You did not get hobnailed military boots. And not several of them.
There was no proof, of course, but Rufinus knew instinctively that they were here for him. He didn’t know if there were any other customers in the balneum, and they might be in the cold bath or the pool or one of the other chambers, but still he knew this was trouble come looking for him. He mentally ran through the floorplan of the bath house and cursed. From here the only doors led back into the steam rooms, another hot bath or the warm room. And whichever he chose he could get nowhere without passing through the decorative octagonal entrance chamber that lay next to the changing room. The boots were already past that.
He was unarmed and naked.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
In a trice he was out of the bath, water sloshing, droplets cascading from him, hopping from foot to foot because of the almost torturous heat of the floor. He couldn’t put his clogs on. Far too noisy. He would have to dance from foot to foot and suffer the heat. He did grab his towel quickly and fold it round his waist, tucking it tight as he ducked out of the warm baths. He was just disappearing into the steam room as white-clad soldiers emerged into the caldarium where he’d been only a moment earlier.
He could hear them arguing now as they looked down at the floor around the bath, which was soaked with pools of water and wet footprints. And then he was gone, in among the sweating clouds of steam. It was not quite dense enough to truly hide him, just make him hard to spot, and so Rufinus ran on the balls of his feet, almost silent, into the chamber where he’d been scraped down, and then through another steam room. He could hear the soldiers behind him moving into the white cloud and shouting, searching.
He hurried out into the vestibule, making for the changing room and freedom, and instead ran straight into a mountain of human flesh wearing a white tunic and segmented plate armour.
‘Thought so,’ said a familiar voice as the huge man in Praetorian white delivered a punch like a mule kick to Rufinus’ head. Brains swimming and eyes blurring, Rufinus staggered. He should have been slower, more careful. He’d not had time to plan anything. He tried to swipe at the man, but he was half-conscious at best, and making for unconsciousness rapidly. His ears were ringing and his head hurt. He swung again, and the big man thumped him once more for good measure, driving him down to the floor with a groan.
The last thing he heard before darkness claimed him was the voice of the cavalry tribune Appius Fulvius.
‘Bring him.’
Chapter Twenty Three – Captivity
Rome, June 16th 190 A.D., evening
Rufinus awoke with a start, though his surroundings were every bit as black as the painful unconsciousness in which he’d wallowed for… how long?
He blinked a few times to be sure his eyes were functioning properly, and then concentrated on the faint shapes and patches of different shade in the black. He was in a room, which he could have guessed anyway, but he could make out all four walls, so it was not a large room. He thought he could identify a door as a faint shape, but he would have to touch it to be truly sure. Turning his head, which hurt like the pits of Tarterus, he found another square. A window, he thought. Shuttered for sure, but since there was not even a hint of a glow around the edge, that confirmed that it was night time. The sun was fully set.
Fulvius. It had been Fulvius and his men who’d tracked Rufinus to the bath house – although he’d never made a secret of using it so they probably knew he’d go there. Fulvius had probably been waiting for him to return to the Castra Praetoria and when he didn’t made the assumption that he had gone to his usual baths.
If Fulvius had taken him, then he would have to be somewhere out of the way. The Urban Cohorts and their Prefect Pertinax would take a great deal of offence at having one of their centurions snatched by the Guard. So the bastards would have had to sneak him into the camp. That meant avoiding the eastern area where the Cohort was quartered. They must have taken him through back streets around to the north and brought him in past the Praetorian cavalry barracks, which made sense. They couldn’t risk taking him near the centre of the fortress where stray soldiers from the Cohort might be found. So he must still be somewhere in the north of the camp, in the cavalry area.
He tried to focus on the room and pick out more details, but there really were none to identify. The room seemed to be an empty box with one door and a shuttered window. It did not smell equine, so it was nothing to do with the horses. It could be about the right size for a barrack room housing a contubernium of eight men. Or one officer. He wished he’d paid more attention to the cavalry while he’d been in the fortress as a legitimate guardsman. Then he might have more of a clue where he was.
No. He wouldn’t be in the barracks, he decided. Fulvius might rely upon his men, but Rufinus doubted he would risk leaving the prisoner among them in a barrack block. And if he wasn’t near the horses, but he was in the north, probably fairly close to the gate, then that meant this was either a disused workshop or an empty storeroom. Either way it would be supplied with a good lock, on the shutters too. No quartermaster wanted to risk supplies or tools being swiped by enterprising soldiers. And Fulvius was no idiot. Rufinus would be held somewhere secure and out of the reach of the Cohort, but he would also be somewhere where shouting would go unheard or unnoticed.
Crying out for help would be fruitless. Worse, it would let his captors know he was awake, which might draw more attention than he really wanted.
He sat, still and silent, for a moment, listening carefully. He could hear the very distant sounds of camp life, but only faintly. There was something else, though: a faint susurration. There were no trees in the fortress, yet it was reminiscent of leaves in the breeze. After some thought, he came to the conclusion that it was a person not far beyond the door, changing position and shuffling occasionally, his uniform making those sounds. A dulled, wood-and-leather clonk confirmed it for him, as he knew the sound of a full scabbard knocking against things. A chair, he reckoned, by the sound. So, a guard watching the door, seated, but armed and in uniform.
Now he had determined more or less where he was being held and how he was being held there. Two major questions remained: how long would he be held, and why was he being held in the first place. He had no doubt that it was Fulvius’ orders that had brought him here and no one else. Fulvius was the only one who knew who he truly was, after all. But why imprison him? If Fulvius had decided to move against him, why not simply kill him? It would probably have been a simple enough job to have stabbed him and left him in the baths. But instead they had knocked him out and brought him here.
With a true wave of fear, he suddenly realised that there was a very good chance that Fulvius intended to torture him. If the tribune had begun to suspect there was more to Rufinus’ plans than simply killing him, perhaps he had decided that it was time to take the nails of Rufinus’ other hand in order to pry out of him everything he had to tell.
And Rufinus was no fool. Brave men might say they would rather die than talk, but under torture everybody talked sooner or later. And while that Persian who had so ruined him at Lucilla’s villa a decade ago was an expert at his job, the best torturers in the world served under a Praetorian centurion called Adrastus. It would not be a difficult job for Fulvius to have one of them brought in.
He rose, slowly, as quietly as he could. He was wearing only the towel from the bath house, so while he was poorly-attired, he was at least quiet. As he reached his full stance, he swayed sickeningly. His head felt as though it were swimming in oil. He bit down on the vomit that rose in his gullet and forced it back down, standing still until the worst of the feeling went.
When he felt a little stronger and more balanced, he began to move slowly around the room, examining things closely and feeling his way carefully where he could.
The room was most definitely empty. The shuttered window was locked down. He could see the fastening as a darker shadow in the gloom. The door would be locked and guarded. There w
ere no other features to the place – not even a bucket to piss in – which suddenly made his bladder ache with the need to do so. Damn it.
Still not wanting to risk alerting the guard to his wakefulness, he moved to the far corner of the room and there very carefully, slowly and with painstaking discomfort, urinated in a tightly controlled dribble for what seemed like an hour. It was difficult and horribly uncomfortable, but he was silent in doing so. The longer they remained convinced he was unconscious, probably the better for him.
As he pissed, he made a fairly important decision. He would not allow himself to be tortured. He knew better than most that he would crack eventually. He would sell out his friends and family under the knife, and then he would die, having been subjected to the most incredible pain first. No, he could not allow that. And he just couldn’t face torture again.
It took perhaps half an hour of testing floorboards and timbers in the wall to find a broken piece. It was really little more than a giant splinter that he managed slowly and with pain to tear from the wood. He tested it. It was pointed and relatively sharp. Nowhere near as good as a knife, but with only a few blows, he could open the veins on both wrists adequately to bleed to death before anything much could be done to him.
It was not an ideal plan, but as a fall-back it was better than being tortured to death, for sure.
Before he truly considered that, he needed to formulate a better plan. One of escape.
Stages. An escape would require stages. He began to reason the problems through, partially with an eye to freedom, but also as a temporary mental escape from the black room and thoughts of what was to come.
Firstly, getting out of the room. Locked, shuttered window. Locked door. No other means of egress. Briefly, he wondered whether if he could get the floorboards up he could dig under the outer wall and escape. He would only need to go four or five feet along and a foot and a half deep. That notion was quickly brushed aside. Apart from the lack of anything with which to dig, there was the ground itself fighting back. The lower areas of Rome were soft soil, regularly inundated by the Tiber or rain and sitting atop tufa – things soldiers knew from having had to dig from time to time. But up here on the hills, the bedrock was close to the surface and the soil above had been compacted by a century and a half of military activity in the camp. Even if he could dig, he’d probably have died of old age before he saw light. The door and window were both locked, but this was a storeroom, and not a cell. No, even with a blessing from Cardea, the goddess of hinges, these would be inset into the ground and lintel as were most doors. No luck there. If he couldn’t open either and there was no way out, then he would have to get someone to open it somehow.
No one would hear or come to his aid at the window. So that left the door, which led to phase two anyway: getting past the guard. He would have to lure the guard into opening the door somehow. Probably not with the old ‘oh I’m so ill’ ploy. No one would fall for that these days. Perhaps he could offer the man a deal. After all, very soon the head of the Praetorians was looking at a long fall from grace and those who helped make it happen might be more popular than their peers. That would involve talking to him and trying to gain his confidence. It was a small chance, but that was always better than none.
Then there was getting out of the Castra Praetoria. Somehow, dressed only in a towel and armed with a splinter, he would have to get across the camp and either through the gate, over the wall, or into the Urban Cohort barracks. The latter was clearly the best alternative.
That would leave part four. What to do next. There were several alternatives there. He could run to Severus and then disappear, assume a new identity and hide until this was all over – perhaps even run to Sicilia and hide with Senova. That would, of course, require getting out of the fortress, and he couldn’t guarantee that. Or he could go to Pertinax and come clean. Tell the prefect who he truly was and about the tribune, his murderous past and his intentions for Rufinus. He half suspected that Pertinax knew the truth anyway and simply chose not to make it known to others. Or, and this was the most appealing of all, he could arm himself, kit up and march across the camp to put Appius Fulvius to the sword.
He was eager at the thought of that, and had to rein in his excitement. To do that he would have to get to the Urban Cohort’s barracks, which would require getting past the guard and out of this room.
But he had his plan. It was, he reasoned, the only possibility. He wasn’t getting out of this room unless that guard opened the door.
He paced over to the door and stopped in front of it.
‘Guard?’
There was a long pause, and then the sound of someone shifting in a chair.
‘I know you’re listening. And I’m going to lay out some basic truths for you.’
More silence. Rufinus huffed. ‘You are a member of the Praetorian Guard. Your oath is to the emperor, then your standard, then your prefect. Nowhere on that list appears Cleander, and Tribune Fulvius is a lesser officer, not one of the prefects. He might be your direct commander, but he is not part of your oath. I cannot believe that the Praetorian prefects would approve of a centurion of the Urban Cohort being held against his will here, and the emperor would demand an explanation. Furthermore, sooner or later Prefect Pertinax will take exception and begin investigating my disappearance. The bath house is a known haunt and the Cohort is currently a lot more popular than the Guard. It won’t take much for the bath attendants to reveal what happened. Then the Prefect will come looking for me among the cavalry. This is your only chance to do the right thing and put yourself in the law-abiding camp when the time comes. Take me to the Praetorian prefects and you’ll find that they’ve not sanctioned Tribune Fulvius’ actions.’
He fell silent and listened to the occasional creaks as the guard shifted in his chair. Still the man said nothing.
‘I have friends in the Guard. Good ones. I am a friend of one of the current consuls, and a decorated war hero. I am being held here because Fulvius and I have a long-standing feud. I bet you didn’t know that, eh? That this is personal and nothing to do with the Guard or the Cohort? Do you want to know a little something about Appius Fulvius?’
The silence seemed somehow interested and expectant now. Had he hooked the man? Now to haul him in.
‘The Guard have always been honourable. That’s one of the prime requirements of a guardsman. I know that well. So it might interest you to know a little of Fulvius’ history. That when the traitor Paternus was in command ten years ago, before the emperor killed him personally, Fulvius was one of Paternus’ men. Fulvius and his mates were sent to the traitor Lucilla’s villa to kill a frumentarius – one of the emperor’s own agents who was investigating the plot. Fulvius and his companions murdered an imperial agent. And I am one of very few people who know about it. That is why I’m here. Fulvius knows I took an oath to see him fall for what he did, and my friends are too important for him to have struck before now. You see what a snake you’re working for? Do you really want to be part of his fall? Come on, man. Take me to the Prefect.
There was a different noise now. The sound of a man rising from the chair with associated ligneous and muscular creaks. Then three footsteps and the guard cleared his throat.
‘You tell an exciting tale,’ said the voice of Appius Fulvius, ‘but sadly to the wrong person.’
Rufinus heart sank. It had not occurred to him that it might be the tribune himself sitting outside.
Damn it. His entire plan just folded up and sank into the mire.
‘Now that you’re awake, I have a gift for you.’
The lock at the door rattled, and Rufinus realised that he was almost getting his first wish, that the door be opened for him, but he also knew Fulvius well enough to know that there would be no opportunity here for the prisoner. Sure enough, before the door was opened, several more footsteps joined in. The portal swung in, and Rufinus blinked in the light, even low as it was, cast by two small oil lamps.
Four shadows coales
ced in the orange glow. Fulvius stepped aside and the two armoured Praetorians urged a fourth man inside. Even in the gloom, Rufinus recognised the shape of his father. The old man staggered for a moment.
‘Enjoy your reunion,’ the tribune sneered. ‘I shall return shortly.’
The door was swung shut once more, but not before the feeble light illuminated his father’s face. It was bloodied and covered with welts, one eye sealed shut and swollen.
Darkness enfolded them, and footsteps receded. Once silence and black solitude reigned once more, Rufinus sighed.
‘Father, this…’
‘Shut up, you stupid boy. Traitor. Look at what you’ve done. The shame and ignominy you’ve brought on your family. I spit at you. Leave me alone.’
Rufinus listened to his father shuffle off into the corner, catch a whiff of the fresh urine there, and then move to another corner.
Rufinus sagged. That was it, then. His best hope had vanished. He was facing torture and death and there really was no way out. Despite everything, he regretted the old man’s involvement, deluded and idiotic though he might be.
He could not rely upon Pertinax or Severus, or any of the other conspirators either. The only real glimmer of remaining hope was Vibius Cestius, though he doubted that even Cestius would currently risk infiltrating the Castra Praetoria. The fact was that he had been compromised. Fulvius knew who he truly was. And there was a very good chance that by now that information had reached Cleander. That being the case there was not a hope in Hades of any of his friends touching him. Anyone seen to be in contact with him would fall alongside him.
He was alone, condemned and doomed.
He subsided into gloomy silence, his only company the ragged breaths of his father, which sounded accusatory. The hours passed, one troubled heartbeat at a time. Rufinus’ only clue as to time was when a faint glow appeared at the edges of the window, declaring a new day to be upon them. Rufinus sighed. How ironic it was that this might be the very day that saw the end of Cleander, and yet here he was in prison, with the same to be said of him.
Lions of Rome Page 34
