‘Please be seated, sir. I shall fetch the master.’
Rufinus shuffled over to one of the easy couches and lowered himself with some difficulty. Though he had foregone his newly-requisitioned armour, which was among the kit on the pack horse waiting patiently beside Atalanta, both tied to the hitching rail near the villa’s gate, he was wearing his leather subarmalis with the waist and shoulder pteruges, his enamelled belt with the dagger and apron of plated straps, and his sword on a second belt for ease. The various hanging weights made settling into a chair a business that required forethought and care, especially with the pain in his hip and the tendency for the leg to give way with little or no warning. The Praetorian medicus had examined the work Cestius had done on the wound and pronounced it adequate, and had explained that with Rufinus’ history with poppy juice there was nothing he was willing to give for the pain.
With a hiss of pain, Rufinus managed to seat himself.
He felt bleak.
He’d put off coming here until the last moment. Until he was fully packed and ready for the journey east. Until he had the orders for his transfer in his hand. Until he could put it off no longer. Irritably, he picked at a scab on his leg – the result of some minor scratch during the fight at the mansio, and the bending set off the pain in his hip again, causing him to sit upright again with a hiss. He’d caught a glimpse of himself in the large, mainly flat bronze mirror in the vestibule and had been unimpressed, if unsurprised, at what he saw.
He looked miserable. And tense. Dark circles under his eyes betrayed the insignificant quantities of rest he’d managed in recent days. In fact, he looked like he’d looked half a year ago, when the poppy juice still had its stranglehold on him and he’d been subject to the endless nightmares of the old days at the villa of Hadrianus.
And yet oddly, though those terrible dreams were gone now and seemed like some old tale he’d been told in the past, fading and confused, no new nightmares had come. No night-time terrors envisaging the death of his brother in Cleander’s tender care.
Perhaps it was because that first time everything had stayed with him, fed by his addiction even as he believed it to be helping him suppress it all. Perhaps because for all the aftermath of the failed plot, in his heart he had never really left that awful villa. Now, things were different. With the ministrations of his friends and limited access to the drug, he had pulled out of his deep, grey hole and begun to live life again. In returning to the mouldering villa at Tibur, he had faced the demons of his past, brought them back up into the light and dismissed them. And in surrendering to the impracticability of precipitous action at the Palatine, he had accepted that the past needed to lie in the past, and that only the future counted.
The future. The future held new lands and new perils. But no matter how long it took, and how convoluted the pathways that would carry him, they would bring him to Cleander with proof of the new prefect’s treason in his hand. He would bring down the snake that coiled around the emperor, and he would retrieve Publius. Somehow.
If only they had reached Perennis in time…
His thoughts were reeled back in at the sound of footsteps.
Military boots.
His hand went to the pommel of his sword in anticipation. There was no reason for hob-nailed boots here in a nobleman’s villa. Were Cleander’s Praetorians – ha! He was one of Cleander’s Praetorians – watching this place still? Making to rise, he was so surprised at the figure that turned the corner and entered the room that he sat back with a thud, not even yelping at the hip pain it brought.
Marcus Antonius Gordianus was the same young, serious, neat man he remembered from previous visits to the villa, but there was an added gravitas to the man when garbed in an officer’s uniform. Though he, like Rufinus, lacked a helmet and armour, he wore a subarmalis of dark leather, patterned with winged horses. His boots clacked on the marble as he entered, a sword at his side that alone had probably cost the same as everything Rufinus owned. Well, everything except his silver spear that remained safely wrapped and stored on his pack horse – he wasn’t about to leave that in a Castra Praetoria that was under the command of Cleander.
‘Master Gordianus?’
‘Ah, guardsman Rufinus. Good to see you again, and propitiously so. I am about to depart this place for the foreseeable future and I wished to pass on to you my sympathies on the difficulties you have encountered and commiserations on the troublesome result for your brother. Know that if I can help at any time, you have but to ask, though I might be hard to reach for some time.’
Rufinus frowned. ‘Thank you. You have accepted a military posting?’
Gordianus gave a strange, lop-sided smile. ‘I am not one for intrigues, politics and martial endeavours, Rufinus. Indeed, I have avidly avoided such for a decade since I took the toga virilis. But when good men ask one to do them a favour for the good of the empire, one would be churlish to refuse. I ride to Carnuntum today to take command of the Fourteenth Gemina, while my friend Clarus Vibianus takes on the Tenth at Vindobona. Together we will control the vast army of Pannonia. Cestius can be rather persuasive, you see.’
Rufinus smiled for the first time in two days. The serious young man would make an able and trustworthy administrator for Pannonia. He could remember the frumentarius’ words back in that inn at Carnuntum weeks ago…
‘I already have the next commander for both legions ready, and with senatorial consent... The Pannonian army will remain loyal and ready should any fool in Rome decide to make a move against the emperor.’
Vibius Cestius was plainly a man who liked to have a plan in place for every eventuality. Rufinus knew nothing of this Clarus Vibianus, but it he was a friend of Gordianus, it was difficult to see him as anything but a good man.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, clasping the man’s hand and shaking it gently. ‘The fate of Pannonia is in good hands.’
Gordianus winced. ‘I’m not convinced that congratulations are in order. Commiserations, perhaps. I fear I have just stepped into the viper pit with only a pointed stick for safety. And you? You are dressed for a journey. Cestius intimated that would be the case. He thinks you might be sent to Britannia.’
Rufinus shook his head. ‘Dacia. To a Moesian fortress and then on detached duty in Dacia with the two legates there.’
‘A dangerous place,’ Gordianus mused. ‘Word is that the Sarmatian tribes are pressing into Dacia from the north and rousing the locals to war. I suspect, despite my fears, I am being given the easier posting of the two. Perhaps you will ride with me and my small entourage, at least as far as Aquileia? I intend to travel by land as I am a martyr to sea-sickness.’
Rufinus’ smile widened. ‘That would be good.’
‘Excellent,’ the newly-appointed legate announced, stretching. ‘I shall be ready to leave within the hour. Find me in my tablinum when you’re done. In the meantime, you might wish to see Pompeianus and your girl, since they also are preparing to depart. They are in the peristyle.’
A second figure appeared in the door as Gordianus turned to leave, also dressed in a military uniform with a neatly pressed red tunic and decorative subarmalis. Rufinus almost laughed. The narrow-shouldered, short officer with the clean-shaven face, the piercing blue eyes and close-cut white-blond hair, was quite striking.
‘Have you met my adjutant, Epulius Bato?’ His smile was knowing and Rufinus blinked.
‘You’re taking him back there?’
Caelus Perennis was hardly recognisable like this. With his hair bleached blond in that very same bucket of strong urine Rufinus had collected at the mansio, trimmed and shaved into a fairly severe military cut with the shears he’d acquired, and ginger-enhanced eyes brighter than he remembered and with a sapphire sparkle, the last scion of the family Perennis would fool almost anyone. But in the city where he had commanded troops, in fact as a senior officer among them once again? Surely someone would see through it?
Gordianus shrugged. ‘There is nowhere safer for hi
m in the world, according to Cestius. Even if his identity is guessed by a few, they will be brother officers who dealt with him closely, and their loyalty is unquestionable. Perennis is gone, Rufinus. Epulius Bato however – son of an Illyrian nobleman and rising star of the Dalmatian military – might have a long and distinguished career ahead of him.’
Rufinus caught the nervous smile from the young officer, who reached up instinctively to touch the shoulder where Rufinus could just see the bandages protruding from his tunic sleeve.
‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘May Fortuna watch over you.’
‘And over you,’ snorted Gordianus. We’re going to settle into comfortable garrison life. You’re walking into a war.’
Rufinus was still musing over matters when he emerged into the peristyle garden. Despite the season – still the tail end of winter, with spring hovering as a haze on the horizon, Rufinus was struck as he had been this morning by the gentle glow of the sun and the slow warming of the land, as though the tears of the gods were drying into the earth and the world was filling with promise.
A gardener tended a flower bed to one side, while Pompeianus and Senova stood in conversation by the central fountain. It came as little surprise to see also the dark shape of Vibius Cestius lurking in the shadows of the colonnade at the far side.
‘Ah, young Rufinus,’ the old general said, catching sight of him and turning. Cestius also emerged from his shadows and strolled across to join the group.
‘General. Senova.’
He scanned the girl’s face for some sign that her façade of chilly distance was cracking. He found none. Damn it!
‘Where are you bound?’ Pompeianus smiled. ‘Cestius thinks Britannia. I wondered if you were being dispatched to southern Hispania to fight back the incursion there and regain control.’
Rufinus sighed deeply.
‘Neither. I am for Dacia.’
‘Dacia? Fascinating. I presume there is some deeply political motive for sending you there, but I shall not pry.’
‘I don’t believe it need be a secret,’ Rufinus mused.
‘Yes it does. The less I know the better. I will have one less lie to tell for you.’
The general turned to the girl standing next to him. ‘Are you packed, Senova?’
‘Mostly,’ she said. ‘Though I was unsure what clothing to leave accessible. What is the weather like in Campania?’
‘Blustery but dry at this time of year,’ Pompeianus smiled. ‘Unlike Dacia, which has a reputation for freak mountain storms in the spring and blistering heat in the summer. But you will not be coming with me to Campania, my dear, I’m afraid. Pack as best you can for storms and heatwaves.’
Senova frowned in surprise.
‘I face several very difficult months,’ the old general said in guarded tones. ‘Cleander has seen me as an impediment throughout his rise and he will seek to undo me – especially after this latest sequence of events. The new prefect will do everything he can to bring me down, execute me and appropriate my lands and finances. I am a past master at surviving the eddies and whirlpools of court politics, but if I am to make it through this latest mess with my head still in place, I need to distance myself from any hint of trouble. To that end, young Rufinus, this shall be the last time we speak until the danger is past. And Senova will have to go with you. She is linked to you through our time at the villa of Hadrianus and I cannot afford to be connected with her any longer now that she is a freedwoman and no longer my slave.’
Rufinus blinked. ‘I can’t take her to Dacia! The place is about to erupt into a war.’
‘But there she will have the protection of your position and of several Roman legions. With me she will almost certainly end up in Cleander’s grip or under the headsman’s blade by my side. Neither of us can risk that. She has to go with you. Nowhere else is safe.’
Rufinus looked at Senova, whose eyes were wide with fright, astonishment, and no small amount of indignation.
‘You can’t…’ she began.
‘I can, and I must,’ the general replied. ‘If you stay, it could destroy us both. You will go as a free woman, and the woman of a Praetorian guardsman, no less. You will be safer there by far. Distance from Cleander at this time is a good thing. So, my friends, for now I must say farewell as I prepare to travel to my estate in Campania and make myself as politically untouchable as possible. Take care of each other. I fear, Senova, that you will have your work cut out in that regard.’
The former slave girl watched as Pompeianus smiled, turned and strode off to begin his own travel preparations, and then flashed a calculating, dangerous expression at Rufinus.
‘You have a lot of apologising to do.’
‘It seems I will have plenty of time to do it.’
For long moments, Senova pursed her lips, and Rufinus found himself staring at those lips. Perhaps Dacia mightn’t be so bad after all…
‘Very well. I will gather my things. You have a wagon?’
Rufinus frowned. ‘Er, no. I have a horse and a pack animal. Can you ride a horse? I expect Gordianus will spare me one…’
Senova gave him another withering look. ‘He will spare me a carriage, I am sure. He has six in the stables, and I am no Amazon to be riding a horse to war. If he requires payment for the carriage, you will give him it.’
It was not a question and, with an air of resigned defeat, Rufinus nodded. He was almost relieved when Senova took her hypnotic yet troublesome mouth away from his sight. With a low chuckle, Vibius Cestius strolled across the garden.
‘You look flustered and unhappy, Rufinus.’
‘We failed, Cestius. All that work, danger and struggle, and we failed.’
‘Rubbish.’
Rufinus frowned. ‘Rubbish? Perennis is dead. Cleander is stronger than ever and commands the Guard now. Publius languishes in his grip. Pompeianus is withdrawing to protect himself, and I am to be sent as Cleander’s ferret to seek out dissent among the commanders of Dacia who, if they are truly condemning the bastard, I would rather raise a glass to.’
‘We know now that our mission was doomed from the start, Rufinus. We couldn’t have saved Perennis anyway. The plot had been building since that display at the theatre. Indeed, if I had made it to the Palatine with you it would have made no difference to the outcome, but I would now be known as an enemy of Cleander and would be in as much danger as the rest of you. As it is, I am clear of any suspicion and can remain in Rome to do my work. Amazingly, none of those who left Pannonia with you are actually dead, which I consider nothing short of a miracle. You saved Perennis’ only surviving son, fulfilling your vow. And you dispatched Glabrio, who I think we can all agree constituted the most villainous and dangerous of Cleander’s hounds. You have succeeded on a number of levels. Do not get so bogged down in what remains to be done that you are unable to recognise our achievements.’
‘But how can I save Publius and bring down Cleander in Dacia?’
‘Keep paying service to Nemesis and time will bring the answers. Play the long game, Rufinus. It matters not how many battles you lose if you win the war. While you are in Dacia, I shall work to gather evidence and support against Cleander. When the time is right, we will make our move. For now, do your job and give the prefect no reason to hurt your brother. Trust me in this.’
‘I am frightened for Publius,’ Rufinus sighed.
‘He will remain unharmed. Cleander is not stupid enough to waste valuable collateral.’ The frumentarius sniffed in a sharp breath and straightened. ‘I came across something this morning at the Castra Peregrina among various records during my catch up. Something that might interest you.’
‘Yes?’
‘A new appointment made yesterday. The tribune of the Praetorian cavalry has been retired in disgrace after saying something rather tactless about Cleander’s provincial origins. His replacement is a former colleague of our friend Glabrio’s. One of his old tent party, in fact, going back a few years. I have yet to confirm it, but I strongly s
uspect him of being one of Dis’ murderers. He’s certainly now one of Cleander’s close supporters. I will work on acquiring names in the coming days. Perhaps by the time your business in Dacia is concluded I will have tracked down the remaining three cavalrymen.’
Rufinus nodded with bitter satisfaction. ‘That would be good.’
‘Very well,’ Cestius said in a business-like fashion. ‘And so we all depart for our own tasks. Good luck in Dacia. Give my regards to Pescennius Niger. He will look after you.’
Rufinus’ eyes narrowed. ‘Is there anyone you don’t know?’
Cestius chuckled, slapped Rufinus on the shoulder, and strode off.
For many heartbeats, Rufinus stood alone in the garden, with just the slave busy tending the flower bed.
Dacia. Storms and heatwaves. Two strong legates outspoken against the emperor and his chamberlain. Tribes stirring to revolt. Incursions from Sarmatian horsemen. Wonderful.
Somewhere out in the grounds, Rufinus heard the angry bark of Acheron and a shriek of panic.
At least he wouldn’t be going alone.
With a deep breath, Rufinus turned and strode from the peristyle to take command of his future.
THE END
Author’s Note
The second of Rufinus’ adventures proved troublesome to plan from the start. Commodus’ early reign was given a certain flavour by a series of powerful Praetorian prefects who each held more power than was strictly appropriate for their role. Paternus fell spectacularly in 182. Perennis followed him, meeting his grisly end in 185. Cleander… well that remains for future Rufinus adventures, of course. And since these characters are far too vivid and important, and intimately connected with the world of the Praetorians, I could hardly go on with this series without dealing with them. But I really did not want to see Perennis turn into a repeat of Paternus, and Cleander the same and so on. That way lies repetitive and dull reading.
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