It was too much, too soon. I have never been a fast thinker.
I heard Cavernus walk out muttering something about a fucking waste of good gold and Pantera, serious-faced, said, ‘You can always stay here if you want. Cavernus will take you back in a flash.’
‘No!’ I was on my feet then, my head spinning. I saw the world open before me, in new colours, with a new feel. ‘Show me what you said, and then I’ll decide.’
‘Good.’ A small smile flickered across his face, as if I’d done well, and was being congratulated; as if I was a good man. You don’t know how rare that was. ‘Do you have anything to bring?’
‘No, nothing.’ I had small things, but I didn’t want them; I was going forward into a new life.
‘Let’s go, then. If you could walk apart from me, as if you don’t know me, but watch to see if anyone else is following me, that would be good.’
I did my best. I saw one of the small boys on a rooftop when now I know there must have been at least a dozen, but I didn’t see anyone more important and I am sure that’s because they didn’t know yet what guise he had taken.
We criss-crossed the city twice in the day’s heat. Twice we stopped and Pantera went in somewhere. Once was to a tanner’s in a foul-smelling yard, once was to a scriptorium in the back of a block of small shops, a place where scribes rented out their skills.
Each time, he came out with another man behind him, and each looked as dazed as I felt, as if their world had turned over and been shown to be other than they had thought it.
The first, from the tanner, was a youth of barely twenty years, with a squint and dirty blond hair that looked as if it would shine like spun gold if only he washed it.
He was a killer, I will tell you that now. I might not have grown up a warrior, but I have had my share of street fights and bar-room brawls and I know the type: they’re lean and lanky and slightly awkward and they look as if they couldn’t land a clean blow on a man if he was held still by six others and then you blink and look again and you find he’s got a knife in his hand and he’s cut the throat of a man you’d think he could barely reach and is heading for the next one. That was Felix. He was left-handed and quiet and deadly and he tagged along behind Pantera on the far side of the street and I barely saw him again until we stopped.
Amoricus was the Egyptian scribe, from Memphis; he wasn’t old either, perhaps in his mid-twenties, but he walked strangely, as if he had a pole up his arse, and it wasn’t until the next morning’s latrines that I realized he’d been gelded.
It turned out he’d been a priest of Isis and had committed some heinous crime, spat on the altar or some such, and they’d cut his balls off and sold him into slavery and he’d been forced into writing because he couldn’t do anything else.
But he was a good scribe. He had ink on his fingers that morning and came with his own writing kit, blinking in the sunlight as if he never usually saw it and trotting along the middle of the road behind Pantera like a faithful hound. He’d been on the bright end of that smile, too, I’d wager, and wanted to see it again.
We went down to the river, through the cattle markets, and crossed over the bridge there, to a tavern on the far side called the Retiarius. It wasn’t nearly as well kept as the White Hare — when you’ve lived in a place for eighteen years, you learn what it takes to keep a good bar — but it was busy, which meant nobody paid us any attention and we could sit down out of the public eye.
Pantera stopped us outside and told Amoricus to pretend he was a scribe and we were his slaves, himself included. Pantera had never looked more disreputable than he did when we shuffled in after the little man from Memphis to the table in the corner where Pantera was directing him by tugs at his sleeve.
He sent me to the bar with silver and I came back with passable ale and some cheese and olives and we ate together in a kind of wonder that grew greater as he spoke to us all in the language of western Britain. And we all understood.
To this day, I don’t know how he did it, but he had found three slaves who were of the right temperament and ability to do what he wanted, to be what he wanted, and each of us had a mother or a father or had been reared by a grandmother who had come from Britain. And he had lived there, loved there, fought there in the wars for freedom. That was what bound us in the first place, the language, and all it meant to us.
Then he told us what he wanted.
‘From today, each of you is a free man. Amoricus has paper, pen and ink and will write your manumission papers when we are done. I will sign them, you will each keep your own. If you wish to go, you are welcome.’
‘And if we wish to stay with you?’ asked Felix. He was the quiet kind, who only spoke when necessary, but when he did it was to the point. ‘You sound as if we might wish to do that. What are you offering us?’
‘Gold, in the end. And a position as Vespasian’s freedmen if you wish to stay. Freedom to leave if you wish to go, and land where you want it.’
Felix said, ‘Vespasian is not emperor yet.’
‘We shall make him so. We four, sworn as brothers, my life for yours. There will be some killing. There may be some dying. We will be hunted by Lucius, brother to the upstart Vitellius, and the one thing we must all pledge each other now, in a binding oath, is that if one of us is captured, the others will do all in their power to kill him cleanly before he is taken to Lucius’ questioners.
‘I will teach you to be spies. You will almost certainly have to kill men of Vitellius’ army, perhaps others. You will live roughly, in many guises. You will be nameless and unrecognized, except by me. It will be dirty and hard and painful and at worst will end in a death so slow that crucifixion will seem like a blessing. Will you do it?’
Felix said, ‘There are men calling your name through the whole of Rome today. For eight hundred sesterces, I could sell you to Lucius now.’
Pantera said, ‘I fought at your mother’s side in the battle of the Fallen Oak. She was one of the most fearless warriors I have ever met. I do not believe a son of Cunava would willingly sell out one who fought with his mother. Or you-’ He looked at Amoricus. ‘Your grandfather held a bridge alone against half a century of men for half a day. You are his grandson in looks as well as heart. I don’t believe you would sell me either, but if I am wrong you are welcome to try.’
He was like that, full of quiet confidence. If any one of us had stood up in that bar and said who he was — we’d all worked it out by then — we would have been rich. To a slave, six, seven, eight hundred sesterces was a lifetime’s silver. Pantera was offering gold, but there was no real promise we’d ever see it. What else he offered, though, was more important to each of us than gold: he offered us dignity.
We were in a tavern, so I could not stand up and grip his arm, but I laid my hand flat on the table, palm up, and waited until he laid his on top of it.
‘My life for yours,’ I said. ‘And if you are taken, a clean death if I have to die to make it happen.’
They say that swearing to give his life is the greatest thing a man can do, but we knew, who had lived as slaves with the threat of crucifixion always hanging over us, that a clean death was the greater boon.
I gave my oath willingly, the first thing of my own I had ever given anyone, and the newness of it was like the first flush of love.
I wasn’t alone. I watched the faces of the other two as they swore, saw tears prick their eyes. We were strangers and we were brothers. And we were free.
It was afternoon by then, heading to evening. Pantera drained his beaker and nudged Amoricus to stand so that we could all follow.