Not that Pantera inspected the rainbow hallway in any depth. You see, when he feigned his fear of dogs in his Berber guise, it was not all a sham; he had learned by sad experience to be wary of hounds and there was one in particular where, shall we say, a mutual respect had arisen.
That hound was Cerberus, a vast, black, strong-tailed, loll-tongued, prick-eared monster with great brown eyes and teeth as long as your thumb, and he was stationed outside the lilac door. A chain ran from his iron-spiked collar to a rivet in the floor, but it was coiled in loose piles and it was impossible for a visitor to estimate its length.
Cerberus wasn’t howling to announce the presence of a visitor, he was too well trained for that. He wasn’t straining to reach him either, but still, Pantera was not inclined to move close. Without moving his eyes, he pursed his lips and began to whistle; not a command to stay or come, but a low, rolling air that blended with the murmuring of doves nearby. It was his signal to me, to let me know who he was.
It’s possible I might have known him without that; I am used to seeing the truth beneath men’s subterfuge, but I heard the air before I looked, and so, squinting through the spyhole in the door’s ornament, I was able to appreciate his disguise in its fullness. Still, I didn’t rush to invite him in.
Pantera whistled. The hound blinked. For a long time, nothing else moved.
Pantera finished the tune and had no other and it looked to me that he was about to turn away. I couldn’t let him go like that, difficult though his presence was for me.
I let the door open a fraction. ‘The Guards are offering six hundred sesterces for you alive, did you know?’
‘Seven.’ Still Pantera did not move. ‘Would you prefer that I leave?’
I said nothing, just undid the chain, let the door swing open and beckoned him in.
On the inside of the door was a silvered panel four feet by two that showed the new visitor how he looked to those around him. Women have been known to enter on occasion, but I have found that men, in particular, like to be assured that they look good.
As Pantera stepped in, we were framed together: him, a wizened Berber grandfather with tattoos like knife cuts on his cheeks and an ancient wound on his head that was not there the last time I saw him; me taller, because I was standing upright, though we are of a height when both standing the same. The mirror flattered my Alexandrian colouring, the doe-brown eyes, the blue-black hair, the olive skin; my patrons find me beautiful and I pay attention to my looks: no hair in unfortunate places, my eyes always enhanced with shading in the Egyptian style. My robes were of lilac silk and cost more than anything Vespasian or his agents could have afforded: the House of the Lyre never skimped on quality.
Pantera shut the door, slid across the three bolts and fastened the chain; he had always been careful, but that day he was doubly so.
He came fully into my domain, then. Though it was hidden away, the room was the biggest in the House, larger than most atria. A beaded curtain divided it in two and beyond was a silk bed big as a boat, and beyond that, a wide, sun-bright balcony on which doves and songbirds dozed amidst hanging vines.
The area nearest the door had no bed, but a low table carved in boxwood inlaid with coloured stones and a couch upholstered in a midnight-blue silk so deep, so lustrous that a man could have fallen asleep in its embrace and not woken for a month. On a table nearby stood a Greek vase that rose to waist height, wrought around with images of naked men. It was centuries old, from the glory days of Athens, when the world was a simpler, more beautiful place. Wherever you were in the room, that vase commanded attention.
The only other thing of note, which I must mention now, so that you know for the catastrophe that came later, is that there was a lilac-painted cupboard that served as Cerberus’ kennel at the far end of the couch. It was painted to fit with the restrained beauty of the room, but it was clearly the hound’s domain.
Pantera knew what it was, and, accordingly, sat at the far end of the couch. Cerberus lay down in the open kennel door and set his head on his great feet. His eyes never left Pantera’s face.
Pantera stayed quite still. ‘What do I call you?’ he asked.
I ignored the question at first, caught his chin, tilted it to the light, studied the work that had been done on his face. The wound on his head was new, but only by close scrutiny did I discern that. At length, I said, ‘Very good. I wouldn’t have known you if you hadn’t whistled. Clearly Cerberus did, or you would be dead.’
‘You are nameless?’
I laughed, softly. ‘If Lucius succeeds in taking you alive, I will very much appreciate being nameless, yes. If I must have a name now, you may call me Horus.’
‘You were Osiris once.’
‘Then we may agree that I have refined my pretensions.’
He looked so old, then, when I know that we are within six months of the same age. We were silver-boys together, two of the very few of our generation who didn’t end our lives floating face down in the Tiber.
We found our sponsors, you see. Pantera, of course, found Seneca who took his raw talent and polished it to the rough diamond he became. Seneca found me, too; I had some talents he valued, but my best and greatest sponsor was, and is, Mucianus, who was leading the armies for Vespasian.
Pantera knew this, I’m sure; we had never spoken of it openly, but he would have been a lesser man had he not. He knew that Mucianus owned the House and that he paid for its upkeep. You could have said that Mucianus owned me, if you like, but both of us would have denied it. He was generous. He is very generous, in fact. He did not consider ownership necessary and I have never been his slave.
For my part, I had my own sources of information, so I already knew that Pantera had come from Vespasian’s side and that he was in Rome to protect the general’s family and to promote his attempt to become emperor. The message doves had brought other messages, too, for Pantera.
I said, ‘Hypatia sends you her greetings. She says to tell you that Kleopatra fulfils her promise, that Iksahra hunts with her hawks across the sands to great effect, and the general is settled and safe. I don’t wish to know what any of this means.’
He relaxed a little, sat back, smiled like in the old days. ‘I wasn’t planning to tell you. If you are taken, I would prefer you, too, to know as little as possible. Has anything come from the east?’
‘Two birds. The messages were sealed. I have not opened them.’
Cerberus guarded more than my person. I knelt by him then, and took off his collar. Pantera looked at me as if I had gone mad, but the hound leaned on my shoulder and swiped his tongue across my face and his tail hit the floor hard enough to make it shake.
There were eighteen spikes on his collar, each two inches long. I unscrewed the third along from the tie and tipped out the two small ivory cylinders from the centre.
‘I don’t know the ciphers,’ I said, which was true, although it was also true that one of the skills Seneca found and nurtured in me was that of code-breaking. You wouldn’t think it in an Alexandrian with the looks of a girl, but there were few ways of disguising a message that I could not read, given time.
My other skill? That was forgery. I can mimic any man’s hand, or woman’s, come to that. Which is why, obviously, I was uncertain of Pantera.
But we digress. I handed him the cylinders and told him I didn’t know their contents and he gave me that sideways smile again, because he and I had spent months in our youth breaking into other men’s private correspondence. I think he saw it as a testament of my respect for him that I hadn’t looked at these, and truthfully, I hadn’t.