Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Sixty-Five

‘Hannah? Can you wake? Someone’s coming.’ Pantera touched her shoulder. His face hovered over hers, bright with care, wet from washing in the ewer by the bed. He was sharply awake, scrubbed clean of the night’s fatigue. In the pale morning light, his age had receded ten years. Here, now, he was the man who had filled the quiet of her mind, in the nights of waiting before the fire.

One hand still lay on her shoulder, the thumb describing circles on her collar bone. His other held the knife Hannah had found strapped to his forearm in the early part of their time together. Only later, near dawn, had he allowed her to remove it, and then would not let her lay it far from the bed.

A sound came from the gate outside, of wood being broken. ‘The fire’s gone down enough to let them near the gate,’ Pantera said. ‘Someone’s taking an axe to the beam that’s blocking it.’

Hannah sat up, too quickly. ‘We can hide in the goose-house.’ The thought appalled her.

Pantera laughed, reading her face. ‘Not unless you want to.’ He leaned over to kiss her. The laughter was swiftly gone. He said, ‘I think it’s Ajax. Anyone else would come over the wall. It means we can start looking for Shimon and Hypatia.’

‘And Math,’ Hannah said.

‘And Math,’ he agreed.

She took his hand and let him raise her to her feet. He helped her to wash, found her a fresh tunic and laid it out, the one clean garment in the room. Blue irises worked in silk thread at hem and sleeves said it was Hypatia’s.

Hannah tied the belt of roped silk. From the window, she could see flames stitch the horizon to the south and west. Elsewhere, plumes of smoke bellied on the wind, but the raging fire-storm of the night was gone. Outside, the sounds of breaking wood were growing more urgent.

Pantera stood at the door, looking out. ‘When Ajax went to hunt Saulos, we didn’t know if you were still alive in here.’

‘So it would be a kindness to go to him now.’ The idea made her stomach lurch.

Pantera turned. His eyes sought her face. ‘Have you regrets?’ he asked.

‘None.’ She thought it was true.

He said, ‘It would be better to go out, I think, than to be found sitting side by side on the bed’s edge like errant children.’ Reaching out, he drew her into an embrace. His kiss mimicked Hypatia’s last kiss in the goose-house; full of hope and love and the bittersweet grief of parting.

Seneca saw her first: the dark-haired woman to whom he had lost both Ajax and Pantera.

Had he not been expecting her, he would barely have recognized the quiet physician of Coriallum. Here was a woman wrought fine and new, emerging from the wreckage of the fire as Athena from the waves.

Ajax hadn’t seen her yet. He was wielding the axe with a fury against the beam that blocked the gate. They had found only one axe, and even after the night they had both experienced, he still had more strength to wield it. The difference between them was less than it had been, though.

Seneca had set himself the task of cataloguing Ajax’s waning energy with scientific precision. As Aristotle had examined the bodies of dead and living animals for their secrets, so Seneca was bringing the same objectivity to his study of his night’s companion.

Thus it was that he had moved a little to one side as the beam began to fall from the gate, and so saw Hannah before Ajax did, and saw her see him, and saw the sudden ache written across her face, sharp and sore as a knife’s cut. He saw it wiped clear as fast as it appeared so that when Ajax paused to sluice the sweat from his eyes and chanced to look through the gap, she was smiling for him in greeting.

‘Ajax.’

‘Hannah.’

They were formal as distant cousins. Then Hannah moved and Seneca saw what Ajax had already seen: that Pantera stood beside Hannah, and that he, too, was rendered clean and clear by the dawn, and was just as uneasy in Ajax’s presence.

‘Saulos is still alive.’ Ajax addressed Pantera, sparing them both. ‘He led us back to Math. We had a choice to leave and follow Saulos, or to stay and keep watch over the children. We chose the latter.’

‘Thank you. He’d have killed Math if he could. Where is he now? Is he safe?’

‘Math? Nero has him. Seneca thinks you could negotiate now for his release. He says that after the night’s work, you’ll have best success.’

‘And you? Where will you go?’

Ajax looked at Hannah and then back at Pantera. Seneca, who thought the night had taught him how to read the smallest nuanced changes of Ajax’s moods, read nothing at all.

He said, ‘A merchant ship rides at anchor at Ostia, on the mouth of the Tiber, ready to sail for Hibernia, via Gaul. It has been there since the last month’s end, waiting for word. My uncle is on it. He will wait until the next new moon and then leave.’

‘How on earth did he know to come here?’ Seneca asked.

Ajax’s eyes never left Hannah’s face. ‘My sister had a dream. Amongst my people, she is accorded the greatest of her generation. She said that my brother and I would sail on it together, back to our family.’

Pantera blinked in surprise. ‘And did your sister see more than you two on this ship?’

‘Others were with us. It’s hard to say exactly who. Dreams are rarely explicit; the interpretation is everything.’

‘Like prophecies,’ Pantera said.

‘Exactly like them.’ Ajax’s pale hawk’s eyes were unusually bright.

Seneca thought his head might break under the tension. Tentatively, he said, ‘If I might make a suggestion? The best tide from Ostia is the second hour after noon. The distance from here to there is eleven miles. There is therefore a limited time in which to reach the ship. I believe Pantera alone has the best chance of wresting Math from Nero’s grasp. Ajax can’t risk being seen and moreover he has to get some sleep — don’t argue, you’re only standing now out of pride — before he travels that far. He could perhaps stay here a while with Hannah while I find horses that might take them to the port. Pantera, you can join them there with Math if it is possible. If not, send a message with the necessary information so that the ship might sail.’

‘I can’t leave without Math,’ Ajax said simply.

‘And we can’t leave without Hypatia and Shimon,’ Hannah said. ‘Will you be able to wrest them from Nero too?’

‘If he has them,’ Pantera said, ‘I will certainly try.’

There was a heartbeat of silence, in which Pantera dared meet Hannah’s gaze. Whatever passed between them was private. What was not remotely private was the fact of its passing.

Colouring slightly, Pantera raised his hand to Ajax in the kind of salute Seneca had seen from the older warriors of Britain, brought as captives to Rome. ‘I leave her in your care. We’ll meet you at Ostia with Math and whoever else we can bring.’