She tried to work out if any of the killers were still outside, but from where she was she couldn’t see beyond the nearest corner. Behind which there might be anything at all. Gingerly she climbed over the balustrade and moved slowly towards the corner, where a low wall covered with bushes separated the garden from the courtyard. She found another body and even before turning him over was in no doubt that it was another German. Using the hairpin, she pushed aside the foliage to reach the wall, though not without scratching herself in several places and tearing her tunic. She barely noticed, and looked over the top of the wall.
There did not appear to be anyone in the courtyard, but she now had to decide which way to go. She tried to work out the safest route to take and where she would find some open shutters, unlikely, considering that it was night time and winter.
Excluding the entrance, which would obviously be guarded by the attackers, she made for the servants’ quarters. The building was very large, and she hoped that the killers had not yet reached it. If their priorities were the Germans, they might have gone directly to their rooms, sneaking up the stairs and avoiding a break-in that would attract attention from outside. The slaves were almost all in their rooms now and in all probability no one had noticed them. She walked around the building to the opposite wing, the front part of which was inhabited by the slaves and the rear by the warriors of the escort. She kept to the front and, at that moment, a window opened and a slave shook out a tablecloth. Veleda moved slowly and cautiously towards her and discreetly drew her attention, showing her maimed arm as identification to stop the woman from screaming.
“Have you noticed anything happening here?” she asked, softly.
“What should we have been noticed?” asked the woman, diffidently.
“Let me in,” said Veleda, getting the woman to help her pull herself up. Once inside, she found herself in the laundry. “How many slaves are there in this wing?” she asked.
“Twelve. Five women and seven men, including me. Then there are the handmaidens of the domina and the overseers of the sleeping area, who sleep in the other wing, near to the masters…”
“Take me to the kitchen now – hurry!” her peremptory tone meant she had no need to repeat herself. The slave accompanied her and immediately Veleda started rummaging through the cupboards, taking all the knives she could find. She ordered the four slaves she found there to wait and told the slave who had brought her to call the others, who were in the adjacent rooms. She returned with them after a few moments, and looked at them carefully. The five women were useless and only two of the men seemed young and athletic enough to be able to help out.
“This is the situation – listen well because there is no time to repeat it,” she began, speaking quietly. “Assassins have entered the house and they seem to be familiar with the layout. They have killed the domina Atia and I am sure that they are now at the back trying to kill my warriors. They will have taken them by surprise and I have no doubt that they will succeed, unfortunately. Now we must save the other masters, a thing I cannot do alone, so therefore, I ask each of you to take one of these knives and help me. You will be risking your lives, but I’m sure that if we are successful, Caesar Octavian will reward you properly for saving at least his sister and his niece.”
Almost all the women began to sob and the men looked at one another, hoping in vain to find the courage to take one of the knives. They were taking too long to make up their minds, and the expressions of dismay on their faces did not leave her much choice. She advanced towards the two younger men and put the knives in their hands. One of them took it but the other shook his head and backed away. Another, much older and with hunched shoulders, walked over to him and grabbed the weapon. In the wake of his example, another stout middle-aged man followed suit. Finally even the slave who had accompanied her took a dagger.
“Better than nothing,” thought Veleda, throwing the extra knives to the ground. “One of you go to warn the triumvir Caesar Octavian. Leave through the window of the laundry room and perhaps the guards the killers have placed in front of the entrance will not see you,” she said to no one in particular, hoping that at least one of them would have the guts to attempt to escape.
At that moment she heard the muffled sound of a scuffle. In the warriors’ quarters at the back a massacre was taking place and in the eyes of the slaves she saw growing fear. She motioned them to follow her as she tried to work out a plan of action. The only hope she had was to surprise the assassins the way they had surprised her. She decided to move nearer to the tablinum where Octavia was to be found, so she motioned to the armed slave to follow her, ordering the others to remain locked in the kitchen. She warned them that they would come to a bad end if the killers were successful – professional assassins were not in the habit of leaving witnesses behind them.
Veleda moved cautiously through the shadows of the corridor, which was lit every ten steps by small lamps on pedestals. When she arrived at the tablinum, she saw that the door was closed, but inside she could hear the voice of Octavia patiently explaining something to her daughter. She gestured to the slaves to hide in the nearby triclinium and she too went into the dining room, opening the door slightly and crouching behind it. The others positioned themselves immediately at her back, and she could feel their heavy breathing on her neck.
They didn’t have to wait long. Shortly afterwards she heard soft footsteps approaching. “As soon I jump out, use your knives on anyone who is in range,” she whispered. “We will surprise them from behind, so you will have at least one good chance, and you must make the most of it, because you will not have a second one. Then go for the others, attacking them one at a time, starting with the one nearest to you. There can’t be more than eight. Clear?” After what seemed like an eternity, she heard them comply. She, however, had something else in mind.
When the footsteps sounded in front of the room, a shiver ran down her spine. She had not thought that they would go into the triclinium first. She grasped the knife firmly in her hand, hoping that the others would do the same, and prepared for a possible battle, with no other hope than that of taking as many as possible with her. She held her breath when she heard them stop before her, but then she heard a creak from the door at the side.
They were entering the tablinum.
She waited only a few moments until they were all inside, then flung the half-closed door open and rushed out. She made for the entrance to the tablinum but saw that it was obstructed by bulky shapes, and struck out at the first person she came upon, ramming her knife between the man’s shoulder blades. Blood gushed from the wound, splashing her face, and the man slumped to the ground with a gasp, allowing her to see the lamp lit room. From the corner of her eye she saw another had fallen to the floor, stabbed by one of the slaves, but now she wanted to get the first in line, who was presumably the leader, in order to set herself between the killers and Octavia. She saw the domina rise from the table and move instinctively towards her daughter, who was playing intently with her toys. Veleda hurled herself towards the assassin who was farthest away, pushing aside those between them, and leapt on him just as he was turning to see what the scuffle was about.
She put her maimed arm around his throat and pointed the dagger at his chest. “Tell your men to lay down their arms, or you’ll be the next to die,” she whispered.
The man burst out laughing. “Ah, Veleda… I would have known it was you even if you hadn’t spoken. Only you would put think of squeezing a man’s neck with a maimed arm,” said a voice that she knew all too well.
*
When Popillius Laenas galloped up to where Ortwin had stopped Cicero’s litter, the German immediately noticed that his armour was stained with blood. As he had feared, the centurion had taken advantage of the situation to give vent to his usual instincts. Once again he berated himself at having failed to convince Octavian not to let him into the sect, and he stepped aside when his superior, ignoring him, walked towards the litter, where Cicero
was thoughtfully and quietly awaiting his destiny.
“Hail, Senator!” exclaimed the centurion cheerfully, pushing aside the curtains. “At last we meet again!”
Cicero leaned forward. “D-do I know you?” he asked, nervously.
“Of course…” Laenas replied, contemptuously, “One as highly placed as yourself could never possibly remember one as poor as me. Or at least, as I poor as I was when you defended me from an accusation of patricide many years ago…”
The magistrate’s face brightened. “Really? Who could remember a thing like that… But you got away with it, I see…”
“That’s right… and I just wanted to have the pleasure of telling you myself, great magistrate, that I got away with it even though I was actually guilty.”
“By the gods, if I defended you it means that I was convinced of your innocence.”
“Which means you were wrong. One of your many mistakes, senator, like repeatedly insulting one of the triumvirs.”
A glimmer of hope appeared on Cicero’s face. “Then I saved your life,” he said, implying that Laenas was in his debt.
“That’s right, my friend,” replied Laenas, maintaining his jovial tone, so surreal in that dramatic situation that for an instant Ortwin thought that he did not actually intend to kill the speaker. But only for a moment. “I have never thanked you, nor have I complimented you on your skills. You owed a favour to a laticlavius tribune, the son of a senator friend of yours by whom I was employed – you never wanted to deal with me directly. Of course not, you do not mix with the common people. I would have told you how my father tortured me as a child, locking me inside a trunk all night for a simple prank, or forcing me to beat my mother when he had hurt his hands by dint of doing so, under the threat of punishing me, and how I cried while I hit her and with every slap, every punch, I swore that I would repay them all to him as soon as I was old enough. Too bad that my mother died from the beatings under my bloody knuckles long before I was able to repay my father for his crimes. How much I wished she were still alive when I beat that evil old man to death.”
“You’re mad…” muttered Cicero, allowing himself to say – as he was practically already a dead man – what Ortwin had already thought even before he heard the disturbing tale.
“And wouldn’t you be too, if you’d had a childhood like mine?” asked Laenas. “But you know what? I like being mad – it means that I don’t have to think about logic or morality. For example it would be logical and moral to let you go, because in theory I am indebted to you. After all, who would know that we arrived in time to stop you from sailing away?”
Cicero was silent. Like Ortwin, he knew that Laenas would never do it. “But since I’m mad,” confirmed Laenas, “it gives me pleasure to kill you. I like the fact that a nobody like me has the power to put an end to a life as important as your own.”
“Can’t we stop all this? I only know that I die because of a homeland I have saved many times. You are just a poor wretch – an insignificant tool,” Cicero interrupted him with an impatient gesture of his hand, and touched his chin with the other, as was his habit. Ortwin admired his outburst of dignity while thinking that what he had just heard Laenas say proved decisively that the centurion was the person least suited to enter a sect where moral constraints were the basic principle of its existence.
The soldiers around him were just as troubled. Everyone sensed the importance of that moment, and felt awe for a man whose fame and works they could never have equalled in a thousand lifetimes. All, that is, except Laenas, who Ortwin saw was quivering with rage and red-faced with anger. He grabbed the orator’s hair and pulled the old man’s head, which was poking out of the litter curtains, towards him while with his other hand he drew his sword from its sheath and, holding it like a dagger, thrust it into the nape of Cicero’s neck. As soon as they realised what he was doing, the soldiers and porters instinctively covered their faces with their hands.
Ortwin was accustomed to death and did not flinch, although his heart was pained. He watched as Laenas pushed his sword deeper and deeper into the speaker’s neck, right up to the hilt, and then, moving the blade from left to right to enlarge the wound, begin to remove the head. Blood spurted everywhere, splashing the open curtains of the litter, the centurion’s already blood-spattered chest plate and Cicero’s face. Blood spurted from his mouth and his bloodshot eyes were still wide open.
Ortwin had seen far more gruesome things in battle, but few had made such an intense impression on him. Laenas did not call anyone to help him. Amid the general silence of the astonished soldiers and slaves, he continued his work, not severing the head with a clean blow but continuing the slow, grisly detachment of the head from what remained of the mangled neck. Once free, the speaker’s head fell to the ground and bounced towards Ortwin’s feet. He stepped back in disgust, before realizing that Laenas was repeating his work on Cicero’s right wrist. In that case too, the centurion refused to sever it cleanly, as though he got some kind of pleasure from savouring that unpleasant task. Which he probably did, thought the German, as he turned away to avoid having to witness any more of the atrocious spectacle. He noted that a good number of the soldiers had had enough too, and many of them had started crowding around the cart carrying the personal effects of the speaker. One legionary climbed inside, then let out a cry of disappointment. He re-appeared holding some papyri which he threw contemptuously at the feet of his disappointed comrades. He had expected to find something else, obviously.
Laenas called for their attention. “Right, it’s time to get back to Rome. I have what I need,” he said, holding up Cicero’s head, still dripping with blood, in his right hand.
Ortwin too, could not wait to get back to the city. He had to convince Octavian – and everyone else in the sect – of how unsuited that grim figure was to join their ranks.
XII
Veleda looked around her, scarcely able to believe that what was happening around her was real. Near the window she could see Octavia, her daughter and her maid, Etain. Their lives depended on her. To one side of the door, three thugs were busy settling their accounts with the slaves she had forced to follow her, and in a matter of moments they were all on the ground, along with three of the assassins.
Suddenly, the crying of the child resounded in her ears, together with the moans of the dying, laying in pools of their own blood by the threshold.
In the crook of her arm, she held the head of the assassins’ leader. A man who had possessed a decisive power over a large part of her life – and who apparently continued to do so, even though she had not seen him for over two years.
Quintus Labienus.
Veleda continued to tighten her grip on the neck of the man who had loved her as much as Ortwin, and she held her dagger at his chest, near that heart which had once beat so much for her. When she had realised his identity, she had thought for a moment that she might faint and had almost released him, but the survival instinct within her had prevented her from doing so and allowed her prevent any reaction to her former lover. In a voice which was slightly fainter than before – and trembled somewhat, to tell the truth – she had once more ordered him and his men to lay down their swords. But Quintus had only chuckled again, and not ordered his soldiers to do anything. After killing the slaves, they were now free to pounce upon Octavia and the others at any time.
And now she had no idea what to do next.
She pushed the tip of the blade against his heart until it sliced through the leather corset the man was wearing. “You must want to die, Quintus,” she whispered. “And it is about time.”
“No, it’s not my time yet,” he said, motioning his men in the direction of Octavia with the head she held in her arm, and one of them immediately advanced upon the domina. The woman held her daughter, who was crying louder and louder, and stepped back against the window. The man slapped the child, and yanked her away from her mother by her arm until Octavia was forced to let go, then shoved her over to Etain, who
quickly picked her up and held her against her pregnant belly. Octavia lashed out at the bully, screaming and hitting him but he just smugly grabbed her by the arm and pointed a knife at her throat. Only then did she calm down, though she continued to sob.
“So you see that I won’t be dying today?” said Quintus Labienus. “Though perhaps you will…”
“I’ll take you with me, then,” she said, regaining her swagger as she remembered that she hated him more than she had ever loved him. She pushed the tip of the knife further into the leather.
“And to think I was planning to take you away with me…” said Labienus. “Just like old times. You’re used to changing sides, aren’t you? How many times did you go from Caesar to Pompey during the civil war? Of course, you care nothing for we Romans… Except for me, of course – the only Roman you were ever interested in.”
She didn’t know why she was letting him talk nor why she did not order him to be quiet. Somehow, she realised, she had missed that voice – she had been with him too long and she had depended on him, believing that he was the only man in the world who loved her, to be insensitive to that sound, no matter how unpleasant it was to her ears.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked him, eventually. She had to buy time. If the slave she had sent out had managed to escape they would soon be coming to the rescue, and as long as she had her dagger at Quintus’s chest he would not kill Octavia.
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