Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Forty-Three

Dawn broke quietly over the goose-keeper’s cottage, as it had done for nearly six centuries.

Here, generations of keepers had bred the geese for Juno’s sacred temple since before Rome was a republic. It would have vanished along with those around it in the centuries that followed but for the fact that Juno’s geese had warned the besieged Romans of a Gaulish attack, for which service their keeper’s cottage had been preserved unchanged while Rome grew around it.

Since the beginning, the keeper had always been a woman. For the past twenty-seven generations that woman had been a Sibyl, and now, in the month of July in the tenth year of the reign of the Emperor Nero, that Sibyl was Hannah.

It was a peaceful place and she had thought she could rest here. Instead, she found the living ghosts of her present followed her from the cottage to the meadow, to the goose house on its alder-shrouded island in the pond, back to the cottage, giving her no respite.

Math was there always: Math flying from the chariot, Math on the scarred sand, dead and then not-dead, Math sick on the ship from Alexandria to Antium and hating it, Math’s face as she left him in the care of the Greek physician.

In the gaps between Math, she was met by Ajax in the places she would not have thought to look: his shaved head reflected in the smooth perfection of a recovered goose egg, the sharpness of his glance in the first prickle of sunlight on the water, his fast, boyish smile in the fire she lit in the evenings to read by. She read a lot, in the days of waiting.

In between reading, Shimon came to visit, an intruder from the world of the living who, daily, brought her no news at all of Math and Ajax, but endless detail of Pantera…

‘Pantera is in Rome, I have met him. Pantera is stalking Akakios as a hunter stalks a boar in deep forest. Pantera has followed Akakios to three meetings, each with a different man. Pantera has intercepted a letter from Akakios to Poros. He copied it and sent on the copy, keeping the original to show to Nero; you couldn’t tell them apart.’

‘Then how do you know the original was authentic?’ Hannah had asked.

Shimon had shrugged amiably. ‘If Poros and Akakios both come to the meeting place tomorrow, then it was authentic. Pantera will be at the cattle market in the morning. We’ll know then.’

‘I want to come,’ Hannah had said, and she had gone and had met Pantera and he had sent her back to the goose-house, and she had waited until late in the afternoon before Shimon had come to the gate.

‘Is he alive?’ She had sat half a day on her terror that he might not be.

‘He’s alive. Akakios is dead. Pantera has gone to deliver the news to Nero. If the emperor doesn’t hang him for his presumption in killing Akakios, he will come here tomorrow.’

Tomorrow fast became today and now it was Pantera who filled the uncertain moments as Hannah slid from sleeping to waking and back again, Pantera’s river-brown eyes that became the tunnel she could not walk down, Pantera’s calloused hands that held hers as she washed her face in the basin on rising, Pantera’s voice that greeted the geese with her, each by name.

Pantera still stood in her mind’s eye an hour after dawn when she heard someone rap an uneven tattoo on the oak gate at the far end of the wall.

Bees followed her down the path and under the honeysuckle arch. White geese stretched their necks to watch her pass. Goslings in yellow fluff piped and chirruped and were sleepily admonished.

She had wanted Pantera, but it was Shimon’s shock of old-snow hair that greeted her, and his staff that was raised ready to knock again. Hannah stepped back and welcomed him in. ‘Have you seen Pantera?’

‘Here,’ said the voice of her mind and she heard the latch fall on the gate and spun back to it, smiling.

And then not.

He didn’t fill the space around the gate as he had done in her imaginings and his eyes drew her nowhere except to his face, which was lined with exhaustion and the weight of bad news.

He said, ‘I saw Seneca last night. He gave me a name.’ And then, ‘Could we go in?’

He shook his head at the questions in Hannah’s eyes and would say no more. Heartsick, she shooed the geese from under their feet and led the way down the path and under the low lintel into the single room that was her home.

Stone walls a yard thick and a flagged floor kept the cottage cool in the day and warm at night. A window at one end gave out on to the meadow, the pond, the somnolent geese. Inside, a bed, a table and a bench occupied most of the small space. A vase of blue meadow flowers stood on the table, filling the room with a delicate scent; it seemed a lifetime since she had picked them on rising. A fireplace, a well and a basin for washing made the rest of the ornament.

Hannah filled a ewer from the well, poured into three beakers and set them on the table.

‘What name did Seneca tell you?’ she asked.

Shimon leaned against the door. His quiet voice spoke before Pantera’s. ‘It’s the Apostate, am I not right? The man who would burn Rome. Is he an agent of Seneca’s?’

‘He was once. Not any more.’ The bed lay under the window. Pantera sat on it with his elbows on the window ledge, looking out at the garden. All Hannah could see of him was his back.

‘It’s someone we know.’ She felt her heart strike a hammer-blow on her sternum, hard enough to knock her cold. ‘Ajax?’

‘No.’ Pantera turned at the sound of her voice. ‘Ajax is a bear-warrior of the Eceni. He might not grieve Rome’s loss, but he isn’t trying to burn it.’

A bear warrior? She had to let that pass. ‘Then who?’ she asked.

‘Someone more dangerous, because he’s less obvious. He’s a cousin of Herod the Tetrarch, an Idumaean by birth. He served his apprenticeship mending tents and progressed to cutting harness, until he was recruited by Seneca and became an agent of Rome. He’s a small man of no consequence, who could walk into a room and not be seen, but his arrogance gets the better of him, so that he craves crowds who adore him. Until these last days, he has been with the-’

‘Green team in Alexandria and then Antium,’ Hannah finished for him, hoarsely. ‘And is presently in Rome, having been dismissed by Akakios, who claimed to be acting in Nero’s name.’ She held her mug with whitened fingers. ‘Saulos is the Apostate. Saulos. I took him in to the Oracle to learn the date when Rome must burn.’

‘And before that, I led him to Ptolemy Asul’s house,’ Pantera said. ‘I suggest we not compete in our guilt.’

‘Saulos tortured Ptolemy Asul?’ Hannah said. ‘Not Akakios?’

‘Of course he did.’ In agitation, Shimon paced the length of the small room. ‘The Apostate used crucifixion and hot irons exactly like that in Judaea. I saw the bodies so often, and yet in Alexandria I believed what I was led to believe without question. That shame is mine.’

‘Then we are all at fault.’ Hannah raised her eyes to Pantera’s grey-tired face. ‘Where is he now?’

‘I don’t know. The first cohort of the Watch has been searching the city since the second hour after midnight. They are searching still.’

‘They won’t find him,’ said Shimon. ‘If Seneca trained him, a cohort of men is not enough. The entire Roman army could comb Rome and not find him by tonight. Do you even know where to look?’

Pantera shook his head. ‘Only that he needs an alternative to the barn that Akakios had found: big enough and safe enough to hold ninety men. He’ll want it downhill from a water tower if he can, and within reach of the river, which narrows it down a little, but not enough. We’re searching the ghettos, but we’re not getting any help: the Watch isn’t popular there and the men can’t say there’s going to be a fire or there’ll be riots. He’ll need a source of food and water for at least ninety men, which means-’

Hannah said, ‘He’ll also need a source of spikenard or something else very close to it and he’ll need to find a physician who’s competent to treat chronic ulcers. There are very few of those and I know which markets they work from.’ And then, as they stared at her, ‘Did you not know about his wound?’

‘What wound?’ they asked together, staring.

They continued to stare as she told them, and when, somewhere partway through her description of the ulcer and how it must be treated, and by whom, their minds caught up with hers, they spoke over themselves to stop her.

They were too slow and too late.

Hannah said, ‘I’ve stayed here tending geese while you two have been hunting Akakios across the city. This I can do. You can’t. Saulos trusts me, as a physician and as the Sibyl who guided his path to the Oracle. If anyone can get near to him, it’s me.’ She was already moving round the cottage, packing a satchel with things she might need. ‘I dressed the wound before we both left Antium, but if he hasn’t seen someone else before now, it’ll stink. He won’t risk going to his death with a suppurating wound; he’ll be looking for an apothecary and a physician. If he sees me, he’ll think I’ve been sent by his god to help him.’

Pantera rose from his chair. ‘If we follow you at a safe distance, we can-’

‘No!’ Hannah hammered her palm on the table. ‘If he sees either of you, he’ll kill you, or me, and disappear. We don’t have time for that. Let me do this. The markets are open and the apothecaries all know me. I’ll find out where he’s staying and where his men are, and I’ll get news back to you here. Don’t speak.’ She laid a hand on Shimon’s arm. ‘I have the right to do this, for Ptolemy Asul. And for my father.’

‘I know.’ Shimon’s eyes carried all kinds of concern, but he didn’t speak any of it aloud. ‘I was going to wish you well. And to say you are truly your father’s daughter.’

No one had ever said that before. Her eyes began to sting. Before she could weep, Hannah reached for her cloak, which hung on a hook on the back of the door.

‘Hannah…’ Pantera stood and opened the door, so that she must pass him to leave. Exhaustion scored lines across his forehead. ‘This is the man who crucified Ptolemy Asul. I think it’s likely he set the fire at the inn in Gaul that killed Caradoc. He is without mercy. Please don’t underestimate him.’