by Ian Ross
In silence they circled, edging and feinting, their boots scraping on the stone paving, and the troops gathered all around them were silent too, breathless as they watched.
Urbicus lunged suddenly, his blade darting out. Castus took the strike on his shield and turned it, but the older man kept up the attack. Another blow hammered down, then two more in quick succession. Castus kept his shoulder hunched into the hollow of his shield, absorbing the force of the attack, waiting for the other man to tire. But he was being driven back almost to the brink of the quayside. He pushed forward, stabbing with his blade and punching out with the boss of his shield; Urbicus dodged clear, then swung a high chopping blow. Castus got his shield up, realising a moment too late that it was a feint. The other man’s blade skimmed around the rim of his shield and swung in low and hard. Pain ripped through Castus’s body as the flat of the sword slammed into his flank, where the bloodstain on his tunic clearly showed the wound beneath. Crying out, he saw Urbicus snarl in triumph, then punch forward with his shield.
The blow caught Castus off balance, and his left leg gave beneath him. Toppling, he caught himself on one knee as his shield fell from his grip. Urbicus was already sweeping his sword up, then bringing it arcing down. Castus raised his blade just in time, gripping the hilt with both hands as he parried the blow. Steel clashed and shrieked in the sunlight as the blades ground together.
For a moment they struggled, weapons locked. Castus heard the screams of the gulls around them, the shouts of the watching soldiers suddenly loud in his ears. From somewhere in the pit of his chest he found a last surge of energy; roaring, he pushed himself upwards. Urbicus staggered back, his sword already wheeling to strike again, but Castus was on his feet now and drove forward into the attack. With a ragged yell he struck two-handed, his blade hacking shards from the other man’s shield rim.
One blow, and then another. He saw fierce anger in the eyes of his enemy. Urbicus was gathering his strength, but for a few heartbeats he could only retreat under Castus’s assault. A third blow, slashed backhand across the face of Urbicus’s shield, then Castus grabbed at the shield rim with his left hand and pulled, hauling the other man’s arm and body around with it.
His sword was already drawn back; with all the power of his arm he drove it forward, stabbing into the open flank of his enemy. The blade bit deep, and Urbicus screamed.
Muscles burning, Castus dragged his sword back again and lifted it, wheeling the blade in the air before hacking it down into the hard flesh and tendons of Urbicus’s neck.
Blood sprayed from the wound, brilliant in the sunlight. For a moment Castus saw Urbicus gazing back at him, his eyes wide with shock at the blow that had half severed his head. Then the man’s legs folded beneath him and the body dropped to the smooth stones of the quay.
Heaving breath, Castus sank to one knee in the spreading lake of blood. He grounded his sword before him and leaned on it, fearing he would lose consciousness at any moment. Around him, Constantine’s men were advancing again, but the remnants of the bodyguard gathered around the landing steps were throwing down their weapons now. Several of them covered their haggard faces as they began to weep, but most just slumped to the ground, too weary to care if they lived or died.
Turning his head, Castus gazed across the sunlit water at Maximian’s departing galley. There were others packed into the boat: he could see the eunuch Gorgonius, and Fausta and her ladies, Sabina doubtless among them. Then he raised his eyes from the galley and looked towards the harbour mouth. Edging in beneath the bastions of the sea fortifications, oars beating in time, were two double-banked liburnians. The galleys’ decks were packed with troops, and both had heavy ballistae mounted in the bows, aimed down at Maximian’s fragile craft.
The two ships slowed as they entered the harbour. Raising a palm to shade his eyes, Castus watched as Maximian stood up in the stern of his own vessel. The oarsmen ceased moving, and the motion of the light galley slackened as it turned slowly with the tide. A man in a linen cuirass was calling orders across the water from the bigger of the two liburnians, but Maximian paid him no attention.
Slowly, with careful dignity, the usurper slipped the gold-embroidered purple robe from his shoulders, lifted it and folded it. Then he raised his arms and cast the folded robe into the waters of the harbour.
‘Will they let us take a bath and change our clothes before we meet the emperor?’ Brinno asked. He was licking the blistered fingers of his shooting hand. Ofilia was trailing behind him, a smile on her broad, tanned face.
Castus shrugged, snorting. All three of them were bloodied and filthy, but the whole city of Massilia looked racked and battered. Soldiers were staggering everywhere, most of them drunk, but many of the citizens appeared drunk too. Maximian was beaten, the battle was over and soon the emperor Constantine would make his triumphal entrance into the city. Surely that was cause enough for happiness?
Stepping through the shade of the colonnades, Castus looked out over the agora. After the night’s rain the morning was fresh and the sky cloudless, and all across the open space there were soldiers and civilians mingled together, cheering and laughing. Castus had not seen the prisoners being brought ashore after Maximian’s surrender. He had seen nothing of Fausta, or Sabina. Even Hierocles had disappeared immediately after the surrender to take possession of the former palace.
In the corner of the agora a gang of soldiers was running, yelling with laughter. They were from one of the Spanish legions, Castus noticed as he heard their accents. As they ran they were kicking something between them; a heavy ball it looked like. Their game moved closer, and one kick sent the dark object spinning between the colonnade pillars to land with a dull thud near Castus’s feet. It was a severed head, beaten and almost black with dirt and blood. Leaning closer, he could not for a moment make out the broken and swollen features. Then he recognised the big stubbled chin of Scorpianus, Maximian’s prefect. He stepped away from the head, and two of the soldiers ran up and booted it back out into the agora again.
Leaning back against a pillar, Castus stared up into the wide brilliant blue of the sky. He was starving, he realised, and very tired. The crowd in the agora had started chanting again, and their voices echoed along the colonnades. Castus closed his eyes and listened.
‘Constantine Augustus! Ever Victorious!’ they were chanting. ‘Constantine! Constantine! Constantine...!’
28
The prisoners were led out into the evening sunlight with their hands bound behind them. They were barefoot, but still wore their richly embroidered tunics. There were four of them, the only men of Maximian’s inner circle who had not managed to flee the city or take their own lives before capture. Perhaps, Nigrinus wondered, they had hoped for mercy? Perhaps they had trusted too much in the Sacred Clemency of the emperor Constantine?
Gorgonius was brought out first, the chief eunuch’s heavy jowled face pale grey and quivering. Behind him was the army commander, Gaudentius, stiff-necked with either pride or fear, Nigrinus could not tell. The former curator of Massilia looked especially woeful; this building had once been his house.
Maximian himself, their former master, would not be joining them. He alone had been granted mercy by his son-in-law. Nigrinus had seen the old man, his tunic ripped at the neck in shame, kneel before the emperor’s horse and plead forgiveness. And forgiveness had been given, of course. Even Constantine, it seemed, could not order the death of a man who had been one of the two supreme emperors of the world, a man who had stood beside the gods.
Now the prisoners were being made to kneel, each man forced to his knees with a rough hand at the back of his neck. The execution party was formed of eight tough-looking horse-guard troopers of the Schola Scutariorum. They would be paid a good bonus for this duty, and were going about it in a brisk efficient manner.
Nigrinus was standing with the other spectators, a gathering of military officers and civilian dignitaries, in the shade of the portico that circled the courtyard. He tri
ed to keep his eyes on the condemned men and their executioners, although he was aware, despite his play-acting in the torture dungeon beneath Arelate, that he was still not inured to the sight of bloodshed. He had no pity for the men. Only hours before he had been released from a prison cell himself, perhaps the same one that had later held Gorgonius and his comrades. He had been lucky. Being found in captivity had preserved his life; that, and the information he had already been able to give about the usurper’s court and military affairs, and his connections with his son in Italy.
But Nigrinus knew how close he had come to disaster. A different throw of the dice, and he could be kneeling with the prisoners in the courtyard. Still, he felt a sour sense of disappointment. Flaccianus’s sudden treachery had robbed Nigrinus of the chance to arrange the surrender of the city to Constantine. In the end, of course, the citizens themselves had done it, led by a few renegade soldiers. All his months of slow steady planning had come to nothing. Or, Nigrinus thought, almost nothing. He had escaped with his life when he could so easily have lost it; now only one brutish soldier still knew the depth and extent of Nigrinus’s deceptions. He wondered if he should rid himself of Aurelius Castus. It could certainly be done. But, then, the soldier’s unwitting dalliance with the emperor’s wife was still a secret. That was a weapon that Nigrinus could use against him, if in his stupidity he ever dared to mention what he knew.
Down in the courtyard the optio of the execution party was swinging his long cruel blade. One of the prisoners – the civilian, Macrobius – retched and spat on the gravel. Nigrinus felt the pulse jumping in his neck. There was a flutter deep in his stomach, a sensation of combined repulsion and excitement. It was, he was embarrassed to note, almost a sexual feeling. He had a strong desire to wash his hands.
The sword flashed up, then dropped, and Nigrinus closed his eyes at the last moment. A sharp exhalation came from the spectators in the colonnade, and when Nigrinus looked again he saw the eunuch’s body sagging sideways, his severed head lying in a spreading lake of blood. Now the soldier moved on to Gaudentius. A swish and a thump, and the second head fell. Nigrinus forced himself to keep watching. It was fascinating, he decided. Swish, thump. Macrobius died, then Diadumenus. Four bodies slumped like sacks of grain. Four heads lying on the bloody gravel.
‘It must please you to see this,’ a voice said. Nigrinus turned, startled, and found Probinus standing beside him. The Praetorian Prefect rocked back on his heels, pursing his lips.
‘Justice enacted is always a pleasure, dominus,’ Nigrinus said.
‘Indeed.’
But now another figure was approaching along the colonnade. Nigrinus bowed his head and saluted his chief, Aurelius Zeno, Primicerius of the Corps of Notaries. Zeno bobbed his shaved skull in response, giving Nigrinus a sideways smile.
‘I’m glad to see you free once more!’ he declared. ‘I look forward to hearing a full report of all you learned after infiltrating the usurper’s court. A very full and confidential report, of course!’
Nigrinus bowed his head again, inhaling slowly as his chief turned to walk away. There was a pressure in his chest. He lifted his head and addressed the Praetorian Prefect.
‘Unfortunately, dominus,’ he said, ‘the most highly placed member of Maximian’s treasonous conspiracy has yet to be brought to justice.’
The prefect gazed at him, raising an eyebrow.
‘Oh? His name?’
‘His name, dominus...’ Nigrinus felt his mouth grow suddenly tight and dry. He swallowed, then raised his voice slightly. ‘His name is Aurelius Zeno.’
The chief of the Corps of Notaries stopped mid-pace. He began to turn, began to smile, but a look of sick panic was flickering in his eyes. ‘Surely you don’t think...’ he began to say.
‘He was organising the murder of our emperor Constantine,’ Nigrinus declared. ‘He intended to strike on the third day of the siege. I have documentary proof.’
Zeno let out a low groaning cry and turned sharply, beginning to run towards the far end of the colonnade, his shoes skidding and slipping on the smooth marble floor. But Probinus raised his arm, calling an order, and two guardsmen appeared to block the fugitive’s way, hands on the hilts of their swords.
Turning again, Zeno glanced quickly into the courtyard: the slumped corpses, the pooling blood, the executioners standing ready. He was breathing hard, biting his lips. Then, with one motion, he drew a short dagger from his belt, reversed the blade and plunged it into his sternum. He fell forward onto his knees, then collapsed onto the polished floor as the guards closed around him.
‘Interesting,’ said Probinus with a sniff. ‘How did you know?’
‘Nearly a year ago,’ Nigrinus told him, ‘Aurelius Zeno ordered me to investigate the correspondence of Maximian’s intimates.’ He was shaking as he spoke, but his voice was steady. Just for a moment, he had felt death’s black wing brush against him.
‘Zeno intended,’ he went on, ‘that I should report to him if I found anything suspicious. It was an insurance policy, I believe. If I found evidence of treason, he would know that his communications network had been compromised. And I would be signing my own death warrant, of course. However, he did not know that I was also investigating his own correspondence.’
‘How very... thorough,’ the prefect said. He stiffened his shoulders and drew away from Nigrinus slightly.
‘Yes. And when I discovered in one particular concealed message a reference to Zeno himself, I realised the nature of the game. Instead of reporting it, I travelled south and pretended to Maximian’s people that I was Zeno’s intimate and fellow conspirator. They accepted me amongst them, and I was able to fully examine all their correspondence from then on.’
‘Ingenious,’ Probinus said with something like a sneer. He took another step away from the notary. ‘It occurs to me,’ he said, ‘that there now exists a vacancy a the head of your department.’
‘I suppose there does.’
Probinus sniffed again. ‘Perhaps you will be hearing from us shortly, then,’ he said.
Nigrinus glanced away to hide his blush of pleasure. He tried to form the correct words, the phrases of polite gratitude that protocol demanded. But the prefect was already striding away from him with his hands clasped behind his back.
All the other officials gathered under the colonnade also seemed to have moved away from Nigrinus, and he stood alone, gazing down into the courtyard.
It matters nothing, he thought. Soon they will have cause to hate me more. Soon they will have cause to fear me. His thin lips tightened into a smile. The rich metallic stink of fresh blood was in the air, and it no longer made him feel queasy. No, he thought; it smells very much like triumph.
29
‘What I don’t understand,’ Brinno whispered, ‘is why they didn’t just kill him? In my country, if a man rises up against his king his head ends up on a spike and that’s it.’
‘This isn’t the same,’ Castus told him. ‘Maximian was an emperor. One of the supreme emperors. Constantine couldn’t just execute him, could he? It would look bad.’
‘Don’t see why not...’ Brinno muttered to himself, unconvinced.
Castus too had very mixed feelings. Even after all the treachery, all the killing, even after his own life had been in peril, he could not fully condemn Maximian for what he had done. Still less could he hate the man. For most of his military life Castus had saluted the former emperor’s image, given sacrifice for his welfare, sworn oaths of loyalty to his name. Along with his old colleague Diocletian, Maximian was like a god on earth. Even now, when he was just a beaten old man shambling along like a prisoner in the emperor’s retinue, he possessed the last gleam of that undying glory.
It was near midnight, and the two Protectores were standing together at the balustrade of a balcony that circled the small enclosed garden of the old residency on the riverbank in Arelate. Behind them was the door to the emperor’s apartments. The night was cold and clear, with an edge of the appro
aching winter in the air, and the garden below them a maze of grey and black under the moon.
Constantine had moved his court to Arelate only days after the end of the siege. He had left Massilia in a blaze of victorious glory, the citizens lining the streets from the agora to the Rome Gate and spreading flower blossoms before the emperor’s carriage. Riding with the imperial retinue, Castus had noticed the Christian bishop, Oresius, raising his hands to the emperor in some sort of salute or benediction. Beside him, sombre as always, stood the deacon Nazarius, and almost hidden between them was Luciana. Gazing down from horseback, Castus had saluted the girl as he rode by; for a moment he saw her waving back at him, then the crowd shifted and she was lost from view once more.
Nearly a month had passed since then. Everything had returned to peace, officially at least. But much remained uncertain, much unspoken.
‘They didn’t even reward us for what we did,’ Brinno said, breathing the words. ‘I mean to say! We captured the city, didn’t we? They should have given us a purse of coins, or another golden torque each... Or at least made us into tribunes!’
‘You know the story,’ Castus said, frowning, barely moving his lips. ‘It was the loyal citizens of Massilia who opened the gates, out of love for their true emperor.’
But so much else about Maximian’s uprising had been officially forgotten now. It had been a brief moment of madness, soon suppressed. One of the Spanish legions, VI Hispana Maximiana, had been disbanded and the men absorbed by VII Gemina, the sister unit. Maximian’s Praetorian Cohort had been similarly broken up. Aside from that, and a brief spate of private executions, the whole matter had been consigned to the past. Needless to say, Castus had heard nothing of Fausta’s offer of marriage to Sabina.
Fausta had been keeping herself and her household secluded. She was not entirely in disgrace, but neither was she wholly trusted at court. Before she was even reunited with her husband, she had learned of the recent sickness of Constantine’s lover Minervina. A mysterious fever had taken her, and for days she had been close to death. Only the fervent and ceaseless prayers of a group of Christian priests had preserved her life. When Castus had last seen Fausta, her face had been shadowed by guilt.
