Rome 4: The Art of War

by M C Scott

  ‘Is Lucius dead?’

  The boy shrugged. In the alleyways, where the silver-boys reigned and he so evidently their king, they neither knew nor cared what happened in the palaces of power.

  I reached into my purse and found one of Vitellius’ new denarii, the same coin that I had laid on Juvens’ eyes. I flipped it to Marcus who caught it on a flat palm and held it there; he had no need to make it vanish as the other boys did.

  I said, ‘We’ll bring our emperor out of the palace by the slaves’ door. Tell Pantera that if he spares Vitellius, I will spare him.’

  ‘You’ll need to wear this.’ The boy held out a blue scarf, free of bloodstains; I would bet a year’s pay that it had not yet been worn.

  ‘No. Not now.’ Not yet. I looked left to Halotus and right to Thrasyllus.

  ‘Go,’ I said to them. ‘Go to the barracks. I’ll catch you up when I’ve seen the emperor safe.’

  That was a lie, but they wanted to be there. We could hear the beginnings of battle and any man not inside when the gates closed faced the prospect of being cut to pieces by the clear-up teams afterwards.

  We made our farewells and, free of the other two, I followed Marcus and his boys down alleys so dark they felt like tunnels, twisting and swerving, and always overhead the high, fierce whistles guiding us as the horn guides the legion: left, here, up the hill, left again, second right; no, stop and turn back, take another right, sprint fast along here and out …

  And stopped.

  ‘We’re too late.’

  The palace was ahead, but between it and us the broad swathe of the Aventine Way was packed, from side to heaving side, by the people of Rome, come down off the rooftops and into the streets again.

  ‘Hades!’ I heard shock in my own voice. ‘Are they all here? Has every single Roman come to see him brought down? It’s worse than the circus.’

  It wasn’t really any worse; just that while the emperor – any emperor – provided his population with bloody entertainment, none had ever before taken the starring role himself, and the promise of exactly this had brought everyone out to watch.

  Vitellius was taller than any of those around him; it was easy to keep track of him in the centre of the sea of jeering humanity. His captors were Guards all marked with blue. They had tied his hands and put a cord round his neck and were leading him towards the forum like an ox to sacrifice.

  A dozen armed men circled him, of whom I recognized only Marcus Claudius Placidus, a junior officer prone to pandering to the masses.

  ‘Where’s Drusus?’ I asked aloud. ‘Did they kill him?’

  Marcus was with me still; glued like a bur to my leg. ‘Vitellius sent him away,’ he said. ‘He sent everyone away. He would have sent you away too. His wife and children have been sent south to Lucius.’

  I snorted. ‘Lucius, whose ring you have?’

  ‘She’s safe. Pantera did not intend this.’ The boy’s face was grave. ‘You are too late to help, but you can watch if you want, from the rooftops. Nobody’s up there now. Everyone’s in the street, wanting to touch him as he passes.’

  He was right; the rooftops were almost bare. And so, like the citizens who had so recently taunted us, we climbed on to a pig sty and from there on to a thatched roof and crawled along, keeping our heads low, as the mob descended the hill to the forum.

  A statue crashed from its plinth below us; an image of Vitellius that flattered him in all aspects. It broke on the ground and a child tried to pick up the head, cut her fingers, and started to wail. Others picked it up for her, and used it as a missile to topple other statues, until ‘collecting the heads’ became a game much as it had done with Nero’s effigies eighteen months before.

  Vitellius wouldn’t look; he stared solidly at the ground, his jaw working, but half the citizens around him were armed with the blades that the emperor had himself issued from his armoury to help in the defence of Rome. Oh, the irony … Those nearest leaned in, leering, and jabbed him under the chin.

  ‘Look! See how the mighty fall!’

  It was shameful and that idiot Placidus was doing nothing to stop it. I began to slither back down the roof. ‘Someone needs to put a stop to this.’

  ‘You can’t rescue him.’ The boy, Marcus, caught my sleeve. ‘There’s no point in dying for— What’s Drusus doing there?’

  The crowd parted, as before a stampeding horse, and Drusus was there, piling through them, big as a bear, and as terrifying. Men and women flung themselves out of his path and he had a clear route all the way to the emperor.

  ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! He’s trying to rescue him. Drusus, you fool! You can’t save him single-handed.’

  ‘He isn’t trying to save him,’ Marcus said, in a thin, tight voice. ‘He hates Vitellius for ordering his brother crucified. I think he’s trying to kill him.’

  ‘Drusus hates— But …’

  Marcus was right. Whether it was out of mercy, or an act of personal vengeance, Drusus aimed himself like a bull at the emperor, with a massive blade held high in his hand.

  Nearly. So very nearly. But Placidus was an idiot, not a complete incompetent, and Drusus was only one man. The emperor’s head swung up and he faced his death bravely, but there was a fence of iron around him and three blades countered Drusus’ one.

  The giant German’s momentum carried him on and spun him round and his sword sliced down the side of Placidus’ head, carving away his ear in a gout of blood. Placidus fell away, screeching.

  Eight men ran Drusus through.

  ‘Drusus!’

  ‘No!’ Marcus was weeping, but he grabbed my shoulders with both hands. ‘You can’t stop it. They’ll kill you if you try.’

  I hadn’t been aware that I’d moved, but I looked down and found that, though I had been safely a dozen feet from the edge, now I was at it, poised to leap.

  Marcus was right: I would have died had I gone down there, either crushed underfoot or slaughtered, exactly as Vitellius was being slaughtered.

  He died with all his wounds to the fore, and in silence, but he died, all the same.

  Drusus’ actions had pushed the mob past their boiling point and what had been contained ridicule descended fast into uncontained violence and eight men were not nearly enough to protect the emperor.

  They didn’t even try; without Placidus to command them, they lowered their blades and backed away. If I were Vespasian, I’d have had them all flogged and dismissed for dereliction of duty. They stood by and watched the mob rip Vitellius apart.

  He died under a dozen savage blows and then, with no one to stop them, the mob stripped his hacked and bleeding body and dragged it to the foot of the Gemonian steps, where lately Sabinus’ bloodied corpse had been left. There was a ghastly symmetry that was lost on no one. Somewhere, the gods were balancing the fates of the mighty, and laughing.

  ‘He’s dead.’ Marcus was holding me still; a boy, holding a man, talking sense to the senseless. ‘They’re both dead. Drusus and Vitellius are both dead. Please will you stop. Which one was it you cared for?’

  ‘Vitellius,’ I said. ‘And Drusus. Both.’

  I was numb, dead inside. I should have been with my men at the barracks, but I could hear the noises of battle from the camp behind the Quirinal hill and knew that I was too late; the gates had closed and there, too, the slaughter had begun. My men were dying bravely, and I was not with them.

  Pantera had kept me from that. Dully, I wondered why, and had no answer, although somewhere the shade of Juvens was pleased.

  There was only one place left I could go and salvage any honour, any pride. Slowly, I unwound the green scarf from my arm and took the blue one Marcus had offered me earlier.

  Tying it on under his too-adult sardonic stare was as hard as anything I had done, but necessary. After, I took his small fist, prised it open and tipped the contents of my belt pouch on to his flat palm. If nothing else, I had the momentary satisfaction of seeing the boy’s jaw go slack.

  ‘All of thi
s,’ I said, ‘if you can get me out of the city and on the road south to where Lucius is.’

  Indecision flickered for a moment across Marcus’ face, then he smiled a true smile that showed a different boy inside.

  He handed back all but one new-minted silver piece. This one he held in the flat of his palm, dull in the late afternoon sun. He slid me a look. ‘One more like this when we reach the south gates.’

  Solemnly, I spat on my hand and held it out. ‘Two if we can reach there before nightfall.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  Rome, 20–21 December AD 69

  Horus

  THE HOUSE FOLDED its silk welcome around us, warm, safe, homely; an antidote to Jocasta’s poison.

  Word had come ahead of us of Drusus’ death; Segoventos, the Belgian who had taken his place as our doorman, was beside himself with grief and the rest of the House was subdued and sad even before we arrived with Felix’ body and news that Domitian had been taken by Jocasta.

  It’s hard to know which part of that was hardest. We did not know Felix well, but Drusus had been our brother, our friend, and we mourned him. Then again, everyone had come to like Domitian in the time he had spent with us and all of us knew by then that he was the new emperor’s son – if he lived.

  I ordered wine for everyone and locked the doors and had them hang white banners from the windows to show we were in mourning and promised that there would be no work tonight, or tomorrow.

  The lady Caenis, it hardly needs saying, was a model of composure. We offered her a bed, alone, of course, and the opportunity to bathe, but she sat with the rest of us as we gathered news from the night.

  She kept close to Borros, feeling, I think, a measure of responsibility for his grief; or perhaps she simply liked him. Together, they oversaw the laying out of Felix, ensuring he was accorded all honours as one who had given his life in defence of the new emperor; he was treated as a hero.

  Trabo, of course, did not believe the evidence of his eyes. In his mind, Pantera was the threat and Jocasta the injured victim. In the end, we gave him poppy to calm his rantings, which worked for a while.

  He recovered his wits around midnight, and I set a girl to tend him: Tertia, the one Pantera had paid for and ordered and sent to him in the summer, to see to his needs when Jocasta was not with him. Bizarre though it sounds, she had grown fond of him, I think. Certainly she cared for him, and soothed him, and let him work out his anger in safer ways.

  Of us all, Pantera was least readily contained. I’ve known him almost all my life and never been afraid of him, but I was afraid that night. He didn’t rant or scream, or even speak much, but he gave off a kind of white-hot fury that stunned everyone to silence. Even the lady Caenis was subdued in his presence.

  As soon as he could, he left, taking Marcus-who-served-with-us and together they called up every silver-boy they could reach – which was all of them, given that he had taken half of my gold stocks as payment. They were set to work with explicit instructions, but scour the city as they might they couldn’t find Jocasta or Domitian.

  After midnight, when the noise of fighting had died away, Pantera sent Marcus back with news that the barracks had fallen: two thousand men bravely dead with their wounds all to the fore. Soon after, another boy brought word that Antonius Primus had occupied the palace formerly used by Vitellius and was holding it in Vespasian’s name while his men conducted a street by street clear-up of the city.

  Nobody knew where Lucius was, except that he wasn’t in Rome. Pantera believed that he was marching up from Misene and would be on us within a day, and that Jocasta had gone to join him.

  Near dawn, Pantera came back with word that a woman fitting her description had taken two of Vitellius’ horses and paid for them with coins cut in Vitellius’ likeness. It wasn’t proof, but it was as close as we were likely to get.

  Pantera roused Caenis and told her that he, personally, was going to lead the legions that were about to march out to face Lucius. He knelt before her and swore that he would bring Domitian back to her alive, or die in the attempt. He chose not to leave her in my care, but took her to Antonius Primus, who could provide half a legion to protect her.

  Then he came back for Trabo.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  Rome, 21 December AD 69

  Trabo

  I WOKE TO a stunning headache and the stench of burning men. I opened my eyes slowly, closed them, opened them again at the feel of soft breasts pressing against my arm.

  I thought Jocasta and was full of hope and joy. And then I remembered. I made myself focus, strove for a name.

  ‘Tertia?’ I blinked and it was still her. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘She works here,’ said a man’s voice behind me. ‘Four denarii a night.’

  Four denarii? Four? I’d paid her two sesterces a month and she’d had to buy food for us out of that.

  And then I recognized the voice. I sat up, fast, and fell back against the wall at the bed’s head. ‘Where’s Jocasta?’

  ‘She’s gone south, we think.’ Pantera moved round to stand in front of me. ‘Do you feel well enough to ride?’

  ‘South? You think she’s gone to Lucius? I don’t believe you.’

  I couldn’t stand, but lifted my head to look at where Pantera had sat down, cool as you like, on a pale blue satin couch. We were in the whorehouse and the whole place was done out in pastel shades and smelled of roses.

  Looking down, I found I was lying on a bed with silk sheets in three different shades of lavender. More than the stench of funeral pyres, that drove me to my feet. I swayed and caught the wall to hold me.

  ‘Ride where?’ I asked.

  ‘Down the Appian Way. Lucius’ cohorts are advancing on Rome. Unless we want a repeat of yesterday, and I don’t think we’ll find a soul alive in Rome who wants that, it will be necessary to meet him in force. Antonius Primus is sending three legions south to stop him. They leave by the second call. If you want to see Jocasta alive, you’ll be ready to leave with them.’

  I had no idea what time it was, only that there were chinks of daylight under the door and so it must have been after dawn.

  ‘She isn’t a traitor,’ I said.

  He blew out his cheeks. He was grey at the edges, like a man who has had little sleep and much commotion. ‘You won’t know if you don’t come.’

  He pushed himself to his feet. I don’t think he liked the couch any more than I did. It smelled of sex. Come to that, so did I, but mine wasn’t scented sex.

  Stiffly, he said, ‘You are offered the lead of the army riding south. If you don’t take it, someone else will. So your choice is this: do you want to face Lucius and his cohorts and the risk of meeting Jocasta, or would you rather stay here and fuck Tertia at my expense?’

  I could have hit him. Perhaps I could. But Borros was there and my head still hurt and he looked more than ready to hit me again.

  Without a word to either of them, I turned and began to dress. I am not a coward, but I choose my battles and this was not one worth fighting.

  Outside, the air was foul with the scent of burning flesh. Greasy soot fell in soft flakes, staining everything.

  At the barracks, there were more men bearing bodies in funeral parties than there were in the columns of tired-faced men lined up ready to march out, and everyone was sunk into despond by the pyres that ranged behind the wall. They didn’t want war any more than I did, but nobody, either, wanted Lucius to descend on the city with his cohorts thirsting for blood, so they were there, ready; brave men all.

  At Pantera’s orders, someone brought me a horse marked with Vitellius’ brand, but wearing trappings hurriedly cobbled together that showed the oak branch in leaf and nut that was Vespasian’s livery.

  Someone else handed me a helmet with a fresh scarlet plume, and as I rode up the ranks the men who knew me stared and then cheered: I was Trabo, whose name had been in the lottery, and here I was, alive, ready to lead them. Those few who had never hear
d of me took longer to understand who I was, but before I reached the head of the column they were cheering too.

  I waved: it was expected of me. I hated it.

  ‘I’m a fraud,’ I said bitterly to Pantera, as he rode up beside me.

  ‘No. You’re the man who fulfilled his oath to Otho and survived the depredations of the false emperor. Don’t belittle yourself.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him just what he thought he would achieve by going out with three legions against Lucius’ three cohorts, but there was something in his eyes that warned me off. He was in a rare mood: tight and taut with a sense of impending explosion. It left me jittery, and in any case my head still hurt from Borros’ attentions; this, too, wasn’t the fight I wanted to have.

  We two rode in sullen silence and the men, feeling it, were quiet; nobody raised a marching song. If they were like me, every sinew ached, every bone felt bruised. Less than a day before, I had been desperate for battle; all that running around in dog-headed masks had driven me mad. Now, I never wanted to lift a sword in anger again.

  I tried to remember if I had felt like this when Otho was beaten, but the past was a haze and all I could recall were the faces of the recent dead. Their shades walked with me in columns on either side, mourning their own passing. Someone said that Rome had lost fifty thousand men in the past month, which had to be the most monumental exaggeration, but even if it was a third of that number, it was too many.

  Just before noon, on Pantera’s advice – his order, if we are honest – we halted in the open land between the Alban and Volscian hills. The rhythms of the legions were returning to me. Pantera may have given the order, but I saw it carried out and found the first beginnings of joy in the snap of command and response. At my signal, muted trumpet calls moved the men about: the cavalry to the higher ground, the legionaries into blocks in the centre with their banners brought down and kept tight so that they might not be readily seen from a distance.