Swords Around the Throne

by Ian Ross

  They had given him the largest horse in the stable, and it bore his weight well, but even after five months of training on the practice ground to the east of the palace Castus was still not a comfortable rider. He sat heavily in the saddle, his thighs clasping the horse’s flanks, chilled fingers gripping the reins. His nose was numb, and every time he inhaled he could feel the ice at the back of his throat; he had known worse on the Danube frontier, but being up on a horse seemed to make the cold sting more sharply.

  The small group of Protectores rode in single file, a perimeter cordon flanking the main party of hunters around the emperor. When he glanced to his right Castus could see them, a dozen riders with hunting spears, swathed in brown mantles as they rode along the margin of the woodland. The bodyguards were supposed to remain in sight of the emperor at all times, but keep a distance, out of earshot. The hunting party included the former emperor Maximian, newly returned from the imperial conference on the Danube, and whatever matters of state might be discussed there were not to be overheard. Castus was glad of that: he had no wish to be a party to such things anyway. The trees beyond the hunters were black, and flocks of birds wheeled above the bare branches, routed out by the plunging dogs. Like the field after a battle, Castus thought.

  ‘What are we supposed to be guarding against anyway, out here?’ he called, his lips barely moving above the bunched folds of his cloak.

  ‘Brigands!’ replied Brinno, riding behind him. ‘Bandits and robbers!’

  Sallustius was laughing from up ahead. ‘More likely the importuning provincials,’ he called back, ‘wanting to disturb the emperor’s leisure with their pleas!’

  They drew together, slowing their horses; the imperial party had paused at the edge of the wood, perhaps debating the direction of their chase.

  ‘We’d be better off surrounding some of that lot over there,’ said Victor, the last of the four men. He nodded towards the emperor and his companions, and the string of other riders and men on foot that trailed behind them, kicking up the snow. ‘They’re much more of a threat, I’d say. Civilians! Too many eunuchs as well – why bring eunuchs on a hunting expedition?’

  ‘To massage their tired thighs, no doubt,’ Sallustius said, compressing his squashed face into a deep grimace. He dropped from the saddle to the ground, and stood flexing his legs. ‘Or somebody might be struck by a profound thought, and need it copied down before it fades...’

  ‘Why are there so many eunuchs at court anyway?’ Brinno asked. ‘Eunuchs and Christian priests. And women!’

  One of Constantine’s first acts as emperor had been to lift the prohibition on Christianity in his domains; now he seemed even to favour them, and several of their priests were indeed residing at the palace. But they were quiet, studious-seeming men, not the crazed cannibal degenerates Castus had been led to expect. About the eunuchs he was less sure.

  Sallustius was grinning. ‘Seems strange to you, eh, my young barbarian friend?’ he said to Brinno. ‘The ways of the civilised world! Eunuchs make good courtiers,’ he went on. ‘They’re loathed by most men, and owe everything to the emperor. They’re ambitious, but they lack the balls to aspire to the highest offices. If you see what I mean...’

  Brinno just shrugged, gazing with mute incomprehension towards the imperial party. Castus could not help but sympathise with the young man’s disdain.

  He had assumed, when he first came to the palace, that the other members of the Corps of Protectores would be men like himself, former centurions, veterans of the legions. Many of them were, but he soon discovered that many others were not.

  There were fifty Protectores quartered in the palace at Treveris. Of those in Castus’s section, Sallustius was a former decurion of the guard cavalry, a bow-legged man in his forties, with thinning hair and a wry squashed face; he reminded Castus of his old friend Valens. Then there was Victor, barely out of his teens, the son of a wealthy landowner from western Gaul who had purchased his commission in the Corps; he made up for his youth and inexperience with vigour, going out every morning at dawn to ride circuits on the equestrian field, and practise the showy individual sword drills his father had taught him.

  Brinno, meanwhile, was the son of a war chief of the Salian Franks. He had been captured in battle ten years before, when he was only sixteen, and held as a hostage at Treveris until his father’s loyalty was assured. A lean and rangy young man, he wore his yellow hair much longer than any Roman, and had a downy growth of beard on his chin. He seemed to Castus very much like the warriors of the Bructeri he had been fighting only a few months before.

  It had been strange, at first, living and serving beside such men, but Castus had quickly grown accustomed to their company, and they had accepted him with ease. The Protectores were not like a regular military unit, but there was a keen sense of pride and discipline amongst them even so. He could respect that at least.

  ‘Do you know,’ Sallustius said, as he squatted in the frozen grass, ‘how they make eunuchs?’

  ‘Make them?’ Castus said. He sensed this might be another of Sallustius’s strange anecdotes. Brinno at least appeared curious.

  ‘There are three ways,’ Sallustius said, raising a finger. His breath made a thin fog as he spoke. ‘First, the dissolving method. This is done to boys before they reach manhood. The boy is placed in a bath of very hot water, and his ball sack is squeezed and gently crushed, until his balls dissolve...’

  ‘Not possible!’ Brinno said, with a look of horror.

  ‘True! Next, the cutting method, for older youths. The youth is made to sit on a bench with a hole in it, and his balls are pulled down through the hole...’

  Castus shifted in the saddle; he noticed Brinno and Victor doing the same.

  ‘...then two cuts are made in the ball sack with a sharp blade, and the balls pulled out and twisted together. The youth is left sitting there like that, and when the balls turn blue they can be safely nipped off with a pair of pliers.’

  ‘People do that?’ Brinno said. ‘It’s allowed?’ He shook his head and gazed off into the snowy distance with an expression of appalled disbelief.

  ‘No, it’s illegal. But mainly it’s done in Armenia and Persia, places like that,’ Sallustius said, getting up from the grass. ‘The eunuchs are brought into the empire as slaves. Though some desperate Roman parents do it to their children, pretending it was an accident, in the hope they’ll rise to greater things.’

  He swung himself back up into the saddle; over to the right, the hunting party was moving again, on along the margin of the woods.

  ‘You said there were three ways?’ Castus said. He caught Sallustius’s wink.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the older man replied. He rode up alongside Brinno. ‘The third method is to place the victim upon a trestle and jerk him up and down. It’s usually done in winter, in severe cold. The motion feels like riding a horse, you see... Eventually the balls go numb and just drop off, and the victim doesn’t feel a thing... Sometimes, riding a real horse can have the same effect...’

  ‘Bastard!’ Brinno said, grinning as he blushed.

  It was a few hours after daybreak when the hunting party paused to eat. They had already covered miles of woodland and hill country, and the local huntsmen that accompanied the party had brought in a few rabbits and a couple of small deer they had caught with the dogs. But there had been neither sign nor scent of the boar, their intended prey. The hunting nets had yet to be rigged, and the horsemen had not yet had a chance to try their spears.

  In a clearing between the trees the slaves cleared the ground of snow, rolled out matting and stretched a canopy overhead, then piled straw bolsters to make a three-sided dining couch. They hung clay charcoal burners in the trees all around, to warm the frigid air, and then the emperor and his hunting companions reclined upon the couches, eating freshly roasted rabbit and venison while the dogs yapped and snarled over the bloody scraps in the snow nearby.

  Castus stood at a discreet distance with the other Protectores.
His stomach growled – he had eaten nothing that day except half a raw onion before leaving Treveris. He tried to clear his mind of everything but the task appointed to him, but still his eyes kept drifting back to the party sprawled on the dining couches beneath the canopy. Being in close proximity to the emperor and his advisors was usual for him now, but Castus had never been able to lose the unnerving sense of awe and discomfort he felt. He watched the diners on the couches, knowing that they were some of the most powerful men in the world. And yet they were just men: Constantine himself, red-faced and open-mouthed as he related some anecdote or called for more wine. At his right hand Maximian, greasy-fingered as he brought the steaming meat to his lips. To most of humanity these figures were as remote and austere as the gods. More powerful than gods, in a way, for their authority was immediately felt, immediately enforced here on earth. What would it be like, Castus thought, to sit among them, to share their meal and their easy laughing talk? He dared not even imagine.

  Instead he scanned the others gathered around the imperial party, all at a distance, some attending to the horses while the rest just waited for the emperor’s pleasure. The huntsmen were dressed in patched green clothing and sheepskin capes. Castus had noticed that several of them carried a bow mounted on a stock – they reminded him of the weapons used by the Picts, but Sallustius had said these crossbows were common hunting tools in Gaul...

  His eyes stopped, drawn to a single figure, a single face.

  ‘Who’s that man there?’ he asked in a tight-lipped whisper. ‘Standing with the group between the saplings. Hair like a bowl.’

  ‘Him?’ Sallustius replied quietly. He shrugged. ‘One of the notaries, I think. The short man he’s talking to is Zeno, their primicerius. He must be here assisting his chief. Don’t know his name, though.’

  Castus nodded, but his mind was racing back through the years. Back in Britain, he had known this man. A slow heat stirred through his blood: a memory of anger. Julius Nigrinus, that was the name, and the man had conspired to start an uprising among the Picts that had killed all of Castus’s men and almost killed Castus himself.

  Yes, he remembered clearly now. And here the man was again, at the margins of the emperor’s inner circle of power. As Castus stared at him, the man looked around. Just for a moment, their eyes met and a slight flicker passed across the face of the notary. Something close to recognition, but not quite.

  Then a slave brought bread and cheese for the Protectores, with warm spiced wine, and when Castus looked back again the notary was gone.

  ‘You know the story about the old emperor Diocletian,’ Sallustius said, ‘when he was a tribune here in Gaul?’ They had ridden for another mile or two beyond the glade where the emperor had breakfasted. Castus shook his head.

  ‘They say he was passing through just this area when he met an old woman. One of these old witch women, I suppose, with the power to see the future...’

  Castus noticed Victor quickly making a sign against evil. ‘Anyway,’ Sallustius went on, ‘the old woman accused him of being stingy – he always kept a tight purse, old Diocletian, so they say – and he told her that he’d be more generous when he was emperor.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Castus, smiling and nodding.

  ‘No... that’s not the funny bit,’ Sallustius said with a frown, and hooked one leg casually over his saddle horn. ‘The woman told him that he’d only become emperor once he’d killed the Boar... So from then on Diocletian went out hunting every chance he got – slaughtered a hecatomb of boars everywhere from here to Armenia. But he still wasn’t emperor...’

  ‘These old women are all liars!’ Victor broke in. From the corner of his eye Castus saw a flock of crows rise from the treetops of the wood to his right. He drew in the reins and turned his head, listening.

  ‘Anyway, by this time Diocletian was chief of the Protectores of the emperor Carus. But Carus died in Persia and his son was murdered on the way home. And it so happened that the Praetorian Prefect, who was next in line for the throne, was called Boar...’

  Three short blasts of the hunting horns, and frenzied barking from the dogs deeper in the trees. The horsemen away to the right broke into sudden motion.

  ‘There they go!’ Victor shouted, but Castus was already dragging his horse’s head around and kicking with his heels, and then all four Protectores were riding at the gallop across the snowy flank of the hill towards the line of the forest. The emperor and his party had vanished.

  Into the wood the horses plunged. Castus ducked his head to avoid a low branch thickly pelted with snow; ice showered over him and spilled down his back. Beneath the trees it was dim as twilight, and he stayed low and clung tight to the saddle, trusting the animal to forge its way through. There were other riders around him now, and men running on foot, shouldering their hunting crossbows – they shouted at first, but then fell silent as they approached the sounds of the conflict.

  Dogs were howling, whining – runners, Castus saw as he drew nearer. They were hanging back from the boar and keeping it at bay, while the other dogs, the mastiffs, had closed in to attack. One already lay wounded, its rear leg ripped, while two more circled and pounced. The clearing was wide, carpeted with a black mulch of dead leaves dusted with snow. Nets hung from the trees all around; the boar was trapped as the hunters closed in.

  Sallustius seized Castus’s bridle, dragging the big horse to a halt. ‘Stay back,’ he said. Castus pulled the reins tight and the horse circled, pawing the dirt. He could make out the others now: the emperor and the other mounted men surrounding the trapped boar, some dismounting, spears in hand. The huntsmen with the crossbows formed a loose cordon around them.

  The boar was a monster, waist-high at the shoulder, with long ridged tusks and a thick black hide covered in welts and scars. It dashed in a tight circle, tossing the attack dogs away from it, letting out a low groaning bellow. Its flanks were streaked with gore: its own, or the dogs’, Castus could not tell.

  ‘A beauty!’ Sallustius said, dropping from his horse and dragging its head down. Castus remained in the saddle, his own horse blowing a fog of breath in the tight air. The footmen were whistling, trying to call back the mastiffs; one dog slunk back, wounded, but the other had fixed its jaws in the boar’s hide and was clinging on, claws raking the scarred black flank of the beast. As Castus watched, the boar seemed to shrug and lunge, swinging one great tusk, and the mastiff was jolted loose. Another lunge, and the dog lay in the dirt with its throat pumping blood.

  Now the hunters closed in, their big spears held low. All of them were dressed alike in brown mantles, and for a moment Castus could not make out which of them was the emperor. He saw Maximian to one side, his massive bulk and beard marking him out, then another man rode in close on horseback, raising a javelin. Castus recognised him too: Priscus, the emperor’s young legal advisor.

  The boar remained still, only lifting its snout as the rider approached. Priscus swung back in the saddle, then hurled the javelin; it was barely out of his hand when the boar charged. The javelin went wide, the horse reared, and Priscus was tumbling from the saddle, the rushing boar almost upon him. Crossbows snapped – one dart jabbed into the animal’s shoulder. Priscus was on the ground, lying flat and face down with his arms across his head. The boar kicked at him, butted him with its snout, but could not get at him with its tusks.

  Castus had been so diverted by the scene that he had not noticed the shouts around him, the men crying out to Priscus to stay on the ground, keep himself covered. Now the shouts changed to cheers: Constantine, the emperor himself, was closing in on foot to tackle the boar in person.

  A clever bit of theatre perhaps, Castus thought. But Priscus could still be badly hurt. Constantine edged closer, gripping the levelled spear in both hands, his legs firmly braced like a wrestler in the ring. Castus saw the emperor’s face, raw and red from the cold, his heavy jaw set hard, eyes fixed on his prey. The boar turned its head, snout twitching, then swung to face the new threat. All aroun
d the clearing, the shouts and cheers died to breathless silence. For a few long heartbeats hunter and animal faced each other, and then with a keening squeal the boar charged.

  At that moment Castus’s horse jinked and pulled at the reins, distracting him. As he glanced back up he saw movement away to his left, figures edging between the trees around the upper slope of the clearing. They were huntsmen, stubble-bearded and dressed in sheepskin mantles, but one of them had a crossbow raised and aimed directly at Constantine. Nobody else was looking; all eyes were on the emperor and the boar. Castus blinked, a cry caught in his throat, and then the man loosed his bolt.

  It darted straight and true across the clearing, but at that instant Constantine lunged forward and planted the heavy point of his spear deep into the shoulder of the charging boar, the beast driving up onto the blade until its flesh met the twin lugs at the top of the spearshaft. The crossbow bolt flicked past, just behind the emperor’s head, and buried itself in the flank of Priscus’s horse.

  Castus hauled the reins and kicked at his own horse, and the animal’s bound almost threw him out of the saddle. Up in the trees he could see the bowman struggling to reload. He swept the sword from his scabbard, crying out a warning to those behind him. Only a few onlookers had seen what had happened; the rest were still intent on the emperor as he forced the dying boar down at his feet.

  Ice sprayed up as Castus urged his horse on through the bushes at the gallop. Frozen branches crackled and whipped, and plumes of snow cascaded from the trees. The second huntsman glanced back at him, then canted his arm with a javelin in his hand.

  Stooping low, his thighs tight to the saddle leather, Castus saw the arc of the weapon as the man threw. He waited a heartbeat, then tugged the reins. The big horse jolted to one side, and the flung javelin darted past. Castus looked up and saw the huntsman reaching for his second javelin. Too late; the man’s face emptied in fear, but in two long strides the horse had closed with him. Castus levelled his spatha downwards like a lance, and the tip of the blade drove into the man’s chest. He dropped his arm with the weight of the body, then dragged the sword free and galloped on.