Lions of Rome

by S. J. A. Turney

  As the crew worked feverishly to save themselves, Buco heaved the steering oar once more, turning the ship. The Korinthos might be doomed, but at least he could buy the rest some time. His hand went to the canvas bag at his belt, waterproof and the most valuable thing on the ship right now.

  The ship began to turn, cutting to the left, beginning a wide, slow arc. As it did so the lifeboat hit the water with a splash, its ejection hidden from the approaching pirates by the ship’s hull. With luck they would get away unnoticed. The men began to leap from the ship into the water, swimming over to the lifeboat and climbing aboard.

  He watched in irritation as the navigator, Vetus, also threw himself in, desperate to escape and ignoring Buco’s orders. Oh well. The lifeboat was already overloaded anyway, and the fewer left on board the more likely his way out would bear fruit.

  With the bulk of the crew gone, rowing like mad towards the diminishing shapes of the fleet, Buco continued to circle. The four small, fast pirate ships were closing on him now. He had contemplated denying them their prize. He could probably have holed the ship and sunk it before they got here, or even thrown much of the grain over the side. But the ship being full was a much better bargain for the enemy. Denying them their prize would not be likely to put them in a good mood.

  As they approached and slowed, Buco and his two companions furled the sail and let the Korinthos drift to a halt. A quick glance showed the lifeboat to be already some distance away, little more than a black blot on the horizon. They would be safe. From the pirates, anyway. Who knew what else they might face.

  Buco stood proud at the rail of his now lifeless ship, just Gallio and Papus beside him. One of the four pirate ships had moved out ahead of the others. Buco could see men with grapples and lines, and half a dozen figures stood with bows nocked and drawn. The men aboard wore brightly-woven tunics, and their dark skin was made all the more so by the black curly hair and beards that had grown out to be plaited and knotted.

  ‘Surrender your ship,’ shouted the leader in a thick Mauritanian accent.

  Buco nodded. ‘You have her: the Korinthos, loaded with grain bound for Portus.’

  ‘Where are your crew.’

  ‘Gone.’

  The man nodded. The crew would have fetched them a few coins at the slave markets, but herding a captured crew usually meant trouble, and the real prize was the grain. ‘You will come onto my ship. Kneel and be bound. My men will crew your ship back to land.’

  Buco watched as the other ship came now close enough that the men threw out their grapples and pulled the two together. With a deep breath and a prayer, Buco reached into his pouch.

  ‘No, no,’ admonished the pirate leader, wagging a finger, but Buco continued anyway, fishing out the wax tablet from within.

  ‘Do you read Latin?’

  The man gestured to another beside him. ‘Jora does. Give.’

  Buco handed over the wooden tablet case and the second man snapped the seal of the Triarii and opened it. He read the contents, frowning as he tried to make sense of the words. Finally, through the impatient huffs of his master, Jora finished reading and began to explain in their own weird Mauri tongue what it said.

  Buco felt the faintest tinge of irritation. He had no idea what the tablet contained, and it seemed unlikely he was going to be told, since they had switched to their own language. Whatever it was, it certainly seemed to take the pirate leader by surprise. He pondered something for a moment, and then there was a brief exchange between the two of them. Buco held his breath. Whatever the tablet was, it seemed to be working. He had been given it by the Triarii’s man when he signed the contract, with instructions to hand it over if ever he found himself in this situation.

  ‘You are lucky man,’ the Mauri pirate said, turning to him.

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘We accept your master’s offer. Your ship and your grain are ours. You will be put ashore at the next opportunity and may go your own way.’

  Buco felt the relief almost buckle his knees. He would lose his livelihood, but a business could always be rebuilt. Being alive to do so was the hard part. He was almost tempted to ask what the tablet said, but it had bought him his life and freedom, and he had no interest in jeopardising that. He would take the freedom and run. Rome would miss the grain, but at least it looked like Buco and his men would live to sail another day.

  The pirate leader chewed his lip for only a moment, then gestured to his ship.

  ‘Come aboard.’

  Rome, August 189 A.D.

  Rufinus waited impatiently as the clerks from the tabularium worked, hanging their burden on the designated hooks on the side wall of the rostrum in the most central part of the forum. Two soldiers stood close by, urging the watching public to keep back while the clerks worked. Rufinus did not feel the crowd pressing, of course, for his marines kept them safely at bay. He watched with interest, waiting for the news.

  The acta diurna were posted in this place, and all across the empire copies would be distributed at staggered times. They comprised the official records of important government news, imperial edicts, social and political notices and everything of import right down to the planning of upcoming games and races. It was a marvel really that every single day men worked to compile and sanction this list of public news, had it hammered into large bronze sheets and distributed to inform the Roman people of the daily affairs around them. And as the day’s acta was hung in place, the previous day’s was taken down and carried to the tabularium, where they would be stored for posterity as the city’s records. Even the quickest calculation suggested that in the two and a half centuries since the great Caesar had initiated this practice, more than ninety thousand of these sheets must have been produced. So much bronze. And surely they could not all still be kept at the tabularium, for there could not possibly be adequate room.

  His musings were pushed aside as the clerks took the old acta away, accompanied by the two men of the Urban Cohort. The guards watched the crowd closely. It was not unknown for the acta to be stolen by the brazenly enterprising, for a large sheet of bronze melted down was worth quite a few coins.

  Rufinus turned his attention to the acta. He received the naval news before it reached the clerks, of course, but he so often only heard anything else important when it was relayed to him by Philip, who made a habit of being present when the acta were posted. Today, Philip was in Ostia, overseeing the commissioning of seven new ships, and so Rufinus had dropped in to the forum to look at the news for himself for a change.

  His eyes ran down the list, taking in all details of interest. As he read, he tried to ignore the feeling of being watched. He was getting used to it now. Since that night when he’d accidentally killed the watcher outside his house he had been very careful to do nothing untoward. New watchers had been set, and while the death of one such must have been suspicious, the nature of his injuries made it at least possible to explain as an accident. But now, even here, he knew he was under scrutiny. As such he had played the roles of “Prefect of the Fleet” and “master of the Roman Domus” to perfection, showing no sign that he worked to undermine the position of Rome’s most powerful man, halt the flow of grain to the city, and seek the death of one remaining murderer within the Praetorian cavalry.

  Damn it.

  And damn it even more. Two of the items of news near the top of the list were clearly linked, and both affected him. A new proconsular governor had been appointed to Africa: Publius Helvius Pertinax. Rufinus remembered the man well – a good man and loyal to the empire, with no love of Cleander, but also not part of their secret group and therefore entirely unaware of what was currently happening. Pertinax might well get in the way entirely unintentionally, and with only well meaning. Indeed, the second piece of news was almost certainly direct from Pertinax in his new role. The senate had vowed to curb pirate activity in the western seas and secure the shipping lanes.

  Undoubtedly that would involve drawing the Africa fleet back from His
pania to where it could protect the grain fleets. And very likely a directive from the senate would hit Rufinus’ desk in the next few days demanding that he put his fleet at the service of Pertinax and Dionysus to secure the seas. So long working at moving the naval power of Rome around unnoticed to put the grain ships in danger, and Pertinax had, in one fell swoop, come in and undone it all. If only they’d included Pertinax in their plotting.

  No. Pertinax was just too law-abiding. He might sympathise with their cause, but he would never be an active part in it. Rufinus suddenly felt a tingle of distaste in his mouth. He had once been an idealist. When had flouting the rules become so acceptable to him?

  His gaze drifted down the news. The emperor had announced the appointment of a new suffect consul, though that in itself was a joke. The emperor was off in some seaside villa, shacked up with his mistress and having fun away from the plague-ridden streets of Rome. It would have been Cleander who had appointed the suffect consul, as he seemed to be doing with alarming regularity.

  Someone in the crowd behind Rufinus snorted. ‘Another pigging consul. We’re getting one a month now.’

  ‘They can’t stay in office long enough to get anything done,’ grumbled another.

  ‘But Cleander’s purse must be getting heavy,’ barked a third, raising a raucous laugh.

  Rufinus winced. It was common assumption that the chamberlain was selling titles to anyone who fancied themselves in a position of power. Of course they would owe the man even after appointment, and their power would be subject to his sanction. But still, the number of ex consuls in the city must have doubled in the last few years. That was not why he winced, though. The wince was in sympathy for the poor wag who’d made the comment. Rufinus would wager a ton of gold that there were at least a dozen pairs of eyes and ears in the crowd that belonged to Cleander. The speaker would be nabbed before he could leave the forum, and would quickly learn to regret speaking so about the chamberlain.

  Rufinus’ heart sank as he read on. The new consul was none other than Pescennius Niger.

  He had last seen Niger in Dacia two years ago, when the man had sold him out. Admittedly, Niger had then secretly helped him escape, but the new consul was so tightly tied up in webs of conspiracy that it was impossible to say where his loyalties might lie.

  Two new appointments, then. A man wo would accidentally work against them on simple principle governing a province critical to their plan, and a man whose motives he couldn’t trust in one of the most powerful roles in the empire.

  He sourly devoured the rest of the tidings and was at least grateful that nothing else in there impacted upon him. One more piece of news remained, though, for just as two men in the crowd nearby were moaning about the state of the city, being hungry and sick, someone else interrupted them with a barked shout.

  ‘Well you won’t be hungry for long, man. Didn’t you hear? The grain fleet’s been sighted on the Tiber.’

  Rufinus felt his spirits sink that little bit further. They said that bad news came in threes, and that certainly seemed to have been borne out today. He had been planning to return to the castrum after this and make a few last efforts to send his ships to distant regions before he was ordered to put them all in place to protect the grain. Instead, he suddenly decided to change plans and visit the river to see for himself. It would hardly be noteworthy for the chamberlain’s spies tailing him. Plenty of others in the current situation would be rushing to see the grain arrive, and as the Prefect of the Fleet, especially given the news in the acta, he very much had a vested interest in it.

  Escorted by his marines, he crossed the forum and clambered up into his litter, bracing himself for the lurching, bouncing journey across the city. He directed them as they travelled, along the Vicus Tuscus, in the shadow of the Palatine and past the tavern where he’d encountered his father and the Praetorian centurion. Then around the end of the Circus Maximus for, though the river was visible nearby, the forum boarium around it was filled with masses of folk and the stench of meat and animals, and the best place to view the Tiber downstream of the city would be from the heights of the Aventine, above the smell and the packed streets.

  They climbed that hill, and crossed to the point where the slope dipped to the south, where the ancient city walls still stood, crumbling amid the buildings that had long outgrown them. Here, at the gap in the walls that had once been the Porta Navalis, they stopped and Rufinus alighted from his litter to stand on one of the few sections of hillside that was not so crowded with buildings as to obscure the view.

  Out of habit his gaze first fell upon the huge structure of the Horrea Galbana across the way, and he was struck once more by the seeming lack of activity in the area. Rome might not yet quite be in a grain crisis, but surely there should be more going on at the granaries than that?

  His gaze slid from that enormous warehouse system, down over the vast roof of the Porticus Aemilia and to the complex of the Emporium by the river. Busier than the granaries above, but still not as thriving as it was at the height of its usage.

  His paused, eyes widening.

  The grain fleet was indeed arriving.

  Every month the grain ships arrived at Portus, usually staggered over anything up to ten days depending upon the distance of the journey, the season, and the conditions of the seas. There it was unloaded, gathered and stored, until it was all accounted for, when it was moved onto the huge barges that would then ply their way up the Tiber, delivering it to the city. In recent months, with the increased need for the precious foodstuff and the decrease in its availability, it had been moved upstream by barges in several stages, as and when it arrived, but even at their smallest, the flotillas of barges that reached the emporium to unload usually numbered more than twenty vessels.

  Rufinus double checked, but there was no mistaking it. There were just two barges making for the dock. They had been overdue, and by now usually the city had its full grain ration unloaded. Two ships would not feed one single region of hungry mouths, let alone the whole city.

  His pulse drummed at the sight. Had they done it? Had the pirates sunk Senova’s ships and crippled the grain ration? Was this what they had been waiting for ever since Severus began to plot his scheme?

  Suddenly overcome with hope, he hurried back to his litter and gestured to them to move off, heading down the hill to the emporium. All the way, bouncing down the slope of the Aventine, he found himself desperate to speak to others. To Philip, to see what news had come from the fleet’s escort vessels if any. To Senova to find out if she had had news of her grain ships. To Dionysus to confirm that the situation was truly becoming as dire as it appeared. To Severus to find out how close they were to his goal.

  They had barely stopped moving at the heart of the emporium before Rufinus leapt from the litter and scurried over to the office of Dionysus’ man there. The Aedile Cereales, the man in charge of the unloading and recording of arriving grain shipments, was in his office, haranguing a man in the tunic of a sailor. Rufinus strode in through the open door, and the shouting stopped instantly as the aedile dismissed the sailor angrily and turned his attention to the new visitor.

  ‘Prefect?’

  ‘Two ships?’ Rufinus barked, trying his best to sound indignant, horrified and angry, rather than elated and relieved.

  ‘Yes, Prefect. It would appear that two ships is all.’

  ‘Are the others on the way? What of my escort triremes?’ That at least sounded good. Sounded as though he was worried about his fleet.

  ‘It would appear that two ships is all we are likely to get at least this month, Prefect.’ Rufinus stood still, heart racing, glare still riveted in place, urging the man to continue. The aedile sighed and leaned back wearily in his chair. ‘It would appear, I’m afraid, that despite the dangers posed by piracy, it is Neptune himself who is angry with Rome. The lion’s share of the grain fleet was swallowed up by a storm off the coast of Lucania. Four ships made it to Portus, and one of those is too far gone for re
fit, two thirds of its grain lost to water-logging. Apparently five more limped in to Paestum, though we cannot expect their loads for another week. The vast bulk of ships went down with all hands and cargo. As for the fate of your triremes I cannot say, Prefect, but that I would normally expect you to know before me.’

  Rufinus nodded. He didn’t quite trust himself to speak without sounding happy about it all. Finally, marshalling his grumpiest tone, he took a deep breath. ‘Do what you can to bring those loads from Paestum, and drain any granaries in Ostia and Portus.’

  The aedile gave him the withering look of a man who had just been told to do the blindingly obvious and feigning irritability Rufinus turned on his heel and strode from the room. He had the distinct feeling that had Philip not been in Ostia today, the moment Rufinus crossed the threshold of the castrum, the centurion would have hurried over with almost the same tidings, though he would begin with the fate of the escort ships, and then be unable to give sufficient detail of the grain fleet.

  Clambering into his litter, he decided that he would make a stop before he returned to the castrum. Consequently a quarter of an hour later he alighted at the far end of the Circus Flaminius, passing on foot between the portico of Octavius and the temple complex of Hercules, accompanied by his marines. Here, tucked away and almost hidden by the grand surrounding structures, stood the ancient temple of Neptune.

  Rufinus strode calmly towards the temple. Outside stood one of the ever-present, ever-hopeful traders in livestock, close to the tables of the other ‘offerings merchants’ This one was particularly hopeful. In his little pen at the roadside, surrounded by piles of dung, stood an ageing and ill-looking bull, tethered to a ring in the paving. Half a dozen chickens clucked disconsolately round in a large wooden cage, and a ram stood in the corner, still looking belligerent even with the fate clearly awaiting it.