Usurpers

by Q V Hunter

  ‘I’m new here. I’ve got much to learn from the chief of the cubicularii.’ It was true. No one was in a better position to know court secrets than the eunuchs who tended the imperial bedchambers.

  She rounded the end of her bed and backed me up against the mural. Her tight black curls smelled of jasmine oil and something else that might have been civet essence.

  ‘How fast will my letter travel from this freezing dump?’

  ‘By twenty-four hour relay to Mediolanum in four and a half days via Augusta Raurica and Brigantium, then eastwards for fifteen days through Sirmium to Constantinopolis and then to the battle front.’

  ‘I trust you, Numidianus.’ She pressed her letter on my chest with a hand laden with rings.

  ‘Oh, what’s this?’ Her sharp fingernails feeling through my shirt, she took the measure of my amulet, an oversized bulla from the old Senator Manlius.

  I extracted it from her tight grasp with care. ‘A sentimental trifle.’

  ‘You’re a grown man but still wear a child’s ornament?’ She tilted her face to one side and tested a playful wink. ‘What if I asked for it as a present?’

  ‘It’s a worthless clump of bronze-covered pottery. Nevertheless, I promised someone to never give it up, even in manhood.’ I slid the letter out from under her fingers and gave her a formal nod. She didn’t accept my gesture that the order of business at her bedside was complete.

  ‘Do you like games?’ she purred. Close up, I saw not only circles under her eyes, but creases collecting the black kohl into feathery lines. The widowed Augusta was something just under thirty, I guessed. That made her some seven or eight years older than myself.

  ‘I enjoy sport, like any man, Augusta. I enjoyed hunting with Lieutenant Commander Gaiso this morning.’

  ‘My younger brother has claimed all the credit. He always does.’ She took a deep breath but didn’t move even an inch away. ‘Do you like indoor games as well?’

  ‘I prefer sports in fresh air.’

  She took it in good humor. ‘My late husband, the General Hannibalianus taught me games of all kinds. I miss him.’

  ‘King of kings and Ruler of the Pontic people, yes, I have heard that the late Constantine had a good friend in your husband—or should I say uncle?’

  ‘But Hannibalianus was supposed to rise farther. He failed. We never do beat the Persians, do we? And so I never got to be Queen of the Pontic people.’ She sighed as she played with one of the heavy necklaces adorning her scrawny neck. ‘Then Hannibalianus died . . . prematurely.’

  ‘Yes, your entire family suffered sad losses.’

  She chuckled. ‘You are diplomatic as well as efficient. You call those murders “sad losses”? We Constantines love to play games. We’re a family with a peculiar pastime. We stick together until we kill each other.’

  ‘Not very sporting, Augusta,’ I slid free of her shadowy presence and bowed my head again to end the interview.

  ‘Oh, you’re wrong, Agens. The sport lies in guessing when and who.’

  She wandered around the room for a moment with an exaggerated flip of rustling hips until she found a length of silk cord lying on one of her side tables. She wound it around her wrist and sauntered back around the bed. I confirmed with a quick glance around the suite what my instinct had already whispered. Her maidservants had retreated. The Augusta and I were alone.

  ‘Hannibalianus told me that in battle, sometimes pain and excitement become one, so that you can’t tell whether you’re dying or in ecstasy. He said wounds come to mean nothing in the heat of combat, with the crush of men and their blood and sweat on all sides, the roars and screams as body presses upon body . . .’

  ‘Thank you, Augusta.’ I bowed again, lower, and made for the arch to the outer foyer, but she stopped my progress halfway by looping her golden cord around my waist and catching the tasseled end. She drew my hips close to hers.

  ‘There’s a rumor around this palace that you were a boy slave in the Manlius household in Roma and earned your manumission by bravery in the field.’

  ‘The Empire found a use for me and rewarded me.’

  ‘You were quite right to fight for your freedom. I hear the Manlius clan is played out, finished, like that whole malarial city.’ She toyed with her cord, chafing my back as she pulled on one end, then the other, back and forth. ‘Do you look for a better future here in Treverorum?’

  ‘I hope to advance in rank, Augusta.’

  ‘It might be easier than you think—all those ranks and classifications—the agentes act as if they were the cavalry! That’s so boring. There might be a more interesting use for your training.’

  I said nothing and tucked her letter under my tunic.

  ‘I hear you agentes learn to ride very hard and fast.’

  ‘Yes, Augusta.’

  ‘That you go for days and nights without sleep.’

  ‘We rest a little between stages, Augusta.’

  ‘You train to go long distances without . . . ever . . . ’ She pulled the cord tighter and whispered in my ear, ‘stopping.’

  ‘We’re trained to serve.’

  ‘You could serve in so many easier ways.’ She let the cord go a little slack. ‘Slaves can’t say no, but then there’s no pleasure, is there? For real excitement, there has to be willingness and freedom and sometimes a little pain.’ She jerked the cord tighter around me again. ‘Excitement mixed with pain or . . .’ Her dark eyes narrowed as she added, ‘just . . . pain.’

  Her breath, coming now in tiny pants, told me hunting was her sport, too. She was as expert as Gaiso in her way. I felt cornered, even without the bay dogs harrying me.

  My stubborn silence triggered that spark of cruelty in her eyes. ‘Did you ever meet one of the palace clerks here, a Gaul named Dax?’

  Ah, here came her catch dog.

  I swallowed before answering, ‘A palace clerk? There’s a cripple near the gate they call Dax.’

  I’d seen the mutilated barbarian, both legs atrophied and twisted backwards underneath him as he begged for coins. We passed him every day as we rode in and out of town.

  ‘He used to be a playmate of mine, she whispered, ‘before his accident.’

  I heard a swish of thick robes. By the gods’ intervention, perhaps her maid was back in the room.

  A strange, high voice broke in. ‘It’s late, Augusta. As the saying goes, a messenger detained is a message delayed.’

  Cocooned in silver-embroidered maroon brocade, the eunuch Eusebius stood in the dark archway between the outer chamber and the foyer. I’d forgotten I’d asked the palace runner to inform him. I was more than ever aware of the Constantia’s silken belt. The eunuch could be a dangerous witness if something was misconstrued. Already his protruding eyes bulged out at us standing side by side next to the bed.

  ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ he bowed, ‘but I feared there was some mistake. Surely an augusta’s messages aren’t meant for the collection of an agens, especially a mere circitor.’

  The cutting cord slackened its bite. She sighed. ‘You’re right, Eusebius, as always. I mustn’t keep Numidianus. He seems tired from the hunt.’

  She tossed her head to dismiss me. I strode past Eusebius holding a low and grateful bow. As I closed the outside door, I heard the whip of golden cord slapping on marble.

  Her letter to Constantius was sealed tight, its wax resting still warm on my bare skin and the heat of her breath still burning my ear.

  Chapter 3, ‘The Chain’

  —Morning, Treverorum—

  I felt suspended, like some Subura slumdweller waiting for their cloddish neighbor’s other sandal to drop on the floor overhead. Only in this case, my surroundings were luxurious and the other fellow wore hand-stitched embroidered slippers.

  Eusebius was patient and clever. He didn’t summon me until well after dawn—only a short ‘autumn hour’ or so before the outgoing rider was to ride south with the morning’s dispatches. I still carried Constantia’s letter on m
e, intending to add it to the post at the last and safest possible minute.

  ‘Your first time to my office, Numidianus? Take a seat.’ He patted his fawn-colored hair flat down on his skull with a pudgy hand. His boiled-egg eyes bulged at me in welcome.

  ‘Thank you, Eusebius.’

  He had a spacious room decorated in a refined, classical style—unexpected in such a vulgar, modern palace of garish mosaics and clashing draperies. I stood on the same black and white tiles I recalled from the Manlius vestibule back home in Roma. Eusebius had filled his shelves with expensive new papyrus codices with spines embossed in gold—no old-fashioned scrolls for him.

  Behind his sleek desk hung a colored map of the Roman world stretching from the Persian border in the East across Thrace and Illyricum to Italia, south to Egypt and Roman Africa, and all the way up to the barrier built by Hadrian to mark off Roman territory from the Celts’. This was no working sketch, no military guide, folded and refolded, muddied or blood-smeared. It hung in an ornate frame, as pristine as a painting.

  It was all very elegant, but the eunuch could not resist a touch of his native East. Wisps of overpowering incense floated from a burner hanging on a chain near the doorway.

  I couldn’t help gagging.

  ‘Sorry, but I can’t bear the stink of that thing roasting below.’

  ‘I doubt the animal will taste any better than it smells.’

  ‘Still, the man who kills such a beast is bound to be seen as heroic.’ His eyes flared wide at me with meaning.

  ‘Gaiso would have waited for the Emperor, but the boar would not postpone his own death.’

  The eunuch smiled at my evasion. I could see he enjoyed playing games.

  ‘Numidianus, I’m a great admirer of your schola. You agentes are efficient and nothing if not discreet. But I prefer to be open-handed in a court with so many interests.’ He slid a silver pitcher of diluted wine across his desk. I demurred.

  ‘Oh, take a sip. You’re a man in need of friends, Numidianus. I want to be one of them.’ He patted his stomach and belched. ‘I ate too much last night. I always eat too much up here. It’s the cold. It piques the appetite.’ For all that talk of cold and the padding of his robes, his pale brow glistened with sweat.

  ‘Freedmen like myself mustn’t get above themselves. I make friends slowly, Eusebius.’

  ‘So, start with me. We might begin by sharing the contents of the Augusta Constantia’s letter?’

  I shrugged, wondering how much diplomacy would help me this morning. ‘As you say, I’m new. So I follow regulations, to the letter. No post is shared, in principle, with anyone but the recipient or his secretary—today, tomorrow or next week. If you’re setting me a test, I fully intend to pass. You can rely on me to keep the section of the post and road service under my direction honest.’

  ‘Ah,’ he shook his head, ‘an agens fresh as a green apple from his upgrade course. Well, let me make it easier for you then, just to save us time.’ He rang a silver bell sitting on his desk. A slave came through a small door in the corner of the room, obscured by a folding screen. He laid a platter of dark bread slices spread with honey and smoked fish paste on the desk. Eusebius offered me a taste. I wasn’t hungry but I took a slice. A mouth full of fish paste can’t leak secrets.

  ‘First, last night the Augusta told you I was her spy.’

  I raised an eyebrow and kept on chewing.

  ‘I’m not her spy, though it’s easy enough to fool that woman. Officially, I report to the Emperor Constantius on what she and the Little Emperor do on their various escapades around the courts of the West.’

  ‘I wondered why you were here and not near Constantius himself. You say, officially you report to him, but—?’

  ‘Yes,’ he smiled, ‘But I investigate what I want and whomever I want, and so far have kept the best tidbits to myself.’ He took a slice of bread and gobbled it down. ‘I advise you to do the same, particularly since the recent hunting outing. You never know when a little dirt can come in handy.’ He pulled a bit of grayish fish meat from his teeth and wiped his lips with a gold-trimmed linen napkin.

  ‘Second, the Augusta probably told you she disliked the Emperor Constans and preferred our senior Lord in the East.’

  ‘I didn’t inquire.’

  ‘If she even implied it, she lied. She despises poor Constans, true, but she fears their older brother to the point of terror. After all, after the old Constantine died, Constantius killed her husband along with most of their other relatives—hardly an act of Christian, brotherly love.’

  ‘She seems a lonely woman.’

  ‘My, you’re observant.’

  ‘Eusebius, I’m going to have to leave you now for my rounds.’ His fish paste was oily and bitter. I rose from my chair.

  ‘Show me her letter.’

  I cocked my head as if I’d heard someone call me and headed for the door.

  Eusebius tossed aside his bread slice and waved me farewell. ‘It’s all right. I can guess the contents. “Dear Esteemed Brother, Eternal glory to your reign, et cetera, et cetera, success and victory against the Persians follow your every step, et cetera, and get me out of here and give me a court of my own somewhere warm.” Something along those lines?’

  He was accurate to the last comma but I wasn’t going to tell him that. ‘Eusebius, you have misunderstood my simple message to you. I serve the Empire.’

  ‘So you think like all new-made barbarians. You men of fresh blood amuse me. You revere the club you’ve just joined and elevate it into some kind of priestly calling. You think you serve the Empire, but listen to me. You serve a vain and short-sighted man in Apodemius.’

  I stopped short, my hand frozen around the door handle. Few men bandied around the name of the discreet, arthritic traveller who recruited unlikely agents from all corners of the vast imperial network of cities and towns. Apodemius answered only to the Magister Officiorum of the whole Roman Empire. No eunuch—no matter how well positioned—could equal the old man’s reach. If I owed any personal thanks for giving me a new life after cutting myself off from army and ex-master, it was to Apodemius as well as the retired agens who recruited me, his friend Leontus Longus Flavius of Theveste.

  I wasn’t about to discuss those two cherished mentors with a half-man like Eusebius.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be friends, Eusebius, and I’m listening to you very carefully indeed. But don’t expect a new recruit to do anything but deliver the mail.’

  He lifted his bulky body with surprising grace and on moist, small feet, padded up to his map on the wall. ‘Apodemius has all the old cities as well as the rich export towns of Africa covered well, but he’s short of men on the ground here in the new north and in the fleshpots of the Eastern territories.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘But I bet you’re here to find out what you can. There are things he wants to know, things he needs to know. He and I could work together.’

  ‘For the sake of the Empire?’

  ‘Oh, stop prattling about the Empire! Can’t you see the deep cracks running through it? The divisions? You’ve seen our Emperor Constans! Is he a leader of men? And even a real man like Constantius is losing the East to Shapur! You can’t mend such cracks. Just be careful not to step into one yourself!’

  ‘I’m very careful.’

  ‘You’d better be. Any information about the Emperor’s special recreation in the forest will be traced back to you. You may find yourself trapped by “The Chain.” And then you’ll be begging for my friendship.’

  I wanted to escape the stifling air of his office. Even through his curtained window the smell of roasting boar mixed with the perfumes and turned my stomach. The sun was well up now. The outgoing rider would be leaving soon for Divodurum, with or without the Augusta’s appeal in his sack.

  But I needed to know what Eusebius was threatening me with. ‘The Chain? That sounds like a scary tale told to children.’

  Eusebius gestured me back from t
he door to join him at the window. ‘You may look down on me as unnatural, but I can assure you that Catena is more of a monster than I. Look, he’s down there now, waiting to intercept you.’

  Eusebius drew the curtain and shifted aside a shutter of thick opaque glass that insulated his window. He pointed towards the outer courtyard beyond.

  Wreaths of smoke rose up off crackling fat dripping over the spit. Through a greasy cloud wafting to and fro, I saw the two cooks at work. They turned the beast evenly around and around as it spat back at them and they carved the boar meat off the haunches as it browned.

  The smoke shifted. Now I was able to make out the hearty Gaiso leaning on a makeshift crutch and chatting to a bull of a man in full armor. This stranger’s face, even seen from a high angle, was disconcerting. Each feature of it was made well enough, but didn’t match the other elements. His high-arched nose was too small and pointed a beak for his broad, thick jaw. His black eyes slanted downwards, one larger than other and set closer to the black eyebrows. His mouth was too small for a man. The overall effect was of someone who’d borrowed his identity from various passers-by.

  ‘Paulus Catena,’ Eusebius murmured. ‘He’s nicknamed “The Chain” because he enjoys dragging people by chains to their death, but also because if he can’t find evidence against you, he’ll forge a chain to bring you down, link by link and lie by lie.’

  ‘What is he?’

  ‘He claims to come from Hispania with antecedents from Dacia, though I detect hints of Persian ancestry in his taste for interrogation techniques that are, shall we say, unusual?’ Eusebius’ eyes bulged suggestively. ‘Some say he started out as a wine steward at the imperial tables and then got himself appointed as a notary.’

  ‘Who gives him orders now?’

  ‘Constans. You tread on the edge of a razor, my African friend. Constans doesn’t want to hear that his foibles are on the tongue of every merchant from Constantinopolis to Sirmium. Within an hour of your rushing back from the hunt, the Emperor had asked Catena who you were. By nightfall, Catena’s flunky had asked me. Now both imperial siblings are watching you. Constantia tested you last night, in her own way, to see if you were working for me, or Catena, or really just a simple messenger with strong thighs.’