The Shield of Rome

by William Kelso

  He tried to picture his brother’s face. What cause had he given Numerius to hate him so much? Had they not been brothers united by a common enemy, had they not shared the pain and suffering from the same tyrant, had they not been best friends? Had they not gone to war together? The only explanation he could think of was that Numerius had grown greedy and envious and had made a deal so that he would inherit everything, but there was something unsatisfactory about the explanation.

  He thought about Fabius and tried to picture his face. Fabius had been an awkward uncle like figure when Adonibaal had been growing up. There had been little warmth and friendship between them despite the close family links; the older man annoyed by the boy’s energy, bravado and lack of traditional respect and Adonibaal by the fact that Fabius always sided with his father. In a way it had been a clash between generations, rebellious youth and energy against age and experience.

  He’d worried that Fabius may have left Rome but Demetrius had confirmed that he was indeed still in the city and had also told him where Fabius lived. In the darkened room Adonibaal allowed himself a triumphant smile. In a few days the cold calculating aristocrat would be dead and the news of his death would be the signal for Hannibal’s advance on Rome to begin.

  He was woken by the janitor moving up the stairs and shouting out the hour of the day. Leaving the Scorpion behind in his room he made his way up the Palatine hill and found Fabius’ house exactly as Demetrius had described it. In an alcove across the street he crouched down and busied himself with his foot pretending to be massaging it whilst watching the front door hoping to get a glimpse of his target, but he was to be disappointed. Demetrius had told him that the Senate would be meeting first thing tomorrow morning. Fabius if he was at home could therefore take two possible routes to the Senate House. Adonibaal glanced northwards up the street and limped off until the road ended in a steep staircase that led downwards towards the Forum Boarium. This was the quickest and most direct route that Fabius could take to the senate house he thought as he descended the steps. He was about half way down the hill when he paused. To his right a house had been built onto the slope and a short and narrow entry shielded by bushes led to the door. Adonibaal nodded in satisfaction. This would be his first possible killing point. He glanced back up the stairs from which he had just come. It was a secluded enough spot and there was a good escape route into the cattle market but the Scorpion would be useless here. If the attempt was to be made here then it would have to be done with Centurion. It would have to be a stabbing followed by a wild flight down the stairs. Then he would have to lose any pursuers in the market. He lingered for a moment thinking it through and then began to retrace his steps.

  ***

  He found the second killing point in the half finished apartment buildings which he had first noticed the previous day on his journey to the Aventine. If Fabius were to take the long route to the Senate house he would have to pass down the Appian Way until he came to the cross roads where he would turn left into the Sacred Way, which led to the forum. Adonibaal paused beside the half completed building site and glanced up. All work seemed to have stopped. The place was deserted. There wasn’t even a guard to keep an eye on the piles of building material dumped all over the place. He slipped through the doorway on the first floor and entered a dark damp room. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he paused to listen but heard nothing. There was a stairway in the corner and he went up it, past the second floor and emerged into the sunlight on the third. The walls of the third floor were mostly complete but there was no roof. He moved to the western side of the building and found what he was looking for, a window. It was a square shape set in the stone wall and when he looked through it he saw the Appian Way and the cross roads stretching out before him. Satisfied he got down on his haunches to observe the traffic on the street. It was maybe thirty yards to the busy cross roads, an easy range for the Scorpion. He grunted in approval as he noticed the traffic slowed down as it approached the cross roads. It was the perfect killing ground for the sniper weapon. Again he lingered watching the traffic and thinking the action through from start to finish. He would have to bring the Scorpion in during the night and install it beside the window. The weapon would have to be abandoned once his mission was completed. That didn’t matter. He ran through the different scenarios in his mind. What if Fabius were to be carried in a litter or a carriage? The sniper weapon would be useless then. Were there other routes to the Senate house he’d not thought about? He shrugged off the doubts. Plans would always change, he was used to that and it didn’t bother him. He would get his man, he always did.

  He left the window and explored the rest of the third floor and frowned in slight disappointment. The stairway seemed to be the only way in and out of the building. It was a ten yard drop to the ground, too high to jump without the risk of injury. He went down the stairs and examined the ground floor. At the back a doorway led to a small courtyard surrounded by a high wall. In the centre of the courtyard was a well. He peered down it and saw that it was deep. A bucket attached to a rope lay beside the hole. He looked at the wall and felt a growing disappointment. There would be no escape that way. That left only the front door through which he’d come in. It was not ideal for he would emerge just yards from the execution site and people may see him. Still it would have to do. No plan was ever perfect. He made his decision. The assassination would take place tomorrow at first light.

  ***

  It was late that morning when Adonibaal returned to his room in the crumbling apartment block in the Subura. The janitor was gambling with another man, throwing dice, as he came in. The two men glanced at him curiously but it was the curiosity of bored men. One of them tried to say something but Adonibaal was already half way up the stairs and the man closed his mouth.

  In his room Adonibaal checked the various parts of the Scorpion and satisfied that all was well he unsheathed Centurion and began to sharpen the blade. There was nothing else to do but wait now until it grew dark. The hours passed by slowly and as they did it seemed to grow hotter in his room. He stared at the wall, fighting the boredom and the tension that was starting to build up inside him. After another hour had past he got to his feet and began to pace around swinging Centurion at imaginary enemies.

  Something was nagging at him and it wouldn’t go away. Since he had returned to Rome he had felt a growing curiosity to see his old house. It had been so long ago since he’d left. The more he thought about it the more irresistible became the urge to go and have a look. Finally he could resist no more and sliding Centurion into its scabbard he left the room. There was no sign of the janitor or his friend as he left the building.

  The wailing of women in mourning was everywhere as he made his way along the familiar streets of the Caelian hill. The Caelian was a well to do district, maybe not as grand as the Palatine, but a good neighbourhood where many Equestrians, members of the second order of aristocrats had made their homes. The sight of so many familiar places brought forth another torrent of memories from his youth. Every building, street, bar and shop had its own significance but as he wandered along Adonibaal felt indifferent to it all. The thought of seeing the old house drove him on. By rights it should have been his house. It should have been the house in which he’d raised his children. It should have been the house in which he would have received guests, family and friends. But he had no children, no guests and no friends. He had no place to call his own. His life had been wasted on death, misery, hatred and loneliness. That was all he had achieved.

  When he finally turned into the street in which he’d been born he paused in the middle of the road. His eyes wondered along the row of houses until they came to rest on his old home. It was still there. The door had been newly painted but from the outside it looked just like he remembered. He knew then why he had come. He had really been hoping to get a glimpse of his brother. Perhaps, now that he was so close, he needed to see him, to know the truth of why he’d betrayed him. He needed to know befo
re he died.

  The house had been built the year after the Gaul’s had sacked Rome and was nearly one hundred and seventy five years old. The Vibulani had owned it all that time, a proud record, the ancestral seat of an ancient patrician family. He remembered the faces of his long dead forefathers, whose death masks had adorned the library in a long chronological line, perched in their alcoves in the wall looking down on the living. As young boys he and Numerius had always treated the library with respect bordering on awe. He’d been taught the names and deeds of all his forefathers until he knew them by heart. One wrong name or misquoted deed would have earned him a beating. He may have fought his father at every opportunity but not when it came to the masks in the library. They had truly been awesome and from a very young age he’d vowed that he would be like his forefathers, that his deeds would equal theirs and that he would make them proud.

  He smiled but there was bitterness in his eyes.

  What, he thought now, would they make of him? What would all those masks make of a man who had betrayed his own country? A man who had murdered his own father? There would be no forgiveness for that in the afterlife but he was not seeking forgiveness. He had come to make them all famous, famous beyond their wildest dreams.

  Just as he was about to turn away the door to his old house opened.

  Adonibaal froze in dismay. A man appeared, laughed and waved to someone inside before starting to walk down the street towards him. It was Janus, his father’s old slave, the man who had been used to beat him for all those years. The slave who had aspired to become better than him!

  Adonibaal recognised him immediately. Janus had put on weight and his hair had turned grey but it was still the same despicable servant who had locked him away on his father’s orders all those years ago. The same man who had taken such delight in his downfall.

  What was he still doing in the old house? Adonibaal faded into the shadows of an alley as Janus past by just a few yards away. The slave was singing happily to himself. A short sword hung from his belt and he was tossing a small bag from hand to hand. Janus was in a good mood and Adonibaal had to keep his wits about him as he followed on behind. The slave stopped frequently to chat with people in the street and as he did so Adonibaal felt his anger grow. The man was being treated with respect. Everyone seemed to know him. Eventually Janus entered a bar and, all alone, installed himself at a table. The bar front was open to the street and one could see straight through to the back room, where a staircase led to an upper floor. Adonibaal sat down across the road in another bar and watched the slave from beneath the hood of his Palla. The day wore on and Janus seemed to be getting himself drunk. His nose and cheeks grew pinker with each cup of wine. Then suddenly two women appeared, prostitutes by the look of their clothing, and joined him at his table. The slave laughed as the two women began to shower him with attention. It was not long before the three of them got up, with arms around each other, and swayed uncertainly towards the stairs at the back of the bar.

  As they disappeared up the stairs Adonibaal rose from his seat and crossed the street. He went straight up the stairs. There was a small landing at the top with three doorways. He could hear Janus laughing to his right. A brown leather apron had been hung across the doorway suspended from hooks in the wall. Adonibaal pushed it aside and stepped into the room. Janus was on his back on the bed and the two girls half dressed were standing over him. The girls screamed as he appeared. Centurion slid noiselessly from its scabbard and the cold steel glinted in the sunlight.

  “Get out!” Adonibaal said in a calm voice. The girls fled banging into each other in their haste. Janus was rising to his feet but Adonibaal stepped forward and the sharp point of Centurion hovered over the slave’s throat forcing him back onto the bed.

  “What do you want? Money, I have money?” Janus screeched.

  Then his mouth fell open and he stared at Adonibaal.

  “I know you,” he said, “But it can’t be. It’s you. It’s you Caeso!”

  Down below in the bar Adonibaal could hear the women shouting.

  “Yes Janus it is me,” he said calmly, “Do you remember what you did to me all those years ago?”

  “I was…I was just doing what your father had ordered me to do,” the man stammered.

  “Why do you still live in my father’s house?”

  Janus looked utterly bewildered, his pink face streaked with a sudden outbreak of sweat. “I…I own it now,” he whispered. “Your father, in his will, he made me a freedman and gave me the house.”

  Adonibaal stared at Janus in utter disbelief and dismay. Surely it couldn’t be true. But the man was not lying. He could see it in his eyes. Someone was coming up the stairs behind him.

  “Is my brother still alive? Is he in Rome?”

  “He is,” Janus stammered. “He’s got a house on the Janiculum.”

  Adonibaal felt his heart pounding away.

  “I will give you my house,” the freedman suddenly blurted out.

  Adonibaal ignored the man’s desperate pleas.

  “A long time ago I tried to kill you,” he muttered, “but you were lucky then and were not in your room. Your luck has just run out. Time to die Janus,” he said as Centurion punched into the freedman’s throat. Blood spurted out onto the bed and wall and Janus gurgled, his eyes bulging, staring at Adonibaal. The Mercenary did not look at him again. He knew the wound was

  enough to kill. He turned and strode from the room. A man, the bar owner stood on the landing gaping at him in astonishment. Adonibaal stepped forwards, grasped the man’s neck with his left hand and pulled him onto Centurion’s bloody steel. The sword slid into the man’s stomach. There was a stifled cry of pain. Then Adonibaal flung the body to the floor without another glance and went down the stairs. He strode straight through the bar, past the two prostitutes who were stunned into silence, past the open mouthed drinkers and out into the street.

  Chapter Sixteen – Death on the streets of Rome

  Numerius was having a bad morning. The sweats and shivers had persisted longer than usual and had left him drained and exhausted until he could hardly stand. Yet something else alarmed him more. His daughter’s life was in danger and it was the fear for her safety which made him get off the couch and call for his cloak. He remembered the smile on Metellus’ face when the priest had accused the vestals of being unchaste. Oh how much he had wanted to wipe that smile from that face forever. They had no evidence. Everyone understood that but the priests didn’t need evidence. Numerius knew his history. He had read about it when studying to become a lawyer. There were precedents for the priest’s behaviour. When Rome had been threatened with catastrophe in the past, a vestal had always been sacrificed to appease the anger of the gods and reassure an anxious population. It was a tradition, one of the many which the priests had; an extreme measure to be taken in extreme times and no legal authority could stop it.

  Well the gods be damned he thought and so too the law. He was not going to allow some ambitious priest to murder his daughter. Fabius was the key. After the back room meeting in the Senate house, all had agreed that the business with the Vestals had probably been meant as a warning to them, not to interfere again in the affairs of the priests. Metellus had craftily avoided attacking Fabius directly and instead it seemed, he had chosen to make his point on him, Numerius, one of Fabius’ close allies. It had been a callous, calculated act of political power. What would Fabius, the old family friend do now Numerius thought? Surely he would not allow this to happen? Surely the old man would honour their long friendship? Numerius had resolved to go and petition him at once.

  Publius came running holding his master’s cloak. He looked worried and nervous. The incident in the house of the woman he'd been hoping to marry had been a crushing blow to his self confidence. He couldn't understand her behaviour, and as always with matters which he couldn't understand, he blamed himself. He had blamed himself until Numerius had told him about Metellus and what the priests were forcing the gover
nment to do. Then at last he had understood and as he did so he had startled himself. Publius had grown angry.

  His master was in a foul mood as Publius hastily draped the cloak over his shoulders.

  “Damned superstitious fools,” Numerius grumbled. “Where are my sandals?”

  Publius placed them at his patron's feet and stepped back.

  “The people are fickle,” Numerius snapped. “I will remind them of this family’s long history of service, duty and sacrifice for the Senate and People of Rome. My daughter is not going to die because some idiot somewhere has failed to properly do his religious duties. They will have to come and get her over my dead body. What madness!”