Battle for Rome

by Ian Ross

  Then the struggling bodies ahead of him parted, and Castus saw the riverbank, a last group of Praetorians still holding together, ringed by the slain. At their centre, pouring blood from a dozen wounds, was Sergianus.

  The red-bearded Praetorian took two steps back down the bank until his feet were in the water. But he had seen Castus advancing on him now. He raised his sword, grinning. ‘Bastard!’ he yelled. ‘Come and die!’

  One last charge, and Castus was down the bank and into the river, water bursting around him in a reddened froth as he waded between the corpses piled in the shallows. The knot of men around Sergianus had scattered, and the Praetorian stood alone, shield raised, sword levelled. Castus closed with him in two thrashing strides.

  Sergianus swung at him, and Castus caught the blow on his shield and turned it aside. Water dragged at his legs, and he almost staggered. He drew his arm back, pressing forward with his shield, and then slashed a low wheeling cut. Sergianus stumbled, throwing his arms wide, and Castus’s blade sheared into his thigh and chopped his leg from beneath him. The Praetorian gave a shuddering gasp, falling to one knee in the water. For a moment Castus hung back, breathing hard, staring at his stricken opponent. Then he took one more step forward, planted his boot firmly in the wet mud of the riverbed, and drove his sword down into Sergianus’s neck.

  The body sagged as he dragged his blade free, then subsided into the bloody water.

  Back up on the bank the legionaries were already raising hoarse cheers of victory. Men seized Castus by the shoulders, by the arms. Hands pounded at his back, but he could feel nothing. Away to his left he saw a group of Second Legion men gathered around one of their fallen comrades. They parted as he approached, and there was Macer, lying on his back with blood streaming down his face. Castus knelt beside him; the drillmaster was still clinging to life, his thin lips drawn back in a snarl. He was lying against a mound of bodies, and the ground all around him was dark and marshy with blood.

  ‘Best way to die, lad,’ Macer said. ‘Couldn’t see me as a farmer anyway…’ He raised his hand, clasping Castus’s forearm. His grip was still strong, but weakened almost at once. Then the old man stiffened, breath hissing between his teeth, and his hand fell slack.

  Castus climbed to his feet. He had dropped his shield back at the river, but the sword was still in his hand. His entire right arm was red to the shoulder, the bronze links of the manica oiled with blood.

  When he gazed back towards the river he saw the banks heaped with the dying and the dead. His own men, those of other legions, Praetorians all sprawled together in a tangle of hacked limbs and bleeding bodies. Beyond them, the Tiber flowed placidly in the sunlight, rolling its freight of corpses down towards Rome.

  Chapter XXVIII

  It would not be a formal triumph. It would be considered unseemly, Nigrinus knew, to celebrate a victory over another Roman army, the deaths of fellow citizens, even the death of a man now universally reviled as a tyrant, his statues smashed, his name chiselled from the monuments. Instead, Constantine’s entry to the city of Rome would be an adventus, a ceremony of imperial arrival and greeting.

  No, Nigrinus thought, it would not be triumph, but it would certainly resemble one well enough. The streets of the capital were decked with garlands, crowds gathered all along the route, people climbing onto the rooftops and thronging the public porticoes to acclaim the conqueror from Gaul. Constantine would ride through the city in an open carriage, seated upon an ivory throne, and all around him his troops would march in procession with their spears garlanded with laurel.

  Already Nigrinus could hear the cheering drifting across from the north, where the imperial cavalcade would be proceeding down the long straight street from the Flaminian Gate. Over to his right, on the broad steps that fronted the Porticus of Octavia, Nigrinus could see the senior members of the Senate waiting in dignified ranks, every man dressed in the heavily starched and densely folded white toga of his office. The Consuls were there, and the Prefect of the City, and behind him Rufius Volusianus. All of them waiting to greet their liberator, Constantine, and escort his entourage across the pomerium, the sacred boundary of old Rome.

  Nigrinus stood alone and unobtrusive in the crowd. He wore an expression of bland indifference, and only occasionally did the dry shadow of a smile cross his lips. But inside he was exultant. The victory of Constantine’s army the day before on the meadows beyond the Milvian Bridge was an answer to many of Nigrinus’s godless prayers. It was the culmination of his efforts, and it would guarantee his path to promotion and high status. And then, he thought, and then… He could look down on all those who had slighted or disparaged him throughout his life, who had ignored him or underestimated them. Yes, he thought, and he could piss on all their heads. This may not be Constantine’s triumph, officially speaking, but in Nigrinus’s closed and secretive heart it was his own.

  Was it not he, Nigrinus, who had induced the tyrant to forsake the security of the walls of Rome and chance his fate in open battle? He had lavished much gold on the city factions, and promises of more gold to come. The seditions they had instigated, the unrest among the Christians, the rumours that had flown about the city of Constantine’s unstoppable advance: all had been Nigrinus’s work. But more importantly, the suggestion he had planted in the mind of the tyrant himself, that he should consult the Sibylline Oracles, had tipped the balance. He had no idea whether the senators of the College of Fifteen had returned the ambiguous message he had given to them, the message that the sorcerer Astrampsychus had plucked from his smoke nine months before in the cellars of Treveris. But whatever they had told him, it had worked. Maxentius had marched, and met his doom, almost as if, Nigrinus thought, he had led the man with a halter. It gave him a cold thrill of power.

  Now the noise of the procession was getting closer, the pulse of chanting coming from the streets to the north-east. In front of the Porticus of Octavia was a wide paved area where the emperor’s carriage would pause, and Constantine acknowledge the greetings of the Senate. The crowd was getting thicker too; Nigrinus had to crane his neck to see, or risk getting jostled.

  ‘Julius Nigrinus, is it not?’ a voice said. Nigrinus flinched, startled – he did not enjoy being recognised in crowds. The man who had addressed him was a senator, balding but smooth-faced, with an urbane handsome look. Nigrinus nodded a greeting to him, then replied with a tight-lipped smile.

  ‘A great and happy day for us all, no?’ Latronianus said. He was wearing his white ceremonial toga, and eight slaves in sky-blue tunics flanked him and kept the crowd away. ‘For you more than most, I would say?’

  Nigrinus merely shrugged.

  ‘They tell me,’ the senator went on, ‘that the body of the tyrant was fished from the Tiber early this morning. Still wearing that golden armour, indeed. Apparently his head was struck off and mounted on a spear, to be carried at the front of the procession! Rather barbaric, I think, but it certainly sends a clear message.’

  That would be Constantine’s doing, Nigrinus thought. He had observed, over the years, a strong taint of vindictive cruelty in the Invincible Augustus. Why was it that emperors, the rulers of the world, were so unable to govern their own emotions?

  ‘But why are you standing down here?’ Latronianus cried, raising his eyebrows. ‘You’ll see nothing! Several of my colleagues have positioned themselves up there on the upper storey of the theatre. It’s reserved for dignitaries. I was about to join them – much better vantage point. Perhaps you would care to be my guest?’

  Nigrinus glanced up at the high stone arches of the Theatre of Marcellus. One side of the curving outer gallery looked down onto the open area before the porticus steps. There were already people packing the arches, but he could see the figures in the white togas standing in immaculate solitude. Yes, he thought, he might do better up there. He had no slaves to shield him from the gathering crowd, and Latronianus’s eight men would serve him well.

  ‘We’ve heard some quite extraordinary storie
s about you,’ Latronianus said as they walked together across the paving to the lower arches of the theatre. ‘Some, I confess, had reason to doubt your intentions. I’m sure you don’t blame them. But you must be due a great reward for your labours, I expect?’

  Nigrinus pursed his lips, about to demur, then stopped himself. He did expect a great reward, yes. But he did not care to discuss it with this man.

  They reached the arches, Latronianus’s slaves moving ahead of them to open a path through the crowd. The stonework of the theatre was scratched and scrawled with graffiti. Men moved through the crowd selling hot greasy snacks and punnets of roasted chestnuts, and the people gathered inside the arches had the heedless levity of a crowd at the circus or the amphitheatre. Nigrinus decided that he would be glad to leave Rome. The city had been great once, centre of a mighty empire, but now it was no more than a festering pit, a sink of decadent luxury and vile poverty grotesquely intermingled. Diocletian had been right to despise the place.

  As he passed through the arch, shepherded by Latronianus’s slaves, Nigrinus glanced back at the senators waiting on the porticus steps. He noticed Rufius Volusianus peering in his direction, and as the old man caught his eye he raised his hand slightly and gave a brief wave. Baffled, Nigrinus waved back.

  Broad stone stairways led up from the lower to the upper gallery; the nearest ones were already crowded with people, beggars and trinket-vendors, but Latronianus led Nigrinus around the curving arcade to another stairway, far from the throng. As they began to climb, a slave stepped up beside the senator and whispered quickly in his ear. Latronianus frowned, then made a tutting noise.

  ‘A trifling matter I must attend to,’ he told Nigrinus. ‘Go on up – my colleagues will be waiting. I’ll join you in a moment.’

  Nigrinus paused, staring back at him, then turned and began to climb. It was cool in the heavy shadowed darkness of the theatre’s interior, almost cold, and strangely quiet after the noise in the street outside. But even here Nigrinus could make out the sound of chanting. Getting louder now – the procession must almost be in sight. How annoying, he thought, to be an emperor. To have people chanting your name at you everywhere you went…

  He turned at the landing and quickly scaled the next flight. At the top was a corridor, a glare of sunlight at the far end. Nigrinus was pacing towards the light when two figures appeared, silhouetted. And now he heard another man coming up the stairs after him, quick leaping footsteps. He paused, squinting. The two men ahead were barring the corridor, and one of them was holding a knife.

  ‘What is this?’ he managed to say. His knees were weak; he feared he would have to support himself against the wall. The silhouetted figures in the corridor advanced slowly, while the third man waited on the stairs.

  ‘Sadly,’ one of the figures said, ‘the noble men of the Senate will not be able to meet you. But they send their regards. And their farewell.’

  With an icy shock, Nigrinus recognised the soft boneless figure. He recognised the voice too, that slight lisp. It was Valerius Merops, Maxentius’s eunuch. Had he too been playing a double game all this time? Nigrinus cursed himself for not knowing. He cursed that he would never know.

  Reaching behind him with trembling fingers, he found the small knife he wore concealed in his girdle. He always carried it with him, intending to open his veins if he were ever captured. He could not abide the thought of torture. He drew the knife, but his chest was quaking, his bowels were loose and he felt the urge to vomit.

  Merops and his assistant were pacing closer. From outside, Nigrinus could hear the cheering gathering in volume. He swallowed heavily, sucked in a long breath through tight lips, then turned and hurled himself back down the stairs.

  He caught the man on the lower step unawares, colliding with him and pushing him back against the wall. With his eyes closed, Nigrinus let out a clenched cry and drove the knife up under the man’s jaw. He felt the blade bite, the spurt of blood hot against his fingers. The man did not even gasp.

  Heaving the body across the steps behind him, Nigrinus leaped down to the landing. His shoes slipped on the worn stone floor, but he caught himself and ran on down the lower flight, the noise of his footfalls booming. He had flung the bloody knife away from him. All his life he had been afraid of blood, anxious that he should not weaken at the sight of it. He had caused the deaths of so many, but had never before raised his hand against another man. He was laughing as he ran. He had never known it was so easy to kill.

  At the bottom of the stairs he doubled the corner into one of the ground-floor passages. He must flee, get away from here and conceal himself somewhere. Down the passage, he saw light filtering from his left and turned again. He was following the curve of the arcade now, and every few steps he saw the flash of sun between the arches.

  Rounding the curve, he saw the crowd gathered at the end of the arcade, many of them already raising their voices in acclamation of the approaching procession. Nigrinus was panting, his sides aching. He would lose himself in the crowd.

  A man stepped from a shadowed opening to his left, and with one straight arm shoved Nigrinus back against the wall.

  ‘Know me, do you?’ the man rasped. Nigrinus saw his pockmarked face, the angry scar across his brow. Pudentianus’s slave, he remembered. Naso.

  Then the slave punched him hard in the belly, driving the air from his lungs. Nigrinus barely felt the blade go in.

  He sagged, his knees folding beneath him, and slid down the wall. Naso had vanished. Now he could feel the pain pulsing up from his wound, and when he looked at his hand it was daubed in bright red. Got to move… Scraping at the wall with his free hand, Nigrinus dragged himself upright. Hunched, he staggered a few steps towards the light, then a few more.

  The noise burst around him, the screams and cries of the multitude. Forcing his legs a few steps further, Nigrinus slumped against one of the outer arches. He could see the procession coming around the corner and moving into the open paved area before the Porticus of Octavia. Marching at the front was a single soldier, carrying the severed head of Maxentius, tyrant of Rome, impaled on the end of his lance. They were not cheers of acclaim Nigrinus was hearing, but screams of hatred and abuse, as the mob pelted the grisly remains of what had once been their emperor with ordure and broken roof tiles.

  Nigrinus dug his fingers into the stone, trying to hold himself upright. If he could see, if he could at least glimpse Constantine… His body felt numb, but his limbs were burning, agonised. He could feel the blood soaking down his legs, pouring onto the cobbles beneath him. Then his legs gave way beneath him and he dragged his fingers scratching down the side of the arch as he fell.

  His last exhaling breath was lost in the jeering of the mob.

  Chapter XXIX

  The imperial city of Rome had rarely looked so impressive. The rains of early November had washed the dust and smoke from the air, and in the low autumn sunlight the city appeared to gleam. Against a leaden sky the temples on the Capitoline Hill rose clear and distinct.

  Aurelius Castus stood on the balcony of a house on the slope of the Aventine, taking in the view. Across the valley he could see the pillared exedra of the palace, where he had met with Maxentius the month before. Below it stretched the vast stadium of the Circus Maximus. The stands down there were still packed; Constantine had decreed ten days of games to celebrate his entry into the city, and the Roman people had responded with their usual enthusiasm. Castus might have expected them to be glutted by such things, after the constant lavish spectacles laid on by their previous ruler, but apparently they had an inexhaustible appetite for entertainment.

  He would not be joining them himself. Since the glorious adventus, he had kept himself apart from the jubilation. He had seen too much of emperors and the business of empire. In his soul he no longer cared what Constantine said or did, or what was said or done in his name.

  And what would he do, in fact, the latest emperor of Rome? He had already forgiven all those supporters of
Maxentius who remained in the city. Only the Praetorians had been punished: the entire ancient corps had been disbanded, and the survivors exiled to the frontier armies. The barracks of the Horse Guards had been seized, and then given to the Christians to turn into a grand new basilica. They at least were jubilant, and praised their new ruler.

  Constantine himself would remain in the city until the spring, and then march north to Mediolanum, to meet with his brother emperor Licinius and decide how to divide the Roman world between them. Maximinus Daza still ruled in the east; would they join with him and split the empire three ways, or would there be further war? When he considered these things, Castus saw only the heaped corpses along the banks of the Tiber, the river running with blood. Too many men had died to bring Constantine to victory. Too many Roman soldiers had been killed by men they could have called brothers.

  Castus clasped his hands behind his back. He breathed in slowly, stilling his mind, then turned and paced into the reception chamber of the house. This had been one of Sabina’s father’s properties once, seized by the tyrant after the old man’s execution. Maxentius had given it to a tribune of the Praetorians, but that man had died at the Milvian Bridge, and now Castus had commandeered it as his own lodgings. He would have the deeds made over to his wife in time. It would be easy enough to do: in Rome, officers of Constantine’s victorious army could have anything they wanted.

  But there was only one thing that Castus wanted.

  Standing in the reception chamber, he listened to the voices filtering through from the vestibule, then from the inner courtyard. Eumolpius appeared in the doorway, dressed in a freshly pressed white tunic.