Praetorian (2011)
Page 40
‘Good lad!’ Macro gave a relieved grin and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I knew you’d see the sense of it.’
‘Good sense doesn’t come into it,’ Cato said quietly.
They reached the road leading back up to the Praetorian camp and stopped. Since their true identities had been revealed, they had been granted accommodation at headquarters, although they were regarded with cool formality by the other officers.
‘You go ahead,’ said Cato. ‘There’s something I have to do.’
Macro gave a lopsided smile, half tender, half nervous for his friend. ‘She’s back in Rome, then.’
‘I heard this morning.’ Cato felt dread welling up in his heart again at the prospect of seeing Julia. It had been over a year since they had last seen each other. In that time there had been a handful of letters exchanged. Though her words had been tender and reassuring, Cato could not help fearing that they were no guarantee that her heart was still his. ‘I told myself I would see her as soon as we were finished with Narcissus.’
‘So, go on, then. What are you waiting for?’
Cato’s brow creased as he stood still, as if rooted to the spot. ‘I don’t know … I really don’t know.’
‘What is there to know, except the truth of how things stand between you?’ Macro punched his shoulder. ‘You can only discover that by going to see her.’
‘Yes. You’re right. I’ll go. Now.’
‘Want me to hold your hand?’
Cato looked at him sharply. ‘Fuck off, thank you.’
Macro laughed heartily and winked at Cato before turning away and striding up the road leading to the camp as if he had not a care in the world. Cato watched him enviously for a moment and then continued on his way, pushing through the crowd as he made for the house of Senator Sempronius on the Quirinal Hill.
It was late in the morning when he stepped up from the street on to the steps to the entrance of the house. The heavy wooden doors were open and the last of the senator’s clients were sitting on benches in the atrium, waiting to present their petitions to their patron. A slave approached Cato to ask him his business.
‘I’m here to speak to Julia Sempronia.’
‘Yes, master. What name shall I give her?’
Cato sucked in a deep breath to calm his nerves. ‘Prefect Quintus Licinius Cato.’
The slave nodded and turned away on his errand. For an instant Cato was tempted to call the man back and cancel the instruction, but the slave was already at the far end of the atrium and Cato did not want to shout after him. It was too late for that. He stood, his right hand twitching against his thigh. He looked round, not really taking in the details of the house.
Then he froze.
Overhead the sky was clear and larks swooped high above, but Cato had no eyes for them and no ears for their shrill song. Instead he stared across the atrium at a slender young woman in a plain, long, light-blue tunic. She was standing in the opposite doorway, her dark hair tied back in a simple pony tail. She stared back at him. Then she began to walk steadily across the tiled floor, round the shallow pool in the centre of the atrium, her pace slowing as she approached him. Cato tried desperately to read her expression, for any hint of the despair or joy that the next moment might bring.
‘Julia Sempronia.’ He bowed his head formally, not knowing why he did it and feeling foolish.
‘Cato,’ she replied softly. ‘Cato … My Cato.’
Then with a patter of her slippered feet she rushed into his arms and held him tight and Cato felt a warm wave of relief sweep through his chest. He pressed his cheek down against her hair and closed his eyes as her scent, almost forgotten, rushed back amid a confusion of memories and emotions.
Julia drew back and he opened his eyes to see her staring into his face. She reached a hand up to touch his lips, then moved her fingers lightly and uncertainly to trace the line of his scar. Then he saw a tear gleaming at the corner of her eye, where it swelled like a tiny translucent pearl before it rolled down her cheek.
Cato felt his heart torn in two as he regarded her. Much as he loved and desired Julia, Cato wanted to leave Rome at the first opportunity and get far away from its deadly cross-currents of deceit and treachery. He and Macro would be leaving to rejoin the army campaigning in Britannia. Nothing could sway Cato from that. Those were the terms that Julia would have to accept if she still wanted to have him.
‘What’s wrong, my love?’ Her brow furrowed anxiously.
Cato took her hands in his. ‘We must talk.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Being set mainly in Rome, Praetorian is something of a departure from the usual battlefield adventures of Cato and Macro. The last occasion they were in the city was when they were waiting for the outcome of an investigation into the death of a superior officer. Then they were living on the last of their savings, forced into taking rooms in a crumbling tenement block in one of the slum districts. It was only a brief interlude, however, and they were soon sent off to join a naval campaign against a gang of pirates. At the time I was quite taken with Rome as a setting for the story and wished that Cato and Macro could have spent more time in the capital. It’s a fascinating setting to write about. With a population of around a million, Rome was a vast city even by modern standards. It is worth pointing out that during the early Renaissance the population of Rome was no more than fifteen thousand - living amid the ruins of a civilization that dwarfed their own. It was not until the nineteenth century that the population of Rome returned to the levels it had enjoyed under the Caesars. That is eloquent proof of the fact that human history is not a tale of steady progress towards greater knowledge and achievement.
Even so, daily life in ancient Rome was no picnic. The streets were filled with refuse and sewage and the stench would have been unbearable to a modern nose. Poor sanitation was only one of the dangers. With no regular police force on the beat, the streets were ridden with crime. Cut-purses and roving gangs of thieves haunted the narrow alleys winding off the main thoroughfares. Even if you avoided that threat you still had to face the danger of a complete lack of building regulations. With such a huge population squeezed into a relatively small area, the value of building land was at a premium. Accordingly, a mass of cheaply constructed tenement blocks rose up on Rome’s hills, and in the valleys between the hills. Many were as high as six storeys and all of them posed significant fire risks as well as being in danger of collapse, burying alive those unfortunate enough to dwell within, as well as any unlucky passers-by.
The vast majority of the population lived in grinding poverty in these high-piled, filthy, crime-ridden slums. Perhaps half the infants born in these slums survived beyond the age of five and did well to live to the ripe old age of fifty. As with all great cities, food had to be transported in from the countryside and therefore commanded relatively high prices which many could not afford. It had long been realised that a starving mob was not conducive to social stability and so the Senate and, later on the emperors, put in place a system of food subsidies and handouts. Having seen to the stomach of the mob, Rome’s rulers proceeded to occupy their minds with entertainments. Something like a third of the days in every year were given over to chariot races, gladiator spectacles and public festivals. It was by such means that the emperors kept the mob in check. It was, however, always a parlous mechanism for social control and vulnerable to the fluctuations in supply of grain depicted in Praetorian.
It was a different story for the rich, of course. Those who could afford it bought houses on the hills where breezes made the stench more tolerable and helped to clear away the brown smog that frequently cloaked the capital. Attended by slaves, they could live off the best and most exotic foods that were imported into the city. They enjoyed the best seats at the Great Circus and in the theatres, as well as the complete gamut of pleasures of the flesh.
This then was the Rome in which Cato and Macro arrived to carry out their undercover mission for Narcissus. Although they had fought on the
frontiers of the empire, the presence of Rome was always in the back of their minds as the embodiment of all the values that they were fighting for. The city was very much the centre of the Roman world. Not only was it the seat of government, it was also home to the temples of the empire’s gods, and the hub of a vast economy that spanned the known world. In a race as hidebound by tradition as the Romans were, the fount of those traditions would always be regarded as sacred and its soldiers would be willing to face any peril in defence of the honour of Rome and all that it stood for.
This makes the reality of life in the great city such an interesting contrast to the abstract principle for which men like Cato and Macro fought and died. The ideals on which Rome had been built had largely perished along with the Republic and by the mid-first century the authority of the emperors was absolute. Sure enough there were still people who professed a yearning for the old days but they were usually sensible enough to keep their political views to themselves. The Senate, once the scene of debates and deeds that shaped the known world, was reduced to little more than an exclusive club who rubber-stamped imperial edicts. The power that had once been theirs had been transferred to the coterie of advisers who surrounded the emperor. To rub salt in the wound, these advisers were frequently men from inferior social classes. In the palace itself, there were deep divisions between the emperor’s subordinates who jostled for influence over the emperor. Influence led to power and the chance to make vast fortunes, as the likes of Narcissus and Pallas duly did. If the stakes were high for the emperor’s advisors, they were higher still for members of his family. The casualty rate amongst those closest to the emperor made the dangers facing those soldiers guarding the frontiers rather mild by comparison. For a brilliantly racy portrait of the lethal nature of life in the imperial palace I’d heartily recommend reading Graves’s I, Claudius, or watch the excellent BBC television series.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
About the Author
By Simon Scarrow
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Characters
Rome In The Age Of Emperor Claudius
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Author’s Note