The Art of War

Chapter 25

Rome, 4 August AD 69

Caenis

‘ Jocasta? ’

‘Trabo!’

‘Jocasta!’

‘Pantera?’

‘ Domitian? ’

This last, of course, was me, coming late across the threshold, hemmed about by rough men who smelled of garlic and olive oil and rich-sour battle sweat.

Domitian stood ahead of me in the atrium, holding one of my best wine glasses in his hand. The flask was on the floor by the couch on which his guest was reclining. Or she was until Pantera barged in.

I think that’s the first time I saw Jocasta as she was, not acting. I had seen a woman in utter control of herself, playing the whore and the diplomat and shifting from one to the other without pausing for breath.

Now, she flung herself to her feet and up close to Pantera’s prisoner. With a delicacy that was entirely surprising, she traced her exquisite fingers round the margins of the raised welt on his cheek that promised to grow into an angry bruise.

There was wonder and a real affection on her face, maybe something more; certainly a shared history that went back longer than this one night. It occurred to me that I had watched Pantera devote to her the kind of attention I didn’t think he lavished on anyone else, but had seen nothing but courtesy in response. Here, with this bandit she had called Trabo, was more than courtesy.

Sharply, she said, ‘Why are you holding him thus? He is Trabo. I told you.’

This to Pantera, who had not set down his knife. By way of answer, he tightened his grip and pushed his man further into the room.

I was ahead of him, lighting candles. It was one of Matthias’ duties, but I thought I had lost Matthias to Pantera; certainly he took his orders from him, although he remained behind with us when the other three ruffians left at Pantera’s quiet order: to guard the house from the outside, or to leave so they were not caught, I still don’t know which.

So I lit candles, which gave me a measure of calm and allowed me to study the changing tensions on the faces of the four men and one other woman in my atrium.

Walking from one wall bracket to the next, I passed Domitian who had been flushed and happy, the lord holding forth in his house, and now was peevish and angry and coming to realize that his love had eyes for other men, and they for her.

Every man in the room had eyes for her, actually. Even Matthias, who until that moment had adored me and reserved his lust for one of the silver-skins on the Palatine, paying him in monthly silver for a fidelity they both knew to be fiction. But here and now he was gazing at Jocasta as if she were Aphrodite walked out of the sea.

But these two, much as I loved them both, were the bit players in this drama; the two men at the centre of the room commanded the better part of my attention.

The bearded bandit — Jocasta had called him Trabo — was grinning at Jocasta with a delight that pushed the boundaries of decency. He was not stupid; he had seen Domitian, and even as I watched, he glanced over and lifted a single raised brow and let his eyes ask the question. This one? Him? Really?

Jocasta had her back to both me and Domitian and neither of us could see her answer, but the ruffian’s face did not fold as it might have done, only creased in a dry, knowing smile that crushed my heart.

Poor boy. He had had his hour of joy and had seen it end.

Pantera knew already of Domitian’s infatuation, of course. Still, as he watched Jocasta and Trabo, I saw surprise sweep across the landscape of his face, and something else, gone too fast to identify. It might have been love. I thought it was at the time.

Jocasta had asked him a question. He answered it in the same even voice he had used since the first attack. ‘He watched your house all morning. And this evening he was following me. He may be the most famous tribune of Otho’s Guard, but just because Vitellius has put a price on his head doesn’t make him an ally to our cause.’

‘Have you asked him?’

‘I am about to.’

Nobody asked how Pantera knew Trabo’s movements, or Jocasta’s. In her place, I would have asked that first, but the moment had gone and we have to suppose she knew his methods. In any case, Pantera had moved his knife so that it angled more steeply at Trabo’s neck, which captured everyone’s attention.

‘It will cost me nothing to kill you,’ he said. ‘The lady Caenis will disapprove of blood on her tiles, but it can be washed away. So you have the length of my patience to explain what you are doing and why. It would be a mistake to assume it long.’

Trabo lifted a slow hand in salute to me. Without moving his head — to do so would have been to slice his own throat — he looked towards me.

‘If the lady Caenis would care to open the secret place in the back of my belt, she will find therein a letter addressed to her.’

I didn’t move. A slave’s training had little to recommend it, but it taught me never to move unless required to. It stood me in good stead now.

‘A letter from whom?’ asked Pantera.

‘The emperor Otho. It was the last thing he wrote before he killed himself.’

Trabo’s cultured voice roughened at the mention of the death. If he was an actor, he was a good one, but we were in the company of two excellent actors already, that he was a third was always a possibility.

‘Jocasta will take your belt,’ Pantera said. ‘If you move, you will die.’

Jocasta unlaced the belt. It sagged in her hand, weightier than it looked, which is always a sign that there’s gold inside. The leather had a long, narrow filet along the back on the inside, which, when opened, revealed a fold of fine paper, bruised to fragility, dark with sweat. My name swept along one face of it, in fine angled script.

‘Is that Otho’s hand?’ Pantera asked.

‘It is.’

I was unexpectedly moved: I had liked the importunate boy who pushed his way to the throne. In the brief flower of his glory he had written to me often as to a sister, asking advice, sharing thoughts; and now this last letter.

There were ways to do this properly. I had a small desk in an alcove beyond the fountain. I carried the letter there and Matthias came to his senses at last and brought me the tall soapstone lamp in the shape of a swan that was my last gift from Antonia.

He did not lay down his cudgel, even then. I wondered if he ever would; does every man live to fight, if only he has the chance to find it in himself?

The letter’s seal was recognizably Otho’s: on the pale yellow wax, a sheaf of grain surrounded by the sun. He was ever an optimist, right to his death. My knife sliced through it, clean and clear. I scanned the salutation and the lines, and looked up, sharply, at Pantera’s prisoner.

‘Have you read this?’

‘No, lady.’ Trabo gave the faintest shake of his head and even that scraped his skin across Pantera’s knife, bringing a feather of blood. ‘But I watched him write it: he wept as he wrote his name at the foot.’

Jocasta said, ‘Can you read it for us?’

I read aloud, lightly, swiftly; Otho’s writing was strong and angular and easy on the eye.

‘ To the lady Caenis, with my thanks for your help and past comforts. You will know by now that I am dead. Trust the man who brings this; he is one of my best and his heart is the truest I have known. He will do what it takes to aid you in whatsoever you desire.

To that same end, I append a list of those men who will be true to you and yours. If the freedwoman of Antonia can rouse those who need it, it may be she will be raised as high as she deserves. None deserves higher.

Know that you have my heartfelt support, and gratitude. Rome’s future lies in your hands, and my good name. ’

I looked up. ‘Below, he has written a list of a good two dozen names. He is sending to me what he could not — dared not — send to Vespasian.’ My heart was a great stone in my chest, rocking too hard, threatening my ribs. ‘He is telling us who will defect from Vitellius. He wrote this in April. Vespasian wasn’t hailed imperator until the first of July.’

That date had been engraved on my liver since I first heard it. You will find it at my death, if you care to cut me open and look. ‘How did he know? How did he dare?’

My question was for all of them, but it was Trabo who, gently, said, ‘We all knew, lady, who was most fit to lead the empire after Otho. Our question was only would Vespasian accept what was offered, not whether that offer should be made. As to how Otho dared — he was about to die by his own hand; nothing in life could touch him. That gives a man great freedom.’

Trabo was near to tears and wrestling with something else. I waited to hear it; we all did.

Red of eye, he said, ‘My lady, forgive me. I should have brought the letter sooner, only he told me to move slowly, to stay behind Vitellius’ advancing army for my own safety, and I did so, thinking he had written a signal of affection, nothing more. I’m sorry.’

Out of charity, I asked, ‘He gave this to you himself? At the end?’

‘At the very end, yes. I was with him when he…’ His hands described a small and futile circle that ended near his chest. His colour was high and tears stood proud at the angles of his eyes.

There was no question that he was genuine, and if he had not forgotten Pantera’s knife, he cared about it a great deal less than he did before I opened the letter.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

And he did.