The Peacekeeper

by Jess Steven Hughes

  Casperius and I went among the men and women manning the defenses of jumbled, broken artifacts armed with swords, spears, and broken pieces of tile and brick.

  “We can’t hold out much longer,” Casperius said.

  “I agree, but we’ve got to keep trying. Surrender is out of the question. If only Antonius’s troops would arrive.”

  “I doubt if they will. If what Lord Sabinus says is true about his brother, Vespasian, than we are trapped and cut off from rescue.”

  I nodded, knowing Casperius was right. I looked toward the Grove of Refuge and pulled my sword from its scabbard. “Here comes the enemy.”

  The Praetorians chased remnants of the rear guard from the Grove of Refuge back to our defenses. We defended our position savagely as the Praetorians hurled themselves over the makeshift embankments. We slaughtered many in a bloodbath of carnage. The clashing of swords echoing metal upon metal, the screams of the wounded and dying exploded into an echoing roar heard throughout the city. The stench of coppery blood, emptying of bowels and bladders engulfed the battle scene like a sickening, invisible fog. But the enemy continued the assault. My face, sword, and uniform were covered in blood. I lost track of the number I hacked and sliced my way through as I ran from position to position, encouraging our people to hold tight. Hot, thirsty, and sweating, my hands sticky with blood, I don’t know what kept me going except the fury of battle.

  The Praetorians smashed through our perimeter. We had no reserves to hurl them back. Our defender’s resolve began to flag, and in minutes they would overrun us. The woman, Verulana Gratilla, tore a javelin from a stunned soldier’s grasp and charged, screaming and cursing. Her insane rage inspired a vicious counterthrust, quickly plugging the breach and stemmed the danger. For a moment, the Vitellian Praetorians retreated.

  All of us suffered from the wet and cold, from hunger, fatigue, and wounds.

  After quickly checking with Casperius, Cornelius Martialis, and other officers overseeing the defenses, I searched for Sabinus. He had disappeared during the last engagement. To my dismay, I found the once-brave soldier squatting and cringing, wild-eyed and in shock, in a small, dark corner of the chapel.

  “Lord Sabinus,” I said. He didn’t reply. “Lord Sabinus, answer me—what’s wrong?”

  I glanced through the pillars of the temple entrance. The enemy attacked again using a barrage of fire arrows. Falling into our midst like shooting stars, they harassed our vague attempts at defense.

  I knelt and shook Sabinus by the shoulders. “Hear me, Lord Sabinus. It’s Marcellus. You’ve got to recover yourself—you must leave, now!”

  He didn’t recognize me. Then I heard a great noise outside—the war cries of attacking troops. With a promise to return, I had to race back to the life of defense.

  I barely reached the top steps in front of the sanctuary when a fire arrow struck deeply into my left thigh. Blistering pain shot up and down my leg. I fell backwards onto the brick steps. I felt as if I had been smashed with a hammer. My screams stopped a wounded, running man in his tracks. But he only glanced dully at me, dumbly curious at such animal sounds roaring from the throat of a man. He ran on, probably lost in his own anguish.

  Suddenly, Sabinus appeared and calmly smothered the fire beginning to engulf my breeches with his cloak. He laid me on the ground. Nausea overcame me, and the sounds of battle grew muffled and distant. Weakly, I raised my head and stared numbly at the smoldering thing in my leg—or someone’s leg. Someone ripped my clenched hand from its shaft while scolding me like a child.

  I managed to turn my head and watched as Sabinus quickly scanned the devastation. “Trumpeters, sound the order for assembly, including the civilians,” he commanded. “I want a defensive perimeter thrown around this position.”

  Sabinus broke the feathered, wooden shaft from the embedded arrow, leaving the barbed iron head and smoldering, embered cloth in place. I tried to stand but passed out.

  When I regained consciousness, both trumpeters lay dead, their bodies riddled with arrows. I had a second wound in my leg. The simple arrow wound was worse than the one lodged above—its V-head passed through my calf muscle completely. My vision blurred, but I clearly remembered Sabinus and Casperius Niger ordering a litter and men to carry me to a makeshift dressing area for the wounded.

  Then as my thoughts blackened into nothingness, someone spoke next to me, “His leg must come off.”

  *

  I awoke. After groggily searching about, I realized I was home on Vatican Hill. I looked about. Where was Eleyne? I had no idea how many hours had passed since being carried from the battle—or how many of us had managed to escape. A searing pain throbbed through my leg, and I viewed the bloody linen wrapped around my thigh and calf. I looked about and saw a soldier standing nearby. Obviously, he had been ordered to stay with me.

  “Where is my wife?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, sir, haven’t seen her.”

  “Find her,” I ordered.

  He turned to leave when a slave entered the room. He passed the command on to him.

  Against the wishes of a soldier, I tried walking to the balcony window. Excruciating pain shot through my body as I stood. I fell to the floor but waved away the soldier rushing to my side. Despite the agony, I crawled until I reached the marble bench by the opening. Nearly losing my grip, I grabbed the seat’s slippery edge with blood-smeared hands. Exhausted, dripping with sweat and gasping for air, I made another attempt. I pushed myself up on my good right leg and managed to straddle the bench. Again, pain lanced my thigh. Hanging over the other side, I lay there a moment to take several deep breaths. Using my arms, I pushed myself up and rolled over onto my back, exhausted.

  A few minutes later, I managed to sit up and peer over the balcony railing to search for the scene of battle. As dark clouds crossed the afternoon skies in the distance, dots of flames licked at the tenements on the steep Capitoline. Below the hill a brighter glow flared now and then, like a dying campfire fanned by a sudden breeze. The glowing debris of the skeletal colonnades of the great temple, jumbled with broken men and women, fueled a pyre that only the Great Fire of Rome could rival.

  Watching helplessly, I sensed—feared—the end was near. Hell itself seemed to conspire in the carnage splitting the earth asunder and gorging upon the ashes, bones, and the souls of hundreds, perhaps thousands. My eyes clouded, blurring all details into a distant, yellow fireball. Holding the sides of the bench for support, I tightly closed my eyes. Being home and not at Sabinus’s side to the end spawned a sense of grief and betrayal within me. Blackness again claimed me.

  *

  The dream. Gods, I pray it was a dream. I remember looking down at the slaughter from my villa. Too far to hear the screams and curses, or smell the stench of battle, but clearly seeing flaming arrows streaking down in golden arches from the surrounding tenements, onto the defenders at the Temple of Juno. Like colliding meteor showers, the arrows danced through the dark afternoon. I grabbed the marble bench for support, but it started toppling—or was it me? Lying on the cold, tile floor, I stared at the spinning wooden ceiling as hands moved my body to a softer place. Darkness.

  Cool hands encompassed my forehead, or was it moist cloth? Cold and wet, like the murky waters of a flowing river. Then I saw it floating with the current towards me. A body, whose face I could not see, rolled over and over, until it bumped against me. KYAR. She sank into a void. Voices. Distant voices—laughing . . . crying . . . screaming. A fire burned my body, and I begged for water, but the voices only laughed—louder and louder. Death—the city laid to waste in ruins.

  Then faces from the past drifted before me, fading in and out. Faces floated by on a sea of fire and wind . . . taunting . . . calling . . . summoning me to their world—old Gallus, snarling, his hair swept by the wind. Rix the Gaul, wearing a mountain cat broach, glaring at me with his one good eye and speaking wordlessly. The little beggar girl in the cave—piercing eyes terrified, screamed a shrill sound tha
t merged with the cries of the tortured Druid priest, as Scrofa the beggar king and Obulco the torturer laughed on.

  Marcellus, a wavering voice hissed.

  I answered, but the voice merely whispered again, MARCELL-USSS. With each repetition of my name a new louder voice, and floating face, joined in unison, Marcellus! The Druid witch, Mugain, cackled, wagging a gnarled and pointing finger. Marcellus, accused Avaro, the soldier I had executed. Abroghast, the Tullianum Prison torturer, appeared shoving slithering little monsters in my face. I turned away and saw Candra fading in. He swung his long sword cutting away a gladiator’s hand and launched my head through the air until it struck Crispus and knocked him off his horse, as he joined the chorus, MARCELL-USS!

  A soldier knelt in a shaft of purple light, and a fleeting woman danced in and about the now motionless figments of my dream. MARCELL-USSS, she hissed. MARCELLUS, echoed the shadowed faces. A man floated toward the soldier, and I saw a dagger sticking out of his chest. An ashen-faced young Gallus raised a club, and all the monsters raised theirs, and together they beat and clubbed the kneeling man, chanting, Marcellus! Marcellus! Marcellus!

  And when they stepped back into the blackness, a long figure, dressed in the uniform of my old decurion, Rufius, beckoned me. He pointed to the sprawling dead thing, its headless body bruised beneath a blood-spattered white toga with purple trim. I moved closer against my will as the intense shaft of purple light narrowed, away from the corpse. All was in darkness except for the beam cast on the severed, pale-white, bloodless face before me. Sabinus. His eyes and mouth snapped open, and all the voices screamed, Marcellus!

  And then I fell, riding a wooden bucket down a black well, racing past blurred faces and skulls embedded in the walls. Down I dropped into a bottomless pit, swirling and spinning, carrying with me the demons I had seen. Down into the whirlpool we sank. Slow motion at first, past the Poseidon’s Eye, going faster and deeper and farther, until torchlights and faces and bodies and boar’s head rings and the world of Druid darkness blurred into oblivion.

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 30

  When I awakened, an unusual silence pervaded the house. A searing pain shot through my head as I turned and spied Eleyne in a dark-blue, woolen stola and mantle, sitting by the balcony in the cold morning sunlight. Our eyes met. Making no sound she rose, and the tension drained from her pinched face. Padding across the room in woolen slippers, she came to my side.

  I tried raising myself from the pillow.

  “It’s all right, Marcellus.” She sat on a stool next to the bed. “Lie down, my love, you’re still too weak.”

  Despite her reassurance, I feared the dream would return. But when she held my hand to her warm cheek, I knew this much was real.

  “How long have I been here?” I asked in a scratchy voice.

  “Nine days, and delirious the whole time,” she answered. “I returned as soon as I received news that you had escaped from the Capitoline. I went into hiding with the other Christians when the mob rampaged through the city, but Vatican Hill was spared.”

  “Thank the gods you’re unharmed.” As I attempted to move myself, a dull ache shot up my leg along the left side of my body. Breathing heavily, I dropped my head back to the pillow, exhausted by the feeble exertion. “By all the gods,” I rasped, “it’s . . . it’s a miracle I survived.”

  “Yes, darling,” she said, stroking my hand. “You had me, and the entire household, very worried. They’ve remained silent as mice, making sacrifices for your recovery. For days you burned with fever and lingered near death. The physicians bled you repeatedly until I sent them away. All I could do is sit and wait . . . and pray.”

  “It seems your prayers and offerings were heard,” I said. For the space of a heartbeat, I gripped her hand. “Thank you, dear, and thank our people, too.”

  “I will, darling. The worst is past, and you’re going to live. Thank God, your leg wasn’t infected with gangrene.”

  “Will I walk again?”

  Eleyne hesitated and pinched her lips together for the length of a couple heartbeats. “Yes, eventually,” she answered as if measuring her words, “with crutches. Your muscles were so badly damaged they’ll never heal properly. It may be months before you can stand and walk on your own.”

  “That’s better than losing the leg altogether.” Inside, I wanted to weep, but I was too numb and weary to exert any outward emotion.

  “How did I get home?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Sabinus’s men sneaked you out through a hidden crypt in the Temple of Juno. Did you know the passage existed?”

  “Yes, I vaguely recall its location. It leads to a cistern emptying into the Tiber—a very clever way of escaping indeed. But what happened to the others?”

  “I don’t think you’re strong enough to hear the story.”

  The tone in her voice struck an ominous chord. A sense of urgency ran through me. “Please, Eleyne, it’s important I hear it all. I won’t rest until I know the whole truth.”

  She sighed, and with a firm grasp, held my hands in hers. “Very well, but it’s an ugly tale. I had sent a couple of slaves to the Forum to learn what they could, and this is what they heard. After Sabinus’s son and Vespasian’s son, Domitian, escaped, the Praetorians overran your remaining forces. It was hideous.” Eleyne’s voice broke. “They hacked Casperius Niger and Cornelius Martialis to pieces and many others, too.” Her puffy, bloodshot eyes clouded. She turned and pulled her hands away.

  “There were few survivors,” she continued a few minutes later, drying the tears shed with a cloth of Egyptian cotton.

  “They disguised themselves as Praetorian soldiers. During the confusion of the battle, they overheard the password and used it to escape.” She paused. “But Lord Sabinus and Quintus Atticus were captured unarmed.”

  The Praetorians manacled Sabinus and Atticus and marched them through the rain to the palace. Vitellius received the two in the forecourt at the head of the staircase. In spite of foul weather, the all-too-fickle mob gathered by the thousands and screamed for the deaths. As Vitellius spoke kindly to the old prefect and consul, the mob bolted through the loose guard around the prisoners. Before the Praetorians closed their protective shield around the two prisoners, the rabble grabbed Sabinus. The guard managed to save Atticus from the throng’s wrath, but the crowd stabbed and hacked Sabinus to death. Decapitating him, they dragged his body to a spot on the Gemonian steps used for exposing a felon’s carcass, where the mob further ridiculed and befouled Sabinus’s battered remains.

  “Enough!” I cried, “I can’t stand to hear anymore.” I turned, and thrusting my face into a pillow, wept. “What a senseless waste. The murdering bastards were never worthy of his justice and humanity. They don’t deserve to survive—and neither does Rome!”

  *

  Five months later, in late May, Emperor Vespasian arrived in Rome after crushing the last Vitellian forces.

  Within a week, I received a summons from the emperor to appear in the Senate for a reading of Sabinus’s will. Only three days before, despite the long rehabilitation of my damaged limb, I took my first steps since collapsing and falling into a coma. Although my personal physician, the old Greek, Soranus, attempted to retie the torn muscles, the arrows had inflicted too much damage. He was fortunate to save the limb from amputation, and cursed the quack doctors who had bled me. Never again would I have full use of my left leg.

  That morning, a litter carried me and Eleyne to the Curia as a cool, light rain swirled around us. “Stop right here,” I ordered, and the sedan halted in front of the Senate building. “I won’t be carried into the emperor’s presence like an invalid.”

  “But you can hardly walk,” Eleyne protested.

  “Rubbish, I’m well enough.”

  After tightly wrapping a wool mantle around my white toga, two big German slaves lifted me from the seat. Chulainn handed me the crutches, and with his and the help of a strong, young Briton slave, I slowly and painf
ully hobbled into the hallowed chambers. Eleyne, the mute Imogen, Porus, and twenty other attendants followed.

  Vespasian sat on a low dais, his body rigid, in a cushioned curule chair, as a group of advisors and freedmen hovered nearby. Five hundred members of the Senate reposed in a large semicircle before the ruler on ornate tiered benches. To ward off the cold winter wind outside, all doors were shut tight. Eye-stinging smoke from a dozen braziers wafted through the dimly lit chamber.

  As I struggled to approach the dais, the emperor motioned with a flick of an eyebrow, and four slaves rushed to my aid. Four more scurried to fetch a bench. Moments later they returned with a horse-legged, wooden chair.

  The emperor acknowledged my salute. “Please take your seat, Commander Reburrus,” he commanded in a kindly tone.

  “Yes, Caesar,” I answered in gratitude. I had suffered enough pain and no longer cared about my undignified ride before him.

  Vespasian ordered the proceedings to begin. Prior to reading Sabinus’s will, the Senate approved a proposal by Domitian to vote that a medallion portrait of Sabinus’s image be displayed in a prominent position in the Senate House, and his statue placed in the Forum of Augustus and honored with Rome’s past heroes. An empty gesture for a man who dedicated his life to peace, and yet it would have pleased him.

  The emperor nodded to Sabinus’s lawyer, who came forward to the dais and bowed. “You may read the will of my brother, Titus Flavius, Sabinus,” Vespasian ordered.

  The advocate read that Sabinus had bequeathed all his property in Hispania to me.

  I gasped, not believing my ears. I never expected to be included in his will but was gratified he thought so highly of me.