The Art of War

Chapter 20

Rome, 4 August AD 69

Borros, freedman, formerly slave to Cavernus of the White Hare

I was born in the White Hare tavern and, until Pantera came, had never slept a night away from it.

It was a fair-sized place, stuck halfway up the Esquiline, spreading over the whole of the corner between the carters’ street and the main thoroughfare; a good, clean hostel with good wine at good prices and food to go with it and by noon on most days we had all of our regulars in place: men who preferred our benches to their own, our gossip to their memories.

They weren’t soldiers, as such. If I’m honest, we were the kind of inn that attracted soldiers who had gone to seed, not so much a legionary tavern, but rather a former-legionaries’ tavern, where men came to share stories of the life that they had lost.

Tiberius Cavernus was the owner and bar-tender, a tall, big-built Rhinelander who said he’d been a duplicarius in the legions in the days of Claudius and had saved his pension just for this.

He had straw-bright hair cut level with the lobes of his ears and he trimmed his nails once a week as he had done in the legions. His whores were clean and went about their work cheerfully and no thieves hung around the tables, not for long. I had always been surprised that he didn’t serve a better class of client: real military men instead of the bitter has-beens who drank to forget.

That day, I discovered the reason.

I was tending to the beer stock when this little Berber trudged in and dumped his sack of dates on to the low pine table that served as a bar at the back. Cavernus was swiftly at his side.

‘Leave, stranger. We have no need of-’

Cavernus’ expression didn’t change; I was watching him and I saw nothing, except that he had stopped speaking.

After a short, stunned pause, he jerked his head to the small door that led to the latrines, and beyond them to the kitchens. Only his voice was strained as he said, ‘Dates, are they? Out the back with you, then.’

He ushered the little man through ahead of him. I was a slave, I had to go out anyway; they barely noticed me following them as they passed the latrine trenches and went through another door to a small room where the food is prepared.

The women took one look at Cavernus’ face and backed out. I remained at the door, peering through the gap at the hinge. My mother always said I was overly curious, but when you’re a slave you either learn things or you learn nothing; there’s no in-between place.

Cavernus was looking worried. His gaze roamed the small room with an air of regret. ‘That’s some disguise,’ he said. ‘I barely knew it was you. Have you come to claim what is yours?’

The little Berber date-man shook his head. ‘This is your inn; it has never been mine. I gave it to you and I will never take back a gift freely given. But I have a favour to ask.’ He spoke like a Roman, not at all like a Berber.

‘Of course.’ Cavernus wasn’t as relieved or cheerful as I’d have thought. He still looked wary. ‘What can I do?’

‘Tell me, has anyone been here asking for me by name?’

‘Who hasn’t?’ Cavernus laughed, shortly. ‘Before this morning, nobody spoke your name in my hearing in the past fifteen years. This morning, more men than I can count have asked for you and each with his blade sharp and ready.’ My master’s hands worked at the cloth at his belt. He looked ashamed. ‘I haven’t had time to send word to you.’

‘You couldn’t have done that; you didn’t know where I was. I’m not blaming you. I bring my misfortunes on my own head. I just needed to know if there was anyone asking here in particular. If they knew that I knew you. It seems not. In which case…’ Pantera opened his sack. ‘Since I’m here, you’d better look at these.’

Cavernus chose one of the dates from the second layer, bit it, rolled it round his mouth before he swallowed.

‘Good enough for the White Hare.’ He sounded more like his usual self.

Pantera said, ‘You can have half. The rest I need to take on.’

Sticky-fingered, they began to scoop the fruit out into a wooden barrel at the side.

‘There must be something else,’ Cavernus said as they worked. ‘You didn’t come here in the day’s heat only to ask if anyone knows I am your man.’

‘Ever wise, Cavernus.’ Pantera flashed him a smile that was all yellowing teeth with gaps at the side. ‘I want you to listen. To find a man, or men, who were officers, but left the legions in poor regard. Someone bitter enough to take silver to betray the current emperor. They don’t have to be overly discreet; just willing.’

I began to understand, then, that this was why Cavernus had chosen to ply his trade to the has-beens when he could have aimed so much higher: because once, a long time ago, this little Berber had thought it might one day be useful. And now it was.

Cavernus said, ‘There are two or three who fit that bill; the trouble will be finding one who doesn’t drink from dawn to dusk. When I have the right man, do I use the old ways of sending a message?’

‘Not yet. I’m not sure they’re all safe. For now, send one of your men to the market to buy dates. He’s to ask for the big Syrian ones he got last week. Ask all the date-sellers. I’ll hear it.’

Pantera picked up his sack. He paused at the doorway, half hunched, lame again.

‘Do you still own Borros?’ he asked. The hairs stood up on my neck then, I can tell you. I didn’t know whether to keep looking or to press my ear to the hinge to make sure I heard every word. In the event, I didn’t need to do that. I could hear it easily and still see.

‘That mad fuck of a Briton?’ Cavernus pulled a wry face. ‘He died in the fire, trying to save his wife and three of his children.’ A flash passed between them of shared sorrow and memories best forgotten. We are all like that, who knew the fire.

Cavernus brightened. ‘Young Borros lived, though; the son. He’s grown well.’

‘Is he reliable?’

‘If you can call it that. He’s twice the size of his father, and twice as mad. He hasn’t actually killed any of us in our beds yet, but I wouldn’t put it past him, if he- You’re not serious?’

Three gold coins had just materialized on Pantera’s palm. They jumped and spun and when they fell they were one atop the other.

Cavernus’ laugh billowed out into the bar room. ‘You’re as mad as he is. I’d be lucky to get half a silver for him at auction, even if I spent a month polishing him up.’

‘Will you sell him to me?’

Something passed between them, some remembering I couldn’t know, for nothing was said, but Cavernus rolled his eyes, wildly, the way men do to show madness. ‘You’re crazy. He’ll cut your throat and get on the next boat home.’

But the gold was gone, the deal sealed. Cavernus shrugged, wiped his hands clean, slid the gold into the pouch he kept round his neck, sucked in a breath and bellowed out my name. ‘ Borros! ’

I couldn’t believe it. In that moment, all I could think of was my mother, my father, the brother and sisters I’d lost in the fire — and that the White Hare was my home. I had been born there, on a bed Cavernus had provided. I’d eaten from his table, drunk his ale, been beaten by him and learned not to weep. I never thought he’d sell me. But what could I do? I waited long enough for it not to look as if I was standing just outside the door, then pulled it open and went in.

I saw Pantera properly for the first time, then; he had set down the dates and wasn’t stooping any more and had run his hands through his hair so it looked less like a crow’s nest and he had that look in his eye…

I don’t know how to describe it, but I felt safe in his company. You know when a pack of hounds meets a strange dog and he just walks in and eats their food and lies in their sleeping places and they let him, because they know he’ll find them food? Pantera was like that, so I didn’t feel quite so broken, and then he opened his mouth and said, ‘Warrior, from today you are a free man. But if you want to hunt with me, I pledge my life for yours and ask only the same oath in return.’

Only he didn’t say it in Latin, or even in Greek, which was what we all spoke except on formal days, he said it in the tongue of western Britain, with the accent of the Ordovices, my mother’s tribe.

A child could have pushed me over then, with one fat little hand. I gaped at Pantera like an idiot and couldn’t speak. Cavernus, trying not to smile, pushed a stool up behind me and I collapsed down to sit on it and only then, seated, did I find the words to answer in kind. ‘My life for yours, of course.’

It’s the old oath that warriors give one to another, and while I might have been born into slavery my mother taught me the ways of our gods, the honouring of oak and stream and the north wind and the sun, and how warriors pledged to each other before battle.

Pantera took my arm, hand to elbow, and I read an honesty in his eyes that I was not used to in men. ‘You are surprised now. I won’t hold you to it. But if you wish to come with me, perhaps I can make it sound more attractive. If not, you may leave, a free man. I will sign your manumission papers in any case.’

It was too much, too soon. I have never been a fast thinker.

I heard Cavernus walk out muttering something about a fucking waste of good gold and Pantera, serious-faced, said, ‘You can always stay here if you want. Cavernus will take you back in a flash.’

‘No!’ I was on my feet then, my head spinning. I saw the world open before me, in new colours, with a new feel. ‘Show me what you said, and then I’ll decide.’

‘Good.’ A small smile flickered across his face, as if I’d done well, and was being congratulated; as if I was a good man. You don’t know how rare that was. ‘Do you have anything to bring?’

‘No, nothing.’ I had small things, but I didn’t want them; I was going forward into a new life.

‘Let’s go, then. If you could walk apart from me, as if you don’t know me, but watch to see if anyone else is following me, that would be good.’

I did my best. I saw one of the small boys on a rooftop when now I know there must have been at least a dozen, but I didn’t see anyone more important and I am sure that’s because they didn’t know yet what guise he had taken.

We criss-crossed the city twice in the day’s heat. Twice we stopped and Pantera went in somewhere. Once was to a tanner’s in a foul-smelling yard, once was to a scriptorium in the back of a block of small shops, a place where scribes rented out their skills.

Each time, he came out with another man behind him, and each looked as dazed as I felt, as if their world had turned over and been shown to be other than they had thought it.

The first, from the tanner, was a youth of barely twenty years, with a squint and dirty blond hair that looked as if it would shine like spun gold if only he washed it.

He was a killer, I will tell you that now. I might not have grown up a warrior, but I have had my share of street fights and bar-room brawls and I know the type: they’re lean and lanky and slightly awkward and they look as if they couldn’t land a clean blow on a man if he was held still by six others and then you blink and look again and you find he’s got a knife in his hand and he’s cut the throat of a man you’d think he could barely reach and is heading for the next one. That was Felix. He was left-handed and quiet and deadly and he tagged along behind Pantera on the far side of the street and I barely saw him again until we stopped.

Amoricus was the Egyptian scribe, from Memphis; he wasn’t old either, perhaps in his mid-twenties, but he walked strangely, as if he had a pole up his arse, and it wasn’t until the next morning’s latrines that I realized he’d been gelded.

It turned out he’d been a priest of Isis and had committed some heinous crime, spat on the altar or some such, and they’d cut his balls off and sold him into slavery and he’d been forced into writing because he couldn’t do anything else.

But he was a good scribe. He had ink on his fingers that morning and came with his own writing kit, blinking in the sunlight as if he never usually saw it and trotting along the middle of the road behind Pantera like a faithful hound. He’d been on the bright end of that smile, too, I’d wager, and wanted to see it again.

We went down to the river, through the cattle markets, and crossed over the bridge there, to a tavern on the far side called the Retiarius. It wasn’t nearly as well kept as the White Hare — when you’ve lived in a place for eighteen years, you learn what it takes to keep a good bar — but it was busy, which meant nobody paid us any attention and we could sit down out of the public eye.

Pantera stopped us outside and told Amoricus to pretend he was a scribe and we were his slaves, himself included. Pantera had never looked more disreputable than he did when we shuffled in after the little man from Memphis to the table in the corner where Pantera was directing him by tugs at his sleeve.

He sent me to the bar with silver and I came back with passable ale and some cheese and olives and we ate together in a kind of wonder that grew greater as he spoke to us all in the language of western Britain. And we all understood.

To this day, I don’t know how he did it, but he had found three slaves who were of the right temperament and ability to do what he wanted, to be what he wanted, and each of us had a mother or a father or had been reared by a grandmother who had come from Britain. And he had lived there, loved there, fought there in the wars for freedom. That was what bound us in the first place, the language, and all it meant to us.

Then he told us what he wanted.

‘From today, each of you is a free man. Amoricus has paper, pen and ink and will write your manumission papers when we are done. I will sign them, you will each keep your own. If you wish to go, you are welcome.’

‘And if we wish to stay with you?’ asked Felix. He was the quiet kind, who only spoke when necessary, but when he did it was to the point. ‘You sound as if we might wish to do that. What are you offering us?’

‘Gold, in the end. And a position as Vespasian’s freedmen if you wish to stay. Freedom to leave if you wish to go, and land where you want it.’

Felix said, ‘Vespasian is not emperor yet.’

‘We shall make him so. We four, sworn as brothers, my life for yours. There will be some killing. There may be some dying. We will be hunted by Lucius, brother to the upstart Vitellius, and the one thing we must all pledge each other now, in a binding oath, is that if one of us is captured, the others will do all in their power to kill him cleanly before he is taken to Lucius’ questioners.

‘I will teach you to be spies. You will almost certainly have to kill men of Vitellius’ army, perhaps others. You will live roughly, in many guises. You will be nameless and unrecognized, except by me. It will be dirty and hard and painful and at worst will end in a death so slow that crucifixion will seem like a blessing. Will you do it?’

Felix said, ‘There are men calling your name through the whole of Rome today. For eight hundred sesterces, I could sell you to Lucius now.’

Pantera said, ‘I fought at your mother’s side in the battle of the Fallen Oak. She was one of the most fearless warriors I have ever met. I do not believe a son of Cunava would willingly sell out one who fought with his mother. Or you-’ He looked at Amoricus. ‘Your grandfather held a bridge alone against half a century of men for half a day. You are his grandson in looks as well as heart. I don’t believe you would sell me either, but if I am wrong you are welcome to try.’

He was like that, full of quiet confidence. If any one of us had stood up in that bar and said who he was — we’d all worked it out by then — we would have been rich. To a slave, six, seven, eight hundred sesterces was a lifetime’s silver. Pantera was offering gold, but there was no real promise we’d ever see it. What else he offered, though, was more important to each of us than gold: he offered us dignity.

We were in a tavern, so I could not stand up and grip his arm, but I laid my hand flat on the table, palm up, and waited until he laid his on top of it.

‘My life for yours,’ I said. ‘And if you are taken, a clean death if I have to die to make it happen.’

They say that swearing to give his life is the greatest thing a man can do, but we knew, who had lived as slaves with the threat of crucifixion always hanging over us, that a clean death was the greater boon.

I gave my oath willingly, the first thing of my own I had ever given anyone, and the newness of it was like the first flush of love.

I wasn’t alone. I watched the faces of the other two as they swore, saw tears prick their eyes. We were strangers and we were brothers. And we were free.

It was afternoon by then, heading to evening. Pantera drained his beaker and nudged Amoricus to stand so that we could all follow.

‘We should get to work,’ Pantera said. ‘We’re going to a hiring fair, to see if we can get ourselves taken on to carry the litter of a lady. You three go first. I’ll come last and we’ll see if it can be done.’