Enemy of Rome

L

‘Come, child, this is no time for delay.’

Galeria Fundana’s urgent tones dragged Domitia Longina Corbulo from the cocoon of her thoughts. The Augusta stood in the doorway, with an arm around Lucius. The boy’s eyes were filled with a mixture of fear and excitement, as if this were some mildly perilous game rather than a matter of life and death. The massive bulk of Aulus Vitellius hovered protectively over them, his face pale as an alabaster statue. Vitellius hadn’t shaved for a week and his cheeks were dark with stubble as if he was in mourning. In the distance Domitia could hear a muted buzz, occasionally punctuated by a shout and the frightening sound of the clash of arms.

‘She is right, my dear. You will be safer in our villa on the Aventine than in the Golden House,’ the Emperor said.

‘But Valerius …’ She shook her head. It was unthinkable that she leave without seeing him. He’d promised he would come for her and she must have the faith to wait.

‘He would have been here if he could, my lady.’ She turned in surprise to see Serpentius in the doorway, a look of weary resignation on his scarred features.

‘Where is-’

‘Safe. As safe as any of us are,’ the Spaniard assured her as gently as his nature allowed. ‘That must be enough for you.’

‘He will have been delayed by the confusion on the streets,’ Vitellius suggested. ‘If the gods will it, he will find you before this is over.’ She stared at him. Did he believe it was possible? She thought of the scarred features, and the eyes that had seen too much war. Gaius Valerius Verrens had survived the Temple of Claudius, the defeat at Bedriacum and the victory at Cremona. If any man could live through this it would be Valerius. The shouts grew more insistent and Vitellius paused as a guard appeared at his shoulder and whispered something his ear. Domitia saw a flinch of anguish, but he kept his features composed. ‘Please,’ he insisted. ‘It is your duty to look after Lucius. We must not delay.’

Duty. The word had followed her since she was eight years old, prodding and insisting. ‘A Corbulo does not have the luxury of choice,’ her father had said. ‘Only duty.’

‘Very well,’ she nodded. ‘Come, Lucius,’ she forced a smile as she took the boy’s hand, ‘we will count the sparrows on the way.’

Aulus Vitellius accompanied his family to the carriage that would carry them to safety and watched them ride away. Galeria stared rigidly ahead and little Lucius was already fascinated by the game Domitia Longina Corbulo had invented. Valerius’s Spanish comrade trotted by their side and he was glad the former gladiator would be there to protect them. He should have sent them earlier, he knew, but the truth was he couldn’t bear to be parted from them. Galeria Fundana was his strength, the rock that anchored him to his duty when the call of decadence became too loud to resist. Lucius was his reason for existing. He felt a fat tear trickle down his cheek. He had failed them. Utterly. He had promised to protect them, but now he had sent them out on to the perilous streets of a city under siege. Why? Because when the soldiers came the danger on the street would be infinitely less than here in this great glittering mausoleum. Alone at last — he’d sent all his guards and courtiers with Galeria — he wandered the echoing marble corridors, with their busts and their artworks, his legs shaking with fear and anticipation of what was to come. What did they matter now, all these shining baubles and this overwhelming sumptuousness that threatened to entomb him? When he’d been in debt he dreamed of a palace like this, but like the man who built it he’d been a fool. Vespasian was welcome to it — all of it. Better to have lived on bread and olives than come to an end such as this. He found himself in the entrance hall, with the enormous golden statue of Nero towering over him. He’d never replaced the head, but … His hand went to his neck. Would they? The Praetorians had sent him the head of Titus Flavius Sabinus and he had cringed from its accusing, glassy-eyed stare. The image triggered a new wave of panic. Vitellius staggered through to his private quarters, almost running now and with his heart thundering in his chest. The doors were locked, but he flung his weight at them, bursting them open. There, on the table, Caesar’s sword. He reached for it with shaking fingers and heard the acclamation of the legions as they proclaimed him Emperor at Moguntiacum. CAESAR! CAESAR! CAESAR!

He’d never called himself Caesar, though other men had, but he’d carried Caesar’s sword. Now he pulled it from its scabbard with that soft, familiar hiss. And almost dropped it. He had never seen it like this before, that gleaming, dangerous edge and the needle point. No longer an ornament, but a weapon of war. A killing weapon. How he wished Valerius were here. Valerius would know. Valerius would help him make the final decision. Tentatively, he raised his head and brought the point up to touch the folds of flesh at his throat. One thrust was all it would take. One thrust and it was over. But what if he botched it? Men took hours to die, sometimes days, with a wound like that. Could he bear it? No, there must be another way. He heard a childish mewing and felt a rush of revulsion when he realized it was from his own lips. You are still the Emperor of Rome, the rebuke was a silent scream, for your family’s sake and your ancestors’, act like one. He raised the point again, closing his eyes as the cold metal brushed the pulsing artery in his neck. One thrust. Shouts and the clatter of running hobnailed feet, skidding at the doorway. Do it now.

‘You don’t get away that easily.’ Rough hands tore the hilt of Caesar’s sword from his fingers, nicking his skin in the process. He willed himself to open his eyes and witness his bane, but the lids wouldn’t obey his mind.

‘Look at that,’ someone else laughed. ‘Caesar’s pissed himself.’

‘Don’t bother about that, search him, and do it properly. There’s enough of him — who knows what he’s got hidden away under all that blubber?’

More laughter as they tore at his clothing, dragging his toga back and tearing at his tunic. Vitellius felt a wave of revulsion and humiliation as the toga dropped away and fingers probed at him. Finally, one of his captors grabbed his hands and wrenched them behind his back, the rope cutting deep into his wrists and making him cry out in pain. Another tied a second length of rope in a loose noose around his neck. Vitellius had an image of a bull being led to the sacrifice and his eyes snapped open in terror. Not even in his most terrible nightmares had he imagined it would be like this.

Ten or twelve soldiers were in the room. Most of them stared in bewildered amusement at the corpulent figure who had been their Emperor, while the others tore at cabinets and moved furniture in search of loot. Their leader, a blood-spattered centurion with a horror of a face, held Caesar’s sword in one hand and the end of the noose rope in the other. The Emperor flinched as he jerked it sharply forward.

‘Where’s the treasure?’ he demanded in a guttural southern accent.

Aulus Vitellius raised his chins and looked down his nose at his captors, and attempted to regain some kind of dignity. ‘There is treasure all around you in this house. Take what you will; I have no further use for it.’

‘Statues, paintings,’ the man spat. ‘An idol the size of an insula that isn’t even made of proper gold. I mean portable treasure: money, ornaments, jewellery. The Golden House is supposed to be full of the stuff, chests of golden aurei and rubies as big as my fist.’

‘A myth,’ Vitellius lied. ‘What little money and jewels were in the house went with the Praetorians when they withdrew to the Castra Praetoria. Perhaps you should look for it there?’ The truth was that the wagon carrying Galeria had been fitted with a false bottom. Hopefully, his loyal guards would be burying the chests it held in the garden of the Aventine house. He had no time to enjoy this minor triumph before the centurion delivered a back-handed slap to his cheek that made his eyes water and the tears run again.

‘Old Brocchus has been around long enough to know how to find treasure. You’ll have heard of Cremona?’

‘An infamy.’ Vitellius shook his head. The slaughter of civilians at Cremona had grieved him more than any military defeat.

‘Well, I know a jeweller at Cremona who didn’t have any treasure right up until the minute I rammed a red hot gladius up his arse.’ Brocchus grinned and drew the sword of Julius Caesar and placed the point in Vitellius’s left nostril. ‘We haven’t got a fire to hand,’ he smirked, ‘so how about I start with a few bits and pieces. What’s it to be, the nose or an ear?’

‘You can’t torture him, First,’ interrupted one of the other men. ‘He’s … he was the Emperor. The high-ups are going to want to see him. Maybe even old man Vespasian himself.’

Vitellius felt a moment of knee-trembling hope. He lifted his nostril from the sword point and sniffed. ‘Yes, I have information of the greatest importance for Vespasian. You will be well rewarded if you take me to your senior officers.’

‘He’s hiding something.’ The speaker’s face was poisonous with malignant intent. ‘I think we should roast him until he squeals like the pig he is. We didn’t come here to be fobbed off with a few statues and a fancy sword. No one would ever know.’

‘You could feed a cohort for a month on a pig that size,’ another man laughed.

‘Use him as a table and a century could eat off him with room to spare.’

Vitellius tried not to hear the jibes and the laughter, but each barb stuck deeper than the last, and he almost didn’t hear the reprieve from Brocchus.

‘No, Julius is right. One of you bastards would blab if we killed him. He’s more valuable alive than dead, and I reckon there might be a nice reward for this fancy sword, which, naturally, you’ll all share in.’ The looks told him they didn’t believe it but Brocchus didn’t give a fuck about that. ‘Come on.’ He dragged at the noose and Vitellius was forced to blunder after him, with half the other men following on and the rest continuing to ransack the palace. ‘We’ll take you to the general.’

But Brocchus had underestimated the crowd who’d gathered in the Forum reckoning it was relatively safe to emerge from their homes. Most were just thankful they’d survived, but some blamed Vitellius for what their city had suffered and these crowded round the pitiful procession to witness his humiliation. Brocchus growled at them to stay back, but he wasn’t going to risk angering the mob over a stumbling fat man at the end of a rope. Vitellius was helpless against the spittle that splashed into his face and on to his tunic. Sharp fingers poked into the flesh of his enormous belly and tweaked the coarse hair of his beard. They shouted their hatred in his face and the tears streamed down his cheeks. He wondered that these screaming, contorted faces were the same people who had hailed him as Emperor a few short months ago, and more recently refused to allow him to abdicate the throne. No thought now of the luxuries he’d showered on them, the games and the tax benefits. They were passing through the line of pillars with his statues upon them and he saw that already the mob was preparing to tear them down. Without warning someone tripped him, and he fell to his knees, crying out as the cobbles tore the soft skin of his knees. Brocchus hauled at the rope, almost throttling him as he struggled vainly to rise. Another pair of legs appeared beside the centurion’s and Vitellius looked up into the coldest eyes he had ever seen.

‘I will take responsibility for this prisoner.’ The man held his hand out for the rope. Brocchus opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it. He noted the phalerae that signalled the other’s long service in the Praetorian unit that Aulus Vitellius had disbanded, and the fifteen or twenty stone-faced veterans at his back. ‘He’s mine,’ the officer repeated. Brocchus shrugged and handed over the rope, reflecting that the sword wasn’t a bad trophy and there was plenty more loot out there. He didn’t give the man he’d captured another thought.

Vitellius was hauled to his feet, and the soldiers formed up around him as their officer forced his way through the crowd. The mob stepped back from these hard-eyed men and the abuse faded, but for Vitellius the vision of a sacrificial bull was all the more vivid. His head sank on to his chest, but one of the soldiers drew his sword and slipped the blade under his chin, forcing it upwards. It seemed he must witness every instant of his humiliation. Past the rostrum, where he had tried to save Rome from this very fate, past the beginning of the Clivus Capitolinus, to … his first instinct was to struggle and pull himself away as he realized their destination.

The officer turned. ‘It will be easier for you if you cooperate, but we will drag you if need be.’

‘Please …’

The rope tightened, and he was pulled forward on to the stairs. The Gemonian Stairs. All fight evaporated from him and his heart fluttered like a trapped butterfly. Suddenly everything in his world seemed sharper. He could see the pores on the faces of his escort, the tiny rust pits on their swords and the fibres of their clothing. Every grain on the granite steps appeared visible to him. He looked up, hoping to see the sun, but clouds filled the sky and a light drizzle settled on his face. This was where Titus Flavius Sabinus had died, and he felt a twinge of regret for his old enemy. No man should die like this.

The little procession shambled to a halt and the tribune removed the rope around his neck, staring at him as if he wanted to remember the features for ever. When he was satisfied he spat in Vitellius’s face, so he felt the warm phlegm on his forehead and in his hair. ‘You destroyed my career, ruined my family and ordered my brother’s execution,’ the young man said, as if it explained everything that was about to happen.

‘Yes,’ Vitellius agreed, ‘but I was your Emperor and it was my right. You have no right to do this.’

‘My sword is my right.’ As the tribune said the words, he plunged the blade into the other man’s chest. Agony beyond imagining expanded to fill Vitellius’s entire body. As he fell, his last conscious thought was for Galeria and Lucius, but then the next sword struck and the darkness closed in. In that moment, the reign of Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Augustus was ended. He had been Emperor for eight months and a single fateful day.