Blood and Steel

Chapter 47

Africa

Carthage,

Ten days after the Ides of March, AD238

The sea was calm. The galley was waiting off the commercial harbour. He could still escape.

He would have to be quick. Capelianus’ auxiliaries and the Moorish tribesmen had almost finished hacking down the throng that clogged the gates. Soon they would be inside the walls. When the raping and massacre began in the city, the more intelligent, the more avaricious, would make for the Palace.

For a time, he had hoped his son was alive, somehow had escaped death. If only he would ride up, defeated, but bloody and glorious. It had been the hope of a fool, of a young man. Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus, recently, to his cost, hailed Romanus and Africanus and Augustus as well, was over eighty, and, whatever some may have called him in his long life, he had never considered himself a fool.

His son lay dead on the battlefield, on that dreadful plain where all their hopes had died. Gordian had watched from the battlements; the trap that failed, the cowardice of the levies — when had the Africans ever shown anything more? — the desertion of the legionaries, and that final doomed charge. He had watched until that last knot of men had been butchered. No one, not even his son, could have survived.

As the carriage had brought him back to the Palace, the plebs had shouted insults, blamed him for their plight. They did not see it was the other way about, and all the imprecations in the world would not save them. Anyway, the plebs were ever fickle, not worth considering.

There was still time to get down to the port. But there was no point. His son was dead. Some might say that he should think of Maecia Faustina and his grandson. But if he reached Rome, there would be nothing he could do to defend them. They would be in less danger without his presence. He had never cared for his daughter, and the child was a stranger. All the love he possessed had gone to his son. Perhaps love is a finite quality. Some might squander it on acquaintances, he had given it all to his son. And his son was dead.

He should not fear suicide. He was old. Many old men had taken their lives. If it was done, not in despair, but with self-control, after rational consideration, it was a praiseworthy end. In Pliny’s Letters, Corellius Rufus had starved himself to death in the face of gathering pain and debility. Pliny had held him up as an example.

In the stern mos maiorum, a defeated general should seek death at the hands of the enemy, or turn his blade upon himself. His son had done the former — could he really be dead? — now it remained for Gordian to take the latter path. Even Varus, when his foolishness had led three legions to their deaths in the forests of Germania, had won a measure of posthumous redemption, when he fell on his sword.

Gordian had never shared his son’s certainty that there was no afterlife. There could be no delight greater than walking in the Elysian Fields, reunited with his son. But would the gods admit one who had denied their existence? And he was far from sure his own limited virtues would earn him entrance to those flower-jewelled meadows. His youth had been marked by arrogance, vanity, ambition, and lust. None but the last had been tempered by age. Yet there were no greater vices against his name, and his life had been untainted by any terrible act of cruelty or impiety. He doubted he deserved eternal torment. If he went, as most did, to Hades, he could drink the waters of Lethe, and all would be forgotten. If his son was right, they would both sleep peacefully for ever.

If he took his life now, perhaps his daughter and her son would be spared, perhaps the house of the Gordiani would continue. It might be his descendants would still look on the fine paintings of the Domus Rostrata, walk the marble halls of the villa on the Via Praenestina. Given the nature of Maximinus, it seemed unlikely.

With hindsight, he should have devoted himself to death before the battle. Long ago, the Decii, father and son, had made a compact with the gods. They had offered their lives in return for the victory of their armies. But that had been long ago, when the world was young, when the gods were closer. At his age, an old man tottering towards the enemy might have invited not divine admiration, but scorn.

From his point of vantage, a terrace high in the Palace, he could see the Hadrumetum Gate. The Moors were inside. He could see their white tunics, the bright tips of their jave-lins, as they stabbed down from their ponies, into the heads and shoulders of the panic-stricken and unresisting. Time was getting short.

He should try for a good death. Socrates had taken hemlock, a gradual numbness had spread from his feet up through his body. Many Senators wore a ring containing poison. Gordian was not one of them. It would have to be a blade, the Roman way. What was it young Menophilus often said? What is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body. There was no time for the hot bath and the leisurely and uplifting discussion of the immortality of the soul. No time to die like Seneca or Thrasea Paetus.

‘Brennus!’

Gordian called again. His bodyguard did not come.

The terrace was deserted.

‘Brennus!’

Gordian walked inside. The first room was empty, so was the long corridor. His footsteps echoed.

There was no one in the Delphix. Four years as Proconsul of Africa, twenty days since the Senate had acclaimed him Emperor, so many dinner parties in this elegant room. Now someone had stolen the cups and plates and big wine cooler.

He sat on a couch. In the further reaches of the Palace he could hear men moving, like mice behind a wainscot.

‘Emperor.’

It was Valens, his a Cubiculo.

The last person to desert him would be the steward of the bedchamber.

‘Emperor, four loyal slaves wait with the carriage. If we do not delay, we can still get you to the ship.’

A momentary surge of relief, of joy, like a servant spared a beating. No, to prolong his life was cowardice. His arrival in Rome would seal the death sentence on his daughter and grandson.

‘Valens, take this ring. Go to the ship, go to Rome. Tell Menophilus and Valerian, our other friends, to look to their safety. Tell my daughter …’

Tell her what? Since her mother had died, their minds had been closed to each other.

‘Tell her we died well.’

‘Emperor …’

‘Now go. Obey my final command.’

When Valens had gone, Gordian went to his bedchamber. It was undisturbed. He had a sharp sword, long since prepared. It should have been wielded by Brennus. But Brennus had gone.

He tested the edge with his thumb. A bright spot of blood. Razor sharp. The ivory hilt looked incongruous in his age-spotted hands.

All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals. He had a sudden urge to rush after Valens. Ridiculous, the a Cubiculo would be long gone. He would not suffer the fate of Galba or Vitellius; an old man, a deposed Emperor, dragged through the streets, stripped naked, tortured. He hefted the sword.

When the friends of Cato had bound up his wounds, urged him to live, the philosopher had ripped open the stitches, torn out his entrails with his bare hands. Cato had died slowly, in agony. Gordian threw away the sword. He could not face the steel.

He took off his belt, looked around. Nothing of use. He went back into the dining room. Taking one of the upright chairs on which the women and children sat, he dragged it under a beam. The belt was too short.

He stood uncertain, panic rising. Men were shouting somewhere in the Palace.

The curtains were held back by a long rope, ornamental, but thick. He looped it over the beam, tied one end to a pillar. He clambered up onto the chair. He fashioned a noose, put it over his head, checked and tightened the knot.

There would be no one to catch his last breath, close his eyes, call his name. It did not matter.

Let me at least not die without a struggle, inglorious, but do some big thing first, that men to come shall know of it. Time would tell.

He thought of his son. Saw him as a child sleeping, the tousled fair hair, the perfection of the line of his jaw, of his mouth, the beauty of his eyes as they opened and gazed into his own. He kicked away the chair.