Gates of Rome

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘Gangs,’ said Liam. ‘Criminal gangs.’

  Maddy looked up at the creaking wooden balconies that loomed over them. ‘Oh, I thought Caligula was like totally in charge of every–’

  ‘He rules by consent,’ said Bob. ‘While he pays the Praetorian Guard and turns a blind eye to the activities of the collegia, they are effectively his police force.’

  ‘Mind you,’ cut in Liam, ‘from what bits and pieces we’ve heard, even they think he’s gone too mad.’

  As they drew up beyond the last of the traders’ stalls, Bob clicked his tongue and rapped the reins across the ponies’ backs. Their plodding stopped.

  ‘But, if everyone thinks he’s a crazy fakirchana-head, why is he still in charge? Why hasn’t somebody just got rid of him?’

  ‘Everyone’s completely afraid of him.’ Liam reached under a lock of his dark hair and adjusted the babel-bud in his ear. ‘Maybe some of them do actually think he’s some sort of god. I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s got his hands on some tech that makes him appear like a god,’ said Maddy. ‘Say a gun … that would do it, right? Make you look like you’ve got super godlike powers? Sheesh, even a plain old flashlight or a cellphone could look godlike, right?’

  She looked up at the chaos of wooden slats above them, the colours of robes and togas drying in the noon sun. They were opposite a narrow rat run between buildings, little more than a yard wide, leading to a shadowed courtyard beyond.

  The sounds of life echoed out of it: the barking of dogs, the squalling of a baby, the shrill cry of a woman’s voice raised in anger; countless lives lived on top of each other in cramped squalor.

  ‘Have you seen any tech, Liam? Bob? Anything at all that shouldn’t be here in this time.’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘I’ve seen nothing like that.’ Liam shook his head. ‘If someone did come back here seventeen years ago and they made a big show of themselves, well …’

  ‘Chariots from the heavens,’ said Maddy, quoting from one of the sources of the time. ‘Some sort of modern vehicles. Trucks or something?’

  ‘Right … Chariots from the heavens and messengers from God an’ all that. If someone made a big spectacle like that,’ Liam said with a shrug, ‘there’s not a sign of them now.’

  Bob hopped down off the cart.

  ‘It’s like this city just swallowed them up,’ added Liam.

  Maddy peered down the rat run into the dark courtyard. ‘That where you were staying?’

  ‘Aye.’ Liam pointed up the side of a clay-brick wall. ‘Third floor.’ The building looked more modern than she could have imagined a Roman building would look. Five storeys in height, with rickety balconies of wooden slats and wicker screens for privacy.

  ‘The building’s basic and very smelly. Gets noisy too. And it’s owned by a right miserable old grump. But it is cheap. Just hope he’ll let us have our room back.’ Liam dug into a pouch tied round his waist. Maddy heard coins jangling heavily.

  ‘Where’d you get the money from?’

  Liam looked guiltily at Bob. ‘We, uh … well, we kind of mugged someone.’

  ‘Kind of … or did?’

  ‘Did.’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘Needs must and all that.’

  ‘I better go and speak to the landlord. See about getting our room back.’

  ‘Those babel-buds work OK?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘Aye. You get some gibberish out of them sometimes.’ He turned to Bob. ‘Better bring them ponies in quick.’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  He turned to the others. ‘We used to have four of them … but people are eating horseflesh now. You’re best not to leave ’em unattended.’

  Bob began to unhitch the animals from the cart, Sal helping while Liam led Maddy down the narrow rat run into the courtyard.

  As she emerged from the narrow passageway, she looked up. All around the courtyard, on all four sides, she could see balconies and walkways hugging the walls, stacked one on top of the other and propped up on wooden support stilts; she could see the curious faces of children and women looking down at them, a dozen different conversations shouted out from one side to the other. Chickens down in the courtyard, chickens wandering freely along the walkways and balconies. And at the very top an overhanging lip of terracotta roof tiles framed a square of daylight.

  Liam approached a thickset, bearded man wearing a leather apron, hacking with a cleaver at the skinned carcass of what looked like a greyhound. She heard Liam mutter something to himself, and remembered that’s how the buds worked: they translated what they heard. Liam cocked his head slightly, listening to the almost immediate translation being whispered into his ear, then repeated it to the man.

  ‘Salve. Rediimus. Passimus priotem concavem iterum locare?’

  The man stopped hacking at the carcass then eventually shrugged. ‘Si vis.’ He held out a bloody hand. ‘Quiniue sestertii.’

  Liam nodded. A barely discernible delay as he listened for the translation. He dug into his pouch and handed over several coins to the man.

  Maddy smiled, impressed at how effectively, almost seamlessly, the babel-bud appeared to work. She made a note to give it a try herself.

  Liam nodded a thank-you to the man and was about to lead her across the straw and dung-carpeted courtyard towards an external wooden stairway that would take them up to the building’s third floor when they both heard a commotion coming from the rat run.

  CHAPTER 39

  AD 54, Subura District, Rome

  With the sound of raised voices, Liam turned to see Sal dragging one of the ponies by its reins into the courtyard. It was snorting frantically, distressed and wide-eyed, hooves clattering and skidding in the dirt as she tried to manhandle it in. ‘They tried to take our ponies off us!’

  ‘Who did?’

  A moment later, Bob emerged from the rat run dragging the other animal after him. He let the pony’s reins go and smacked its flank so that it darted across the courtyard towards the other one. A dozen chickens squawked, flapped at the disturbance.

  ‘Caution!’ Bob barked out.

  Almost immediately, a dozen men spilled into the courtyard, all of them thickset and muscular. All of them armed with short swords or daggers, drawn ready to use.

  Liam heard the landlord’s voice, his bud translating almost as instantly as an echo.

 

  One of the men stepped forward. ‘Titus Varelius adsumet unam vestrarum bestiarum!’

  the bud whispered quietly in his ear.

  The landlord snapped an angry reply and thumbed his nose at them defiantly.

  The collegia leader smiled, a broad, gap-toothed grin. His gaze settled on Bob.

 

  said the landlord.

  Liam was no longer aware that he was actually listening to the bud in his ear.

  ‘This animal is ours,’ said Bob in passable Latin. ‘I recommend you leave immediately!’

  The collegia leader’s smile broadened. ‘I hoped you’d say that.’ He pulled a short sword from his belt. ‘Then we shall have some sport with you. Mamercus! Mettius! Vel! This big brute’s yours!’

  Three of his men stepped forward, grinning like naughty schoolboys as they angled the tips of their blades towards Bob and sized him up.

  ‘Are you an ox or a man?’ one of them laughed.

  Bob scowled. ‘Neither.’ He lunged. A whiplash of movement that concluded with the tips of his fingers lodged firmly beneath the jawline of one of the men; the jab had crushed his windpipe. As the man’s legs began to buckle beneath him, and he choked, gasping for breath, Bob caught his short sword in mid-air as it began to tumble from a limp hand. With a deft flick, he was suddenly holding it by the handle instead of the blade. He lunged forward, swinging it at the throat of the second collegia man. But this one was a little m
ore prepared. He thrust out his blade, managing to parry the heavy sweep barely inches from his neck. The ring of metal echoed round the courtyard and all of a sudden, Liam noticed, every creaking wooden balcony above them seemed to be lined with curious onlookers. It reminded him of a crowded penny theatre.

  The gap-toothed leader decided the ‘sport’ was already over with and barked an order to the rest of his men to attack Bob. They fanned out either side of him.

  Liam pulled Sal back into a corner of the courtyard, beside the old landlord who was already quickly packing away his joints of meat and muttering to himself. ‘Those scum think they own the place!’

  ‘Maddy!’ Liam called out to her. She was still standing pretty much in the middle of the courtyard. ‘Back up! Give Bob some room!’

  Three of them closed in on Bob at the same time, one of them swinging his sword at his neck, the other two thrusting at his torso. He ducked the swing at his neck deftly enough, but one of the other blades lodged deep into the side of his ribcage.

  A groan erupted from the balconies above. They recognized the wound as a fatal one. That the fight wasn’t going to last much longer.

  The landlord grimaced and shook his head. ‘Pity.’

  But Bob casually twisted his body, yanking the handle of the sword protruding from his ribs out of the hands of the man who’d thrust it into him. He grasped the handle and wrenched the blade out of his side. One sword in each hand now, all the collegia thugs had successfully managed to do was arm him with two swords … and, of course, annoy him.

  Bob swept the sword in his left hand down low, a round, scythe-like sweep that hamstrung one of them and lopped the foot off another.

  In his other hand he flipped the short sword blade-over-hilt, catching it by its tip then throwing it end over end at the third man who’d swung his heavy sword carelessly for Bob’s neck. It thudded into his stomach, the man doubling over with a grunt and dropping to his knees in the dirt, beside the other two men clutching their legs, spurting arcs of dark crimson on to the ground.

  Above the courtyard voices cheered out from the balconies. Liam glanced up at them.

  They’re cheering for Bob.

  Bob picked up another discarded weapon and again had a sword in each hand. His beefy hands were spinning the blades like marching batons; shimmering blurs of glinting metal, like rotary saw blades; a whusk-whusk-whusk of sharp edges slicing through the air.

  ‘Who’s next?’ Bob announced calmly in heavily accented Latin.

  He’s a one-man army. Liam shook his head in amazement. Isn’t he always?

  The collegia thugs were certainly now looking less sure of themselves. Liam guessed reputation was at stake here. He could see the gang leader weighing things up, wondering whether to withdraw from the courtyard with all these people still openly braying their support for Bob, or try and finish the ox-of-a-man off. A lesson to everyone watching that no one – no one, not even this extraordinary brute – was going to walk away after thumbing his nose at their collegia.

  He barked at the rest of his men. ‘Enough of the play! Now finish him!’

  All six began to close in, their eyes warily on the spinning blades and the mischievous grin spreading across Bob’s face.

  Liam glanced at Sal. ‘Big mistake.’

  She wasn’t listening, or didn’t hear him over the caterwauling from above. Instead, she closed her eyes and turned away, just as the first wet thunk of a blade slicing through muscle and cracking bone filled the air.

  Liam watched the blur of Bob leaping forward – the grace of a woodland deer married to the rippling, muscular bulk of a giant bear. He was no longer spinning his blades like a manic circus performer; instead, with flashes of metal and bright droplets of blood, he deployed a sequence of fast and precise thrusts and slices that dropped all six men in rapid succession; each wet thud accompanied by an increasingly raucous cheer of delight from above.

  A hand severed at the wrist hit the dirt a yard away from Liam, clenching and unclenching the hilt of a short sword reflexively.

  In less than half a minute all six men lay dying, clutching bloody stumps or cradling puckering stomach wounds, desperately holding their insides in.

  The courtyard echoed with a hundred or more spectators cheering gleefully as those collegia men still alive withdrew back down the rat run. The voices of the apartment block’s tenants echoed off the clay brick walls. Someone even tossed a basketful of sunflower petals from the third balcony into the air; they spun like confetti all the way down, finally settling on Bob’s sweating head.

  The landlord stared wide-eyed at Bob, muttering some oath under his breath.

  CHAPTER 40

  AD 54, Subura District, Rome

  ‘Bob’s become some sort of celebrity,’ said Maddy.

  Liam made a face and spat out an olive stone. ‘And what’s one of those?’

  ‘Famous people, you know?’

  ‘People who get rich for doing nothing,’ added Sal. ‘Mostly.’

  ‘He’s a hero to the people in this building,’ said Maddy, ‘aren’t you, Bob?’

  He nodded. ‘I appear to have earned their approval.’

  Maddy looked around the simple furnishings of the room: straw mat on the floor, a small low table between them, almost completely filled with food. They’d had a steady stream of offerings all evening. Gentle, polite knocks on their door, shy smiles through the grilled covered greeting hatch, whispers of gratitude and wooden platters of fruit, bread and amphoras of watered-down wine left behind. Food many of these people could ill afford to surrender so willingly.

  The landlord, still wearing his blood-spattered leather apron, had even offered this room to them for nothing, although he’d not made clear how long that gesture of goodwill was intended for.

  ‘Bob humiliated those thugs,’ said Liam.

  ‘They run this district of Rome. The people do not like them,’ said Bob.

  Liam frowned and spat out another stone. ‘They’re vicious crooks. Extortionists, so they are.’

  Maddy sipped at her cup of diluted, sour-tasting wine. ‘These people are looking at Bob as some sort of champion now, aren’t they? Their champion.’

  ‘That could be of some tactical use to us,’ said Bob.

  ‘On the other hand …’ She swilled the wine round her mouth and made a face. ‘Ugh! On the other hand it could attract unwanted attention. We do need to be discreet.’

  Sal was fiddling around with one of the babel-buds. ‘Tactical use? Jahulla! We don’t even really have a plan!’ She looked up. ‘Do we?’

  ‘Visitors came by not so long ago,’ said Maddy. ‘Within living memory of some of the people in Rome. Perhaps some of the people in this very building saw them? We need to ask around, carefully of course. We need to figure out when they came back. Precisely when. And why? What was their game plan?’

  ‘More to the point,’ added Liam, ‘where the devil are they now?’

  ‘Who knows? They might be here still. They might have gone native. Blended in.’

  They sat in silence. Outside, in the courtyard below, they could hear a dog snapping and yowling. Through the thin walls of clay brick they could faintly hear the muted exchanges of other families: somewhere a woman cried; somewhere angry voices snapped at each other; somewhere pots clattered on a brazier.

  Liam made a face again. ‘Gah! So bitter.’ He spat out another stone on to the side of the plate of stale fruit, curling his lips in disgust. ‘These grapes are rubbish, so they are.’

  Maddy looked at him, then at the olive stone. ‘God, you can be such a moron, Liam.’

  It was a tap as gentle and as light as a feather’s touch. Quiet enough that neither Sal nor Liam stirred. Or Bob. He’d gone into one of his occasional ‘standby’ modes, sorting his memories into more efficient storage compartments. ‘De-cluttering’ was the term Sal used for it. Not quite what he was doing inside his head, but close enough.

  Maddy sat up and listened carefully. The city, or
at least this district of it, had finally quietened down for the night. Even the feral dogs had stopped their yapping.

  Tap-tap.

  Someone at their door. Maddy softly called, ‘Who’s there?’ before she realized, even if she knew how to ask that in Latin, she wouldn’t have a hope of making sense of the answer. She fumbled in the dark for the babel-bud and found it where Sal had left it on the table. She eased it into her ear, and then quietly – whispering to herself – asked the same question. The bud soothingly translated for her.

  She stood beside the oak door. She could see the faint, flickering amber of candlelight coming through the door’s grated hatch and round the loose-fitting doorframe. She could see the shadows of somebody’s feet shuffling impatiently outside. She looked out into the passageway.

  It was their landlord. ‘Yes? Can I help?’

  ‘I’ve got someone here,’ he grunted, ‘who’d like to meet your friend.’

  She noticed a man beside him; tall and lean, his dark curls emerged from beneath a hood pulled up to hide as much of his face as possible. By the flickering glow of the candle, she thought at first he looked quite young, but then saw flecks of grey in his dark hair, the traces of lines around his eyes; his was a face that looked like it had seen the better part of thirty or forty years, but he was still very lean and fit.

  A soldier perhaps.

  Maddy tried the phrase of Latin the bud had whispered in her ear. ‘Who is that?’

  The landlord replied in a soft growl, a ragged voice that sounded like it had spent a lifetime being abused. ‘He’s an old friend of mine from my army days. A good man.’

  The younger man stepped forward. ‘May I speak to the one who got the better of Varelius’s men?’

  ‘He’s asleep.’ Which was kind of true.

  ‘I wish to discuss a matter with him. An important matter as it happens.’

  Maddy narrowed her eyes – the only part of her they could see through the door slot. She hoped this expression of suspicion was universal and timeless enough that they’d understand she wasn’t opening this door for them, not on the strength of that.