Now, with the whole of Rome offered real silver to catch him, he hugged those unsafe places as if they were friends. And he immersed himself in his new guise.
Even the silver-boys, who can transform themselves from street thieves to boy nymphs in the twist of a smile, said that he had utterly changed himself into a Berber grandfather, a lame date-carter, making a pittance carrying his wares balanced in a sack on his head, which made his limp worse. He was afraid of dogs.
He left behind the last of the summer sunlight and moved deeper into the heart of the slum.
In this place are inns that cater only to slaves, and others that cater only to freedmen. There are fishmongers, ironmongers, bakers, carpenters, tanners, fullers, dyers, spinners and weavers: if a trade stank or might cause a fire, or blind its crafters, or pollute the local water, it was done there, in the sink of the city.
And then there were the brothels, which at least smelled sweeter.
Their doors, on the whole, were painted in martial red, with carvings of men in full erection all around. The shutters had breasts painted on them that made pairs when closed, and strange anatomical impossibilities when pegged open. For the hard of thinking, the door knockers were shaped like engorged phalluses, if giants gave their members to madams for their premises.
With the Marcuses watching from their rooftops, the little black Berber that was Pantera passed through all these without pausing long in any one place; just enough to look back and be sure he was not being followed by other than they. He whistled occasionally when they lost him. Yes, they lost him, which is almost unimaginable, but you have to remember he was one of them once; we both were. We know how they think.
He came to the outer, southern edge of the ghetto, where the brothels mixed with ordinary houses and were less indiscreet. Down one carefully unspectacular side street was a particular door painted lilac set between thrown-back shutters that showed musical instruments played by fully clothed youths of both genders. The knocker was in the shape of a lyre.
Pantera walked past once, carried on to the end of the street, turned right and right again in a circle, rested his dates on the ground and waited. The city was at its busiest and he must have known that if one of Lucius’ agents was following him, this was when they would have been hardest to see.
There were no Guards in the vicinity. He must have passed a dozen or more detachments on his way here, but they wouldn’t be in this particular street; the House of the Lyre has its own reputation and it would sit ill with the man who upset its management if that upset were passed to the clients, most of whom outranked any member of the Guard.
Yes, I am proud. We made this house, my sponsor and I, and it has grown in less than fifteen years to be the foremost of its kind in Rome.
But more of that presently. On the day in question, which was the fourth day of August that year, Pantera the spy made his circuit a few more times, and then, on the fourth or fifth pass, he stepped up and knocked lightly on the lilac door.
A giant German with a small head on vast shoulders and inked marks on monstrous biceps answered. He was so big that his member might well have graced the doors deeper in the slum, except that nobody would ever have been suicidal enough to try to take it. He cost a fortune, and was worth every slip of silver; nobody, however drunk or drugged or finely born, was going to offer violence in his presence.
Pantera was not intimidated; quite the reverse. He cocked his little wizened head to one side and, bright as a blackbird, said, ‘The seas were stormy when I travelled here. Perhaps the House of the Lyre can offer balm to a travelling soul?’
The giant blinked down at him and stared and blinked again. He gave the impression of a man who thought slowly, and then followed with his fists. It was, as Pantera knew, and I can attest, an entirely false impression, but he played it well.
‘The seas can be rough,’ he said presently, in passable Latin, ‘but we always have calmer waters in our house.’
He nodded his tiny head, a sight altogether like a pea bouncing on a bough; then, in rougher, easier Greek: ‘It’s been long enough.’ He held out one massive arm.
Pantera clasped it fondly. ‘Drusus, I miss you every moment I’m away. But it can’t be helped. Is he in?’
‘He is. And alone. I could take you up, but-’
‘But you won’t because we’re all safer with you guarding the door. This for your time.’
A piece of silver changed hands, not enough in most circumstances to buy entry to the House, but this was Pantera; he had rates all his own.
So what can I tell you about our house? If one were to enter as Pantera did, by the front entrance, which is the only one permitted to clients, one would pass from a plain and inexpensive street into sophisticated, genteel beauty. The door gives way to a small vestibule, but that’s only for show. Beyond that is a large courtyard garden, open to the skies, so that the five storeys of the house look inward over an abundance of late-flowering lilacs, olives heavy with fruit, citrus trees, cherries, balm.
Doves settle and coo in the bowers. Songbirds shower the visitor with golden notes. Doors lead off on all sides, on all floors. Those above the ground floor have rails and balconies that look down on to a garden that is laid out to be as restful seen from four storeys up as it is to walk through. Staircases lead up from the two diagonals; the northeastern and south-western corners.
Pantera took the latter, which was closest. He ran lightly up four flights of narrow, claustrophobic stairs. The frescoes were new, but nothing he hadn’t seen before in one form or another.
On the lower walls are images of sexuality; not the grotesques of the inner-ghetto brothels, but subtle frescoes of silk-clad women regarding their reflections in slow-flowing rivers, young men poised in acts of bravery and strength. As he ascended, the images became more explicit and the faces more recognizably those of the men and women who worked in the House. Each had a specialty, and these were depicted in unashamed detail, so that by the time the visitor reached the top floor he or — less often — she would have had time to examine the possibilities in theory, and so would be ready to explore them in practice.
Some of those explorations were taking place as he passed, giving rise to the sounds and scents of intercourse; even now, in the mid-morning, we had clients who had paid for a full day, dusk to dusk, and were loath to waste time sleeping.
Elsewhere, the employees of the House slept off a night’s work, together or alone. A few of them passed Pantera on their way to or from the baths on the lower ground floor. They slid past clad in silk, eyeing the lame, wizened Berber, deciding that he must have a great deal more money than appearances might suggest. We keep an exclusive establishment and nobody comes here who lacks the means to spend freely. Everyone who comes requires absolute privacy and will pay to preserve it.
On the top floor, the fourth, an expensive drift of frankincense underlined, strengthened, deepened, made more intimate, exotic and enticing the enduring smell of human sex that leaked up from below. Pantera took a left turn at the top of the stairs, skirted the balcony that looked over the now vertiginous drop into the courtyard garden, and entered a corridor that stretched out away from it; a spur that led away from the main building.
The floors on this level were painted in a brilliant, martial red: a man’s entire body of blood could have flowed along here and been invisible until you trod in it. The walls were paler: Mars met the white light of the moon and made a delicate pastel pink. There were fourteen doors along the corridor, seven on either side, painted progressively in the colours of the rainbow, beginning with a deep cherry red at the head of the stairs and cascading through amber, sun, spring, sky and midnight to a single lilac door at the far end that stretched across the corridor’s full width.