The Broken Lance

by Jess Steven Hughes

  If they were still there!

  Chapter 29

  The prisoners were taken to the infamous Latumiae Prison near the edge of the city. From outside, all that was visible was a small, brick building with a vaulted roof. But inside, past fetid cells, a murky, narrow corridor led down to a subterranean world filled with torture and terror.

  After sending a courier with a sealed message to Sabinus, Crispus and I, along with Centurion Faenus Rufus, waited at the prison’s entrance for the senator’s arrival. Because Crispus and I were his retainers and had uncovered the plot, Sabinus would take charge of the investigation and prosecute the case in court, his right as a senator.

  We did not wait long. Upon Sabinus’s arrival at the gates, I briefed him on the raid and discovery of the letter.

  The heavy lines in his forehead tightened as he studied the note. “It’s incredible to see words of this magnitude committed to paper. Only a fool would write such damning words, let alone carry them, but then again, most plots are uncovered by accident.”

  Sabinus scanned the list of prisoners handed to him by Faenus Rufus. “I dealt with Nonius, Fabius, and Titius a few years ago. I was an Aedile magistrate handling minor cases for the Watch. These petty thieves aren’t capable of conniving a plot against the emperor. Nevertheless, I want them questioned—severely. Now this one,” he said, thumping the paper with a finger for emphasis, “Decimus, is another matter. He may be our key, I’ve not seen his name before. I will save him last for questioning. Come with me.” He jerked his head towards the inner corridor.

  We entered the prison’s shadowy hallway, following it a short distance, to a drafty shaft. Slowly, we stepped down a dark, slippery stairwell, wide enough for only one man to pass. Water dripped from the ceiling, a foreboding hint of what lay ahead. We hugged a curved stone wall winding its way down to the dungeon and torture chamber. About every twenty feet a torch jutted from the wall. We stalked forward until the twilight of one torch met the dawn of another. Many had fallen to their deaths here, few by accident. The air became fouler and more oppressive the farther we descended. A voice whimpered in an unseen cell. Muffled chains clanked in another cell as unseen things behind other doors slithered across straw-covered floors.

  We reached the bottom level of the torch-lit dungeon and waited for the turnkey to arrive and lead us to the interrogation room.

  “As you know,” Sabinus began, interrupted by a desperate scream from within the bowels of the jail, “the prisoners are detained behind this wall until they are brought to trial, usually after confessing. Abroghast,” he continued, pronouncing the name as if passing judgment upon all traitors, “will learn the truth as each culprit perceives it.”

  “Abroghast?” I asked. The very name swallowed us whole as it echoed, reverberating from the sweating stone wall beyond. “I’ve heard the name before. Obulco, my squadron interrogator, once said he had learned his trade from Abroghast before he transferred to Rome.”

  Sabinus grunted. “One and the same. There is only one Great Master in the dark art. All confess before him.”

  “I assume much depends on what the prisoners tell us before he applies his craft,” I said.

  “I prefer to see them confess without using torture,” Sabinus said. “You know the Laws of Twelve Tables allow it in cases of treason?”

  “Doesn’t that apply only to slaves?” I asked.

  “Treason is an exception. You’re right about other crimes.”

  “In all honesty, sir, haven’t many citizens been tortured for crimes other than treason?” Crispus asked.

  Sabinus nodded. “Unfortunately. My predecessors never allowed the law to stop them. I find it repugnant, but I understand why they have used it. Until better methods of investigation are developed, torture will be used for treason.”

  “Especially since we’re dealing with the emperor’s well-being,” I said.

  “Absolutely,” he agreed. “No matter what one thinks of the emperor, his position is sacrosanct. He is the empire, for better or worse, symbolic of its stability. To remove him by assassination would mean civil war. Despite his eccentricities, Rome prospers. The treasury is full and taxes are bearable.”

  I listened without interrupting, understanding that Sabinus uttered these words to justify his actions.

  “With the exception of the British campaign,” he continued, “the empire is at peace. No, this is not the time for a new emperor. I’m determined to crush this conspiracy.”

  The turnkey arrived and led us to the dungeon.

  The torture chamber reeked of stale, humid air. Smoke drifted along the low ceiling toward an invisible vent lost in the upper shadows. The coppery smell of blood wafted about the room. To the right of the entry two large cartwheels squatted where two hapless prisoners lay shackled and stretched. Beyond stood a large, glowing brazier on four iron dog legs.

  A potbellied torturer, not Abroghast, dressed in a scorched, blacksmith leather apron and tunic, tested one of the hot irons by searing a piece of scarred leather. It hissed, and bluish smoke rose to the ceiling. With a look of satisfaction, the questioner hummed a crude soldier’s ditty in a husky voice. He walked to the cartwheel where a dirty loin-clothed prisoner, feet lashed to the spokes, was being interrogated by a centurion of the Praetorian Guard. When he refused to answer to the officer’s satisfaction, the inquisitor applied the iron to his thigh adding to a long line of oozing blisters. The captive howled, and the stench of burnt flesh wafted through the room. The torturer grinned and spun the wheel for good measure.

  On either side of the condemned man, amber torchlights illuminated the mildewed stone pillars and exposed the source of the smell. The dungeon’s porous, cobblestoned floor had absorbed ages of spattered blood and feces.

  Across from the wheels rested a wooden rack with pulleys and levers for stretching a victim’s arms and legs, until the bones popped from their sockets. Prisoners confessed, truth or lie—any tale as long as the pain stopped. A barrel of brackish scum-covered water stood nearby.

  After saluting Senator Sabinus, a brawny interrogator, speaking through his nose, brought in the prisoners, their hands bound behind them, one at a time from a holding cell.

  Sabinus recognized the sorry lot that stood before us dressed in filthy rags. “Well, well, Nonius, Fabius, and Titius, we meet again—you never learn, do you?”

  The prisoners hung their heads in silence.

  “I will question them separately,” Sabinus said. “Starting with Fabius.”

  The prisoner, Fabius, paled.

  Sabinus motioned to the torturer who stood behind the prisoners. The interrogator grabbed Fabius and shoved him down on the bench in front of Sabinus.

  “Use the cord,” Sabinus said in a flat voice.

  The inquisitor pulled a small coiled, leather strap from his waistband. Unrolling it with his calloused, dirty hands, he wrapped it around Fabius’s forehead to the back of his head. He gave it two twists before inserting a hardwood stick through the two strands and tied it into a knot. Slowly, he twisted and tightened the cord around the prisoner’s head.

  Fabius’s face flushed, his eyes bulged. He screamed, the echo resounding through the chamber.

  Sabinus nodded again, and the torturer pulled the strap tighter.

  Another scream.

  Fabius’s agony did not move me. Unfortunately, over the years I had seen this method of interrogation applied so many times, that I had become jaded to its use. Still, it didn’t mean it was the right thing to do. I looked about—the faces of Crispus, Sabinus, and the watchmen remained blank.

  Sabinus raised his hand. The torturer released the tension but held the prisoner’s head firmly.

  Fabius exhaled and lowered his eyes.

  Sabinus took a seat in front of Fabius and studied him. “Look at me, Fabius.”

  The prisoner raised his eyes and stared blankly at the senator.

  “Now, will you answer my questions?” Sabinus asked in a quiet voice.
r />   Fabius gasped. “Yes, my Lord, anything.”

  “Only the truth,” Sabinus said.

  He confessed without hesitation to stealing the goods from shops along the Sacred Way. Fabius claimed that Decimus, the fourth prisoner, had instigated the robberies.

  The other two, Nonius and Titius, needed no persuasion by the interrogator to confess to the same crimes.

  Sabinus turned and motioned me closer to him. I stepped over and bent down where he whispered, “In my experience when dealing with these three characters in the past, you need only question one and the other two will readily confess.”

  Sabinus motioned to Fabius and continued his interrogation. “What else is Decimus involved in?”

  “He’s the go-between, your Lordship, for a middleman, a freedman who represents what he calls special interests,” gaunt-faced Fabius answered. He seemed to be the brightest of the three thieves. He also told of a fifth member of the band, whom they feared: the Gaul.

  “Decimus said the Gaul specialized in collecting high-interest loans,” added the matted-hair Nonius, who stood next to Fabius, “whatever that is. If somebody don’t pay back the loan, he breaks their bones. And if you want a body killed, he’s your man.”

  “I heard the Gaul say that he killed a woman a while ago,” confessed squat-legged Titius, “but he wouldn’t say who or where he did it. But something went wrong, because he hid with us.”

  Titius confirmed my conclusion that the Gaul was our assassin. A gang of thieves, filling a list of wanted items for waiting clients, and dealing in murder for hire. The group offered everything in one, with a minimum of names involved, and none at their level knew the real powers in charge.

  “Too bad the Gaul died,” I said to Sabinus. “He was probably a quarry of information.”

  Fabius told Sabinus that neither he nor Nonius nor Titius knew the freedman. They had turned to burglary after being approached by Decimus.

  “Decimus offered us a higher price for stealing goods than we got before,” Fabius said. “He gave us a list of what he wanted for the freedman’s clients.”

  Sabinus jabbed his hand toward Fabius. “What about the contraband in the caves?”

  “We stored it there until the freedman arranged to move it to his customers’ homes,” Fabius said. “They’re all rich.”

  “What do you know about the conspiracy against the emperor’s life?” Sabinus asked.

  Fabius turned his head in the direction of Nonius and Titus. “Nothing, sir. We’re thieves, not traitors.”

  “Place them on the rack,” Sabinus ordered.

  “I swear it’s true,” Fabius pleaded, “we know nothing!” Fabius bawled as the torturer placed him on the pallet and strapped him in. He shrieked denial again as the pulleys tightened on his limbs. The two others did the same when they, too, were put on the rack.

  Despite the excruciating pain, the three thieves denied any knowledge of the conspiracy.

  “I’m doing this for the edification of Decimus,” Sabinus said to me, nodding to the nearby cell where Decimus had been watching from the beginning. “I suspect he knows the answers, and I want him to appreciate the agonies awaiting him if he doesn’t confess.”

  Only a fool or a madman would refuse to confess after such a horrendous experience, I thought.

  Once again Sabinus turned his head in the direction of the cell where Decimus waited, his eyes gazing at the iron door. “Everything depends on the answers I get,” Sabinus said.

  Chapter 30

  When the three thieves had suffered enough, Sabinus halted the torture. Each had screamed so loudly and harshly they spat blood from ragged and torn throats. Although I had fought in many battles and seen horrors no one should witness, it was still unnerving. Had they slit my mother’s throat, I might have plead mercy even for this slimy lot. Surely, Decimus would beg to confess now.

  “They have told the truth as they know it,” Sabinus said. “Release them from the rack. Prefect Calpurnianus will try them in his court for theft and burglary but not treason.” Sabinus motioned to the torturer and his two assistants.

  He turned to the pitiful trio as they were being shackled for transport to the jail at the statione of the First Cohort to await trial. “You have graduated to three lettered men.”

  Nonius, Fabius, and Titius glanced to one another and knew what the senator meant. When convicted, their foreheads would be branded with letters, FVR, indicating they were habitual thieves. Sabinus ordered the thieves’ removal from the torture chamber.

  The centurion, who had earlier been interrogating a prisoner on the wheel, quietly stepped over to where Sabinus, Crispus, and I were standing as we waited for the prisoner, Decimus. The soldier gave the senator a respectful nod.

  Decimus had to be yanked out of the holding cell by two turnkeys. I judged him to be about nineteen or twenty. Calling obscenities, he spat in their faces, and in turn was kicked in the groin. Doubling over, he fell to the floor and was dragged to the rack. After being tied to the pallet, he let more spittle fly at anyone coming near him. Beneath his beetling brows and eyes carved into a missile-shaped head, his high-bridged nose flared.

  “Go to Hades, you bastards, I ain’t telling you nothing!”

  A turnkey slapped him with the back of his hand and ripped away his loincloth, leaving him naked.

  “He’s a professional,” Sabinus said, gesturing to the nasal-speaking inquisitor. “You’ll save yourself a lot of grief by answering my questions. I promise you a swift death—or one that will last an eternity.”

  Decimus spat in Sabinus’s face. “Go fuck your mother!”

  Sabinus calmly wiped the filth from his face with a towel quickly handed to him by one of the torturer’s assistants. Another man would have half-beaten the tough to death.

  “How unfortunate,” Sabinus said. “You had your chance. I have summoned an especially gifted torturer for you.”

  Like a spirit, Abroghast, the master torturer, slipped into the chamber past the original interrogator. I felt his presence before seeing him. Perhaps it was his reputation or Obulco’s stories. A sudden chill raised the hairs on my arms and neck. He stood in the shadows and seemed to be a part of the darkness near the cavern walls. When he stepped forward at Sabinus’s beckoning, he carried darkness with him.

  The grand interrogator stealthily approached his victim, his face partially masked in the gloom of a black cloak. Torchlights flamed brilliantly nearby, moving his shadow from the curved wall across the damp floor until it fell upon the victim. A distant dripping sound echoed from a dark, unlighted chamber. Decimus prostrate upon the rack must have felt the shadow or smelled its source, for he twisted about to see. The silent figure stood at his head and walked slowly around the strapped-down naked form, Decimus no longer crying out defiantly.

  “I am—Abroghast,” he rasped as if knowing his very name would strike terror. No doubt his assistant had prepared the victim in his cell with tales of his torture.

  The prisoner held his breath at the spoken name, but a sharp gasp escaped his throat, like a whimper, as his rebellious curses melted away. Abroghast stood behind the man’s head, forcing his victim’s eyes to tilt up to see him.

  “I am Rack Master,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. Abroghast ran his fingers gently through the man’s dark hair, twirling a curl about his index finger, and then massaged his temples softly. “Pain . . . and pleasure . . . are closely related.”

  Although mustached, I saw his jagged upper lip through the graying hairs, as if torn and healed, which revealed stained teeth. I detected a lisp as he continued.

  “In distant lands,” he said, “both are considered an art. I am master of both.”

  The grand torturer’s right hand stopped the tender massaging of Decimus’s temple and glided across the man’s pronounced cheekbones. His middle finger touched the skin as if trying to calm a nervous tick, and his other fingers floated, casting a shadow plague of dappled light and darkness like an eclip
se of life and death. His finger continued down a strong jawline and paused, exploring a dimpled double chin. Abroghast brushed his calloused palm tenderly against the grain of the stubbly beard, its resisting hairs bristling audibly. His index finger made little circle motions about the chin and slowly drifted down the neck, pausing in a threatening hover as if his intent was to strangle.

  “Your skin is fair, and white,” he muttered. “Free of scars from pox and diseases—yes, fair indeed.”

  Delicately, Abroghast’s hand moved downward onto the prostrate man’s smooth chest, his fingers rustling the tops of light chest hairs and circling the nipples until they became taut. He smirked with pleasure as his fingers drifted down the torso like a shadow without touching the skin, yet close enough for the warmth of his hand to be felt as it aroused invisible hairs along the way. The man’s stomach muscles quivered and danced involuntarily at the passing hand.

  The master torturer’s fingers eased down the thug’s right leg, skipping a thick, leather restraining strap, and then with a firm, smooth touch moved back up along the inside of his thigh. He paused at the groin, stroking the dark pubic hairs with his palm, combing them with fingertips, circling and caressing gently. There was a slight stirring in Decimus’s manhood as it began to fill.

  “Yes, pleasure and pain are both beautiful, much like a bitter herb prepares one to appreciate the sweet taste of honey.”

  Decimus remained silent, breathing uneasily, the green irises of his eyes fully ringed in white, and then whimpered slightly as his member stirred.

  Abroghast ignored those of us watching. “And to appreciate, one must first taste honey, and know beyond all doubt that whatever comes next will be worse.”

  As the master moved around the rack to the other side, his fingers trailed in his wake across the body, again pausing at the groin with raking and stroking fingers. Abroghast’s cloak hood fell away, but the long, black hair kept much of his face masked in shadow.