Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Sixty

The fire that ate Rome had first become visible as Seneca and Ajax passed the tenth milestone. Then, it was only a whisper of colour, pale as a boy’s hair in the morning, streaked along the horizon, barely outshining the stars.

The closer they had come, the greater it had grown in size and colour until, at five miles’ distance, jagged flames had played clearly along the spine of the horizon.

At the three-mile mark, Seneca could smell smoke peppering the air.

Ajax tapped his arm. ‘You should leave your mare here,’ he said. ‘There’s a farm with neat fields. She’ll be well cared for. Tether her near the water trough so she can drink before they find her.’ He had, Seneca observed, a Gaulish care for animals.

Seneca had dismounted before it occurred to him that he could have refused, indeed that the protocols of rank and station demanded that he do so to restore his waning authority.

He had tied the tether lines at the mare’s ankles before he had spelled out for himself the reasons why he couldn’t refuse at all, the most acceptable of which was that he had several questions currently nagging at his curiosity and wished to remain in Ajax’s company long enough to find their answers; to ignore an order now, clearly, was to be left behind.

He patted the mare’s wither and left her to graze. Peering into the night, he picked out the outlines of the farmhouse and three sheds clustered in a hollow that Ajax had already seen. Closer, a kennelled dog whined, but did not bark. As they left, a cockerel coughed its way to an early crow, deceived by the fire’s false dawn.

Half a mile later, they met the first refugees: whole families sitting on the turf at the roadside, watching fire paint the horizon in brightening shades of amber as if it were a display put on for their benefit.

These ones were the furthest out, those most able to walk, and to carry their children. The closer they came to Rome, the thicker became the crowd, the less mobile and the less decorous.

At the two-mile mark, progress was almost impossible; grown men tugged at their tunic hems, begging them not to walk on into the hell that was Rome.

‘If we turn off here,’ Seneca said, ‘we can find a route through the fields. There will be fewer people to see us, or slow our progress.’

Ajax glanced at him sharply. ‘Do you know a path, or do we simply cut across country?’

‘I think that if we turn right at the stone in the shape of a boar, there should be a farm path down through the groves of nut trees. At the gap at the foot of the hill, we turn left at the twisted olive that turns against the wind. From there the track should take us up to the Via Tiburtina. If it’s still there. I heard of it more than thirty years ago from a man who used to spy for Julius Caesar. I’ve never walked it myself.’

‘What better time than now?’ Ajax favoured him with a brief, dry smile; the first of the thirty miles. ‘Can you run nine and walk nine again, do you think?’

He showed no signs of tiring, or of pain: Seneca had passed beyond surprise at that twenty miles ago. ‘If I have to,’ he said, and set off, to prove it.

Beyond the nut trees, the track was old and barely used. Thick with weeds and olives, it wound through irrigated farmland, and ended abruptly at a wooden stile, beyond which was an alley serving the slave quarters between two large villas at the side of the Via Tiburtina.

‘We should walk now,’ Ajax said. ‘And not speak unless we have to.’

Subdued, Seneca took second place going over the stile and walked as he was told. He was too tired to think clearly, but he missed the conversation of earlier.

For the duration of the thirty miles, whether he was running or walking or riding, the two of them had talked. Their dialogue had been fragmented, but always interesting, shifting from the experience of Alexander in the far distant lands where he had met the ascetic priests of outlandish gods to the warriors of Britain to the politics of Rome. Here, in the city, that easy rapport had ended without warning. Here, Ajax was hunting.

Silent as a shadow, he never stayed long on the path, but regularly stepped off sideways into silent buildings, or loped ahead to check the way was clear, leaving Seneca feeling unusually ineffectual. Once, he thought he saw blood on Ajax’s hands, but wasn’t sure. An hour before, he could have enquired as to its origin. Now, he walked on, accepting an object lesson in stealth.

‘Did I hear someone sound the watch hours?’ he asked presently.

‘The tenth hour just sounded,’ Ajax said, his voice slotting beneath the sounds of the city. ‘Dawn comes in two hours. Night is our friend; we shouldn’t waste it.’

They were moving as fast as any sane man could do, given the dark and the debris and the need for secrecy. Even as the brazen notes of the watch trumpet melted into the fire, empty villas gave way to merchants’ booths and those in turn became by degrees the slums of the suburra.

‘Look.’ Seneca pointed, and then, feeling foolish, let his arm fall; only a blind man could have failed to see the barricade of flame ahead, and even the blind would have felt the wall of heat. There, the fire was a true inferno, sucking in air to make its own wind, roaring fit to match the gods.

Between them and it, like a demon’s playground, lay a hu nd red feet of broken buildings, demolished by the Guard to create a firebreak.

‘We can’t cross that,’ Ajax said.

‘Follow me,’ Seneca said, seeing a way to be useful again. ‘I can find us a path past the breaks.’

The next half hour was a hell to haunt dreams for a lifetime as Seneca turned back and then left, navigating a twisting death-walk through the smoke-hazed huddle of huts and shops and three- or four-storey tenements, all empty as if visited by plague, with the pall of death chokingly thick; the fire had not reached here yet.

Then, at one alley’s end, they came to the places it had reached, where the stench of raw smoke made Seneca sneeze, and all around was the greater horror of burned and burning buildings, decked about with burned and burning bodies, some of them still living.

Out of mercy, Ajax killed those he could reach, climbing two storeys up once on to charred and smouldering beams to reach a woman who stretched out a charred arm to them as they passed. She couldn’t speak. Seneca was glad. The stench of burned hair and flesh made him retch.

After that, they kept moving uphill towards the parts the fire had not yet reached. There, in a back alley, they came upon the Watch cutting firebreaks and Ajax hid as Seneca played the part of a grieving father soliciting news of the fire and the welfare of those caught in the city centre.

‘Nero’s thrown open the imperial gardens and is offering safety and food while “his boy” — I trust that’s Math — is marshalling the orphaned children in there. The adults with children are going up to the Field of Mars. Calpurnius is dead. Tonight, the emperor’s spy is prefect of the Watch.’

‘And by that, we sincerely hope they mean Pantera.’ They stood at a street corner. Ajax surveyed the surroundings. ‘If memory serves, the Field of Mars is due north of here. Am I right?’

He had already set off. Seneca followed him at a trot; they were in a hurry again, evidently. Catching up, he said, ‘May I ask how you come to know the geography of Rome?’

‘I was here in Claudius’ time. With my father.’

‘I see,’ said Seneca, who did not see at all for at least the next two blocks and then suddenly saw too much.

‘My dear boy…’ They were nearly at the gardens. Ajax had become a hunter again, merging with the shadows. Striving for a matching skill, Seneca slid into an alcove behind him and, reaching out, caught the crook of Ajax’s elbow, holding him still. Stray firelight reached them. Thus lit, the halo of gold hair was clearly visible on Ajax’s unshaved head. ‘Are you quite mad?’ Seneca whispered. ‘If Nero discovers who you are…’

‘Then being skinned alive will seem like a blessing. I know. So if you can manage not to shout it from the rooftops, I would be grateful.’

He edged forward, drawing Seneca with him, ducking them both down behind a broken water trough. ‘Nero’s ahead, I can hear him, so we need to keep hidden, although I think the more pressing need is to keep hidden from Saulos, who would appear to be watching Pantera, who in turn is talking, I think, to Math. You see?’ Ajax smiled. ‘The gods are good if we give them our all.’