Usurpers

by Q V Hunter

  But I couldn’t be sure. It would take time for these strangers from Gallia to locate the Senator’s townhouse, unless they had special informants. Judging by the speed of their departure for Eutropia’s whereabouts, I feared they did. I’d banked too much on their ignorance of Roma’s elite neighborhoods. Marcellinus had planned better than I thought. He had never shown loyalty, much less respect for the decrepit Roman Senate that had delayed and thwarted his new government. If he ever intended to revenge himself on those remnants of Roma’s lost greatness, if he relished handing them over to the mercy of a mob with nothing but hatred for patrician authority and tradition, it was going to happen tonight.

  There was no choice but to slip away again, to defend the Manlius House until I fell under some sword, if necessary. I shouldn’t have left Clodius in titular charge, no matter how much I relied on the trustworthy Verus.

  Marcellinus’ legionaries had split into two groups. One group was storming the Caelian Hill and the second searching the Esquiline. The summer skies shone full blue, but as I rode fast, back up the slope toward Trajan’s Baths, I saw the first signs of blood running through the gutters right under my horse’s hooves.

  Screams came from other houses as doors were battered down, gates cracked open and street walls scaled to invade the lush gardens of the privileged.

  I hurried on now, closing my eyes to scenes so cruel and savage, only my loyalty to the Manlii carried me past atrocities I would otherwise have fought to stop. I finally reached our old street and clattered up the road, leaping off my saddle. Under the sprawling fig branches, the oak gate barring the Manlius House from the street stood wide open.

  I sighed, thinking that the family had fled in too much of a hurry. That idiot Clodius had left the valuables accumulated over centuries—statues, rugs, ancestral funeral masks, golden tableware and priceless murals for any brigand to loot and vandalize. I dropped off my horse, shut the gate and bolted myself in.

  I walked through the vestibule, then the atrium, stifling hot now under the glass roof and stinking of weeds rotting in the moss-covered fountain basin. What servants still reported to Verus had fled as well.

  It wasn’t too late to secure the house up tight again, especially the priceless library books. I dashed up the short steps to the old study and then fell back against the doorframe in horror.

  The Senator lay across the floor, his sightless gaze meeting mine. He looked now for all the world like a bag of bones covered in white linen and wool stained livid with drying blood. His two scrawny feet in their goatskin shoes had kicked over the bin of scrolls he always kept by the side of his favorite chair, ready for the vanished slave boy Marcus to return and read out loud.

  I sobbed and ran to the old man’s corpse. Wrapping him in a tight embrace, I cried out to any gods who were listening, ‘Unjust murder! Injustice!’ My breast pounded with shock. My brain was blank and dizzy. No heat of the battlefield at Gregorius’ side had ever drained my mind of thoughts and strength so fast. The empty house didn’t answer my screams of rage, yet I howled all the same.

  This was the only person in the world who had truly loved me. I pressed my breast to his as if we could swap his lifeless heart for my broken one. I heard someone wailing with grief and realized it was myself. And all the time I held the frail and lifeless body to my heaving chest, my horror reverberated. How could Gregorius ever forgive his father’s murderer? Who would avenge it?

  Chapter 13, The Coin of Unity

  —Aquileia, November, 350 AD—

  Marcellinus’ massacre in Roma made you look barbarian, not imperial,’ Gregorius said. ‘The Roman fathers—those that survived—will never accept you now, whatever Decentius does, Imperator.’

  ‘Who cares?’ Marcellinus retorted across the council table. ‘You already rule Roma and all the West, Imperator.’ He scoffed at my ex-master. ‘Move with the times, Commander Gregorius, move with the times.’

  ‘My father’s ashes are hardly cold in the Manlius mausoleum.’ The Commander’s distrust of the Gallo-Roman Magister Officiorum grew by the minute.

  Marcellinus’ gaze turned stony. ‘I’ve sworn on my ancestors, though they are not as illustrious as yours, that I gave specific orders to spare the old fool from retribution. Don’t raise the issue with me yet again.’

  I listened to them wrangle in front of General Magnentius and his consistorium as I had for the last five months. Always more thoughtful than his older brother, Decentius had tried, but failed to make peace between the council members.

  Decentius had never felt comfortable surrounded by these senior veterans with years of service for other emperors under their sword belts. I thought I had detected downright relief when no one challenged his elevation to Caesar. Decentius even had his own solidus now, too, embossed with RENOBATIO URBIS ROMA, MAGNENTIUS DECENTIUS, but from what I observed, the coins embarrassed him more than anything else.

  With Titianus shamed in the eyes of the Roman street, Magnentius now had to dispatch his own brother on bended knee to the old capital to appease its wounded pride. Decentius didn’t care for pomp but at least he took his new responsibilities for the security of Gallia and the Rhenus border to heart.

  Gregorius himself had returned to Roma to oversee the last rites for Senator Manlius and to commission his death mask. He’d left Kahina with us under Magnentius’ powerful protection. Clodius declined his uncle’s summons to the funeral by pleading illness. He remained behind to enjoy the sundrenched terraces of Ostia. Perhaps it was just as well that the Commander’s nephew and heir stayed with Verus in the port town, well out of Marcellinus’ sight. If Marcellinus had distrusted me from the first, the Manlius camp consisting of Gregorius and myself now hated Marcellinus with equal sincerity.

  The time for avenging the Senator’s death wasn’t ripe, but the enmity was there. Marcellinus knew it only too well.

  So the Usurper and his court argued out the summer, distracted only by a move back to Aquileia. Magnentius disliked the stifling bureaucracy of Mediolanum more than ever. In Aquileia, he was free to spend his leisure time the way a rough-and-tumble soldier sees fit under less judgmental eyes.

  By fall, Constantius’ bouts over Nisibus with the Persians had reached an uneasy truce. He now turned his vengeful attention towards the West. Aquileia was rife with rumors on the streets, whispers in the wine shops, and gossip in the baths. People shivered at the scent of conflict in the wind.

  ‘Unity, men, unity is our first priority. Does this coin lie?’ Magnentius tossed one of his solidi on the table. It twirled and circled, and then fell flat with Constantius facing up. Magnentius pressed his thick index finger down on the Emperor’s profile. ‘He and I can split the Empire or we can share it. I’m determined to try once more for peace.’ His heavy eyelids lowered as he added, ‘But in the future, tell the mints to take the bastard’s face off my coins.’

  ‘War’s inevitable,’ Gaiso said.

  The hunter’s hunger for a real fight was palpable. He trained his forces harder than anyone else. The cavalry units under his demanding eye knew how to wheel and charge, retreat and regroup, circle and reverse in the saddle with the seamless grace of palace dancers. Training fresh tirones how to mount horses at a run carrying full arms or how to charge down steep bushy slopes without breaking the mount’s legs now bored him and his deputies. They’d done their job all summer. They stood impatient to test their skills.

  ‘I hope you’re wrong, Gaiso,’ Silvanus said.

  General Silvanus always played it safe. I wasn’t surprised to hear the caution in the handsome Frank’s voice. He was in charge of pulling the legions, one by one, farther south towards Magnentius’ expanding front line. Silvanus knew better than the other commanders what vast territories lay stripped of defense as these troops vacated the northern borders of the Empire.

  As so often these days, Silvanus this morning played the arbiter enjoying the decisive word. ‘You still have Vetranio halfway on your side, Magnentius. Unfortunately
, he suffers from his humble origins and poor education, making him susceptible to a peculiar malady.’

  ‘Sick? Vetranio’s sick?’ the Emperor asked.

  ‘Our roughhewn Moesian suffers from a case of Constantinophilia.’

  ‘What in Hades is that?’

  ‘A rash that spreads from head to toe whenever he comes near the color purple.’

  Everyone but Marcellinus chuckled. Silvanus continued, ‘Employ the legions massed behind us as an antidote without delay. Team up with Vetranio and together put it to Constantius that a civil war would be fatal to his campaign against Shapur. Even propose marriage again to Constantia—if you must—and send the virgin bride home to her father.’

  ‘Silvanus is right. Justina is still a child. I can’t wait years for heirs to the Great Constantine. My so-called “marriage” to her could be annulled. She could be sent back to Roma . . .’

  Silvanus held the floor. ‘Vetranio is asking Constantius for more money while pledging his loyalty to us. God knows we have enough money to reverse that, what with Marcellinus selling every imperial post from here to Lutetia . . .We should send another delegation to Vetranio . . .’

  I left the room on time with the morning’s dispatches for the relay rider. It wouldn’t do to linger and feed Marcellinus’ suspicions. Not all of us were so discreet. Roxana blocked my exit from the council room Her ears stretched a full yard in front of her.

  I’d helped her out once or twice since my afternoon with Justina, trying to squeeze her some free time between her duties as chaperone and her exercises as military mistress. Sooner or later, I confess, I hoped for some personal reward. Silvanus was handsome for a man in his forties, with that sleek dark hair and those friendly green eyes, but time had proved him cold and calculating.

  I could be tender and kind. Now I reached for her shoulders wreathed in expensive Eastern silk, but she brushed my hands away with impatience.

  ‘Did Silvanus propose another peace delegation? Quick, tell me. I must get back before I’m missed.’

  ‘Yes.’ I didn’t like taking orders from women. ‘Don’t act as if a delegation was your idea.’

  ‘To put over with all my persuasive skill.’

  ‘Not your idea, surely?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, just play your role and let me do my job!’

  ‘Roxana,’ but she was already flying down the marbled hall, back to playroom duties. ‘Roxana?’

  My face burned at her insult. Everyone knew I was an agens with authority over all the court’s post, ready to record and report any factional split or crime to the Castra Peregrina’s master. The suspicious eyes of Marcellinus hampered my movements. Meanwhile Roxana stayed invisible and free to carry out Apodemius’ tactics to keep the Empire intact.

  I flushed even deeper when the stark truth hit me like bolt of Zeus. Apodemius had set me up. If we agentes were told to put the Empire over all our private ties and political sentiments, the old chief put the Empire ahead of the interests of his individual agents with ruthless utility.

  I was just a decoy so Roxana could do the important work. I was there to distract Marcellinus and feed council room debate back to Roma while she was feeding policies and strategies across the pillow to save the Empire from itself. Apodemius planted an idea through Roxana into the Council and then read my reports to see how the argument presented by Silvanus had played out.

  That night things got worse. Resting in my cell-like quarters as chief of the postal riders, I received a letter bearing only a wax seal embossed with a small mouse. Even playing the decoy wasn’t enough, it seemed.

  It read, ‘To Sirmium as escort. Report daily.’

  Escort again. Clearly the old man in the Castra Peregrina had more confidence in his feline brunette than in his Numidian informant.

  ***

  Magnentius gave Vetranio ample warning of his dissatisfaction with their ‘pact’ in a string of letters, all of them drafted in the distinctively elegant handwriting of Marcellinus’ personal secretary. The ground was laid but the path littered with traps. The Usurper’s negotiating delegation set off for Sirmium in the second week of December. It included not one single key member of the Council. Magnentius sent ten tribunes and a half dozen protectores domestici from Gaiso’s military staff, protected by units of the Ioviani with none other than the disgraced Prefect Titianus riding at the head.

  I was the state escort in charge of the route.

  We were all disposable.

  Marcellinus smiled at the scene as we mounted our horses in the outer courtyard of the palace before the gray dawn. How utterly vulnerable we must have looked, riding into the enemy’s maw! Any failure on our part would signal success for those who wanted civil war.

  Vetranio was hardly likely to be moved by our puny mission. I was riding out for a lost cause. Only Magnentius himself, in personal conference with the wily old Moesian, could have brought about a solid alliance against Constantius.

  I felt a sudden shiver, despite my thick woolen tunic and socks, sturdy riding trousers, armor and short riding cloak. It was as if Justina’s silver dream oracle had warned of danger looming over me. I shot one last look at the fortress walls as we trotted eastwards in the direction of Illyricum. What I saw over my shoulder sent another kind of shiver through me.

  Framed by a high window in the imperial quarters, Lady Kahina stood alone watching my departure.

  Her face was red with weeping.

  ***

  The rocky Haemean slopes, emptied of troops or peasants by frozen winter, were all that now stood between Sirmium and our party. The glaze of ice on the paving stones was treacherous to our horses’ hooves. Teeth chattering and shoulders shivering under blankets, we walked the horses over the last mile towards the city with care.

  The Illyrian legions had moved into more solid winter quarters. The old general Vetranio, his stubbly jowls still wagging like a bloodhound’s, welcomed us into the entrance hall of a large suburban villa commandeered for the senior staff. Although he was Constantius’ anointed buddy, he sported neither borrowed diadem nor purple-trimmed cloak, just a battered cuirass over his uniform tunic, patched trousers and worn boots.

  ‘Eat, gentlemen! Our grub is better than anything you get from any tavern on the Cursus Publicus.’ We quickly made ourselves at home. Vetranio had risen to the top because he knew soldiers’ ways and the men loved him for it. Food and warmth came before political talk.

  Vetranio’s jovial humility fooled me no longer. I watched him. He eyed Titianus over the edge of his wine goblet as our party devoured a hearty dinner of olives and fruits, roasted capons marinated in garum, blood sausages and wheat bread, all washed down with an oaky wine.

  The other officers in our delegation could never have judged by the generosity of Vetranio’s board that he feared Magnentius’ displeasure at his last-minute double-dealing. I alone had read in secret the word-lashings doled out by Marcellinus, letter by letter. And I could trust that literate or not, someone had read those letters out to Vetranio.

  Tonight I saw in the wary warrior’s eyes a mix of curiosity and peasant canniness. Vetranio might still be studying his alphabet but he needed no lessons in politics. He knew he commanded the critical military hinge that buffered a legitimate Emperor from a popular and powerful upstart.

  ‘We Romans like to pay for our meals,’ Titianus said, smiling as he called forward four adjutants, each laden with two sacks of Magnentius’ solidi. ‘This is a just a small expression of our gratitude for your continuing alliance.’

  ‘For that kind of money, I should have served you gold-papered dormice stuffed with dates,’ Vetranio said. ‘But I’m happy to see that Magnentius has returned the West’s finances to health in only one short year.’

  ‘The Magister Officiorum has regularized taxation. He has straightened out the budget irregularities that crippled the Empire during his days as Treasury Secretary taking instructions from Constans.’

  ‘And grown fat in the process, I be
t!’ one of Vetranio’s staff volunteered.

  Titianus didn’t smile along. ‘Marcellinus serves the Emperor Magnentius, for whom the army will always come first. Have no fear of that, Vetranio.’

  ‘Oh, I believe it, I sure do. It was the army’s misery that drove him to treason and murder,’ the old fox chuckled.

  ‘Justice, not treason. An arrest gone wrong, not murder. All the legions west of this room salute Magnentius. The defenders of the Roman people have spoken.’ Titianus spoke with impressive authority for a coward who so recently had fled for his life to a stolen boat on the Tiberis. Perhaps that event crossed Vetranio’s mind as well.

  ‘I hear that there aren’t many real Romans left, thanks to you and Marcellinus.’

  Titianus tried to chuckle it off.

  ‘You might laugh, Prefect. Oh, not that Nepotianus or his mother were friends of mine. But I didn’t like what I heard. They should have been arrested or exiled. Let’s call it peasant sentiment. I was born not far from here on a rough pallet laid with a borrowed blanket under a leaking roof.’ Vetranio’s thick fingers picked the very last morsels of meat off a bone with concentrated precision. ‘In my childhood home, a meal like this would have been stretched to feed the entire village. So forgive me, Titianus, if I trust a system that promotes a yokel like me right to the top.’

  Titianus nodded, ‘Magnentius had also promoted his men on the basis of merit.’

  Vetranio spit a bit of gristle out, thinking perhaps of Caesar Decentius but he didn’t quibble. Instead, he pressed his point. ‘Oddly enough, I respect the family who gives a simple man like me a fair chance, provided I follow orders and fight with courage.’

  ‘Magnentius only wants peace within our Empire. We all need peace to use our forces to defend the borders. Barbarian incursions grow more frequent with each year and even when we win, the enemy holds more imperial ground than the year before. Magnentius wants you to join us in getting a formal settlement face-to-face from Constantius. The marriage proposal to Constantia is back on the table.’