Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1 (54 page)

The crowd thought he was begging for his life. As they might have done in the circus, men here and there began to hold their fists at an angle with thumb out, to show that he should live. Some kept their thumbs hidden, for death, but they were few; they had heard him argue a good case against Saulos, and a better one for saving Rome.

Math knew that they were not discussing Pantera. The skin beneath his armpits prickled nastily and hot blood flushed his cheeks.

Nero said, ‘We always hold such a thing gently.’

Math shivered with a cold nausea.

Pantera murmured, ‘I know, lord. And yet it would show great compassion if—’ A building fell then, and the crash of falling masonry drowned out all other sounds, but Math saw Pantera’s lips frame a question that looked more like a statement. There was a brief flurry of haggling that no one else could possibly hear. To Math’s eyes, it seemed that Nero capitulated, and was not happy with it. None the less, as the noise of falling masonry abated, he ordered Pantera to stand.

‘My lord has orders?’

‘You offered us a strategy,’ Nero said. ‘We accept in its fullest with one exception. We will not yet promote the tribune of the sixth to be prefect.’

‘Who then, lord?’

‘You. The strategy is yours. Its success or failure rests on your head. You promised us a city saved to the best of your ability. Make it so.’

‘W
ith Math’s help, we shall protect the children.’

Thus, standing at the porticoed entrance to the Forum Augustus, with flames lighting his face and great black crow-feathers of soot falling softly about his shoulders, did Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, emperor of Rome and all her provinces, announce his part in the night’s drama.

Math had no choice but to play the part allotted to him. He, too, was caught in the fire’s flare, as much the focus of the crowd as Nero whose hand rested on his shoulder. Children were already flocking towards them. Their eyes had fed on Math’s face, as if, having magically appeared, he and Nero could now magically extinguish the fire, or at the very least lead them all to safety.

Pantera stood nearby, gathering information and issuing a steady stream of orders to the men newly under his command. Someone had given him a helmet and cloak marked with the signs of the Watch. He held both in the crook of his left arm and even so, dressed as he was in a torn tunic, with his right shoulder crooked, not taking all his weight on his left leg, he commanded more respect than any of the officers who stood around him awaiting their orders.

At Nero’s new pronouncement, Pantera abandoned his conversation with a short, wiry guard and bowed to his emperor.

‘Your excellency shows his greatness,’ he said. ‘A nation’s children are its future. If I might offer a suggestion, it might be prudent to—’

‘Lead them up the Capitoline hill to the imperial gardens that stand adjacent to the Field of Mars.’ Nero gave an acid smile. ‘We are aware of that; you have said so already. We shall take our own guardsmen and as great a detachment of the Urban Guard as you can spare. We shall organize a route to the gardens. There, we shall provide food and water for all who take shelter. History shall record that this emperor did everything possible for his people in their extremity.’

‘My lord has the wisdom of all great Caesars,’ Pantera said. ‘If he wished to mount, I believe the grey gelding ridden by the water engineer is the most fit of the riding horses and, given its pale colour, will be most readily seen by my lord’s people as he leads them to safety. Math, perhaps, could hold the beast?’

At a nod, Math left his own beleaguered colts and walked back to take the reins from one of the guards. Faustinos the water engineer had already gone, taking two aquarii and their detachments to see if the broken cisterns could be repaired.

The horse was exhausted. In Antium, it had been given everything it could need and more. Here, there wasn’t even water, certainly no feed.

Math let it lick the salt sweat from his hand, feeling the tightness of its lips across his palm. He scratched it behind the ears, in the sweaty place where the bridle lay, and it rested its forehead on his shoulder so that each shuddering breath reached down to his feet.

Pantera’s shadow fell across the horse’s neck. Math said, ‘He’s not fit to be ridden. You can’t let—’

‘He’s the best we have. Nero rides well enough and you’ll be at his side to see he goes no faster than a walk. There’s a water trough in the garden and stables at the side of the Field of Mars. Collect your colts next time you come down. The guards that came with Nero will take care of you.’

All of that was said loudly, for the benefit of anyone listening. Under the fire’s crackling, Pantera breathed, ‘Where’s Ajax?’

‘In Antium.’

‘But held prisoner against your good behaviour?’

‘Did Nero tell you that? When the building fell?’

‘No. But Ajax is his best lever to use against you. It’s what I would do if I were Nero. Did Seneca reach you? He came to Antium earlier in the evening.’

‘I didn’t see him.’

‘Then he and Ajax are beyond our help.’ He gripped Math’s arm at the elbow, as he had once gripped Ajax’s in a pool in Gaul, with an inn blazing nearby and a dead man beneath an oak tree in the meadow. ‘Get through tonight alive,’ Pantera said. ‘Nothing else matters.’

‘We are ready to mount.’ Nero approached with three of his guards and a wake of small children behind him.

‘Lord, your horse awaits.’

Pantera released Math’s arm and made a stirrup of his looped hands. Nero swung himself lightly up and settled in the saddle, waving the gathered children to follow them.

Nero did ride better than Math had expected; he was fully sober, and sharply aware of the children stumbling in his train. Twice, he instructed Math to bring one to him who had fallen faint from too much smoke. Both were lifted up to ride in front of their emperor as they paced at a slow walk up the hill, away from the flames.

Six men of the Watch ran ahead, keeping the route clear. At the hill’s top, they threw open the bronze gates to the imperial gardens, where, among the flowering trees and frantic trills of the caged birds, was a water trough for the horses and the children.

Nero passed down the silent, owl-eyed child he had been holding. His toga was stained with saliva, tears and blood. It made him more regal than he had ever been, a credit to the Caesars who had gone before.

He gave sensible orders to the nearest watchmen, and then said to Math, ‘See that each child has enough water. Food will be brought. You need not go down the hill. The Watch will bring your horses up. You will remain here and care for the weakest of the children. We believe you have the skills for that.’

‘Lord.’ Math bowed as he had seen Pantera do. ‘I will do my best.’

It was the last sane conversation he had that night. The rest was conducted in hoarse shouts where three words threaded together was a long sentence and more often than not his orders from Nero came as a nod, or a meeting of eyes or, once, a single shout of his name, in time to catch a falling girl-child who had breathed too much smoke and had toppled off the emperor’s horse.

Math carried her at a run to the imperial gardens, spat water from his own mouth between her blue lips until she choked, and breathed and came alive again, stark-eyed and screaming.

He spat life into a great many children over the course of the next few hours. Very soon, his existence had narrowed to a dash from the gates to reach the nearest of the incomers, seeking out those who could no longer walk, carrying them back to the place kept clear beside the horse trough under the olives where the scent of foreign flowers was lost beneath the stench of smoke and blood and death except once in a while when, breathing in, he found a sweetness that made him want to weep.

He became skilled at scooping water into his own mouth, savouring the sudden splash of cold in the hot night, then spitting it quickly in a sprayed rush into the waiting mouth in the hope that the cold and wet might restore life that the fire’s heat had taken.

Not all of them came back to cough on his shoulder. Three were lost that he knew of; two boys and a girl. Their deaths pierced his heart. Each one dragged him down until the next half-living child was brought, and he must leave the dead to their own fortunes and run and run and lift and run and drink and spit … and wait to see the first flutter of the eyelids, and the choke, and then turn them over and bounce his balled fist between their shoulder blades, to push the water out again and let them live.

With Nero and the Watch, Math worked through the night. Somehow, somewhere, a nameless watchman kept count of the hours, sounding each one with a trumpet. The brazen notes cut the night into manageable parts, so that Math began to look forward to them, counting down to each one as he had once counted down the clamouring water clock in Alexandria.

He saw Pantera barely at all; the newly appointed prefect of the Watch spent the night traversing the city across and across, marshalling his men to ever greater feats of endurance and courage. Word amongst those sent back to Nero’s gardens said that he had personally led the centuries of the first cohort to the inferno’s edge to hack new firebreaks.

The men were full of his praise and it seemed for a while that Pantera had made of himself a god, able to be in more than one place at a time, Once, at the sixth hour of the night, when all was darkest, he brought up half a dozen children, carrying one of them himself. He was lamer than Math had ever seen him.

Of the one he carried, he said hoarsely, ‘This is Libo’s daughter. Her name’s Sulla. I don’t know how— She should have been safe. Care for her well.’

Libo was the big, bluff guard who had gone to get the colts and bring them to safety halfway through the night. He was weeping now, but less wildly than he had been earlier when his son and daughter were lost.

The child was barely dressed and not breathing. Mute, Math showed where she should be laid on the woollen cloak beside the horse trough and spat water into her as he had done with all the others. After, when she had choked and begun to breathe, he sat down, taking her head on his lap, and began dribbling water in the corners of her lips.

Pantera crouched down beside him. ‘You’re doing well,’ he said. ‘I’m proud of you.’

Around them, guards were listening. Pantera pulled Math into an embrace. Into his ear, he said, ‘Hannah and Shimon are at the goose-keeper’s cottage on the Aventine. It’s clear of the fire so far. If you need help, go there.’

‘What about you?’

From behind, Libo clapped him brusquely on the shoulder. ‘Never worry, boy. Pantera will save us all from the fire and come back to you safe and well.’

Libo believed it, because he needed to believe that his daughter might live. But Math was close enough now to see Pantera’s face, to read the deadness about his eyes and the line etched between his brows that had grown deeper with each hour of the night. Not even in Gaul, when the two of them had sat through the nights together without sleep, had he seen such exhaustion as he saw now.

‘Is it bad?’ he asked, when he found his voice.

Pantera pulled a wry smile. ‘It’s not good. A dozen of Saulos’ men escaped the warehouse. They’re stoking the fires. And there’s at least a century of the Watch who are actively working for him. They’re harder to find, but at least we know now who their centurion is.’

He leaned forward and kissed Math’s head. ‘I’m keeping Mergus with me; he’s the small, wiry guard with hair like a horse’s mane and a scar across the bridge of his nose. He’s sharper than Libo, but has no children. If anything happens to me, Libo will get you to the goose-keeper’s cottage on the Aventine. If it’s burned, he’ll give his life to get you away from Rome. You can trust him.’ Pantera squeezed Math’s arm. ‘I found his children – twice.’

T
he fire that ate Rome had first become visible as Seneca and Ajax passed the tenth milestone. Then, it was only a whisper of colour, pale as a boy’s hair in the morning, streaked along the horizon, barely outshining the stars.

The closer they had come, the greater it had grown in size and colour until, at five miles’ distance, jagged flames had played clearly along the spine of the horizon.

At the three-mile mark, Seneca could smell smoke peppering the air.

Ajax tapped his arm. ‘You should leave your mare here,’ he said. ‘There’s a farm with neat fields. She’ll be well cared for. Tether her near the water trough so she can drink before they find her.’ He had, Seneca observed, a Gaulish care for animals.

Seneca had dismounted before it occurred to him that he could have refused, indeed that the protocols of rank and station demanded that he do so to restore his waning authority.

He had tied the tether lines at the mare’s ankles before he had spelled out for himself the reasons why he couldn’t refuse at all, the most acceptable of which was that he had several questions currently nagging at his curiosity and wished to remain in Ajax’s company long enough to find their answers; to ignore an order now, clearly, was to be left behind.

He patted the mare’s wither and left her to graze. Peering into the night, he picked out the outlines of the farmhouse and three sheds clustered in a hollow that Ajax had already seen. Closer, a kennelled dog whined, but did not bark. As they left, a cockerel coughed its way to an early crow, deceived by the fire’s false dawn.

Half a mile later, they met the first refugees: whole families sitting on the turf at the roadside, watching fire paint the horizon in brightening shades of amber as if it were a display put on for their benefit.

These ones were the furthest out, those most able to walk, and to carry their children. The closer they came to Rome, the thicker became the crowd, the less mobile and the less decorous.

At the two-mile mark, progress was almost impossible; grown men tugged at their tunic hems, begging them not to walk on into the hell that was Rome.