The Sword and the Throne

by Henry Venmore-Rowland

  ‘Thank you, General. We had heard an army was coming out of the Alps, and we all prayed that we would be spared the fate of Albintimilium.’

  ‘What do you mean? There aren’t any armies in Liguria already, are there?’

  ‘You haven’t heard, my lord? Otho sent his navy to southern Gaul, hoping to stop the advance of your army in Gaul.’

  ‘Valens’s army, yes, but he can’t be over the Alps yet,’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘You misunderstand, General: it was Otho’s navy that attacked and plundered the town. They ransacked the town from top to bottom, even killed an old noblewoman who went out to order the men to stop.’

  ‘Which noblewoman?’ I asked, sensing the answer before it was given.

  ‘The lady Agricola, General.’

  * * *

  I knew it was Julius’s mother as soon as I heard that the woman had tried to shame the looters into stopping. That was just like her. When we were growing up she had never needed to raise her voice with Julius and me. She could always make us behave by saying how our fathers would be disappointed if they could see us, whether we were fighting over the same toy as children or skipping lessons to go into the raunchier parts of town when we were teenagers. Albintimilium was her favourite place, you see; like a Baiae of the north, it is a beautiful coastal resort where one goes to see and be seen by the high society of northern Italia. As the Agricola estate was in unfashionable Gaul, the resort was her one escape from rustic life into something like the life she had enjoyed in Rome before her husband’s death. And now she was dead, cut down by Otho’s men. Poor Julius. I wrote to him that night, letting him know how sorry I felt. There wasn’t much else I could write. He had gone to Rome to stand in the elections for praetor, and I couldn’t risk the letter being read by any of Otho’s creatures once it reached the city. I even had to borrow the seal of one of the local landowners to send the letter. My own seal would be recognized in Rome and the letter would almost certainly be confiscated on arrival and pored over for intelligence.

  But on the other hand, Otho’s actions in Liguria meant that Valens’s crossing of the Alps would take him longer than expected, giving me a free hand in Italia until he arrived. My ultimate destination was the key town of Placentia, one of the largest fortresses on the Po, founded in the days of Marius to protect the soft underbelly of Italia from barbarian tribes like the Cimbri and Teutones who had threatened Rome almost two centuries ago. Not only that, it sits at the junction of the Aemilian and the Postumian Way, the two great roads of Italia. To the east were the legions of Pannonia and Dalmatia, hard-core supporters of Nero and almost certain to follow Otho. And to the south lay Rome itself.

  As much as I wanted to, we couldn’t make for the town on the near side of the Po, Cremona, at least not directly. We had to march from town to town, from grain store to grain store. Publilius had taken an advance party of six cohorts with him, four of infantry and two of cavalry. One of those cavalry cohorts was not for fighting, but had been broken up into much smaller squadrons and detachments to act as scouts. Some would head west towards the Maritime Alps and report to me on the progress of Valens and his army, others would head along the Postumian Way to watch for the eastern legions while others still would head south to wait for Otho’s coming.

  Within a week we reached the final town of the four that the Silian cavalry, Vitellius’s loyal Africans, had delivered to us. Mediolanum was the biggest city in the entire province, and it was here that the prefect of the cohort and Publilius had set up their temporary headquarters. After yet another tedious ceremony of welcome from the great and the good of the town I was free to stop being a diplomat and start being a general again. The advance force had commandeered an impressive villa in the centre of the town. A dozen men from one of the auxiliary cohorts stood guard over the house, saluting when they saw their general approach.

  ‘As you were, men.’

  A man was waiting for me in the atrium, and he escorted me to the room where the officers were laying their plans. My attendant knocked loudly on the door.

  ‘If it’s another complaint about the grain requisition, I’m not interested,’ said a voice that I didn’t recognize.

  ‘It’s General Severus, sir.’

  ‘Well, show him in then!’ The attendant remained hidden behind the wall while pushing the door open for me. The man who spoke must have had a fearsome temper, I thought, if his own staff didn’t want to face him if they could avoid it. I was greeted by the sight of two men poring over a collection of maps. Publilius was one of them; the other was a man as black as coal.

  ‘General Severus, I presume?’

  I didn’t know what to say. I had expected a Roman or at least a man from Italia to be the cohort’s prefect, or else a dusky North African like his decurion. This man though was tall, built like an ox and…

  ‘If my skin offends you, I’m afraid there’s not much I can do except wear a longer tunic. You are General Severus, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes I am,’ I said, regaining my composure. ‘And I take it you’re the prefect of the Silian cavalry?’

  ‘Prefect Cerberus, sir.’

  ‘Cerberus, as in the giant dog that guards the entrance to the Underworld? How on earth did you get a name like that?’

  ‘The locals gave my father that name when he settled with a group of his soldiers in the African province. He was a mercenary, sir, and a good one.’

  ‘But that doesn’t explain how a mercenary’s son comes to be in command of a cohort of cavalry. You have to have a certain… social standing.’

  ‘True enough, sir. I owe that to my mother. Her father was a senator. But my good looks I get from my father’s side. Now would you like to be briefed on the situation, sir?’

  He didn’t wait for me to answer. I suppose he had grown used to the surprise his appearance prompted and had learned to tolerate it. After all, I was in a similar position. People don’t expect a general of Rome to be much under fifty, let alone thirty years old.

  Publilius smiled at the exchange. ‘Been having a leisurely march, General?’

  ‘Oh you know how it is, you’re having a nice walk through the north of Italia in spring, the birds are singing, the daffodils are in flower. Some things can’t be rushed.’

  ‘Quite. Meanwhile my boys do all the work!’

  ‘Is that a complaint or an observation?’

  ‘Oh I’m not complaining, it’s what the auxiliaries are for, to save you infantry boys for the fighting.’

  ‘So what have you been doing while I’ve been away?’

  ‘Scouting mainly. I’ve got men covering all the western passes over the Alps so we know where Valens has got to.’

  ‘And where has he got to?’

  ‘We’re not sure,’ Cerberus said. ‘The raid by Otho’s navy delayed them, but we think he will have started crossing the mountains by now, away from the coast and out of the reach of the marines. After that he’ll make for Augusta Taurinorum probably, and from there he’ll be less than a week’s march away.’

  ‘So we’re on our own for three, maybe four weeks?’

  ‘It looks that way,’ Publilius admitted.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said, rubbing my hands joyfully. ‘And what of the enemy?’

  ‘Once he heard that your army had appeared out of the Alps so soon, Otho sent an advance guard of about seven thousand. It’s a strange mix of men, we gather,’ Cerberus said. ‘What’s left of the legion of sailors Nero recruited but Galba then disbanded – they’re now the First Adiutrix – a few praetorian cohorts, a few cavalry units and strangest of all, two thousand gladiators. We estimate around ten thousand men.’

  ‘Gladiators? Otho must be desperate, the army hasn’t used gladiators since the days of the republic!’ I said.

  ‘Can you blame him? He’s only been emperor for two months and now he has nearly fifty thousand crack troops rebelling against him. Anyway, that force has been split. The legion has headed east to make sure the road from Pa
nnonia stays open, while the praetorians and the gladiators have been sent to reinforce Placentia, to stop us crossing the Po.’

  ‘And how far away are the eastern legions?’

  ‘At least a month away,’ Publilius answered.

  ‘Food, ammunition, tools, how are we off for them?’

  ‘There’s enough food in the area to keep us in the field for two months at the most, otherwise we’re pretty well equipped.’ I took a moment, looking at the map in silence. Valens was in the west, several legions to the east, and to the south lay Otho and Rome, with a few paltry sailors, praetorians and gladiators in our way. I jabbed my finger at the crucial city.

  ‘Placentia, that’s where we go from here. If we can establish a foothold on the south bank of the Po we can march south long before the legions from the east could hope to arrive. Otho has what, four thousand praetorians left in Rome? And he’ll no doubt recruit another legion from the city. So, four thousand men who have done little but whore in Rome and guard emperors, and a legion of raw recruits, against twenty thousand of the finest troops in the empire. I’m not going to sit here and wait for Valens to arrive. If we can take Placentia quickly we can march down the Aemilian Way and catch Otho in the open as he comes north to unite his army.’

  ‘How soon can we be at Placentia?’ Publilius asked Cerberus.

  ‘It’s fifty miles from here to Cremona, then another twenty or so across the river to Placentia. With all the siege equipment, no more than four days I should think.’

  ‘Can your men be ready to march tomorrow, Publilius?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll run rings around you, General!’

  ‘Good man. Now, I don’t know about you two, but I need a bath.’

  ‘There was one last thing, sir,’ Cerberus added. ‘A letter arrived for you by private courier this morning. He’s still in the city, waiting for your reply.’

  ‘Who on earth sends an invading general a letter?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea, sir. The messenger didn’t give his master’s name.’ He gestured at a cylindrical container that stood next to the table. Curious, I opened the leather tube and out fell a letter, the figure of a prancing horse pressed into the red wax that sealed it. It was the seal of my friend, Julius Agricola.

  X

  I waited until I was in the privacy of my own billet that evening before reading the letter from Julius. Totavalas was in the garden giving Aulus a lesson in swordplay, while Salonina was being pampered and preened in the bath by her slaves. Carefully, I picked away at the wax with my fingernails. I have this knack of tearing the vellum if I try to prise a letter open in one go, you see. Finally the wax came away:

  Caecina,

  Thank you for your letter. It was hard enough when your mother died only three years ago, she had been as good a parent to me as I hope my mother was to you. Mother was so proud of me when I was elected to be a praetor last year, and with your promotion to Legate of the Fourth she couldn’t have been prouder of ‘her boys’.

  But to lose your mother to a fever was one thing, to lose mine to the swords of Otho’s scum is another entirely. I admit that I cannot understand what possessed you and others to follow a man as uninspiring as Vitellius when Galba was alive, but you’ll understand why I have no loyalty to Otho as emperor. He is gathering his troops to oppose you and has put our old general, Suetonius Paulinus, in command of the army, though Otho intends to march with us. Paulinus has asked me to serve as his chief of staff and I have accepted. If there is any way that I can help you and the cause of Vitellius, write to me using the same messenger.

  Yours in haste,

  Julius

  ‘What have you got there?’ Salonina asked. Her rounded form was delicately wrapped in a gown of expensive fabric, decorated with swirling patterns of blue and gold.

  ‘Read this,’ I said. Her eyes flicked from left to right as she read, her expression betraying her surprise.

  ‘And you’re going to accept his offer?’ she asked.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? It’s thanks to Otho that his mother is dead; why shouldn’t he want to see him fail? But there’s something else we need to talk about.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ she said suspiciously, coming to sit on the corner of the bed.

  ‘I would have wanted this even before I heard about Julius’s mother, but now that she’s been killed I’m going to insist.’

  ‘Spit it out, Caecina, whatever it is.’

  ‘I want you and Aulus to wait here in Mediolanum when I take the army south.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I would have sent you home to Vicetia, but that’s on the road that Otho’s reinforcements will take. You’ll be safer here.’

  ‘I thought you said there would be no safer place for me than with your army,’ Salonina said.

  ‘When we were marching, yes. But now we’re going to war. And a proper war, not like those scraps we had in the Alps. This will be the real thing. Thousands will die in the next few weeks, and I don’t want you among them.’

  ‘Don’t I get a say in this?’

  I smiled weakly. ‘You’re having your say right now. As your husband I don’t have to listen to it.’

  ‘That’s not funny, Caecina.’

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry. But you can’t blame me for not wanting to lose you. And it’s not as though we share the same bed that much these days…’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’ she said, gesturing at her swollen figure.

  ‘Yes, I realize that. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you.’

  ‘So you want to be with me, but you don’t want to be with me, is that it?’

  ‘Stop twisting my words, Salonina!’

  Her shoulders slumped. She looked tired. ‘I’m sorry, Caecina, I didn’t mean to fight with you. My mind’s all over the place.’

  I went and gave her a hug. ‘I just want to keep you safe.’

  ‘I know, but if you kept me any safer I might as well live in a box and only be brought out for special occasions. You know that’s not the sort of wife I want to be.’

  ‘I know. But trust me on this. One big battle and it’ll all be over, then we’ll be together. I promise.’

  * * *

  The army set out the next day. The men were spoiling for a fight. As I rode alongside them it struck me how many veterans we had in our number. You could tell the raw recruits, for they were the ones who still wore their long socks. Socks are a welcome addition when plodding slowly through the mountain passes, but in the lush plains of northern Italia we would be marching faster and harder, and that meant blisters. And blisters break. That’s painful enough; more painful still is when the pus glues the wound to the sock, making every step a sore one. And then there’s the agony of trying to take the wretched things off once they are stuck to you. But that was the price you paid for electing to keep your shins warm for that little bit longer, and it was a lesson once learned that was never forgotten.

  As Cerberus had said, it was little more than fifty miles to the main fortress on the northern bank of the Po, Cremona. At full marching pace that should have taken two days, no more. Hampered by the siege engines I had allowed three and a half days, but what I had not accounted for was the obsequiousness and pomposity of my fellow citizens. Every tiny market town we passed sent us a deputation of dignitaries who offered us the freedom of the town, or landowners would invite the senior officers to their homes for dinner and try to ingratiate themselves with us, no doubt hoping that we would requisition grain from farms other than their own! And we could hardly ignore the overtures of our own people. Poor Totavalas probably spent more time polishing my ceremonial armour than he did in the saddle on that tiresome journey south. We ended up taking six whole days to march those fifty miles, and every day we idled meant more time for Otho’s men to prepare their defences in Placentia.

  The people of Cremona welcomed us with open arms. Like the citizens of Vienne and Lugdunum before them, they had a bitter rivalry with the town
of Placentia.

  ‘Just because they’re on the southern side of the Po and we’re not, they treat us like dirt,’ one of the locals complained bitterly. ‘Doesn’t it matter that our town is just as old, as rich and as important? No, not to them; we’re just barbarians from beyond the river!’

  ‘I’m a Vicetian myself,’ I explained. ‘We may not be from the same province, but I know what it’s like to be considered an inferior breed just because your home town is nearer to the Alps than it is to the decadent cities in the south.’

  The man beamed at finding a kindred spirit, and the rest of the town were just as welcoming. Aside from the huge delays, my only concern now was that my officers were being overindulged by the local hospitality as we were honoured with yet another feast, and I had to make yet another gracious speech to the citizenry. Thank the gods my scouts kept me informed of the enemy’s whereabouts. That half of the advance party not in Placentia was still away to the east, keeping the Postumian Way open to the Balkan legions, while Otho and his army were still far away to the south.

  Once over the Po, the raucous marching songs stopped. The men were beginning to think of the battle ahead. They knew that this would be the last campaign for some of them, and that tends to make a man rather thoughtful. But crossing the river was important. It showed we were taking the fight to Otho, and I had confidence in my men even without Valens’s larger army on hand to support us.

  Placentia was the biggest fortress in the north, and it grew out of the hazy western horizon at daybreak the next day. In every other direction the land met the sky in an unerringly flat line. Up in the sky, tinted a lifelike pink by the touch of a red dawn, there was a cloud that looked like a staggering boar. I don’t know if it was my imagination or some omen from the gods, but it unnerved me.

  The minutes passed, and the lump on the horizon grew and grew. At first it looked as big as the tiniest pebble on a stony beach. Then it was as large as a thumbnail. We marched on, and I could begin to make out the individual faces of each wall. To the side of the city stood a great amphitheatre, the biggest of its kind anywhere along the Po. But it was the walls, the towers and the men on the battlements that drew my attention. Soon we met another road that joined us obliquely from the south-east. This was the Aemilian Way, the road that Otho and his army would be marching along to meet his Balkan reinforcements. But if we took Placentia quickly we could leave the siege engines in the town and march at lightning pace to meet him head on, and we would outnumber him two to one. Valens would barely be in Italia and I would hand the throne to Vitellius on a plate.