Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Forty-Eight

If Hannah had not spent years learning to navigate the Sibylline labyrinths, she would never have found her way back through the warren of narrow alleys and broken buildings that protected the entrance to Saulos’ headquarters.

For a while, even with the map laid out in her mind, she thought she had got lost, and that she might have to abandon her plan in its infancy. She stopped then, on the corner of an alley, and stared up at the high, blue sky, letting the colour clear her mind so that she could be certain she was not, after all, acting rashly, or purely for vengeance.

Vengeance was there; a vision of Ptolemy Asul stained her mind whenever she saw Saulos now, and it cried for vengeance. So, too, did the more distant, hazier image of the father she had never known, who had given his life for his men, and had his death traduced for political gain.

But it wasn’t only for them. Staring up into the limitless blue, Hannah knew that she was here because she had spent nearly a year with Pantera and Ajax, because their cause had become her cause, and she was as bound now to its success as they were.

A collared dove flew over, from north to south, heading towards the river. She followed its path down the alley. At the foot, she found the ox-hide door with the mark of the tent-maker on its upper right hand corner and knew she was not, in fact, lost. She passed through it into the low-roofed goat-pen and then out again into the knife edge of sunlight that lit the final alley leading down to the warehouse.

At first glance, the only sign of life was a group of grubby urchins playing with a tan and white, floppy-eared hound whelp that ran back and forth across the narrow passageway. One of the girls looked up and grinned, showing blue eyes beneath matted black hair. Hannah flipped her a silver coin as she pushed between them and felt the shadow of their presence behind her; children were everywhere, invisible as slaves. The smell of the river reached her over the low warehouse roofs, and somewhere, not far away, men shouted as they loaded or unloaded a boat.

The guards were there, but well hidden. These were not the men who had seen her in Saulos’ company in the morning. Like their predecessors, these were legionaries, but younger, fitter, better armed, with shields and short javelins in addition to their gladii. Their passwords had changed and she had no idea what the new ones were, but they had orders to let her past. She had each tell her the word, in case she had need of it later.

The last of them stood a dozen paces from the warehouse, not quite beyond reach of the stench of wet wool. A red ram’s head marked the wool-merchant’s door. More recently, some wag had scratched a wine jug on it and more recently still, another had drawn an image of Nero with his lyre. Strictly speaking, that was an offence against the person and god-head of the emperor, but here, where no emperor ever came, even incognito, there was little danger that the owner of the warehouse would be arrested, even if he could ever be tracked down.

The urchins’ young hound gave song and dashed past in noisy pursuit of a rat, or a mouse, or a cockroach, or simply a thrown pebble; it was impossible to tell. In the ensuing commotion, Hannah repeated her final code word clearly, stepped past the guard and rapped out on the red ram’s head the rhythm that gave her entrance into Saulos’ headquarters.

Pantera reached the goose-keeper’s in the late afternoon. Shimon met him at the door with a beaker of well water and the news he didn’t want to hear.

‘Hannah came when you were away. She went back to Saulos.’

Pantera felt his heart clench. ‘You let her go?’

‘We had no way to stop her,’ Hypatia said. She came out of the shadows at the back of the cottage, where the herbs were kept. The light touch of her scent lit the air before Pantera saw her. ‘She said the warehouse is close to impregnable, that Saulos has two hundred men and can send them out through the maze of the ghetto so fast you’d need two legions to stop him and even then only if you surrounded the whole of the dockside. You’re to burn the warehouse if she hasn’t come out by dusk.’

‘With Hannah inside?’ Pantera stared from Shimon to Hypatia and back again.

‘That was the implication.’ Hypatia’s black gaze raked across his face. ‘She said to tell you she was doing it for Math.’

‘Of course she did.’ When, momentarily, Pantera closed his eyes, he saw Hannah standing in a burning inn, with Math tumbling down a ladder, begging for help for his father. He opened them again; Hypatia’s pitiless gaze was preferable. ‘Did she say what she was going to do before we set fire to everything around her?’ he asked.

‘No. But it isn’t hard to guess. She is the Galilean’s daughter. Who else can undermine Saulos’ credibility in front of his people?’

‘If she denounces him as a liar, he’ll kill her.’

Hypatia nodded. ‘Unless you can stop him. I thought you had a century of men?’

‘They won’t be enough. We won’t get so much as a handful in without alerting them well in advance.’ Pantera dragged his hand through his hair. ‘When did she leave?’

‘An hour ago.’ Shimon had gathered his olivewood staff from the room’s furthest corner. ‘But I followed her down the hill, behind Saulos’ two spies. There were children playing at the entrance to the alley. One of the girls had followed Hannah and heard the passwords. She sold them to me. I can get you and me past the sentries, at least as far as the door. After that-’

‘After that, we’re two men against two hundred, but if we can get Hannah out, the narrow alleys will work in our favour. I’ll see if I can set Mergus’ men outside.’ Pantera turned to Hypatia. ‘Will she do this? Will she name Saulos a liar in front of his own sworn men?

Hypatia nodded. Her black eyes were wide and full of helpless rage. ‘She’ll do whatever it takes to stop Saulos, even if it means she’s going to die trying.’

Hannah stepped into the warehouse as a gladiator steps on to the sands: outwardly calm and inwardly taut as a bow string. As the door swung shut on its new hinges, she was assaulted by the heat, sweat and thunderous noise of two hundred hungry men devouring their evening meal. The smells of cooked garlic, fish sauce, stewed beans and honey rose over the rank, sodden wool.

Poros was near the doors with half a dozen members of his Blue team. They waved to her with enthusiasm, who had barely exchanged two words with her when she was on the opposing team in Alexandria. She waved back, and exchanged welcomes with other men she had met in the morning.

The warehouse was transformed. When she had last seen it, the place had been darkly damp, and disorganized. Now, it was like a temple at Passover; full to capacity, but buzzing with order. Racks of wall candles pushed back the dark, scenting the sweaty air with beeswax, while the horizontal slats high up in the wooden walls let in the evening sun.

Dust motes sparked in the angled beams and men were sliced across their lengths by the light, seeming to dance in jerking steps as they moved among the military camp beds laid out in ordered rows across the floor, carrying bowls of stew to stand in huddles or sit on their blankets and eat.

Saulos himself was hammering the last nails into the dais that had been their treatment room. The curtain was gone now, and a lectern had been set up at the front, ready for an oration. Saulos reached for a new nail as she approached.

‘Hannah!’ He swung round to embrace her. ‘How are you?’ He held her at arm’s length, searching her face.

‘Better. I went into a cottage on the Aventine for water and the woman there gave me herbs for the pains.’ She told half the truth, and no lies, exactly as he had done in Hades. She found she could still hold his gaze cleanly, which was a relief.

‘Then you feel less…’ His hands filled in the words he couldn’t find.

‘Much less, thank you.’

‘Good. Come and see what we’ve got.’ He took her arm and ushered her across the floor to the far corner.

The crowds parted again to let him through. They were in his fiefdom now, among his chosen comrades, the foot soldiers ready to give their lives in the coming fight.

He knew them all by name. Here and there, he stopped to ask after a man’s wife, or his children, to enquire whether he had brought his son with him, or his brother, his nephew, uncle or distant cousin, whether some chore had been carried out, whether the auspices were good.

In all cases, the answer was yes; brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins and sons were here, or were on their way, and they had done everything he had asked of them. They waited now only to finish eating and to be given their final orders. As far as Hannah could tell, they would have been content without the meal; if Saulos hadn’t ordered them to eat, they would willingly have left on empty bellies.

They reached a wall, and so the end of the men. In the quiet, Saulos drew Hannah closer. ‘Did you see the line of the aqueduct when you were up the hill?’

‘I saw it and the Aqua Marcia, where it comes to an end on the Capitoline. If you want to prevent water from reaching the centre of Rome, you’ll have to destroy them both.’

‘Excellent!’ He beamed at her. ‘I’ll order Poros to take his men up there at the start. In the meantime, perhaps if you could help carry the candlesticks to the dais?’

The candlesticks were silver, taken from some temple. Each was taller than Saulos, taller even than Hannah, made from solid silver, with many-branching arms that held aloft more candles than she could count.

They carried them to the dais and set them up on either side of the lectern. The candles weren’t lit yet, and the warehouse was already as hot as the noonday. Hannah said, ‘If you’re going to light those, I should open the back door for a while. The men need clean air to breathe or the sour humours will stifle their courage before the evening’s work.’

‘Of course.’ Saulos waved a hand towards the door even as more men clamoured around him with questions. Poros ploughed a way through the crowd carrying wine jugs on a tray across both arms. Two broad-shouldered youths of the Blue team followed bearing another piled high with loaves of flat bread. Wine and bread. Hannah thought of Shimon, spitting, and wondered what he would do if he were here.

The area by the back door was quiet, away from the crush of men. Cobwebs draped the wall and door in one vast, dusty curtain, thick as silk. Fighting her way through, Hannah found the hinges were of old leather, gone hard with disuse, and that the iron catch was rusted shut, but not locked.

It gave way after some effort and she braced her shoulder against the jamb to force it open, letting in a rush of light and humid air from the river.

A shallow courtyard lay beyond, full of debris, surrounded by an oak palisade with gates that hung awry on torn hinges. Nobody was guarding this entrance. Hannah pushed through the broken gates and stepped out of the courtyard to the jetty beyond and found, as she had thought, that there was a direct route along the riverside, joining up all the warehouses and leading out eventually to one of Rome’s main arteries.

‘Hannah?’

She spun back towards the warehouse. Saulos stood in the doorway. His tunic was a clean one, belted with bleached linen cord, and his hair had been combed, but it was not the clothes that made her stare; they were the least of the changes in him. In all ways, from the set of his shoulders to the planes on his face, Saulos was as different from the stuttering fool she had met in Gaul as Pantera was from Nero. Here was a man who could kill Ptolemy Asul and revel in it.

He is without mercy, Pantera said in the ear of her mind. Please don’t underestimate him.

She thought of her father, and of Math, and looked up to the clear sky. The river ran close, and a path to freedom.

‘Hannah?’ Saulos came forward and took her hand. ‘Will you come and help me give out the bread and wine? As we do so, I would ask you to think of the saviour whose death will free us all.’