M. Scott: Rome: The Emperor's spy

‘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.’

Math thought the dark-haired woman was Hannah when Libo and his men carried her bodily under the archway into Nero’s private garden. Her face was bright with new bruises, half hidden by hair so full of ash that it looked white, with only streaks of black.

Then she raised her head, and the eyes that met his were not Hannah’s, nor was the hard, angry smile. He could breathe again.

He was breaking his fast with the emperor in the hedged area away from the rest of the morning’s havoc. There were no singing birds here, but wild roses twined over the arch and all around flowers opened to the growing dawn.

Math had not washed on waking, but nor had Nero; he smelled of smoke and grit and a night’s work. He kept his hand on Math’s knee as they ate, and only removed it when Libo ushered in the woman who was not Hannah. The big watchman treated her with respect bordering on fear; Math didn’t think it was he who had beaten her before she was brought here.

After her, other men brought Shimon, who had been beaten far more badly. And then they dragged in someone else, small, wiry, dark-haired, his face purpled by bruises.

Math shot to his feet. ‘That’s Mergus! Pantera took him up on to the Aventine to rescue…’

He tailed to silence. The woman who wasn’t Hannah put a finger to her lips. Math was trying to work out who she could be when a centurion of the Watch marched under the rose arch and stamped to a salute in front of the dining table.

Nero ignored him, pointedly. His gaze was on Mergus and it was not kind. Opening his hand, he showed a fat, sweat-marked ring on his palm. Gold greeted the morning, and a blue cabochon sapphire with stars at its heart. Apollo played his lyre at the sides.

To Mergus, in the stilted voice he had always used to address Akakios, he said, ‘You have used this, our token, against our officer. We might say you have abused our token.’

‘Lord, such was not my intention.’ Wisely, Mergus dropped to both knees. ‘Pantera, our new prefect, gave me the ring and with it your authority. Such was my understanding. His best concern was that the woman and man who had given their services to Juno should be restored to safety and dignity. I was ordered to do whatever that took, up to and including the arrest of Centurion Appollonius.’ Mergus gave the faintest of nods in the direction of the man who had just marched in.

‘He outranks you,’ Nero said.

‘And yet he was lighting fires on the Aventine hill, lord. I have witnesses who will attest to that. He was following his tribune’s orders even after that man had died by his own hand. In doing so, he forfeited his position.’

Nero’s flat eyes swivelled round. ‘Is this true?’

‘Lord.’ The centurion named Appollonius did not kneel, but bowed stiffly. ‘I had information that a Hebrew had ordered the fires to be lit. I was further informed that this Hebrew and his Egyptian whore had evicted the true keeper of Juno’s geese and appropriated her dwelling. I went there and found this man, Shimon of Galilee, known also as Shimon the zealot, long an enemy of Rome. I found also this Hypatia, his whore. She cursed my men in the name of Isis when they arrested her. I am satisfied she is Egyptian.’

Hypatia. That was the name. A friend of Hannah’s. And the centurion was afraid to look at her directly. And he hadn’t denied lighting the fires. Math noticed that. He hoped Nero had too.

The woman had certainly noticed. Under the light of the pitch-pine torches, her caustic gaze would have shrivelled the centurion had he dared to catch her eye.

Math, who did dare, studied the bruises on her wrists and one vivid weal on the side of her face. She saw him looking and shrugged one shoulder, wryly. Math nodded back the same dry appraisal of the lunacy of adults; a secret between them.

Everyone else was watching Nero, whose word could kill them speedily or slowly, or not at all.

He crooked a finger at the guards. ‘Bring the woman. We would question her.’

‘Lord.’ Appollonius extended a warning hand. ‘She is dangerous.’

‘Then we look to you to keep us safe.’ Nero’s smile was thin as a snake’s. ‘She does not appear to us dangerous.’ Three men of the Watch brought her forward. ‘Who are you?’

She stood straight and tall and beautiful. ‘I am a Sibyl, lord. Keeper of the flame of Isis.’

A Sibyl! The word hissed around the garden with no one giving it voice. Math thought his own eyes might start from his head from shock.

‘A Sibyl?’ Nero spoke what everyone else dared not. ‘One of those who wrote the prophecy?’

‘Lord, I ordered that the prophecy be copied, nothing more. The words were spoken a hundred generations ago and circulated widely at that time. We released them again now in such a way that those who cared most for Rome might have an opportunity to prevent the conflagration and all that it prefaced. Our intent was honourable.’ Her voice was the perfect chime of a cymbal at dawn, but Math caught the fine edge of a tremor in her hands and her shoulders.