Usurpers

by Q V Hunter

  ***

  I dreaded the moment I had to recite my private worries to Apodemius yet again. I heard the little page Caius summon other agentes one by one for midnight meetings with the white-haired boss over in the main building. When the old man gave his decision, men obeyed without protest. Sometimes they didn’t even show up for breakfast the next morning. Sometimes they just swept their things out and with a smile or frown, paid off their gambling debts, left a letter or two for posting, waved the rest of us a business-like farewell, and disappeared.

  Yet it was now the third week of December and Apodemius hadn’t called me in. More often than not, as my acquaintances took off for new postings in distant parts of the Empire, I found myself eating alone.

  There was one jolly night when those of us left behind decided to turn up in disguises for a little feast. I came in a retiarius getup, complete with trident and net, rented for a pretty price from a shop that sold the used kit of dead gladiators. Everybody got a little drunk that night. We composed a spontaneous funeral ode to Florian, an unlucky recruit who had died during training.

  I drank and sang along with the best of them. I was happy to recall some of my favorite poems learned at the Senator’s knee and even a few learned in the Manlius kitchen, like that limerick, ‘There was an old Roman named Nero, considered by some as their hero . . .’ but I kept one eye on the door. I hoped for a visit from Roxana, but she skipped the party altogether.

  Finally after eleven that night, I caught sight of her returning from the swimming pool. Her face looked distracted and troubled. I slipped away without hailing her. Now that classes were ended, she seemed to have forgotten me.

  I dragged my bloodstained net to my cell and threw the rusty trident in a corner. The celebration had left me a bit sulky, what with all the toasts and boasts of fellows soon to be moving on. Everyone but me had his assignment for the coming year.

  An old bronze mirror hung on the wall. When I saw my wavering reflection, I felt ridiculous. The new year promised me nothing but more customs, accounting and tax training. The only ‘relief’ would be depressing meetings with Verus to review the decline of our house. Still dressed in my costume, I flung myself down on my cot.

  Just then Caius knocked on my door. I peeked out and saw him nod. He didn’t have to say anything.

  ‘Do I have time to change?’

  The little slave gave my costume a scathing look up and down. ‘Nope. He’s working by minutes, not hours. He already turned the timer. Technically, your meeting is already in session and you are late.’

  I dashed across the moonlit paving to the main building, my garish cloak flying behind me in a vermilion streak.

  ‘Reporting, Magister.’

  Apodemius was wearing a heavy felt bed cloak over his shoulders and soft boots of sheepskin on his suffering feet. The room was ablaze with oil lamps. Clearly he intended to work through the night. I saw a chunk of hard cheese and a stack of flatbreads on a sideboard next to a large pitcher of wine keeping warm over a low flame.

  He raised a stern eyebrow at my getup. ‘Hungry? You seemed dressed for the kill.’

  ‘No, Magister. There’s been a sort of party—’

  ‘How’s the Customs training coming along?’

  ‘Fine, Magister. Fine.’

  ‘Still want to stay within reach of Roma?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘That’s too bad. I had hoped to see more initiative from you, after your little adventure with the Circumcellions. You did well then.’

  And not now.

  ‘Thank you, but as I explained there are troubles in the Manlius house that are worsening in the Commander’s absence. I owe it to my old master to save what’s left.’

  ‘Troubles in the Manlius house,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘You have no idea.’ He broke off a chunk of cheese and dropped a piece into the cage for his sleepy mice.

  I stood there, waiting. He had not offered me a stool.

  ‘I had an assignment for you, Numidianus, a sensitive one, even a dangerous one.’ He sighed. ‘I should have entrusted it weeks ago to a more experienced agent.’

  He pulled his cloak tighter. His room was indeed cold at this hour. The men firing the hypocaust steam system that kept the building’s walls and floors nice and warm had retired for the night. Working while the stone building cooled down couldn’t be good for the old man’s joints. And when did he sleep?

  Suddenly he spoke up. ‘Numidianus, did you see any other signs of disrespect to the Emperor Constans up in Treverorum?’

  ‘No, Apodemius.’

  ‘And yet rumors reach me here.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure I cannot persuade you to leave Roma?’

  ‘I’ve promised to protect my former’s master’s family.’

  ‘You had no right to make such a promise. You were sworn to serve the Empire.’

  This meeting threatened an outcome worse than a boring career in Customs. My divided loyalties meant I was about to be dismissed from the schola. This was why Apodemius had delayed our meeting for so long. He’d been hoping I would use the extra weeks to straighten out any Manlius headaches and free myself for some garrison on the Upper Rhenus or desert postal hub out East.

  I took a deep breath and concentrated on my little Leo, for whom everything must be protected. I fought back a perverse curiosity as to what chance at glory I’d just missed out on. I was almost grateful that for discretion’s sake, Apodemius would never discuss one man’s mission with another—especially a fool who was refusing a good career he’d fought hard for only two years before.

  But Apodemius didn’t sack me yet. First, he had to wring me dry of any last information he might need.

  ‘So, to whom do you swear your loyalty?’

  I thought hard—of the Senator, the Commander, Kahina, my son and the old Leo buried far across the Great Sea—a Roman buried deep into the sand of an empire frayed and fragmented beyond recognition.

  ‘To the Empire,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘And?’

  ‘To the Empire and all its citizens?’

  ‘Precisely. We’re the eyes, ears and conscience of all of its citizens, even the lowliest. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  It was a lecture even a stubborn Numidian-born mule like myself couldn’t misinterpret. The Empire wasn’t the noble families and their crumbling Senate, the arrogant commanders, the decadent Emperors’ courts in Constantinopolis, Sirmium, Treverorum and Mediolanum filled with ambitious officials, not to mention one miserable and vicious imperial sister.

  The Constantines wore purple—but their Empire wore leather, fur, homespun cotton, hemp, wool and linen. The Empire spoke dialects of Latin so garbled and twisted now that old Marcus Tullius Cicero wouldn’t have understood a single syllable.

  The Empire was us. Our loyalty was to an idea that embraced everyone.

  Apodemius came over to me. He stood there, a head shorter and a brain smarter. ‘Did Gaiso say anything about disgruntled soldiers?’

  ‘No, Magister.’

  ‘Has the Commander Gregorius written home of any discontent among his men?’

  ‘Not that I know of, Magister.’

  ‘When’s he due back?’

  ‘The household still hasn’t heard.’

  Apodemius shook his head, confused. He crossed the room and stood in front of that large map on the wall behind his desk. With his finger he traced the stations linking Treverorum to Mediolanum.

  ‘Did anyone up there mention a General Magnentius?’

  ‘No, Magister.’

  I waited with a heart torn and miserable. I wished Apodemius would just finish me off with a clean dismissal.

  But he kept on almost talking, more to himself than to me. He ran his fingers over the black lines running across his parchment map. ‘It can’t be true. It can’t be right. Constans saved Magnentius from a rebellion in the protectorates. But then, he would never expect it coming from the Herculiani.’

  ‘
The Herculiani?’ I asked. ‘Commander Gregorius is with the Herculiani.’

  He started, as if he’d forgotten I was still there. ‘Yes, I know, Numidianus. That legion is the nest of many rumors.’

  ‘Please explain this to me.’

  Apodemius dismissed me with a wave of his hand. ‘Certainly not to an accountant in Customs. You can go now.’

  ‘No! I’ll take the mission, whatever it is. I hate Customs Training. Send me on this mission, please.’

  Apodemius rested his pained hips on the edge of his desk. ‘Even if it means forgetting your distractions at the Manlius townhouse?’

  ‘The Manlius House is a pillar of the Empire. What have the Herculiani done?’

  ‘You may be in time to save him, Numidianus. He has bound himself to a powerful man, a man who means well, but who may trip over his own ideals and pull us all into an abyss.’

  ‘I’m ready, Magister.’

  He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. ‘I thought so. Good.’

  A bell tower in the distance rang out midnight. A mouse woke up and skittered around the cage.

  Apodemius cocked an ear as it chimed. ‘Ah, the beginning of another working day.’ He chuckled as he picked a memo off the top of his towering pile of paperwork and waved it at me. ‘It seems I’m under orders to wish everyone I greet today a “Festive Christ Mass”.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  He read, with the faint sarcasm of any proper pagan for Constantine’s ‘official’ cult, “Pope Julius”—and what a politician he is, eh?—“decrees that henceforth, on every December 25, the people shall celebrate the Nativity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, rather than the Roman festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. They shall refrain from all labors, and attend Mass in their churches to give thanks to the one and only truly God for the Gift of his Son” et cetera, et cetera.’

  He tossed the memo back onto the pile. ‘Well, that’s the gist of it but we’ll ignore the “refrain from labor” bit. Now, back to work. You’re to wait in Lugdunum only as long as it takes to ascertain the likely rendezvous of this General Magnentius with the Secretary of the Emperor’s Private Revenues, one Marcellinus.’

  ‘What does this Marcellinus actually do, Magister?’

  ‘His office collects the rents of state properties and if necessary, seizes and redistributes properties that were confiscated by or falls to the state for lack of heirs. He supervises the sale of state property and makes cash payments from the imperial treasury.’

  ‘That’s real power. But why must I watch him?’

  ‘Because dark waters are roiling, boy. The problem is, I can’t determine where the waves will break. Perhaps our Augusta Constantia is plotting against Constantius out of revenge for the murder of her husband and making promises to Eusebius, in exchange for playing a double game in her favor. Perhaps Constans is keeping her close for a similar reason? There’s no brotherly love lost between our two emperors.’

  ‘What does General Magnentius have to do with it?’

  ‘Magnentius has shot up as the most powerful military man in the West. But why? Why?’ Apodemius fingered a carved game piece on that checkered board near his chair.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He is the son of a Breton freedman who served old Constantine’s father, Chlorus, as a craftsman. His mother was a Frankish war refugee from the Rhenus resettlement camps who entertained Constantine’s court as a soothsayer. Bit of a wild woman, they say. Now their son has made his name in the army as a rising man. He already commands both the former praetorian legions.’

  ‘Both the Legio V Iovia and VI Herculia? Wait a minute. I believe I do recall his name. He was providing support forces for the fatal ambush on Constantine II, wasn’t he?’

  ‘And beyond that . . . all I have is rumors, rumors, and more rumors. We know that Constans once saved Magnentius from a mutiny of his own men. I need more on this Franco-Breton. I need to know where he stands. I have to know before Eusebius plays him like a “dog” piece on his latrunculi board!’

  Apodemius knocked over the ivory playing piece with the flick of his twisted middle finger.

  ‘Yes, Magister. And what is the General’s relationship to Secretary Marcellinus?’

  ‘Ah, Marcellinus is no game piece. He’s an expert politician, perhaps the most dangerous man in the Empire after Eusebius. And for the last year or so, whenever I heard mentioned the names Marcellinus or Magnentius, I also heard of purple ribbons tied onto items of disgust or disdain. And then your report linked such a ribbon with Lieutenant-General Gaiso.’

  ‘Why is this mission dangerous? It sounds like normal reconnaissance.’

  ‘I’m placing another agent on a similar mission, but from another angle. You won’t be alone but you won’t work together. It’s safer that way.’

  ‘But why dangerous?’

  ‘Because, my boy, you won’t be there incognito. If my plan goes through smoothly, you will be immediately recognized as who and what you are by the man who knows you best. It will take all your talent to convince him that you’re there as an innocent courier.’

  The blood drained from my face. He was asking me to spy on my own former master, the Commander, while I, his bastard son, hoped only to be acknowledged for my merits—not hated for betrayal.

  No wonder Apodemius had left me to stew alone. I was indeed the perfect man for this job. The Commander would welcome me back as a prodigal ex-slave unable to shrug off the deep loyalty I’d felt as the favored child in the house and later on the battlefield as his private aide and bodyguard. He would accept me under false pretenses. Whatever my official access to the top officers of the Herculiani as an agens, I would enjoy double the trust as Gregorius’ personal freedman.

  I had never been false to the Commander before. Mutilated and disfigured, Gregorius had trusted me above anyone else. He had tried to bind me to his side, even at the risk of breaking his word. Yet I’d openly abandoned him out of a greater hunger for freedom.

  I looked at Apodemius with new respect. I’d wanted to protect the House of Manlius. Now I saw how clever the old man was. He had understood all along that the fate of the Manlius family hung, not around the fig-strewn courtyard of a rundown Roman townhouse, but around the Commander’s political neck.

  ‘You’ll accept an attachment to the staff of General Magnentius?’

  ‘Yes, Magister.’

  ‘I thought so. You never struck me as the number-sifting type. Oh, yes, there’s a new gadget we’re giving all our men on dangerous jobs,’ he said. He reached below his table into a wooden box and pulled out a varnished wooden handle about five inches long.

  ‘Rather clever, this. It looks like nothing, but you see, if I pull here, a spoon swivels out—harmless. Or a comb, here. If only I had more hair to demonstrate! Oh, my fingers are stiff. But if I pull here,’ he pried out a shining blade on a hinge which snapped into place. ‘Or here,’ and suddenly there was a deadly iron pick sticking out a right angles to the handle. ‘You can hand over your weapons in any search and conceal this inside your tunic or boot.’

  ‘What’s it called?’ I took the polished thing from him and pulled out a second twisted coil of iron and finally a file.

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea. The armory just sent me a box of them,’ he shrugged. ‘Let’s just call it a present for . . . Christ Mass?’

  Chapter 7, The Birthday Party

  —Augustodunum Haeduorum, Gallia—

  Apodemius trained us agentes to ‘register and report’ as soon as we reached a new posting. But I had no clue yet what I was really investigating. Vague unease triggered by purple ribbons?

  If there was any disquiet, it was in my heart. How would the Commander receive me back on assignment?

  He had fought against losing me because he thought I was his only issue. Now Kahina had given him a legal heir, the baby Leo. Perhaps because of Leo, the Commander could accept that I preferred taking my chances on li
berty and an uncertain future to a half-life as some shopkeeper or foreman under his lifelong patronage. I would know from his expression within the first moments of our meeting again.

  According to the latest report arriving at the Castra just before I left, the General Magnentius had shifted his base from Lugdunum up to the imperial city of Augustodunum. I stuck to the coastal state road as far as Arelate, then shot north through Lugdunum. Riding alone from Roma, I made it in eighteen days—not at 24-hour relay speed, but not dawdling either.

  The Augustodunum I now trotted towards didn’t look like a city simmering with political ferment. The city’s walls were obscured on the southern side by lean-to’s, vendors’ stalls and a few huts. Most of the poor were sheltering inside from the harsh weather. Only one humble doorway framed a couple of bone-chilled prostitutes, their cheeks made rosy by the New Year’s brisk winds.

  They both waved to me. The buxom blonde even winked. I tossed her a nummus for trying and she caught it with a greedy fist.

  ‘Come back for some luck, dark-and-handsome!’ she shouted back, tucking my coin into her bosom.

  After the new-built brashness of Treverorum’s gray sandstone walls, Augustodunum struck me as a middle-aged woman with broader curves and a basketful of nostalgic memories. She was living off a fair chunk of glory from her Republican past. The Emperor Augustus had set up headquarters here to lord it over the conquered Gauls of Bribracte. Three centuries of wind and rain had smoothed down her rough edges. Today, surrounded by broad rolling pastures lying fallow for the winter and rippling streams stippled with ice floes, Augustodunum looked like a settled dowager. I passed a vast amphitheater standing empty, waiting for spring weather to fill its bleachers with laughter, cheers and tears.

  But up close, Augustodunum wasn’t such a shabby town, despite its weather-beaten facade. The elders had just added a modern gateway to Augustus’ original one, no doubt paid for by ripe pickings from the trade route between Lugdunum and Bononia, the coastal Gallic boom town facing the Channel to Britannia. I’d heard everyone was speaking Germanic in Bononia these days. Even here in Augustodunum, when I asked directions where to register my arrival and deposit my mount, my ear caught a Latin enriched with barbarian slang that the Old Senator back in Roma wouldn’t find in any of his authoritative tomes.