Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Forty-Seven

Grey smoke smeared the sky in a broad ribbon from the peaked roof of Augustus’ forum in the east to the temple of the vestals on the Sacred Way that lay to the south of where Pantera stood.

Beside him, Mergus lifted a deer-bone whistle to his lips and shrilled a long, high blast. A chain of men in boiled leather armour lifted their tarred rope buckets so smoothly, so completely in unison, that it was as if a giant beast had rolled on its side, exposing a black band along one flank.

A shouted order followed, and another and another and another so close together that if Mergus had not told Pantera the sequence beforehand, he would have missed it.

Lift empty. Drop. Lift full. Pass.

Libo, Mergus’ broad-shouldered aquarius, was one of the eight men surrounding the open-topped water tank. They were all equally huge. On the drop, each man filled his bucket. On the lift and the pass, their muscles stretched and grew as they raised them, full now, and sent them back down their lines. Not a single drop of water fell to blacken the dusted pavings around the cistern.

The chain of full buckets rippled and grew in a way that was opposite in every respect to the gaggle of old men and boys in Gaul who had done their best to keep an inn from burning.

Here, the fire was a pile of old straw mattresses. Only lice died and most of those were drowned before they could burn, so fast and so complete was the deluge poured upon them. A larger fire, a hundred paces away, was put out as fast by a team working a horse-drawn fire engine with an eight-man pump that was worked in relays by three teams, so that there was time for each to recover before they had to step up again.

Pantera watched, mesmerized by the near-mechanical precision of the work. To his surprise, he found that he was still moved to see that men could be so trained, could entertain such pride in their work; that they could reach for perfection, and find it, and hold it, and not let the beauty of their own success bring them down. He thought of his father’s endless drilling with the bow, and his heart ached as it had when he was a child in Judaea and wanted nothing more than to join the legions.

Mergus’ whistle sounded three short blasts and one long. Before the last note died, the men stood down. An obstinate drizzle of smoke marred the high point of the sky but beneath it was unblemished blue, sharp as crystal, clear as a mountain stream.

A final blast blew, on a different note. As one, the line of men turned and bowed to their tribune, temporarily made prefect of the Watch, who stood on an ox-cart a little away from the action.

From his place a hundred paces away, Mergus murmured, ‘That was as good as it gets. Calpurnius will hate it on principle, he always does.’

Pantera squinted into the sun. Gnaeus Calpurnius, tribune of the first cohort of the Watch, was an awkward, angular figure, with a high patrician brow and an unfortunate nervous tic that left him sneering even when he smiled. ‘He doesn’t look particularly-’

‘This is insane!’ A voice like a bullhorn cut over the hush of stacking buckets. ‘Do you think Rome’s made of water? Did you enquire of the engineers if they had sufficient to spare? What will you do if there’s a real fire? Throw feathers at it?’ A grey-haired bull of a man ran past Pantera and Mergus to the ox-cart and hurled his ire at Calpurnius.

Pantera watched with open curiosity. ‘Don’t they decimate men for insubordination in the Guard?’ he asked.

‘Not the officers,’ Mergus said, ‘only the men. And it’s not been done yet. That’s Quinctillius Varus, tribune of the second cohort. And beyond him, looking just as upset, is Annaeus of the sixth. I think we can safely say that neither of them wants his cohort to hold a drill.’

‘Which is either immensely sensible, given the obvious paucity of water, or it’s insane given the obvious likelihood of a fire. I think I should confess my role in this, don’t you?’

Pantera strode forward past the line of watching men. At the ox-cart, he vaulted up to take the space alongside Calpurnius, gaining height over the two complaining tribunes.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said, untying the pouch at his belt. ‘Sebastos Abdes Pantera, currently acting under order from his imperial majesty.’

The belt had been a parting gift from Nero. The new pouch thereon bore the imperial mark of the lyre and the chariot. Sight of that alone cut both men silent, but the seal he drew out of it caused them to salute, and then to bow.

Pantera took his time retying the pouch. The silence grew painful.

‘I rode in from Antium this morning. The prefect’ — he nodded to Calpurnius — ‘will vouch for my bona fides. The emperor is rightly concerned with the risk of fire amongst his subjects. I assured him that with his trust and bearing his goodwill’ — he tapped the pouch with his forefinger — ‘I could arrange a fire drill. Vigilance is everything, as I’m sure you know.’

That was the motto of the Watch and if they didn’t hate him already, the two tribunes did so then. But he carried the imperial seal and they had each sworn fealty to it and its holder. They bowed their way back towards their waiting cohorts.

Gnaeus Calpurnius, who was far from a stupid man, waited until they were out of earshot. ‘Did that tell you what you needed to know?’ he asked mildly.

‘A little.’ Pantera blew out his cheeks. ‘Of the six cohorts, the second and sixth are led by men who are either exceptionally thoughtful and have full care of Rome-’

‘Or they wish to see it burn. And either way,’ Calpurnius said, ‘traitors or not, you’ll die for what you just did if they find you alone.’

Pantera ran his fingers through his hair, teasing out the particles of soot. ‘Then I will endeavour to ensure that they don’t.’