The Broken Lance

by Jess Steven Hughes

  “I once killed a man, accidentally, by misjudging what he could stand. I killed him by merely talking to him, and telling him what would soon happen. It was more than his weak and aging heart could stand. But you are young and strong.” His eyes fell to the gorged stiffness. “It was while I was explaining a device I created especially for him. This one.” Abroghast held forth a small, dagger-like instrument in front of the wild-eyed man.

  “You see? When I squeeze the handle, the dull-prong point opens, forming a triangle up to two finger widths at the tips. A simple device really,” he hissed. “Three slightly curved pieces of metal that, when closed, appear to be a crude rod of a single-blade dagger.”

  Abroghast grinned at Decimus, who no doubt wondered what would befall him by the device, as did we all. He squeezed the handle several times, demonstrating how the spike-like blades moved apart, into three spikes, and clicked back together again when released. Abroghast’s other hand by now had slowly grasped and was gently milking the man’s erect member.

  “You see,” he said in a melodious and deep hypnotic voice, “the point is inserted into a small hole, and when the handle is squeezed, the blades expand the hole to a width great enough to insert something—vile—or worse.

  “Look at the handle of this dagger,” Abroghast commanded. “It’s hollow. In fact, it is a very small cage.” He pointed the tip at the man’s eyes. “You see? When the handle is gripped hard and the blades expand, a little trap door to the cage opens at the hilt and frees my hungry pet to enter whatever hole the tips are in.”

  I glanced about the area. All eyes were focused on the head interrogator and his fiendish device. The centurion, whom had earlier questioned a prisoner on the wheel, appeared wide-eyed, seemingly appalled by what was to take place.

  Sabinus’s face hardened as he looked on through narrowed eyes.

  The other torturers, who had stretched the three thieves on the rack, smiled through jagged and missing teeth, no doubt having watched Abroghast on many occasions plying his terrifying art.

  Crispus shook his head and for a split second turned away.

  Even though I was a veteran of five campaigns in Britannia and Germania, seeing more than my share of bloodshed and gore, it was all I could do to hold down the bile raising in my throat and keep an impassive face.

  Abroghast smiled crookedly and rasped, “I forgot to tell you about my pet, an earth monster of a sort. Not quite mole-like, or beetle-like, yet it tunnels and is even cannibal. I’ve seen it eat its young. Closer to being a worm, it consumes the earth, or flesh before it, and excretes it on its journey, ever deeper, into the bowels like needles of fire and brimstone.”

  He held the handle so close that Decimus could clearly see the thing confined in its hollowed-out enclosure. A sudden gasp of terror and an involuntary shudder overcame Decimus.

  “Pincer-jaws to grab its prey, and jagged-bone teeth to rip and tear, and a ferocious appetite,” Abroghast said with a grin.

  The rack master then rested the tip of the dagger on the man’s cheek bone below his twitching left eye, moving it slowly to a nostril, down the chin’s dimple, then the neck, across the chest, inserting it gently into the navel, pausing briefly with a slight clicking. He then brought the instrument quickly to the swollen but flaccid member, and quickly inserted the tip deeply into the foreskin pulling it onto the blade like a sock.

  Decimus fainted.

  Abroghast waited patiently for Decimus to regain consciousness. Such tender compassion graced his face that I could not, but for my eyes, believe the deed he awaited to consummate.

  Decimus groaned, then remembered and bellowed for mercy.

  Abroghast squeezed the dagger handle several times, sharply stretching the foreskin open and closed, but not freeing the thing from its cage. Decimus’s cries of anguish split the air, along with laughter from Abroghast, and murmurs calling upon the gods from several spectators present, including me.

  “But this . . . is . . . is for later,” Abroghast croaked, quickly withdrawing the device and placing it gently on a tool table where the prisoner could see the moving creature inside. “Now, I have some questions.” Abroghast motioned to the assistant torturer who began slowly cranking the pulleys.

  As Decimus’s face tightened and flushed from the pain, he screamed in renewed defiance, “Do your worst!”

  “Ohhh—but I will,” Abroghast said, his grin widening.

  *

  After the torturers finished, Decimus confessed to all but the name of his master. He told of a conversation with the dead Gaul that confirmed our suspicions, but refused to name the middleman who might lead to the real conspirators. The Gaul had gotten drunk one night and bragged about killing a British woman in the house of Sabinus. In turn, Senator Sabinus asked the prisoner what he knew about him.

  “He’s sent lots of my friends to the gladiator schools,” Decimus answered bitterly, “I won’t forget it.”

  “They should consider themselves fortunate,” Sabinus retorted, “I could have easily had them thrown to the wild beasts of the arena!”

  Decimus rolled his eyes and groaned.

  When Sabinus asked Decimus about the Gaul’s name, he replied with a quivering lie. He had only been with the band two years. When he again refused to name the middleman, Abroghast was asked to persuade him.

  “It is time to feed my pet!” Abroghast said.

  Shaken, I moved away, closer to the air shaft. I closed my eyes and enjoyed its refreshing breath of sour bile, where decades of those with queasy guts had no doubt retreated.

  And then I heard him.

  At first, a moaning plea for mercy, then a shrill pleading with the guards to kill him, and a rambling cursing prayer to the gods. A sudden quietness filled the chamber, then a piercing animal shriek burst forth as torment stung and seared its agony through Decimus’s being and past human words or abilities to convey.

  Never had I heard such sounds of pure terror and horror, though they yet echo in my mind and ears. A guard vomited. I turned and saw Abroghast silhouetted by torchlight, the prisoner’s foreskin stretched by the dagger blades to near transparency, and watched—horrified—as the monster-worm thing bulged its way slowly down the inside of Decimus’s swollen member, like a rat swallowed by a snake. Through it all, Abroghast’s heinous laughter was beyond description and filled the dungeon with a song of grotesqueness.

  Before the insanely raging Decimus was allowed to die, he named and cursed the freedman, Calenus, an Egyptian living along the Tiber waterfront. Calenus had conscripted Decimus as go-between with the other three prisoners to watch out for his interests.

  *

  In the early gloom of the following morning, Calenus, the Egyptian, was arrested in a tiny, vermin-ridden, sixth-floor tenement apartment in the area inhabited by the poorest people. Two watchmen kicked in the door, surprising Calenus, who sat on the edge of a cot. He was dragged away and shackled as the rest of us searched the premises.

  Pieces of broken furniture and dirty crockery were scattered on the floor of the cramped flat. On a pockmarked, cheap, marble slab sat a small drinking cup, and five cracked food jars lay reeking of stale, pickled fish. On the floor sat an old chest of Greek books gnawed by unlettered mice. Nearby, a rusty brazier perched on a table missing one leg. If Calenus was a middleman, why did he live in squalor? I discovered the answer. In one of the room’s dark corners rested a number of empty wine jars. Heavy drinking had claimed his fortune.

  The Bucketmen and I searched the apartment for the written documents, needed for conviction. The thieves were small eels. We were after those in higher positions—nobility. Against a senator, the word of a freedman, foreigner, or slave was worthless without outside corroboration. Although Roman courts purported to deal with evidence given under oath, in reality the reputation of the accused had greater influence on the final verdict. The Senate tried its own, and unfortunately, bribery was all too common. As I soon learned, an honest senator and prosecutor like Sabinus
was the exception rather than the rule. However, written documentation was another matter, and a charge of forgery was not enough to discount it.

  We did not find any documentation, but when Calenus confessed, and he did when counseled by Abroghast, he revealed the location of incriminating papers. Documents leading to the heart of the Senate were concealed in a nondescript urn in the family mausoleum of Gallus the Elder.

  Would it be enough to put old Gallus on trial and lead to a conviction?

  Chapter 31 - November, 44 AD

  On a freezing, clear November night, Crispus and I cautiously forced open the iron gate to the elder Gallus’s family tomb. A light frost marked our footprints as we crossed the mausoleum grounds bordering on the Appian Way. Acting on Sabinus’s advice, we worked alone, keeping our intrusion a secret. Tomb breaking was a sacrilege. Discovery meant condemnation to the mines for life. What irony that among the ashes of the dead, evidence of a death list might be found.

  The approaching winter had changed the vault’s park-like setting of well-manicured pines and cypresses into a desert of withered limbs and weeds. The pretentious square building towered to about fifty feet, peaked with an arched, tile roof. White Dorian pillars and weathered, life-sized statues of the family’s greatest ancestors stood atop the vault’s four corners.

  Inside the musty columbarium, dozens of niches containing funeral urns lined the wall like a great honeycomb. Depending on family status, they differed in shape and size, ornamented or simple, and included favorite freedmen and loyal slaves.

  Although the Egyptian, Calenus, said the evidence was hidden in a plain urn, we searched them all. Painstakingly, we probed the ashes and little bone fragments with our daggers by the shadowy light of our bronze and oiled canvas lanterns. I hated tampering with the dead, and earlier Crispus had said as much.

  “When we’re through,” he said, “I’m making a votive offering to Melkart to protect us from paying for our sacrilege.”

  “In the meantime, pray we don’t get caught,” I answered.

  About an hour passed when a now-sooty Crispus exclaimed in a loud whisper, “Marcellus, come here! Take a look!”

  He pulled a series of folded parchments from a pitted clay urn. “Calenus was right,” he whispered excitedly, “the urn is poorly made, and that’s what caught my eye.” His voice carried like shouts in the crisp air. And when I moved, the steps sounded as if I had toppled a tombstone.

  “By the GODS! QUIET!” Crispus hissed.

  I examined the reused, old, yellowed parchment scrolls, written in Greek. My blood ran cold as I read the newly scribbled words.

  “Gods, your face is white,” Crispus said, “that’s the one, isn’t it?”

  “Aye, the death list, the emperor’s name is right on top.”

  “Great Melkart, who else is on there?”

  “Sabinus has the dubious honor of being second in line.”

  “How many are on the list?”

  I scanned rapidly. “Twenty senators, including Sabinus’s friend, Vitellius, the two consuls of Rome, Decrius Calpurnianus, and the freedmen Narcissus and Pallas.”

  A low whistle shot from Crispus’s mouth. “By the gods of my people, the Egyptian told the truth.”

  “There’s a list of conspirators as well, with instructions for the murders, signed by old Gallus. See this.” I pointed to the red-waxed seal. It bore the imprint of a rooster clutching a snake in its claws. “Gallus’s seal. It’s his ring, I . . . remember it from court . . . but how could he be so stupid?”

  “Stupid? Or so confident of success? And successful he would’ve been, except for our stumbling over the Gaul in the caverns.”

  “The important thing is now we have him!”

  I was partially right.

  *

  “W-we are shocked by the documents th-that you have discovered,” a bleary-eyed Claudius said to Sabinus, Crispus, and me as we stood alongside his bed. “If they are authentic, then Gallus the Elder must die.” The emperor looked past us to the rest of the late-evening audience who hovered behind us, his freedmen secretaries Narcissus and Pallas, the Praetorian prefect, and a couple dozen senators, including Vitellius. All of them had been named on the death list.

  Silence. For a split second, I turned and noticed several disheveled senators still wearing crumpled night tunics after being rousted from their beds. Fidgeting, they stepped from one foot to the other, or wrung their hands.

  The emperor perused the papers, hands trembling as he sat up in bed. Heavy purple-trimmed, silk blankets, embroidered with gold stitching covered him to the waist. Surrounded by fluffy, silk pillows, his red and gold nightgown seemed comical given the situation. Again, he squinted at part of the damning evidence. He raised his head with its unkempt, thin, white hair and looked about the smoky, oil-lit room. Claudius paused and studied the ashen face of each senator, as if allowing them time to absorb the gravity of the plot. No doubt he realized the noblemen had suffered two major shocks within the last hour. To be summoned to Caesar’s Palace under armed escort usually meant the direst of consequences. Then to be told they were marked men on a list with Caesar, for assassination, must have come almost as a relief to the senators. The emperor’s eyes fell on Sabinus.

  Sabinus glanced to the senators and back to Claudius. “Unfortunately, Caesar, it is all too true. And Gallus may now have been forewarned of our discovery and try to carry out the death list tonight. Otherwise, I would not have awakened you at this late hour.”

  “The hour is of no consequence, Sabinus,” the emperor said. “I seldom sleep past midnight. For years I have had problems sleeping for any length of time.” He sighed. “Besides, there is so much work that must be done. The duties of an emperor are staggering,” he said with a clarity that I had seldom heard from him on the previous occasions when Sabinus and I had visited. And then, as if to himself, mumbled, “That might account as to why I occasionally fall asleep while holding audience.” He focused his eyes on me then on Sabinus and snapped, “But we say to you—Gallus has slept his last peaceful night.”

  Before the senators had arrived, Sabinus had explained to the old ruler the developments leading to the discovery of the documents, starting with the night that we saved the woman Pricilla from robbery.

  “Do you not have spies?” Claudius asked.

  “Yes, Caesar, but Senator Gallus is very clever and devious.”

  “That should not have stopped you.”

  Sabinus shook his head. “It didn’t, but the information gathered by Centurion Reburrus and Sergeant Crispus up to that point was circumstantial. It came from slaves and freedmen. As Dominus realizes, that kind of evidence is worthless against any senator, even in cases of treason. But this information is such . . .” He pointed to the yellowed parchments in Claudius’s venous hands. “I have never seen more treasonous evidence in my life.”

  “We fear that you are right,” the emperor said in a tone of resignation, again viewing at the documents. “We commend you for the honesty and frankness in explaining the situation.” Claudius scowled at Vitellius, the freedmen, and the senators. “We regret that cannot be said for the others.”

  Claudius had explained the situation to the senators, including Vitellius, after they had arrived. He passed around the documents for their examination.

  “He is right,” the ruddy-faced Vitellius said as he approached the emperor’s bedside. Until that moment, he had been standing with the rest of the senators. He gestured with a flabby hand to one of the sheets. “I would know Gallus’s pig-scrawl handwriting anywhere, and that is his seal.”

  Vitellius’s foul breath wreaked of rancid wine. “But by the gods, why?” he asked. “Why would any man sign such a thing as this?”

  The emperor’s jaw tightened exposing the blue veins in his neck, and his cheeks turned crimson as he frowned. Fresh spittle ran down dried spittle-tracks on the sides of his mouth. Ignoring the question, he handed the sheets to Narcissus.

  The freedman exami
ned the documents, and in his cold, monotone voice said, “I am of the opinion, and of course with Caesar’s permission, that we must bring Senator Gallus to trial before the Senate on charges of treason. There is no doubt that he is a traitor. The same goes for the other conspirators on the list.”

  “I agree,” Vitellius said. “Look at the names on the death list.” His hands gesticulated wildly. “Not only are you at the top of the list, great Caesar, but so are your most trusted advisors, including myself.” As an apparent afterthought, he said, “Of course, there is also my friend, the noble Sabinus.”

  How good of you to name my patron, you overstuffed baboon.

  The emperor fixed his gaze on Sabinus. “Then we shall deal with the traitors at once.”

  *

  After Claudius gave orders to the Praetorian prefect to arrest the treasonous senators, he dismissed the rest of us with an admonishment for secrecy until the conspirators were imprisoned. He provided contingents of twenty Praetorians to escort each senator on the death list home, including Sabinus.

  “It is nearly an hour after midnight,” Sabinus said as we left the emperor’s bedchamber. He turned to Crispus. “Sergeant, instead of returning to your billet, come along with us. You can stay at my home tonight.”

  “Yes, sir,” Crispus answered.

  “We have a lot to do in the morning, and we’ll be up very early,” Sabinus said. “You’d have to get up all the earlier and travel half way across the city to join us.”

  I turned to Crispus and nodded, and he shrugged.

  After our weapons had been returned to us, we left the palace with an escort of twenty fully armed guardsmen. Sabinus, Crispus, and I wore tunics and cloaks, and each of us carried a sword and dagger hidden beneath our clothing.

  We stepped out into the chilly night air. Stars shimmered in the clear sky. Directly overhead, a full moon illuminated the Forum, Circus Maximus, and the heart of Rome in silvery light. But it failed to penetrate the perilous darkness of the city’s crowded slums, narrow streets, and alleys.