M. Scott - Rome - The Emperor's spy

‘Indeed.’ The rhythm of the stitching paused only a moment. ‘And you are?’ The man’s voice was perfectly neutral. A sheathed sword lay under his seat. His right foot had moved to rest on the hilt.

‘A friend,’ Pantera said. ‘One who cares for Math and his future. Not in the way you might think. I have just watched him encounter the Emperor Nero. It was… unfortunate.’

‘I imagine Math did not find it so.’

‘He told the emperor that his mother was dead and his father had been crippled in a tavern brawl. He told me, on the other hand, that you had been a warrior and were injured in battle. Either way, I am surprised to find you so active.’

‘It suits Math that others believe what he wishes. And he believes it to be true that I am injured beyond all use.’

‘Perhaps he is also protecting you with the story of the tavern brawl? It would not do to tell the emperor that his father had been wounded in battle against the legions.’

‘Did he tell you that?’

‘No. He told me you and his mother had been warriors. It may be that in our ancestors’ time the men and women of Gaul fought shoulder to shoulder. But in my experience, only in Britain has such a thing happened in our lifetime.’

‘Then your experience is wide indeed.’

Caradoc of the Osismi did not stop stitching, but he did lift his foot from his blade. Something altered in the angle of his shoulders and, for the first time, he looked up from his work.

His eyes were a clear, rain-washed grey, exactly like Math’s. His hair was the colour of old thatch, streaked through with grey, older by three decades than Math’s grubby gold but easily imagined as once the same, only cleaner, and so brighter. Manifestly, he was the father of his son.

He was also a reader of men. Pantera stood still under a scrutiny such as he had not borne since his first meeting with Aerthen’s mother.

‘Will you sit?’ Caradoc said at last. ‘I have no wine, but could offer ale.’

It sounded a simple offer. Pantera, who knew it was not, found he was offered both an answer and another, more difficult question.

The past days had been full of such. In each, he had made a choice that did not fit with his idea of the man he had become since leaving Britain: the choice to answer the emperor’s summons when it would have been as easy to walk up the long road from the Roman camp in Lugdunum and lose himself eventually in the wild tribes north of the Brigantes; the choice to let a grubby urchin follow him from the docks, and then not to kill him; the choice to let Seneca find them, and then not to kill him either, but to eat with him, and listen; the choice to speak to a race-driver who claimed falsely to be Greek about what had been done to his harness; and now, last, the choice to find the urchin’s crippled father, who was not, after all, anywhere near so crippled that his son must ply the docks to feed both of them.

At any point, Pantera could have walked away. He did not yet know why he had not.

‘Thank you.’ He sat on the iron-bound chest at the tent’s entrance that served both as a lock-box and a seat, waiting while Caradoc set down his harness and went to fetch ale from the back of his tent.

The former warrior moved slowly, using a stick for balance. His left leg had evidently been broken at some time and set at an awkward angle, so that his knee and foot turned outward.

Cautiously, Pantera said, ‘I have seen others who were fallen on by a horse. Few of them escaped with only lameness.’

‘But many more are able to throw themselves clear and walk away unhurt.’ Caradoc spoke with his back still turned. ‘I was holding Math. He was less than a month old. I had to keep him safe from more than a dying horse.’

Only in war were horses killed beneath their riders, and newborn infants threatened with danger so that their fathers must accept injury to keep them alive. ‘Does he know?’ Pantera asked.

‘No.’

Caradoc poured the ale and, halting, brought it back. In the hippodrome, the fourth lap came near its conclusion. At the tents, Pantera accepted the small beaker of boiled leather and the foaming ale within it. A further decision settled in his mind.

Raising his mug to the sun, he spoke aloud the first line of the invocation to Briga, mother of Nemain, keeper of life and death, of war and poetry, patron of leatherworkers and of the chariot drivers’ death-dance. Into the still silence after it, he said, ‘When I lived among the warriors of the Dumnonii, it was considered an insult to offer a man wine, it being of Rome. Ale, by contrast, was an honour.’ He spoke it all in the language of south-western Britain, enemy of Rome.

The clear grey eyes regarded him a while. ‘There are places in Britain still not under the heel of Rome,’ Caradoc said eventually. ‘The dreamers are gathered again on Mona, the island off the west coast, led by the Boudica’s brother, with her daughters at his side. Graine, for all her youth, is said to be amongst the foremost dreamers there. She has said already that Rome will take Mona in her lifetime, but that Hibernia, further west, will be safe and can be reached in time. Those who will set themselves against Rome believe her and gather under her uncle’s banner.’

He spoke the forbidden language with an ease and fluency that told of a lifetime’s daily use.

Pantera held the leather mug between his knees and stared down at the slow-moving islands of thin foam on the top. As Caradoc had done, he, too, answered the question that had so carefully not been asked. ‘I lost too much in Britain to go back there now. You, though, could return at any time.’

‘And take Math?’ The grey eyes flashed even as they looked past him to the hippodrome. ‘The boy who tells the emperor that his father was injured in a bar-room brawl? If you know my son at all, you will know that he despises warriors and all they stand for. How could I take him into a culture where warriors are honoured above all else?’

‘They’re not honoured above the dreamers,’ Pantera said softly.

‘My son is not a dreamer,’ Caradoc said. ‘Nor is he a leatherworker, a hunter, a weaver, a builder of roundhouses, or one who can find water, who can sense shoals of fish and draw them to his nets, who can charm a hare from the hill. He is a thief and a seller of himself and neither of these has a place in the tribes. In the pitiful port-sprawl that is Coriallum, Math has learned to be an urban creature. What would he be if I wrenched him from that?’

‘He would be safe from Nero. No one here can give him that protection now.’ Pantera set his ale on the grass. He had drunk a mouthful, which was more than Math’s father had done. ‘You are not of the Osismi,’ he said. ‘Ajax who drives for the Greens is not of Athens. Might he not help you to take Math to safety?’

Caradoc shook his head. ‘Not if Ajax wins the race. Or even if he comes a good second behind the magistrate’s wing-footed Parthian colts. He made an oath on the shade of Math’s mother he would do whatever was in his power to get the team — and so Math — to Rome if he could. And no’ — Caradoc held up his hand against Pantera’s almost-question — ‘I did not think it wise to give such an oath, but it was Math’s greatest wish and it seemed safer that he go with Ajax than that he try to get there alone.’ The old man smiled thinly. ‘He thinks Rome will be Coriallum wrought larger, and he will be the greatest dock thief of them all.’

Pantera said, ‘When I was a child, I thought the greatest gift I could have was Roman citizenship and that I would do whatever was in my power to earn it. We all make mistakes that in later adulthood we look back on with dismay.’

‘If we survive them,’ Caradoc said, and Pantera found it politic not to answer, but paused, listening to the sound of another lap finishing. The roar was the longest it had been, as the teams began their final lap.