Their bodyguards were vast men bearing bundles of rods and axes with which to deter the inappropriate attentions of lesser mortals, but even they kept a seemly distance from the white apparitions. The only people permitted to approach the Virgins were their hand-matrons; former Vestals who remained to serve their younger, still-chaste sisters. They, too, were dressed in white, but their ribbons were blue to show that they no longer tended the sacred flame.
They moved to and from the Vestals to the gathering crowd dispensing favours: dates and apples in accordance with the Saturnalia; small denomination coins; slips of paper with exhortations and prophecies: Fortune favours you; Honour those who support you; Begin each day gladly, and it will end so.
Simply to be gazed upon by a Vestal could free a condemned man from his execution. On the day after the temple burned, with the smoke still billowing up from the top of the Capitol hill, everyone wanted to fall under their stare. They were the nearest thing Rome had to living gods and we all needed their goodwill.
The mood of the crowd was strangely erratic. There wasn’t a man, woman or child there who didn’t think Rome was on the road to certain ruin; the temple had gone and their emperor had all but abdicated, both things unheard of in the city’s history. On the other hand, it seemed as if the gods had simply taken the inversions of Saturnalia and pushed them to their natural limit. The emperor was no longer ruler. The people were no longer safe. Anything was possible.
So the crush of the crowd grew denser with every passing heartbeat and we were caught up in it, helpless as a pair of corks in the ocean; for a while, it was all Pantera and I could do to keep sight of each other, never mind follow anyone else.
No one gave us any favours and we broke out eventually, but we had lost touch with Marcus in the chaos and when we found him again his cocky know-everything air had gone.
‘We lost them.’
‘What?’ Pantera could make a single word sting like a sword cut. ‘Where?’
‘In the crowd. Not ten paces away. They were there, all of them, and then they were gone.’
Pantera’s gaze cut us both equally. I had never been afraid of him, but I was then. ‘Find them,’ he said. ‘Our lives and the future of the empire rest on it.’
Chapter 71
Rome, 20 December AD 69
Trabo
In a city layered with a fine mist of ash, the silver-boys were everywhere; I’d never known the streets of Rome so infested with small boys. Every rooftop had one, every side alley had two and their whistles meshed us in a net of sound just as the falling ash from the temple fire meshed us in filth.
We thought the Vestals had been sent by the gods to protect us from Pantera. The crowd around them was like an army, the front row solid as a shield wall.
I was set to break through, with my shoulder angled down and to the fore as we did in the Guards. Domitian was with me; he must have read of the tactic, or seen his father show it off, or his brother.
But Jocasta dodged into a side shop and came out with cloaks and hoods — she must have paid for them, but the bargaining was very brief — and said instead, ‘The best place to hide is in a crowd. All we have to do is change how we look and we can get in amongst the people, become one of them. Do it quickly. The silver-boys are everywhere.’
I caught Domitian’s eye and gave the nod, and together we pushed the crowd open a little to let us all in. As soon as the pressure was off, the mass of men and women closed again behind us, solid as a dungeon door, trapping us in, but trapping out Marcus and his light-footed spies.
We kept close in our pairs, me and Jocasta, Horus and Domitian, Caenis and Matthias. Of them all, Caenis and Matthias had been hardest to persuade into coming; Caenis would not have it that Pantera intended anything other than the best for her and Vespasian and, by inclusion, Vespasian’s son. It took Domitian himself to point out that her house had been burned to the ground because Pantera had been seen going into it and that no decent man would have allowed that.
Bunched together, keeping watch each for the other, we were swept up by the crowd that surged in the Vestals’ wake down the Palatine, and across the open space of the forum.
It was there, or close to it, that I saw Pantera standing on the margins with blond-Marcus to his one side and Borros to the other. He looked as thunderously angry as I’ve ever seen him, and he was clearly searching for us. I tipped my head down, let the hood of my cloak fall further over my face.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Jocasta’s vindicated smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Don’t be. Loyalty is a coin of infinite value, only sometimes it needs to be spent with more care. Still, we need to get out of here. He’ll work out soon enough how we got past him. I would.’
That was easy to say and harder to do. We were swept slowly out of the forum, leaving behind the temples and the ugly statue of Nero, and on down the Flaminian Way.
We passed on north, with the Aventine to our left, past the circus and all the gladiator schools, past the temple to Claudius. We were heading out towards the markets that lined the Tiber, towards the bridge that was the front line of Vitellius’ defences, when a flash of colour caught my eye: cowled robes in vermilion and midnight blue, worn by a huddle of shifty-looking individuals. Then one of them turned round and what I saw wasn’t human.
‘What the fuck is that?’
My voice was a squeak, my blade half drawn. Horus put a warning hand on my arm. ‘Don’t. They’re priests. It’s a mask.’
‘Anubis,’ Domitian said, in wonder. ‘Dog-headed god of the Underworld. Are they Alexandrians?’
‘They’re priests of Isis,’ Horus said. ‘There’s a temple behind the water tower that’s said to have greater wealth than any other in Rome. They’ll be taking it out of the city before Antonius’ legions come in and decide to sack it.’
Jocasta said, ‘And this is their best chance; nobody is going to commit acts of war while the Vestals are in procession. If they can leave now, they’ll be safe. Shall we join them?’
Her smile was all challenge. Caenis saw it and bit her lip, but Domitian had begun to catch the fever of the day.
‘Who has gold? Isis is only rich here because the priests love the sight of it.’
‘I do.’ Jocasta untied her belt. Along the back was sewn a pouch exactly like the one I had worn when I came into Rome. She hadn’t used hers as a weapon, but she could have done; it was easily heavy enough. When she opened it, we saw gold glimmer softly inside.
‘I have enough here to pay a dozen men for a year. Trabo, I believe you can match it?’
I could, and I did. There was something of an altercation when we first joined the group, much vermilion flouncing by the priests, whose dog-headed masks prevented them from offering coherent argument, but Jocasta opened her hidden purse and poured out her gold, and I joined her, and very swiftly the muffled grunting stopped.
A tall figure at the back spoke a sharp order in a language I didn’t know and someone nearer to us lifted the mask, revealing a woman of mature years beneath.
‘What for do you offer this?’
She wasn’t Roman, clearly, but nor did she sound Alexandrian.
‘For sanctuary amongst the people of Isis,’ Jocasta said. ‘We must leave Rome incognito. In the name of the Chosen, who is our personal friend, we would ask that you let us join your procession. When, in the coming days, the rightful emperor sits on the throne, your reward will be ten times what we offer now.’
Domitian started forward. ‘My father-’
Jocasta’s glance silenced him more effectively than anything I could have said, but still, in those two words he had revealed everything.