Rome’s Fallen Eagle

CHAPTER V

‘Now I understand why our parents have chosen to stay here,’ Vespasian said to Sabinus as the brothers pulled up their horses. They gazed at a newly constructed country villa set on a gentle slope that ran down to the shore of Lake Murten, in the tribal lands of the Helvetii. ‘Father’s banking business must be doing very well to afford all this.’

‘He won’t be needing to buy wine again,’ Sabinus observed.

Countless neat rows of vines surrounded the villa and trailed up the hill behind it, framing it with pleasing regular stripes. Even the gangs of slaves toiling between the lines seemed to be spaced at even intervals. The orderly agricultural arrangement of the estate contrasted markedly with the distant, irregular peaks of the snow-bound Alps, gleaming white and streaked with bluegrey. The strengthening spring sun had, as yet, had little impact on that soaring realm where winter still held sway; but here, down at the limits of the foothills of Italia’s northern shield, spring was advancing. The pasture beneath their mounts’ hooves was losing its brown tinge, gained from months beneath a crust of snow, and was now returning to its former lushness; the horses tugged gratefully at it.

Magnus drew up next to them, slipping his mount’s reins so that it too could enjoy the grazing. He took a large gulp of the cool air and grinned at Ziri riding beside him, leading two packmules. ‘I can’t imagine anywhere more removed from that parched, flat wasteland that you used to call home.’

Ziri looked around, evidently unimpressed. ‘The desert has nothing to constrict you; no barriers.’ He pointed to the brick wall running along the front of the estate and then indicated to the high mountains beyond. ‘How far can a man ride in a straight line in this land before he’s forced out of his way by somebody’s property or an impassable obstacle?’

‘A lot further than in Rome and it doesn’t stink.’

‘But still not as far as you can in the desert, master, and that doesn’t stink either.’ Ziri gave a wide, white-toothed smile that creased the three strange wavy lines carved into his brown cheeks.

Magnus leant over and cuffed his slave good-humouredly around the head. ‘Slaves don’t win arguments, you curly-haired camel-botherer; in fact, slaves don’t argue.’

Vespasian laughed and kicked his horse forward for the last few hundred paces of what had been a long and tedious journey. Having taken a ship to Massalia they had transferred to a river vessel and sailed up the Rhodanus to Lugudunum. Here they had requisitioned horses from the local garrison commander and made the hundred and fifty-mile journey across country to Aventicum in five days. Having found their father’s banking business in the forum of the fast-growing town, they had been told by a couple of harassed clerks that he had not been in for the previous four days because of illness. They had consequently travelled the last few miles from the town in a state of some concern, as Titus, their father, was now in his eighties.

They cantered through the estate’s gates, set in a tall, brickbuilt gatehouse, and on up a straight track bordered by freshly dug vegetable patches alternating with small orchards of apple and pear trees, in front of long, low outbuildings. The track ended at a neatly laid-out formal garden, centred on a fishpond and fountain; it was bordered on three sides by their parents’ two-storey country villa. A waist-high wooden balustrade ran around the outside of the house enclosing an area of decking, four paces wide; this was sheltered by a slanting, tiled roof jutting out from just below the level of the first floor’s uniformly square windows and supported on wooden columns. Climbing plants had been trained up the columns; their first green shoots of the season waved gently in the light breeze. Doors and windows punctuated the two protruding sides of the villa with exact symmetry. As Vespasian and his party dismounted, one of the doors, to their left, opened and a familiar figure stepped out onto the shaded decking.

‘Minerva’s mangy minge,’ Magnus exclaimed, ‘Artebudz! What are you doing here?’

Vespasian was as surprised as Magnus to see the ex-hunting slave whose freedom he had procured from the Thracian Queen, Tryphaena, while he had been a military tribune serving in that client kingdom. Vespasian had last seen him ten years previously, when Artebudz had accompanied his parents north out of Italia after the raid on their estate at Aquae Cutillae by agents of Livilla and her lover Sejanus.

Artebudz smiled in recognition. ‘Magnus, my friend; Vespasian and Sabinus, it’s good to see you, sirs.’ He walked around the decking towards the double doors at the front of the house. Leaving their mounts with Ziri and a stable-lad who had come scuttling from an outbuilding, Vespasian, Sabinus and Magnus joined him there.

‘I’ve been here for three years now,’ Artebudz told them, taking Magnus’ proffered forearm and bowing his head to Vespasian and Sabinus; his curly hair, once jet black, was now streaked with grey. ‘After I arrived at Aventicum with your parents I returned to my home province of Noricum; I found my father, Brogduos, still alive but very old. When he died I buried him, with an inscription with both our names on it marking his grave, and then came back here to repay the debt that I owe your family for my freedom.’ He looked with concern at the brothers, creasing the Greek sigma branded on his forehead with a frown. ‘But you have come in time, sirs; your father’s been ill for some while now; he took to his bed a few days ago. The doctors think that he has the wasting disease; he’s been steadily getting worse.’

Vespasia Polla’s pleasure at seeing her two sons after so long was tempered by her worry about her husband. After no more than a perfunctory embrace in the spacious atrium, whose vaulted, lofty ceiling was fully enclosed in defence against the northern climate, she led them along a corridor and up a set of wooden stairs. Her once proud, slender face was now careworn and she wore her greying hair haphazardly pinned atop her head, taking no pride in her appearance. There was no sparkle in her dark eyes and the thin flesh beneath them hung in slack bags, telling of tears and sleepless nights.

‘These doctors here know nothing,’ she complained as she led the brothers along a first-floor corridor with views over the vineyards and on to the distant Alps beyond. ‘I’ve tried to persuade Titus to return to Rome since he first started feeling weak a few months ago, but he won’t go. He says that whatever the Fates have decreed for him is not going to be altered by changing from Greek quacks in Germania Superior to other Greek quacks who charge twice as much just because they live in Rome.’

Vespasian could see the logic of the argument but refrained from saying so.

Vespasia paused by a plain wooden door. ‘He says that the time that Morta chooses to cut the thread of a man’s life is determined solely by her whim and has nothing to do with your geographical whereabouts.’ With a disparaging scowl she opened the door.

The brothers followed her in and were surprised, but delighted, to see their father sitting up in bed; he raised his eyes from the scroll that he was perusing and a smile cracked his pallid, hollow-cheeked face. ‘Well, well, my sons; either the messengers got to Rome and Pannonia in record time and you beat that again travelling here, or I wasted my money writing to you both, four days ago, asking you to come.’ He held out both hands and Vespasian and Sabinus took one each. ‘But seeing as you’re both here and that I’m feeling a little better today, despite the doctors’ best endeavours to finish me off, I’ll get up for dinner.’

Titus set down his wine cup and looked disbelievingly at Sabinus. He rubbed the puckered, red scar where his left ear had been and then turned to his wife reclining on the couch next to him. ‘It seems that we brought up our eldest son to be an idiot with a suicidal sense of honour.’ He glanced over to Clementina, reclining next to her husband, and added: ‘Although, of course, my dear, the wrong that had been done to you had to be avenged at some point, but not at the expense of your brother and husband.’

Clementina nodded vaguely at Titus, her red eyes rimmed with tears for her brother; she wore a simple stola of yellow wool and her hair hung dishevelled around her shoulders. Since being told, upon returning from a walk with her children an hour earlier, of the part that her menfolk had played in the assassination of Caligula, she had been torn between mourning for Clemens and relief at Sabinus’ reprieve. She decided to attend dinner so as not to be parted from her husband for a moment, but had not been the best of dining companions and had eaten nothing. ‘My shame was not worth my brother’s life; nor my husband’s.’ She ran a hand up Sabinus’ muscular forearm. ‘But I thank the gods that one, at least, remains to me.’

Sabinus shifted uneasily and placed his hand over Clementina’s. ‘Only if we can find the Eagle.’

Vespasian held up his wine cup for a slave to refill. ‘And to do that Pallas thinks that we should try to find Arminius’ son, Thumelicus, whom he suspects has returned to his tribe’s homelands. And how do we do that? We don’t even know what he looks like.’

‘Exactly like his father, I should expect,’ Titus said. ‘At least he did as a child.’

The brothers both stared uncomprehendingly at their father.

‘You’ve seen Thumelicus?’ Sabinus asked, frowning.

‘I only saw him as a small child at Germanicus’ triumph; it was the May of the year that your mother and I went to Asia; we sailed from Ostia two days later. I remember remarking on how the boy looked so like his father: long, almost black hair with piercing, bright blue eyes and thin lips. The only difference was a slight cleft in his chin that his mother had passed on to him.’

‘But how could you compare them?’

‘Because I knew Arminius as a child; I saved his life, as a matter of fact.’ Titus gave a rueful smile. ‘Looking back, perhaps if I hadn’t, things might be different; you see, boys, it’s not just men from the great families who can change the course of history.’

‘How did that come about?’ Sabinus asked.

But Vespasian remembered. ‘Of course, you served with the Twentieth Legion.’

The look of pride on Titus’ gaunt face as he recalled his martial youth seemed to take twenty years off his age. ‘Yes, Vespasian, I did. After we had defeated the Cantabri in Hispania we were sent to Germania. We were part of Drusus’ army, Tiberius’ elder brother, whilst he pursued Augustus’ policy of conquering Germania Magna as far as the Albis River. With him we fought campaigns all over that forest-infested land, against the Frisii and the Chauci along the low-lying coast of the cold Northern Sea and against the Chatti and the Marsi in the dark forests and hills inland. When I was thirty-four and had been a centurion for two years, we fought a battle against the Cherusci, almost on the banks of the Albis. We beat them, and then their King, Segimerus, submitted to Drusus in one of their sacred groves. To seal the pact, his nine-year-old son, Erminatz, was given as a hostage to Rome. As one of the most junior centurions at the time it fell to me and my century to escort the boy back to Rome so I got to know him quite well — and I saved him from being butchered by some Chatti tribesmen who ambushed us on the way back to the Rhenus.’

‘Erminatz was Arminius, Father?’ Vespasian asked.

‘Yes, his name was Latinised to Arminius. He stayed in Rome for seven years and was given equestrian rank before serving as a military tribune in the legions. He eventually returned to Germania Magna as the prefect of a cohort of German auxiliaries. And the rest is history: three years after his return he betrayed Varus and almost twenty-five thousand legionaries and auxiliaries were massacred. Perhaps I should have left him to the Chatti after all.’

Sabinus took a sip of wine, looking less than pleased. ‘How does this help us, Father? You saw Thumelicus when he was two and his father when he was nine and you thought that they looked very similar. Both had black hair and blue eyes, just like many thousands of other Germans, but Thumelicus had a cleft chin.’

‘Exactly,’ Vespasian agreed. ‘And wandering around Germania Magna looking underneath the beard of every German we can find is not going to get us any closer to Thumelicus.’

Titus nodded and picked up a wrinkled winter apple. ‘So you are going to have to get him to come to you.’

Sabinus almost scoffed but then remembered that it was his father that he was talking to and pulled his face into a more respectful expression. ‘And how are we going to do that?’

Titus took his knife from the sheath on his belt and started to peel his apple. ‘As I said, I got to know Erminatz or Arminius quite well. It took us nearly two months to get back to Rome; on that journey the lad began to realise just how far he was being taken from home and he began to despair about seeing his parents again, especially his mother. The Germans hold their mothers and wives in very high regard and even take their advice on subjects that we would consider to be male concerns.’ Vespasia snorted; Titus carried on without seeming to notice. ‘The morning that I handed him over to Drusus’ wife, Antonia-’

Vespasian was surprised. ‘You met Antonia when you were younger?’

‘Hardly, she dismissed me as soon as I walked through her door; I was far too lowly to be noticed. Anyway, before I left him, Arminius gave me something and made me promise to give it to his mother. I promised of course, thinking that I would be rejoining my legion, but what I didn’t know was that Drusus had fallen from his horse two days after we’d left and he had died a month later. We met his funeral cortège on our way back and my legion was with it. We were then posted to Illyricum and, with Tiberius, campaigned in Germania Magna again a few years later. This time we came in from the south and never reached the Cherusci lands. Then, four years after that, I was almost gutted by a spear-thrust and was invalided out of the army; so I never returned to the Cherusci lands and I never gave this thing to Arminius’ mother. By the time I’d recovered from my wounds and got back to Rome, Arminius was serving with the army far from the city so I couldn’t return it to him.’

Sabinus’ eyes brightened with hope. ‘So you’ve still got whatever it is?’

‘Yes, in fact I still use it,’ Titus said, quartering his apple.

‘How?’

Titus carved the core out of a quarter. ‘Use your eyes.’

The brothers stared at the knife in their father’s hand. ‘Your knife?’ they exclaimed simultaneously.

‘Yes, the knife that I use every day. The knife I use for peeling fruit and for sacrifices.’ He held up the sleek blade. ‘I even used it at both your naming ceremonies.’

Vespasian and Sabinus both got up and went to examine with fresh eyes the blade that they had seen every day when they were younger.

‘I don’t think that it would be a big enough incentive to get Thumelicus to help you, but I believe if you let it be known that you have Arminius’ knife, then he would at least be willing to talk to the sons of the man who saved his father’s life in return for a memento of the father he never knew. After that it would be down to you to persuade him.’

‘But what would make him believe that it did belong to Arminius?’ Vespasian asked, admiring the plainness of the weapon.

‘Look at the blade closely.’

‘Oh, there are strange letters engraved on the blade, aren’t there, Titus?’ Vespasia said, frowning with recollection. ‘It’s the same knife that you gave me to kill myself with on the night that Aquae Cutillae was attacked by Livilla’s men. I held it to my chest and stared at my reflection in the blade. I was terrified, thinking that it would be the last time that I saw myself. Then I noticed these lines distorting my image and I tried to calm myself by working out what they were. I meant to ask you about them afterwards but the shock of everything drove it from my mind.’

Vespasian squinted. Along the blade close to the hilt were a series of fine lines and curves recognisable as a sort of writing. ‘What are they, Father?’

‘Those are runes; they’re Germanic letters. Arminius told me that they say “Erminatz”.’

*

Five days later the brothers knew that they could delay their departure no longer. Vespasian sat with his parents on the decking at the front of the house watching Sabinus and Clementina walking towards them with their two children, Flavia Sabina and young Sabinus, now eleven and nine respectively. Outside the stable block, to their left, Magnus and Artebudz were supervising Ziri and a couple of lads saddling their horses and loading the provisions onto them for the hundred-mile journey to the II Augusta’s camp at Argentoratum.

‘I made arrangements yesterday for the banking business to be sold,’ Titus announced, shivering slightly. Despite the warm spring sun, he had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

Vespasia frowned at her husband. ‘Have you finally made up your mind to go back to Italia?’

‘No, Vespasia, I shall die here and it will be soon.’

Vespasian remained silent knowing that his father was right: his health would not allow him to see midsummer. This would be their final farewell.

‘And what shall I do, Titus?’ Vespasia demanded.

‘Whatever you like. I shall leave this estate to you; the income from it and the money from the sale of the banking business will keep you very comfortably. You could stay here or go back to our estates in Italia; either Aquae Cutillae, which I shall leave to Vespasian, or Falacrina, which I shall leave to Sabinus.’

‘You expect me to live in places where every room will remind me of you? How can you still be so stupid after all these years?’

Titus chuckled, smiling fondly at his wife. ‘Because, Vespasia, your wilfulness will not allow me to appear otherwise in your eyes.’

Vespasia looked momentarily confused. ‘I can’t work out whether that’s a compliment or an insult.’

‘It’s both, my dear.’

Vespasia sniffed in derision. ‘Titus, if you’re so determined to die on me then the last thing that I shall do is sit around in a place where I shall constantly be reminded of your selfishness. Flavia is going to give birth to Vespasian’s second child soon and Clementina will no doubt be taking her children back to Rome, so I can be of some use there. I shall go to my brother Gaius’ house.’

Vespasian closed his eyes, imagining his mother and Flavia living in the same house, and shuddered. He wondered how his uncle would react; Gaius would probably find a lot of correspondence to deal with.

‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’ Titus muttered with a slight grin.

Vespasia stared sternly at her husband and then her face relaxed; she put a hand on his knee. ‘I’m sure you did, but thought that I would dismiss it as stupid.’

Titus placed a hand on his wife’s, squeezed it gently and looked over to the stables where Sabinus had sat his young son on a horse and given him a sword to hold; the boy was waving it above his head and shouting a high-pitched battle cry whilst his sister looked on clapping her hands excitedly. Sabinus put his arm around his wife as they watched their children.

Titus smiled contentedly at the family scene and then turned to Vespasian. ‘Do you remember that oath that I got you and your brother to swear to each other before we left for Rome all those years ago?’

‘Yes, Father,’ Vespasian replied, looking cautiously at his mother.

‘You can talk about it freely,’ Vespasia assured him. ‘Titus has told me about it and why he made you swear it.’

Titus leant forward. ‘What was the purpose of the oath?’

‘If one of us was unable to aid the other in time of need because they were bound by a previous oath then this oath superseded it, as it was made before all the gods and the spirits of our ancestors.’

‘And what do you think that I had in mind when I made you swear this oath?’

Vespasian felt his stomach tense; he had wanted to talk to his father about this for fifteen years but knew that the subject was taboo. ‘It was to supersede the oath that Mother had the whole household, including Sabinus, swear after my naming ceremony, nine days after my birth, never to reveal the omens at the sacrifice and what they prophesied. I don’t know what they were because no one would tell me.’

‘Because of the oath that we all swore.’

‘Exactly. But since then I’ve encountered two other prophecies that have given me cause for thought. The first was at the Oracle of Amphiaraos in Greece; it was vague but seemed to imply that the King of the East would one day gain the West if he followed Alexander’s footsteps across the sand with a gift.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I’m not sure, but when I was in the Oasis of Siwa, in Cyrenaica, I witnessed the rebirth of the Phoenix.’

Titus and Vespasia looked at their youngest son with a mixture of incredulity and wonder.

‘I was taken to the Oracle of Amun and the god spoke to me; he told me that I had come too soon to know what question I should ask and that I should come again with a gift that matches the sword that Alexander had left there.’

‘Was that the second prophecy?’ Titus asked. ‘That you would return?’

‘No, it was more of an invitation to come back with a gift and the correct question; it seemed to relate to what Amphiaros had said. The other prophecy was made by Thrasyllus, Tiberius’ astrologer; he said that should a senator witness the Phoenix in Egypt then he would found the next dynasty of emperors. But I didn’t see the Phoenix in Egypt; Siwa used to be a part of Egypt but it’s in Cyrenaica now; so I don’t know what to think. You must tell me what the omens of my birth foretold so that I can see my path more clearly.’

‘We can’t, my son.’

‘Only because of the oath you all swore,’ Vespasian almost shouted, exasperated.

‘I was right to make people swear never to reveal what was predicted for you, Vespasian,’ his mother asserted. ‘It was done to protect you. However, your father was also right to give Sabinus a way to do so if he deems that you should be told.’

Vespasian, bursting with curiosity, struggled to control himself. ‘But when will that be?’

Titus shrugged. ‘Who can say? But what I do know is this: should you not recover the Eagle and Sabinus’ life is forfeit, then he will tell you what he knows before he dies. I spoke to him yesterday and have convinced him that he won’t be breaking the first oath if he does so. You will need his help at some point and this way he can give it from beyond the grave.’

‘Let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that,’ Vespasian muttered, although his curiosity was almost forcing him to think the exact opposite.

‘Yes, let’s hope so,’ Titus said, struggling to his feet with Vespasia’s help. He looked around the estate and smiled approvingly. ‘This has been a good place to live out my last years and the people of Aventicum have provided me with a good income.’ Vespasia handed him his walking stick and he began to hobble towards the door. He looked over his shoulder at Vespasian. ‘The family should reward this town sometime for all it’s done for Vespasia and me. Perhaps one day you’ll see to it that it’s granted the rights of a colonia.’

Vespasian stared at his father’s slowly retreating back, wondering if the thought that had been growing in the back of his mind, a ludicrous thought that he had tried to suppress, was true. Could it really be possible? Would he really be in a position one day to grant his father’s wish?