Rubicon rsr-7

by Steven Saylor

  "No, wait!" He lunged desperately toward Otacilius. One of the soldiers gave him a vicious poke with his spear. A blossom of blood stained his shoulder. He clutched the wound and wailed. "Up on that knob! The two of them climbed up there before the troops arrived, spying on you!"

  "There's no crime in curiosity," said Otacilius.

  "But don't you see? That's when they must have hidden the document, or destroyed it. They saw you coming, and they got rid of it. Go look up on that hill! You'll find it there!"

  Tiro rolled his eyes in disgust. "The lying slave will have you searching every stretch of road from here back to Beneventum, if you listen to him. Stupid lout! Perhaps if you stop lying and tell the truth, the cohort commander will at least allow you a quick and merciful death."

  Otacilius worked his jaw back and forth and stared at me. I played the affronted citizen and stared back at him. I realized that he had not given back our daggers. That meant he had not made up his mind about us.

  At last he called another row of troops from the column. "You men, go search that hilltop. Bring back anything you find that a traveler might have left there- any sort of bag or pouch, and any scrap of parchment, no matter how small or burnt."

  Surely they would find nothing, I thought. Tiro had been with me atop the knob. He hadn't mentioned the courier's passport, and I hadn't seen him hide it. The only sign of a human that the soldiers were likely to come across, I thought ruefully, was the deposit left by Tiro when he stole away to relieve himself…

  I suddenly realized that Tiro had not lingered behind on account of his nervous bowels. He had gone off to dispose of the document.

  Parchment burns easily. Parchment could also be torn, ground underfoot, chewed, even swallowed. But had Tiro destroyed it beyond trace, or merely hidden it, thinking to retrieve it after Caesar's troops passed by? I avoided looking at him, fearful that my expression might give me away. Instead I watched the soldiers scramble up the hillside. At last I could stand it no longer. I glanced in Tiro's direction. In the instant our eyes met, I knew as surely as if he had spoken that he had not obliterated the document, but had only hidden it. My heart sank. I drew a deep breath.

  Perhaps, I thought, the soldiers would be content to search the bare hilltop. But I knew it was a vain hope; these men were trained to follow tracks, watch for signs of passage, ferret out hiding places. Their commander had ordered them to search and retrieve. That was what they would do.

  Tiro, Fortex, and I stood in the wagon and waited. The driver clutched his wounded shoulder and sobbed. Row after row of soldiers marched past. I felt the suspense one feels in the theater, awaiting a reversal of fortune.

  At last the soldiers came scrambling down the hillside. They had found not one artifact, but several. What Roman road is without litter? There was part of a cast-off shoe, chewed on by some animal with pointed teeth. There was a bit of ivory which appeared to be a broken strigil, used for scraping oneself clean at the baths. There was a tattered scrap of cloth which might once have been a child's soiled, discarded loincloth. The most valuable find was an old Greek drachma, the silver tarnished black.

  "We also found this, cohort commander. It was rolled up tight and stuffed between some rocks on the far side of the hill." The soldier handed a piece of parchment to Otacilius, who unrolled it. His face grew long.

  "A courier's passport," he said quietly. "Issued by authority of the Ultimate Decree. Signed by Pompey himself. Stamped with his seal ring." Otacilius peered at me above the parchment. "How do you explain this, Gordianus? If, in fact, you are Gordianus…"

  XV

  Row after row of soldiers marched past. Face after face peered sidelong at us, some scornful, some merely curious. A few even looked at us with pity. We must have made a sorry sight: four men with arms bound behind their backs, tethered to one another by their ankles, being led down the mountain in single file along the side of the road by a cohort commander on horseback. A foot soldier followed behind, using his spear for a prod.

  The wagon driver was hindmost in the group. The wound at his shoulder had rendered him faint and weak. He had a hard time keeping up. The footpath alongside the paved road was rough and uneven. Occasionally he stumbled, sending a jerk through the tether that connected our ankles, making Fortex trip forward into Tiro, who tripped forward into me. The foot soldier would prod at the stumbling slave with his spear; the slave would let out a yelp. The soldiers marching past would laugh, as if we were performing a roadside mime show for their amusement.

  Otacilius peered at me over his shoulder occasionally, his face inscrutable. Another tether connected the two of us, one end tied around my throat, the other wound around his forearm and clutched in his fist. Despite my best efforts to keep up and maintain some slack in the tether, my neck was soon wrenched and sore, the flesh chafed and raw. I was lucky to still have a head connected to my shoulders.

  We might have died within moments after Otacilius discovered our lies. We were an unexpected anomaly encountered on the road, a hindrance to the army's progress, a problem to be disposed of. He might have had us all executed where we stood. As soon as the passport from Pompey was produced, I braced myself for that possibility. To avoid the horror of it I let a great tide of recriminations flood my thoughts. If only Tiro had had the sense to destroy the passport, rather than hide it. If only we had stayed on the Appian Way instead of taking Tiro's "shortcut." If only we had dragged the driver into the woods and cut out his tongue before the first scout arrived. If only we had left the wagon behind that morning, and the driver with it…

  The list of regrets circled endlessly in my mind as we trudged downhill, the monotony interrupted only by the occasional stumble by the driver, followed by more stumbling up the line and a jerk at the tether around my throat, then the squeal of the driver as he was poked, and the laughter of the soldiers passing by.

  "Who are those wretches?" said one soldier.

  "Spies!" said another.

  "What will they do to them?"

  "Hang them upside down and flay them alive!"

  That elicited a squeal of terror from the wagon driver, who stumbled again. The humiliating sequence repeated itself. The passing soldiers howled with laughter. Not even the most stumblebum troupe of Alexandrian mimes could have put on a funnier show.

  What did Otacilius intend to do with us? The fact that he hadn't yet killed us offered some hope. Or did it? He assumed we were spies. Spies knew secrets. Secrets might be valuable. Therefore we might be valuable. But I suspected that the Roman military in regard to spies, like the Roman judiciary in regard to slaves, recognized only one credible means of obtaining secrets: through torture.

  We had been spared our lives, but toward what end? We were being led down the mountain, toward the rear of the army, but for what purpose? I found it easier to scroll mentally through endless recriminations and regrets than to contemplate those questions.

  "Gordianus," Tiro whispered behind me. "When we arrive, wherever they're taking us-"

  "Silence!" Otacilius looked over his shoulder and glared down at us. A crueler man might have given a wrench to the tether around my throat for good measure, but I saw that his gaze was clouded by doubt. If I was the man I claimed to be, then I was the father of a personal confidant of Caesar, a man Otacilius knew. On the other hand, I had lied about the courier's passport, which linked us directly to Pompey, and if the wagon driver was truthful, Tiro was not my slave Soscarides, but the actual leader of our little traveling party. Had I lied about being Meto's father, as well? Otacilius faced a dilemma. His soldier's instinct was to pass the dilemma along to someone higher up.

  It occurred to me that I might possibly escape with my neck intact if I kept doggedly proclaiming my identity- but only if I betrayed Tiro. How else to explain the passport? Once he was known to be Tiro, higher ranking officers could probably be called forward to identify him, despite his disguised appearance; as Cicero's secretary, Tiro was well known in the Forum. What would be done to
him? Would he be released, as Domitius had been released, and sent back to Cicero unharmed?

  I doubted it. Tiro was not Domitius. He was a citizen and a member of a senator's household, but only by dint of having been manumitted by Cicero. What would be done to a former slave traveling incognito as a spy, who had brazenly lied to a Roman officer? I couldn't believe that he would simply be set free.

  This vexing train of doubts and apprehensions served at least to keep my mind off the more and more frequent stumbling from behind, the tug of the tether at my neck, and the raucous laughter of the marching soldiers. I was weary and thirsty. My head buzzed as if there were a swarm of bees inside it.

  Down and down we trudged, until at last we arrived at a broad, high meadow that overlooked the coastal plain and the glimmering Adriatic in the distance. The meadow appeared to be the site of the previous night's camp. A single large tent was still standing. We passed the staging area where the last cohort was assembling in ranks to begin the march up the mountain.

  In my dazed state, I wondered how many soldiers I had seen in the last few hours. If the army consisted of Domitius's entire force from Corfinium, they amounted to thirty cohorts in all, with six hundred men in each cohort, and I had passed every one of them. Now I knew what a body of eighteen thousand armed men looked like. How many men did Caesar have in Italy, that he could spare so many troops for Sicily?

  Otacilius led us toward the tent, where a team of camp-strikers had begun to pull up stakes. A young officer in splendid armor stepped out, carrying under his arm a helmet with an elegant horsehair crest. There was no copper disk with a lion's head on his breastplate. He was not one of Domitius's men, yet Otacilius was quick to jump from his horse and salute him as a superior.

  "Numa's balls!" I heard Tiro mutter behind me.

  I peered at the officer more closely. It must have been fear and fatigue that kept me from recognizing him at once, for there was no mistaking his curiously brutish yet babyish face. His profile was the brute: seen from the side, his dented nose, jutting chin and craggy brows made him look like an angry boxer. Seen straight on, his full cheeks, gentle mouth, and soulful eyes made him look like a homely poet. At every angle between, his face was a mixture of contradictions. It was a face women found fascinating, and men trusted or feared instinctively.

  Otacilius conferred with him in a low voice. I heard my name spoken. The man looked toward me. His eyebrows registered surprise, then shock. He shoved Otacilius roughly aside and strode toward us, casting aside his helmet and drawing his short sword from its scabbard. He grabbed my shoulder and put the blade to my neck. I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes.

  An instant later, his bearish arms were around me, crushing me to his barrel chest. The tether that had been around my throat lay on the ground, cut in two.

  "Gordianus!" he bellowed, pulling back to give me the full effect of his homely features at close quarters.

  "Marc Antony," I whispered, and fainted to the ground.

  I heard voices, and gradually realized that I was in an enclosed space- not a room exactly, but a shelter of some sort, full of soft light.

  "A citizen his age, led by his neck on a forced march!"

  "The prisoners had to be bound, Tribune. Standard procedure for suspected insurgents and spies."

  "It's a wonder you didn't kill him! That wouldn't mark an auspicious beginning for you in Caesar's army, cohort commander- killing Gordianus Meto's father."

  "I only followed regulations, Tribune."

  I realized I was in a large tent, and remembered the tent in the meadow from which Antony had emerged. I lay on a hard pallet with a thin blanket over me.

  "He's waking up."

  "A good thing for you! You're dismissed, Marcus Otacilius. Go back and rejoin your cohort."

  "But-"

  "The sight of you is likely to send him straight to Hades! You've made your report. Get out."

  There was a rustling noise, a flicker of light from a parted tent flap, and then the face of Marc Antony abruptly loomed over me. "Gordianus, are you all right?"

  "Thirsty. Hungry. My feet hurt."

  Antony laughed. "You sound like any soldier at the end of a hard march."

  I managed to sit up. My head whirled. "I fainted?"

  "It happens. A forced march, no food or water- and from the marks on your neck, it looks like that fool Otacilius half-strangled you."

  I felt my throat. The flesh was tender and bruised, but not bleeding. "For a moment, up at the pass, I thought he was going to execute me."

  "He's not that big a fool. We'll talk about it later, after you've had something to eat and drink. Don't get up. Sit on the cot. I'll have something brought to you. But eat quickly. The tent needs to come down. I intend to set out within the hour."

  "What about me?"

  "You'll come with me, of course."

  I groaned. "Not back up the mountain!"

  "No. To Brundisium. Caesar needs me, to close in for the kill."

  Antony's company consisted of a hundred mounted soldiers. He had been dispatched by Caesar to escort the troops bound for Sicily as far as the foot of the Apennines, then to rejoin the main force. His contingent was kept small so that he could move swiftly. Every man was a battle-hardened veteran of the Gallic Wars. Antony boasted that his hand-picked century was the equal of any two cohorts.

  He invited me to ride alongside him at the head of the company. The slaves were allowed to ride in the baggage wagon. Fortex he presumed to be my personal bodyguard. Tiro he failed to recognize, even at close quarters. This surprised me, because there was no man in Rome whom Antony hated more than Cicero, and I feared that he might recognize Cicero's secretary even disguised, but Antony accepted the explanation that Tiro was Meto's old tutor Soscarides with hardly a glance. 'Antony isn't simple,' Meto had once told me, 'but he's as clear and plain to read as Caesar's Latin.' Apparently he expected others to be equally transparent.

  As for the wagon driver, the poor slave had arrived at the meadow exhausted and feverish from his shoulder wound, too delirious to answer questions or to speak for himself. He was loaded into the baggage wagon along with Tiro and Fortex. I found it convenient to pretend that his delirium preceded our encounter with Otacilius. "The wretched slave caught a fever coming over the mountains," I told Antony as we rode out. "I think he must have been out of his wits from the moment he woke up this morning. All that nonsense he told the cohort commander- he was raving."

  "Still, he was right about that courier's passport, wasn't he?" Antony looked ahead, showing me his fierce boxer's profile.

  "Ah. Yes. That's a bit embarrassing. I told my man Soscarides to hide it until the troops passed. Foolish of me, perhaps, but I thought I might save myself some trouble. Instead, I was caught lying. I can't blame the cohort commander for being suspicious of me after that."

  "But Gordianus, how in Hades did you ever get your hands on such a document? Signed by Pompey himself!"

  I decided to evade, rather than lie. "I don't know how else I could have obtained fresh horses at every stop along the way. I was able to take advantage of it… thanks to Cicero." That was not a lie, exactly. "I stayed at his villa at Formiae for a couple of nights."

  "That piece of cow dung!" Antony turned to face me. His features straight on had grown as fearsome as his profile. "Do you know what I'd most like to see come out of all this? Cicero's head on a stake! Ever since the bastard murdered my stepfather, putting down Catilina's so-called conspiracy, he's made a career of slandering me. I don't know how a fine fellow like yourself can stay friends with such a creature."

  "Cicero and I aren't exactly friends, Tribune…"

  "You needn't explain. Caesar is the same. Every time the subject of Cicero comes up, we argue. He tells me to stop ranting. I ask why he coddles such a scorpion. 'Useful,' he says, as if that won the argument. 'Some day, Cicero may prove useful.' " Antony laughed. "Well, he proved useful to you, I suppose, if he gave you that courier's passport from Pom
pey! But it landed you in trouble in the end, didn't it? You rode up one side of Italy, but you had to walk down the other! You're lucky Marcus Otacilius brought you straight to me, or you might very well have lost your head. But you've always been lucky, to live as long as you have. Imagine, the father of Gordianus Meto suspected of spying for Pompey! The world has become a strange place."

  "Perhaps stranger than you think," I said under my breath.

  "Well, we shall sort everything out when we reach Brundisium." He seemed relieved to be done with the subject, but his words left me unsettled. What remained to be sorted out, if Antony had accepted my story?

  There was the problem of the wagon driver, of course. What would happen when his delirium receded? And what if Tiro were recognized? How could I explain my complicity in his masquerade as Soscarides? Betraying Tiro now was out of the question. He could not possibly fall into worse hands. I could all too easily imagine Antony taking out his hatred of Cicero against Cicero's right-hand man.

  "You look pensive, Gordianus." Antony reached over and squeezed my leg. "Don't worry, you shall see Meto soon enough! After tonight, we'll have three days of hard riding to reach Brundisium. If your luck holds, we should arrive just in time to witness Pompey's last stand!"

  We camped that night half a mile off the road, in a shallow valley amid low hills. Antony pointed out the site's defensibility.

  "Is there really any danger of attack, Tribune?" I asked. "The mountains are to our right, the sea to our left. Behind us is Corfinium, securely garrisoned by Caesar's men. Before us is Brundisium, which I presume to be surrounded by Caesar's main force. I should think we're as safe as a spider on a roof."

  "Of course we are. It's all my years in Gaul. I can never pitch camp without thinking something unseen might be lurking in plain sight."

  "In that case, could I have my dagger back? The one that Otacilius confiscated? He took daggers from my slaves, as well."

  "Certainly. As soon as we've made camp."