But it was the Guards who were dead and not one of the litter-bearers so much as scratched. What could Otho have done with these men on his side? What could Vespasian do?
I lifted my hands to show they were empty, and levered myself cautiously to my feet.
‘We need to talk,’ I said.
‘One of us does,’ said Pantera, and took my right arm and twisted it behind my back and marched me over to where they had set down the litter.
Chapter 24
Rome, 4 August AD 69
Caenis
I felt like a block of carved granite, set in the flimsy surround of the litter.
Outside was a violence I had seen often at a distance, but never this close, never this personal. Matthias was armed with a cudgel — Matthias!
He was a stranger to me, lost in a sea of silently fighting men, holding his own, but against unspeakable odds.
Long ago, Vespasian had offered me a blade and bade me carry it, ‘to protect my virtue’. I had laughed at him, poked his naked ribs, reminded him that slaves have no virtue to protect and if his name did not protect me, a blade was hardly likely to. ‘I’m not going to offer an assailant a weapon he may not have.’
It had sounded good, in the safety of his bed. Now, in the darkness of a hot summer night with men fighting outside, it was an offer I would have grasped with both hands, if only to make a clean end of myself before they came for me.
I lifted the hem of my stola and considered whether I could rip it and make a noose for myself as braver women had done before me. The first, yes, the second, no; I didn’t have that kind of courage. Not yet, anyway.
I made irrelevantly unfulfillable vows to myself that I would never again allow myself to be caught in a situation where I was so impossibly helpless. And then I sat stilclass="underline" helpless.
Outside, the grunts of exertion grew fewer and further between. A voice issued a stream of quiet orders; Pantera, I thought. He was speaking a language I had never heard before and it warped his voice from what I knew, but the tenor of command changes little from tongue to tongue and I had lived near enough to soldiers for there to be a certain security in it.
I was surprised to feel the litter twitch in that edgy, erratic way that meant four men had taken hold of the carrying poles, and lifted. A hand appeared at the flap, and after it Pantera’s dye-darkened face. At his side, held in a grip that looked likely to cripple, was a bearded ruffian who smiled at me convivially, ignoring the blade angled at his jugular. In his turn, Pantera ignored him; his attention, at least outwardly, was all for me.
‘Lady, I apologize for the inconvenient delay. Sadly I am unable to continue my duties as your bearer. Matthias will take my corner to deliver you home. It’s not far; a few hundred paces and we’ll have you safe, if such a thing exists in Rome tonight.’
The door flap dropped. He hadn’t asked for my permission. Why would he when he was so effortlessly in command? And Matthias had lowered himself to carrying my litter. Truly, the day had reached an unprecedented level of strangeness.
For a brief moment, I allowed myself the luxury of hating the man who had brought us to this, and his paid henchmen, and Vespasian, who sent him in the first place. It didn’t last long, but it filled me with a hot, red, savage rage, which sustained me round the corner into the Street of the Bay Trees, and on the hundred yards to the front door of my house.
Which was where I should have dismounted and dismissed the men. I had lifted the flap and was stepping out when Pantera’s hand caught my arm.
‘Stop,’ he said, and I did. ‘Someone’s in there. The door’s been unlocked.’
‘Guards?’ I asked, looking as far as I could up the empty street. ‘Where are the watchers?’
Pantera nodded. ‘Indeed. Where are the Guards? They may be the ones inside, but if not, they have taken themselves away. Or been ordered to leave. There are some things even paid watchers are better off not seeing.’
He gave orders again, one pitch above a whisper, and his four men — Matthias was his now, sprinting to obey — made a ring around me, facing out, cudgels hefted, while Pantera thrust his captive ahead of him as a shield and barged fast and hard in through my terrifyingly expensive, worryingly unbarred front door.
Chapter 25
Rome, 4 August AD 69
Caenis
‘ Jocasta? ’
‘Trabo!’
‘Jocasta!’
‘Pantera?’
‘ Domitian? ’
This last, of course, was me, coming late across the threshold, hemmed about by rough men who smelled of garlic and olive oil and rich-sour battle sweat.
Domitian stood ahead of me in the atrium, holding one of my best wine glasses in his hand. The flask was on the floor by the couch on which his guest was reclining. Or she was until Pantera barged in.
I think that’s the first time I saw Jocasta as she was, not acting. I had seen a woman in utter control of herself, playing the whore and the diplomat and shifting from one to the other without pausing for breath.
Now, she flung herself to her feet and up close to Pantera’s prisoner. With a delicacy that was entirely surprising, she traced her exquisite fingers round the margins of the raised welt on his cheek that promised to grow into an angry bruise.
There was wonder and a real affection on her face, maybe something more; certainly a shared history that went back longer than this one night. It occurred to me that I had watched Pantera devote to her the kind of attention I didn’t think he lavished on anyone else, but had seen nothing but courtesy in response. Here, with this bandit she had called Trabo, was more than courtesy.
Sharply, she said, ‘Why are you holding him thus? He is Trabo. I told you.’
This to Pantera, who had not set down his knife. By way of answer, he tightened his grip and pushed his man further into the room.
I was ahead of him, lighting candles. It was one of Matthias’ duties, but I thought I had lost Matthias to Pantera; certainly he took his orders from him, although he remained behind with us when the other three ruffians left at Pantera’s quiet order: to guard the house from the outside, or to leave so they were not caught, I still don’t know which.
So I lit candles, which gave me a measure of calm and allowed me to study the changing tensions on the faces of the four men and one other woman in my atrium.
Walking from one wall bracket to the next, I passed Domitian who had been flushed and happy, the lord holding forth in his house, and now was peevish and angry and coming to realize that his love had eyes for other men, and they for her.
Every man in the room had eyes for her, actually. Even Matthias, who until that moment had adored me and reserved his lust for one of the silver-skins on the Palatine, paying him in monthly silver for a fidelity they both knew to be fiction. But here and now he was gazing at Jocasta as if she were Aphrodite walked out of the sea.
But these two, much as I loved them both, were the bit players in this drama; the two men at the centre of the room commanded the better part of my attention.
The bearded bandit — Jocasta had called him Trabo — was grinning at Jocasta with a delight that pushed the boundaries of decency. He was not stupid; he had seen Domitian, and even as I watched, he glanced over and lifted a single raised brow and let his eyes ask the question. This one? Him? Really?
Jocasta had her back to both me and Domitian and neither of us could see her answer, but the ruffian’s face did not fold as it might have done, only creased in a dry, knowing smile that crushed my heart.
Poor boy. He had had his hour of joy and had seen it end.
Pantera knew already of Domitian’s infatuation, of course. Still, as he watched Jocasta and Trabo, I saw surprise sweep across the landscape of his face, and something else, gone too fast to identify. It might have been love. I thought it was at the time.