Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  The privately-hired guards who stood outside the street-front entrances to a few of the more exclusive houses in the area took a quick look at the group and studiously averted their gaze. Such was not their concern unless the four men should descend on their door.

  The crowd thinned out as they climbed the narrower street to the hill where the houses of many of the wealthier families stood. Not here the hawkers of products of dubious meat, the beggars and pickpockets, the stallholders or lurkers. The presence of so many private forces of guards kept the streets here clear of the lower rungs of society. Indeed, by the time Balbus reached the small square with the benches and the apple tree, the only life to be seen was a small family group hurrying to some event in their best clothes. They and an incongruous single young man in a dusty tunic collecting the fallen as-yet-unripe apples and bagging them in large sacks.

  Paying no heed to anyone, Balbus led his three companions to the right and along the narrow side-street, the four men lowering their blades but not sheathing them as they came to a halt in front of the residence of Atia – niece of Julius Caesar.

  Reaching up, Balbus rapped three times on the studded wooden door and then clattered the bell to the side for good measure. There was only the briefest of pauses before a small hatch opened in the door at eye height, protected by an iron grille.

  “Yes?”

  “Be so good as to ask the lady of the house to attend.”

  The slave frowned, taken aback by this breech of etiquette. “I will most certainly do nothing of the sort, sir. If you state your name and business, I will consult my mistress.”

  Balbus leaned sharply forward so that his eye was suddenly only inches from that of the slave, separated by a thin iron strip. The man instinctively ducked back nervously.

  “I am Quintus Lucilius Balbus. Former legatus of the Eighth Legion. I have brought the fortresses of countless Celtic tribes down to rubble and enslaved their people. If you think for one minute I will be inconvenienced by a simple door, you are sadly mistaken. Open this door and fetch lady Atia.”

  The hatch slammed shut and the three younger men behind Balbus all lunged forwards.

  “The swine!”

  “We can break the door!”

  “For Jove’s sake…”

  Balbus, his face still stony cold, reached out an arm and held them back. “Wait.”

  As he stood, the three men impatiently straining to move against the house, Balbus took a deep breath. The number of thugs within the building could determine the course of the next ten minutes. At least Lucilia was safe, having been delivered to the temple of Vesta by Balbus and half a dozen of his most trusted slaves and servants that morning. The priestesses would watch over her until he collected her, and even the city’s most depraved thugs would refuse to enter Vesta’s compound.

  After half a minute, there was a click and the door swung open wide. Lady Atia Balba Caesaonia – a relation of his, incidentally, though by the most distant and tortuous route imaginable – stood in the corridor that led to the atrium, her porphyry-toned stola hanging licentiously from one shoulder, her makeup perfect in every way and her smile as manufactured and calculated as every other facet of her appearance.

  “Dear Quintus, you must excuse my fool of a doorkeeper. He’s new and from Lusitania. They’re all inbred and backward there, you know?”

  Her eyes flicked momentarily to the blades in his and his companions’ hands, but her smile and composure never faltered. She was clearly cut of the same cloth as her uncle. Balbus felt his resolve harden, rather than weaken as she probably intended. He also noted with professional interest the four men busily cleaning the hallway behind her. Dressed as common house slaves and servants but there was no disguising the wiry muscles beneath their tunics or the bulge at each waist where a knife hung. Atia was not a woman to take chances, despite appearances.

  “Where is Clodius Pulcher?” he said sharply.

  The lady of the house simply stepped back and allowed her smile to fall slightly and her brow to furrow in surprise. She’s so calculating she should be in the theatre, Balbus thought absently.

  “Clodius? Oh he no longer stays here. Despite my uncle’s request, I simply cannot abide the thugs who accompany him in and out, slamming doors day and night, drinking and whoring in my beautiful domus. I suggest you look for him at his own townhouse. I’m sure he will be there. In fact, I recall him saying as much before I had to eject him – somewhat unceremoniously, I’m afraid.”

  “You won’t mind if we come in and have a look, then?” snarled Brocchus behind him, the gladius in his hand rising in a threatening manner.

  “By all means. Perhaps you will all join me for a repast? I have good Falernian wine and honeyed dormice prepared? You will, of course, leave those barbarous blades at the door shelves as is customary?”

  Brocchus opened his mouth to snap out a reply but Balbus placed a restraining hand on his shoulder and nodded respectfully at the lady, his blade slipping beneath his toga and into the sheath at his side.

  “That will not be necessary, Gaius, and I must respectfully decline your invitation, my lady. We have pressing business with Clodius the rat. Should he put in an appearance, I would take it kindly if you would warn him that we are looking for him?”

  “Of course, Quintus, of course. You must call again when you have more time.”

  As the former legate stepped back and bowed, an unseen doorman swung the portal closed with a very final click. Brocchus opened his mouth angrily, but Balbus put a finger to his lips in warning and strode off towards the square. As they reached the corner and were finally long out of sight and hearing of the house, Balbus cleared his throat.

  “It was not the right time.”

  “Why not?”

  “Either Clodius was not there, as Atia said, in which case we would have drawn a blank and made ourselves look to be the rudest of fools, or he was there and so well prepared that Atia felt safe inviting us in and it would have been tantamount to falling on our swords to even try. No. It was not the right time.”

  “So what now?”

  Balbus took a steadying breath and strolled across the square to the boy collecting the windfalls, flipping three copper coins to him.

  “Ossus? Tell me.”

  “The posh one left yesterday with two patrician types” the boy said, scratching his chin. “He’s not been back since, but nobody’s moved out all the personal stuff he moved in yet, so I reckon he’s still based there. He’s got this friend, who looks like an old soldier, but he’s so tall he looks like he’ll bang his head on the city gates. Talks with a weird accent; Greek, I think. That fella comes and goes quite often and he’s been around today. In fact, he came out of the back gate while you were at the front, with a couple of other thugs.”

  Balbus nodded in satisfaction and tossed him two more coins.

  “Where did they go and did you hear them say anything?”

  Ossus grinned at his new acquisition. “They went that way – towards the Circus” he pointed south. “His accent’s really weird, but I heard the Aventine mentioned. That’s about it.”

  “Sounds like they did head to Clodius’ house” he confirmed to the other three. “The rat has a large residence in the shadow of the circus. Like so many he considers the Aventine unlucky, so he carefully lives just below the hill, rather than on it. Cheap property, so he can live like a king for a low cost – gives him extra cash to spend on thugs and gladiators. If he’s taken Faleria there we’ll need a small army to dig her out.”

  With a friendly smile, he turned back to the young lad.

  “I’ve a new job for you, Ossus. It’s more dangerous, so I’ll double your pay. Find the house with the Bacchanal mural opposite the Circus and near the Neptune’s chariot street fountain. Keep an eye on the place and take note of all comings and goings again. If you see, or hear of, a lady in her thirties who looks like she might be there against her will… No – this is Clodius. If you see any lady at all –
other than slaves – come and find me immediately. You got that?”

  “Got it, sir.”

  Balbus breathed deep again.

  “We must move carefully, gentlemen.”

  And yet time may well be running out for Faleria.

  Chapter 18

  (Caesar’s camp on the coast of Britannia)

  Fronto stood on the rampart and peered out into the torrential rain as the winds battered him, threatening to knock him from the parapet and driving the downpour at an almost horizontal angle. The soldiers on the walls had taken to moving considerably slower than usual due to the extremely slippery nature of the timber walkway, which had already caused a number of minor accidents. Back down in the camp, what had begun as puddles a day and a half ago were now small lakes that reached up above men’s ankles and the grass across much of the site had now become a thick, cloying mud.

  “There’s going to be too many of them. You know that?”

  Caesar, standing beside him, tapped his chin thoughtfully with a finger. “How many was the estimate?”

  “The scouts came up with various figures, but I’d safely average it out to about twenty thousand.”

  “And we have less than ten thousand.”

  “Precisely. And those men are undernourished, cold, tired and have the lowest morale I’ve seen in years. When the Tenth start to mutter and complain you know there’s something wrong.”

  “Indeed, Marcus. But this could be our moment. We came here to chastise the Britons for their interference in Gallic campaigns and to make them think twice about doing so again. If we can smash their force here, we could perhaps break their spirit and consider our task complete. Then we could return to Gaul and think about wintering the troops.”

  The legate of the Tenth nodded with little enthusiasm. “That’s reliant upon us actually winning, though, and I’d be dubious about wagering money even on a one-to-one basis right now, with the legions in the condition they’re in. Certainly two-to-one worries me.”

  “We could still leave” Cicero muttered on the other side of Fronto, quietly enough that only his fellow legate could hear before the wind whipped the words away. Fronto ignored him, despite the sense he spoke. The two men had shared a strained relationship ever since the aftermath of the beach assault.

  “We need an edge. We need to pull something out of our helmets to even the odds.”

  Caesar nodded and tapped his foot irritably. “If we had the cavalry we could harry them from behind. That would make all the difference.”

  “No use pondering on the ‘could-haves’, Caesar. Unless…”

  A smile crept across Fronto’s face.

  “What?”

  “Maybe we could use their tactics against them?”

  “What do you mean?” Cicero asked interestedly, leaning closer.

  “These Britons are the same as the Germanic tribes we fought, and the Belgae and so on. All these Celtic peoples favour ambushes. The worst battles we’ve fought are the ones where they’ve fallen on us from the woods. Remember the Nervii at the Sabis River? They very nearly put an end to your whole Gallic campaign. And only days ago the locals came out of the trees and surrounded a vexillation of the Seventh. But they feel safe attacking us, because word gets around. Everyone knows that Romans fight in the open ground. We like an empty field.”

  “Go on” Caesar said thoughtfully.

  “Horns of the bull. We array most of the army in the open before the camp, exactly as the Britons will be expecting. But they won’t notice two cohorts missing. Cicero can take his veteran first cohort out to the south, through the trees, and I’ll take mine north. We’ll get ourselves lined up in the cover of the woods to either side of the open fields and as soon as they engage your force, we’ll come out of the woods and fall on their flanks. We can do them so much damage it might even the odds for us.”

  Cicero shrugged. “Why not two cohorts each? Why not come right round behind them and seal them in? After all, we need to stop them escaping like they have every time.”

  “No” Fronto shook his head. “More than two cohorts makes enough of a difference in the army’s size that they might notice and suspect a trick. On top of that, on the off-chance we run into trouble in the woods, we only lose Caesar two cohorts and he can still make a try for victory with the remaining eighteen. If we risk four cohorts we risk leaving too few to succeed.”

  Caesar nodded. “And while I would love nothing more than to stop them fleeing the field, it’s stupifyingly risky to trap a force twice your size with no means of egress. They are then forced to fight to the death and that makes any army twice as dangerous. If we wish to survive it ourselves, we have to leave them a way out when they break.”

  He glanced around Fronto at the legate of the Seventh.

  “Are your men up to it? The Seventh have had a difficult time of it so far. Perhaps Brutus can take Fronto’s second cohort?”

  Cicero opened his mouth, a look of sheer disbelief on his face being quickly overcome by one of anger, but Fronto stepped forward to block the view between them and addressed the general.

  “Caesar, Cicero is an able commander and his first cohort fought like lions the other day. They have a number of good veteran centurions. This is the way we need to move. We’ll be taking the primus pilus of each legion with us, so Brutus will need to take charge of the Seventh, on the assumption that you will command the Tenth, Caesar?”

  He stepped back and allowed the air to crackle between the other two officers for a moment. Caesar seemed to be weighing up the situation in his head and finally nodded.

  “Very well. Good luck to you both. You had best move now, before they arrive. They must be close.”

  With a quick salute, Fronto gestured to Cicero and the pair slipped and clambered down the logs that formed the stairs to the ramparts, leaving Caesar to watch the tree line pensively.

  “The old bastard goads me deliberately” Cicero snarled as the two legates strode through the siling rain and sloshed through the muddy pools. It was the first time he’d spoken to Fronto in many days without issuing a threat, an accusation or a curse of some kind. Perhaps it was time to bury the hatchet. If Fabius and Furius could do it for him, surely he could do it for Cicero. The army needed to pull closer together; not to continue fragmenting.

  “You have to understand a certain level of uncertainty, though” Fronto said with a sigh. “Your brother is the general’s most outspoken opponent. He denounces Caesar at every turn of the wheel. The general’s bound to level a certain amount of mistrust at you.”

  “I have been his loyal legate throughout the campaign!”

  “And one of the most forthright in opposition to his decisions” Fronto declared, biting down on a reminder that this ‘loyal legate’ refused Caesar’s orders at the beach. “You do yourself no favours.”

  Cicero looked around to discern just how alone they might be, but every man in camp was busy making preparations, waiting for the call, or huddling beneath their cloaks against the driving rain. None were paying any attention to the small talk of senior officers.

  “Marcus, you have no idea. I am Caesar’s loyal man; always have been. But because I will not distance myself from my brother, and because I advocate a path of calm and sense, I am tarred with the brush of a traitor. And I’m not alone, either. Labienus cannot fall much further from favour without having to look up at the turf! Remember that you are not that far behind us, either.”

  Fronto turned, ready to proclaim himself Caesar’s man, but a plethora of thoughts battered at him in that fraction of a second. Just how much was he Caesar’s man? Certainly his allegiance to his general had waned throughout the campaign. And given the vehemence of Cicero’s statement, it was more than possible that his fellow legate had, at a deep level, a more solid and anchored support for Caesar than he himself. Quailing at even the thought, he swallowed and broached a new subject – almost new, anyway.

  “What of Menenius and Hortius? Why are they not in the
Seventh with you if Caesar’s lumping all his potential dissidents in one legion?” It was blunt. Much blunter than he intended, but the conversation had taken a difficult turn that had hit him unexpectedly, and he felt ill-equipped to attempt subtlety.

  “I’m sorry, Marcus?”

  “The two tribunes from the Fourteenth. Make no mistake: whether they’re tied to you and Labienus or not – or whether they’re tied to your brother or even Pompey, I will deal with them for what they’ve done. But how did they escape the policy of ‘all Caesar’s opposition in one legion’?”

  Cicero actually stopped walking for a moment in surprise, standing in a muddy puddle and apparently not even noticing as his boots started to saturate.

  “Tied to me? What are you talking about, Fronto? What have they done?”

  “They’ve been undermining the general, removing those with close links to him. I can appreciate a bit of opposition, such as you and Labienus – that’s healthy and keeps the general grounded, but taking action and killing officers is tantamount to treason and murder and I won’t have it – especially not with my friends.”

  Cicero frowned as he started walking again. “I thought you landed that blame squarely with my centurions. Hell, you only started speaking to me civilly again since we found out we were in danger.”

  “Fabius and Furius are innocent – martinets, but innocent. It’s the two tribunes, Menenius and Hortius.”

  “You’re mistaken, Fronto.”

  The legate of the Tenth glared at his counterpart.

  “Don’t protect them, Cicero. I will have my time with them.”

  “I’m not protecting them, you idiot.” Cicero grasped Fronto by the shoulders. “I’ve avoided every contact with those two. They’re Caesar’s pets.”

  “Oh, please…”

  “They are, Marcus. I’ve seen them in the general’s tent late at night when most of the army is asleep. They creep around and fawn to the general. I don’t know what they’re up to, but they’re certainly not killing Caesar’s favourites.” He lowered his tone, despite the fact that no one was remotely interested. “Menenius is so far into Caesar’s purse he would clean the general’s arse with his tongue if he asked. The Menenii were once Consuls but they’ve fallen so far, and now they’re living on farms in Illyricum. They’re but a spit from being plebs these days, Marcus, and Caesar’s the only thing upholding their ancient noble name. And as for Hortius – well the man may play a noble fop but his mother served in a brothel on the Esquiline and his father was… let’s say a regular visitor with solid mercantile wealth. He owes his current high position to the general.”