Usurpers

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Usurpers Page 14

by Q V Hunter


  ‘Undefended!’ Magnentius lifted both arms. The officers took his cue and cheered.

  ‘We’ve just got things started here,’ Marcellinus said, running after Magnentius. The hefty barbarian was already marching back through an arch into the inner courtyard of his headquarters.

  Magnentius rounded on his sponsor. ‘Marcellinus, we’re leaving Mediolanum.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘This town is too riddled with your secretaries and accountants, not to mention those argumentative bishops—especially those blasted Arians. I know they support Constantius behind my back. Don’t argue with me—I can smell their treachery.’

  ‘I’ve tried to keep your schedule under control. I’ll cut back your appointments and—’

  ‘And isn’t this where old Constantine married his daughter to Licinius and feasted with these townspeople for weeks on end? I don’t like this city. I don’t like sitting, stewing in imperial halls like this, waiting for Constantius to make the first move.’

  ‘Wait—’

  ‘We’re leaving, Marcellinus and that’s an order!’

  So, that very afternoon, the Western Empire’s two crack legions took to the paved state highway, heading southeast to tackle the snowbound passes for the smaller but better fortified town of Aquileia on the shores of the Upper Sea.

  ‘He’s thinking like a soldier again,’ Gregorius confided to me as he rode past my horse.

  We hadn’t spoken for weeks, not even to exchange polite greetings. We hadn’t discussed the Emperor Constans’ gory end and I now realized, we never would if Gregorius had his way. It was a blot on the family’s history to which he turned his blind eye.

  ‘Indeed, Commander. This is a wise move. I know these routes like I know all the corridors and corners back home. From Aquileia, General Magnentius will control the Via Postunia, the Via Popilia, and all the routes into Italia from Illyricum and even farther to the east. With luck, he’ll secure Emona as well.’

  ‘We’ll secure everything,’ Gregorius said. He fixed his eye ahead of us, on the peaks towering ahead, white, cold and unpredictable. The Roman aristocrat in his nature was trying to reassure himself that his provincial half, through his noble Gallo-Roman mother, hadn’t cast his dice too soon.

  ‘You’re committed to this man beyond doubt, Commander?’

  ‘It’s for the honor of the Empire, Marcus. I’m not alone. It’s been many generations since these legions were manned by Pannonians. You realize half those men signed up on the promise they would never serve east of the Alps? And yet, listen to them sing as they march toward those mountains,’ Gregorius said. Extending easily half a mile behind our mounts, our column had taken up a boisterous chant, marking by the tramping of nailed boots.

  Feed the poor and tax the rich,

  No more rulers’ sister-bitch,

  No more eunuchs, fat and sly,

  No more archers, riding high!

  We were slowed a bit by the melting snows, but in six days, the Ioviani and Herculiani legions, almost three thousand strong, descended towards our destination. There, stood the old walls of Aquileia, formidable and proud. We stretched our bleary eyes as far as the naval station and its dry-docked ships overlooking the white capped wintry waters.

  It had been a good decision. Magnentius had advanced his position to one of the busiest junctions of the imperial road system. More importantly, he was now facing eastward—towards the crucial provinces that bound West to East. He was facing Constantius.

  ‘He’s a military genius,’ Gregorius told me one evening shortly after. He had offered to help me with the set up, organizing the cubicles and dispatch flows for our service. I didn’t overlook the importance of his kind gesture. We were sitting near the very city gate where the Commander had led the ambush to kill Constantine II for the dissolute defender Constans. It had been his last big battle as a whole man before the debacle on the Rhenus cost him an eye and half a hand.

  Perhaps he needed the comfort of a child of Roma that night, even an ex-slave boy with olive skin and a Numidian accent. He was brooding over home and his tenuous ties back to the old capital.

  The ‘old women’ in the Roman Senate were making trouble for Magnentius, despite Gregorius’ constant overtures and lobbying contacts back in the city. The Senators were showing some mettle, for once, and withholding their support.

  Happily for the Commander, Magnentius’ priority wasn’t the impotent old coots of Roma, but the security, freedom and economic recovery of vast new dominions that Constans had robbed and neglected. After many weeks of assassinating more regional politicians who were idiotic enough to voice loyalty to Constantius, Magnentius got serious about his governance of the ‘reformed’ West.

  For one thing, he hadn’t shown any interest in religion back in Mediolanum, but he made up for it now. Following the laws initiated by old Constantine in the East, Constans had prohibited pagan sacrifices and seized temple treasures late in his reign. In a two-handed signal of his own liberality, Magnentius now overturned the prohibition restricting the pagans, but at the same time, he printed the Christian Chi Rho on his coins.

  As for his own beliefs, Magnentius played a canny game. Some said the General was baptized into the new religion, but I never saw him worship their Christ or read a catechist’s lesson. One hundred per cent barbarian blood, he aspired to restore pagan strength, not Christian humility, to the Eagle Standard. He assumed he could do it through money and brute force, not prayer.

  So Magnentius played the religious game but he neglected Roma. He was unable to imagine that he risked his stolen throne because of technicalities like a thumbs-down from an irrelevant group of old senators.

  Gregorius was there to remind him. ‘We aren’t home and dry by a long shot,’ he advised the General after supper one evening in March, ‘Not until we’ve got you approved and a pair of consuls properly elected in Roma.’

  Marcellinus had retired to his apartments for the evening, complaining of overwork. It was a rare moment when the two rebel brothers, Magnentius and Decentius, were left alone with their military officers. Magnentius had commissioned me to annotate a set of road maps—all facing eastwards—using whatever I remembered from my hard-riding days on that postal loop to Sirmium.

  Tonight they were poring over my work. I lingered on, ostensibly to answer any questions. The senior men had forgotten me within a few minutes.

  ‘There’s another essential matter still pending, General.’ You could rely on Gaiso to pinpoint the target and spear it through. He wasn’t talking about ballot boxes.

  ‘That Frankish bastard Claudius Silvanus will come around in the end,’ Magnentius cut him off. ‘He has to now. But Gregorius has drummed into me that I’ve got to deal with Roma without further delay. I’m re-appointing the impeccably pedigreed Gaius Maesius Fabius Titianus to resume his previous position as Praefectus Urbi Romae.’

  ‘A very shrewd move, Emperor Magnentius. I approve. As you say, gentleman, I am a bastard, but I am an essential bastard.’

  We all turned at the amused baritone that addressed us from the doorway.

  Standing there, in full uniform under a mud-soaked cloak, rain-spattered helmet in the crook of his arm, was the delinquent general, Claudius Silvanus.

  Like all these Franks, he was tall and broad-shouldered. A thick head of dark brown hair waved over his high forehead. He had green eyes that crinkled with humor. He’d made a dramatic entrance, like the protagonist in a Greek play where the lesser characters have warmed up the audience for his arrival—and he knew it.

  Magnentius rose to his feet and lips pressed together, waited. Was Silvanus here only to deliver the feared ultimatum from Constantius? Was the Empire already at war with itself?

  Silvanus strode into the center of the room and shivered. ‘This is a cold palace for such a heated group of warriors.’

  ‘What do you bring us, Claudius Silvanus?’

  Silvanus chuckled and took in the anxious faces around the table. You
could have heard a fibula drop in the apprehensive silent that swept through the rebels’ breasts.

  ‘My oath of loyalty, Magnentius.’ Silvanus dropped to one knee and laid his sword at the General’s boots.

  They broke out into cheers. One by one, the officers rose, whether Franks or half-Franks, Gallo-Romans or purebred Roman, to embrace the latecomer. He needed a shave and a bath. I had no doubt he was growling with appetite as well. I summoned a page to take his cloak, prepare a room, and bring him a hot supper.

  Silvanus accepted a goblet of wine. He leaned across the tablecloth. ‘Good gods above, is that you, my dear old contubernalis, Atticus? I hope somebody covered this man’s mirror.’ He raised his drink in salute to Gregorius and added, ‘I heard about it, old friend. You did well. To your health and good spirits.’

  ‘We’re all cheered by the sight of you, Claudius,’ Decentius said.

  ‘And no wonder. I look around this table and I see a dozen battered, over-ambitious and lonely old veterans.’

  Magnentius chuckled. ‘Lonely? I haven’t heard any of the local brothels complaining for lack of business.’ A couple of junior officers at the end of the table laughed along.

  ‘As I expected,’ Silvanus said, setting his drained goblet down. ‘Our new Emperor strikes the nail smack on its head. Brothels. This is the report that I have heard, all the way up there, in every garrison facing the Rhenus. You’re still little more than an army camp, Your Excellency. You are not yet a court.’

  ‘Tell that to all those paper-pushers Marcellinus hired up in Mediolanum,’ Magnentius grunted. ‘Besides, I prefer camps to courts, don’t you? It’s all I can do to stop Marcellinus from changing my sheets to purple and making me wear a toga so little clerks can kiss my hem.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I’ve just sworn my allegiance to you, but—’

  ‘It’s all we needed. The addition of your cavalry forces makes the Western Army complete,’ Magnentius answered. ‘Let’s have another pitcher of wine to celebrate tonight. Our purse is full of funds and we’re ready to rally thousands more troops to our standard on a week’s notice. We can only pray that our over-manicured Prefect Titianus will worm his way back into the hearts of his fellow Roman snobs and senators, but—what is it, Gaiso?’

  ‘General Silvanus brings a fresh eye,’ Gaiso answered, with a glance at the others around the table. ‘You heard what he just said. We are not yet an imperial court. He sees that our rebellion is still missing the jeweled buckle that would fasten our legitimacy the West.’

  Magnentius poured himself another goblet and gulped it down. ‘Oh, gods, you’re always too sly for me, Gaiso. I’m not one of those elks you have to sneak up on. Spit it out. What do you mean by jeweled buckle?’

  Silvanus took in the room of determined, tired faces searching each other’s expressions through the shadows.

  ‘Gaiso understands me. Isn’t it obvious? The Senate in Roma may be powerless, but they have long memories, right, Atticus? You’re still a barbarian at heart, Magnentius—wait, wait—coming from me, that’s in your favor. But one hundred years ago, the Praetorian Guard foisted a barbarian peasant soldier, the ignorant giant Maximinus, on the Empire. It was a disaster. You won’t get confirmation from the Roman Senate unless you give them some way of saving face . . .’

  Magnentius leaned forward and glared at Silvanus. ‘I don’t appreciate such a comparison with Maximinus from the last guest to our party. Are you suggesting I step aside for some puppet?’

  ‘Nothing so drastic, General. I was just . . . thinking out loud, rhetorically, as an honest Roman might?’ He shot a quick glance at Gregorius and with studied indifference, sunk his spoon into a plate of tender baby lamb roasted in honey and wine that had just landed on the table in front of him.

  Gregorius lifted his tragic face. ‘Then let me say it.’

  The red glow of the coals winking through the heavy brazier caught the shiny white plane of flesh sewn down tight under his eye socket. I looked up from my maps, no longer pretending to stick to my business. I knew he was about to speak up for Roma, out of the memory of his family, tradition and no doubt, for sanity. For the sake of our frayed blood bond and my unclaimed son, I prayed whatever Gregorius said now would prevail.

  He stood up and tucked his wounded hand into his cuirass. ‘I’ve lain on Roman supper couches all my life, listening to after-dinner jokes and stories of the old capital. Marcus Numidianus, the agens over there, was a tiny boy romping around our dining room at the time. I’m sure he’ll agree with me that at heart the Roman senators are a bunch of old ninnies.’

  ‘Excepting your father, Commander,’ I said.

  They all chuckled in their cups. Greg nodded, ‘A loyal joke, but apart from Senator Manlius, they are impotent aunties reduced to regulating district sewer permits and festival days. And like all little old ladies, their crabby hearts soften at sentimental stories. Dynastic stories.’

  Gregorius leaned on Magnentius’ table with his maimed palm.

  ‘Touch the Senate’s nostalgic soul, General. Solve all your problems on the pillow, not the battlefield. Spare the Empire disorder and bloodshed Send a delegation to the Augusta Constantia carrying a proposal of marriage. You have an unwed daughter to exchange, do you not?’

  Magnentius’ eyes had widened as he took in what his Silvanus and Gregorius were advising.

  ‘Yes, Magnentius. Every court requires an Imperatrix.’ Gregorius said. ‘Marry the Constantine shrew.’

  Chapter 10, Constantia’s Man

  —The Road to Sirmium—

  Magnentius was a healthy widower of forty-seven. Many mornings I caught a glimpse of one comely face or another, some shadowed by a discreet stola, some brazenly unveiled, slipping out of the Palace at dawn. These lovely women crossed my path from the direction of the general’s private quarters towards the luxury baths across the Forum, next to the Law Court.

  No one commented. We all understood that the new Christian values of abstinence or chastity didn’t top our imperial pagan’s list of reforms. I was curious to see how the idea of a state marriage sat with him.

  ‘Well, if I have to marry, I don’t want Constantia. Let it be the little Helena,’ Magnentius said the morning after Silvanus’ arrival. He shoved his honey and pancakes aside with a stoic expression for his morning council. ‘I think I saw her ten years ago in procession. She was just starting to push out the bodice of her tunic.’

  Ever the soldier, he made suggestive circles in the air over his cuirass. ‘Where’s the imperial chickling now?’

  ‘In Constantinopolis, General,’ Gregorius said. ‘Of course, she’s hardly a child any longer. She’s twenty-five but, by reliable accounts, still virgin.’

  ‘On the shelf for a decade? What’s the matter with her?’

  ‘Nothing, General, so far as we know.’

  ‘So why didn’t you put her name forward instead of that Constantia’s?’

  ‘Helena is a devotee of the Nicene Creed, General. She’s a fervent Christian and a favorite of the Empress Eusebia. The Empress dotes on her sister-in-law and she is unlikely to part with her company during the Emperor’s long absence from court.’

  Magnentius gave Gregorius a steely look. ‘That’s a roundabout way of saying I’m not good enough for the saintly Helena. So I’m stuck with the older one.’

  ‘Only a few years older, Imperator, and already a widow, thanks to the cruelty of her own brother. She’s in Roma, not so far away as Constantinopolis. She’s more likely than Helena to view marriage to you as a welcome escape from her brother’s watchful eye.’

  ‘If I might mention it, Commander, the Augusta is known to me personally.’ Before I could stop the very showing off that Apodemius always warned me about, I couldn’t help but offer Magnentius fair warning.

  The consistorium turned as one to where I stood at attention with two praetorians near the door. I was waiting for the clerks to copy the outgoing imperial dispatches from their wax notes onto paper.


  ‘Has she improved with age, Agens?’

  ‘She is still lovely, General, but . . . perhaps in a more exotic vein than the virginal Lady Helena.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t rule her out. Perhaps Hannibalianus taught her some bed tricks from the East, did he?’ The General rubbed his hands with relish.

  ‘Indeed, General. Summoned to her private suite in Treverorum to pick up some letter, I did observe that the Augusta decorates her chambers with whips, ropes and even jewel-encrusted gold bracelets that lock like shackles.’

  The faces arrayed around the long conference table drained bedsheet white.

  Magnentius broke the painful silence. ‘Well, the Constantines are a family of extremes, aren’t they?’

  He braced his meaty shoulders with resolve and removed a rugged gold ring from one of his fingers. ‘Someone take this to Roma and make the proposal. That’s enough of marriage matters. Any news from the Rhenus . . .?’

  But Constantia was no longer in Roma, the well-scrubbed Urban Prefect Titianus messaged back. I’d already sent my own coded update to Apodemius and by return mail I got more coded information back, ‘An imperial letter for Constantius left Via Nomentana for a fortress near Nisibus end January. Bridal coach departed along eastern road on February 3.’

  I should have given this information to Marcellinus, but instead passed it to Gregorius to use as he thought best. Silvanus might keep pushing for this deadly marriage, but I hoped that, in light of Constantia’s departure for the East, Gregorius might improve on his original advice with a better negotiating ploy.

  ***

  Despite my warning, the Constantia plan prevailed. Gregorius was to supervise the proposal that Gaiso would make. But first we had to find the woman. Gaiso happily shook the snow off his boots and rounded up a dozen cavalrymen. He carried Magnentius’ chunky Germanic gold-and-garnet ring for the intended. I was seconded again as escort. If we were lucky, we’d catch Constantia on the road somewhere.

 

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