The Art of War

Chapter 17

Rome, 4 August AD 69

Marcus, silver-hand of the western Quirinal, speaking for his brothers

The little wizened Berber didn’t look like a man who had been beaten half to death, although we had seen that happen. He didn’t look like a man who was hunted by Rome, either, though there were Guards throughout the forum and the markets, asking questions and spreading news of the rewards for his capture.

Did we know who he was, with all his black skin and wiry hair? Not at first. But we saw him come out of Scopius’ inn, and had not seen him go in, so we followed him on the rooftops, making the whistle signals, and we knew soon enough that he wasn’t what he pretended.

From the first, when he came out of the inn, he didn’t leave by the front entrance into the courtyard and on to the main street that runs up the Quirinal, the one with the widows’ houses off it. He went out of the back, down the Street of the Lame Dog where the Guard don’t dare go, and turned deeper and deeper into the hidden ways where the sun never reaches and bandits live with thieves and neither welcome strangers.

He was lame, he walked bent over, like he was crippled, but he didn’t walk as if he was afraid, and in those streets he should have been.

He came into my place then, where I owned the rooftops.

How did I get them? You think I’m too small to fight for them? Well, then, don’t ask me how. They were mine. Nobody was going to take them from me.

We were whistling one to another, just following him along, and then he went and ducked into a doorway and tucked his head out twice, to see if there was anybody watching. There wasn’t, not at ground level, so he waited a bit longer and then, not lame at all, hopped on to the wall that goes round the courtyard where Phenris kills his pigs and then up on to the rooftops. Fast as you like, he was here, where only the boys should be.

We all lay flat, and he didn’t look at us, but ran up and over the top and down the other side and then along and along and gone!

Well, some of the boys was for backing off and leaving him alone then. I mean, it’s not right, is it? The boys leave the rooftops behind when they become men — those that live to become men, which is few enough.

But he was there, heading down into a place that used to belong to the Kosian before he died of marsh fever, and before that it was Circan’s, and before that it was Florian’s and before that… anyway, it has always been someone’s place; we each have our own special place, hidden away, where nobody sees and the wind don’t reach too strong.

This one has brick on either side from the house walls and tiles that meet in the middle at the back and catches just enough sun in summer or winter to be warm all the time, but never too hot. It’s a palace of a place, really.

Pantera leaned back against the brick and tiles, looking like this is home.

We stopped whistling, all of us. There isn’t a tune for ‘That bastard’s just dropped into the Kosian’s place’. The others were all looking at me and I had to do something, so I picked two of them, Quethat is, Marcus and Marcus, and we went over to see him. You have to, don’t you? You have to face these things.

He’d got his eyes closed, all peaceful, and we just dropped in and settled down and waited for him to look back at us.

Which he did soon enough. He looked at us like we were friends, as if we didn’t each have salt in our hands, ready to throw in his face in case he tried to jump us. Actually, Fe-Marcus had something worse than salt.

He nodded at us as if we’d spoken, then brought both his hands out, nice and slow, like, and turned to one side and placed his palms flat on the wall and counted along the bricks.

We thought he was addled then, but we stayed and watched and after a while he pushed on a brick with the heel of his hand.

Nothing happened. Which, actually, was scary.

But he kept pressing and then gave a huff of frustration and hit it hard and then the brick jerked in, maybe only the breadth of your thumb, but still, it shouldn’t have done that, see?

Very slowly, with his eyes on us, he took his knife out from his sleeve and slid it in along the side of the brick, breaking the mud and shite that looked like mortar, and then, when he’d got it free, he worked the brick out.

It was only half a brick. So he laid it on the roof and stuck his hand back in and we all held our breath then, because whatever was in there’d been in since before we was born.

Finally, he got to what he was after: there was a kidskin pouch, tied at the top with rough twine and sealed with a blob of dark wax. The whole thing was clean and dry and untouched. He laid it on the ground between us and broke the wax with his knife and opened it, so that we could see what was inside the same time he did.

Coins. A stash of silver coins. All with the head of Tiberius on, as clean as the day they were made. No one’d cut them, no one’d marked them, no one’d tested them with his teeth. Did he let me hold one? Of course he didn’t! I saw, that’s all. I’m a silver-hand; I know what you’re carrying, how much and where. And in that pouch were fifty silver coins. Trust me.

He tipped the pouch a little towards us.

‘All yours,’ he said, ‘and perhaps gold besides.’

Gold? No one ever pays us in gold. There’s not many as pays in silver and then only when they want us not to talk about what they’ve done. Or to show anyone the marks. It always goes wrong in the end.

Anyway, he offered gold and we laughed in his face; not aloud, but he saw what we thought, and that we were ready to leave.

He hadn’t lifted one of the coins out, I’ll swear on my life he hadn’t, but suddenly he had one in his hand anyway, and he was turning it over and over, making it slide under one knuckle and across the rest, as if it was flowing in loops round his hand.

So we stayed, to see what else he could do. And he said, ‘Drusus, he’s at the House of the Lyre still, aye?’

He spoke like us, or like the boys used to speak back in the time of the Kosian and before. Some of it is Latin, some of it’s Greek, or Dacian or Gaulish or, if you’re near Drusus, it’s German, and we like to be near Drusus; he is one of us, grown and survived on account of his size; he gives us money from his own earnings, and food, and gets us work at the House if we want it.

And this man was asking about Drusus and the place he worked. So we listened to what he said next. It was a kind of code, see? To prove he was one of us, really, however weird he looked.

‘There is a house on the Aventine,’ Pantera said, and gave us a description, where it was, what it looked like; we knew it, and who lived there, but we let him tell us anyway; no point in giving up what you know if you don’t have to.

He said, ‘I’m going there now. You can follow me as long as you keep out of sight. One silver now if you do, two more this night if I know who comes and goes after I am gone and more yet if I know who follows me this day.’

He picked up his pouch, laid one silver coin where it had been. The face of the emperor Tiberius stared up at us like a ghost from the past.

I nodded. I took the coin. He knew already that I was leader.

To me, he said, ‘I will speak to Drusus later. He will tell you who I am and what I have been.’ He rose, smoothly, not lame at all, well maybe just a bit, in his left ankle. ‘It would be useful did I have a name to call you by.’

I told him Marcus. Yes, all of us. We were all called Marcus.

‘Marcus.’ He said it as if he’d never heard the name before. ‘A fine choice. Marcus, you will know where I am.’

Which we would, of course, because we could follow him when he crossed to the Aventine hill and went to call on his friend.

So we did.