Domitian came next, and then Matthias and Trabo, who helped Pantera to haul Borros up.
‘How are we to get down again?’ I asked.
‘There’s a rope, lady. If I might climb past you?’
He had lizard feet, Pantera. He stepped lightly past me and went on a dozen paces and then lay on his belly on the wall and leaned down, and on the second or third try found what he sought. He whispered back, ‘Borros!’
The big Briton made himself the anchor once again, and the rope dangled over the edge, down into the everlasting dark.
Domitian went first, stepping lightly down the wall with his legs braced against it. He seemed immune to fear that night. His father would have been proud of him. Trabo followed Matthias and then it was my turn. I couldn’t move. I was frozen to the wall, staring at the height, terrified.
‘My lady?’ Pantera was behind me, standing on the wall’s curved top. ‘We need to lower you down. With your permission?’
He asked for my dignity, knowing I couldn’t climb; of all the things I am grateful for that night, his care for me on that wall ranks amongst the highest.
He wrapped the free end of the rope around my waist and, with my feet braced against the stone, Borros and Pantera lowered me down until I felt Domitian’s hands on my waist, helping me that last step, untying the rope that dug in beneath my ribs and made my breathing tight.
‘Keep your back to the wall. Don’t step forward. There is nowhere to go but down.’
I could feel it, the long drop to the foot of the Capitol. It sucked at me, sang to me siren songs of life swiftly gone, of an end to all care and fear and hope, for what use is hope when all is hopeless?
I thought of Sabinus and wished I hadn’t. We were so close still to the temple; we’d have heard sounds of fighting if it had started, so it hadn’t yet.
‘Excuse me, my lady.’ Shuffling past me on the tiny ledge, Pantera gave me a sickly grin. It felt better, knowing that he hated heights as much as I did.
With him in front, we all edged forward in the dark, testing each step as we went, keeping our right hands on the cold, slick stone of the temple wall and the other hand wrapped tight across our chests that we might not swing it out and pull ourselves over.
We reached a corner. Ahead, to our right, were the Guards who were assaulting the main gate of the temple. We had come round the side and there was a small gap before we reached the row of priests’ houses, now largely burned out.
By the noise, there were Guards there in numbers greater than we had yet seen on the hill. They were not well ordered; I could hear the commands and counter-commands, but there was no doubt they were perfectly capable of killing us if they saw us.
Or they’d take us prisoner, which would be worse. Very badly, I didn’t want to be the reason why Vespasian had to abandon his attempt, but I had no doubt, also, that he’d do exactly that if Domitian or I were to be taken by Lucius and threatened with harm.
They were a stone’s throw away; less. Pantera drew Domitian, Matthias and me close and said, softly, ‘Under the first of the priests’ houses is a cellar room. The trap door has been badly burned but is still in place, and I think nobody will find it who doesn’t know to look. The gap from here to there is ten paces.
‘If I have timed it correctly, there will be a noise from inside the temple very soon. When this happens, you will keep your heads covered with your cloaks, your faces turned away from the light, and you will walk, not run, those ten paces on to the porch and in through the front door of the first priest’s house.
‘It will feel like a lifetime, but it is not. Borros, Trabo and I will protect you with our lives if the Guards see you. In that case, you will have to risk being seen. Run to the fifth house. It has a door in the back wall that leads out to a narrow path behind the row that leads down the hill. The silver-boys will hide you if you can get to the Street of the Lame Dog.’
‘Pantera.’ I caught his arm. ‘If there is any chance of our being captured, I want your word that you will do for us what you did for Amoricus.’
He didn’t know that I knew what he had done. His eyes swam with hurt. ‘Lady, I can’t-’
‘You can. I order it. As your future…’
‘As my empress,’ he said, though we both knew I could never be that.
I said, ‘I will not be used as a weapon against him. I would rather be dead. Is that clear?’
By way of answer, he slid his arm into his sleeve and brought out a small, wicked-looking knife, sharp on both edges of the blade and fining down to a narrow point.
‘Take it.’ He held it out, flat on his palm. ‘For use in the last resort, if Trabo, Borros and I cannot help you.’
If we are already dead.
I had turned one of these down once, and regretted it. I took it. The hilt fitted perfectly into my hand. I prayed, briefly, to the gods whose temple we were leaving, that I would have the courage to use it at the right time.
As if in answer, a shout went up from behind the temple gates. A great ball of flame lobbed out, arcing up and over the wall, to fall down amongst the Guards. It was a barrel of pitch and it exploded as it hit the ground, sending hot tar over the nearest men. The noise, then, of screaming, shouting, weeping and cursing was like a wall of sound, crashing over us.
I barely heard Pantera’s single word, ‘Go’, but I felt his hand in the small of my back and in my mind I repeated over and over, Walk, don’t run. Walk fast, don’t run. Keep looking away. Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t -
I was there, up the steps and in through the doorway. The whole walk had been in shadow. The priest’s house was a charred ruin, still smoking, still hot. I stepped in through a doorway that was little more than a pair of leaning doorposts with no lintel. Inside, the light of the blazing pitch barrel cast awkward shadows across the debris.
Domitian reached me, his face pinched and scared. He stared at me, hard, at the knife in my hand. ‘Do you need to carry that?’
‘For now, I do.’ I had nowhere to put it, but even if Pantera had given me his little sleeve scabbard and strapped it on for me, I would have kept the naked blade in my hand. It was my touchstone for safety, my promise to myself.
Matthias came up on my right. His mouth moved in silent prayer. I realized I had no idea to whom he prayed.
Pantera joined us, then Trabo and Borros, together. ‘This way.’
He led through the atrium into a small back room with a window that looked west, out over the cliff and down towards the city below where Saturnalia lights flared and flickered, tiny sulphur perforations in a sheet of night.
‘Here.’ Pantera knelt in the middle of the floor. The charred remains of a trap door stood upright on its hinges and below was a mellow light, as of a dozen wall lamps.
We descended down a ladder that had not been touched by the fire into a small room, half the size of my atrium, painted blood red on walls, floor and ceiling, with a statue on the northern wall of a young man killing a bull.
Two people were there ahead of us.
‘Jocasta!’ Trabo skidded down the last two rungs of the ladder and leapt towards her, his arms wide.
‘Horus! I thought we’d lost you.’ Domitian didn’t run to the painted youth in the lilac gown, or embrace him, but I know that look, have felt it and given it, and his voice… I had never heard him sound mellow; always the opposite. Just then, he was mellow. And he didn’t so much as glance at Jocasta, which in itself spoke more than words could have done.
And so, and so… The trap door closed, softly. I glanced up and caught Pantera’s eye and he gave a strange, quirked shrug that was at once apology and explanation. He knew and he hadn’t told me. Very likely, he hadn’t known what to say.