Iron and Rust

CHAPTER 37

Africa,

the Town of Thysdus,

Four Days before the Kalends of March, AD238

It had been a busy day, busy for a man of eighty. Gordian could not now remember a time when he had not got up in the dark, and read his correspondence by lamplight. At dawn, Valens, his a Cubiculo, had opened the doors of the bedchamber and admitted the governor’s intimate friends. Today, only his Quaestor Menophilus and Valerian had attended him as he dressed. The latter was a dutiful man. Gordian did not blame his other legates for not appearing. Sabinianus, Arrian and his son were young men. Their pleasures were more demanding, and the young needed more sleep than the old. In any event, they were all upset at the ruin of Mauricius.

At the third hour, Gordian had held court. The tutor Serenus Sammonicus had joined Menophilus and Valerian as his assessors. Gordian had always had a tendency to doze in court. It had grown worse as he had got older. Nowadays, Serenus Sammonicus was ready to nudge him. It had not been necessary this morning. It had been a case of disputed identity. A local landowner claimed that on a visit to Hadrumetum he had recognized a stevedore on the quayside as a slave who had run some ten years before. The defendant was adamant that he was free born. Certainty proved unattainable. Gordian, as usual, had taken the path of clemency with generosity. He had declared in favour of the dockworker, but awarded the landowner the price of an able-bodied slave from his own funds. Wealth only existed to be spent.

He had heard only the one case. Afterwards, Serenus Sammonicus had remained, and they had worked on Gordian’s biography of Marcus Aurelius. When he was young, Gordian had composed his Antoniniad, an epic poem on the dynasty in thirty books. He had written many other works beside. Now he found it increasingly difficult to hold many different things in his mind at once.

Serenus Sammonicus was a brilliant man of letters. His Opuscula Ruralia stood comparison with any contemporary poetry, and his Diary of the Trojan War was a masterpiece of prose invention. Gordian had been a friend of his father, the author of the Res Reconditae, killed by Caracalla. When the family estate had been confiscated, Gordian, at some risk of imperial displeasure, had appointed the son as tutor to his own boy. Under his tutelage, the younger Gordian had written some nice pieces, but he had squandered much of his talent in the pursuit of pleasure.

Gordian found little fault with his son; much of his own life had been dedicated to Bacchus and Aphrodite. His daughter, Maecia Faustina, stood in contrast to them both. From where she had inherited her censorious nature, Gordian was uncertain. Not from her mother. The character of his late wife, Orestilla, had chimed with his own. Perhaps it was from her maternal grandfather, who had always been a prig. Gordian remembered when once he had taken a seat in his own house, and Annius Severus had snapped the rebuke that no son-in-law should sit in the company of his wife’s father, not until he had achieved at least the Praetorship. He had had something against washing in his presence as well.

Still, Maecia was loyal and capable. She ran the ancestral home of the Gordiani in Rome with a rod of iron. The Domus Rostrata had never looked better the last time he had passed through, three years ago on his way from Achaea to Africa. But recent events would not have improved her. With the execution of her husband, she would have found her share of grief. It was a pity, Gordian thought, that her son, his only grandson, seemed to exhibit the worst features of Maecia and the late Junius Balbus. If only the epicureanism of the younger Gordian had not dissuaded him from marriage. The gods knew, his son had sired bastards enough.

All too soon, his literary endeavours had faltered. In the old days, Gordian had liked to exercise before lunch. He had gone riding, wrestled, played ball; worked up a sweat and washed it off. For a long time since, he had merely ordered his carriage and gone for a drive. Today he had dispensed with even that mild outing. He and Serenus Sammonicus had bathed, eaten an early lunch and, saying goodbye to his companion, Gordian had retired for a nap.

One of the many annoyances of advancing age was sleep. Gordian felt tired all the time; he nodded off at public occasions but when he lay down to rest sleep would not come to his bed. He often tried summoning up all the animals in the huge painting that hung in the atrium of the Domus Rostrata. He had commissioned it to commemorate the games he had given as Quaestor back in the reign of Commodus. Two hundred stags with antlers shaped like the palm of a hand, thirty wild horses, a hundred wild sheep, ten elks, a hundred Cyprian bulls, three hundred red Moorish ostriches, two hundred chamois, two hundred fallow deer …

Some noise woke him. He was pleased he had an erection. Not the aching hardness of his youth, but a definite tumescence. He had been dreaming of Capelianus’ wife in days gone by. She had been wanton. Cuckolding Capelianus had added to his pleasure. For a moment he wondered whether to call Valens, have him send in some girl. There was a decadence to sex in daylight. You could see every detail of their bodies, watch the flush spread over their faces. No, it would not serve. Even as he framed the thought, he felt himself begin to go limp. For many years he had consumed aphrodisiacs; oysters, snails, wild chervil, rocket, nettle seeds, pepper, satyrion, the bulbs of the grape hyacinth. Finally, he had tried to emulate the tragedian and believe that he had been freed from a cruel tyrant.

It had rained in the morning, but now the sun was streaming through the gaps in the shutters. Orestilla would have loved Africa. She had liked the sun. When Caracalla had sent him to govern Britannia Inferior, she had been convinced the Emperor had made the appointment in the hope that the cold and damp of the far North would make an end of him. The climate had been ghastly, the winters near beyond belief, but it had not killed him, and it had revived his career. He stroked his now flaccid penis. The trouble it had caused. Although Gordian had been acquitted of adultery, Capelianus and his friends had moved heaven and earth to keep him from holding office. He had no idea why, years later, Caracalla had made him governor in Britannia. After that, his natural proclivities had stood him in good stead with Elagabalus. The strange youth had made him Consul designate, and his successor had let it stand, indeed had held office as his colleague. Gordian had had several friends on the board of sixteen Senators — Vulcatius Terentianus, Felix, Quintillius Marcellus — and under Alexander he had progressed from the governorship of Syria Coele to that of Achaea then to Africa without intermission.

There was commotion out in the atrium. Gordian rang the little bell for Valens. The a Cubiculo did not appear.

The door crashed open. Gordian sat up as a mob burst into the room. Although his heart was hammering, he would not betray himself. Since the condemnation of Junius Balbus, he had been half expecting this. Maximinus could take his life, but he would not let the Thracian take his dignitas.

‘What do you want?’ Gordian managed to keep his voice level.

The men stopped. They were armed, but they were not soldiers. There were three well-dressed young men with swords. Behind them were many plebs with kitchen knives and clubs, who gawped at the rich furniture and fine hangings.

Where in Hades was his bodyguard, Brennus? Where were the household troops? Perhaps he could keep the men talking.

One of them had a purple cloth in his hands. He came forward and draped it over Gordian’s shoulders. By all the gods, no — he would not be trapped like that.

‘Augustus!’ They shouted. ‘Gordian Augustus!’

Gordian shrugged off the fatal trappings. He slid off the couch, got down on his knees.

‘Please-’ he held up his hands in supplication ‘-spare the life of an innocent old man. Remember my loyalty and goodwill to the Emperor. I mean no treason. Spare me.’

One of the young men gestured for silence. He faced Gordian with his sword at the ready.

‘You have a choice,’ he said. ‘You face two risks: one here; the other in the future.’

Gordian said nothing. Were they not agents of Maximinus?

‘Put your trust in us, accept the purple and overthrow the tyrant.’ The young man moved the blade. ‘If you refuse to join us, then this day will be your last.’

Gordian saw the crowd behind the young man part. His son stood there, his toga all covered in blood. No, not that! Anything but that!

His son walked forward, reached for the blade, put it down. Thank the gods, he was unhurt.

Kneeling by him, his son took his hands in his, kissed them, kissed his cheek.

‘Father, the soldiers and people are tearing down the statues of Maximinus. They are acclaiming you Emperor. There is no way back. You must free the Res Publica.’

His son raised him up, and whispered in his ear:

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