Enemy of Rome

XXVIII

‘Valerius!’

The urgent voice seemed to come from very far away, much too far away to bother answering. Better to stay drowned in this tranquil pool where the shadows of past failure caused you no pain. ‘Valerius, you must come.’ More insistent now, and accompanied by an uncomfortable feeling of responsibility that made the pool shimmer and the shadows withdraw. With the greatest reluctance, he swam upwards, towards the mirror surface, and opened his eyes.

‘How long have I been sleeping?’

‘Long enough,’ Serpentius snapped.

‘I told you …’

‘They’re burning Cremona.’

‘What?’ He rolled off the cot as the Spaniard reached for his sculpted breastplate. ‘No time for that.’ He picked up his sash of office. ‘Just help me with this and strap on my sword.’ He waited impatiently until Serpentius had carried out his instructions. ‘Is my horse ready?’

‘The groom is saddling it now. I-’

Valerius was already on the way out. ‘Bring my cloak and you can tell me on the way.’

He emerged from the tent to see black smoke hanging over the city like a funeral pall. Bright pricks of flame and bursts of sparks erupted from burning buildings inside the walls. They set off at a gallop and reined in outside the shattered south gate of the entrenchment to be met by a visibly shaken Claudius Ferox.

The young tribune pointed towards the scattered corpses of friend and foe lying in small huddles around the entrance. ‘After the Third took the gate we had the usual slaughter, but when the Vitellians started to throw down their swords our lads seemed happy enough to let them surrender.’

Valerius nodded. Serpentius had given him the details on the way. How the trouble started when a few men had retreated to the city and closed the gates and a few of the braver townsfolk thought they were safe to shout insults from the walls. They’d been cleared away by a flight of arrows before Primus took the surrender of the city and all the units in the Padus valley. ‘What I don’t understand is how in the name of the gods it could lead to this.’ He swept a hand towards the great tower of smoke hanging over Cremona.

‘It was the Thirteenth, sir,’ Ferox looked sheepish, ‘and I’m afraid a few of ours got involved too. They were searching the tents for any loot that was hidden inside, digging up below the hearths in case someone had used them to hide his gold. You remember the Thirteenth thought they’d been badly treated after the surrender at Bedriacum?’ Valerius grunted acknowledgement. During his trial for cowardice and treason, Aquila had tormented him with the stories of the indignities that his legion had suffered. ‘The worst of it was a centurion who roared and wept, snarling at the townsfolk about some women — the Thirteenth’s women — who’d been rounded up and locked in a barn then burned to death. Well, his tent-mates weren’t having that. They were hungry and they’d have their fill of what Cremona could offer, aye, and the rest. General Primus was gone by now, and their officers didn’t dare stop them …’

‘So they went on a looting spree,’ Valerius predicted as they walked their horses through the lanes of flattened tents, past dead bodies and parts of bodies. The sickly-sweet scent of early putrescence was familiar enough, but Valerius would never become accustomed to it. In the distance his ears detected a low murmur punctuated by howls of delight and high-pitched screams. ‘That’s all in the past. I need to know what’s happening now,’ he persisted.

Ferox shifted uneasily in the saddle. ‘As soon as they charged inside, the rest followed them, including ours, and even some of the Vitellians they’d been fighting. At first all they wanted was food and drink, but you know how these things escalate, sir; soon food wasn’t enough.’

Valerius could imagine it all too well. A wine shop, its door battered in and the contents poured down the throats of men who hadn’t had a wine ration for a week. Some poor bastard trying to protect his property or his women. The next thing he’s lying weeping amongst the blue-veined coils of his own guts and his women are naked and on their backs. Oh, and just for good measure we’ll burn his house down for his insolence.

After the tents they came to ramshackle houses of the city suburbs that had been served the same way, contents spread on the streets, doors and shutters ripped off. They were close enough now to hear the crackle of burning timber and the roar of flames fanned by the brisk breeze. Thick black smoke billowed and rolled above the city walls. A few men of the Seventh stood uneasily by the gate or slumped against the wall staring into the distance. Valerius dismounted and handed his reins to Ferox. ‘Round up any stragglers from the Seventh, Claudius, and send them back to camp. All plunder to be kept in a common fund. We’ll decide what happens to it later.’ The young tribune nodded, and Valerius turned to Serpentius. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ With the Spaniard in the lead, they walked through the gate, prepared for a scene worthy of the deepest pit in Hades.

It was quiet enough close to the entrance, and they soon discovered why. The houses had been spared the torch, but their occupants hadn’t been offered the same mercy. They lay in the streets, or half in and half out of their homes, blood spilling from cut throats and smashed skulls to run in scarlet streams to the central drain. Men, women and children; none had been spared. Their lifeless bodies were surrounded by shards of shattered red-glazed pottery that sparkled like rubies in the sunlight. The two men passed a house where a couch hung haphazardly from an upstairs window with the corpse of a grey-haired woman draped head down beside it. A little further ahead, they came upon a group of legionaries drinking outside a burning shop. The soldiers seemed oblivious of the bodies scattered around them, and ignored the little dark-haired girl tugging at her dead mother’s stola. A few eyes were drawn briefly to the sash signalling Valerius’s rank, but none of the men acknowledged either it or its owner.

Serpentius was silent as they marched through the carnage, but Valerius sensed the pent-up frustration in the Spaniard. Eventually the former gladiator turned to him. ‘Why are we here if we aren’t trying to stop this?’

‘I can’t bring the dead back to life,’ the Roman said wearily. ‘But I need to understand what happened here and why. If we get the opportunity to intervene without getting our throats cut, we will, but leave the decision to me.’

Serpentius answered with a grunt that might have been acquiescence and might not. By now, whole streets were in flames and choking smoke filled the air. Broken tiles fell from a building up ahead and by tacit agreement they turned up a narrow side street. It seemed to have been left unscathed and Valerius thought it might eventually lead them to the Forum. Even here intermittent gusts of heat hit them from openings between the buildings. Halfway along a prancing blood-soaked figure staggered from a doorway waving a pilum with something spitted on the point. Valerius’s gorge rose as he recognized the corpse of a small baby, the tiny arms and legs flapping lifelessly as the drunken legionary swung the spear in circles. He took a step towards the man, but Serpentius was already past him. Without a word the Spaniard kicked the soldier between the legs and grabbed him by the ear flaps of his helm to smash his head against the red brick wall. As his victim collapsed, Serpentius retained his grip. He hammered again and again, making the brass helmet ring like a bell until the crown was crumpled metal and blood poured from the legionary’s ears and nose. With a grunt of disgust he dropped the body on to the cobbles.

He turned to Valerius. ‘I knew what your decision was going to be before you did.’ He walked to where the spear lay and tugged it free from the tiny corpse. With surprising tenderness he picked up the child’s body and carried it into the nearest house. When the Spaniard re-emerged Valerius glanced back the way they’d come. He thought he saw something jerk back from the entrance to the street. The sight stirred some memory, but he dismissed it.

‘I think we should get out of here.’ The soldier was still alive, but Valerius doubted he would be for long. Short breaths bubbled from his bloody nose and his eyes were rolled back in his head. They stepped over the body. ‘This place makes me feel dirty.’

Closer to the centre, where the inhabitants had been driven like cattle, more houses were burning and screams and cries for mercy came from every direction. A naked woman, tall and heavy-breasted, ran round a corner fifty paces in front of them. Long dark hair flowed over her shoulders and blood covered her thighs. A heartbeat later a jeering crowd of a dozen legionaries appeared. The terrified woman was blind to anything but escape. As they watched she caught her foot on the corpse of a bearded elder who lay in her path with his skull smashed. She fell with a shriek a few paces from Valerius and he instinctively went to her aid, freeing his cloak with his left hand. She cowered away, shaking with terror. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I can help you.’ The suspicion remained, and confusion and fear filled her eyes, but she stayed still and he was able to wrap the cloak around her.

‘Yes,’ he heard Serpentius say. ‘Try it. There’s nothing I’d like better.’

Valerius looked up to see the woman’s pursuers lined up across the road, eyes wild and breathing hard. They looked like a herd of racing antelope halted by the sight of a leopard. Serpentius faced them down, his long sword in his hand and death in his eyes. Valerius waited, ready for the inevitable confrontation, but the men looked at each other and then at the Spaniard. A moment of decision was reached and all the threat faded from them.

Valerius rose to his feet. ‘If you want her, come and get her.’ His voice was as much of a challenge as Serpentius’s sword. ‘But she won’t come cheap.’ Among the men a pair of eyes widened at the sight of the wooden fist and the sash that marked the commander of the Seventh Galbiana. Valerius choked back his anger as he recognized their owner, but his voice remained as cold as a Silurian’s heart. ‘Genialis, second rank first century, First cohort, isn’t it? What are you doing here, boy? We have work to do back at camp. Tomorrow we will march on Rome. Rome, do you hear? Not this provincial backwater.’ He looked from Genialis to the woman at his feet and shook his head. ‘What are you doing here, boy?’ he repeated.

They stared at him shamefaced and he recognized more of them, all from the First cohort. ‘Yes, your legate is here. But he struggles to recognize the men he led into battle this morning.’ Anger and frustration filled him to overflowing and his voice shook with fury. ‘Men? Not men: vagabonds and thieves, defilers of women. Have you no sisters? Mothers? Is there no discipline in my legion? Where is your centurion? Where is your primus pilus? You are not a legion, you are a rabble. Gather up your comrades and go back to the lines. This is done, do you hear me? As long as Seventh Galbiana is my legion you will be warriors. Warriors, not murderers. Soldiers, not civilian street rats driven mad by the first sniff of a woman. Fools. Today you won eternal glory, but with this act you condemn your legion to eternal shame. Are you killers of soldiers, or killers of innocents? Now is the time to decide. Genialis? March these men back to the camp and collect as many more as you can. Make sure your actions from now on reflect the honour you won this morning and not the shame of the last hour. Now get out of my sight!’

When they were gone, he felt utterly drained. Serpentius helped the sobbing woman to the nearest intact house and told her to stay inside until the soldiers had gone.

‘Is this what it’s come to?’ Valerius asked wearily when he returned.

The Spaniard turned to him with a bark of bitter laughter. ‘Have you been blind all these years, Valerius? Have you not seen what I have seen? This is Rome. When Rome marches into your town or your village this is what it brings. Slaughter and fire and rape. Rome first enslaves you, then it strips you bare with its little lists that calculate your wealth down to the last egg and its bland, pitiless tax collectors who leave you with just enough not to starve. And when you say Enough, as any man of honour must, they send you.’ His eyes burned with a passion Valerius had never witnessed, even in battle. The Roman remembered weeping Catuvellauni wives and smouldering African villages and felt ashamed. Serpentius sensed it. The feral features hardened and he nodded his scarred head. ‘Yes, you, Valerius, you and Genialis and animals like Brocchus. It does not matter if one man, or even ten, feels the slightest compassion for those they enslave and they rob, because you are part of a legion — like a small cog in the wheel that turns a baker’s millstone — and a legion is merciless. This troubles you because it is Roman killing and raping Roman. It troubled you less when it was Roman killing the Helvetii or the Armenians who stole our horses on the way to the Cepha gap. No Roman mourned the family of Serpentius when Avala ran with blood.’

Valerius looked anew at the man who had shared a thousand dangers with him. He’d become so used to having Serpentius at his side that he sometimes forgot he wasn’t a Roman. In that moment he wanted to apologize for every death caused by a legionary sword and every innocent led away in chains. But fine words would change nothing. ‘A long speech for someone who is normally reluctant even to confirm his name.’ He said it lightly, seeking refuge in jest.

‘It cannot be unsaid.’

‘I would not wish it unsaid.’ Valerius shook his head. ‘You are right. I have been blind.’

‘Then let us leave the city now,’ the Spaniard urged. ‘There’s nothing else we can do here.’

‘No.’ Valerius’s tone cemented the decision. ‘I can be blind no longer. I must see the rest.’

If anything, the rest was worse.

With every step closer to Cremona’s centre, the smoke clogging their throats thickened and the bodies carpeting the streets became more numerous. Individual legionaries fought each other for gold looted from shops and temples. A crucified tavern keeper hung limp from the shutters of his smouldering crossroads inn, his throat mercifully cut after he’d revealed the location of his savings. They met groups of soldiers carrying bundles of plunder wrapped in blankets or whatever came to hand. A few laughed and joked among themselves, but most had the thoughtful, confused look of men in a trance. Valerius exchanged glances with Serpentius and the Spaniard shrugged. It was a sign of how unmanageable they’d become that not one took notice of the senior officer who walked among them. Why became clear when the two men finally entered Cremona’s forum. This was where the bulk of the townsfolk had fled. And where they’d died. They lay in their hundreds, bodies piled high on the marble paving where they’d once stood to listen to the councillors of the ordo, men of consequence and power who now lay cheek to cheek with night soil carriers and harlots and the shopkeepers they’d despised. Streaks of blood on the white marble steps showed where they’d been dragged from their hiding places in the colonnaded temples.

Those temples, now wreathed in flame and billowing smoke, had been put to the torch, but not before they’d been plundered. The city’s treasures had been gathered on the far side of the Forum, close to the steps of the blazing basilica. Statuary, carvings, fine furniture and wooden chests that Valerius knew must contain the temple gold all lay in orderly piles. He noted that they were guarded by a wary group of legionaries very different from those who staggered drunkenly among the burning buildings. Every man was a member of Marcus Antonius Primus’s personal bodyguard.

‘I’ve seen enough.’

They walked back through the blood-spattered streets, each wrapped in his own thoughts. ‘What happens now?’ Serpentius asked eventually.

Valerius considered for a moment before replying. ‘We rest and resupply, I suppose. Then Rome.’

The Spaniard looked to his right, where another of Cremona’s countless corpses hung from the window of what had once been his home. ‘Will it be like this when we get there?’

Valerius turned sharply to the Spaniard, his eyes bleak. ‘Do you think I would allow this to happen to Rome?’