by M C Scott
‘About two streets ahead of us,’ Pantera said, grimly. He thrust blue scarves at us, taken from dead men as we escaped. ‘Wind these on to your arms.’ And to Caenis, ‘Can you run?’
Caenis glanced at me, then bent down and took off her sandals. Barefoot, dust-lined, she looked like a slave until you saw the fire in her eyes. ‘Let’s go.’
*
‘Pantera! Stop!’
Trabo stood outside the temple of Isis, his blade in his hand. He looked exactly like the men fighting in the streets, but bigger, and more angry, and all his ire was directed at Pantera. ‘One step forward and you’re a dead man.’
Pantera stopped exactly where he was told, about ten paces from the white marble steps leading into the temple. ‘Is Jocasta inside?’ he asked.
A flicker of panic in Trabo’s eye betrayed him. He might have been a good legionary, but he would have been desperately bad at dice. ‘She’s not here.’
Pantera didn’t call him on the lie. ‘So why the blade?’
‘You’re working for Lucius. You’ll take Domitian and hand him over and all our work will be for nothing.’
‘And Jocasta, who isn’t here, told you that?’
‘She said it before she left.’
‘Then I suggest you bring Domitian and Horus and come with us. We’ll go somewhere safe. You can suggest the place and I’ll come with you. I won’t leave, I won’t signal anyone. We’ll sit in together and wait until Vitellius is deposed and Domitian can claim the throne. How does that sound to you?’
It sounded perfectly reasonable to me, but Trabo had gone beyond reason; he was in love with Jocasta and her lies had rotted his mind.
Pantera never took his eyes off him, didn’t nod at me or wink or crook a finger, but I saw a shift in the set of his shoulders and it was signal enough.
‘Haaaa!’
Trabo was a trained legionary, but I was bigger, and louder, and my father had been a warrior of the Ordovices; he had taught me all the moves a man might make against an armed opponent.
Trabo’s blade slashed fast past my face but I had already ducked and swerved. I came in under his arm. My fist took him in the side of the head and my hip caught his, sending him crashing back on to the marble steps. He didn’t make any attempt to rise.
‘Is he dead?’ Caenis asked.
‘Not yet.’ Pantera was kneeling at Trabo’s side, his hand on his neck. He looked up at me and there was a respect in his eyes that made my heart sing.
‘That was well done,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ And then, ‘Jocasta’s inside with Domitian. Felix went round the back.’
We burst in together, saw the blood together.
‘Jocasta!’
‘Felix!’
We threw ourselves forward, for it was Jocasta’s blood that sprayed from a cut on her arm, but it was Felix who lay, purple-lipped, on the floor with no sign of life in his eyes.
I forgot about Domitian then; he might have been son of the emperor, but Felix had been my friend. I would have killed anyone who stood over him, and Jocasta must have seen that, for she whirled round, laughing, and leapt out of the back window, the one that Felix had come in through.
I held his hand, squeezed it, felt no squeeze back. His face was still, quiet, white. His uneven eyes were wide open, with the black points in them stretched as if he’d taken nightshade.
‘He’s dead. There was poison on the blade. See, where it entered?’ Pantera was kneeling at Felix’ side, his hand on his neck. ‘Borros, I’m so sorry. We nearly had her there.’
‘Do you want me to go after—’ I waved a hand at the window, but in truth I wanted to stay with Felix. He looked so peaceful, so young.
‘I’m sorry, we have to find Jocasta. She’s taken Domitian.’
We found Horus cowering behind the open door, invisible until we closed it again. He had hidden there, it transpired, when he saw Jocasta coming.
Horus said, ‘She would have killed me.’
Pantera was furious. He was on his feet and at the door but Horus caught his arm. ‘You won’t find her if she doesn’t want to be found,’ he said. ‘She can vanish as easily as you can and Domitian with her. Keep the lady Caenis safe. She’s the other half of the same coin.’
Pantera rounded on him, raging. I had never seen him angry before; it was a cold, fierce, frightening thing. ‘Did she pay you to say that?’
I was aghast. I had thought Horus was Pantera’s friend, but I watched the blood drain from his face and knew, then, that he was no friend. I stood, slowly; lifted my fist. If Felix had died because of him …
Horus whined like a struck hound. ‘Don’t! I am yours. I always was. When I wrote the letters, I didn’t know what she planned. I have done nothing for her since. If you believe nothing else, know that I am loyal to Mucianus, and his goals are yours.’
They locked eyes for a moment, as deer lock horns.
Stiffly, Pantera said, ‘We need to get Caenis to safety before Jocasta comes back with half of Vitellius’ Guard. Will you provide sanctuary at the House? With Borros and your Belgian, it’s probably one of the safest places in Rome just now.’
‘Of course.’ Horus leaked relief. He wept, silently, slowly. He looked like a bedraggled cat.
‘Good.’ Pantera looked my way. ‘If I carry Felix back, can you carry Trabo as well as you did Caenis?’
Of course I could. Why ask? He was heavier, but he was only a man. I have carried whole oxen in my time. I would rather have carried Felix, but Pantera took him, gently, and we walked side by side.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
Rome, 20 December AD 69
Geminus
‘WHAT I’D GIVE now for a company of Scythian bow-men!’
The ironsmiths’ boys were howling out our positions. The Blue Guards were racing at us as if we were the only men in Rome they had to hunt down. Bowmen would have been good, but we’d have needed a whole company, and if we had that we wouldn’t have been where we were.
Juvens knew this part of Rome; I had hardly been in it. I said, ‘Where do we go?’
‘This way.’ Juvens grabbed my sleeve and tugged me into an alley to our left. ‘If we run, we can get to the barracks and make a stand there.’
A last stand, a hero’s death; there was nothing else, now.
I said, ‘We’re south of the forum. It’s a mile away and all uphill.’
‘Then it’s a good thing you haven’t got soft on good living yet.’ Juvens threw me a wild grin. ‘Last one there pays the rest a month’s wages each!’ He smacked my arm, lightly, as children do, starting a race. ‘Go!’
Heads down, arms pumping, we ran. Half a hundred men ran after us.
Somewhere near the forum, we lost Lentulus to bad luck and a thrown spear; if someone hadn’t shouted his name, if he hadn’t turned just as the spear was cast, if the aim had been less true … but he was dead and left lying, which was shameful, and nobody would speak of it.
We ran on.
I tasted blood in my throat. My windpipe was on fire, my lungs fit to burst. When I closed my eyes, my pulse flashed bright across the black inside my lids and we hadn’t reached the steep part of the Quirinal yet.
Juvens was right; I had become soft in the few months in Vitellius’ company. It wouldn’t have mattered, but there was nothing soft at all about the blue-marked legionaries we faced, the men coming up the hill behind us, grim-faced and steady.
They were in no hurry; there was nowhere for us to go, except into the trap that was the barracks: one way in, one way out. And that exit could be blocked by a ten-man shield wall and held for as long as they felt like it once they had us trapped inside.
We had to stop for breath. I found I was leaning on a statue of Venus with my hand planted on her thigh, indecently high. I pushed myself away.
‘A month’s wages, you said?’ And I was running again, driving myself as if I were in training, listening to Juvens’ constant commentary on the men following us.
‘Hades, they�
�ve brought up the cavalry. That means they’ve won at the Park of Sallust. Petilius Cerialis will have paid good gold to be allowed to go back there again and wipe out the shame of yesterday’s defeat … Don’t stop now, children, they’re putting a push on … Look out—’
Eight of them came at us in a wall from the side. Iron flashed in the winter sun. I hurled up my shield, struck out in a curving arc with my blade, felt the clash of iron – and recoiled as scalding blood sprayed across my face. I tasted it. It blinded me. I heard the scream of a stricken man and in all the carnage around, all the screams and the hollered oaths, I recognized that voice, and the finality with which it was cut off.
‘Juvens!’
I fought with my eyes shut, screaming; slashed out and felt the blade bite flesh, strike iron, heard it clang on a helmet, the impact so hard that it shocked me to the shoulder, but I felt my man go down and then Halotus was at my one side and Thrasyllus at the other … but no Juvens. He was lying to one side, sprawled in the filth.
I smeared my eyes clear, and, bending, saw the gash across his throat and the blood that foamed about it. He had clamped his mouth shut, but there was life still in his wide-stretched eyes.
‘Fend them off!’
I grabbed Juvens under the armpits and dragged him back, kicked a door open behind me, hauled him inside.
Two men could hold that doorway with ease and Halotus and Thrasyllus did so with the ferocity of grief. I heard them kill at least three men. The rest stepped back and considered their courage. I knew then that they’d either leave us to get help or just leave. In that moment, I didn’t care which.
I took a deep breath and choked on it, swearing; by bad chance, I had broken into a tanner’s, ripe with the foul stink of curing hides and vats of rotting urine.
Kicking aside chairs, stools, workbenches, I laid Juvens on the floor. He tried to speak; blood foamed from the gash in his neck. His wild, beautiful face twisted with the effort.
‘Don’t.’ I lifted his hand, squeezed it. ‘There’s nothing left to say.’
His eyes said there was. His fingers clawed tight around my wrist. His gaze hunted wildly round the room and came back to my face. He tried to speak without speaking.
‘I don’t understand. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I’ll meet you on the banks of the Styx before the day is out, which has to be worth more than a month’s wages. I’ll put silver on your eyes to pay the ferryman. It has been a good life.’
Juvens couldn’t tut, but it was there, on his face, the upward twitch up his brows. He had never believed in the tales told to the credulous and he wasn’t about to believe them now.
He still wanted to speak and had a moment’s inspiration. Lifting his free hand, he wet a finger with his own blood. On the pale and costly fabric of my court tunic, bought and paid for by Vitellius from the imperial coffers, he drew a bloody letter, and another, and another.
He hadn’t the strength to complete all he needed, but what he wrote was enough. FORGET OAT
‘Forget my oath? You mean the one to kill Pantera? Or the one to serve the emperor?’
BOTH
LIVE
His hand reached up and stripped the scarf from my arm, or tried to. The knots were too tight, but the meaning was clear.
‘What of honour? What of courage? What of all the things that bind the legions together?’
He gave a shrug and a nod together, and a faint grin that was all the old Juvens; wild, erratic, carefree. His tilted palm said, ‘What of them? Life is too precious.’
His mouth framed the word Go. His eyes flicked to the door and back.
I tried to match his smile, and couldn’t; my throat was too tight, my chest too full of hurt. Because he was right. I wondered how long I had known it. And yet—
‘We both gave an oath in the temple of Jupiter,’ I said, and my voice was dry as ash. ‘But the temple is gone now, and the oaths burned with it. They were given to a poisonous man, for poisonous ends. I will not pursue Trabo, or Pantera. But I will go to the barracks and die with our men. Honour requires it. And I will join you by evening. Is that enough?’
It had to be enough because the light had gone from Juvens’ eyes; no chance now for one last, mercurial thought, no smile, no wild idea.
The dying go so swiftly at the end. Always the speed of their leaving catches me unawares; so much left to say, to promise, to pray for.
I hadn’t asked what to put on his monument, or even if there was to be one, and now I couldn’t.
I smoothed his eyes shut with my hand, tipped coins from my belt-purse and laid them on the lids to hold them closed. I left silver; a fitting fare for a fitting man.
The freedom from my oath left me feeling unnaturally buoyant, as if someone had lifted leaden armour from my shoulders. I had no illusions about surviving the day, but I could die freed of petty vengeance; that much was good.
At the door, Halotus and Thrasyllus had killed two men each and the rest had run; the alley was clear.
I poked my head out, took a look round and up and got my bearings. We were perhaps three blocks south of the forum, with the Quirinal hill just behind and our barracks at the back of it.
At the door, I cleaned the grip of my sword on the hem of my tunic. The letters Juvens had drawn were clear across it. I had no time to wash them out, and didn’t want to.
‘To the barracks, then,’ I said. ‘A month’s wages, I believe, paid out by the last one there.’
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
Rome, 20 December AD 69
Marcus, leader of the silver-boys
THE HEIGHTS OF Rome had been ours until this day, when every man and his son decided he owned them too.
Men, women and children were in places only silver-boys had been and so we had to get down to the ground where we were able to move about freely. The soldiers didn’t attack us, and as long as we kept clear of the worst fighting there was profit to be made from doors left ajar and market stalls abandoned.
Early in the day, Pantera had sent me to Drusus, to find out how the emperor was. He didn’t want him harmed, see, although he knew the risk. He said Vespasian wanted Vitellius kept safe and if he – Pantera – couldn’t give him his brother alive, at least he would deliver his enemy still breathing.
So, through the day, whenever I had time, I went back to the palace and Drusus let me in and I knew when the emperor went to hide in his house on the Aventine, thinking at least the enemy soldiers might not look for him there, and then, later, when he returned again to the palace, thinking it better to stay there. He knew they were going to kill him, I think: he didn’t want to die like a rat in a hole.
I took that information myself to Pantera; he was coming out of the House of the Lyre, where another Marcus was working as his runner.
He shook his head when he heard my news. ‘The man is mad. He has absolutely no sense of self-preservation. Geminus should never have left him.’
‘Geminus is near the forum,’ I said. ‘I saw him as I came to you.’
‘Did you? That was well done.’ Pantera’s smile grew wide at that. ‘Could you find him again? Take him a message?’
‘Of course. This is Rome. I can do anything.’
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
Rome, 20 December AD 69
Geminus
WE RAN COVERTLY, keeping to side streets and back alleys, dodging into doorways to avoid the hunting packs of Antonius’ men and the rooftop vigilantes who were all howling for Blue now: the mob will always support the winning side and we were so clearly losing.
We turned a corner and saw a flow of townspeople crossing our path; a sea of ardent faces. ‘Come on!’ I found a last burst of speed and turned tightly, to cut behind them. Behind me, Halotus was breathing like a narwhal. Thrasyllus trailed us, too far back to be heard.
A burst of whistles rose over the street, a brief chorus of songbirds in the afternoon, which was odd, but there wasn’t time to contemplate its meaning because a small street boy with dirty
blond hair had swooped down from a wall to stand in my way, and then three others.
They formed a line across the road.
‘Get out of the way! Clear the road!’ I was not so desperate yet that I would have killed a child to reach my goal, but I wasn’t far off.
The boy didn’t move. He was small; you could have crushed his hand in your own, easy as a fistful of spring walnuts. ‘You are Geminus,’ he said. ‘I am Marcus. Pantera sent me with a message for you.’
‘Pantera?’ I stopped, hard, in front of the boy. ‘What message?’
He closed his eyes, reciting from memory. ‘I am to tell you that your emperor was taken safely to his house on the Aventine, but that he saw the condition of the warring cohorts and believed that they would soon engulf his house, and that his presence was a danger to his wife and children. Accordingly, he has returned to the palace, which is commendable, but not safe. If you turn back now, I can show you a way that will get you to him ahead of the people. If they take him, they will kill him, but if he comes out the back way we may yet keep him safe for you.’
‘You will keep him safe for me?’ I laughed, hoarsely. Halotus had joined me, and Thrasyllus. Either one of them was likely to bring his sword out shortly and use it. The boy was nine years old at most, and fearless. ‘Why should we trust you? Or Pantera?’
‘He said when you asked that, I was to show you this.’ The boy held out one dirty paw. On his hand lay Lucius’ ring. The shining emerald was a feral eye, fixed on me.
He went on, ‘I am to tell you that help is not coming, but you must know this by now. I am also to say that the lord Domitian, in the name of his father, wishes you and Vitellius no harm. There is still time for your lord to walk free as he was promised, but only if you move swiftly. If the crowd reaches him first, neither you nor Pantera has the power to turn them.’
‘We don’t, do we?’ I could have stood there for the rest of the day, mesmerized by that ring. I had still hoped; against all evidence, against sanity, I had still nurtured a hope that Lucius and his cohorts might come to our aid. And now the ring.
