‘They will be safe for the likes of you,’ I said. ‘And you may give them my greeting.’ Which is to say, my assurance that he, Pantera, was safe. It was the greatest gift I gave him that day, but neither of us knew so at the time.
He lifted the mirror-bowl and held it a moment in such a way that my daughters were shown in it together. Zois is like me, small and dark and stringy; she will never turn men’s heads with the curve of her figure, but she has a sharpness to her features that raises the blood.
Thais takes after Gudrun, since you ask; they are both ice-blonde and Nordic, and while the girl has not yet grown into the stature of her mother the signs of it are there, and are what hold men’s attention when she dances on the tightrope across the street or spins at the top of a pyramid of men.
Pantera took the bowl and set it down, so that the only reflection was his. ‘I saw your wife watching the smoke-dreams last night, after you had put me to bed.’
‘You should not ask what she saw,’ I warned him.
‘I don’t plan to.’ He gave a tight smile. ‘If death is coming, I would rather not know. If it’s not…’ He shrugged. He had been close enough to death often enough to know that there are worse things than dying. ‘I wouldn’t want to become careless. I just wanted you to know that I had seen.’ And then, briskly, shaking himself clear of the memory, he asked, ‘Have you been out to market this morning? Have you heard any news?’
The question was directed at me; he must have known I’d been out.
‘If you mean are they hunting you,’ I said, ‘yes they are. Half the Guard is out asking for you by name and description in the morning markets. They say you are an enemy of the state and offer five hundred denarii for news of you. A lot of people say they have seen you. None of them is telling the truth. Yet.’
An enemy of the state is what they called Nero, which was enough to make him kill himself when he thought they might take him alive. Enemies of the state have their necks caught in a cleft stick and are flogged to death, although not, of course, until they have revealed all they know about other enemies of the state. People who harbour them are subject to the same sanctions.
Pantera’s face grew grave. Formally, he said, ‘I endanger you all by my presence here. I’m sorry, I had not thought they would be so swift to act. I will leave now.’ He delved into his money belt and brought out gold. ‘Perhaps this, for your trouble.’
I was the shy one then. It was Gudrun who put words to it. ‘We don’t need your gold.’
This was true: we owned the Inn of the Crossed Spears, plus the entire acrobat troupe who played in it. At least half of the houses strewn along the Street of the Lame Dog were ours while the inhabitants of the other half, if they didn’t owe us rent, at least owed us loyalty.
Pantera closed his fist over his hand. He didn’t turn away. ‘Every man has his price. How long before the emperor’s silver outweighs a promise?’
‘Long enough for what you need,’ Gudrun said and then, seeing his face, said, ‘We have our dreams, too, and they tell us we shall not be betrayed while you are with us.’
Zois, who has eyes of the same hot-ice green as her mother, looked up at him and said, ‘Your death is not at our hands.’
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask whose hand would kill him — we all saw that — but he must have known the ways of the dream and how it harms a man to hear too much of his future, for, with no further comment, he donned the loose white robes of the Berber, took a stick that we gave him, and leaned on it. He stooped his back, dropped his left hip as if the arthritis had crippled him, and like that, bent and old, he ventured out into the city that was hunting him.
Chapter 17
Rome, 4 August AD 69
Marcus, silver-hand of the western Quirinal, speaking for his brothers
The little wizened Berber didn’t look like a man who had been beaten half to death, although we had seen that happen. He didn’t look like a man who was hunted by Rome, either, though there were Guards throughout the forum and the markets, asking questions and spreading news of the rewards for his capture.
Did we know who he was, with all his black skin and wiry hair? Not at first. But we saw him come out of Scopius’ inn, and had not seen him go in, so we followed him on the rooftops, making the whistle signals, and we knew soon enough that he wasn’t what he pretended.
From the first, when he came out of the inn, he didn’t leave by the front entrance into the courtyard and on to the main street that runs up the Quirinal, the one with the widows’ houses off it. He went out of the back, down the Street of the Lame Dog where the Guard don’t dare go, and turned deeper and deeper into the hidden ways where the sun never reaches and bandits live with thieves and neither welcome strangers.
He was lame, he walked bent over, like he was crippled, but he didn’t walk as if he was afraid, and in those streets he should have been.
He came into my place then, where I owned the rooftops.
How did I get them? You think I’m too small to fight for them? Well, then, don’t ask me how. They were mine. Nobody was going to take them from me.
We were whistling one to another, just following him along, and then he went and ducked into a doorway and tucked his head out twice, to see if there was anybody watching. There wasn’t, not at ground level, so he waited a bit longer and then, not lame at all, hopped on to the wall that goes round the courtyard where Phenris kills his pigs and then up on to the rooftops. Fast as you like, he was here, where only the boys should be.
We all lay flat, and he didn’t look at us, but ran up and over the top and down the other side and then along and along and gone!
Well, some of the boys was for backing off and leaving him alone then. I mean, it’s not right, is it? The boys leave the rooftops behind when they become men — those that live to become men, which is few enough.
But he was there, heading down into a place that used to belong to the Kosian before he died of marsh fever, and before that it was Circan’s, and before that it was Florian’s and before that… anyway, it has always been someone’s place; we each have our own special place, hidden away, where nobody sees and the wind don’t reach too strong.
This one has brick on either side from the house walls and tiles that meet in the middle at the back and catches just enough sun in summer or winter to be warm all the time, but never too hot. It’s a palace of a place, really.
Pantera leaned back against the brick and tiles, looking like this is home.
We stopped whistling, all of us. There isn’t a tune for ‘That bastard’s just dropped into the Kosian’s place’. The others were all looking at me and I had to do something, so I picked two of them, Quethat is, Marcus and Marcus, and we went over to see him. You have to, don’t you? You have to face these things.
He’d got his eyes closed, all peaceful, and we just dropped in and settled down and waited for him to look back at us.
Which he did soon enough. He looked at us like we were friends, as if we didn’t each have salt in our hands, ready to throw in his face in case he tried to jump us. Actually, Fe-Marcus had something worse than salt.
He nodded at us as if we’d spoken, then brought both his hands out, nice and slow, like, and turned to one side and placed his palms flat on the wall and counted along the bricks.
We thought he was addled then, but we stayed and watched and after a while he pushed on a brick with the heel of his hand.
Nothing happened. Which, actually, was scary.
But he kept pressing and then gave a huff of frustration and hit it hard and then the brick jerked in, maybe only the breadth of your thumb, but still, it shouldn’t have done that, see?