by Q V Hunter
‘Lady Kahina, it’s a childish thing to lose your peace and position over. Thank you. Let’s forget all this.’
‘It was the Senator’s gift, after all. You must never lose it again.’ She searched my expression for reassurance.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’
‘You won’t tell my husband?’
‘It’s the least of our secrets. Thank you. I’ve got to go now.’
‘Marcus?’
‘Yes, Lady Kahina?’
She reached for my arm to slow my leave-taking. ‘He’s the loveliest little boy in the world.’
I tied the bulla cord back around my neck. ‘Yes. Worth sacrificing everything for.’
‘Then you do feel our sacrifice, still?’ She tightened her grasp of my arm.
‘Not when I see Leo and yourself both thriving. Keep the boy safe, Kahina and give Roma a wide berth. Constantius may have it in him to send Vetranio off with a pension plan to Bithynia, but he won’t be so kind to Magnentius or any of his officers if things go wrong.’
‘But surely he wouldn’t slaughter the old Roman families?’
‘Constantius would not. But his lieutenant, Paulus Catena, “The Chain,” would make certain you begged him for the mercy of death.’
***
Late that day I had a chance to remember Kahina’s warning about Roxana. There was more than jealousy in her mistrust. I tracked my training mate down with stealth, lying in wait more than an hour among the columns lining the corridor to the palace toilets reserved for the ladies. I’d been too gullible, I realized, and too easily distracted by the feeling of her warm breasts moving up and down my chest.
I surprised her at last, moving in on her as she passed down a shadowy corridor well in the fading light.
‘What did he offer you?’ I twisted her arm hard behind her and held it fast to her back.
She knew the same training tricks I did, so it was hard work keeping her pinned down. She tried to kick back and knock my legs out from under me but I jumped and she missed. Her teeth were bared to take whatever chunk of flesh she could from wherever she could. It was like wrestling with an oiled stoat—soft and serpentine to hold but all sinew, spring and teeth underneath.
‘Let me go or you’ll never be able to piss straight again.’
‘What’s he paying you? You know I can snap that slender neck of yours so you’ll have to beg to be put down like a crippled horse.’
‘A hero like Silvanus gets it free—and often.’
‘I meant that beardless slug, Eusebius, of course. What could he offer you? You like your viri well-endowed, as countless men no doubt could confirm.’
‘You bastard. I’m better at everything than you, but I have to work days and nights—’
‘Then you’re working three shifts, not two, with the extra work behind Apodemius’ back, aren’t you? What does the eunuch offer you? More bracelets and earrings? What does he want? What do you want?’
She stopped fighting, but I braced myself for another wrestling bout all the same. Any minute now, I would dislocate her shoulder for the truth and she knew it.
‘A good post in the East.’
Disbelieving, I waited for more.
‘What of it? We’re all one Empire, aren’t we?’ Her eyes blazed an angry defiance back at me through the dark.
‘The eunuch is just using you against Apodemius.’
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘And vice-versa. The old “Mouse” works me no better than a streetwalker. When I’m dried up, he’ll give me some cleaning job at the Castra at quarter pay and a pittance of a pension. Let me go!’
‘Eusebius won’t deliver even that.’
She smiled even as she struggled. ‘Who’s waiting around for a pension? The East is rich pickings for an unattached girl.’
Suddenly, underneath the scent of her imported perfume and almond bath oil, Roxana reeked of raw jealousy—jealousy of Kahina and me. She’d flaunted the stolen bulla and now I could see it all—how Roxana’s envious suspicions of a secret past between Kahina and myself had frightened Kahina.
‘So you’re alone. Don’t take it out on the service.’
‘The West is cold, confused, and sinking. Old Roma is a forgotten junkyard. I smell failure, Marcus—on you—on all of them. You stink of decay, all of you. Well, nobody’s got me tied down, especially not you.’
She broke my hold with a sudden wrench and ran for it. I would’ve followed her—I knew there was more to her actions—but I had to sign off on the records before the praetorians locked down for the day. I was headed back for her when a horn less than a mile outside the town sounded an alert.
I ran out of the palace and down to the Aquileia city gates. One of our relay riders appeared on the crest of a hill about a quarter of a mile away on the eastern road. We delayed our sentries from bolting fast the gates. I sent a boy to fetch Marcellinus from his paperwork.
A few minutes later the rider thundered into the courtyard. He wore the white feather of victory in his helmet.
‘Constantius’ advance forces completely repelled, Magister Officiorum!’ He dismounted and handed me the report. I passed it over in turn.
Marcellinus read it on the spot. ‘Prepare your next team of couriers for immediate departure. I’ll prepare summons to Gregorius and all the rear legions.’
‘Yes, Magister. We have half a dozen fresh men just coming on shift.’
‘Put every single one on duty to ride out tonight. It seems the Emperor Constantius fell into our trap. He’s sending a delegation to negotiate.’
‘I don’t understand, Magister. If it’s peace, why pull the rear legions forward?’
He waved the dispatch with displeasure. ‘Magnentius’ orders. We move the imperial council to the front, myself included, with the entire Western Army at our heels.’
‘To strengthen his bargaining?’
‘I pray to the gods that’s all but I suspect that’s not the reason. I’m afraid he’s got his head swollen with a lust for yet more power.’ The expression on Marcellinus’ crafty features darkened. Despite his contempt for me, he muttered within my earshot, ‘I curse the day I crowned that stupid barbarian.’
So it seemed I would be hand-delivering the Empress Justina’s love letter after all.
***
‘My gods, look at that. Who in Hades is she?’ A rider named Caduceus stared, the packet of reports clutched in his hand frozen in the air.
We all looked out from the postal cubicle. Under my supervision, the couriers had been sorting up and registering the overload of orders and dispatches to be sent out, when a woman of around sixty had appeared at the outer palace gates beyond.
She wore her hair in wild reddish curls festooned with braids of twisted gold cord and fastened down with a golden headpiece studded with jewels. But for all her glittering display, she swaggered with impatience at the sentries’ delay in clearing her with no more grace or dignity than a common potions peddler. Then to our astonishment, this garish creature obtained entrance and even a praetorian escort for her passed to the inner gate and courtyard leading to the palace.
It was none other than the Emperor Magnentius’ mother, a formidable flame-haired barbarian clanking under her load of Frankish belts and bracelets—a German woman’s armor indeed. She had arrived from parts north to make a rare visit to the salon of her straight-backed little daughter-in-law.
I’d heard of this crone. As an eye-catching young refugee, she had read fortunes to the officers around Constantine I, until his strategic conversion to Christianity prevailed over such amusements. The woman looked half witch even now. I scolded the courier clerks back to work, while I imagined Magnentius Mater being welcomed now into the Augusta’s suite with condescending hospitality, but not a Roman aristocrat’s warmest embraces.
I was wrong about the welcome. However odd-matched, these two in-laws soon discovered a mutual love of soothsayers and omens.
As the staff finalized unprecedented logistical prob
lems on the very eve of our complicated departure, the palace became a meeting point for a series of peculiar visitors. Each commander who brought in his dozens of centurions to report to Decentius for duty and detailed briefings found themselves stumbling over a bazaar-like hustle-bustle of praetorians escorting weird civilians in silk slippers crisscrossing the same crowded halls.
Each day, one wide-eyed old bat in rags or dubious harridan in gaudy silks after another threaded through the ranks of reporting officers en route to Justina’s quarters.
If we men were summoning all the physical forces of the West into one powerful message for Constantius, it seemed that Justina and her steely-eyed in-law were calling in all their spiritual chits for the oncoming confrontation at Atrans. I much preferred the charming child Justina to this impressionable teenage Augusta made giddy with crazy predictions and incantations—but it wasn’t my concern.
Soon after that, Marcellinus’ fears proved well founded. We heard that the elated victor had abandoned the security of Fortress Atrans to push deeper into the East without waiting for his backup forces.
His impetuous advance forced the Caesar Decentius to hustle over fifty thousand men forward in a race to catch up with his brother. Lumbered down by baggage trains, ballista-carts, weapons, bullion and cook wagons, not to mention the fixed pace of the infantry filing at fast-march pace ahead of the cavalry units, we set off, expected to join the imperial camp in a mere six to seven days.
That assumed that Magnentius managed to stay put until we arrived.
I argued to Marcellinus and Gregorius that as an agens my job was to speed ahead of their stately progress to communicate the strength of our forces and any requirements in advance. Gregorius agreed, all too readily. He hoped I would carry his private advice to Magnentius to pull back to Atrans and reconvene the council.
To my surprise, Marcellinus shook his head, ‘No.’ ‘You’re free to solicit such a command from your schola superiors, Numidianus, but I would consider it a favor to myself, as well as Decentius, Gregorius and our fellow commanders, if you’d remain with our company.’
‘Surely, Magister, there are some messages or intelligence that would be good to deliver ahead, to ease the merging of such vast forces?’
Marcellinus shook his head again and even laid a bejeweled hand on Gregorius’ shoulder to cut off any dispute. ‘Trust is not only delicate, but also unpredictable, Agens. You know a year ago, I resented your independence and even more, the insubordinance with which you, a mere freedman, flaunted it. Now, I’m not too proud to admit, I might come to value that very quality more and more—or at least to be ready to exploit it. I find I’m very very reluctant to lose you.’
I chaffed at his tightening control disguised as respect over my movements.
‘But all the news from the East is good, Magister. Look behind us.’ The line of spears, standards and banners reached to the horizon of hills we’d already crossed and behind which the late summer sun was now sinking. Like an explosive ball of flame, it sent orange light onto a shimmering river of armor winding left and right. ‘My request to speed ahead is based only the need for logisitical warning, not strategic worry. Rarely has one emperor commanded such a modern, robust force—’
‘Much less two.’ Marcellinus looked uncomfortable in his military livery. He made me uncomfortable as well. Seeing him in full armor again, all I could think of was his savage, defiant ride around the Trajan Arena brandishing Nepotianus’ dripping head with its blind, staring eyes.
I pressed Marcellinus to divulge his misgivings. ‘Surely, Magister, there’s too much to lose to risk all-out civil—?’
‘Certainly!’ He cut me off, adding, ‘Indeed, why would the most powerful empire in the world commit suicide?’ The he stared off at the horizon, unable to answer his own question.
Gregorius bit back some comment of his own and kicked his horse forward. I was about to fall back in line with more junior officers when the Magister Officiorum broke his restive pause.
‘If I were not so modern myself, gentlemen, I might consult an oracle or better yet, slice up some poor goat to spill its fortune-telling entrails into a basin. But I’m a modern man, so all I’ll say is that my own guts churn with uneasiness. So, no, agens, you’ll stay with us and even after we arrive, I’ll be watching you. You never know. You might make a useful weather vane, like that bronze Triton in Athens on top of the Tower of the Winds, pointing his trident in the opposite direction—should fortune stop blowing my way.’
When the moon was high overhead, I set off with stealth to Roxana’s room. Silvanus was gone and Justina and her ladies long retired to their beds. I knocked again and again, softly. After considerable exasperation with lurking in the shadows of the women’s wing, I forced her door open, using the thin wedge of my swivel knife to lift the latch.
Perhaps I had guessed already. Perhaps I just had to see it for myself.
Her room was empty. Roxana had fled Aquileia, taking all her clothes and jewels, not to mention her secrets, with her. Had Eusebius been merely receiving reports from the woman or worse? Was he scheming against Apodemius through her? What? What? She’d decided to run the moment she confessed. So there must be more to hide from me. Exactly whom had she betrayed and was it too late to save them?
Chapter 18, An Oath is Broken
—Western Pannonia, September 351 AD—
Thus I was stuck in place for the duration, keeping my horse at the infantry’s fast-march pace in the company of legion commanders. These were hard men, scarred by border duty and a life on the move. Franks, Celts, Hispaniards, even the odd refugee from farther north, they were all committed to the imperial barbarian’s new regime.
It wasn’t hard to understand their affection for Magnentius. Some of the black-eyed Hispaniards’ ancestors had fallen to Pompey’s slaughter almost four hundred years ago. Even as they rode, some of these Frankish officers might still have toothless grandfathers walking the earth, telling tales of forest warfare against Constantine around some refugee camp’s ovens.
As usual, I listened like the slave child I’d once been, keeping my gaze forward but my ears cocked. These strangers had endured the long impatience of suspended mobilization. After months of reconnoitering and exercising while sullen Italian peasants looked on, they were keen to get their men marching to a purpose. All day they barked and disciplined their lines double-time, not only to catch up with Magnentius within the week, but also to quicken the troops’ appetite for war.
The men took it with gusto, too. Marching meant more ‘boot bonus’ for each infantryman on top of regular pay, a fresh choice of women and more plentiful food rations. They’d eaten southern Gallia and northern Italia down to the last breadcrumb and shellfish.
We passed one last night of comfort camped around the walls of Atrans and along the valley floor before setting off again for the more uncertain territory beyond Emona.
We knew we were nearly in sight of the main Western camp because a full day before reach of Siscia’s city gates nestling on the left bank of the Colapsis River, our eyes spotted a miasma of brown cloud hovering above the Sava River. Our ears soon picked up the unmistakable rumble of army—a true ocean roaring like breaking waves with the sounds of horses, oxen, hammers, horns, wagon wheels, metal-working, shouts and pounding feet. The fading skylight filtered through the smoke sent up from hundreds of cooks’ and smithys’ ovens.
And suddenly I was a child again at the Senator’s knee, reading to him from The Iliad, . . . as the countless flocks of wild birds, the geese, the cranes, the long-necked swans, gathering by Cayster’s streams in the Asian fields wheel, glorying in the power of their wings, and settle again with loud cries while the earth resounds, so clan after clan poured from the ships and huts on Scamander’s plain. And the ground hummed loud to the tread of men and horses, as they gathered, in the flowery river-meadows, innumerable as the leaves and the blossoms in their season . . . Like the countless swarms of flies that buzz round the cowherd�
��s yard in spring, when the pails are full of milk, as numerous were the long-haired Greeks drawn up on the plain, ready to fight the men of Troy and utterly destroy them.
A boisterous greeting broke into this reverie that accompanied my progress towards the parade ground where the Emperor waited. Magnentius’ re-constituted council was going to hold their first field conference at dusk in the imperial meeting tent flagged at all four corners with the banners of the Ioviani and Herculiani hanging limp in the summer heat.
‘Victory! Victory, Marcellinus! Hello, Gregorius! We chased their asses straight out of the valley. They ran like rabbits.’
Magnentius’ face had lit up at the sight of his bean-counting sponsor as soon as our crowd of officers ducked under his tent flap.
‘Congratulations, Magnentius.’ I noticed that Marcellinus could not bring himself to smile.
‘You’re tired, sure, man, but you’ve got them here without trouble?’
‘Just under two hundred miles with no incident, but a brawl over some blonde back in Emona. Hello, Gaiso. Silvanus.’ The generals greeted each other as I presented my satchel of post to a tribune assisting Magnentius. The leaders resumed their lively arguments over how to get a nation of soldiers across the Sava—by building a bridge or commandeering boats?
I still had to find my own tent and work out the order of merging the messaging and posts with the army communications officers. More than 80,000 men now measured out an orderly space all around the hard-packed parade ground that bathed in the fast setting blaze of September’s dry dusk.
‘Halt, you! Yes, you!’
I turned, startled at the sound of his imperious summons.
‘Did you deliver this, Agens Numidianus?’
The Emperor himself had thrust his head out the flap of the council tent and was recalling me across the parade ground. I trotted straight back into the tent behind him and stood at attention. I assumed he had already stumbled on his consort’s letter, but as soon as I got up close, I realized Justina’s tender announcement could hardly be responsible for the bull-faced rage in those huge eyes.