M. Scott - Rome - The Emperor's spy

Ajax balanced the peach in the centre of his palm. ‘I was going to meet him six months ago, on the night Math was caught trying to leave the compound. Clearly, I missed my appointment. Last night was the first time since then. We didn’t intend it so, but we had to wait for the right circumstances.’

‘Like Akakios being away from the compound for the night?’

‘And the moon giving favourable light and the right guards on the palisades. Indeed.’

Behind Ajax, a flash of gold caught Hannah’s eye. Out on the sands of the training track, the teams of each colour were harnessed and ready to begin their warm-up. This once, Math was ready first, with the resin wiped on his hands and the harness wound round his waist exactly as the first drivers did it.

With Hannah and Ajax watching, he took Bronze and Brass for what should have been an easy, lazy circuit of the track, except that nothing with these horses was ever lazy or easy and Math would not have wanted them if it was. He took them round one full circuit steadily enough; then, at the next corner, leaned into the turn as if it were a real race, and very nearly succeeded in lifting the heavy training rig on to two wheels, as if it were a racing chariot in full flight.

It was an impressive attempt. Other boys would have punched the air and checked to see who was watching. Math frowned and spoke to the colts and then rebalanced himself and took the next corner faster. This time he managed to lift the chariot up on to the two inside wheels for three paces, and set it neatly back down again. It wobbled a little as it settled.

On the sidelines, some of the younger apprentices applauded. Math didn’t look up. Hannah saw him bite his lower lip, frowning. The colts felt something from him, and extended their paces, so that for a while they flew with racing speed, until even the guards were cheering.

At Hannah’s side, Ajax cursed quietly. ‘I should thrash him senseless. He knows better than to push the horses before they’re properly warmed up.’

Hannah glanced sideways, expecting to see in him an undercurrent of pride. Instead, she saw that rare thing: Ajax truly angry. She took a moment to uncramp her hands. ‘We forget he’s only ten,’ she said. ‘You should let him race. He won’t stop trying to impress you until you do.’

‘ He forgets he’s only ten,’ Ajax said. ‘We don’t. And there’s no point in his racing until he can control the horses at speed, which he isn’t close to doing yet. In any case, the only race in sight is the trial against Poros and Math won’t be ready for that.’

Hannah was struggling to marshal a response when Ajax leaned both forearms on the table and said, ‘Pantera brought news this morning.’

‘He’s found the ink-stained apothecary who held a seat at the Black Chrysanthemum?’ Hannah felt her eyes flare wide.

Ajax grinned tightly. ‘After six months of searching and a great deal of Seneca’s gold surreptitiously spent, yes, Pantera has tracked down a particular man who sometimes dines at the inn of the Black Chrysanthemum on the Street of the Lame Lion and once asked a Syrian to sell copies of a certain prophecy to the highest bidder. The Syrian, it is said, sold precisely one: to a thin man with dark hair, shortly before he fell in with the emperor’s messenger, who is rumoured to have stolen another and killed the seller. If the man Pantera has found knows the date by which Rome may burn, then we have the first part of the riddle.’

‘But not the answer to who is trying to light the fire.’

‘We might have that, too.’

A slave-boy had come to hover nearby, sent by the chief cook, who, against all recent form, favoured the Whites. Ajax finished his peach and tossed the stone back into the bowl. Lacking any reason to stay, the boy picked it up and returned to the chief cook.

When he was out of earshot, Ajax said, ‘Akakios’ agents have been following Pantera for the past month. It may be that they simply want to know what he’s doing, but it may also be that Akakios is trying to discover the date of the fire.’

‘That doesn’t mean he’s necessarily trying to light it. Akakios won’t want Pantera to succeed where he has failed. He’d lose Nero’s favour.’

‘Which in this court is likely to be fatal.’ Ajax chewed on his lip. ‘At any rate, if Pantera can dispose of whoever’s following him — and I would bet on that man against anyone in Alexandria — then he’ll visit the ink-stained apothecary later today and return here tomorrow morning with news of what he’s found.’

‘And what makes you think Math won’t try to leave the compound again to watch you?’

‘Unless he’s got the hearing of a hawk, he won’t be there. He hid under the water troughs too far away to hear what we said.’

‘ Ajax! ’ Heads turned. More quietly, Hannah said, ‘If you saw him, then there’s no saying who else might have done. What will you do if-’

‘I didn’t see him. Pantera pointed him out or I wouldn’t have known he was there. I told you, he’s learned too well, just not yet perfectly, for which we should all be grateful.’ Grim-faced, Ajax stood, pushing the bench away from the table. Like all the drivers, he wore only a loincloth, so that when he raised his arms to ease his shoulders a stray finger of sunlight feathered the side of his ribs, filling the indentation where the hoof had crushed his chest.

In Gaul, the edges had flared scarlet, with fierce lancing scorch marks stretching out across the whole of his chest. But he was young and as fit as any man of his age and the scars of this accident had grown white, joining the mess of others on his back. Hannah had no idea where those others had come from. She traced them sometimes in her mind. He had been flogged once, clearly, but beneath that were marks she could not begin to name, and ‘Hannah?’ Ajax tapped lightly on the trestle. ‘Your admirer is here.’

‘Saulos?’ She snatched her mind back to the present. The team’s newest member had a wound on his back that she had been treating since before they left Gaul.

‘Saulos of the talking hands. The Idumaean harness-maker with a Greek education. Who else?’ Ajax spat succinctly into the dust. As everyone else had come to know and like Saulos, Ajax had come to loathe him, and made no effort to hide it. Saulos, for his part, was unfailingly civil. ‘He’ll offer you marriage soon, if you keep on encouraging him.’

Hannah laughed aloud. Against all her foreboding, it was a good morning, with kindness in the air.

‘I’m not encouraging him,’ she said, shooing Ajax away with her hands. ‘I’m his physician and he’s my patient. But if he offers anything more substantial than a copper coin in payment for his treatment, you can be sure I’ll tell you before anyone else.’

‘Good day.’

Saulos stood diffidently at the edge of the dining area. His expressive hands made a fluid, apologetic movement that conveyed both his regret at disturbing her, and his joy in her presence. ‘May I sit?’

‘Of course.’ Hannah motioned him forward. He stepped neatly past her, to take the bench Ajax had so recently vacated.

He was a neat man. Early on in their acquaintanceship, in her effort to find something remarkable about Saulos that might make him more visible than the invisible slaves, his fastidious neatness was the first thing she had noticed; he carried a rag of linen in his sleeve and wiped his lips with it after eating, which was curious enough to be memorable.

Later, she had come to enjoy the landscape of his mind; he was articulate, intelligent, thoughtful and funny, but shyly so, and it had taken work on her part to bring him out of himself.

It had been worth the effort. Through the winter, she had found that he was schooled in Greek, Latin and Hebrew literature, that he could recite the poetry of Homer and Nicander for an hour without pause, that he understood philosophy and could conduct reasoned discourse on the nature of thought and had been known to hold forth at length on the differing philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Epicurus, as if he had known each one personally.