Behind him, the booth was clean and uncluttered. His tunic was old and worn thin at the elbows, but fastidiously clean. He smelled of new grass and neatsfoot oil and, beneath that, of the rubbing stones the warriors of Britain – and likely of Gaul – had used daily on their blades to keep the soul-spirit of the iron fresh and fed.
It was a combination Pantera had not encountered in nearly two years. It caused his mouth to water and his chest to ache with remembered loss. He pushed himself away from the tent pole and squatted on his heels in the way the elders had done among the Dumnonii.
‘I am told you are Caradoc of the Osismi,’ he said, ‘father of Math of that tribe. I had hoped to find you here, but I confess to surprise that you are not watching the race.’
‘My son prefers it thus. He fears I bring ill luck to him and his horses. On a day such as today when his team may be victorious, I would not blight his joy by my presence.’
‘And the team’s progress is as easily gauged from here as the stadium,’ Pantera said, cocking his head to the roar of a half-lap from the hippodrome.
‘Indeed.’ The rhythm of the stitching paused only a moment. ‘And you are?’ The man’s voice was perfectly neutral. A sheathed sword lay under his seat. His right foot had moved to rest on the hilt.
‘A friend,’ Pantera said. ‘One who cares for Math and his future. Not in the way you might think. I have just watched him encounter the Emperor Nero. It was … unfortunate.’
‘I imagine Math did not find it so.’
‘He told the emperor that his mother was dead and his father had been crippled in a tavern brawl. He told me, on the other hand, that you had been a warrior and were injured in battle. Either way, I am surprised to find you so active.’
‘It suits Math that others believe what he wishes. And he believes it to be true that I am injured beyond all use.’
‘Perhaps he is also protecting you with the story of the tavern brawl? It would not do to tell the emperor that his father had been wounded in battle against the legions.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘No. He told me you and his mother had been warriors. It may be that in our ancestors’ time the men and women of Gaul fought shoulder to shoulder. But in my experience, only in Britain has such a thing happened in our lifetime.’
‘Then your experience is wide indeed.’
Caradoc of the Osismi did not stop stitching, but he did lift his foot from his blade. Something altered in the angle of his shoulders and, for the first time, he looked up from his work.
His eyes were a clear, rain-washed grey, exactly like Math’s. His hair was the colour of old thatch, streaked through with grey, older by three decades than Math’s grubby gold but easily imagined as once the same, only cleaner, and so brighter. Manifestly, he was the father of his son.
He was also a reader of men. Pantera stood still under a scrutiny such as he had not borne since his first meeting with Aerthen’s mother.
‘Will you sit?’ Caradoc said at last. ‘I have no wine, but could offer ale.’
It sounded a simple offer. Pantera, who knew it was not, found he was offered both an answer and another, more difficult question.
The past days had been full of such. In each, he had made a choice that did not fit with his idea of the man he had become since leaving Britain: the choice to answer the emperor’s summons when it would have been as easy to walk up the long road from the Roman camp in Lugdunum and lose himself eventually in the wild tribes north of the Brigantes; the choice to let a grubby urchin follow him from the docks, and then not to kill him; the choice to let Seneca find them, and then not to kill him either, but to eat with him, and listen; the choice to speak to a race-driver who claimed falsely to be Greek about what had been done to his harness; and now, last, the choice to find the urchin’s crippled father, who was not, after all, anywhere near so crippled that his son must ply the docks to feed both of them.
At any point, Pantera could have walked away. He did not yet know why he had not.
‘Thank you.’ He sat on the iron-bound chest at the tent’s entrance that served both as a lock-box and a seat, waiting while Caradoc set down his harness and went to fetch ale from the back of his tent.
The former warrior moved slowly, using a stick for balance. His left leg had evidently been broken at some time and set at an awkward angle, so that his knee and foot turned outward.
Cautiously, Pantera said, ‘I have seen others who were fallen on by a horse. Few of them escaped with only lameness.’
‘But many more are able to throw themselves clear and walk away unhurt.’ Caradoc spoke with his back still turned. ‘I was holding Math. He was less than a month old. I had to keep him safe from more than a dying horse.’
Only in war were horses killed beneath their riders, and newborn infants threatened with danger so that their fathers must accept injury to keep them alive. ‘Does he know?’ Pantera asked.
‘No.’
Caradoc poured the ale and, halting, brought it back. In the hippodrome, the fourth lap came near its conclusion. At the tents, Pantera accepted the small beaker of boiled leather and the foaming ale within it. A further decision settled in his mind.
Raising his mug to the sun, he spoke aloud the first line of the invocation to Briga, mother of Nemain, keeper of life and death, of war and poetry, patron of leatherworkers and of the chariot drivers’ death-dance. Into the still silence after it, he said, ‘When I lived among the warriors of the Dumnonii, it was considered an insult to offer a man wine, it being of Rome. Ale, by contrast, was an honour.’ He spoke it all in the language of south-western Britain, enemy of Rome.
The clear grey eyes regarded him a while. ‘There are places in Britain still not under the heel of Rome,’ Caradoc said eventually. ‘The dreamers are gathered again on Mona, the island off the west coast, led by the Boudica’s brother, with her daughters at his side. Graine, for all her youth, is said to be amongst the foremost dreamers there. She has said already that Rome will take Mona in her lifetime, but that Hibernia, further west, will be safe and can be reached in time. Those who will set themselves against Rome believe her and gather under her uncle’s banner.’
He spoke the forbidden language with an ease and fluency that told of a lifetime’s daily use.
Pantera held the leather mug between his knees and stared down at the slow-moving islands of thin foam on the top. As Caradoc had done, he, too, answered the question that had so carefully not been asked. ‘I lost too much in Britain to go back there now. You, though, could return at any time.’
‘And take Math?’ The grey eyes flashed even as they looked past him to the hippodrome. ‘The boy who tells the emperor that his father was injured in a bar-room brawl? If you know my son at all, you will know that he despises warriors and all they stand for. How could I take him into a culture where warriors are honoured above all else?’
‘They’re not honoured above the dreamers,’ Pantera said softly.
‘My son is not a dreamer,’ Caradoc said. ‘Nor is he a leatherworker, a hunter, a weaver, a builder of roundhouses, or one who can find water, who can sense shoals of fish and draw them to his nets, who can charm a hare from the hill. He is a thief and a seller of himself and neither of these has a place in the tribes. In the pitiful port-sprawl that is Coriallum, Math has learned to be an urban creature. What would he be if I wrenched him from that?’
‘He would be safe from Nero. No one here can give him that protection now.’ Pantera set his ale on the grass. He had drunk a mouthful, which was more than Math’s father had done. ‘You are not of the Osismi,’ he said. ‘Ajax who drives for the Greens is not of Athens. Might he not help you to take Math to safety?’
Caradoc shook his head. ‘Not if Ajax wins the race. Or even if he comes a good second behind the magistrate’s wing-footed Parthian colts. He made an oath on the shade of Math’s mother he would do whatever was in his power to get the team – and so Math – to Rome if he could. And no’ – Caradoc held up his hand against Pantera’s almost-question – ‘I did not think it wise to give such an oath, but it was Math’s greatest wish and it seemed safer that he go with Ajax than that he try to get there alone.’ The old man smiled thinly. ‘He thinks Rome will be Coriallum wrought larger, and he will be the greatest dock thief of them all.’
Pantera said, ‘When I was a child, I thought the greatest gift I could have was Roman citizenship and that I would do whatever was in my power to earn it. We all make mistakes that in later adulthood we look back on with dismay.’
‘If we survive them,’ Caradoc said, and Pantera found it politic not to answer, but paused, listening to the sound of another lap finishing. The roar was the longest it had been, as the teams began their final lap.
He turned to face Caradoc for the first time. ‘If Ajax were to lose the race,’ he asked thoughtfully, ‘and Nero were not to require him to come to Rome, would Ajax help you get Math to safety then, do you think?’
Caradoc looked at him in alarm. ‘Tell me why Ajax might not win,’ he said sharply.
‘A youth of the Green team cut partway through the harness of the offside traces just before the horses left the barns. It was carefully done: the harness will stand for the greater part of the race, but it is my belief that if the team is made to angle hard to the outside, the strain will break at least one of the straps.’
‘Does Ajax know of this?’ They were both standing now, staring out towards the hippodrome. The thunder of the crowd was deafening.
‘I told him before he entered the arena,’ Pantera said. ‘I wouldn’t have come here to tell you otherwise. He will need help later. I thought you would be in a position to give it.’
In the hippodrome, the crowd sucked in a collective gasp. The noise was exactly that of the moment in battle when a champion has been downed in single combat.
Caradoc gripped Pantera’s shoulder. ‘If Ajax is injured, tell Math and Hannah to bring him to the upper room of the Roan Bull tavern; it’s closest to the hippodrome. Go now!’
‘
G
o Sweat! Go Thunder!
’
The fifth lap marker fell – another tumbling dolphin that spun and arced down a water slide on the spina to bob in the pool at the base. By the time it settled in its place, the teams were halfway down the far straight, running against the sun, with the Green ribbons lying in third place of four. The Parthians were in the lead for Red, but not as far as they might have been if they had really raced. The magistrate’s four matched grey colts had barely broken sweat and were not being pushed by their driver.
Behind them, Blue, Green and White, in that order, were straining in a tight pack, bunched together, the drivers leaning steeply into the turns, each vying for the place on the rail that gave them the best chance into the bend. Ajax’s bald head was a beacon in the middle, with the coloured ribbons flowing past his ears. Sweat and Thunder were running their hearts out, low to the ground, stretched flat and hard with every stride.
Through the sweating gap under another boy’s elbow, Math watched a space appear between the rail and the inner wheel of Blue’s chariot. Ajax had seen it before him. He always did.
Math watched Ajax shift his weight to his inside foot, felt in his own body the pull of the traces shift a fraction inside, saw the crack of the whip high above Sweat, but not Thunder, pulling him just a step to his left, and then – wait, wait, wait another stride …
on!
– aiming for a space that was barely wide enough for a single horse, never mind two and a chariot behind.
Math thought his heart might stop with excitement. Ajax was his hero, Pantera forgotten. He grabbed Lucius’ shoulder and jumped high in the air, fighting to see.
What he saw was near-disaster. Thunder broke stride, a thing that never happened.
‘
Nooooo!
’
Ten thousand men, women and children groaned as one. Math jumped again, but Lucius jumped in front, blocking the view, and by the time he could leap a third time and look, the disaster had been averted. There was no crash, but Ajax was still caught in behind the Blues and now the Whites were coming up on the outside, four sweat-streaked black colts, stretched flat to the floor with a thread-fine whip above, moving smoothly into place to box Ajax in.
The boys of the Blues and Whites jumped in unison, cheering. ‘
Go! Go! Go!
’
‘
Unfair! Foul!
’
Math was screaming himself hoarse. So unfair! Everyone knew the Reds were going to win, but it mattered to come second. It had not occurred to him as he walked with Nero that the other drivers would see it, and mark the Green team as the one to beat.
‘Foul! Unfair! They can’t combine, it’s not legal! Foul! Fou—
oof
!’
A boy from the Blue team slammed his elbow in Math’s gut. He sank to his knees, retching. Hannah jumped down from the rails and pulled him up before he was trampled.
‘One of the other drivers made Thunder break stride. They must have done!’ Math shouted over the havoc around them.
Hannah cupped her palm to his ear and shouted back. ‘The White driver spun his whip at Thunder’s eye. Ajax saw it and pulled him back in time. In Alexandria, even in Rome, the driver would have gone for the gap, and risked a blind horse. Ajax is better than that.’
Math heard the thread of pride in Hannah’s voice, and jumped again. The teams were nearing the bend. The track began its smooth angle to the left and the Blues’ driver lost control of his outer lead stallion, and so lost his tight line to the rail. The chariot swayed out again, leaving the same gap as before. This time, Ajax leaned in over his four, bald head flashing, using voice and whip and reins to ask more speed of them.
Math’s heart hurt; he had never seen the horses strain so hard, or so valiantly. Still, when asked, they dug deep and gave more. Ajax pushed forward and slid neatly through.
‘
Go! Go! GO GREEN!
’
The roar of the crowd became a constant, deafening scream. The last of the leaping dolphins tipped and fell at the end of the track. Math pushed on Lucius’ elbow and saw the grey Parthian team flash past, way ahead of the rest. They had three lengths on the others by now, if not four; an almost unassailable lead.