But he bowed, hands on his chest, in the Persian fashion, and said, ‘Be welcome, brother of the emperor. And all those who seek sanctuary with you.’
The relief? You could have cut it up and served it on a plate to the emperor; to either of the emperors. When the priests opened the temple gates the entire group piled inside, leaving behind only the stalwart few manning the barricades and even they set up a rotation and went in for a while each.
There was food in there, and water, rest and shelter from the downpour; we’d run up the hill in rain but it had become a thunderstorm by the time we reached the temple. Sabinus said, and nobody disagreed, that it had been arranged by the gods to protect us.
Certainly, it was better to sit inside and listen to the rain batter the roof tiles than to stand out in all that weather, holding a cordon around the foot of the hill, which was, we were told, what Geminus’ Guards were doing. Pantera said as much to Sabinus when he was able to get him away from his throng of sycophants.
‘If the rain stays like this, the Guards won’t be able to hold their cordon on the hill. There will be gaps you could drive a tenhorse chariot through. We can get you out then, and away to Antonius.’
That made perfect sense to me, but Sabinus was a politician, not a military man; his strategies were all for the look of things, not the practical necessities of survival.
He smiled at Pantera the way you might smile at a slave you pitied, and shook his head. ‘To abandon the Capitol now would be to abandon Rome, and I am my brother’s representative: I can’t do that. Use your powers to keep us safe, and I’ll use mine to make sure that we have an empire to come out to when the rain lifts.’
He had practised that speech, I think. It came out sounding rehearsed, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t sincere.
We left soon after and went out to check the first line of defences just past the brow of the Arx.
Jocasta was still there, overseeing the creation of a second layer of barricades formed from old timbers and carefully balanced masses of old masonry that could be sent flying down the hill by five men heaving on a lever. She was striding up and down the line with her tunic belted like a man’s and her dark hair flying free in the rain. She was filthy and bedraggled and she looked as beautiful as I had ever known her; and happy.
It was heart-breaking, and all the more because she didn’t so much as look my way and there’s a limit to how much of a fool I’m prepared to make of myself, even for her. I smiled once, and then pretended to study the battlements she had made.
Pantera, watching her, said mildly, ‘You should be in Britain. There, the women lead the armies.’
She threw him a cheerful glance that knotted my stomach. ‘I’m told it is cold and wet and the children are born with webbing between their fingers and toes, like ducks.’
I learned later that Pantera had had a daughter once, to a woman of the Dumnonii. It perhaps explained the strange look on his face, the longing and sorrow and yearning mixed.
‘Not true,’ he said. ‘It’s no wetter than here. You would thrive there. When this is over, I’ll take you-’
‘Someone’s coming!’ a man shouted up from further below. Every inch the military leader, Jocasta spun on her heel and ordered the defenders to the levers, ready to send rocks hurtling downhill. They were actually leaning on the first lever when a new call came: ‘He seeks the Leopard.’
‘Expecting someone?’ Jocasta pushed a hank of hair out of her eyes.
‘Possibly.’ Pantera put his hands to his mouth and shouted, ‘Ask for a name!’
‘Borros!’ shouted Borros, and pushed up to the barricade, and was shown the only safe place where he could clamber over without risking damage to his manhood from a series of sacrifice-knives set upright in the planking.
Reaching us, he said, ‘The Guard has set a cordon about the foot of the hill, but they can’t hear anything over the rain and you can walk ten feet from them and they see nothing. If Sabinus wants to leave now, we could have him down the hill and out of the city to be with Antonius Primus by morning.’
‘He won’t leave,’ Pantera said, and stepped away from the barricade. ‘I’m sorry to have sent you on a fool’s errand. Come away from the rain and have something to eat.’
I couldn’t wait to be free of Jocasta’s blank stare. I followed Pantera back up the hill and into a priest’s quarters in one of the small, ramshackle houses in the row that led up to the temple. It was little more than an alcove with a bed and a brazier, but as private as any we had found when the greater mass of the refugees was clustered in the main rooms of the temple.
‘Have you located Domitian?’ The question had been burning Pantera’s tongue since he saw Borros, but he couldn’t ask it with everyone around because nobody else knew the boy was missing.
Borros shrugged expressively. ‘He was still in the House of the Lyre when the Guards went to burn it.’ He held up a hand. ‘Be calm, they didn’t succeed. They didn’t even try. The Belgian doorkeeper dropped the names of several people who would be mightily upset if that place was not fit for their parties and the officers thought better of it and went on their way. But Domitian left by a back route while that discussion was happening and I didn’t see where he went. One of the Marcuses might know where he is, but they won’t tell me.’
Water was dripping steadily from the crag of Borros’ brow on to the bedding. Pantera handed him a cloth to dry himself, and a warm cloak, filched from a priest, before dragging on another cloak. It wasn’t his and it stank of incense, which is less than useful if you’re trying to hide, but he needed something to shield him against the rain.
‘I’ll try to find him. If Caenis and Sabinus ask, tell them. If you can manage not to mention the House, it will probably save your life when the boy becomes emperor.’
Borros grinned. He sat on the edge of the bed and warmed the flats of his hands on the underside of the platter. ‘I’ll be in Britain long before that. And you too, if you’ve any sense. Don’t get lost in the rain. And don’t get caught.’
I followed Pantera out. He didn’t turn me away, so I was there when he found Domitian and Mucianus’ catamite together in a hut owned by Scopius of the Crossed Spears.
Chapter 56
Rome, 18 December AD 69
Horus
The silver-boys told him where we were, and directed him to us with their whistles.
The first thing I knew, there was a scuffle outside and a knock on the door frame of our hut; the door itself was goat-hide, you understand. I was inside with Domitian, Gudrun, Zois and Thais in as cheerful a cluster of vivacity as you could ask for, all of us bunched in a ring round a hot brazier, eating flat bread and goat’s cheese and playing dice for copper coins. Domitian was losing.
Pantera ducked inside with his thug Trabo close behind. I despised him, and the feeling was returned in kind. But neither of us was able to take the edge off the joyful greeting that met Pantera as he walked in.
‘You’re alive!’ Zois, Scopius’ small dark daughter, who had so entranced everyone with her acrobatics in the summer, threw her arms round him.
Thais, her taller, fairer, more shapely sister wasn’t far behind. ‘When we heard about the Guard and the burning houses, we were so afraid for you.’
It was like a family, when the favoured brother returns home, or a particularly indulgent uncle. The girls clustered round, fussing over Pantera’s wet tunic, bringing dry cloths to scrub at his hair.
Trabo eyed him sourly. ‘You’re a popular man.’
I could have hit him for that. Pantera stiffened; the warm, easy joy was lost. Sliding behind the irony that is his shield, he said, ‘I let them dye my hair. You should try it sometime.’
But his eyes rested on my face and there was still a kind of peace in them as if everything I had done had been forgiven. Or perhaps he was just lost in memories, for he said, ‘I had a daughter once, in Britain. She would have been their age by now, had she lived.’