Usurpers

by Q V Hunter

  Vetranio let out a snort and polished off more wine. He stared at the hot coals in the brazier.

  Titianus grew testy with the rough Moesian. ‘Surely you’ve had time to consider this, Vetranio. You’ve read the messages from Mediolanum?’

  ‘Messages? Scoldings, you mean! The arrogance!’

  ‘You must know by now what your answer is? Will you ride with us to Constantius, or not?’ Titianus used too much condescension. His allusion to Vetranio’s educational shortcomings was a fatal insult.

  Vetranio rubbed his stubbly jowls with a calloused hand. We waited. He looked around our delegation with a mix of resignation and disdain. Then he belched in our faces.

  It was clear my report to Apodemius on this confrontation was going to disappoint anyone praying for peace. Vetranio’s lavish meal had just been showing off. He might as well have served a bowl of salt to rub into our saddle sores. His refusal to make good on his partnership with Magnentius was going to be the bitter dessert.

  I was wrong.

  ‘Yes, there is only one solution to this. Constantius will meet us next week in Naissus to discuss terms.’

  Titianus visibly started in his camp chair. Tribunes, legates and centurions from our two camps exchanged smiles and shook hands down the length of three long tables. The banquet was adjourned. Vetranio said goodnight like a Roman patriarch blessing his grandchildren as they scampered off to bed.

  I lingered in the emptying dining room to inquire where to deposit my night’s report with the dispatches leaving at dawn. An officer wearing the Pegasus insignia offered to escort me in one hour’s time when I had collected whatever self-serving puffery Titianus was drafting himself to send to Marcellinus and added my own unvarnished version.

  As usual, my report to Apodemius took time. I had to write two messages, as I’d been trained. Tonight’s cover letter detailed our arrival time, the money transferred to our host and his proposal we all proceed to meet the Emperor in Naissus.

  Then around the margins of the page, I added a coded message in invisible ink that was sure to outshine any intelligence that vixen Roxana could come up with for weeks to come. It felt good to know I had useful information for once, but as I wrote it, my heart sank knowing that Gregorius had gambled the future of the Manlii and my son with dice now loaded against all of us.

  The evening had been long and the wine strong. Before the meeting had adjourned, I’d excused myself to take a piss and a gulp of fresh air. Instead I caught a whiff of sweet and cloying perfume. In the villa corridor I spotted an unmistakable silhouette that drew me back into the shadows with a gasp. I prayed to the gods he hadn’t detected me, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Now I could add something to the margins of my report that would give Apodemius a shock of his own. ‘Eusebius eavesdropping from adjoining room.’

  Chapter 14, Hope Abdicates

  —Dacia Mediterreana—

  We set off a few days later for Naissus. I could deduce that Vetranio’s assurance we were to meet Constantius was based on information delivered by the eunuch.

  I’d never ridden so deep into the East in my life. We crossed three hundred mountainous miles of frost and snow. It took six days, via Singidunum, Viminacium and Horreum Margi, just to reach Constantine’s birthplace. The great Emperor had once nicknamed Naissus, ‘my Roma’—before he built himself an even better one.

  Naissus was all right, but to my eyes, no Roma.

  The last surviving imperial son had moved on and now waited for us at his winter quarters in Sardica.

  We set off on another three days of bone-chilling travel. It all came back to me now from my army days serving Gregorius—the stench of twenty thousand men and their horses, the thunder of tens of thousands of hooves thudding on dirt next to wheels on the paving stones, always ending with the pounding of palisade stakes around a fresh camp at dusk. Only discipline and habit saved us from chaos as we bedded down in a rectangular metropolis of tents.

  Surely Constantius’ forces, weakened and whittled down by the relentless Shapur for years on end, could never match Vetranio’s muscle? I imagined all the legions of Britannia, Gallia and Hispania, massing ever closer and closer to Magnentius, matched with this horizon of hardened fighters, all the Danubian cavalry legions plus infantry units from the central northern frontier. Logic told me the sheer weight of the allied armies of the West and Illyricum had Constantius cornered.

  I was sure Magnentius had a deal.

  Yet my nerves tightened on a winch of apprehension with each day’s leaning in my saddle against the chilly winds. I got no chance to tell Titianus my fears that the eavesdropping Eusebius had had ample time to set a trap.

  Our Magnentius delegation had been split up on purpose, a move I credited to the perfumed eunuch, riding under silken covers in a cushioned litter somewhere back with the baggage-train of bullion and supplies. Our Ioviani Gauls and Franks rode pinched behind some ten thousand men fast-marching or riding ahead, followed by another ten thousand on horseback and the trains behind.

  Singled out to ride at Vetranio’s side, Titianus was in no position to counsel the rest of us, even during our nightly stopovers. Vetranio kept his chief guest busy with flattery and toasts at his private table.

  Even from a distance, our noble Roman spokesman didn’t look any more confident than I felt, but not because he knew Eusebius’ labyrinthine ways hidden from our view. He was no doubt busy rehearsing the terms of a treaty which would acknowledge the superior standing of the legitimate heir in the East over the reformer of the West in exchange for a peaceful division of rule.

  If that failed, Titianus was to allude to the interests of the united Empire over the high price of a civil war.

  As a sweetener, the Urban Prefect carried in his army kit a small portrait of the Magnentius daughter. Unfortunately, the virgin was no trump card, even as part of a dubious exchange for the widowed Constantia. I’d caught a quick glimpse of the tiny image and noticed a pair of cow-like eyes and pointed nose curving down over her father’s massive jaw.

  After so many days of riding, obscure and silent, in a flowing river of disciplined men, I felt nothing but relief as we finally crested the mountains that ringed Sardica’s valleys.

  I gulped at the vista below. For miles and miles, Constantius’ forces—in lines as regular as a Roman boy’s grid in the sand at Ostia—stretched in wait for the Moesian’s forces. Under a gray sky heavy with snow, I could just make out Constantius’ pennants marking the center parade ground and military headquarters. A wooden podium stood twenty feet high and fifty feet wide in front of the imperial tents.

  Hundreds of horses slowed ahead of my own to negotiate the rocky, narrow descent. I had to rein in hard to keep in position. I exchanged worried glances with any of the Gallic tribunes I could spot near me in the procession.

  Sidling down, hoof by hoof, stone by stone, I spotted Vetranio’s standard and picked his heavyset figure out from the advance riders speeding up their pace after they reached the safety of the flatland. I would have known Titianus anywhere for his upright bearing and white horse specially chosen in Aquileia departure to dazzle, but I was surprised that Vetranio himself now wore the long purple cloak and diadem Constantia had tossed his way in Sirmium.

  On the descent, my horse lost his footing and stumbled. I slipped farther behind our party and was struggling to keep my place on the road. A brutish Thracian with thighs as thick as tree trunks was edging my own mount off course.

  Then he barked over his saddle to me, ‘We’ve got instructions. When Constantius finishes speaking, hail him with a full throat. Pass it on.’ He returned his eyes to the treacherous final stretch.

  ‘How do we know when he’s finished? I can hardly see the podium from back here, much less hear anything.’

  ‘Don’t be a clod. When Vetranio kneels, of course.’

  ‘Why would Vetranio kneel? He’s here to sign a—’

  ‘Just pass it on.’

  We melted into t
he sea of tents. I passed Constantius’ cavalry in various stages of war exercises. These were men who lived for constant battle, ferocious and unforgiving, ungallant and duplicitous, against the Persians. Even during their winter rest, they were honing their battle skills, preparing to face Shapur’s formidable cavalry all over again in the spring.

  I was astonished by my first sight of a mounted unit clad entirely in metal armor, with only slits for eyeholes and rotating scales of metal plated over their arms and legs. Each rider on exercise carried lance, sword, mace, bows and battle-axe, all dangling from belts and scabbards and sheaths. More extraordinary, each horse wore armor over its head and body that hung down to its knees, making the whole of man and mount one glittering engine of death.

  I could not stop staring. I had to see more. I was about to slip forward for a better look when a roar from the troops engulfed me. I’d only heard such a sound, like a bellowing, hungry beast, in Roma itself and only at the arrival of a celebrity gladiator or the death throes of a royal prisoner-of-war in the center of Trajan’s Arena.

  I strained high in my saddle over the clamor and bang of spears and swords on shields just in time to catch Vetranio and Titianus dismount. Our two envoys followed a heavy-footed man with a proud, heavy-featured head on wide and rigid shoulders underneath the imperial banners and into the ceremonial imperial tent.

  I had just enjoyed my first glimpse of the true Emperor.

  ***

  Across the plains, horns summoned the armies into loose formation. Overnight I’d managed to rejoin the other Magnentius delegates. We now carved out a space for our party in the ranks among the cavalry officers of the IV Flavia but before too long, the Flavians had jostled forward, obliterating all sense of order in the eager crush.

  Above the imperial tent poles, a fierce northern wind sent the open mouths of the Emperor’s gold dragon banners, the cylindrical dracones, snapping at the breeze. Fixed to the ends of the stage, two placards painted with Chi-Rho insignias twisted and banged against the handrails of steps wreathed in purple silk on both sides.

  Nothing seems quieter than thirty thousand or more soldiers standing in rigid silence, broken only by horse’s neigh, the intermittent order for attention, a cough here and the wind there whistling through thousands of upright lances.

  I imagined that for Constantius, nothing was lonelier than facing us but then I saw the sharpened point of a pike and remembered his cousin Nepotianus’ head bleeding from Marcellinus’ weapon.

  Such men as Constantius couldn’t afford human frailties like loneliness.

  We heard the bells of Sardica’s Christian churches ringing. They chimed on and on, for ten, fifteen, then twenty minutes. Soon it seemed they would be chiming all day. The clanging pounded on my tired temples.

  ‘Why don’t they stop?’ I asked a centurion next to me.

  ‘It’s a feast day. Sardicans will spend today on their knees.’

  ‘For Constantius?’

  ‘The birth of Christ.’

  I must have looked too tired or too foreign to take in his meaning, because he repeated more slowly, ‘Today is Christ Mass.’ He made the Sign of the Cross against his breastplate as if to underscore his message.

  Finally the bells swung down to a standstill, leaving echoes for a full minute in our ears. Constantius’ praetorians emerged from the imperial tent at last. Now, without straining, I scrutinized the Emperor himself—his long face framed by a short bowl haircut. With his large, heavy-lidded eyes fixed and expressionless, he reminded me of a stronger version of Constans, but with all the prettiness hammered out of him and replaced with builders’ concrete.

  He led Vetranio and Titianus up the steps to the center of the stage.

  The officers at the front of the crowd sent up the salute. Whatever Vetranio’s shortcomings in a library, he was obviously a hero in the field. Cheers rolled backward from their ranks and engulfed me like sea waves and then onwards to the foothills behind us. I noticed in the clamor that Titianus stood well back from the two senior men. Constantius put his arm around Vetranio’s shoulder and began his oration.

  His voice hardly carried to where I stood. Like everyone else, my eyes read the pantomime of embraces and gestures that matched sentences floating back and forth according to the whims of the chilling breeze.

  ‘ . . . for reasons I shall make clear . . . As you know, for the good of the Empire . . . I delayed any course of action . . . in the West.’

  He went on, but I was heaving a sigh of relief already. So, the treaty was set and global peace secured. Tomorrow we’d head back to Magnentius with the East-West accord in our dispatch bags.

  ‘But last night,’ Constantius shouted, ‘the shade of my father, the great Constantine, appeared to me . . . the corpse of my murdered brother Constans in his arms . . . voice called me to avenge . . . He forbade me to despair of the republic. He assured me of the success and immortal glory that would crown the justice of my arms . . .’

  Someone cued a cheer at the front and again, roars and hails of support swallowed up and deafened me, then rolled onwards to the rear and finally subsided. I even saw tears rolling down soldiers’ cheeks as Constantius’ oratory moved their hearts.

  But I had stopped cheering. Something wasn’t right. My face flushed at the mention of Constans, though no one there knew his killer stood right there in their midst. Irrational fear deafened me to Constantius’ next words, but I felt more than personal alarm. To my horror, the political theatre staged for the troops was veering off our script.

  Vetranio removed his purple cloak, dropped to one knee and handed the Emperor the diadem from off his hoary old head.

  There was an explosion of noise around me and I lost my footing for a moment as a crush of men cried, ‘Death to False Emperors! Death to Constans’ killer!’ There was a great sound of scraping metal as swords were drawn and the rhythm of blade on shield started up again.

  I joined my croaking voice with theirs, ‘Death to False Emperors!’ Anything else would have triggered a stampede of hobbled boots on my torso for simple disobedience.

  Vetranio finished his charade, unbuckling his thick sword belt and laying his weapon in its battered scabbard at the Emperor’s boots. Stiff as a living statue, the Emperor laid his palm on Vetranio’s cowering head with one hand. With the other, Constantius saluted his army, now trebled in size thanks to the capitulation of our erstwhile ‘ally.’

  We were trapped. I tried to calculate the distance to my horse. Should we wait for Titianus to rejoin us in defeat, or muster the group without him for a dash back over the mountain road towards Naissus?

  Even riding in twenty-four relays at twice the speed of our fast-march here, using my agens permits and pulling every string of privilege, we couldn’t reach safety in the West for at least four days, maybe five.

  I needn’t have bothered. My horse and travelling sack were gone, confiscated. As I searched for them with frantic speed, I was spotted and pointed out to two Dacians under a tribune’s watchful eye. Within the hour of Constantius’ public condemnation of Magnentius, they had gagged and dragged me straight out of the vast camp for the imperial palace in Sardica.

  ***

  ‘It was so very kind of you to come to us, Marcus Gregorianus Numidianus. The Emperor would have had us wasting months chasing you through the wilds of Gallia or the slums of the Subura. Speak up. Where are you?’

  Paulus ‘The Chain’ Catena had entered our subterranean Hades. He was moving among us prisoners in the dark. I’d heard his voice as the guards let him pass through the corridor of cells until he arrived at our door. It opened and then clanged closed behind them. In the blackness it took me only seconds to identify a voice I hadn’t heard in so many months.

  When I realized who it was, I shrank back against the slimy rock. My slave’s training to virtually melt into the walls unseen was letting me down now when it mattered most.

  So far, I’d seen out two days and nights in this pit of death, measured
not by a single changing ray of light but by the arrival of coarse bread tossed through a grate on the floor.

  I’d had time to think. When had Vetranio decided to betray Magnentius? From the moment we’d left his Sirmium tent, or earlier? Had Constantia returned to threaten or flatter the old fool? Or had he intended from the very first, even before we arrived, to convert our overtures into Constantinian gratitude?

  Catena held out a flaming torch at the height of his sword hilt to guide his steps between the shit and groaning bodies. The blinding flame lit up my fellow unfortunates, one by one, as the Hispaniard’s heavy boots trudged past their terrified eyes.

  Until now, the pitch black of the jail had been a sort of blessing, sparing us the sight of each other and offering a pathetic privacy to our suffering. On all sides, men retched and shat where they crouched their fleshless bones. After only three days, I was coming to recognize fellow inmates by their particular smells but at least I didn’t have to see what torture and starvation had done to them and was going to do to me. I’d retired into what most men did with such a living death and tried to sleep away the hours or recite poetry to myself, remembering safer, happier days back home in Roma.

  About ten feet from my hiding spot, Catena thrust his torch closer to the face of a prisoner who started shrieking, ‘No, NO, not HIM!’ Catena’s flame swept back and forth only inches from the victim’s face. Instead of teeth, all that remained in the poor man’s mouth were gums crusted thick with blood. His chest was covered with smeared gore as well.

  Catena moved on.

  There were five or six other men in the darkness not far from the corner I’d fought hard for because the dirt floor where the rocky walls met was slightly softer and higher, a little nest of debris and dust. From all corners of the low-ceilinged chamber, vomit and piss ran in streams to the center of the cell. Those with limbs too broken or diseased were left there in the foul pools. But all of us suffered from the freezing draft that stabbed like sharpened rods right through the rocky wall.