To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II)

by Crichton, Edward

  “You’re being melodramatic.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted, “but even if only one life is changed because of all this, I can’t help but feel like I’ve murdered them all.”

  She leaned up on her elbows and tilted her head to look at me. “Just stop it, Jacob. You’re beyond melodrama now and not helping anyone with talk like that.”

  I shook my head before turning to gaze at her. “I’m really not, Helena. If just one person back home ceases to exist because of what we did here; it’s no different than if I held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”

  “It’s not like that and you know it.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s no different than if I just stood by and did nothing while someone else did the deed.”

  Helena didn’t have a quick response herself this time, but I could feel her mind churning. I couldn’t guess what exactly was going on in there, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. She’d never been a deep thinker, relying instead on a clarity of mind that gave her answers to problems more easily than they came to most. I’d always respected her opinions because of it, at least I had until recently I suppose, but in this case I still wasn’t sure she understood the situation enough to render an appropriate perspective.

  A few seconds later, she lowered herself to the ground and pressed her body up against mine. She propped herself up on one arm and looked down at me. “I suppose I’ve never thought about it that way, but I still don’t understand where all this is coming from. You haven’t voiced a thought on timelines or changing the future in years, so why now? Why this past year? What’s changed?”

  “Because now is the time to worry about it,” I answered easily. “I’ve tried to keep it out of my mind in all that time to avoid going crazy, but I have to think about it now. The longer we wait, the more divergent things will become and the more difficult it will be to put back together. Now is the sweet spot.”

  She nodded, accepting that. “But you still don’t know if the timeline even needs to be ‘fixed’ because you can’t see the future, Jacob. You can’t lay there and definitively tell me that we need to do anything to ensure the future remains as we left it. You just can’t.”

  “And you can’t tell me that we don’t need to do anything at all with any conviction either,” I retorted with a long, slow sigh, waiting for the right thing to say to come to me. “I need you to trust me on this, Helena, I really do. Listen. In light of our last conversation, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you really think we shouldn’t do this, just tell me now. Tell me this is more about your intuition and not your feelings being hurt because I wouldn’t talk to you. If you can do that I promise we’ll leave, never come back, and find a quiet place to live out the rest of our lives, but I need to know now.”

  She was quiet for a very long while as she stared in the general direction of my stomach, her eyes contemplative. After a while, she laid her left hand on my chest and pounded it with a clenched fist in frustration.

  “Damn it, that’s not fair. You can’t put everything on my shoulders like that.”

  She paused and let out a long breath, but I interrupted her before she could continue.

  “Now you know how I feel, Helena.”

  She looked speechless once again, but she was able to continue after a short while. “I do trust you, Jacob, I do. I told you I’ve always trusted your gut, and I feel no differently now. I just wanted you to know that you don’t always have all the right answers, and that’s okay.”

  I smiled. “Well, now I know that…”

  She smiled back, the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. “You’re such a jerk, Jacob. Sometimes I wonder how I can still love you.”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  She smacked my chest. “You are that. More than you know, but if you go out of your way to ignore me again, you won’t be for much longer.” She continued smiling, and for the first time in months, hunkered down back in my arms, and in that moment I knew better than to ruin it by saying a word. As she got comfortable resting her head on my chest, I awkwardly moved my arm around her back to hold her. She noticed my hesitation and looked up at me.

  “It’s all right, Jacob. I’m not going to bite you.”

  “That’s not always so clear sometimes,” I replied, finally reaching around and holding her by the shoulder.

  She blinked up at me, an oddly mixed expression on her face. She didn’t need to say anything more either, and I knew that look only confirmed her feelings that while we were reconciled, we weren’t done yet. She had no problem beginning the healing process with a little cuddling, but it was going to be a while before we shared the same level of trust and intimacy we did a few months ago.

  We laid there in contemplative silence for a few minutes before I got bored.

  “Want to play a game?” I asked.

  “What kind of game?” She replied, curious.

  “How about, I Spy?”

  “Jacob,” she said with a weary sigh, “there’s not much…”

  “I spy something… green.”

  “Grass,” she said immediately.

  “Damn. You’re good.”

  She slapped my chest again, probably harder than she should have.

  “Just go back to sleep.”

  ***

  It was during times like these that I really missed home. Hours cooped up indoors would never have been a problem for Child Jacob, Teenager Jacob, or even Young Adult Jacob, each of which would find ways to keep himself entertained for hours on end. From movies to video games, music and books, and the wonders of the internet; 21st century Jacob was a man-child who knew how to keep himself busy. Many a girlfriend hadn’t been too thrilled by my ability to avoid boredom, but they’d come and they’d go, but Jacob always remained – entertained.

  I’d grown out of such reclusiveness well before I had joined the military, but sometimes I wondered how Helena would have dealt with such habits back home. In some ways I was lucky we’d ended up here in Rome. Something told me she wouldn’t appreciate my MacGyver DVD collection as much as I did.

  Instead, Helena and I boringly spent the next three hours lounging together on the floor of Galba’s tent playing chess on my wrist mounted LCD screen that was attached to a small computer in my MOLLE rig. It was either that or solitaire, and Helena proved a worthy opponent, even though I managed to edge her considerably in the win column.

  We also chatted about inconsequential things, memories of the homes we had five years ago and more recent ones.

  Our favorite story surrounded Santino, when the three of us had stalked a band of thieves to their hideout and he had triggered a simple snare trap that caught around his ankle and sent him flying into the trees. Helena and I had been on his flanks and hadn’t seen what had happened to him, but once we took care of the bandits, we realized Santino hadn’t participated in the take down. He’d contacted us over the radio and politely asked for us to find him via his GPS tracker to give him a hand.

  We’d found him dangling from a tree, his head bobbing a few meters above the ground. His predicament wouldn’t normally have been a problem, but his knife had also fallen out of its sheath and imbedded itself in the ground just out of his reach. I’d picked it up and looked at Helena, and we both burst out laughing as Santino hung there with his arms crossed across his chest, a rare frown on his face.

  Back when Santino had lost his favorite combat knife during our mission to rescue Nero four years ago, Helena had promised him she’d find him a better and bigger one. She’d come through on her promise months later when she purchased him a ten inch blade shaped like an Arabian scimitar during our time in New Carthage on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia. Santino had immediately fallen in love with it and claimed it would take either an act of God or, jokingly, an act of sheer stupidity to ever part him from it. Needless to say, we simply couldn’t contain ourselves when we found him hanging from a trap even a toddler could avoid; his knife having accidently escaped him.
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  It was after a few minutes of laughter at his expense that I finally handed him his knife back, and he cut himself down, falling to the Earth with a loud thump. He had stood and brushed himself off, replacing his knife, and in typical Santino fashion, acted like nothing had happened. He’d thrown an arm over Helena’s shoulder and my own, and led us towards the bandits’ camp to pick up what we had been tasked to retrieve.

  Like most good stories, we’d told it a hundred times, but it never got any less funny.

  Unfortunately, further storytelling was interrupted by the sound of the tent’s entrance flapping open.

  I quickly pushed everything from my mind when the sound of footsteps inched closer to the bed. I freed my Sig P220 quietly from its thigh holster, the metal gun rasping quietly against its plastic sheath, and I felt Helena shift in my arms, just enough so that she wouldn’t get in the way if I needed to do something fancy. I saw the figure fall to his hands and knees, and I knew it was either Galba or someone I’d have to deal with messily.

  When the sheet was ripped away from the bed, I pushed my suppressor equipped pistol into the intruder’s face. My finger on the trigger, I diverted my aim immediately when I noticed Galba’s dark eyes looking back at mine. I sheathed my pistol with a slow breath through my teeth, Helena’s head slumping against my chest, the adrenaline rushing out of her system as well.

  “Galba,” I hissed. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “Me too,” Helena said.

  I felt her breathing heavily and hoped she wasn’t having another pain attack.

  “I apologize,” Galba replied. “Please, come out. It is safe, but we only have a short time before you must hide again. I presumed you would enjoy an opportunity to stretch.”

  I nodded and waited for Helena to move off of my arm, which had fallen asleep beneath her. Free from her weight, I hauled myself out from beneath the bed, my back stiff from hours of idleness. I turned and offered Helena a hand and we spent the next five minutes walking around the tent, stretching muscles that had been dormant for over eleven hours. Helena moved over towards the tent’s entrance, her back to me, and raised her arms high over her head and stretched. A second later she snapped them down, clutching her side. I turned away before she could notice I was watching. She’d been trying to hide the fact that she was still afflicted by her abdominal pains since they’d begun, and I didn’t want to make it worse by letting on like I noticed now.

  By the time she turned around, I was already sitting on Galba’s bed, stretching forward and gripping my bootless toes, not paying her any attention. She came over and sat next to me while Galba poured some wine into three cups, handing us two of them.

  He plopped into his chair heavily and raised his glass. “To the empress, Agrippina. May her wisdom know no equal.” He took a long gulp and refilled his glass while Helena and I exchanged bewildered glances, taking polite sips.

  Helena winced at the dry vintage, still unable to truly appreciate it, before asking, “Is there something you want to tell us, Galba?”

  He scowled in her direction, not used to being treated like an equal by a woman, only to tolerate it because he knew what she could do. “Yes, I suppose there is,” he said, finishing off his cup, failing to elaborate.

  “Well…” I began, swirling my left hand in a circle after he didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

  He jerked, as if roused from a deep sleep. Looking at his empty cup, he glanced over at the wine jug before setting the cup down and massaging his scalp. “It appears,” he began quietly, “that Agrippina has interesting aspirations for the upcoming campaign, and that she hopes to be more involved than we originally thought.”

  I glanced at Helena again, but her lips were tight and angry, her eyes unfocused and distant. It was her “Agrippina” look.

  I looked back at Galba. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

  He looked up, his body sagging forward. “Agrippina came ashore this morning, strutting down the gangplank with a look of authority in her gait. She was wearing legionary armor, her attire speaking volumes as to why she is here well before she uttered a word.”

  I could only imagine how much Helena must be fuming. Female legionary armor was her shtick, and Agrippina had just stepped on her toes. The first thing I thought of, however, was actually Elizabeth I at Tilbury, Essex riding her steed wearing silver armor over a white dress, rallying her troops in preparation for the Spanish Armada, even though it had already been defeated at sea. Unfortunately, Elizabeth I had the chops for the duty, whereas it seemed to me Agrippina was just playing dress up and using legionary armor as an excuse to show as much skin as possible.

  Galba refilled his goblet, but didn’t drink from it. “She looked every part the military general. She even had a scarlet red cape wrapped around her shoulders. Vespasian, myself, and the other legions’ legates, along with more bureaucrats, advisors, legionnaires, and sycophants than the gods could count were there, ready to receive her. When she made landfall, she immediately called for a council of war in Vespasian’s praetorium without delay.”

  I leaned back on Galba’s bed, propping myself up on my elbows and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to concentrate. I had a suspicion as to where this was going, and it was bad. In the original timeline, Agrippina had showed interest in the legions when she was married to Claudius, and I wondered if she was going to take it another step now.

  “Once inside the praetorium, she outlined her plans for the German campaign,” Galba continued. “At first, I thought little of it. They actually made sense. Besides, both Caligula and Tiberius visited their battlefield commanders when they were emperor, so I was initially hopeful, even thankful Agrippina was claiming a personal stake in the campaign. It meant we’d have the backing of the Senate, and it will definitely inspire the men.”

  I tried not to think about Agrippina riding a horse, each leg dangling over the side, with the only thing covering her goods being her armor. Unfortunately, it was hard not to. The legions would love it and certainly inspire them.

  “It wasn’t until she announced she would be assuming overall command, that I started to worry. As did my colleagues. Legate Gnaeus Hosidius Geta, my friend and one of Vespasian’s co-legates in Britain, was so bold as to ask her if she had lost her sanity. She had her Praetorians carry him outside where he was beaten and crucified. His replacement should be here within the month.” He paused as he looked guiltily into his cup before giving into temptation, swallowing its contents in one big gulp. “She will be with the army at every turn in the campaign and will, as is granted by her title, be commander of the army with Vespasian acting as her second.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Helena grumbled.

  “Of course I’m serious, woman! I do not need two of you talking down to me today…” he mumbled that last part, the alcohol already taking effect. “She is ready to take command and has two of her Praetorian cohorts and her Sacred Band with her to ensure a seamless transition.”

  That was the first good news I’d heard yet. If I could get in contact with Gaius, Marcus, or even Quintilius, the Sacred Band’s primus pilus, perhaps I could get a clearer picture surrounding Agrippina and how to move forward after taking Nero.

  “Other than her announcement, there is little else to report. We have plans to start the campaign in May, with plans to push all the way to the steppes of Sarmatia within two years.”

  I whistled. That was an extremely ambitious plan. Rome had tried a number of times, but had never been able to conquer Germany, and while tentative progress would be made north of the Danube River by the time Trajan came to power, they didn’t hold it for long. Ambition aside, I really couldn’t see the logic in it. Germany was a recalcitrant and angry land. Its occupants wouldn’t sway to Roman rule easily. The only benefit the Romans would receive out of such an operation would be a strategic foothold against invading Huns in a few hundred years.

  I take it back. If the Romans could hold the line
in Sarmatia against that invasion, preventing the Great Migration, disallowing the thousands of Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, and other “barbarian” tribes into the Roman Empire, things may turn out differently. That event had always been one of the underlying reasons for “the fall of Rome”, but as interested as I was in testing the theory, I couldn’t let that happen.

  It would defeat the purpose of everything I was trying to do.

  “So what’s her itinerary for the rest of this week?” I asked.

  “She’ll be staying on her barge, docked right next to the camp. We’ll be drilling the boys hard in the upcoming weeks so there will be little for her to do. Even though she wants to command, she doesn’t seem at all interested in the army’s readiness. I imagine she will be spending much of her time there with Nero.”

  “So, he’s here?”

  “I have not seen him as of yet,” Galba replied, “but Agrippina always keeps him close. I cannot tell you where he may be aboard the ship, but I can tell you that it is a labyrinth. It has many levels and its interior is honeycombed with passages and rooms. If you’re planning to board her, you will be searching for a long time.”

  “Leave that to us,” I said, “We’re really good at sneaking around.”

  “Yes,” Galba said slowly, “you are. Just don’t be fooled by Agrippina’s beauty a second time.”

  I grimaced at the reminder. When Agrippina had tricked Santino and me into rescuing Nero four years ago, I had been doing my duty to an innocent child and his grieving mother. Most of me was at least, but I couldn’t deny that a part of me had been blinded by Agrippina’s little seduction act she pulled when convincing me to go. The woman practically threw herself at me, and I almost went for it. I may have never gone on the rescue mission at all had she not been so beautiful and alluring.

  “Don’t worry about us, Galba,” Helena said. “Just ensure no one tips her off that you’ve been talking to us.” She finished her statement by jabbing a finger at him.