Revenge

by Andrew Frediani

  Octavian bit his lip. Yes, he’d set in motion a perverse mechanism. “But have you got any idea how many people might simply denounce their enemies or people they’ve argued with?” he objected. “Many innocent people would die…”

  “For that matter, some people would quite happily report people they like just to get their hands on a reward,” said Antony. “Like I said before, we’re at war,” he concluded nonchalantly, “and in war a lot of innocent people die.”

  Octavian felt the need to dig his heels in. There must be a limit even to a lust for power, and he had no intention of turning into a tyrant like Silla. He wanted to be Caesar’s equal: hard, but not bloodthirsty. These two, however, didn’t seem to pose themselves such problems. If he’d shown himself to be sensitive after he’d done so much to appear strong and determined and to convince them that he was more ruthless even than they, they would quickly walk all over him, and the entire edifice he was painstakingly building, aided by the hard work of his ministers, would collapse. He also had a responsibility to the members of the sect, who had faith in him and had put their destinies in his hands.

  He ended up nodding, albeit with his head bowed, and promising himself that once he alone was in power he would give back to the Romans everything that he was taking from them for the war effort. Even though it did occur to him that the lives which would be lost would be impossible to restitute.

  “Let’s do these proscription lists, then,” resumed Antony, announcing his agreement with Lepidus’ idea. “But there are a lot of rich and powerful people we shouldn’t let escape. I’d get rid of them before making their convictions official. You have excellent assassins, Octavian, judging by what happened to Decimus Brutus, and in at least some cases, you could take care of things.”

  “Who, specifically, are you referring to?” he asked.

  “The first name that comes to mind is Cicero. He must pay for everything he’s said and written about me.”

  Octavian sighed. The old orator had backed him since he first appeared on the Roman stage after the Ides of March. Octavian had used his support as a tool – just like he planned to do with Antony’s, although in that case it was far more risky – to make his way in the political arena, playing up to Cicero’s vanity and behaving as though he were devoted to him. However, upon meeting him face to face for the first time, the young man had decided to put Cicero on his own personal blacklist and punish him for his moral culpability for Caesar’s death. Caesar’s assassins had shouted Cicero’s name as they killed the dictator, and it was Cicero who had proposed an amnesty for them. There was therefore no way that the vendetta dedicated to Mars Ultor could not involve the celebrated orator. What’s more, Cicero was no longer of any use to the cause, and indeed had even begun to hamper it.

  The young triumvir nodded again, this time without hesitation.

  VIII

  Octavia had picked the wrong night to be out and about in Rome. As always, the so-called ‘ministers’ of the sect had kept her in the dark about any developments in the agreement between Octavian, Lepidus and Antony, and news of this new second triumvirate – after that of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus – had only reached her when she’d already decided to visit her son Marcus. It had been her cousin Lucius Pinarius who’d told her in the late afternoon, just as she was about to go out.

  Had it just been for that, a visit to her child would have been a wonderful way of celebrating their success, but her cousin had also mentioned the list of proscriptions that the triumvirs had drawn up on the basis of Silla’s model to avoid any risk of their meeting the same end as Caesar, who’d been too soft on his enemies. The lists would soon be put up on walls around the city, but in the meantime the triumvirs had agreed to send assassins to eliminate the most troublesome and dangerous figures. Consequently, it was best to keep a low profile and not be seen around too much for the moment: someone overly anxious to ingratiate themselves with Rome’s new masters might easily trigger a manhunt whilst thinking they were doing them a favour. There was a very real danger of rioting on the streets, as had already happened in the city’s recent past.

  But Pinarius hadn’t been authoritative enough. He’d made a suggestion, or at least that’s how it had sounded, and that hadn’t been enough to make her change her plans – too long had passed since she’d last seen her son. For days she’d been restless and feeling deeply unhappy. She’d come to the conclusion that she had nothing to be satisfied with: she was part of a sect in which the decisions were all taken by men, she had a dull husband who she didn’t love, a son she’d been forced to give up at birth, and her real passion, Gaius Chaerea, was forbidden to her.

  No, there really was nothing that made her happy, so she’d therefore decided to console herself by going to see little Marcus, as she sometimes did. She always presented herself as a rich matron who knew about him through the stories her bodyguard Gaius told. This was what she’d agreed with the woman who pretended to be his mother. Octavia had many reasons to envy her, despite the fact that she was from the lower classes and could hardly be considered privileged.

  She’d therefore gone to the Suburra, accompanied by Etain and escorted by her slave litter bearers, and she’d immediately felt the tension hanging over the streets. News of the imminent executions must have got around, perhaps mentioned by a soldier to a merchant or courier. But the trip there had gone smoothly, and she’d arrived at Marcus’s home without any trouble. She’d spent a couple of hours with the boy, lavishing him with gifts and attention under the watchful and wary eye of his ‘mother’, all the while secretly hoping that Gaius would return from the barracks to visit his family. She was even prepared to face his anger at her violating his domestic tranquility just to have one look from him, from the man who’d been in her heart ever since she was a little girl.

  But Gaius hadn’t appeared, and when her hostess discreetly made it clear that she’d overstayed her welcome, she left.

  And it was then that she realised she’d done something stupid.

  “Shall we take that alley and go the long way back, mistress?” asked one of the slaves, pointing at a side street whose few window torches failed to provide much illumination. At the same time, he nodded towards what was happening on the main street through Rome’s most populous district.

  Octavia looked around her in dismay. Groups of soldiers were marching from house to house, searching the insulae for the condemned men that the triumvirs had decided to eliminate straightaway: certainly, they were all patricians and equites who had backed Caesar’s killers but they might have been hiding in these poorer neighbourhoods. And the people tasked with the job by Octavian, Antony and Lepidus were combing the city, albeit without achieving much, other than terrorising the population at large.

  It was true that in the first few days after Caesar’s death there had been many who had backed the actions of Brutus, Cassius and the other conspirators, at least until the dictator’s will had been made public and the Romans had radically changed their way of thinking. Now many had a guilty conscience and were afraid of being included on the proscription lists. Amidst the general coming and going, it wasn’t very hard to make out people of rank trying to pass themselves off as plebeian, though they struggled to hide their proud, pompous bearing. Some particularly enterprising folk – anxious, as Pinarius had said, to curry favour with the triumvirs – thought they’d identified them, and people were being assaulted and blackmailed on every street corner. Etain, sitting next to her domina in the litter, squeezed her wrist when a man who’d been blocked by a group of thugs a few yards from them was knocked to the ground and savagely kicked. Octavia was about to reply to the bearer when the situation deteriorated, and she couldn’t hold back a scream of terror. The thugs had surrounded the man on the ground who had by now become a corpse with a sword in his throat and blood pooling around him as it spurted from his wound.

  The sight of the body on the cobblestones was too much for her, and, her nerves already sorely tried by the
sadness her visit to Marcus had caused her, she broke down. She didn’t reply to the slave and burst into tears, throwing herself into Etain’s arms. Etain embraced her tenderly and motioned to the bearer to head into the lane he’d indicated. The luxurious litter began to move, but in that precise moment the men who’d just committed the brutal murder noticed them, and their predatory instincts were re-awakened.

  Etain shouted at the slaves to pick up the pace. They entered the alleyway but found the road blocked by another group of unsavoury figures who’d pulled a girl and a man from an insula and were dragging them by their hair. A tongue of flame appeared in the building’s doorway. The litter bearers couldn’t stop in time and ran into the group, the impact jolting the two women inside, causing one of the slaves to lose his grip and the litter to tilt alarmingly. Octavia fell out, slamming into the cobbles, despite Etain’s efforts to hold on to her and pull her back in. The matron found herself face to face with one of the thugs, and the mutilated face of the woman who was the victim of their violence appeared before her eyes. She had a fresh cut running down her right cheek, from which blood flowed copiously.

  Octavia felt as if she’d been surrounded by creatures from the underworld and plunged into Hades. She became hysterical and began to wave her arms around to drive the visions away. She felt herself being grabbed by Etain, who shouted at her to calm down whilst a slave began to fight one of the criminals. In the meantime, the man being held hostage by the thugs had got up and, taking advantage of the fact that his captors were distracted, was trying to escape, followed by one of them and the screams of his wife, who was imploring him not to abandon her.

  The tongue of fire had by now reduced the doorway of the building to ash and was moving down the street, its heat washing over Octavia and Etain’s bodies, and its wicked, flickering light illuminating the scene around them upon which darkness had fallen.

  Then Etain began to scream too. Octavia turned and saw that the mob was upon them.

  *

  Gaius Chaerea was revolted by what he was about to do. But he’d sworn before the gods and couldn’t turn back now. Furthermore, he truly wanted to avenge Julius Caesar, and was ready to go to any lengths to do it. But he couldn’t see what a task like this had to do with rendering justice to the dictator.

  As far as he could make out, this Quintus Asinius Pollio wasn’t one of Caesar’s actual assassins, unless the triumvirs in Bologna knew differently. In fact, he was the brother of one of Caesar’s closest collaborators, among the few who hadn’t betrayed him, and he found it hard to understand why he deserved to be summarily executed, without even being able to defend himself in court or even simply justifying himself.

  So why then did he find himself in front of the door of Pollio’s luxurious home on the Esquiline hill with a squad of legionaries under his command, ready to execute him on the spot?

  He had taken an oath. Mars Ultor demanded blood: not just from Caesar’s actual assassins, but also from those who’d backed them, and even from those who’d simply approved of their handiwork.

  They were all people who could stab Octavian in the back when he and the sect went to defeat the growing forces that Marcus Brutus and Cassius Longinus had gathered in the East, and for those who loved Caesar, the survival of his heir, the man he’d chosen as his son, was essential. He kept telling himself that as he rapped the door knocker until, after an excessive delay, a slave came to open it.

  “I am Centurion Gaius Chaerea from the General Staff of the Triumvir Caesar Octavian. I wish to see your master,” he said in a deliberately authoritative tone that he hoped would conceal his doubts.

  The man looked puzzled. “He… he went out several hours ago, Centurion,” he stammered.

  “Oh yes? And where did he go?” he urged.

  “I don’t … I don’t know exactly. He doesn’t tell the slaves who stay at home.”

  He might be telling the truth, but there again he might not. After all, news of the triumvirs’ agreement had already reached Rome, and many people had good reason to be on their guard. He pushed the slave out of the way and signalled to his soldiers to follow him as he entered the hall and barged into the atrium. There he found more slaves busy cleaning the impluvium, so he continued in the direction he presumed led to the triclinium: it was late afternoon, and it was quite possible that the masters of the house had already started dinner.

  Sure enough, that was where he found them, lying on the couches. A woman and two children, as well as yet more slaves serving at the table. The matron stared at him, and Gaius saw agitation in her eyes. The children looked at each other, and every so often glanced at the room’s other entrance, which gave onto the rear.

  It was all perfectly clear.

  “Where’s your husband, ma’am?” he asked the woman.

  “He’s gone out. He didn’t tell me where he was going,” she replied, her voice trembling.

  “Of course. And perhaps he went out just a minute ago, as soon as we knocked…”

  No answer. But the children continued to glance upwards. Gaius went over to them, squatted beside the couch they were sitting on and said, “Will you tell me where your father went, boys?”

  The two looked at their mother, who shook her head. “No,” they replied, almost in unison.

  Gaius stood up again and approached the lady. “Domina, I’m not stupid. Can you tell me where he went without forcing me to resort to unpleasantness? Or I can ask your slaves: someone will talk.”

  “No one will help you,” the woman replied, decisively.

  “Centurion, hang one of the kids from the wall and you’ll see how they talk!” said one of his soldiers.

  Gaius turned to him, furiously, and snapped “Shut up, you imbecile! In reality, though, he was more furious with himself than with anyone else. He knew perfectly well that a job like this required a much less delicate stomach than he possessed. Anyone else in his place would have done exactly that to get the job done. But he found it too despicable. He was a soldier, not a torturer, and he would not stoop so low.

  He stood for a moment in silence, and everyone else in the room was silent with him. He considered every possible way of getting them to reveal where the condemned man was, but they were all foreign to his nature.

  “There’s a reward for anyone who helps you capture condemned men, right?” A voice caught his attention. A slave behind him.

  “Yes. I don’t know how much it will be yet, but I know the triumvirs will be generous. And the slaves will be freed,” he replied. This wasn’t anything official, just information Quintus Pedius had given him, but in that moment he would have paid out of his own pocket to avoid having to resort to extreme methods.

  The man hesitated a moment and glanced at the lady of the house, receiving from her a look of contempt. He then replied, pointing at the other door: “He went out there. If you’re quick you’ll catch him. He was barefoot and only had a tunic on.”

  Before he’d even finished talking Gaius grabbed him by the arm and dragged him towards the exit, ordering four of his six soldiers to follow him. He found himself in a corridor which led to the garden, in front of a small door which had been left open. He went through it and found himself on the road. At that moment, he heard a woman’s scream behind him and was on the point of turning back, but then realised that he couldn’t. He preferred to ignore what the soldiers he’d left to guard the house were doing, and looked at the slave, who pointed down the slope to the left of the Cispio hill. “He was going to his clients in the Suburra. At least, that’s what he told his wife when he left,” the man said, and Gaius immediately broke into a run, urging the others to follow him.

  The sun had dropped behind the outline of the housing blocks, leaving Rome wrapped in a soft light which would soon disappear altogether. Gaius continued downhill, skirting the Cispio and passing by the Carinae, the sound of his and his soldiers’ boots resounding through the street and echoing off the walls of the buildings. The people they encountered ste
pped aside, frightened, and wagons stopped and pulled over to the side of the road, some so suddenly that they tipped their loads onto the ground. It occurred to Gaius that his colleague Popillius Laenas would have enjoyed seeing the Romans’ terror as he passed, but to him it was just a nuisance, if not actually a source of sorrow: he would have liked to be their defender, not to appear as their persecutor.

  “There they are,” the slave shouted, with the little breath he had left. When the road flattened, out the number of tenement blocks increased and the narrow lanes multiplied. Gaius slowed down, disorientated, letting himself be caught up by the slave who confidently turned into a gloomy, malodorous alleyway. The gathering darkness hadn’t yet made it impossible to see the silhouettes of the men on the streets: shady figures that Gaius watched closely, wondering who he would soon be executing.

  It was the slave who pointed the man out to him. He indicated a man running awkwardly, just visible in the distance, and the centurion increased his pace, despite his equipment beginning to weigh him down. He looked back and saw that the column he was leading was starting to break up, but didn’t slow down. The condemned man, for his part, realised that he was being chased and tried to run faster, but in his panic he tripped and rolled onto the cobblestones. He staggered to his feet and continued to race forward, but had lost the speed he had earlier, and his accident had allowed Gaius to make up ground. The centurion was about to catch him up when he disappeared behind the corner of an insula.

  The panting slave arrived, saying, “That’s his client’s house. First floor.” Gaius nodded and walked round the building until he reached the still open door. He went in, followed by his men, and climbed the stairs under the shocked gaze of the tenants, some of whom hurried to lock themselves inside their homes. When he arrived on the landing, he waited for the slave to reach him. The exhausted slave dragged himself up the stairs to join him, and pointed to a door a few yards away. Gaius knocked authoritatively, without getting a response. He heard raised voices inside, but no one opened the door. With a violent kick, he smashed the door down and broke into the apartment, finding himself in front of the man he had chased, covered in sweat and blood, a woman with a new born baby in her arms, an old man, and three small children.