Magnus and the Crossroads Brotherhood

by Robert Fabbri

  ‘Where does Tatianus go when he’s not doing business in his house?’

  Magnus thought for a few moments. ‘The normal places: the baths, theatre, games and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes, but what else? What did you notice about him? About the decoration in his room?’

  After a brief pause to recollect, Magnus pointed his index finger at his counsellor. ‘The statuettes of the gods; he has a lot of them.’

  ‘Yes, he’s a very religious man so he does all the things that religious men should do.’

  ‘Such as observing all the festivals, and tomorrow is the Ides of May.’

  ‘Indeed, and we shall be celebrating the Mercuralia in honour of Mercury, the god of merchants and commerce, amongst other things; and what do all merchants do on that day?’

  Magnus grinned and shook his head slowly in awe at the way his counsellor’s mind worked. ‘They sprinkle their heads, merchandise and places of business with water taken from the well at the Capena Gate, and because they have to draw the water themselves we can guarantee that at some time tomorrow Tatianus will be at the Capena Gate. In fact, he said that he wouldn’t be home until the third hour that morning so he’ll be at the gate first thing. I’ve just got to work out how to take advantage of that.’

  Night was three hours old but the streets of Rome were none the quieter for it. Magnus, with Marius and Sextus for company and protection, watched a group of half a dozen men make their way up the Vicus Longus. All were hooded and all had the bearing of men used to violence; a couple had limps from old wounds and one was missing three fingers on his left hand. One had a bulging sack slung over his shoulder.

  ‘The lads watching the West Viminal were sure that they came from that brotherhood’s headquarters?’ Magnus asked Marius, raising his voice to make himself heard against the rattle and clatter of mule- and ox-drawn carts and wagons.

  ‘Yes, Brother. As soon as they appeared to be heading in this direction they sent one of the errand-boys racing up here with the news. There’s no doubt about it: they’re out to do no good in the area.’

  ‘Well, they don’t look like they’re on a shopping trip, that’s for sure. But there’re not enough of them to threaten the tavern; so what do they want?’

  All three turned away and leant against the open bar of a street wine-seller’s establishment as the six heavies approached.

  ‘There you go, Magnus,’ the owner said, placing a jug of wine and three earthenware cups on the counter. He then turned to the old slave working with him. ‘Come on, Hylas, you lazy sod, get a move on with those victuals.’ He looked apologetically at Magnus. ‘I’ll get you some bread and roast pork as soon as my idiot slave wakes up; no charge, obviously.’

  ‘Thanks, Septimus,’ Magnus said, edging his head around to try to get a closer look at the intruders as they passed close by but their hoods were too deep. ‘Have you ever seen any of them before up here?’

  Septimus looked at the men as they passed and waited until they were out of earshot. ‘Hard to say, Magnus, I couldn’t see their faces; but there were a couple of strangers hanging around earlier today, big lads who had the look of ex-gladiators about them. One of them had a limp and his mate was missing a few fingers, I seem to remember when I served him; although how many and which hand I don’t recall.’

  ‘Did you catch any of their conversation?’

  ‘Not really, we were very busy at the time and, what with Hylas being about as dozy as a slave can get without actually dropping down dead, that means I’m rushed off my feet and have very little time for chit-chat or eavesdropping.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘I did notice that they were always looking up the hill in the direction of your tavern and after they’d had a couple of jugs of my roughest they moved off in that direction. That’s the lot, I’m afraid, Magnus.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Septimus my lad; that may be very helpful. About what time was this?’

  ‘The third hour or so.’

  Magnus turned to Marius and Sextus. ‘They found pokerboy’s body soon after dawn and took the implement to Sempronius, who would have seen it at the end of the first hour. The timing fits.’

  Marius nodded whilst Sextus, judging by his strained expression, struggled to get to grips with such advanced arithmetic.

  Magnus downed his wine and then grabbed some pork and a hunk of bread as Hylas placed the plate of food in front of him. ‘Come on, lads, let’s follow the bastards and see what they’re up to.’

  Keeping a dozen paces behind the suspicious group, Magnus and his companions tracked them along the Vicus Longus as it made its way up the Quirinal Hill. Just before they arrived at the junction with the Alta Semita, the intruders stopped and took a deep interest in a reinforced door out of sight of the main street at the end of a recess, a couple of paces deep, in the wall. ‘That’s one of the back doors to the tavern,’ Magnus hissed as they watched the men from a distance. ‘How do they know about that? We haven’t needed to use it in ages.’

  Having tested it with a crowbar extracted from the sack and found it to be solid, the intruders moved on up the hill.

  ‘I think they’re planning to give us a painful shock by taking us in the rear, lads, if you take my meaning? My guess is that they’re heading for the back door on the Alta Semita to see if they can force an entrance there. If we hurry we could be there to meet them.’

  The group carried on up the hill, past the tavern’s south wall, skirted around the tables and benches set outside the building at the apex of the forty-five-degree junction and then turned left along the Alta Semita.

  Magnus stayed in the shadow of the south wall as he watched the intruders disappear behind the northern wall. ‘Quick, lads!’ He ran through the outside tables, signalling to the brothers drinking and playing dice to follow him, and pounded through the tavern’s front door, causing a lull in the raucous atmosphere within. On he went, through the gradually widening room as it expanded, following the diverging courses of the two roads encasing it, and then out through a curtained doorway and right into an ill-lit corridor. ‘Break out the weapons box, Sextus,’ Magnus ordered as he turned left into the room at the far end of the corridor in which he conducted brotherhood business.

  ‘Break out the weapons box; right you are, Magnus,’ the brother replied, digesting his orders and then picking up a heavy box from just inside the door as Magnus ran to a further door on the far side of the room, its key already in the lock in preparation for a quick getaway. He turned the key, opened the door, crossed another, longer corridor and rushed through the dark chamber, infused with the lingering smell of burnt flesh, which had been the scene of the previous night’s brutalities.

  Here Magnus slowed and, signalling to the men racing behind him to do likewise, he listened. From the adjoining room could be heard the distinct sound of wood being worked on by metal. ‘Dole them out, Sextus,’ Magnus said, nodding to the weapons box clasped in the huge brother’s ham fists. ‘And close the door behind us, Marius.’ The one-handed brother quietly pushed the door to, shrouding the room in almost complete darkness.

  Taking the first sword from the box, Magnus crept forward to the door at the far left side of the room and put his ear to it. Listening, he slid his hand over the wood and found the key, again ready in position should this escape route be urgently required. ‘They’re almost in, by the sound of it. There’s only one way out of that room and it’s through this door; let’s make it easy for them.’ He turned the key and the lock clicked; a moment later came the sound of splintering wood from the room beyond. ‘Keep tight against the walls, lads,’ Magnus hissed at the eight or so brethren veiled by gloom. ‘Let’s try and get all six of the arse-sponges.’

  Magnus pulled back into the corner opposite the door as the handle was tried from the other side; there was a dull clunk and then a tall thin chink of dim light materialised as the door was slowly pushed ajar. The chink widened and then was filled by the silhouette of a bulky ma
n; he paused and listened – none of Magnus’ brethren dared breathe.

  After what seemed like an age, the intruder stepped through into the room, his mates close behind. ‘We go through this room and then across a corridor,’ he whispered as he trod gently forward and the last of the shadows passed through the door.

  ‘No you fucking don’t!’ Magnus shouted as he ground the tip of his blade into the nearest silhouette, rolling his wrist as it punctured flesh and muscle; a roar of pain, guttural and prolonged, was his reward. His brothers took his lead and descended on the shadowed figures from all angles, hacking and stabbing wildly in the dark at the surprised and confused intruders who, despite their disadvantage, very soon rallied with the three remaining on their feet managing to get back to back. Weapons clashed with ringing reports and men grunted and cursed in the blackness as a wounded intruder moaned pitifully somewhere on the floor. The three survivors, swiping their blades before them to discourage their attackers from closing with them, edged back the way they had come. Slowly they retreated, their forms indistinct in the gloom, defending every assault with lightning-swift ripostes that gave credence to Septimus’ assumption that they were men trained for the arena.

  ‘Easy, lads!’ Magnus shouted as he realised that there would be no way that they could break through the gladiators’ guard in the near absent light. ‘Pull back and let the bastards go.’

  His brethren obeyed the order as the three survivors stepped back through the door and then, after a brief pause, turned as one man and ran off, out into the street and on into the night.

  ‘Minerva’s dry dugs, they were good,’ Magnus puffed as he slammed the remains of the shattered back door closed behind the fleeing intruders.

  ‘What do you want us to do with the wounded one, Brother?’ Marius asked, kicking the moaning, prone form and eliciting a cry of pain. ‘Would you like me to heat up my poker?’

  ‘No, Brother, we know where he came from; just make sure he doesn’t go back there, if you take my meaning?’

  The wet sound of honed iron slicing through muscle and cartilage was followed by a protracted gurgling as Servius and another brother entered the room with an oil lamp each, illuminating the dying man as he drowned in his own blood, his throat a gaping gash.

  ‘Is everyone all right?’ Magnus asked as Servius knelt down and pulled the sack from the intruder’s weakening grip.

  His brothers examined themselves for wounds and to their surprise found none.

  ‘We’ve got a couple of problems, Servius,’ Magnus said.

  ‘No back door,’ the counsellor replied, rummaging in the sack.

  ‘I’ll have that mended and reinforced before morning; Marius will see to that. No, it’s more that we haven’t got a back door that isn’t known about.’

  ‘Then you’d better make another one.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a different place.’ Servius nodded to the wall opposite the ruined door. ‘What’s on the other side of that?’

  Magnus scratched his head and frowned. ‘I imagine it’s just a deserted courtyard full of shit and stuff. Perfect. I’ll have the lads knock a door through.’

  Servius shock his head. ‘People can see a door; just have them remove the mortar from the bricks so that a couple of blows from a sledgehammer will knock them down.’

  ‘That’s a nice idea, Brother. I’ll have them do the same in a couple of other places too. What have you got in there?’

  Servius tipped the contents of the sack on to the floor; an earthenware jar, about the size of a man’s head, fell out wrapped in bundles of rags. ‘It looks like they were planning on torching the place.’ He picked up some rags and held them to his nose. ‘Oil.’ Then he pulled the stopper from the jar, immediately releasing a pungent scent that Magnus did not recognise. ‘I’ll wager that, whatever this is, it can burn fiercely; I’ll have a little play with it somewhere safe.’ He refitted the stopper and then looked up at Magnus. ‘You said that we’ve got a couple of problems?’

  ‘Yeah; the other is how did the leader of those bastards know his way through this building in the dark? I heard him say: “We go through this room and then across a corridor.” How did he know that without someone telling him?’

  ‘Or without having been here before?’

  ‘True, Brother, very true. And that’s an even more disturbing thought.’

  The Capena Gate was busy the hour before dawn the following morning; scores of merchants and traders pushed and shoved each other to get to the well at the foot of the Caelian Hill, sandwiched between the city walls and the line of the Appian Aqueduct, to the left of the gate. Each one was keen to draw the water with which Mercury was sure to bless their business ventures and each one wanted to complete the task as quickly as possible so as not to be away from those ventures for longer than necessary. In the cutthroat world of Roman commerce, time definitely was money and therefore manners came into little consideration when it came to waiting one’s turn in the scrimmage that passed for a queue. The priests of Mercury, standing on a dais overlooking the well, in torchlight, offered prayers to their favoured deity as his special day dawned; even their presence did nothing to help restore a semblance of order to this thoroughly un-reverential scene. Just to the right of this chaos, the centurion of the watch had the men of the Urban Cohort under his command inspect every cart coming through the gate. Most were given a cursory search but occasionally, at random, one was given a rigorous frisking much to the annoyance of the carter, who knew that he had only an hour to make his delivery and get his vehicle out of the city before the daytime ban on beast-drawn vehicles came into effect – unless, of course, he had access to expensive stabling within the walls.

  ‘I suppose he knows which ones not to search too carefully,’ Magnus commented as he and Marius watched the centurion point to a cart loaded with leather buckets. ‘Mind you, I imagine our order is already through.’

  Marius yawned and grunted something unintelligible but to the affirmative. They stood beneath an arch of the Appian Aqueduct where it crossed from the Caelian Hill to the Aventine, running within the Servian Walls.

  Magnus nudged his brother with the amphora he carried. ‘Try and keep awake; you’re not going to be much good at playing your part if you’re continually dropping off and starting to snore.’

  ‘Sorry, Magnus. I didn’t get much sleep tonight or the night before either, what with the poker work and then getting rid of the body and all.’

  ‘Yeah, well, everyone has to work hard sometimes and our business is no exception. Now, keep your eyes open and look for Tatianus.’

  ‘Right you are, Magnus,’ Marius said, repressing another yawn and blinking.

  Even Magnus was struggling to stay awake by the time the sun had risen for an hour and its rays had begun to penetrate down into the busy thoroughfares, lanes and alleyways of Rome, but his vigilance was rewarded by the sight of a tall man surrounded by four bodyguards.

  ‘That’s him, Brother,’ Magnus hissed, nudging Marius again and jolting him from semi-consciousness. ‘Come on.’

  They nipped out from under their archway and jogged up to the well so that they arrived just before Tatianus. The crowd had died down to only two or three deep by this time as most of the worshippers who wanted to take advantage of the god’s beneficence but not lose any working time by doing so had now departed, leaving the well clearer for the devotees of Mercury who, perhaps, took a slightly less mercenary attitude to the festival.

  ‘We could really do with the god’s help for our business this year, eh, Marius?’ Magnus said in a loud voice.

  Marius looked at him bleary-eyed. ‘What?’

  Magnus gestured at his brother and made encouraging movements with his eyebrows as Tatianus stopped just behind them to wait his turn.

  Marius finally took the hint. ‘Oh, right. Er … Yes, Magnus, we could really do with all the help that Mercury can give us this year, what with having all that money stolen the other night. Do you
think it was Sempronius?’

  Magnus nodded with exaggeration, his face turned to Marius so that it was in profile to Tatianus behind him. ‘The patronus of the West Viminal Brotherhood? Definitely, Brother; he heard what we were trying to buy and wanted it for himself. He hopes that having stolen the money from us we wouldn’t be able to raise enough at short notice to replace it.’

  ‘And can we?’ Marius asked as they shuffled forward.

  ‘It’s not looking good, brother. The Cloelius Brothers’ banking business in the Forum refused me a loan yesterday and the rest of the Brotherhood’s cash is tied up at the moment. I’ll have to go to Tatianus and ask him as a favour to hold on to our item for a day or so.’ Magnus got to the well and handed the amphora to Marius who held it steady as Magnus took the draw-bucket and slopped water into it.

  ‘Do you think that he’ll do it?’

  ‘He might, seeing as I don’t suppose many people would want to buy what we’ve ordered for the price that we’re prepared to pay for it, that is; except, perhaps, Sempronius, who would do it just to spite me and enjoy watching me lose my deposit and spending the money he stole from me on an item that I was going to pay for with it.’

  ‘That would be nasty.’

  Magnus jammed the stopper into the amphora. ‘It would, Brother; but highly unlikely. How would Tatianus ever make that connection? After all, he ain’t that bright.’

  ‘That’s what I heard too,’ Marius agreed as they moved off, restraining themselves from looking back at Tatianus and enjoying what they both imagined would be a look of deep outrage on the middle-man’s face.

  The sudden blare of horns cut across the general chatter at the well. Magnus looked towards their source at the Capena Gate to see the upheld axes wrapped in rods, the fasces, which were borne by lictors. Someone important was coming through the gate.

  ‘Let’s get out of here before we’re obliged to stay and applaud whoever it is,’ Magnus said. ‘I never like being too close to anyone with lictors, just in case I get noticed and come under strong scrutiny.’