Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Forty-Two

The trumpeter of the Watch marked the first hour after midnight with a burst of brief notes. Hearing it, Seneca moved his numbed buttocks against the hard earth floor, seeking some feeling. The small noise he made soaked into the mud-brick around him and the night fell silent again.

‘When he comes,’ he said to the dark, ‘don’t ask his name. Just let him in.’

Nearby, a woman laughed. ‘You’ve said that every hour for the past three,’ she said. ‘I know what to do if he comes. What if he does not?’

‘He asked for this meeting. He’ll come.’ Seneca’s voice fell flat in the small room. The woman huffed another laugh but some time later, when they heard footsteps in the narrow alley outside, she was standing before the knock came at the door.

Thinly, Seneca said, ‘If it’s not for me…’

‘Then you will be privy to my business.’ The woman’s voice was musical in the dark. ‘You’ll not see anything you haven’t before.’ She pushed a way through the beaded curtain that made the single room into two and walked unerringly to the door.

It cracked ajar and a murmured conversation broke the hush. The woman padded back, her naked feet scuffing the earth. Seneca felt her fresh amusement before she spoke. ‘They are two. Both for you. I have no names, but the taller will come in and the small, dark one will wait outside the door as a guard. Already, this night brings great wonders; my door has never been guarded before.’

To honour her guest, she struck iron to flint and lit the saved stub of a candle. The newborn light was kind to her face, easing away the decades, making her the woman Seneca had first met when both were young. She stepped back and their guest parted the curtain and ducked into the room.

‘Pantera.’ Seneca stood uncertainly. ‘You brought company.’

Pantera stank of horse-sweat and harness oil and dust. He jerked his head backwards. ‘I brought Mergus, centurion of the Watch. He’ll keep us safe. May I come in?’

‘Of course.’

The candle showed the single small bed, big enough for one man and half a woman. Pantera sat on the edge and then, with a glance for the woman’s approval, lay back with his hands looped behind his head. When no one spoke, he closed his eyes and there was a moment when he looked as if he slept. His face was not quiet in repose.

‘We have wine,’ Seneca said. ‘Would you like some?’

‘Watered. Please.’

‘You intend to stay awake after this?’

‘We have the rest of tonight and all of tomorrow to find the man I seek. The dog star rises two hours after dusk tomorrow. I intend to stay awake as long as necessary to keep Rome from burning.’

Seneca had brought the wine from his own cellar. It was heresy to water it, but Pantera’s tone did not allow for dissent. At Seneca’s signal, the woman furnished two beakers and a jug of well water and took herself to the far side of the curtain so they could pretend privacy. She left the candle stub on an upturned barrel.

‘She’s a friend,’ Seneca said, speaking to Pantera’s raised brows. ‘We can talk safely here. I have some food. Here…’ From beneath the bed, he brought a tray of goat’s cheese dipped in crushed hazel nuts with slices of lemon, a ham and a small clay pot of olives. He laid it on the barrel by the candle and wished he had brought more so that it might not seem as if he had doubted there would be two eating, not one. ‘Have you news?’

‘No, but I need something from you, something I didn’t want to put in writing.’

Seneca blinked, that he might not seem to stare. Not once in all the time of their relationship had Pantera asked him for anything: not an olive, not a coin, not a knife, not a posting. Uncertainly, he said, ‘What have I that you would value?’

‘A name.’ Pantera sat up and reached for a hunk of ham. ‘Nero’s given me a century of the Watch as my personal guard and the rest of their cohort are under my orders. I have five hundred men who will search the whole of Rome to find the man who wants to burn their city — but I don’t know who they should be looking for.’

‘And you think I do?’

‘I’m sure of it. The Oracle told me so.’ The candle flickered up to Pantera’s face from below, sharpening the angles of his cheeks and the hollows about his eyes. His eyes rested on Seneca’s face with alarming acuity. ‘Think back to the early years of Claudius’ reign… I was in Syria, you had just been to Judaea. We met in a drovers’ hostel on the road to Damascus. You told me of an agent of yours, one of Herod’s kin-’

‘Half of Judaea is Herod’s kin and half of them were agents of mine at one time or another.’

‘This one was in trouble: he couldn’t do what you’d set him to do. You and I talked through the night over a jug of wine; we shared wild, impossible ideas, thoughts and theories, hypothetical situations. In the morning, you went back the way you’d come. You didn’t say if you were going to see him and I never asked. I’m asking now. I think you went back and told him the way he might bring the Hebrews to Rome using their belief against them instead of force.’

‘It was such a long time ago…’ Seneca sat against the wall again, resting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. His gaze passed through Pantera, seeing the past paint itself across the candle-warmed walls; a man’s forgotten face, the tapestry of his history, his needs and wants, the things that had brought him to Rome and set him against his own people.

Slowly, as if the whole were a mosaic blown apart and he must find the pieces in order, Seneca said, ‘He was young; twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. He’d been interrogating the Galilean’s Sicari rebels, striving to suppress their insurrection against Rome. He was losing his battle: there were too many rebels, too willing to die. We gave him a different means to his end, you and I.’

‘We did.’ At a rustle on the bed, Seneca opened his eyes to find that Pantera had pushed himself to sitting. Candlelight brightened him from breastbone to hairline, wild-faced with sleeplessness and hope. ‘We told him to invent a religion that would turn the Hebrews towards Rome. And now he wants to burn the city, to give his blood-soaked god rule over all the earth.’ He caught Seneca’s wrists. ‘I need his name

… I need everything about him. I need to know how he thinks and what he’ll do, what he eats and drinks, how he dresses, what kind of shoes he wears… everything.’

Seneca pressed his palms to his eyes, shutting out Pantera’s fervour. He said, ‘It’s too long ago. All those things will have changed.’

‘But you must have known his name.’

‘I knew him as Herodias, but that was an alias and he’ll have used a hundred others since then.’

‘Tell me what he looks like.’

Helpless, Seneca let his hands drop. ‘He’s a spy, just as you are. He looks how he chooses to look. If he wanted to make an impression, you’d pick him out of a crowd of thousands. If he didn’t want to be noticed, you could share a bath with him and hardly see he was there.’

Pantera stabbed a piece of cheese and chewed on it. ‘How did he think?’

‘Sloppily. He wanted to be a Pharisee but the rabbis wouldn’t have him: his logic was too shaky. He’s insecure, but arrogant. More than most men, he’s driven by the need to be loved by others. By now, if you’re right, he’s surrounded himself with sycophants who believe every word and who’ll die on his behalf.’

‘Not if we can stop him first.’ Pantera looked as if his mind was already out in the streets, directing the searches. He pressed his fingers to his temples. ‘No man is invisible to those closest to him. Does he have family? Whom does he love? Women? Men? Boys? What did he do to earn money? What skills did he have? Something? Anything?’

Seneca stared at his own hands, the better to sift the rush of images that assailed him now; of covert meetings in marketplaces, of ciphered letters, of reports sent by others of this one man among many, a single thread in the vast web of his network that must be drawn tight and examined for what set it apart from the rest.

‘He doesn’t love anyone,’ he said, slowly. ‘He’s too much in love with himself for that. As for family, he was a cousin to Herod, of the royal house of Judaea, but the Herodians are Idumaean first; they have their roots in the desert. He learned the skills of the desert early and can pass himself off as a middle-ranking tent-maker, but I don’t know if he-’

‘No!’ Pantera slammed both hands against the wall, as he threw himself upright. ‘An Idumaean! Invisible except when he wants to be seen… Why didn’t I see it?’ He swept back the curtain in a clatter of beads. The startled woman ducked out of the way. ‘I have to go. You should leave too. Both of you. It isn’t safe to stay.’

‘Wait!’ Seneca sprang through the curtain after him. ‘You mean you don’t think you can stop the fire?’

‘I don’t know.’ Pantera was already at the door, framed in the candle’s pale light. ‘I have to try. There’s a chance… If I can find this man and keep Rome from burning, Nero might let me take Math from Antium.’

There was too much uncertainty in that. ‘Is he working alone?’ Seneca asked.

‘He has ninety men with him, maybe more by now.’

‘So even if you stop him, you’ll never-’

‘Stop the fire completely. I know. We can minimize it, save lives, save property. If possible, we can save the best part of Rome. It may be enough.’

‘It may not.’

‘I know.’ Pantera dragged his hands through his hair, leaving it in wild disarray. ‘If I were to ask you… If I begged another favour? Something that might put you at personal risk? Would you consider…’

To be asked twice in one night, when he had never been asked before. To be trusted enough. ‘Sebastos…’ Seneca took a single step forward. His heart hurt. He had to clear his throat to speak. ‘Whatever it is. You have only to ask.’