The Art of War

Chapter 53

Rome, 18 December AD 69

Horus

I was living through a waking nightmare. I had ridden harder, for longer, on less sleep in the past night than the cumulative total of my life.

Daylight saw me back in Rome, with the blazing hell of Tarracina seared on the backs of my eyes.

I had no idea if Julius Claudianus and his gladiators had any chance of beating Lucius’ Guardsmen, but I knew they would try and that the trying would be vicious, bloody and terrible for those who didn’t die swiftly.

The belief that, for the foreseeable future, the safest place in the empire was at Pantera’s right hand had sustained me through the night and it sustained me now, as we passed through the gates at the head of the Appian Way and into the southern suburbs of Rome.

The horses were left with an innkeeper who seemed, if not to expect us, then at least not to be overly surprised at our hasty arrival and similarly hasty departure. He had an urn of soup ready, full of thick, floating things best not explored; we took the bowls he gave us and drank from them as we moved swiftly through the waking city. Slaves were up and about, cloaked against the winter’s cold, but few others.

In some dark, unnamed alley we stopped to urinate against a wall: a line of four men — Pantera, Trabo, Borros and me — darkly dressed, not recently shaved, pissing in arcs on to the bricks. A sudden wall of noise rose from below, where the forum awaited the day’s gathering.

Pantera’s head snapped up. ‘That’s Vitellius. He’s early. Run!’

We ran. It was mostly downhill, but still, I was spitting blood from my lungs on to the dirt by the time we reached our destination.

The Forum Romanum: once a market place, now the centre of civic life in Rome; a plaza, surrounded by ancient temples and newer civic buildings; a place of constant building since the days of Rome’s republic.

The temple of Vesta and the circular House of the Vestal Virgins lie on the eastern edge, settled between the regia, where once kings lived, and the Palatine hill. Pantera scrambled up on to a broken wall alongside the regia.

Borros and Trabo scrambled up the sheer surface in an act of magic that I couldn’t possibly repeat, but I was lifted up one-handed by Borros, so that I could see at least as far as the place where the emperor stood, surrounded by grim-faced — one might even say murderous — Guards.

A very large number of Guards.

In fact, looking through the ranks of those gathered, there were easily as many Guards as there were citizens and they were not listening to Vitellius read from his prepared script: they were watching the men around them.

Nobody, particularly, was listening to the emperor. It was humiliating enough that he read to us when any man of worth should have been able to speak extempore in times of need. Worse was the fact that he made no effort to send his voice to the crowd. He seemed to be speaking mainly to the Guard officer next to him, and that without conviction.

His son was there, poor stammering waif who no sane man had ever believed would live long enough to take the throne, and might now not live long enough to see so much as the new year. The boy was dressed in funereal grey, and now that I looked at him in the poor winter light I saw that his father was the same.

It’s true: amazing as it may sound, Vitellius had come in mourning to his own abdication. And he was weeping!

Emperors of Rome are proud men. Of course Augustus wept when his Varus lost three legions in the forests of the Rhine, but that was a proud weeping, as of a father for the loss of a beloved son.

No emperor, not even Nero, wept for pity at his own misfortune. If he hadn’t been surrounded by stone-faced Guards, there was a fighting chance that Vitellius would have been booed out on to the streets, bundled into a sack and thrown into the Tiber. As it was, he snivelled on to the end of his speech; short, perfunctory and inadequate.

I hadn’t heard a word of it, because by then I was fixated on the Guard officer who stood so menacingly at his side. It was Geminus.

This was a new Geminus, prouder, more erect, more savage even than when he had slaughtered my beloved Cerberus, more driven; a Geminus who bore in the chiselled angles of his face all the authority that Vitellius lacked.

A Geminus whose gaze roamed the crowd, who caught the eye of every third or fourth man and gave a nod that was more of a flicker of the eyelids that I knew so well from my years in the House of the Lyre.

There, it meant ‘Yes, loosen your ties now’, or ‘Take her upstairs soon, before the wine becomes too much’, or ‘Yes, he likes to be hurt, but go carefully, he could have us all crucified in the morning.’

Here, it meant ‘Yes, keep the crowd chanting the emperor’s name’, or ‘Move a little to your left, fill that gap, don’t let anyone through’, or ‘If the senator to your right shows any inclination to support the emperor’s abdication, you have my permission to kill him.’ Or her. There were women here, listening in the forum. I swear this is true. Truly, the world has changed.

At the end of his speech, Vitellius took out his dress dagger and tried to hand it to the consul, Caecilius Simplex. The weasel-faced little man was there to confer some kind of authority on the event, but had ruined it by looking at everyone except the emperor throughout the speech.

Now, with no sense of spectacle at all, he reached for the dagger’s hilt. And found himself staring at the slick, clean iron of Geminus’ blade.

He froze: it would have been comical if the whole situation had not already been immersed beyond redemption in pathos.

It may be shared between two men, but the office of consul is the second highest in the land. Simplex outranked a Guard officer in the way the emperor outranks a slave.

With much gesticulation, he explained this, but Geminus had gone beyond social niceties and iron carries its own authority: Vitellius had been made emperor by the sword, and by the sword he was not going to be allowed to abdicate easily.

On Geminus’ orders, Caecilius Simplex stepped back. Confused, Vitellius turned a tight circle, offering his dagger to whomsoever might be stupid enough to take it.

Not a man lifted his hand: he was not, after all, offering to give away the throne of Rome, but rather desiring that someone — anyone — take from him the symbol of its office.

Vitellius found himself blocked on all sides by a solid mass of men standing shoulder to shoulder, and by then it was nearly impossible to tell which were Guards and which were citizens: everyone was united in wanting him to stay: Geminus made that happen.

In the end, the emperor took the only route left open to him and turned up the hill back towards the palace. The men closed behind him, shepherding him forward. As Tiberius warned, and every emperor since has found, you take the wolf of the empire by the ears, it is yours unto death. Rome was still his. Vespasian and those who supported him must needs fight to take it. Or wait to see what happened.

Pantera jumped down from the wall. It was daylight now; his face was easily seen, but not yet readable.

‘Borros, take Horus home. Trabo, come with me.’

I was affronted. Leave me and take his tame thug with him? I said, ‘I don’t want to go home.’

‘You have a party to host.’ In theory, that was true. It was still Saturnalia; another Night of Free Exchange was due to take place at the House of the Lyre — with a different guest list, obviously.

I shook my head. ‘Not tonight. Not if war is on our doorstep.’

‘Even so, we are going to meet the prefect of the city, Titus Flavius Sabinus, and very likely his nephew. Do you really want to meet Domitian in the cold light of day? Do you think he wants to meet you?’

It had been too much to hope that in the dark Pantera had not recognized the youth who had shared my bed last night. Yes, I had invited Domitian to the House of the Lyre and yes, it was his first time at the Night. He hadn’t been old enough last year, too lost in his collections of pressed butterflies and bluebottles pinned to boards. In any case, he had been the impoverished son of a minor general who had been banished to Greece and faced almost certain death: we had never had any reason to invite him.

By this year, he was the son of the man who looked certain to become emperor. Even if he’d still been penniless, we’d have invited him. But he wasn’t. He had come to us five or six times in the preceding months and paid in gold each time. So our invitation to the First Night at the Lyre was legitimate by all our usual standards.

And anyway, I had no intention of letting Pantera browbeat me into going away, not when leaving him was so manifestly dangerous.

Attack has always been my best form of defence. Brows raised, at my most acid, I set my fists on my hips and stared him straight in the eye.

‘Do you really think that the emperor’s son- Hades! Who is that?’

It was impossible to continue an argument in the face of what had just arrived: a litter extraordinary for its vast size and the weight of the fabric that draped it.

In my head, I was performing the additions of cost upon cost. Sixteen men carried it, four at each corner, and as a result it moved swift as a sail ship with a following wind. Until it was set down in front of us, trapping us in the alley, but also blocking us from the view of the forum.

From within, a melodious voice said, ‘You may join me.’

It was Jocasta, of course, the Poet who had taken all that Seneca had built and moulded it to her own use. I helped her to do it, since she is neither a natural forger nor a good reader of ciphers. She needed me to help her understand her Teacher’s encoded notes, written over decades, and then to write to those who needed letters.

But here, now, in the midst of Saturnalia, she looked neither at me nor at the fool Trabo who mooned after her so; her gaze was all for Pantera, and his for her.

I had not seen them in the same place before, but you could feel the air warp around them. They were rivals, of course. It was like seeing two gladiators who, after beating all others sent against them, finally meet their match and don’t know whether to fight to the death or to clasp arms and walk together out of the arena.

Pantera solved his immediate dilemma by bowing extravagantly low, ‘My lady, we are at your service.’

‘I know.’

The flap was thrown back on the litter and I saw her, Jocasta, a woman whose beauty was only surpassed by the sense of power that flowed from her.

Her hair was black as polished slate, with the blue-black hue of a newly preened raven’s wing. Her brows were the same, small wings that only served to accent her eyes. I had taught her, once, how to paint them to best effect and I am pleased to say she had used my tuition to great effect. Her eyes were like a panther’s, glowing. Her skin was flawless, her neck slim and erect, like a swan’s.

The interior of her litter — and I have slept in bedrooms that were smaller — was draped with lemony silk that transformed the weak winter sunlight into the sunburst bright of a summer’s noon. Then I caught the scent of freshly baked oatcakes, of warm cheeses, hams and olives, and my mouth ached with wanting.

But I was not invited within. To Pantera alone, Jocasta said, ‘Get in. Sabinus is taking the oath from the Urban cohorts and the Watch, after which, I strongly suspect, he will dismiss them. You will travel faster with me, and you can bathe and change into clothes that smell less of horse and sweat. The emperor’s brother will expect you at least to be clean.’

Pantera wanted to refuse, every line of his body said so, but she had presented unassailable arguments and so, in tones of deepest irony, he said, ‘My lady,’ and then, to me, ‘Not you.

You may be happy to see the emperor’s son, but he may need some time before he sees you, and then not in the company of men who may one day take his orders. Gudrun and Scopius will provide a safe place until you can return to the House. Borros, take Horus to the Inn of the Crossed Spears. Meet us at the prefect’s house, or at the Capitol if we’ve already got there.’

He was lying, and I knew it. He didn’t think Domitian was ashamed of me or me of him; this was Pantera’s punishment for my treachery with Lucius. He didn’t know, or didn’t care, what they had threatened me with: the long death, the destruction of all I cared for, the letters they would have sent to Mucianus telling of infidelities that were never important. He just knew that I had sold him, and was taking his revenge.