He opened the heavier of the two cylinders first and, after a moment, held it out so that we could both read the contents. The sparse lines on the rolled bark inside were written in a simple letter-substitution cipher he had created himself twenty years ago, which both of us could unravel in our heads as we read it.
From Mergus to the emperor’s spy, greetings.
We have met Vologases, King of Kings of Parthia, who promises peace between our empires when Vespasian rules. He has offered forty thousand archers to our cause. Vespasian will not accept foreign aid, but is grateful for the offer. Mucianus marches west with five legions. We are for Alexandria. Men seek you with ill intent. Take care.
‘Interesting?’ I asked.
‘Marginally.’ He laid the missive down on the table. ‘I didn’t know about the archers. It’s good to know the King of Kings is choosing Vespasian as his preferred emperor. It could mean peace in the east.’ He had been there, you see, to Parthia, or at least close. He had spoken to the King of Kings.
The second message was from Mucianus, which was a surprise; I thought he only wrote to me. He used a more complex cipher of his own creation so that Pantera had to ask me for the key and then for a slate so he could transcribe it. It wasn’t impenetrable, don’t think that: a competent code-breaker on either side could have mastered it in a morning. With the key, it was effortless. Pantera transcribed it on the first pass.
From Mucianus, to the maker of minds. We need Ravenna. It must come to our cause.
Just that. Pantera stared at it, chewing his lip.
After a while, I said, ‘ Maker of minds? Does he always call you that?’
‘Never before.’
I said, ‘He is not one to waste a bird.’ He knows the trouble we take to get them to him. He would never do that.
‘Nor to speak the obvious.’ Pantera raised a brow. ‘Have you a candle?’
The candles were on the far side of the beaded curtain, with the bed and the cooing doves. I passed through, setting it chiming. When I returned, Pantera was holding one of the beaded threads, studying the beads. In wonder, he said, ‘I had thought these were painted wood.’
He held in his hand a fortune threaded on a few feet of silk. The beads were of ivory, pearl, palest amber. The very lowest bead on each strand, which weighed the others down, was a nugget of raw gold.
I said, ‘Mucianus sends me beads as he finds them, or things he thinks can be fashioned to be suitable. There’s a trader in the city, Ostorius — you’ll remember him from the rooftops? The black-haired half-Dacian with the smallest finger missing on his left hand? He’s a woodsmith now. He can carve anything into a bead, given time.’
With every passing heartbeat, we were receding further into our shared childhood. We huddled together on a couch that seemed suddenly too big for what we had become. I passed him the candle in a silver stick and the kindling ember held in a small pot. He lit the wick.
Heated, the thin paper crisped at the edges, but across the width of the page grew letters, darker than the darkening bark around them.
Beware treachery. F amp; A not alone. One other: you his sole target. Now dead. Did not have a name to give, or a face.
‘F and A?’ I asked.
His face was pinched. ‘Fundanius and Albinius. They were two centurions in Lucius’ pay who tried to assassinate Vespasian in Judaea. Fundanius said before he died that I had been his second target.’
‘And Mucianus has caught another who was sent to kill you alone.’
‘Evidently.’
‘How do they know who you are?’
‘If I knew that, I would sleep better at night.’
Pantera burned the two messages, dropping the last fragments into the ember-bowl where they charred and curled and became fine threads of sweet smoke.
‘I should go.’ Pantera stood. It didn’t seem likely to me that he had got all he came for, but he gave every sign of leaving. ‘If anything else comes in, the silver-boys will know how to find me.’
‘Are you back for good?’
‘I’m back for now.’ In two strides, he was at the door, and Cerberus had not moved to stop him.
He paused in the process of leaving, as if struck by a thought. ‘Do you still have dealings with Tiberius Nisens at the palace?’
This, then, was why he had really come.
‘The bath-master?’ I had to think about that. ‘What kind of dealings do you mean? He’s not a client of the House; he can’t afford it.’
‘But you see him still?’
‘Sometimes. He’s a friend.’ He was almost a brother, once, but that doesn’t always lead to trust.
‘Do you still have sufficient connection to him to suggest subtly that he take on a new masseur?’ Pantera asked.
‘Probably. He won’t take you, though. Vitellius is a big man; he needs big hands on his body.’
‘Are Drusus’ hands big enough?’
‘Hades!’ I haven’t laughed in years the way I laughed then. And then I stopped laughing, because he was serious.
‘You’d have to pay gold,’ I said. ‘Drusus is not cheap.’ He was not for sale for any money, actually, but I knew that he would do what Pantera asked; there was a love between them that I had never been part of.
Pantera said, ‘I have Vespasian’s writ. I have all the gold we need. But I need a man inside the palace, who hears what Lucius says when his guard is down. Drusus is one of the bravest men I know.’
‘If I tell him that,’ I said, drily, ‘maybe you won’t need gold. He worships you. I can’t think why. ’
It was Pantera’s turn to grin like a boy. In truth he loved this place, the memories of it, the lifestyle, my company. He didn’t have to say so, it showed in his eyes.
He said, ‘I can’t think why, either. And I will pay gold in any case. See if you can get Drusus into the palace. Leave word for me with Cavernus at the White Hare on the Esquiline.’
Cavernus. And me. And Drusus. All the relics of his far gone past. I said, ‘Is there nobody newer you can call on?’
‘When my life is worth seven hundred denarii and rising? Only the distant past is safe from that.’
‘Then you might want to know that Julius Claudianus leads one of the gladiator schools now. He trains on the Capitol side of the Circus Maximus. Vitellius likes him. He may have access to the things Drusus can’t hear. And there’s-’
‘Stop.’ Pantera put up his hand. ‘What you are doing is already enough. And what you don’t know can’t endanger you. Do you employ the silver-boys still? The Marcuses?’
‘When they ask me to.’ The fact that he knew them by name told me all I needed to know. ‘I’ll send them with word if anything comes in.’
Pantera gave a small salute, a lift of the finger that the street boys use to say the road ahead is clear. ‘Keep safe. I’ll whistle for Cerberus when I’m back.’
Chapter 20
Rome, 4 August AD 69
Borros, freedman, formerly slave to Cavernus of the White Hare
I was born in the White Hare tavern and, until Pantera came, had never slept a night away from it.
It was a fair-sized place, stuck halfway up the Esquiline, spreading over the whole of the corner between the carters’ street and the main thoroughfare; a good, clean hostel with good wine at good prices and food to go with it and by noon on most days we had all of our regulars in place: men who preferred our benches to their own, our gossip to their memories.
They weren’t soldiers, as such. If I’m honest, we were the kind of inn that attracted soldiers who had gone to seed, not so much a legionary tavern, but rather a former-legionaries’ tavern, where men came to share stories of the life that they had lost.