‘Me. Indeed, so,’ said Pantera.
He was sitting on a barrel, playing finger games with some twine. Around him huddled a dozen filthy, entranced boys. Not one of them had dirty blond hair.
‘Where’s he gone?’ I asked. ‘The boy who rules them?’
‘Marcus?’ Pantera looked around, as if searching. ‘I have no idea. He does what he’s paid to do and then he leaves. He was paid to bring you here. He’s done that; there’s no need for him to stay. He isn’t interested in the shadows made by string.’
For the rest, who were manifestly fascinated by what was nothing more than sleight of hand, slickly done, Pantera called the string into a delicate, angled shape that sent the shadow of a hare and then a wolf on to the patch of wall which caught the only light. The boys sighed in awe, and then again in frustration as Pantera palmed the string and stood up.
‘Time to go,’ he said, shooing them away. ‘Later, we can make more.’
I watched them disappear, effortlessly swallowed up by the city. ‘Are they all called Marcus?’
‘So they say.’ Pantera smiled; a flash of warmth swiftly gone. ‘They know who you are.’
‘The boys?’
‘No. I mean, yes, of course, they always have, but they’re not your enemies. I mean Geminus and Juvens. And Lucius. Three of your victims lived. One saw your face. They have a dozen men waiting for you at the Inn of the Crossed Spears. You can’t go back.’
‘Fuck.’ I leaned back against a wall. Gudrun’s stew was a dream on my tongue, but there were compensations and the thought of all-out war against the Guards wasn’t a bad one.
I closed my eyes. My hands flexed over and over on my pack and my pitch. My mind swam with plans, but within them was a kernel of doubt. I didn’t trust Pantera; since that first evening at Caenis’ house, I never had. He was too tricksy, too much the spy, and there was something about him here and now that was not quite honest.
‘You’ve seen them?’ I asked.
‘Of course. They think they’re being subtle, but they’re Guards…’
‘And Guards think subtlety means wearing a plain belt, without legionary markings.’ I forced a smile. ‘So I need to find somewhere else to live. I can move from the inn, go down the hill to-’
‘Trabo, you need to leave Rome.’
‘ What? ’
‘We need someone to go to Ravenna, to bear a message to Lucillius Bassus who leads the eastern fleet. He’s halfway to our side but he needs some final persuasion. I have a letter in Vespasian’s hand, bearing Vespasian’s seal, offering Bassus land and gold and a commission in the legions if he’ll come to our side. You can deliver it, and stay with him, and talk him round. You’ve been in the Guard. You can talk tactics where even the best messenger can only relay what he’s told.’
The letter lay on Pantera’s open palm: a scroll, pale in the dusk light. It was a forgery, of course; no letter from Vespasian could have got here so quickly. He wanted to make me into a messenger boy.
Screw that.
I laughed and heard it bounce off the walls. ‘I’m a free man. I don’t take orders from anyone. Go fuck your mother.’
I turned and would have walked away, but the not-vanished silver-boys had shifted piles of debris into my path. Nothing much, just a couple of barrels, a sack full of evil-smelling food waste, a dozen smoothed planks that were too good to be there and must have been stolen from a building site. They had done it with such quiet care that I hadn’t heard them move, but I was trapped as efficiently as if they stood there with spears to hold me still.
I spun on my heel and threw out the only weapon I had to hand. ‘If you’re trying to get rid of me so you can have a clear run at Jocasta, you can forget it!’
‘A clear run?’ This time, it was Pantera who laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘I rather think Caecina is ahead of me in that queue, don’t you? And then Domitian. And very likely Juvens and Geminus. At the very least, they have men following her who are far more subtle than you. And she knows about them, too.’
‘You think I’m an idiot?’ His tone… I could have hit him, but there was too much junk between us and I’d seen how fast he could throw his bloody little knife.
He knew it, obviously. With exaggerated calm, he said, ‘You’re far from an idiot, but you’ve spent too many nights hunting Guards and too many days tracking a woman across the city and the sum of these has made you careless. I think you’ll be safer in Ravenna, and also useful.’
‘I’m not-’
Pantera cut across me. ‘Listen to me. If I wanted you dead, you would be lying cold on the street, so just this once, do what you’re told and think it through later. Deliver my message to Bassus and the navy. It’s sealed in a way that will show if you’ve opened it, so obviously you won’t. Can you write?’
‘What? Of course I can write.’
‘So then I ask only that you write a report of everything you see and hear and send it to me.’
‘But…’
Pantera pushed himself off his self-made throne. In two steps, he was in shadow, barely visible. His voice trailed back to me. ‘Trabo, don’t make this more difficult than it has to be. Your life hangs by a particularly fine thread. I am doing everything I can not to have to cut it. You will be safer outside Rome, trust me on that. And you will be just as useful to all of us. I will need to send messages to the fleet, to Antonius Primus, to whoever else defects from the Vitellian side. You can be my go-between to all these and you can fulfil your oath to Caenis while you’re at it. Go now. Find yourself a bed for the night somewhere small and quiet and in the morning there’ll be a horse waiting for you at a tavern called the Retiarius on the western edge of the cattle market. It is being held in the name of Hormus, which is the guise you will use; a freedman of Alexandria. You should ride out with the dawn. The silver-boys will see you safe.’
He was gone. I was left alone, furious, to work my way out of the alley with Gudrun’s stew a dry memory in my mouth. I didn’t trust Pantera, but there was a chance he’d been telling the truth about the Guards at the Inn of the Crossed Spears and I couldn’t take that risk.
I turned back into the winding alleys of the slums, turned left and left and left, heading towards the Quirinal, not entirely sure where I was and simmering on the injustice of all Pantera had said while at the same time striving to think where else I might go, what I might eat, how I might plan a night’s hunting and still get to see Joc Juvens.
And Geminus.
And Marcus Sulius Constans, and five other Guards of similar calibre, strung out across the alley ahead and behind in an ambush as fair and square as any that might infest your nightmares.
When they come for you like that, you have to move fast, right?
‘ Ha! ’
I swung my pot of half-congealed pitch in a fast, looping arc. Hot tar spewed out, spraying the nearest men. They fell back, cursing viciously, but quietly; someone had commanded them to keep at least a modicum of silence.
I didn’t care about quiet; the more noise the better, especially if the bastards were keen on hush, that was my theory. My pack was my shield, my stave-knife my sword. I was on the first of them — Constans — ready to kill and then to die.
I was already angry after Pantera’s petty jibes, and now I dropped all pretence of civilization. I was free and wild and reckoned I could kill at least three more of the bastards before they sent me to join Otho in whatever afterlife he was in.
I slashed my blade back-handed at Juvens’ beautiful, much-admired face, then flicked and slashed forward at a man I knew by sight but not by name. Blood sprayed back to the alley walls.
Three men hurled themselves at me, cursing, clearly aiming to kill.