aside to let him pass.

The boy twirled his red cord, thinking. ‘He’s going to the Hebrew quarter,’ he observed. ‘Men like him cross at the jewelled bridge on the main way where everyone can see them.’ Implicit was the assumption that Math would not want to be seen. ‘You could get there as fast if you go by the north bridge. It’s old and uncertain, but boys can cross it easily.’

Math nodded, looking around. ‘Where is it?’

‘Follow him until you reach the ivory-seller, then turn lakewards and go past the fish-women. Follow the fisher trail until you reach the soldier with one arm who begs. He’ll try to grab at you. The bridge is ahead of him. Go over it and you’ll be on the Street of the Three Palms. You’ll get there ahead of your man if you run.’

‘Thank you.’ Math ducked a nod. He could have paid, but he knew better than to open his own purse and reveal that he had silver in there. A wad of rancid cheese kept it silent.

He was nearly gone when the silk-boy caught his elbow. ‘What about the old Hebrew? I could slow him down.’

Math had seen the old Hebrew, but didn’t know the boy had seen him too. The old man was clearly a spy, that much was plain from his behaviour; he slid through the shadows like an eel through weed and neither bought goods nor examined them.

Math had noticed him first in the temple, when the old man had come out of the library. He was with Pantera and, it seemed, he knew Hannah and she him, both of which combined meant he was not a stranger, and might be a friend.

Most important of all, the old man didn’t want Akakios to see him and seemed to be succeeding in that, which made him very good indeed, because the emperor’s spymaster had eyes on all sides of his head that saw everything, almost.

‘No,’ Math said. ‘Let him alone.’

‘He hasn’t got any money anyway.’ The boy grinned and spat on his hand and held it out in a universal gesture as common on the docks of Gaul as the streets of Alexandria. ‘If you need help…’

‘I’ll whistle,’ Math said, and slipped away.

The boy’s directions were good. Keeping Akakios in sight, keeping his face mostly averted and his cap always on, ducking under stalls where he could do it without causing havoc and making use of all the available cover when he couldn’t, Math tracked Akakios — and by extension the nameless old Hebrew — until he came to a stall ripe with elephant tusks, lying in bundles, tied together with twine. To its left was a profusion of women selling dried fish, flat and black from the sun.

There was no room between them, but he flashed a grin at the three nearest women and slid into the stinking space under the counter, pushed his way past three sacks of stiff fish and emerged at the back of the stall.

Right, then left, and he saw a crippled legionary sitting in the noonday shadows with his cap on the ground. Some coins flashed in it, which was, frankly, reckless. Out of sheer habit, Math estimated the sum, the distance from here to there, and three distinct routes of escape — and abandoned them all in the sad understanding that the last thing he needed was a hue and cry.

Regretfully, he slipped past the old soldier — and only a month of Pantera’s uncompromising tuition stopped him from crying aloud as a hand grabbed at his ankle.

He stood very still. The hand was far stronger than any crippled beggar’s had a right to be. ‘Pantera?’ He whispered it, barely a sound.

‘If not, you’d be dead. Don’t walk so close to men you don’t know. I thought I’d taught you that.’

Abruptly, his ankle was released. Math managed not to gape with joy. He forgot all about Akakios. To be here, to be in Pantera’s presence, to have got this far himself…

He became aware that he was grinning foolishly, while Pantera was squinting up at him, grunting vague threats, because that was what the old soldier would have done. The threat in his eyes was not vague at all.

Coming to himself, Math let rip a stream of dockside obscenities and kicked out at Pantera’s ribs, striking the sand behind.

Pantera spewed an oath in return of anatomical invention that left Math’s ears burning. Then, quietly, so that nobody else could hear, he murmured, ‘Akakios is going to a particular house in the Hebrew quarter. I know which one, so there’s no need to follow him too closely. If you go over the bridge just there, I’ll go the other way and meet you on the Street of the Lame Lion when I’ve caught up with Shimon. Follow the sign of the bull or the star and wait when you see both together for the second time. The cap is very good, by the way. Well done.’

Well done. Well done. Well done. Glowing, Math made his way with exemplary care to and across the old, unstable wooden bridge that was suitable only for boys, women and reckless men.

On the far side, a six-pointed star was chalked on the wood, and beside it a very rapid sketch of a bull. With an excitement that made his blood fizz and his heart skip, Math sauntered down the road, turned left at the mark of a star on a gatepost and then left again when he saw it on a water pump.

He was turning into a narrow alley when he saw Hannah. She was walking openly down one of the more brightly lit streets, with the river on her right and a kaleidoscope of brightly painted shops, houses and taverns on her left. She made no effort to hide herself, but stopped here and there to greet men and women who clearly knew her of old and had time to share pleasantries.

He followed at a distance, never showing himself to her, until she stopped outside a tavern full of Gauls. That surprised him; he had never seen her take either wine or ale and in Coriallum she had never shown a liking for the mournful battle dirges of the kind currently emanating from the tavern’s interior.

To his relief, she didn’t go inside, but instead examined a bronze statue of a cow set at the edge of the tavern wall. Flowers hung in garlands about its neck. Hannah touched them, and then the beast’s ear, with an intimacy that left Math wishing he hadn’t watched.

He looked away, and when he looked back she had vanished as completely as if the sky gods had reached down to pluck her away.

Sprinting to the place he had last seen her, with his mind creating horrors of her lying in an alley with her throat cut, of her dragged into the tavern, of her curled in a back street half dead with her hands bound and her purse cut, dying of wounds untended because Math hadn’t run fast enough, he reached the alley that the cow statue was guarding. There were no bodies or blood, but it was so narrow Math had to turn sideways to squeeze in, shuffling his feet like a crab.

She was there, though. He couldn’t see her because the alley was too dark and he couldn’t hear her because the Gauls were still singing, but he felt her presence as a shiver in his guts. With his eyes adjusting slowly to the poor light, he felt his way forward, running his hand along a single line of smooth tiles set into the wall as if for that very purpose: to guide the incoming traveller.

He couldn’t smell her at first; old, stale urine overwhelmed the scents of flowers from the entrance. Soon, though, he caught the faintest scent of Hannah, of her womanliness, and the ashwood soap she used.

Slowing, he heard her open a door, cautiously, and then her light tread on tiles that were harder than the beaten earth of the alley’s floor. Last, he heard her knock on another door.

Her voice reached him, lightly amused, saying, ‘Ptolemy? Ptolemy Asul? Might a poor physician enter your home and avail herself of your pharmacy? I have a patient in need of spikenard for a wound and no one else in the city can-’

A blast of fetid, charnelhouse air swept over Math, ripe with the terror and stink of the slaughter fields. He smelled blood, singed hair and burned flesh, just as he had in the fire that killed his father, so that he doubled over in remembered pain, spewing bile, and even as he did it he heard Hannah’s voice say, ‘Ptolemy, whatever are you- My apologies, my lord, I had no idea you were- What are you doing to Ptolemy Asul? ’

The door began to swing shut. Abandoning caution, Math dashed down the alleyway, slowing only at the end. Peering round the wall’s end, he saw a short corridor with an open door at the far end which seemed to lead to an open courtyard. He couldn’t see Hannah at all.

For a paralysing moment, Math thought he would have to go in and try to bring her out, and knew he would die. Then he remembered the chalked stars.

Sick with nerves, he slid back to the alley’s end and there became a lost boy in search of his father, running headlong down the streets, staring in distress at strangers who threw him sympathetic glances and didn’t recognize him as the whore they had shunned less than half an hour before.

He found the last of the chalk marks he had followed and turned right, then right again at the next, still running.

‘ Math.’

He careered sideways into another alley, bigger than the one that had swallowed Hannah, with more light, and taller houses on either side that had carvings of grapes on the shutters.

Pantera was there, and the old Hebrew, leaning against a wall for all the world like a pair of merchants conducting deals they might not wish seen in public.

Math crashed to a halt. ‘Hannah,’ he said, breathlessly. ‘Akakios has her. They’re hurting her friend.’

Out of habit, Hannah had touched the ear of the bronze Hathor at the alley’s mouth. The statue was worn there with a lifetime of her touches. Taking a breath against the stale stench inside, she stepped out of the sunlight and into the alley.

The gap between the god and the wall had seemed impossibly narrow when Hannah was younger, but she had not been on a boat then, where everything was small. Now, it seemed an obvious thoroughfare, for all that it was dark and stank of old urine.

She edged into it as she had always done, with the Gaulish songs reverberating through her chest as she walked. So much sorrow, so much loss, so much despair that Rome, a race of such small men, could overwhelm such great golden warriors.

Within three paces, she had lost sight of the sun. Soon, it was too dark to see and she felt her way forward with a finger running along a row of tiles set in the wall for that purpose.

The alley angled sharply left along the back of the Gauls’ tavern. Her fingers edged out, seeking the handle of the iron-banded oak door she knew blocked the end. From the time of Cleopatra and her two lovers, the handle had been cleaned daily by those who used it. Even now, ancient grease kept the hinges silent as it let her through into the corridor of Ptolemy Asul’s house.

She was about to knock on the door at the other end when she breathed in again, and caught, as if in a dream, the iron-honey smell of blood and burned flesh and the sound of a man’s wet-hard breathing.

She knocked sharply, to help her own courage, and called out, ‘Ptolemy? Ptolemy Asul? Might a poor physician enter your home and avail herself of your pharmacy? I have a patient in need of spikenard for a wound and no one else in the city can-’

There was a pause, a muffled order spoken in a voice she knew, a panicked clattering of feet back and forth until eventually the door swung open, releasing the full horror of what was on the other side. It surged over her: the stench of pain and blood and fire.

Tight with fear, Hannah stepped over the threshold. ‘Ptolemy, whatever are you- My apologies, my lord, I had no idea you were- What are you doing to Ptolemy Asul? ’

In his own home, under the blazing sun in his own courtyard, they had stripped him naked and crucified him, crudely, fixing his blue-white old man’s arms to a plank tied between two columns, and that was the least of it — a convenience designed to hold him still while they destroyed his body with knives and hot irons.

His right ear had been cut away early in all they had done; the blood crusting the side of his head was older than the blooded stump of his right wrist where they had taken off his hand, his writing hand, his lamp-lighting hand, the hand he mixed his unguents with. The bone ends and pumping vessels had been cauterized to keep his blood in his body.

A brazier burned red near his feet, scalding his thigh. A selection of irons lay in it still, shimmering white. The smell of scalded metal was as great as that of hair and blood and bone. She made herself look at his face.

Both of his eyes had been burned out. Blisters around the sockets showed that his head had not been still as they approached. Crusting yellow fluid marred his cheeks, streaked with tears.

His torso hung full-bellied down. His feet twitched, seeking the floor, but at a bad angle; she thought they had broken both his knees. Higher up, liquid dung and urine stained him. She remembered how that shamed men when pain first came, and how soon they ceased to care.

‘Where did you come from?’ Akakios stood behind her, so close that she could smell garlic and wine on his breath. She turned to face him, slowly, so that she might not seem afraid. He looked just as he did in the compound, only that his bitter face and high brow reddened a little in the firelight, and here he smiled more readily than usual.

‘I walked in through the alley that leads to this man’s door.’ She spoke as if the door were the obvious entrance and they should know of it. Evidently, they did not.

At Akakios’ furious signal, two of his five guards sprinted down the corridor and into the alley, dragging their weapons free as they ran. They were all dressed as slaves or minor merchants, but they were Romans: wiry, dark-haired men with the arrogance of the conqueror in their every step.

A limed oak bench stood nearby. In other times, Hannah had sat on it and listened to the music of the fountains, of the stars, of her lover’s heartbeat.

Now, one of the remaining guards sat on it, tending the brazier. Shoving him off, she hauled the bench across the marble floor to give respite to Ptolemy Asul’s feet. The wave of relief that swept his body and as the weight was taken from his nail-bound arms was heart-breaking. Blood slid down on to the pale wood.

‘What is it you want?’ Hannah spoke without turning, her voice acid with scorn. ‘I’ll tell you, and then we can set about healing him.’

‘ Not heal… ’ That from Asul, a whisper.

‘Oh, my dear man…’ Reaching up, she touched Ptolemy’s forehead, high up, near the line of his hair where there was no damage. He flinched. She said, ‘Why don’t you tell them? Nothing is worth this, surely?’

‘ He seeks… the date for… Rome to burn. I was the copyist. Never

… knew the date.’

He could barely speak. He must have screamed a great deal, here in this hidden house with its so-quiet walls that let loose no sound. He had been her almost-brother, the older voice in her childhood that had offered friendship when she had none, and later, when she had found more than friendship, he had given her a trysting place to meet her lover when others wanted them kept apart, to follow other paths.

‘ Han…? ’

That was a whisper, barely a breath. She could feel the silent plea from the spaces where his eyes had been.

Hannah carried a knife. Even Ajax did not know that, but Ptolemy Asul had always known, and wanted her to use it.

She used her body to shield the movement of her hand. ‘Go well, my love.’

She spoke in the language of the past, that only the Sibyls knew. On the last word, she sliced fast at his throat.

But not fast enough.

‘I think not! ’

Akakios snatched at her hand, wrenched and twisted. The knife clattered to the floor and Hannah was thrown after it, crushing her cheek to the marble. A shod foot pressed on her neck, holding her down.

Akakios stood over her. ‘For wielding a weapon in the presence of the emperor’s envoy, you are sentenced to death,’ he said pleasantly. ‘In the emperor’s absence, the manner of execution is mine to decide. Take her.’

There were no more planks and they could not nail her on to marble, but used rope and bound her to the pillar alongside Ptolemy Asul, with its carvings of lotus flowers and irises. Pain racked her shoulders. Her own pulse crashed in her ears. Her bowels loosened but did not yet leak. She found she did still care about humiliation.

Akakios came to study her face, feeding on the signs of fear. She did not know how to erase them. The fire etched fresh lines about his own mouth, accentuating the beak of his nose so that he became a vulture, added to those of the morning; a tenth, sign of treachery in business.

‘Perhaps now he’ll think differently.’ Stepping back to the brazier, he lifted a padded leather glove from a rack beneath and slid it on to his left hand. In the glowing coals, an array of knives and pokers lay white with heat.

‘Were you his lover?’ he asked.

‘Ptolemy Asul’s?’ By a miracle, she was able to laugh. ‘Hardly. He’s my friend.’

‘But he loves you,’ Akakios observed. ‘Always a useful trait in a man. What will he do, do you think, to keep you unblemished?’

With a sudden movement, he kicked the pale oak bench away from under Ptolemy’s feet. The man dropped, sickeningly, on to his riveted arms. The noise he made then was not one Hannah had heard from any living thing. She found she was weeping, and could not stop.

When, at last, he could be heard, Akakios said, ‘Ptolemy, listen to me. I will take her nose first, and then her tongue. If she lives, she will walk out of here condemned to a life of silent, disfigured harlotry. You know I will do as I say. To stop it, give me what I need by the count of three. One…’

White iron crisped the air in front of Hannah’s face. Her hair burned. She felt her skin already blister.

‘Two…’

She fought to keep her head away. One of the guards caught the back and forced it forward.

‘Three… Hold her…’ White-hot iron jabbed at her, smoking. Shamefully, she screamed. It was impossible not to.

‘ No! I can tell you- ’ The iron stopped moving. Hannah stared at it, petrified.

‘Go on.’

Afterwards, when she dreamed, as she did many times, of that afternoon, it was the mild curiosity in Akakios’ voice that woke her, sweating, to stare into the dark.

Ptolemy was straining round, trying to make his blind eyes see her. ‘ In Hades. You will find the date only in Hades.’

‘Hades? Are we children, afraid of the dark? You’ll have to do better than that.’

The iron moved again. Hannah felt her skin blister. Somewhere, she heard Ptolemy cry out, and then a woman’s voice, her own.

‘ Stop! He’s telling the truth!’ Words spilled from her, disorderly. ‘The Sibyls tend the Oracle of Hades in the heart of the city. It was here long before Alexander and Ptolemy. For a thousand generations the Oracle has spoken there. Only now, under Rome, is it silent.’

The iron went away far enough to stop the scorching. Mesmerized, Hannah watched the white-hot metal cool to straw, to amber, to the darker colour of autumn Nile honey. Tears burned her cheeks where the skin was broken. She had not soiled herself yet. She didn’t care.

Akakios looked from her to Ptolemy Asul and back. ‘Am I to understand that the Sibyls wrote the prophecy?’

‘Yes.’ Ptolemy had found his voice. More strongly than before, he said, ‘The Oracle can tell you the date on which Rome must burn. I don’t know it. I never have.’

‘But you can gain me access to the Sibyls?’

‘No.’ Ptolemy Asul shook his head.

Sighing theatrically, Akakios laid his cooling iron on the charcoal and selected another, hotter. ‘Truly, if you think there are limits to what-’

‘There are,’ Hannah said, desperately. ‘There are limits that will not change whatever you do to either of us. Only a woman can lead a petitioner to the Oracle.’

Ptolemy Asul said, ‘Only Hannah.’

‘Ah.’ Akakios stepped close. His eyes fed on her face. The heat of the iron blistered her hand and neither of them noticed it. ‘Is this true?’

Hannah dared not look across at the hanged man opposite. ‘I know where to go, yes.’

‘And you will take me.’

‘I-’

‘You will take me because I hold the lives of those you love in the palm of my hand.’ Akakios dropped the iron. It lay dully hot near her feet. With a sweep of his knife, he cut away the cords that bound her. His smile was terrifying in its triumph. ‘You will guide me in and guide me out and if I get what I want it may be that I will allow-’

A guard coughed, suddenly, as if in warning. Akakios swung round in time to catch the man as he fell backwards, vomiting blood. He died at Hannah’s feet.

Two figures loomed in the doorway. Akakios shouted an order Hannah did not hear, but the sun was in her eyes so the last thing she saw was two figures hammering in through the ruin of the door, and then there was nothing but the after-image of Ptolemy Asul’s hanging body — and Akakios, who stood in front of her with the point of his knife resting on the bone beneath her eye.