Caesar's Spies Omnibus

by Peter Tonkin

  And so it was decided.

  vii

  Cicero’s slave Philologus answered the door even before Artemidorus could knock. He had clearly been keeping a look-out. And not in order to protect his master either as his first words made clear. ‘He’s gone. I told the other soldiers,’ the oily steward gabbled, clearly terrified. ‘They went after him at once. They had their swords out. Hardly any time ago. He’s on his way down to the harbour in his litter. There’s a boat. Their power to take his head ends at the tide-line. The Master says. I told them...’

  ‘You told the other soldiers this?’ Artemidorus fought to keep the incredulity from his voice. Half convinced Philologus must be lying to them all – hoping to give Cicero time to get away.

  ‘Yes! Yes I did!’ Philologus nodded forcefully. His voice rang with truthfulness. ‘And they went after him at once.’

  ‘How many soldiers?’

  ‘Six. Maybe more...’ Philologus was shaking with naked panic, slick with terror-sweat, still nodding wildly.

  ‘Just moments ago?’ Persisted Artemidorus.

  ‘Maybe. I can’t be certain. We’re all so frightened...’’

  Artemidorus swung round to the others. The steward was useless as a witness. ‘Let’s go!’

  As they pounded down the path towards the little harbour, Quintus wondered, ‘Is he so frightened of the soldiers? Or has he just realised the enormity of what he’s done? Handing his master over like that? Not even the faintest attempt to send whoever’s ahead of us down the wrong path. To give Cicero just a little more time...’

  ‘They’d have beaten the truth out of him,’ said Artemidorus, half talking to himself. ‘Especially if it was that bastard Popilius Lenas and his men.’

  ‘Who are top of my lists of suspects for setting that ambush,’ puffed Quintus.

  ‘Something we will settle later,’ promised Artemidorus. ‘When our mission is completed. One way or the other.’

  ‘But even so,’ added Furius, with the authority of an expert, ‘it would have taken time to beat the truth out of him. Time that Cicero could have used...’

  ‘You sound as though you want the old windbag to get away,’ said Quintus.

  ‘I don’t,’ replied Furius. ‘But that oily, fat steward should have. That’s my point.’

  ‘Quiet now,’ ordered Artemidorus.

  In the middle distance, it was just possible to see the bright flicker of torches in the shadows between the tress. None of the surviving crypteia needed to be told what that meant. Cicero’s slaves were lighting the way for their master’s litter as they hurried towards the safety of the boat down in the little harbour. But beneath the roaring of the wind in the treetops, the cawing of the crows and the raucous mewing of the seagulls’ dawn chorus, it was just possible to hear footsteps close ahead. The jingling of armour. The slap of scabbards against thighs.

  Then, shockingly loud, a bellow. ‘STOP!’

  ‘Put it down or die where you stand!’ The raucous voice continued. There was no doubt that the order must be obeyed because the alternative was so real and so immediate.

  Artemidorus raised a hand and his little crypteia slowed to a walk. Their footsteps muffled by the pine-needles on the ground. The noise caused by their weapons and armour falling well below the sounds of the wind, the birds and – increasingly – of the restless surf in the harbour carried northwards up the hill on that relentless southerly wind. The tapping of cordage against masts. The yank and creak of straining land-lines. The booming of ill-secured sails. The heave and plunge of moored vessels. A restless promise of immediate escape.

  So near and yet so far.

  The flickering lights stopped moving down the hill. They bunched together – telling of frightened slaves and servants standing back from Cicero’s grounded litter. The brightness that they cast showed monstrous shadows looming in the pre-dawn dimness between the tall black columns of the trees. Artemidorus’ crypteia crept closer. Gladii and spathas whispered out of sheaths. Pugiones in left fists matched the swords in the right. By the time they approached the flame-bright clearing, they were all as well-armed as their leader.

  As they closed on the tragic stage, the words of the actors beneath the lights upon it continued above the restlessness of the gathering winter’s day. ‘Well, Marcus Tullius, it looks as though your race is run,’ gloated the sneering voice of Maecenas’ brutal carnifex Tribune Popilius Lenas. ‘All three of the triumvirs want to see you dead. But your head is going to Antony. I requested the privilege of removing it personally. For once Antony is offering an even higher bounty than the boy Caesar. Probably because he hates you more. And who can blame him? I think the only person in Rome who hates you more than Antony is Fulvia. And, again, why not? Your friend the gang-leader Milo slaughtered Fulvia’s first husband Clodius. You even promised to defend Milo should he come to trial for the murder. And then, more recently, look what shame and degradation you have brought upon her current husband and their family. You killed his step father without benefit of trial. Your famous Philippics came close to destroying his reputation. You had him declared Hostis enemy of the state and urged all right-thinking Romans to slaughter him without hesitation should they come across him anywhere, at any time. Well, they have the upper hand now and you will suffer for it. My instructions under the proscription are to bring in your head. Fulvia apparently also wants your hands...’

  ‘Be quick about it then,’ interrupted Cicero’s unmistakable voice. Speaking as calmly and forcefully as if he were pleading a case before the Praetor Urbanus senior judge in the Forum or pursuing an argument in the Senate. ‘I have bared my neck. Now strike. And may the gods have mercy on all of you...’

  ‘Oh no. You don’t get off that easily! As I was saying before you interrupted in your usual arrogant, blowhard fashion, I have been tasked to bring your head and hands. Nothing has been said about the state of the rest of your body. Or whether any burns and bruises, wounds or fractures – no matter how agonising they might be; no matter how long drawn-out the torture that they bring – should be inflicted before or after we take your head.’

  ‘It would serve little purpose,’ observed Lenas’ victim with all the dignity he could muster, ‘to torture me after I was dead.’

  ‘Precisely, old man. You have hit the nail on the head. My mission is not only to take your head and hands but also your precious senatorial, ex-consular dignitas. I look forward to taking your extremities to Antony and to Fulvia with the further information that you died screaming, soiling yourself and begging in tears for death...’

  ix

  Artemidorus stepped forward. With the others at his shoulders, he stood silent, motionless and unobserved between the tree-trunks at the outer edge of the clearing. Cicero’s litter sat in the middle of a rough circle of sparse grass through which the path to the port ran downhill from left to right. The slaves crowded, terrified, beyond it. Their flaming torches bringing the scene an eerie, unearthly light, faintly conflicting with the gathering brightness of a cold grey dawn. Tribune Popilius Lenas and Centurion Herrenius stood closest to the litter. There was a tiny space between them, widened by the tightness of the wide belts at their waists, even though the belts themselves carried a distracting range of swords, daggers and fascinum good-luck charms. Through this, Artemidorus could just see Cicero’s head and shoulders protruding from the litter’s curtains. His tunic was pulled back, as he said, to bare his neck. Which, as Fulvia observed, was unusually thick. His thinning hair was awry. His face pale, high-domed forehead deeply lined, cheeks fallen-in and cheekbones sharp. Eyes baggy, watering, exhausted. Defeated.

  But not, noted Artemidorus, frightened. Even in the face of the most atrocious imaginable death. Not frightened at all. There was a dignitas here that the brutal Tribune and his barbarous Centurion would never understand. Unexpectedly, Artemidorus felt a surge of sympathy for Cicero. Fell into the grip of an almost overpowering desire to rescue him. Or, at the very least, to help him. But Lenas and Her
renius were not alone. In a rough circle all around them stood ten legionaries. Clearly chosen for their size and strength. Some of them, by the look of things, ex-gladiators. Had his crypteia been at full strength, Artemidorus might have considered challenging them. But as things stood it was simply out of the question. His mind raced. He slid his sword back into its sheath.

  ‘Well, old man, let’s get on with it,’ jeered Lenas. ‘Do you want to crawl out of there or do you want us to drag you out? It won’t make much difference in the end. You’re still going to go down screaming, begging and shitting yourself...’

  ‘Quintus!’ whispered Artemidorus, also sheathing his pugio. ‘Distract them. Do anything! If they laid the ambush, they probably think I’m dead or dying. They won’t expect me to be here and that might give me an edge. Move on a count of three. One...’

  As he spoke, the secret agent reached into the little pouch which always hung at the right side of his belt balancing the money-pouch he wore on the left. The little pouch hung just behind the scabbard that held his sword. From this he pulled out his favourite sling and one of the slingshots he kept especially for it. It was a long sling in the Balearic design and the shot that fitted into the cradle at its heart was a stone carefully selected from the millions littering the sea-shore at Populonia after they sent young Caesar’s would-be assassin Quintus Gallius, ablaze, off on his final voyage towards Africa Province. A stone that was unusually weighty but worked round and smooth by the action of the waves. Guaranteed to fly true and strike with the maximum impact. He slid the shot into place and glanced back into the stand of trees. There was ample room to swing the weapon. And a straight, unbroken line to his target. He stepped back into the clearing and swung the sling, bending his knees, rolling his shoulders, letting his body become the epicentre of the weapon’s increasingly powerful circular motion. ‘Two...’ he spat.

  ‘Come on, old man. Hurry up, or we’ll start getting bored and imaginative. You wouldn’t want to spend a little time playing Lucrece to our brutal ravishing Tarquins, would you? Or you can play Europa to ten strong bulls. Then we’ll get down to business...’

  ‘Three...’ he breathed.

  Popilius Lenas stepped forward as he made the jeering threat. Directly into Artemidorus’ line of fire.

  Quintus strode into the clearing. ‘What’s all this?’ he demanded. Furius fell in beside him. Hercules towered in their wake. ‘Who are you and what are you doing?’ Quintus continued. ‘My contubernium has just been ambushed. There are several of us hurt and dying. Do you know anything about that?’

  Lenas, Herrenius and their men all swung round to face the belligerent little man. The Tribune stepped forward to confront his accuser. Artemidorus’; sight line was clear once more. With no further ado, he released his sling-stone, leaning into the final swing with all his strength, power and weight. Faster that the eye could see and in absolute silence the heavy spherical stone sped unerringly to its target. It hit Marcus Tullius Cicero low on the forehead, immediately above the bridge of his nose. Right between his eyebrows.

  It killed him at once; he never even knew what hit him.

  The sharp crack! of impact could have been caused by an unwary foot breaking a fallen branch. The stone fell unnoticed to the ground. The dead statesman settled back to lie with his head, shoulders and left arm hanging out of the litter.

  ‘Who are you? What are you accusing us of?’ Lenas was shouting at Quintus. He suddenly froze, prickling with suspicion. ‘We have attacked no-one. Certainly not you or your contubernium! Are you after the old fart’s head as well? If you are, you’ll have to come through me and my men to get it!’ His hand rested threateningly on the pommel of his gladius.

  Unable to resist a challenge of any sort, Quintus immediately squared up. Even though the odds were strongly against him. The others stood at his shoulder. Lenas’ men formed up behind their Tribune. Their fists also closed round the grips of their gladii. No-one seemed to have noticed that Cicero was dead. Artemidorus hesitated, calculating the best moment to step in and calm the situation before it came to blows. But before he could do so, another, unexpected voice rang out across the clearing.

  ‘Ah Tribune Lenas! Congratulations. I see you are the victor ludorum, winner of these particular games. First to the booty, and within a sword-blow of outplaying the rest of us. Cicero’s head is the greatest prize of all. I can hardly begin to calculate how great Antony’s bounty will be when you lay it at his feet! And Fulvia’s reward will hardly be inferior. You and your friends are all made men. With nothing to look forward to beyond great riches and even greater reputations!’ As he spoke, Lucius Flavius Felix strolled into the clearing. Coming up the hill from where he had clearly been guarding the harbour against Cicero’s escape by sea. With the dozen or more men that formed his expanded contubernium. Suddenly Lenas and Herrenius found themselves as comprehensively outnumbered as Quintus had been mere moments earlier.

  With a grunt of barely-contained rage, Lenas turned to his victim once again. Clearly it would be impossible for him to rape or torture the old man in front of so many witnesses. So there was nothing for it but to take his head and hands as he had been commissioned to do. It hardly seemed to register with him that Cicero was no longer sitting up and talking. Though his head, lolling on his left shoulder, still presented his neck to his executioner exactly as before. Lenas simply pulled his gladius from its sheath and brought the edge of the blade down on Cicero’s exposed neck as hard as he could.

  The sharp blade chopped into the column of muscle supporting the right side of the old senator’s skull. Pale skin and red flesh beneath it parted as the steel sank in. The wound pulled wide as the muscles on either side contracted. But there was nowhere near enough power in the blow or keenness in the edge to take the head off at one stroke. With mounting frustration, Lenas tugged his sword-blade free, as though from a log of hard wood. Cicero’s neck was open to the bones of his spinal column. The tubes and vessels of his throat lay bare. Half-severed arteries and veins oozing sluggishly where they would have been pouring and pumping had his heart still been beating. But only Artemidorus seemed to notice this fact.

  With an animal grunt, Lenas struck again. He was a soldier. Trained in swordsmanship. The blade bit at exactly the same point as before. The neck-vertebrae parted, as did the spinal cord, and the head lolled downwards, still attached by the tubes and vessels of the throat, the muscles and skin of the neck’s left side. This time when Lenas jerked his blade free, he sprayed blood in an arc that stained the litter and some of the slaves just beyond it.

  ‘Should have used a spatha,’ said Quintus all too audibly. ‘Or an axe.’

  This time Lenas’ grunt was more like a growl. The sword sank in for a third time. But the head was not resting on a block, or indeed anything that would hold it firm. It yielded, rolling grotesquely, the movement soaking up a good deal of the blow’s force. The ruined neck and throat leaking blood more forcefully now from both the head-end and the shoulder-tops. His face a mask of outrage and humiliation, Lenas began to saw at the strings of skin, blood-vessels, ridged trachea and muscular oesophagus, grunting, growling and swearing under his breath. Until, at long last, Cicero’s head fell free, landed with a sopping sound in the considerable puddle of the blood it had once contained and rolled across the grass. Down the slope. As though it was still heading for the harbour, escape and safety. Until Felix stopped it with a raised foot as if it was a runaway ball.

  ‘Oh, well done!’ he said. ‘Euge! Bravo indeed.’

  Barely able to contain his rage and humiliation, Lenas swung round to Herrenius. ‘Take the old bastard’s hands!’ he ordered.

  And with two strong stokes of his gladius, the Centurion obeyed.

  XIV

  FINIS

  i

  Artemidorus watched Popilius Lenas and his men departing with Cicero’s head and hands. He was finding it hard to control his rage. For he was certain that these were the men who had laid the ambush. If ther
e was a head nearby that the secret agent and assassin really wanted to take, it belonged to the murderous tribune. But there was nothing he could do.

  For the time-being at least.

  He looked across at Felix. Then down at the mutilated corpse lolling half in and half out of the litter.

  ‘Well, that would seem to be that,’ said Felix. ‘Factum est.’

  ‘Finis,’ nodded Quintus. ‘The end.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Artemidorus answered. He took a deep breath. ‘We can’t just leave the rest of Cicero here for the birds and wild dogs. He may have been a bitter, occasionally murderous old windbag and my general’s greatest enemy but he deserves better than that.’

  ‘Not to mention,’ added Quintus, ‘the fact that if he isn’t granted a proper send-off, his ghost will wander the earth. And may well start haunting the man who ordered his death as well as the men who actually killed him.’

  ‘A good point,’ agreed Artemidorus drily. ‘We want to protect our General from his dead enemies as well as the living ones.’

  ‘You’ll have to watch that soft heart of yours,’ said Felix. ‘It’ll get you in trouble one of these days.’ He paused, thinking. ‘But yes,’ he concluded, ‘Perhaps your kindness is contagious. I agree with you both. And, I must admit I have heard rumours that Brutus has been occasionally visited by the ghost of Divus Julius in the night. Even though the people of Rome granted him the most memorable of funerals.’

  So they organised the slaves into putting Cicero’s body gently and respectfully back into the litter and then carrying it on down the hill. Their two commands fell in behind in a makeshift funeral cortege. The harbourmaster at the little port of Formia which lay at the lower end of the path was able to direct them to the local adile, magistrate Lucius Verius Ancharius. At whose villa they found Puella, Ferrata and the wagon waiting. There was a medicus there as well, summoned by the adile and already treating Ferrata. Far too occupied to answer importunate questions about his patient – as was typical of his Athenian breed, thought Spartan Artemidorus. But he seemed to be doing a good job of cleaning and bandaging Ferrata’s face. What was left of it.