M. Scott - Rome - The Emperor's spy

‘I’ll lead them in,’ Pantera had said. ‘There is a thing your driver must know.’

Math had gaped at him, horrified, then looked to Ajax for permission to carry on into the tunnel. But, once again, Pantera’s green-brown eyes had met Ajax’s amber ones over Math’s head, and once again a decision had been made without him.

‘Math, go to the apprentices’ enclosure,’ Ajax had said. ‘The horses will be safe with the emperor’s bodyguard.’

It was the last in a series of mortal insults. Always, every single time, in every race in the history of racing, the boy who led the racehorses to the tunnel led them also through it to the start line.

Math had relinquished the lead ropes as if they were his life, swearing inwardly to all the gods he could think of that if the Green team lost he would know it was Pantera’s fault, or Ajax’s, or both.

He spun away, kicking at the chariot wheel in passing, kicking again at the wall of the hippodrome, kicking at the shin of the last boy in the queue lining up to go into the apprentices’ enclosure, which was suicidally stupid when Math had just been marked for the kind of special attention that saw boys scarred for life, if not dead.

Murder happened often enough in the apprentices’ enclosure and was never of great concern; the strongest lived and the weakest died and sometimes a silver coin changed hands afterwards to soften the blow to the driver who must find a new boy.

The offended youth had turned, slowly. He was as tall as Ajax, and as broad, but with a head full of hair and lacking the scars. His nose was flat from many fights, his eyes small and violent as a boar’s.

A White band at his brow identified his team as the matched blacks that ran for Gallia Lugdunensis. White ribbons danced and dangled from his wrists, light as a flight of moths settled by chance on a rutting bull.

He had two companions, equally big, equally beribboned. All three were armed with short, vicious eating knives, honed on both edges and curved at the tip. They had flashed forward, close enough to lift Math’s hair with the wind of their passing.

Math did not carry a knife; he had always relied on his speed and a greater knowledge of the streets to protect him. Here, in the open, the three youths were too close and the crowd pressed too tight to make running an option. He had stood his ground obstinately and thought what Ajax and Pantera might say when they found him dead. The idea held a certain bleak satisfaction.

‘Math?’

Hannah had caught his shoulder, spinning him round, away from the danger. In the few moments since he had left the tunnel’s mouth, she had become cleaner, and ceased to stoop. Green ribbons were bound about her wrists. On her, they were bright as new leaves.

‘Look.’ She had spoken in Greek, which lifted them apart from the mob. When Math had looked up at her, she had pointed back to the tunnel’s mouth. ‘It was for a reason you were sent away.’

She was a woman and a healer and she had held him in the crook of her arm as if the knives did not exist, nor the youths wielding them. For all of these reasons, but more for her courage, the White youths had left them alone.

Math had felt death brush him close and then leave. The knots in his bowels had loosed themselves, and he had passed wind noisily.

Hannah had said only, ‘Do you see? There’s something wrong with the chariot. The emperor’s scarred man saw it.’

‘Pantera,’ said Math, laying claim to the man by virtue of his name. ‘His name is Sebastos Abdes Pantera. He’s not the emperor’s man. He’s the one who paid me the denarius last night.’

Even as he was speaking, Math had watched Pantera say something and gesture towards the offside wheel of the chariot, and Ajax had turned in consternation, peering down at the chariot, or the harness, or the wheels.

He might have jumped down to look at whatever was wrong, but the three horns sounded for the fourth time, summoning the Green team to the start.

With an oath that Math barely heard, in a language that was not Greek, Latin or Gaulish, Ajax had clucked his tongue and flicked the horses forward and let Pantera lead him into the tunnel.

Math did not see the race start — the apprentices’ stands were good for the end of the race, not the beginning — but the roar of the crowd told him the Greens got off to a good start, and when they came into view it was clear Ajax held a good position, not quite in the lead — the Reds were truly unassailable — but good enough, and with no signs of a crisis.

For the first three laps of the seven, Math learned the details of the race from the cheers of those around him. Confused, unhappy and terrified at what Pantera might have seen that he had not, he had made the effort to jump to see past the boys in front.

The rest of the Green team had filtered in afterwards but kept their distance, ashamed to be with him. The wainwright’s apprentices were there, and the loriner’s half-blind son, plus one or two others who could lay claim to a Green ribbon and a place in the enclosure. None of them had spoken to him.

Even Hannah had not stayed with him. Seeing him safe from attack, she wormed her way out to the oak rails at the sides of the enclosure and hoisted herself up to perch on the top rail, the better to see the race.

Math joined her halfway through the fourth lap when the hammer of the race had moved his blood so that it wasn’t possible to stay silent any longer. There was no room for him on the rails, but he stood at her side jumping whenever he could to see the flashes of coloured ribbons from the horses’ manes and screaming when Hannah screamed.

Sometime in the progress of the laps, Lucius arrived, sullen and stupid and barely carrying a Green ribbon, but even that had not taken the shine off the morning. Math screamed louder, to make up for the older boy’s silence.

‘ Ajax! Go! Go Green! Go Sweat! Go Thunder! ’

‘May I help you?’

The yellow-haired Gaul sat at a bench in front of the harness-maker’s booth at the end of the Green barn. He was almost alone; every other man, woman and child of Coriallum was in the hippodrome watching the races. The laps could be counted by the volume of the screams; a notch higher with each dipping dolphin on the central spina. They were on the third as the man asked his question.

Pantera did not answer immediately, but leaned his shoulder against a pole of a nearby booth and watched a man of perhaps fifty years, made old early by battle, pain and loss, deftly turn the end of a breastpiece, stitching together two flaps of leather with padding between to make it softer. He used two needles, one above and one below, making a row of neat double stitches, perfectly spaced.

Behind him, the booth was clean and uncluttered. His tunic was old and worn thin at the elbows, but fastidiously clean. He smelled of new grass and neatsfoot oil and, beneath that, of the rubbing stones the warriors of Britain — and likely of Gaul — had used daily on their blades to keep the soul-spirit of the iron fresh and fed.

It was a combination Pantera had not encountered in nearly two years. It caused his mouth to water and his chest to ache with remembered loss. He pushed himself away from the tent pole and squatted on his heels in the way the elders had done among the Dumnonii.

‘I am told you are Caradoc of the Osismi,’ he said, ‘father of Math of that tribe. I had hoped to find you here, but I confess to surprise that you are not watching the race.’

‘My son prefers it thus. He fears I bring ill luck to him and his horses. On a day such as today when his team may be victorious, I would not blight his joy by my presence.’

‘And the team’s progress is as easily gauged from here as the stadium,’ Pantera said, cocking his head to the roar of a half-lap from the hippodrome.