The Art of War

Chapter 85

Rome, 21 December AD 69

Jocasta

If Trabo didn’t recognize me before Pantera pointed me out, he was deceiving himself.

I didn’t care at the time, either way. Trabo was only a small part, a counter to be discarded for the wider game. Pantera was the one who mattered, the one for whom all this had been played out. Since Seneca’s death, we had been manoeuvring around each other. Now, finally, we could be open.

I smiled at him, as I had at that first meeting, back in Seneca’s house, with the old man recently dead and the ink newly dry on the forged letter that made me leader of the entire Senecan network.

Horus wrote it for me, yes. Few men in Rome could have reproduced Seneca’s hand so accurately, or his voice.

Horus is not as straightforward as he would have you believe. His first loyalty is to Mucianus and then himself. Everything else depends on who pays and I have always had deeper pockets than Pantera, even when he had Vespasian’s backing. Vespasian, as I’m sure you know, has never been what you might consider wealthy. It will be different now, of course.

So Pantera was never sure who wrote that letter. It might have been real, you see. It was very close to the original, and he had that strange mix of certainty and insecurity that made him a good spy: he didn’t know if it was his own arrogance that said he should have been named leader over me.

And I was not a bad spymaster. Given free rein, I could have been the best.

Approaching, Pantera’s eyes fastened on my face, searching for some sign as to the depth to which I had deceived him. Even then, I think, he hoped for less, or more, than the truth.

I gave Trabo barely a glance, and oh, how that wounded him. He had been relaxed, riding towards us, slightly melancholy, as men are after the killing is over, but now he was spear-stiff and bristling with righteous anger. He had been in love; probably he still was — is — which was what made it all so very dangerous.

They stopped at a sensible distance. Close enough to speak without having to shout, not quite within sword reach. Geminus had been given clear orders. He brought Domitian up to stand on my left, with Geminus on his left and Lucius on his left. We made a line, with me at the far right of it.

‘Jocasta.’ Pantera made a bow, palm to breast, as the Alexandrians do. ‘You honour us with your presence.’

‘Do I?’ I gestured to the boy at my side. He sat stiffly, not only for the chain at his neck that fixed him to Geminus’ saddle. ‘My blade has on it a different poison from that used on Felix. If scratched, Vespasian’s son will fall into near-death, but will continue to breathe. I can, of course, provide an antidote which will ensure his recovery, but only at great cost. It would be better for all of us if he were never touched.’

Pantera bowed his understanding. Seneca had taught him well; never speak when you don’t have to. Never give the enemy words to work with.

We studied each other in silence. If I hadn’t slept much, neither had he. I recognized the signs in him by then; nothing so dramatic as dark smudges under his eyes, but a shortness of temper signalled by tension in the lines at his mouth, at the corners of his eyes. I wanted more than that. I wanted him to know how soundly he had been deceived.

‘When did you know?’ I asked.

He shrugged, loosely. ‘As soon as Sabinus died. While he was alive, there was always a chance it could have been him. My lord Domitian, of course, has always been blameless.’

That was a lie. He had suspected Domitian from the start; too much gold, too many contacts with the silver-boys. I tried to catch his eye, to show him I knew that, but he was watching my hands, not my face. He was clever, always. And right.

‘Jocasta?’ At his side, Trabo’s horse was stuttering backwards, held on too-tight reins. He kicked it forward, savagely. A bruise on the side of his face was colouring deeply in purple and black. ‘What could Sabinus have been?’

‘My informant in Pantera’s group,’ Lucius said coldly from my left. ‘They are congratulating each other on their cleverness. It was obvious from the summer that Pantera and I each had someone who was privy to the other’s most secret thoughts, but neither of us knew the identity of the other’s informant. Much of the past half year has revolved around us each protecting our source, while trying to find the name of the one sent against us.’

‘And we succeeded,’ Pantera said. ‘Was it worth the cost?’

I had posed that same question to Lucius not long before. He said now what he had said to me in the tent in that last, long night of intimacy.

‘I let Caecina defect to protect Jocasta; I allowed her to poison Valens; I let her give gold to Domitian and encourage him to the House of the Lyre, so that it might seem as if he was selling stories for sex. I have no doubt you did things that were likewise dangerous. You let me kill a hound, although in retrospect I should have killed its master. Who betrayed me? Was it Geminus?’ He looked sideways at Geminus, who had come to us in the night and was still as doggedly loyal as ever. ‘Should I have killed him when he came to us last night with news of my brother’s death?’

‘I shouldn’t, if I were you,’ Pantera said. ‘Geminus is as loyal to you as he has always been.’

That was clever. From the little I know of him, Geminus’ first oath was to Vitellius and he cleaved to Lucius only because he was the emperor’s brother. Now that another man had been named emperor…

‘It was Drusus,’ Pantera said.

‘Drusus?’ Lucius laughed. ‘The German masseur? I don’t believe you.’

‘You should; he did his utmost to kill your brother yesterday.’

‘We knew that.’ Lucius’ jaw clamped shut. ‘At your order?’

‘No. Your brother was not a monster; he could have lived, and at worst deserved a decent death. Drusus had his own oath to fulfil and thought others might get in ahead of him.’

‘And you let him?’

‘I couldn’t stop him.’

Across from me, perhaps a dozen paces away, Trabo was still coming to terms with reality. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and his head was clearly addled from the blow that had knocked him flat the day before.

Unexpectedly, he looked up. ‘Jocasta, why?’ So much pain in his voice.

‘Yes, why?’ Pantera’s horse took an uneasy step sideways. ‘You could have thrown the whole of Seneca’s network behind Vespasian and I would have gladly followed your lead. Why did you not? You can’t have thought Vitellius would have made the better emperor?’

‘Vitellius was never emperor.’ I heard the acid in my own voice, but was too shaken to make it mellow; we were beyond that.

My gaze skidded over Pantera’s face. I was studying his hands, just as he was still studying mine, trying to see where the knife was hidden. Like lovers lately parted, we knew each other too well. He was up to something… I just couldn’t tell what.

I said, ‘Lucius has ruled since before his brother reached Rome. If you hadn’t tried to impose your provincial soldier on us, Vitellius would have died by now of a surfeit of eels or bloody flux, or something equally certain.’

‘But then his son would have taken the throne,’ Trabo said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I snapped, I admit it. ‘The boy was far too young to rule. After Nero, nobody is ever again going to let a child take the throne of Rome. He would have been dead within days of his father.’

‘And what of the men who had been loyal to Vitellius? What of Geminus and his Guards? Were you expecting them to transfer their oaths to Lucius without demur?’

‘When one emperor dies, their oaths are given to the new one,’ Lucius said. ‘It has always been so.’

‘And is so now, with Vespasian.’ It was the middle of winter and the wind was cold, but still, I saw Pantera wipe a trickle of sweat from the side of his face. He kept one hand on the reins; the other fell to his side.

He said, ‘You can’t fight on. We have three legions, you have a handful of cohorts and your men must know that Vitellius is dead. They won’t fight, even if you ask them to. My “provincial soldier” has won, and not yet set foot on Roman land.’

Carefully, carefully… this last was a taunt, thrown in my face, but I didn’t have to rise to it.

I smiled, and made no comment. He thought he had won, but I knew that victory could be pulled from defeat more certain than this. An emperor who was locked in Alexandria was not a real emperor.

Pantera pushed on, needling at what he thought were sore points.

‘That’s the truth of it, isn’t it? You couldn’t bear the idea that a rustic provincial, with only one generation in the senate, could take the throne?’

‘No.’ I gave him a look to freeze his blood. ‘I don’t care about that. I’m sure Vespasian will make a perfectly good emperor, I never disagreed with you on that. But he wasn’t my emperor and never would have been. He was yours. You made him. I made Lucius. I brought Seneca’s network to him. You tried to give it to Vespasian instead. And that I could not bear.’

The last words were flung at him, and my knife behind them, and however much he was expecting it, he could never have been completely ready.