Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Forty-Four

The grubby girl thief appeared out of the early morning mist, holding her hands out, palm up. Her clothes barely covered her nakedness. If she had washed in her life, it was not this year. Her eyes were bright as a jackdaw’s and her instincts as sharp.

Hannah said, ‘Where?’

The girl jerked her head roughly northwards, uphill, into the chaos of the Palatine market where the dawn mist rising from the river draped itself wetly over the stalls, saturating them all in the Tiber’s morning bouquet of drowned rats and duck shit and mud. Already, the aisles were too crowded to see more than a few paces in any direction.

‘You’re sure it’s him?’ Hannah asked.

The girl rolled her eyes; they were blue, like the Gauls’, though her hair was black. She never spoke. Hannah had no idea if she could.

Hannah said, ‘Show me,’ and the girl vanished, fast as a rat, and then came back to find her because Hannah couldn’t push a way through the crowd quickly enough.

They moved swiftly enough once they were together. Hannah worked doubly: first to keep an eye on the flash of greasy black hair ahead of her and second to get her bearings so she could find her way back.

In fast succession, they passed a baker lifting trays of flat bread from the oven, a stall selling olives at one end and olive oil at the other, another selling fish sauce in vast amphorae, another offering mushrooms, picked this morning and driven by fast cart into the city. Men and women stepped aside as Hannah passed, thinking her on the way to a woman in childbirth, or some other like emergency. She wore the green cloth of her calling wound round her upper arm and carried her bag and they pressed bread into her hand as she passed them by, or olives or cheese, for luck and for the novelty of seeing a healer in the slum market.

The girl thief stopped. She had more sense than to point, but she drew a line in the dust with her foot and Hannah looked along it, between a wine merchant and a pair of Gaulish brothers selling black olives and garlic to where a man leaned against a stall, haggling over a barrel of cheese.

His head was out of sight, but a buzz of flies attended his back and, over the warm, ripe bouquet of grape and garlic, olives and veined blue cheese, Hannah caught the sweet-sick horror of rotting flesh.

‘Thank you.’ Hannah dropped the promised piece of silver into the waiting palm. The girl did not leave. Hannah said, ‘I need to speak to him alone.’

The girl looked at her a moment, then, in perfectly acceptable Latin, said, ‘If you need help, raise your arm.’

‘He’s dangerous,’ Hannah said. ‘You shouldn’t be close to him.’

The girl shrugged, her eyes lit with scorn. ‘He’s only one man,’ she said. When Hannah looked again, she was gone.

Hannah walked past the cheese stall and on to the potter who sold small clay jars for salve, and the beeswax to seal them. The vendor recognized her and even as she reached him had produced the box with medical jars for her to examine. She lifted one up, testing its weight.

‘Hannah!’ A man called her name. Hannah set the pot aside and asked the price for a dozen wax seals, folded in dried oak leaves. ‘Hannah, it’s me! Wait! Don’t go!’

She paid for the pot and the seals and turned away, sliding them into a pocket of the bag hung from her shoulder. Saulos caught up and tugged at her sleeve, holding her back. ‘My dear! I never thought I’d see you in Rome! What are you doing here?’

She turned in evident surprise. He was dressed as a merchant, with a skein of wool at his belt to show his interest in all things woven. His hair was oiled and newly washed. Flies hung about him but dared not settle on the wound; a smear of camphor kept them at a distance.

Hannah backed away. ‘Math has another physician. I am no longer welcome at Antium.’

‘No more than I was.’ Saulos grimaced. ‘You left Math with Nero?’

She looked stricken and it was not only an act. ‘I had no choice. I was told a Greek physician would care for him, but I’ve heard nothing since. Nero’s men won’t speak to me and Math himself can’t write to send a message.’

Saulos’ eyes were fixed on her face. ‘And Ajax? He would send you word, surely? In his solicitude…’

Hannah looked away. ‘Ajax is… That is, I no longer seek succour from Ajax. He and I…’ It took her a moment to find the right words. ‘We see the world differently. He seeks Roman citizenship. It’s all he desires.’

‘Citizenship?’ Saulos barked a laugh. ‘I thought he despised Rome and all it stands for?’

‘He resents what he cannot join. And he has not the learning of the Sibyls, to see how Rome’s decadence is a rot that endangers all we have built, all the beauty and the knowledge, and…’ Hannah’s gaze snapped back to Saulos. A sharp wind swept between them. She shivered, sending away ill-said words, and drew her cloak around her. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘Perhaps another time…’

Saulos clutched at her arm. ‘Don’t leave. Please. Not yet.’

She had a list of things to buy. She let her eyes fall to it and then looked up the aisle, to see where she must go. ‘Really, I didn’t mean to hold you. You must be busy.’

‘No! That is, I have things I must… Hannah! Please!’ He caught the front of her cloak and backed away, drawing her with him, coaxing as if she were a frightened child. ‘Come with me. We should talk somewhere… safer. I won’t keep you long, I swear it.’

Hannah let herself be taken to the edge of the market, where a Lusitanian wine merchant sold poor Falernian in jugs, but also by the beaker. Saulos bought one, and brought it to share with her on the shaded benches set nearby for the clientele.

‘We can talk safely here,’ he said. ‘This man is mine.’

Hannah let her eyes widen a fraction. ‘What need have you of a man such as this?’

‘He has boys throughout the markets who tell me when the Watch search parties are near.’ They were on a slope and Saulos on the uphill side of it. His eyes were level with hers, flat and calm and sure. He spoke briskly, with no trace of a stammer and with a certainty that the Saulos of Gaul and Alexandria had lacked.

He read confusion on her face and smiled. ‘I have something to tell you,’ he said. ‘After it, you may wish to leave, and may do so freely; it may be best and safest if you do. But I would ask that, whatever you think, whatever you do, you not betray me. For our friendship, would you do this?’

‘For our friendship.’ Hannah agreed.

He leaned back, kneading his brow with his knuckles. The wind curved around them, bringing her the smell of his wound.

He said, ‘You are familiar with the Sibyls’ prophecy regarding the requirements for bringing about the Kingdom of Heaven?’

‘The one for which we risked our lives in Hades?’ Hannah said drily. ‘It would be hard to forget.’

‘Then you should know that Akakios was my man, not I his.’

Hannah frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I found the prophecy and I gave the orders. Akakios was never going to enter Hades; it was to our advantage that he could not approach the Oracle and must send me in his place. It was I who needed to find the date, and I did so.’

‘You lied to the Oracle?’

He shook his head. ‘Every word I spoke was true. I would be dead, else, you know that. But I was not asked for my motives in entering, and did not give them.’

The air grew thick between them. Hannah looked down first. For a while, she studied her fingers. ‘I risked my life to lead you to the Styx. I did it in good faith.’

‘And I went in good faith! Hannah, you must believe that. Rome must burn. It must. You said yourself that its decadence is destroying all that is beautiful and worthy. And the Oracle alone had the date. The dog star rises over Rome tonight. I can do all that is needed to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven.’

‘You can burn Rome?’

‘And then destroy Jerusalem. Yes.’

‘The Kingdom of Heaven.’ Hannah studied Saulos’ face as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Do you believe in a world where the god of Abraham rules alone, where his laws reign inviolate?’

‘My men do. They are sworn to the new covenant and the Kingdom that will arise from it. They will die to make that happen.’

Abruptly, Hannah stood. Saulos remained on the bench. She felt his gaze pierce between her shoulder blades as she walked downhill through the market to the old Syrian apothecary.

Returning, she held her purchases in her cupped hands, a gift not yet given. ‘I dressed your wound in Antium,’ she said. ‘I think it has not been dressed since.’

Saulos blushed deeply.

Hannah said, ‘It may be you have a physician…?’

‘I have Poros.’ Saulos spread his hands.

‘So my presence may not add anything to your cause.’ Hannah turned away.

‘No!’ Saulos’ fingers gripped white on her forearm. ‘You would add everything. Everything. But I question my right to ask you to take the risk of staying.’

‘You’re not asking,’ Hannah said, ‘I am. You only have to say yes.’

They completed their errands together. At the end, close to noon with the high sun a blazing pyre roasting the city to tinder dryness, Hannah had everything she needed for the dressing and Saulos had food, wine and bread for two hundred men.

‘Two hundred?’ Hannah asked as they walked down from the market through the maze of tiny alleyways that marked the ghettos of the Palatine.

‘And more arriving through the day.’ Saulos caught her elbow, turning her to the side. ‘Turn left there, under the cow-hide flap. And then right immediately after. You’ll have to duck down, the ceiling is low. This pen was made for sheep and goats, not Alexandrian healer-women.’

Inside, cool air met them like a welcome lover, so that Hannah only noticed the stench as an afterthought. Under Saulos’ direction, she passed through a narrow channel that stank of goat manure and out into a second alley. A little way down, two men in legionary dress stepped out of the shadows to stop them. Saulos gave the passwords, and introduced Hannah to each in turn. ‘You’re well protected,’ she said, as he led her on down the hill.

‘We need to be.’ Saulos’ face clouded over. ‘Yesterday, we were betrayed. Akakios had rented a cattle barn half a mile downriver from here. He was slain there and Poros was lucky to escape with his life. You’ll meet Poros at the warehouse. He’s as loyal a man as I have ever met, but we may have traitors within our ranks. For safety, we must assume so.’

Hannah looked about. The alleyway was so narrow they could barely walk down it together. ‘This isn’t an easy place to assault.’

‘It’s almost impossible,’ Saulos said, with grim satisfaction. ‘Nothing short of the entire Praetorian and Urban Guards could assault us here. And even then there are ways out of this place that even I haven’t found yet. I think five men, left living, could burn Rome if they were properly prepared, and we are nothing if not that. Excuse me-’

He leaned past her and pushed open a door. Noise spilled out, loud as a rushing tide. A wall of heat gave them momentary pause.

‘This is the warehouse,’ Saulos shouted, over the din. ‘I apologize for the disarray. Until yesterday, it housed bales of wool. Poros is there.’ He pointed through the throng. A big bluff man looked up at the sound of his voice. He frowned a moment, then a wide smile split his beard across and he began to push his way through the mass of men.

Saulos said, ‘He’s my quartermaster. He’ll introduce you to the men. I have some arrangements to make and then I must pay a visit to the water tower beside the Claudian temple further up the hill. You are welcome to join me. With Akakios gone, securing the city’s water supply is my responsibility. Before that-’

‘Before anything, we will dress your wound.’

‘Of course.’ He flashed a grin. ‘As my physician directs, so shall it be. There’s a dais over by the rear door that I’ll use to speak to the assembly tonight. It has a curtain round it now for privacy. We can use it, perhaps, so as not to alarm the men?’

The dais was bare boards laid on bricks, but it was tolerable and there was light enough from a row of vents set high in the roof. Saulos’ wound had not liquefied as much as she had feared and the dressing went on cleanly. The old one was taken out and dropped in the river to keep its foulness from spreading.

When she was done, Saulos stood, stretching his arms as he had done each time in Alexandria. He was turning away when Hannah grimaced in evident distress.

‘Hannah!’ He spun back. ‘Are you all right?’

‘The heat…’ Hannah forced a tight smile and waved her hand in the way all women use to dismiss the things they can’t discuss in men’s company.

‘My dear.’ Saulos grasped her wrist and her elbow. ‘You must leave Rome. I should have said so earlier, but selfishness held me back. Go now. I’ve got gold enough to buy you a good horse and an escort.’

‘No.’

‘But, Hannah-’

‘ No! ’ All around, men arrested their activities to stare. She dropped her voice. ‘I’m not leaving now,’ she said. ‘You can’t make me.’

‘The fire-’

‘Must start tonight. I know the risks better than you do. I’m a Sibyl. Never forget that.’

‘How could I? Your courage shames me.’ Saulos took her elbow and guided her away from the gaggle of watching men. ‘If you won’t leave, then at least rest here, behind the curtains. This isn’t a palace, or even the compound at Alexandria, but-’

‘Please…’ Hannah shook her head. ‘Allow me what little pride I have. In any case, walking helps ease the pain.’ She nodded back towards the door. ‘Perhaps I might walk up the Aventine and see the city from above? If I’m going to be useful tonight, I could identify the routes of the aqueducts nearest to here.’

‘You would do that?’ Saulos took her hand and bent to kiss it. When he rose, his smile was radiant. ‘I have to visit the water engineer,’ he said. ‘I will escort you that far.’

Hannah lifted her satchel. ‘I’ll make sure I’m back before you talk to the men.’

‘It’ll be more than talk.’ Saulos’ eyes shone. ‘Tonight, I will tell them God’s truth one last time. They will eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, and go to the fire as living memories of their saviour.’