Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Thirty

For Nero’s visit to the training compound, Akakios demanded that the three teams demonstrate the quality of their improvement since the emperor had last seen them.

To that end, three heavy parade chariots had been brought out of storage, stripped of their cobwebs, polished and garlanded with ribbons. They were larger than the practice rigs, made of oak and iron inlaid with ebony, ivory and copper, and were so heavy that a full team of eight horses was needed to pull them.

And because there were eight horses, pulling a chariot of three times the weight and twice the size of the practice rigs, the driver required a second man on board to help keep the balance on the corners.

For the Green team, Math was that second man and, standing on the thin planking high above the start line with the four pairs of horses strung out ahead, he knew without doubt that he was staring death in the face. The air was wet with rank, sour horse-sweat and heavy with the threat of a dust storm.

From outside the compound, a single brass trumpet sounded. At its signal, the gates eased open. Bronze stamped at the sand, sending a judder back through the team and up into the chariot.

Math felt it faintly through the soles of his feet. A brief swirl of wind sifted desert sand into his mouth. He hawked and spat without ever taking his eyes from Akakios, who stood ten paces away at the trackside with his arm raised.

At his side, Ajax murmured, ‘A hundred heartbeats till we start.’ Math swallowed the rest of the grit.

The air became less heavy. A slow, hot wind raised the sand in sluggish dust demons. Brass bit the air as if he hated it. His every muscle twitched.

Ajax said, ‘Fifty heartbeats. Less. It will only seem like a lifetime, but- Gods alive! Close your eyes, now!’

Math clamped his eyes tight shut. The chariot’s floor bucked twice beneath him as a blinding spray of sand scoured his face.

More followed, driven by a withering wind that destroyed in its first careless flurry the five days of washing, polishing, oiling and grooming that had stripped away the shabbiness of winter and transformed the compound into a place fit to greet an emperor.

Out beyond the gates, the lone trumpet was joined by others and others until the wind’s howl was drowned under the raging brass and even the horses were still. It was deafening. Math clamped his teeth and kept his eyes shut and dug his nails into his palms and knew that around him men and boys were doing the same, or more; whatever it took not to scream against the murderous noise and so bring disgrace on the team.

The horns stopped all at once, with the finality of a fallen blade. As if by imperial order, the wind, too, fell away, taking the dust devils with it. In the crushing silence after, a boy coughed and was hushed.

Math opened his eyes. Ajax’s hand on his shoulder kept him still which was as well because Nero was nearly on them, hovering ten feet above the ground, a god floating on a cloud of gold with white-robed boys parting before him, strewing pink and gold flower petals in his path. The tamed wind tossed them lightly skywards, mixing them with the sand.

‘Look again,’ Ajax said. ‘He’s on a cart taller than ours. And not as close as he looks.’

Math blinked and peered through the settling dust and found that the emperor was not possessed of magic, but instead stood on the platform of a parade chariot filmed in gold leaf and laced about by foamy cloth of gold, and that he was not within reach, but stood framed between the pillars of the gate.

Two dozen chestnut horses drew him forward, each with a fountain of gilded ostrich feathers fanning high above its head so that they were no longer mere horses, but the fable-beasts of childhood tales.

‘This is it,’ Ajax said.

He lifted the reins. In front of him, four pairs of horses tensed. On either side, the Blue and White teams did the same. Eight horses in each team. Eight. It was madness.

It became hard to breathe, to think, to swallow. Math clamped his hands on the hard oak edge of the chariot rail. Hannah was somewhere in the crowd, with Saulos. Her burns were healing quickly and the haunted look in her eyes was less wild than it had been at Ptolemy Asul’s house. Best not to think of that. Math stopped trying to see where she was.

Ajax whistled a long low note. Brass and Bronze pushed forward to take up the slack in the harness. Ajax flipped back his whip. From his place inside the gates, Akakios’ arm fell.

‘Go!’

‘Go!’

‘ Go! ’

Three drivers shouted together. Three long whips flicked far, far out over the waiting teams to the powerful colts in the lead. Twenty-four horses erupted from the starting line. Three big, beribboned show chariots sped flat out down the full length of the track.

Math was placed behind Ajax at the point of balance from where he must lean his weight either way on the corners to keep the whole rig from tipping over.

They had practised exactly three times, once on each of the past three days, and each time had been a catastrophe of bruises and broken wood. For all his practice in falling through the winter, Math had been lucky to walk away with his bones intact.

He wasn’t alone in that. The chaos in practice had been bloodily painful and there had not been time to get it right. Even so, Akakios had been explicit that their lives depended on a perfect display and nobody doubted him. News of the baker’s fate had spread through the compound faster than a dose of flux. If nothing else, it had brought the teams to a level of cooperation that had been unthinkable through the winter.

But this wasn’t a race. Racing would have meant only one man driving only four horses and a light chariot. Racing would have been easy. This was a contrivance designed to show the emperor how inspired had been his choice of teams, how perfectly trained they were, and, contrary to the reality, how closely matched.

Thus, setting aside all they had worked for through the winter and knew to be true, Blue, White and Green had to leave the start line in foot-perfect synchrony and reach the finish in line abreast, keeping together all the way.

In a steam of horse-sweat and hammering feet, they thundered down the long straight with their wheels in perfect line. The speed was terrifying, far faster than they had dared risk in practice. Ajax, Poros and Lentus of the Whites seemed consumed by gods, or demons, determined to show their best speed, even if it saw them all dead.

Math clung to the back rail of the chariot with his teeth loosening in his head and his palms cut in ridges by his nails and knew that the second man in the Blues to his outside and the Whites to his inside were doing the same.

Too fast, the first bend came.

‘ Math! ’

Ajax’s shout cut through the roar and fury of the race. Math prised his grip from the rail and leaned away from the tilt, pressing ever more of his weight over the outside rear wheel, leaning out and out, balanced on one foot, until he was flying, precariously suspended in space over the packed sand with the crown of his head a hand’s breadth from the spinning, hissing, burning wheels of the Blue chariot and his hair brushing the spokes.

For a moment, he thought he might be sick with terror, but then it was over, the apex of the corner was passed and the pressure of the rails on his ribs meant he could bring himself back on to the platform again, and balance with the balls of both feet over the rear axle directly behind Ajax as they pounded along the short straight at the top of the track.

His mouth was dry, and his heart smashed itself sore against his ribs. His hands were wet and cramped and he had to focus on each finger to move it. He stared at the back of Ajax’s neck as a snake stares at its prey, watching the bunched muscles cording the naked shoulders, trying to gauge how far and steeply they were going to lean.

Unconsciously, he counted the horses’ strides. Four, and the short side was over. He saw Ajax widen his stance, saw his left arm swing a little out, and almost by instinct began to lean himself ever further to the right, to balance the turn.

This time it was not so terrifying. Math flew for a moment and returned to stand square behind Ajax. He didn’t feel sick.

Twice more, and they were done with the first circuit. Four more to go, and then three, and then two. The corners became easier each time. Nobody made any mistakes and the rhythm of the hooves fed the rhythms of the race so that it became a dance between men and boys and horses, beautiful and lethal.

A lap and a half to go. Math found he could take his hand from the rail down the long straight and smear the sweat from his forehead. He risked a brief look for Hannah and found her standing at the rails. She waved, and Math returned it.

Behind her, Nero stood atop his gold-layered platform, legs spread, arms folded across his naked chest. He was wearing only a driver’s loincloth made of white silk, an already strange effect that was further confused by the slaves standing to his either side who kept him cool with ostrich-wing fans.

‘ Math! ’

A corner again. Math wrenched his attention back to the track. Two strides. One. Math watched Ajax’s neck and leaned out and out and out, his fingers relaxed on the rail, so that he could lean ever further out over the speeding sand, so that he was flying, weightless, perfect, with his hair streaming behind and the hiss of the wheels in his ears and the bounce and sway so like the ship from Gaul that he ‘ Lentus! Move over!’

Ajax called too late to the Whites’ driver. Twice, in practice, the boy in the White chariot had leaned too far so that his chariot had swooned out on the apex of the turn, touching wheels with whoever was next to him. Once it had been Ajax and once Poros and each time it had thrown them into a rig-destroying crash.

Akakios had promised a slow death for them all if they did it in front of the emperor.

Math felt the subtle judder of wood on wood. He felt the wind of the Blue wheels cut the air a hand’s breadth from his head and thought that if he leaned out just a little further it was possible he might buy himself a swift death.

‘Math, lean out more. Lean out!’

The shout came from his outside. Through a blur of tears and sweat and spinning wheels, he caught sight of Poros’ face turned back towards him, and the open cave of his mouth.

‘Lean out further. Bring your chariot out.’

There was space. Poros was creating it, even as he pushed his own horses round the turn. Ajax was leaning too, but the other way, levering the last pairs of horses into the space Poros left for them. The Blues’ driver shouted again, ‘Math, lean out, damn you!’

Math didn’t trust Poros, but Akakios had said they would all die together if any one of them crashed and he didn’t think Poros wanted to lie pegged on the sand with his skin stripped any more than Math did.

And so he tried the impossible, and let go of the rail and hooked his right ankle on something that felt firm and, stretching his arms up, reached further out.

The rail was hooked under his ribs now, seated in the curve of his waist. His hair streamed back. A slipstream cooled his armpits. His eyes spewed tears and his face was scrubbed clean and raw with the flying dust.

But the juddering stopped and then the corner was over and all he had to do was bring himself in again smoothly, to be in balance for the long drive down the straight.

The chariot wobbled. In the fight to hold the team in line, Math felt Ajax shift his own weight and realized that the rock-steady thing he had hooked his ankle round was Ajax’s shin and that, by easing it sideways, the driver was helping him back in to the chariot again.

And he was there, safe, standing on knees that threatened to buckle but did not, heaving great gulps of gritty air and grinning stupidly in relief.

‘Three more corners,’ Ajax shouted past Math to the drivers and seconds on either side, over the boiling chaos of cheers from the trackside. ‘Let’s see if we can do them safely, shall we?’

They did. Nobody, on the track or off it, had the stamina for more excitement. They took the corners with plenty of space between and they paced themselves to perfection, so that the lead horses were not only in line but were matched stride for stride as they crossed the finish.

Gradually, the teams slowed and stopped. Steam came off them in ripe clouds. Ajax was laughing, Poros too. Lentus was threatening his boy with every bad death he could think of, but quietly, so that nobody beyond the three chariots could hear. They existed in a bubble of their own; the almost-hysteria of the watching crowd couldn’t reach them yet, nor the fact that Nero was climbing down into a litter, ready to be brought to the front of the throng.

Math leaned back on the rail and looked up at the dirty sky. His palms had crescent nail marks gouged across the width of each, his face felt as if Akakios had already stripped it of skin and his ribs were bruised where the rails had bitten into them. He was as happy as he could ever remember.

He took a deep breath. ‘It’s not about losing the fear, is it? It’s about feeling it and still being able to think.’ He spat grit from his mouth that had been there since the beginning. ‘And calling to the gods, obviously. I did hear you do that.’

Math felt the heat of Ajax’s gaze and turned his face up. ‘Am I too much like my father?’

Ajax looked away. ‘You’re very like him. But not too much. You reminded me of… someone else.’

‘You?’

‘No. My mother’s brother. He would have had your courage, I think, when he was young. It was a great thing you did today.’ Ajax looked away, smoothing the reins straight. ‘Nero’s coming.’

Math made himself stand up tall. He wanted to straighten his tunic, but he wasn’t wearing one. He wasn’t, in fact, wearing nearly enough, but then none of them was. He straightened his loincloth instead, and ran his hand through his hair.

Ajax jumped down from the chariot and turned to offer him his hand. ‘I want to meet your mother’s brother,’ said Math, as he climbed down.

‘One day you will.’ Ajax’s lips barely moved as he spoke. ‘If we survive this afternoon. I’ll lay you two denarii that Nero’s going to invite us to join him in the baths.’