Rome: The Emperor's spy

III: Rome and Antium, 17–19 July, AD 64
Chapter Forty

Rome’s cattle market opened at dawn two days after the ides of July to a bellowing of cattle, calves and bulls that easily drowned out the Tiber’s sullen mumble from the foot of the hill.

Dressed in the plain cloth of a rural farmer, Pantera sat on an upturned barrel beside a pen full of newly weaned heifers, whittling at a stick that might one day become a bull-goad. Around him, weather-beaten men steeped in the aroma of cow manure came to lean on the pen gates and shake their heads at the dismal quality of the stock displayed therein.

For the most part, they ignored him. When they tried to bargain, he grinned foolishly and spoke in fast, accented Gaulish, pointing to a red-haired man nearby who took their money and sold them his lean heifers. One or two of those who thought they had driven a good bargain threw a coin at the whittling fool as they left. Pantera scooped up the copper pieces and grinned his thanks and never took his eyes from the entrance to an alleyway a hundred paces away that he had been watching since daybreak.

Farmers and stockmen passed back and forth across the alley’s mouth, but not until the sun began to give colour to the cattle did anyone enter it. Then, Pantera laid down his bull-goad with a silver coin beneath, hobbled ungainly down the row of pens, ducked under a guard rope at the market’s edge and followed the solitary figure into the alley.

Akakios walked a hundred paces ahead of him, tall and bitter as the day was new. He wore a cloak against the morning’s chill and carried a short stabbing sword at his belt, angled tight to his leg, where it could be drawn with most speed.

Old stables and byres lined both sides of the narrow street, abandoned when the new stock buildings were put up in Caligula’s reign and long since fallen into disrepair. Pantera waited in a disused doorway and watched Akakios pause before each broken, unhinged door, examining it for scratch marks.

The last building, a long, low barn set at the alley’s foot, stood out amongst the rest. Mould grew on its walls and paint peeled from its door as much as from any of the others, but the roof was whole, and the gaps in its walls had recently been boarded over.

It was here that Akakios found the marks he wanted. As he lifted the wooden bar to let himself in, Pantera walked back out of the alley and turned right through the ghetto, towards a line of empty donkey stables, recently mucked out.

The door to the second hung ajar. Inside, Hannah and Shimon sat opposite each other on the straw, neat and clean in the patched linen of household slaves.

‘We were beginning to think you’d taken a liking to cattle dealing.’ Hannah passed Pantera a beaker of clean water and received a hunk of dried spiced beef in return. She split it three ways and they shared it comfortably.

Shimon leaned his staff near the door and sat cross-legged with his back to the far wall. ‘Poros is less than a mile away,’ he said. ‘Where’s Akakios?’

‘Heading for the cattle barn at the foot of the alley,’ Pantera answered. ‘Someone’s repaired the roof since I was there yesterday.’

‘Ha!’ Shimon clapped his hands. ‘The letter could be real, then. I had prayed so. You will have arranged a way for us to enter unseen?’

‘There’s a door at the back hanging open just enough to admit a man,’ Pantera said. ‘I put a pile of old roof beams in front when I checked it last night. If you’re careful, you can crawl in unseen and lie behind them.’

Shimon looked up sharply. ‘Am I going alone?’

‘No.’ Pantera finished the last of his breakfast, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘We need credible witnesses, or Nero will hang us for treason.’ He turned to Hannah. ‘The Emperor mustn’t know you’re a part of this. Could you go back to the goose-keeper’s cottage? If it goes well, I’ll meet you there after I’ve visited the imperial palace in Antium.’

The two officers of the Watch who leaned against the railings near the calf pens had not patrolled the market at any point in the morning. As far as Pantera could tell, they had been there for the sheer pleasure of a summer’s morning steeped in the stink of cattle; country men made to live too long in the city and glad of a respite.

Even so, they had kept their eyes open and their wits sharp: half a dozen times, they had noticed pickpockets working the crowd and had alerted their men subtly, so that the thieves could be arrested without fuss at the market’s edge.

The smaller, darker of the two was the sharper. He had olive skin and black hair curled ram-tight about his head. If it wasn’t for the fact that the men of the Watch were always recruited from families of Latin descent, Pantera would have said he was Syrian.

His colleague was taller by a head and broader by the worth of an ox. He had the build of a gladiator, with the fair skin and sun-shy complexion of a northern Latin. Neither of them wore any badges of rank and, early on, Pantera laid a private bet with himself that the smaller one outranked his taller, broader, more Latin colleague. Through the morning, he had seen no reason to change that view.

The pen nearest them held a cow in milk with a pair of twin calves at her side. Pantera hobbled up with a pail of fresh water and tipped it messily into the trough, then dumped the bucket to the ground and leaned both elbows on the rail.

‘When I was in Britain,’ he observed affably, ‘the stockbreeders of the tribes believed that the heifer calf of twins was always infertile.’ And then, into the silence that followed, ‘If you give me your names and ranks, we can proceed more swiftly.’

‘And you are…?’ It was the small, dark one who asked. He had the tattoo of the Twentieth legion on his right wrist and was the right age to have served in Britain.

‘If you open the pouch at my right side,’ Pantera said, ‘you’ll find the emperor’s ring wrapped in a white silk square. I wear his seal on a thong about my neck. If you wish to examine that, I suggest we leave the market. I have no wish to destroy an identity that’s taken me four days to create.’

‘We asked who you were.’

The taller guard spoke this time; his colleague was already occupied. With the smooth dexterity of a street boy, he lifted the ring from Pantera’s pouch, examined and returned it. Anyone watching would have seen him lean forward on the rails and look into the pen, nothing more.

‘He’s telling the truth,’ he said. ‘He’s the emperor’s man, however little he looks like it.’ And then, to Pantera, ‘We don’t need to see the seal; the man who bears Nero’s ring already outranks anyone else in Rome.’

He turned round, hooking his elbows over the rail and his thumbs in his belt. ‘I’m Appius Mergus, centurion of the first century, the first cohort of the Vigiles, tasked with care of the city at night and with protection against fire. I served three years with the Twentieth in Britain. This is Marcus Tullius Libo, my aquarius. He was with the Ninth when they lost to the Eceni. The market’s almost over. Unless the Lusitanian who’s just bought your cow discovers that the heifer calf is sterile and demands his money back with interest, we can leave now. What do you need us to do?’

Pantera said, ‘Bear witness to an execution. The emperor will question you afterwards.’

‘Who’s to die?’ Libo asked.

Looking thoughtful, Mergus said, ‘We don’t need to know that. We’re there as witnesses, not members of a conspiracy. The emperor will need to be clear about that.’ He tilted his head to Pantera. ‘And you, too, need to be clear. We’ll watch, but not help. Are we going far?’

Pantera lay with Shimon and the two watchmen behind a clutter of old roof beams, peering through the gaps between, breathing air thick with dust and the loamy smell of old cow dung. The barn loomed low over them. Largest of the line, it had wooden walls that reached the height of a man, and then slatted boards above that let in long, linear strands of morning sun to slice the dust into lozenges.

A forgotten consignment of old cow hides was stacked in bales, four deep at the end nearer the other door. Akakios had pulled two of them down and sat at his ease on the bench they made, an ankle hooked over one thigh and his fingers looped over the knee.

Behind his right shoulder, the door ground open on old, hard hinges. A bluff, broad-shouldered man stood framed in the light, his face made square by a beard.

‘Poros,’ Shimon whispered. ‘God is good.’

Pantera eased himself half a hand’s breadth sideways, so that he could see both men through a narrow slot between the roof beams.

Akakios hadn’t moved from his makeshift couch. ‘We’ll need to replace the door,’ he said. ‘The hinges won’t last the use of ninety men.’

‘Ninety?’ Poros took care as he pushed the door shut. He spoke from the depths of his barrel chest behind his black beard, and his voice easily reached the back wall where Pantera lay waiting. ‘Are you sure we have so many?’

‘At least.’ Akakios smirked. ‘Our friend has a wide reach. The first sixty reached the docks at Ostia with the morning tide. They’ll be here by this evening, the rest tomorrow morning.’ He rose and stepped out into the centre of the open space. An angled shaft of sunlight sprayed dust motes across his high, bald brow. ‘The Oracle was precise: the fire must begin as Sirius, the dog star, gazes on to Rome. I have consulted a dozen different astrologers from as many schools and all are agreed that the star first rises tomorrow night. Between now and then, we must house, feed and water upwards of ninety men, together with whatever they will need to stoke a blaze.’

Poros had begun to pace the length of the building, checking the walls as he went. From the far end, he shouted back, ‘If we clear this place out, we can fit in a hundred beds, with room for a kitchen. There are no latrines, but we can dig a pit in the yard. The risk of infection will be low in the beginning, and by two days from now this place will have burned to the ground.’

‘Not if you’re sensible. Unless you choose to martyr yourselves in the conflagration, you’ll need somewhere safe to retire when the work is done. This is by far the best option.’

‘This tinder box?’ Poros’ laugh echoed the length of the barn. Here, he showed no deference to Akakios, but seemed to outrank him, at least in his own mind. ‘You would have us roast along with the rest of Rome’s unbelievers?’

‘Not at all.’ Akakios paused less than ten paces from the beams behind which Pantera and the others lay. He stood in the cleft between two shafts of sunlight, so that his voice came from darkness. ‘There’s a water tank uphill of here. If it is left unattended, you can-’

‘It won’t be left unattended. The Watch are the best-drilled force in the empire. They-’

‘I own the Watch.’

‘All six cohorts?’ Disbelief rendered Poros shrill.

‘No, only the commanding officer. Which is enough.’ Akakios’ disembodied voice rolled fat with satisfaction. ‘If you would own an army, you need only buy the man who gives the orders. The prefect of the Watch is as loyal to me as you are. His men will abandon the water tanks for long enough for yours to act. If you close off the water supply from the aqueduct and then breach the tank, ten thousand cubic feet of water will flow down through this building. If you have left the hides stacked up at the top end there’ — Akakios swept his arm across the short end of the barn, furthest from where Poros now stood — ‘they may soak in the water and thus form a barrier that will keep the fire from consuming your quarters. If not, you’ll have a clear route through the back door and into the Tiber. Unless your god can create fire out of water, you should be safe enough.’

Akakios was on the move again, coming closer to the haphazard muddle of planks and beams near the back door.

With each coming pace, Pantera could see more clearly the open pores stretched along the beak of his nose, could hear his feet scuff the dried earth. But more, with each coming pace, too, he could feel Mergus coil tighter, a spring compressed past the point of destruction.

The prefect of the Watch is as loyal to me as you are.

In all the days of planning on the ship from Alexandria, Pantera had not considered that Akakios might have suborned the city’s firefighters. Faced with proof of that fact, it occurred to him that if Mergus had been bought along with his commander, then he, Pantera, and Shimon were as good as dead. He held his breath, waiting to discover whether his ability to judge a decent man had abandoned him.

Two heartbeats later, still alive, he concluded to his satisfaction that it had not; Mergus’ rage was all for Akakios and the prefect.

Akakios had paused eight paces away. Pantera turned his head and caught Shimon’s eye. Together, they began to edge back away from the beams. They were bracing themselves to rise when Mergus caught hold of Pantera’s arm.

Pantera craned his neck round, shaking his head. Mergus nodded back, his eyes blazing. Curtly, Pantera pointed at Mergus, and made the horned-owl sign that had been used to signify reconnaissance by the Cornovii in Britain.

Mergus’ eyes widened in shock. Pantera made the universal sign for cutting a throat, then pointed to himself and Akakios in sequence.

Mergus jabbed his own thumb towards Poros, his brows raised in question, then caught sight of Shimon, who was already drawing his sicarius from his sleeve. Pantera made the sign for watching a second time, with emphasis, and Mergus, lips pursed and nostrils flared white, sank back to the dry earth.

Pantera let his knife weigh in his hand. His father had first bought him a dagger small enough to practise with when he was five years old and still too small to draw a bow. He had thrown it from ten paces at a target as wide as he was tall, and had missed. By the time he was six, ready for a bigger knife, he could hit a linen square the size of his own palm from thirty yards.

By the time he left Judaea, he could throw from a bad angle on a dull night at a running man shouting orders and hit his larynx, silencing him in the breath between words. More than archery, more than spying, this skill was his father’s greatest gift. And the advice that went with it: Don’t think. Let your body make the throw. If you think, you’ll miss.

Don’t think. Akakios was walking again; six paces away and closing. From the far end of the barn, Poros said something scathing in reply to the earlier jibe at his god. Pantera couldn’t make out the words over the rush of blood in his ears.

Five paces. Pantera lifted three fingers of his free hand and felt Shimon’s nod.

Three. His mouth tasted of desert sand. His eyes pricked hotly, as if he might weep.

Two. His pulse pounded in his neck, his legs, his hands… and

One!

He exploded from lying to standing in one fluid movement. Akakios spun in shock that became rage that became the first fractions of attack.

He should have died then, but Pantera’s knife remained in his hand. He was five years old and his father’s voice spoke with terrible calm in his ear.

You’re too close. If you’re close enough to touch a man, then don’t throw your knife away. Stab him!

He did more than that. Akakios was incandescent with rage and hate. His sword whistled from its sheath, slicing forward and up; his mouth flew wide, shouting insults, probably, but Pantera was too lost in battle rage to hear them.

He heard nothing and saw little for, in those first moments of movement, Akakios’ cloak had whipped back, revealing a mail shirt shining beneath, and Pantera was no longer five years old, practising his first throw in his father’s ox barn, but a warrior of the Dumnonii, facing the men of the Fourteenth legion, with his wife and child dead in the blood-soaked dirt at his feet.

Howling their names as his battle cry, he vaulted the small wall of roof beams and hurled himself at the hated enemy. His body was his shield, ready to block the sword strike, with no care if he died doing it, only that it would buy him time to bury his knife in Akakios’ throat.

Akakios came as hard at Pantera and they slammed together, solid as bulls in the rut, driving the wind from each other’s lungs so that breathing became impossible.

Through the red haze of suffocated pain, Pantera grappled for Akakios’ head, gouging his thumb towards the eye socket. He shrieked as his legs were kicked from under him, but his hand clutched tight and, falling, he found a grip on Akakios’ meagre hair.

It was enough to hold him upright, enough even to pull him higher and higher in a thrusting leap, so that when his left hand slammed his knife vertically down into the one place that was always free of armour, it had his full weight behind it.

Akakios died with Pantera’s blade embedded in the unarmoured gap between his neck and his collar bone. Little blood spilled from the wound, but the blade’s tip sliced through the great vessels feeding his heart and his life’s blood pumped into his chest so fast that he didn’t know himself dead.

One hand scrabbled at Pantera’s face, and fell away. His knees buckled. The hate faded last from his eyes as he sank into Mergus’ waiting embrace.

Pantera knelt on the earth, fighting to breathe. His world was a black tunnel with silver lightning bolts seared across. His own blood made a storm in his ears.

Shimon’s voice pierced it, loudly. ‘Would that we could all die so swiftly, with so little care.’

Shimon shouldn’t have been so close.

Pantera dragged his head up. ‘Poros?’ The word came out hoarsely, on a precious, hoarded breath.

He saw Shimon shake his head. ‘Poros ran for the door as soon as he saw you rise up with a knife in your hand. I had a choice: to block Akakios’ sword hand, or to run after Poros. You and I have an oath, so I chose the former. Would you prefer I had not?’

Pantera shook his head and, closing his eyes again, gave himself over to breathing.

A while later, hearing a movement behind him, he opened them. Mergus who had been kneeling by Akakios’ body, was standing.

‘I am a witness,’ he said, wiping blood from the heel of his hand. ‘And Libo. We will come with you to Antium, and make our report to the emperor, but I’m damned if I’ll be the one to tell him he needs to find a replacement for Akakios. I’m not sure there’s another man like him in the entire empire.’