Blood and Steel

Chapter 20

Rome

The Carinae,

The Day before the Ides of March, AD238

Timesitheus did not care to be kept waiting. The Praefectus Annonae, the man responsible for feeding the million inhabitants of Rome, should not be kept waiting. Especially not by an ex-slave. The accent and manner of this freedman Reverendus proclaimed his origins in some effeminate eastern province like Syria or Cappadocia. His flabby face hinted at good looks in his youth. Probably buggered senseless as a boy. It was the nature of his sort to become insufferably insolent if they served a noble family. Still, one should only make enemies if it was necessary. The situation needed delicate handling. Timesitheus did not want to alienate a member of the familia of the Gordiani, but over familiarity with the odious creature, let alone a rebuff, would damage his dignitas.

‘At last the rain has stopped, and spring has arrived,’ Timesitheus said.

‘The weather is better,’ Reverendus said.

The tone of the freedman exhibited no desire for further conversation. Timesitheus arranged his face, and turned to studying the many beaks of warships that were set in the lofty walls of the vestibule of the Domus Rostrata and gave the house its name. Tranquillina gave no sign of noticing the abrupt exchange. She waited with complete composure, as if bestowing a gracious favour. His wife always knew exactly how to behave. Unlike her husband, she had grown up in the great houses of the eternal city.

Timesitheus looked closely at the bronze rams. Pompey the Great had decorated the house with spoils from his campaign against the pirates. Yet these ornamental prows did not look as if they had ever seen the sea. It was always important to look closely. Few things in Rome were ever quite what they seemed.

The superstitious considered this an unlucky house. Its owners seldom came to a good end. Pompey beheaded on a beach in Egypt. Defeated and abandoned, Mark Antony falling on his sword in the same country. The aged tyrant Tiberius, worn out with perversity on Capri, smothered with a pillow. Timesitheus was not superstitious. He coveted this property. A house like this would complete his rise from relatively humble beginnings on the backwater Greek island of Corcyra. His father had just scraped together the capital necessary to qualify as an equestrian in the Census. He had owned two small trading vessels, a modest house in Kassiope, and an estate of some olive groves and many barren slopes on Mount Istone. Possession of a palatial dwelling in the Carinae of Rome would seal the ascent of his son. Timesitheus would be content. Of course, he knew, Tranquillina would not. Her relentless ambition was one of the several things he loved about his wife; loved and almost feared.

Timesitheus stifled a yawn. They had got up before dawn to attend, and Tranquillina had made strenuous demands in the night. That was another thing he loved about her.

‘Wake up.’ Tranquillina spoke softly, so that the freedman could not overhear. Her breath was hot in Timesitheus’ ear. ‘Stop daydreaming. Remember why we have come. As the Gordiani are not here, we must ingratiate ourselves with their relatives and those, unlike you, who have already managed to get close to this new regime. I have no intention of remaining the wife of just another equestrian administrator.’

‘Please come this way.’ Another freedman had appeared. This one was called Montanus, and he had the same infuriating air of superiority.

Waiting just long enough to assert their independence, Timesitheus and Tranquillina followed Montanus into the house.

Maecia Faustina was receiving visitors sitting in the shade on one side of the broad, airy atrium. Her salutatio was well attended, as was only to be expected. Many wanted to be admitted and recognized by a woman who was the daughter of one of the reigning Emperors and sister of the other. Few were deterred by her reputation as a cold, censorious bitch. It was said she had got worse since Maximinus had executed her husband Junius Balbus, the ineffectual governor of Syria Coele, the previous year.

The crowd eddied forward. Romans of the elite did not queue. They were brought up to dally politely. Timesitheus and Tranquillina paused by a massive, half-finished sarcophagus standing in the middle of the atrium. Tranquillina smoothed the folds of her husband’s toga. Screened by the sarcophagus, she slyly ran a hand over his crotch, squeezed his prick. She grinned up at him.

By some unspoken agreement, their turn arrived to greet the mistress of the Domus Rostrata.

‘Health and great joy, Domina,’ Timesitheus said.

Yet another oily manumitted slave whispered to Maecia Faustina. She gave no sign of noticing her freedman Gaudianus. Necessary though it might be, to acknowledge that she needed to be reminded of her visitors’ names would be a breach of etiquette.

‘Health and great joy. It is a pleasure to welcome Gaius Furius Sabinius Timesitheus Aquila and his wife to our house.’ Her tone belied her words.

‘We are all praying for the speedy and safe arrival of our noble Emperors,’ Timesitheus said.

Maecia Faustina inclined her head. ‘They are safe in the hands of the gods.’

‘May I say, the city is full of your praise. The imperial dignity becomes you.’

Neither the graceful words, nor Timesitheus’ most winning smile, softened her forbidding demeanour.

‘Duty not ambition called my father and brother to the throne. We must all do our duty, but such prominence comes at a price. I desired nothing but the solitude of a widow, to mourn my husband, and raise my son to live a virtuous life. The finest praise a woman can have is not to be talked about.’

Tranquillina spoke in the low voice of a modest young matron. ‘The sarcophagus will be a fitting memorial to your husband. What will the sculptures represent?’

Maecia Faustina gazed over the heads of the throng at the great part-worked block of marble. ‘Balbus’ procession as Consul. A reminder of him in happier days.’

‘Who are the other men?’

‘His closest friends in the Senate. Men of the highest rank and virtus, many of them also victims of the tyrant.’

‘Will your son be depicted?’

‘No, it is enough for him to have to have examples of such ancestral virtue before his eyes as he grows out of childhood. The man at Balbus’ right hand is Serenianus, the governor of Cappadocia, his amicus murdered by the Thracian.’

Maecia Faustina was more animated, her voice softer. Superfluous to the conversation, Timesitheus glided away.

The colonnade around the open space was decorated with a famous painting of a wild-beast hunt. Long ago, Gordian the Elder had commissioned the panels to commemorate the games he had given when he held the office of Aedile. Timesitheus stood in an attitude of appreciation. Under his gaze, innumerable stags with antlers shaped like the palm of a hand met their end. His thoughts wandered as he counted them; twenty, fifty, a hundred.

Women were harder to fathom than men. He had never been as good at reading them, at winning their trust. Yet the gods knew, he should have been. His stepmother had provided him with an early training. His mother had been dead a year when she had come into the house. He was thirteen. She had not been an evil stepmother of myth. She had not tried to seduce him, murder him, or trick his father into cursing him with a false accusation of attempted rape. No bull from the sea had smashed him to death as he rode in his chariot. Not that his father’s patrimony had extended to chariots. No, their relationship had been a low-intensity conflict; a war of small ambushes and raids, of petty deceptions and diplomatic truces soon betrayed. He had not liked the half-brother she produced, but he had not hated him. Of course she would never believe that it had been an accident. The boy had always been boastful and proud. It was such pride that had undone him. Timesitheus had been home on leave between military commands, and the boy had challenged him to a swimming race. The currents in the straits off Kassiope were notorious. Timesitheus could not have saved him. He had nearly drowned himself.

One hundred and fifty stags, two hundred. Perhaps it was the life they led that made women so hard to understand, so much more difficult to manipulate. Unable to hold office, or make a mark in the world, never tasting success. Confined in the house; if they went out at all, it was under the watchful eyes of a custos and a maid. Their desires and ambitions so unimaginably narrow and pointless. Unless, of course, they were Tranquillina.

His wife was still talking to Maecia Faustina. Pity the child brought up in the joyless care of that dried-up old widow, with stern moral lessons and mementoes of death wherever he looked.

Timesitheus scanned the crowded atrium. He had hoped to find Menophilus, Valerian or Pupienus: the men at the heart of the emerging administration of the Gordiani. But they were not relatives, and there was no call for them to attend the salutatio. They would be busy making plans, in meetings from which Timesitheus was still excluded. In the far corner, Maecius Gordianus, second-cousin of the hostess, was holding court. Timesitheus went over, and greeted the Prefect of the Watch.

‘My congratulations, the city is safe, now your vigiles are back on the streets, and Pupienus has sent the Urban Cohorts into the Subura to arrest the worst troublemakers.’

Maecius Gordianus laughed. ‘Without your help, how would he have known where to find them. It is a lesson. Around you we must all watch what escapes the prison of our teeth.’

The various clients sniggered.

Timesitheus again arranged his face. ‘If one’s thoughts are virtuous, there is no fear our unguarded words are dangerous.’

Tranquillina came up and spoke to the Prefect of the Watch. ‘We saw Brundisinus the other day. When your brother takes the toga of manhood, women will besiege him. He has your family’s looks.’

She was standing just a little too close to Maecius Gordianus, smiling up at him with her very dark eyes. The Prefect beamed down at her. Timesitheus stowed his jealousy deep in the hold of his mind. Tranquillina was not wanton, not with other men, she did nothing without calculation. They needed the friendship of this kinsman of the Emperors. Timesitheus himself had failed to win it. She would not go too far. Timesitheus moved away.

All governments were oligarchies behind the façade. A Greek Polis like Corcyra claimed to be a democracy. Yet power resided with a few dozen rich landowners, who monopolized all the magistracies and kept the poor out of both Council and Assembly with property qualifications. Rome was a monarchy only lacking the name in Latin. But an autocrat can not rule alone. Unless it was in front of him, he only knew what he was told. His friends decided what he heard, what was put under his nose. The question was how to penetrate that inner circle.

Timesitheus had proved himself of use to the new regime. To quell the unrest of the plebs urbana, he had released a huge amount of grain from the public warehouses. Much of that surplus had been marked for his own profit. Using contacts such as the young cut-purse Castricius, he had summoned up a mob so that Menophilus could drive out and liquidate Sabinus. Promptly handing over the names and domiciles of those same men had made it easy for Pupienus to arrest them, and at a stroke ended all rioting in the streets.

He had applied himself in the interest of the Gordiani, advancing various plans that could win the civil war, perhaps end it before the fighting began. His friend Axius Aelianus, the Procurator of Dacia, might be induced to overthrow the governor of that province, and thus take control of an army that could threaten Maximinus from the rear. He had suggested that the new regime might bring pressure on those officers serving in the North by seizing their relatives in Rome, especially the children being taught at the imperial school on the Palatine. Similarly both the Praetorians and the men of the 2nd Parthian Legion had left families at their Italian bases, respectively in Rome and in the Alban Hills. Even soldiers were not so heartless as to ignore the safety of their loved ones.

More direct actions might spare Italy the horrors of internecine strife. As Prefect of the Heavy Cavalry with the field army, Timesitheus’ own cousin Sabinus Modestus was well placed to strike down the tyrant. Privately, Timesitheus doubted this scheme would succeed, but it was more than worth the risk to his dim-witted relative. More inventive was the plan involving his friend Catius Celer. The Senator was regarded with suspicion in Rome because his brother Clemens had been instrumental in putting Maximinus on the throne. What would be more natural in the eyes of the tyrant than Celer fleeing to the North. In his train, as a stable boy or the like, would go Castricius. The knife-boy would have no choice but to try and kill Maximinus. Now, as a prisoner, his future held only the cross or the mines. Should Castricius succeed, and, by some miracle, survive the aftermath, he would be richly rewarded.

Menophilus and Pupienus had looked askance at all the suggestions. They had said such things ran against the ways of their ancestors. The mos maiorum could countenance nothing so underhand. Menophilus had dredged up ancient history. The Senate had rejected offers to assassinate enemies such as Pyrrhus and Arminius. Which was rich, coming from a man who, recently having stabbed one opponent with a sword, had beaten the next to death with the leg of a chair.

Timesitheus had not spared himself on their behalf. They had rejected his proposals, and he had received nothing for what he had accomplished. He had not added the Prefecture of the Praetorians, or even the Watch, to that of the Grain Supply. He had not been admitted to the small inner circle of the unofficial oligarchy. Half-promises of the command of the fleet at Ravenna or Misenum, vague hints about the Prefecture of Egypt, some time in the future, were not enough.

What galled Timesitheus most was that he seemed to have no choice but to persevere. Maximinus had sentenced him to death. Changing sides was not an option. Thracians were strangers to mercy or forgiveness. Maximinus was most unlikely to remit the death penalty, let alone invest him with high command, embrace him with friendship, should he suddenly ride into his camp. And, worst of all, Timesitheus thought it most likely that Maximinus would prevail.

With the thought came fear. Timesitheus heard the scrabble of its claws, felt its moist breath at his throat. He walked away from his wife. He needed to be on his own, somewhere he could face down the rodent, stare back into its flat, black eyes.

The rear colonnade was deserted. Timesitheus leant his back against a column. There had to be a way out. A bold stroke to cut the apt image of the Gordian knot. Perhaps Egypt could provide the answer. Annianus the Prefect there had been appointed by Maximinus. Rome needed Egyptian grain. Without it, the plebs would riot. Annianus could make the city ungovernable. Persuade Menophilus of that danger. Timesitheus must go there now to replace Annianus. Who better than the Praefectus Annonae to secure the supply? Once there he would have soldiers, not just auxiliaries, but also the 2nd Legion Traiana Fortis. There were another two legions in Mesopotamia with his friend Priscus. Two more in Syria Palestina under Priscus’ brother-in-law, weak old Severinus. Priscus had flirted with revolt before. No matter who won in the West, Maximinus or the Gordiani, the army of the East could challenge them. Invest a pliable Senator with the purple. Severinus might serve. Tranquillina would approve. She would become not just the wife of a friend of Caesar, but of the man who had put him on the throne.

A small movement behind him in the lararium made him whirl around. It was just a boy, no older than nine or ten. He looked frightened. Toy soldiers were spread across the floor of the household shrine.

Timesitheus smiled, and walked over slowly, as he did approaching a nervous horse.

‘I was not doing anything wrong,’ the boy said.

‘No.’ Timesitheus squatted down by the toys. ‘May I pick them up?’

The boy nodded. ‘My mother told me not to be seen playing. She said people would think me a baby.’ He was older than he first appeared, perhaps eleven or twelve, and had a slight lisp.

Timesitheus peered at a wooden soldier. ‘The 10th Legion?’

‘No, the 2nd Augusta. The thunderbolts on the shield are very similar.’

‘They are well-painted. Better than I managed when I was your age. Did you paint them yourself?’

‘No, my mother says it is not suitable for a boy of a noble family. My uncle Gordian gave them to me.’

‘Perhaps when he returns to Rome, he will give you some more.’

‘I think he will be too busy, now he is Emperor.’ The boy said the last with pride.

‘Would you like me to bring you some?’

‘I can not accept gifts from strangers.’

‘I will ask your mother. My name is Timesitheus.’

‘I am Marcus Junius Balbus.’

Timesitheus grinned. ‘I know.’

The boy looked past Timesitheus, and shrank back.

‘Junius Balbus, you are late for your instruction in ethics. Your mother paid a great deal of money for the philosopher. He is waiting.’ The voice of the freedman became peevish. ‘Your mother told you not to play with those childish things in public. Next year, you will take the toga virilis.’

Timesitheus stood, and faced Montanus. ‘It is my fault. I asked the boy to show me the soldiers.’

‘Nevertheless, he has disobeyed an instruction. He must be punished.’

‘It was my doing,’ Timesitheus said. ‘He should not be punished.’

The freedman bridled. ‘You presume to dictate how the house of the Gordiani conducts itself?’

Timesitheus stepped up to Montanus. The freedman went to move back. Timesitheus took him by both shoulders, put his face very close, spoke quietly. ‘You know who I am. You know what happened to Magnus, what happened to Valerius Apollinaris. Crushing something like you, an ex-slave who has forgotten his place, an ex-slave with scars on his back and his arse still gaping, is nothing more to me than stepping on a snail. The boy’s mother need not be informed. If I hear that he has been punished, I will come for you. Believe me, I do not make idle threats.’

Montanus staggered a little, when released.

Timesitheus arranged his face into an open smile, turned back to the boy. ‘Farewell, Marcus. I hope to see you again.’

‘Farewell, Misitheus.’ The boy blushed. ‘I am sorry, some names are hard to pronounce.’

‘No need to apologize. Misitheus sounds a better man than Timesitheus.’