Rome 4: The Art of War

by M C Scott

  Vitellius was proving surprisingly popular. The people liked him, although whether that was simply because he wasn’t Lucius was hard to say. Whatever the reason, he had gone out amongst them after his birthday celebrations and, one smile at a time, was winning his city back from his brother, from his generals, from the torpor and muttered disquiet of his people.

  Sending his two leading generals north with the army was part of his strategy.

  It was a good idea, ruined by the fact that only Caecina had turned up at the barracks that morning, and in a foul temper.

  He it was who had ordered Icelus flogged. He it was who had stood close enough to be coated in a light spray of blood, so that his skin, ordinarily healthy, was mottled with raised spots from which men naturally recoiled.

  He was screaming orders now, harassing Guards who were already running to their duty. Disgusted, I had turned away when the light, unmistakable tread caught up with me.

  ‘If this lot meet Antonius Primus and his legions, they’ll lose. They are sheep with no sense, and they fear the thought of real battle.’

  I had been at Cremona with exactly these men when they had fought Otho’s forces through the night and half of the following day. Never in my life do I want to see a battle more real than that one – and we won it.

  I was concerned, briefly, that my brows might rise and betray me, but no, my face had schooled itself to the tepid acceptance I most despised and had most frequently used of late.

  I said, ‘With luck, Antonius Primus will turn tail when he sees the size of your army and you’ll be back in Rome before the start of winter.’

  Mentioning the season was a guess, but it struck the target. Caecina’s eyes closed a moment and opened again only slowly.

  ‘Winter,’ said my commanding officer, ‘is too fucking close. We shouldn’t be marching anywhere now. We should be training these lazy bastards until they have forgotten their own names and their mothers’ names and the name of the girl they fucked last night if they ever knew it at all and remember nothing but their place in the formation and how badly they want to kill the man opposite them. We should be blocking the passes into Italy and securing the navies. We should be …’ He cupped his hands to his face in despair. ‘We should have left by now and we’re not ready. Most obviously, we don’t have Valens and Valens is supposed to be leading half of this fucking army. Find him. Bring him here. Remind him of his duties, however pleasant you have to be. You can be pleasant, I’m sure.’

  Caecina wasn’t Lucius, he didn’t freeze a man’s blood in his veins with one look, but he wasn’t a happy sight when he was angry and he was beyond angry now. With the thought of that as my spur, I set off for the big double gate that let out on to the Quirinal and from there to the Capitol.

  That day, the gateway was far more crowded than it had been, but that was to be expected; the half of Rome that wasn’t lining the streets to cheer the legions’ departure was here trying to make some last-minute sales to men with too much silver in their pouches and little hope of spending it on anything approaching luxury in the days ahead.

  At the gates, I had to shoulder my way past boys selling luck charms (Long life and good health to you!) and women selling finches in small cages (Bright songs for bright spirits! Joy on your march and good health to you!), and I was contemplating what kind of chaos it would cause if I set about the citizens with my staff when Juvens appeared at my shoulder.

  ‘Going somewhere interesting?’

  Until recently, Juvens had been despondent. Failing to find Trabo had buffed the shine off his reputation and he’d been sullen and sour for over a month. But since discovering that his nemesis was the bear-man he’d never looked more cheerful: however fearsome your quarry, hunting a living thing was preferable to hunting a shadow. I should know; I was still hunting Pantera.

  The men at the Inn of the Crossed Spears were Juvens’, and they had clear orders to follow their man but not spook him. Still, I would have been with them, were it my target and my men.

  ‘Why are you not at Scopius’ inn?’

  ‘Because Trabo knows what I look like and we’d lose him for ever if he saw me.’ Juvens’ smile was irritatingly indulgent. ‘You’re looking cross. Did I see the blessed Caecina venting his wrath on you?’

  ‘No, you saw him vent it on Icelus. I merely caught the backlash.’

  ‘Which is why you are veritably running across the city.’

  ‘I’m not running.’

  ‘Of course not, just walking at a speed that would put a bolting horse to shame. May I trot alongside?’ Juvens was panting. I slowed my pace and found the veins were pulsing in my neck.

  I shoved past a tall Mauretanian curse-vendor (Honoured lords! Lay low your foes, whosoever they may be!) and wondered if I could buy one of his tabs for Caecina, and what it might cost to pay for his silence afterwards. I was safely past before the thought had taken root.

  ‘Are we going to collect Valens?’ Juvens asked, at my shoulder.

  ‘I am going to find General Valens, yes. You, meanwhile, are waiting for a report from your men and are instantly ready to act on it. If not, you’d better have a good excuse.’ Turning, I found I could walk backwards almost as fast as I could forwards. ‘Unless you’ve been ordered to follow me?’

  I didn’t want to think that likely, but it wasn’t impossible. Lucius was ten times more frightening than Caecina and Lucius delighted in turning a man’s family against him; or if not his family, then his closest friends. Squeezing through the crowds, I studied Juvens, searching his open, playboy face for signs of subterfuge.

  Ten paces on, I gave up; I wouldn’t have known what to look for anyway and I wasn’t going to treat my closest friend as an enemy. If I did that, Lucius would have won, and while I might have given my oath to the emperor, and had every intention of holding to it until death, I had given nothing at all beyond necessary obedience to the emperor’s brother, nor did I ever intend to give more.

  Quite what we thought would happen when Lucius ascended the throne – because he was obviously aiming for that and part of the reason Caecina was so unwilling to leave Rome was that it meant leaving Lucius behind with his brother – was anyone’s guess and too far away to contemplate. Thus did I keep myself sane.

  With Juvens easy at my shoulder, I came to the Aventine, strewn with big houses with gilt-tiled roofs and fountains that had flowed with wine instead of water on the occasion of the emperor’s birthday.

  Here was the real wealth, the vast, overstated, too-much-money-and-no-sense wealth that buys fripperies because they are today’s fashion; British slaves this month, Thessalian next; pâté of larks’ tongues today, caviar tomorrow; wine yesterday, a different wine today, a different one again tomorrow. Always wine. And gold; there was so much gold here, a man could have died blinded by its shine. Valens lived on the crest of the hill, with a view north in the direction his legions were due shortly to march.

  The front door to his house was locked and barred as if he had already left and sent the slaves away, but a door at the side gave on to a walled garden aburst with colour and scent; many dozens of fruit trees bowed under the bounty of their harvest, while late-flowering roses climbed the walls, assaulting the air with their perfume. A small river flowed cheerily down the slope, though I would have bet it was not natural, and that Valens was not paying his due to the water commissioners for diverting their aqueduct to this small patch of glory.

  This was my first impression, taken in a single sweeping glance, which ended at the gardener’s hut. There, a group of slaves was huddled round a prone figure, headed by Hermonius, physician to the wealthy, and, in my opinion, one of the most morbidly dangerous men in Rome.

  ‘Valens?’

  I was running now, if not fast enough to put a bolting horse to shame, then at least fast enough to leave Juvens behind. At the hut, I skidded to a stop: it was Valens, prone, perhaps breathing, with a splattering of vomit near his head and clumps of foul, bloody diarrhoea c
lotted about his buttocks and the ground around.

  The stench was enough to throw a man back. I gagged, covered my mouth with my hand, and knelt, feeling for a pulse. The slaves had backed away; they had no authority and could exert none. I grabbed the closest, a youth of perhaps eighteen. ‘Run to the Quirinal hill. Find Scopius who tends the Inn of the Crossed Spears. Tell him we need his wife, to tend your master who has both vomiting and loose bowels. If you can’t find him, ask the silver-boys. Tell them there’s gold in it and no harm to their master. Don’t gawp at me, child; I was born here, I know how the streets run. Go!’

  He ran. I turned back in time to grab Hermonius, the physician, and bodily prevent him from taking a lancet to the general’s veins. ‘You can leave. We don’t need you.’

  ‘You, sir, have no authority, while I— Ah!’

  I had drawn my blade and slammed the flat of it back-handed across the physician’s chest, sending the man flying into a pile of mule manure.

  I stood over him, with the point at his face. ‘My blade is all the authority I need. You will leave. I will send for you should we have need of your particular lack of skill.’

  I watched the physician scuttle away, and then rolled my general gently on to his back, sent for sponges and water and waited for the slave to reach Scopius and Gudrun, praying all the while that at least one of them would come.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Rome, the ides of September AD 69

  Geminus

  ‘VALENS IS ILL. If he hasn’t got the bloody flux, then he’s been poisoned. Either way, he may not live to see the next new moon. He certainly won’t be riding out today or tomorrow.’

  Hard though it was to believe, Caecina was in a blacker mood now, at ten o’clock in the morning, than he had been at daybreak. He heard out my report in silence, pacing back and forth a dozen strides each way, hands caught behind his back, shoulders concave.

  At the end, he spun on his heel to face me. ‘Then we need another general. I cannot possibly be expected to lead detachments from eight different legions, four of them loyal only to Valens. If I am to …’

  He drifted to a halt. His eyes grew wide and his scowl swept through a startling spectrum from fury to surprise to self-examination to a slick-hair, straighten-belt smile of sunny delight that I had never before seen on his face and would have had real trouble imagining.

  ‘Jocasta!’

  He was past me, veritably leaping across the parade ground to the gate, where stood a tall dark-haired woman dressed in a stola of deep, deep red, almost black, fashioned from a silk that radiated a quality, a richness, a raw, demanding sensuality that was a forgotten thing on a parade ground, and often in a fighting man’s life.

  Caecina was a comet, a blazing ball of light, so complete was his transformation. Long before I could have reached him – I didn’t try – he had bowed, made his excuses for the state of his barracks, his hair, his dress, and swept the lady forward into his office. They entered it, unchaperoned.

  Without undue effort, I managed to find duties that allowed me to keep an eye on the door. Nobody entered and nobody left until shortly before noon.

  Caecina came out first. He had combed his hair, but otherwise he looked much as he did any time he walked out of his office; he was never the kind of man to let his belt hang awry, or to have stains on his tunic. He was a monument to perfection in the legions, and he knew it.

  The lady Jocasta emerged on his heels and she, too, had not a hair disarrayed. She was as cool as any Roman matron going about her business in Rome. This did not necessarily mean, of course, that their intercourse in the office had been entirely cerebral.

  In my experience, the men and women of the senatorial class are trained from birth in how to look outwardly cool while their inner lives are in turmoil. They could have been rutting like rats on the far side of the door, and nobody would necessarily have known anything about it.

  Whatever they had done, Caecina was manifestly in a better mood. He escorted the lady to the gate and assigned eight Guards to escort her wherever she might choose to go next. There was a spring in his step as he marched back to me so that I had to fight not to grin at him as he approached.

  ‘All well?’ he asked as he came within hailing distance.

  ‘All is well, lord. The detachments of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Twenty-first legions are ready. The Twenty-second has had an outbreak of thrush in their stables; eight mules have gone lame. Replacements are being sent for and they’ll be ready by nightfall. They can march to join you with tomorrow’s dawn.’

  ‘Excellent! Excellent.’ Caecina rubbed his hands down his arms. ‘They are the best Rome has to offer. Get them gathered so that I can tell them so. We’re going to march out of here today shining – shining! – so that Antonius Primus and all the rest of Vespasian’s men know exactly what’s coming against them, and tremble at the sight.’

  It was such a spectacular change of tone, delivered with such enthusiasm, that it was only many days later, when the disaster had happened, that I looked back and saw the seeds of catastrophe sown in that moment when Caecina’s talk was all about how well his men looked, and not at all about the strength of their fighting capacity.

  At the time, I did as I was told: gathered the men, ordered them into tidy lines and stepped back to let Caecina take his rightful position on the podium, ready to address them—

  And found I had trodden on Lucius’ foot, and must move aside, awkwardly, and fall into apologies; I was most sorry, I had no idea that the emperor’s brother had graced us with his presence. I absolutely did not intend—

  ‘Of course you didn’t.’ Lucius’ whisper was more deafening than most men’s shout. ‘Stop grovelling and listen to me. I hear you are on the verge of capturing Trabo?’

  ‘Juvens is, yes.’

  It was Juvens’ job. Juvens drew his name. Lucius should have been speaking to him.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Don’t take him. Watch him, yes. Approach him, definitely. Find a place he can’t escape from and corner him. But don’t arrest him, and certainly don’t kill him.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  Lucius’ smile was quenched in snake blood. ‘We have word that Trabo is working with Pantera. The two have made an alliance. Since July, I have been trying to place someone on the inside of Pantera’s network and now we have someone handed to us on a plate.’

  ‘I’m sorry, do I understand you rightly? You think Trabo, who held Otho as he died, who has given pledges on the altar of the legions’ god that he will see Vitellius removed from power, you really believe he can be turned to our cause?’

  ‘I know he can. The man is an incurable romantic, prone to grand gestures. Corner him, and offer him a deal in exchange for his life: he will spy against Pantera for us, or we will kill those for whom he cares most before we kill him. Let him know that the lady Jocasta is vulnerable if he refuses. If you need to sweeten it, tell him the price will be removed from his head the day Vespasian is dead and the insurrection dies. If he serves us well, he can be a tribune of the Guard again.’

  ‘And if he accepts, what do you want him to do?’

  ‘You will arrange a means by which he can contact you. Keep it simple. Keep it foolproof. I want details of everything Pantera does, of who helps him, who doesn’t, what they offer. And particularly I want to know how he gets his messages to and from the generals. He has reawakened the old Antonine messenger service from the days of Caesar and Octavian and he’s using it to keep in touch with the legions. When Pantera dies, that service will be mine. It’s more important than he is.’

  ‘Then why don’t we take Trabo and question him? He could tell us where Pantera is and then we could question Pantera. However committed he is to his cause, there is no man who can withstand the inquisitors for long.’

  Lucius pulled a face. ‘He lasted three days in Britain and told them nothing of value. I would li
ke to think we have greater skill, but we can’t be sure of it. If he dies and we have learned nothing, we will be in more danger than if we had left him alive. The enemy you know is a dozen times easier to fight than the one you don’t.’

  There was a light in Lucius’ face I had not seen before; he thrived on the hunt and, like Juvens in the morning, had seen his way clear to a kill. Except in his case, he wanted to prolong the chase as long as possible.

  He clapped my shoulder. ‘Geminus, you’re a natural diplomat. Use all your skills on Trabo and get me what I need. There’s a generalship in it for you if you succeed in this.’

  There was a time when I would have given my right arm for the chance to serve as a general. But only emperors can make or unmake senior officers and the very fact that Lucius felt safe in making the offer without first asking his brother left me profoundly despondent.

  I saluted, and went to find Juvens, to tell him the news that he wasn’t going to get to kill Trabo and I wasn’t to be allowed to arrest Pantera, and what we had to do instead. I knew he wasn’t going to be happy. I wasn’t quite ready for the explosive fury that followed.

  ‘Fuck that! I gave my oath in the temple of Jupiter that I’d hunt Trabo down and kill him and now you want me to call him a friend? Are you completely out of your fucking mind?’

  I shrugged. ‘Lucius ordered it. If you want to tell him he’s an imbecile, feel free. I’ll wait here.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Right, then …’

  We spent most of the afternoon setting up what we needed. When we had done, I have to say, it went with satisfying smoothness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Rome, the ides of September AD 69

  Trabo

  I WAS REPAIRING a wheel that afternoon, as I remember; but then, I spent a lot of those days repairing wheels. It would have been surprising had I not been.

  I’m not a wheelwright by trade, but in my guise as a carter men expected me to be able to at least repair the spokes and set the rim true and I had found I could do that readily enough; after twelve years in the legions, I can turn my hand to most things.