Usurpers

by Q V Hunter

  I had recognized no one en route and certainly had no informants or old contacts in Augustodunum. Crusted with dust and sweat, I rode through the city’s arches thinking I was hardly likely to make any new friends in my current condition.

  All these problems could be solved by one thing—a bath. I returned my mount to the city stables and registered myself with the agentes list, then rambled down the main street in search of the thermae.

  A trio of stable boys laughed when I asked for a good bathhouse. ‘There’s one on every street.’ They pointed me in three different directions at once, so I narrowed it down by saying I wanted a chance to see the town’s true fat cats without their fur.

  ‘Then you want the Baths of Tonantius,’ one of the urchins said. ‘But my father says they charge too much for towels,’ he added, extending his own grubby palm for a tip.

  I strode down a well-paved boulevard full of busy locals until I spotted Tonantius’ sign. It was painted with two body-scrapers, a pair of sandals and bright blue letters that read, ‘Salvum Lavisse, a bath is good for you.’

  As soon as I entered the crowded vestibule, I realized one thing was certain; these baths were good for the proprietor’s bottom line. Under the wintry light struggling through the domed glass ceiling, I threaded myself between gaggles of men in various stages of undress as I looked for an available clothes hook. Reaching some benches lining the walls, I was crushed between two men, one of them portly and bald and the other as tall and stooped as a shepherd’s hook. Two dressing room boys vied for their tips to guard their belongings.

  The heavier man lost his patience with the press of other bodies. ‘This is ridiculous. On a normal day we wouldn’t have to wait for the Tepid Room.’ One of the boys reached out a hand, waiting for the man to remove his numerous neck chains. ‘No, thank you! I’m keeping my gold on my chest where it’s safe, you rascal! Watch what you’re doing, lad, I’ll be counting those items when I collect them later and I know your face only too well!’

  ‘What do you expect on a day like today? You were invited, I assume,’ his stooped companion asked.

  ‘Of course, but you won’t see me there. A previous engagement.’

  It was obvious to me that the fat man hadn’t been included in whatever the event was. The stooped man suppressed a knowing smile.

  ‘It’s not an invitation I’d dare refuse. All the big families will be there. I’m sorry I won’t be seeing you. I’d hoped to share a few laughs with someone I trust.’

  I followed them as they made slow progress towards the baths’ various chambers. I had the impression that for some reason, Augustodunum’s elite wanted to gossip more than bathe en masse today.

  ‘What does trust have to do with it?’ the fatter man shrugged. ‘It’s just a birthday party for a kid and not a very nice one from what my granddaughter tells me. Why should I bother?’

  The tall man leaned down to whisper and I caught his expression, full of meaning, ‘Because you and I both know it’s more than a birthday party for Marcellinus’ brat.’

  There was more to be heard, but if I glued myself to these two, they’d turn suspicious. I needn’t have worried. After all, what might they see in their eavesdropper but an olive-skinned Roman African youth with calloused hands and reeking of horse?

  After a quick scrub, I did short laps for some twenty minutes in the cool swimming pool alongside half a dozen young men like myself.

  Spotting some scarred and muscle-bound army veterans through the warm mist, I considered joining their loud and ribald conversation. While resting between laps, I’d overheard some juicy boasts about humping Pict redheads for the price of a drink or seducing white-haired ‘princesses’ begging for bread in the barbarian refugee camps in Upper Germania.

  But there was nothing useful in their boisterous jokes. I might have looked relaxed, but I was very much on the job. As I toweled off, the veterans moved away to work off their excessive energies on some exercise balls. I wandered back to the vestibule to see if I could get into the Tepid Room for a light sweat.

  I settled on a bench next to two elderly Gallo-Romans, their saggy chests covered in grey tufts, their flabby backs bent over to be oiled down and scraped clean by minions. One of them suffered from a goiter and the other from legs swollen with gout. Six months of guarding the Rhenus on simple army rations might have cured their complaints.

  ‘Look at his villa. Count his slaves. The man’s got everything he wants.’ Goiter Man sniggered as he was massaged. ‘Why upset the turnip cart?’

  ‘Because Marcellinus hasn’t got everything he wants. A man like this doesn’t come along every day and he knows it.’

  ‘He’ll be there tonight . . . Have you met him?’

  The gouty man winced as the boy scraped his swollen calf. ‘Saw him once, riding into town for winter provisioning at the head of the Protectorates. That was years ago. He must be in his late forties by now.’

  ‘Illyrian, I heard. Or Dacian?’

  ‘You heard wrong. He was born up north, in Samarobriva, I think.’

  Goiter Man slapped his thigh. ‘That settles the question. He’s a Gaul. Or a Gallo-Roman.’

  ‘No. He’s definitely not one of us. His father was a Breton—a slave who got himself freed and married a German girl from one of Constantine’s refugee camps on the border.’

  ‘A real barbarian then.’

  ‘In all but name. He has spent his whole life in the army fighting his way up through the ranks.’

  ‘And probably never sat behind a desk in his life. What does Marcellinus see in such a man when he’s already got the Treasury?’

  Gouty Man sighed, ‘Oh, Lucius, you are well behind the times. Marcellinus has piled up political resentments as fast as he has piled up private riches. He’s sick of the Constantines and their Eastern favorites. Constans is just the last straw. Last week I heard Marcellinus tell Thaumastus that General Magnentius is The New Roman.’ He kicked away the bath slave. ‘Stop that, you ass, can’t you see you’re hurting me?’

  The two old men had soon had enough, but I hadn’t. Wrapping my loins in fresh linen supplied by the boys, I made my way through the crowd into the steamy caldarium. I could hardly see the bright-colored mosaics that decorated the floor above the subterranean furnaces churning beneath our bare toes. The great flues along the hollow walls belched their hot gusts into the air over our heads. I thought of poor Apodemius, his hypocaust turning off at midnight, leaving his office walls humid with cold.

  Everything in this room was built of fine white marble. Through the thick mist, I saw few empty seats and already that told me a lot. I was new to Augustodunum, but I wasn’t new to society’s ways. Most of these men looked well fed and sharp-eyed. Having ridden past miles of villas flanked by gardens and orchards earlier today, I knew these customers had baths at home. They weren’t here for the doubtful pleasure of being anointed with cut-rate massage oils by light-fingered cloakroom boys.

  These men were here for the very same reason I was—information—and the obscurity of the Hot Room masked the murmurs of Augustodunum’s powerbrokers.

  I picked my next quarries well. I watched the rows of faces to see who was doing as much watching as I was. Finally, I spotted two men who in their younger days might have served the imperial throne from a horse or under a banner. Their muscles were softened with time, but their spines were still straight as spears. Each wore a seal ring, but apart from that, their only adornments were the towels tossed across their laps. I sat to their right, leaving a good foot of discreet space between the customer closer to me and myself. His long jaw and high forehead gave him the look of a patrician and possibly a former officer. I thought of him as the Tribune.

  ‘ . . . in it for us? We can manage as we are,’ he murmured.

  ‘Why not make reality official?’ the other said. This one was less aristocratic in stature than his friend, but he was more of a merchant type. He must have prospered in retirement from military service, to judge by th
e size of his belly. He dragged his thick fingers across his brow and flicked off the perspiration.

  ‘Draw the poison to the surface and purge the boil. The gods know I don’t care what people they do in their bedrooms, but when they devastate the economy, it’s another thing. He has devalued our coin once already and the bastard might do it again. He installs Easterners as prefects where he should promote reliable Romans. Someone has to put the economy and administration back to rights.’

  ‘Is that what the praetorians are saying?’ the Tribune asked.

  ‘And more,’ the Merchant replied. ‘I know, I know, their complaints are based on pride and disgust, not hard business facts, but they have a point. You can understand how they feel about the disrespect. We both served, but not under a festering, pus-filled boil like—’

  ‘Better the boil we know than—’ the Tribune warned.

  ‘The point is not why the praetorians are fed up, but that they are at the end of their tether. Once the military leadership is unhappy, then we’re not safe in our beds.’ The Merchant jabbed the air like a man addressing his trade association. ‘We have to keep the army happy or that border will snap wide open and we’ll be entertaining Alemanni for supper. Do you think our enemies don’t know how fragile the situation is?’

  The Merchant lowered his voice quickly as some acquaintances passed and nodded to our bench. Men were eager to talk, but not to be overheard.

  ‘I’ll make up my mind when I see the man in person,’ said the Tribune. ‘Anyway, it’s not my head on the block Marcellinus should bide his time. Let this wretched family continue to kill itself off and we’ll get a solid Roman ruler back on top. That’s what I say.’

  The Tribune nodded to his friend and rose on bare feet to mount the marble steps for the labrum in the corner, where a slave doused his naked body with fresh cool water. The Merchant glanced at me and smiled, which I took as a courtesy. Making the most of this, it was my job to take a gamble:

  ‘Citizen, I’m an imperial rider with a message from Roma for one Prefect Marcellinus, but the town seems in such a hubbub, I’m unable to find his villa among so many strangers. The directions I got at the relay station are worse than useless.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ the Merchant laughed. ‘Marcellinus is a rising man and he’s hard to pin down. He’s moved house twice in the last four years.’

  I leaned back against the dripping marble wall and wiped off my face with an air of casual resignation. I was a messenger in no hurry to get back to work. I fooled him.

  ‘But you’re in luck. The Prefect of the Treasury is giving a birthday party tonight. If your business can wait a few hours, you can follow my carriage to his villa. We have a brown roof festooned with dark red braid and bronze pommels shaped like bulls’ heads. It’s less than a mile. Wait for us to pass by at the main gate at sundown.’

  ‘I’m very grateful, but my message isn’t that urgent. It sounds as if I may be intruding on a private family celebration.’

  ‘If you worry about that, then so should the entire elite of this diocese,’ he laughed, tightening his towel. ‘Half the men in this room are from out of town. They’re cleaning up for the big event. There will be a veritable Triumph of Litters heading out the gates tonight.’

  ‘An anniversary? Is this Marcellinus so very old?’

  ‘No,’ The Merchant lowered his voice as he rubbed his face with a towel. He continued added in a muffled tone, ‘and neither is his son, the birthday boy. That’s not the point. Stick around, rider, and you may have a much bigger message to take home.’

  He tossed me a knowing wink and headed off for his own cold dousing.

  ***

  I’d paid the bath boys extra to clean up my uniform and trim my hair. Wafting neroli oil in my wake, I had no qualms trailing hundreds of chattering guests towards the Villa Marcellinum. It stood on the slopes not far above the amphitheater. It also enjoyed a view of a massive temple to Janus featuring a Christian cross freshly engraved into its facade.

  Nobody asked me to produce a written invitation but I was careful to nod to my neighbors in the crush on either side, even though neither of them was actually talking to me. I waved to a man ahead of me in the queue as we filed into the walled garden. I acknowledged his mystified and hesitant wave in return. I kept all this nodding, smiling and waving up so that by the time we reached the entrance to the house itself, I was practically an esteemed member of the town council.

  I’d seen big society parties before. In fact, as a slave child among the Manlius elders in Roma, one of my duties had been to scamper and skip around the banquet table while Commander Gregorius entertained his military friends. I’d been expected to recite poetry, sing little songs and be teased and ordered about. As the evening wore on, Gregorius would gather me onto his couch and let me fall asleep while he kept on debating battle tactics and weapons with his fellow officers.

  But the gathering tonight resembled something different—not so much a private party as a massive public display of local power and luxury. Set off by the glow of garden braziers and the rustle of silk flowers, it seemed there was more raucous music and loud greeting than you’d see on Circus Day in Roma.

  People weren’t so much settling in for a good time as counting heads and registering the names of those who hadn’t yet passed through the garden gates under pine boughs tied with green ribbons. The arrivals never seemed to thin out and people who had got into the reception halls stood around sending darting glances of curiosity at each other. We all seemed to be waiting for something, even as we picked at passing trays of roasted meats, honeyed fruits and grains steamed with exotic seeds from the south.

  Yes, waiting for something . . . but what?

  I scanned the crowd for the one face, mutilated, and embittered, that I’d last seen in North Africa streaked with tears at my ‘betrayal.’ I searched for the Commander, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  A former slave never forgets how to stay inconspicuous, and amidst all the nobles and officers in attendance here tonight, I slipped through the crowded atrium much like a minnow might move unnoticed in a school of distracted and exotic tropical fish. Everyone had made an effort to distinguish themselves in dress or makeup, with the result that before my eyes, the great and good of Gallia appeared as one lavish, glamorous, yet provincial mass of people straining their bejeweled necks to see who was yet arriving and glancing away from their partners to see whether they’d missed greeting a more significant companion.

  One thing that struck me within the first half hour was the outlay of money. Everyone looked astonished at the over-generous bounty straining the catering tables and banqueting bars. Even by wealthy Gallo-Roman standards, we were being stuffed like pigs ready for the spit. There was double the usual number of musicians, too. The tweeting and bang of their flutes and drums made conversation a sort of competitive sport.

  The second thing that struck me, and this was as much thanks to my childhood as a slave as any observation drills at the Castra Peregrina—I was sure that nobody was having a good time.

  ‘Where is he? You’d think he’d have greeted us by now. I’ve paid my respects to his boy, but I’m getting a headache in this crush,’ a woman in a grey wool cloak thick with red embroidery whined to her tipsy husband.

  ‘Just stand over there, then, by the garden, for fresh air,’ he muttered. ‘It’s too early to go home.’

  The tension wound like a current through the guests. It was about to break any minute like a wave of impatience. Suddenly, the assembly in the main dining room parted into two wavering seas of heads and headdresses.

  A man with a well-formed head and thick, compact shoulders over a taut torso descended the steps of a tablinum at the end of the atrium. He smiled and nodded to the first cluster of guest. This must be Marcellinus, our host, at last.

  The lady on his arm would be his wife, I had no doubt. She had once been a pretty woman, I thought but no match for her husband’s dominating presence. She looked
almost buried under jewels too large for her tiny frame and hair too overdone for her bird-like features. She looked like a bookkeeper’s daughter. I wondered if the luxuriant coiffeur might be a hairpiece.

  He was shaking hands and taking time to exchange welcoming words with each couple or family. Surprised and half-drunk, some of them shoved the bread down their throats in time to pay their respects or dropped half-peeled fruits on his priceless Persian carpets in a hurry to get to the front of the crowd.

  None of this obsequious or obnoxious hustling seemed to ruffle the Prefect. He had that knack of listening closely with rapt attention, so that each person received the impression that he ranked, after all, among the most essential guests.

  The mood changed from anxiety to relief. Everyone relaxed and the wine flowed even faster. The evening’s end was within sight, so why not make the most of his generosity now?

  I drank nothing and ate little. I watched Marcellinus. His hair was close-cut, his complexion pale for a dark-haired Gaul and his body held taut and close to his torso—as though by disciplining his limbs he demonstrated his greater care with the Western Empire’s accounts.

  Still, no man controlled mints and coffers without benefitting himself over time. It was part of the job. I judged that the purpose of this party was to pave the way for his boy to meet the most important trading and civil service families of the province.

  Yet this wasn’t so. Marcellinus had only appeared half an hour after his son had gone off to bed. Now, having satisfied the social ambitions of one roly-poly merchant after another, our host paid special attention to his military guests.

  I spotted the insignias of high-ranking officers from both the legions wintering over in the area but I didn’t recognize any of them. With these men, Marcellinus lingered longer and smiled less. He nodded, murmuring agreements and giving short, sober replies to their questions. If he had an eye for treating imperial servants in uniform well, I was hardly going to remain invisible. I checked my agens insignia and straightened my sword belt as he approached.