‘We will?’
‘The Prefect of the Misenum fleet will stand down his command in three days’ time and retire into private life. I would urge the lady Julia to consider one of two safe estates, either close to myself in Sicilia or perhaps the one in southern Gaul, in the lands of my friend and ally Governor Cilo of Gallia Narbonensis. Either should be safe enough to sit out the rest of this affair without stepping into danger.’
Rufinus could see Senova winding up to one of her indignant explosions at the notion of being put away somewhere safe instead of in the thick of it, and he cleared his throat to override her before she began.
‘It will need to be Sicilia,’ he said. ‘I should be close when you need me.’
‘My dear Rufinus, I was speaking of your lovely wife. You will not be leaving.’
‘But you said…’
‘I said the Prefect of the Fleet will be leaving. He will disappear into provincial obscurity. You, on the other hand, will have a new role to play here.’
Rufinus was baffled, but still his suspicions had already taken root.
‘I cannot be the Urban Prefect, if that’s your plan. Cleander would uncover my identity in days.’
‘Quite so. And you will not be. Publius Helvius Pertinax returns from Africa in three days. In gratitude for his part in the securing of the sea lanes, he has been appointed prefect of the Urban Cohorts. I’m sure you’ll agree that he will do a fine job. He is a man of principle and though he is not party to our schemes, I believe we can rely upon him to oppose Cleander appropriately at all turns. And if not, Gaius Valerius Maximus will be there to guide him onto such a course.’
‘I am totally lost. Who is this Maximus?’
‘You are, you fool.’
Rufinus blinked. ‘What?’
‘We have no further use for the Prefect of the Fleet or his enterprising wife. Their part in the plan is now done. And to see that side of it through to fruition is now the role of myself and Dionysus. Nicomedes will continue to keep us all informed with letters that stay safely out of the hands of the chamberlain’s men. Vibius Cestius will continue to make sure that any eyes or ears that pick up anything they shouldn’t never live long enough to reach Cleander.’
That came as something of a surprise to Rufinus. He’d not seen the frumentarius for months and had almost forgotten about the man in the stress of his work. And he knew he’d been watched, but it had not occurred to him that Cleander’s men had picked up anything over that time.
‘Has Cestius had to cover our tracks, then?’
‘Dear boy, you have no idea. That man and his fellows have killed half a century’s worth of spies over the last year, many of whom had reports of meetings or connections between us. One, I am informed, had even uncovered your identity. Fortunately he was found bobbing in the waters of the Tiber before he could tell anyone. Cestius has done what he does best. He has operated in silence behind the scenae and done so with the utmost efficiency, protecting us all.’
Rufinus exhaled loudly.
‘Anyway, as I was saying,’ Severus picked up, ‘myself, Nicomedes, Dionysus and Cestius are accounted for. That leaves you. In support of Pertinax, and guiding him if you have to, your task henceforth is to redirect against Cleander any and all trouble reported to the Cohort or to somehow lay the blame for everything at his feet. And while doing such, I trust you will live up to your own moral code and prevent this turning into a city-wide bloodbath that kills thousands. You must direct blame and limit trouble. You understand?’
‘And I am now this Maximus fellow?’
Severus smiled. ‘Gaius Valerius Maximus is being appointed as the senior centurion of the Second Urban Cohort on the same day Pertinax takes command.’
‘And I presume you have created this fictitious Maximus already as you did my current persona?’
‘Hardly. Maximus is a real man. Or rather he was. He sadly passed away last year while serving as one of my guard in the Eighth Augusta. In fact you met him several times while you were in Lugdunum. Helpfully, Maximus bore a passing resemblance to you even if he were a little more blond, and some ten years ago he served as a centurion in the First Adiutrix under Pertinax no less. The new prefect will probably remember the name at least, so you should find it easy to gain his trust.’
Rufinus sighed. ‘Nothing is simple with you, Governor.’
‘Few things worth having are simple. But think on this: the various Urban Cohorts are critical to keeping order in the city, and some provincial places, too, and are also responsible for overseeing the grain dole is protected. Friends have already been put in command of the other cohorts in Carthage, Puteoli, Ostia and Lugdunum. We are securing out grip, but also preparing to save Rome from Cleander when he falls. Now, the day after Rufinus stands down as prefect, Maximus will report to the Castra Praetoria and take up his centurion’s stick with the Cohort.’
‘I’m no centurion, Governor.’
Severus shrugged. ‘You’d never been an admiral until recently. And I seem to remember you telling me that in your time in Dacia you took on the duties of a centurion. Gods, man, if you can run a fleet you can command a century of men. But while performing the duties of a centurion, it is imperative that you remember your role and steer Pertinax where necessary. Oh, and it’s time to lose the hair and beard. You need to change your appearance. I would suggest a stubbled chin and a close-shorn head, in the manner of the Pannonian soldiers. That way you should look like neither your true self, nor the prefect you have been.’
He turned to Senova. ‘I trust you will manage to do as I asked with your ships?’
Senova smiled sweetly, though Rufinus could see beneath it her mind working at how to deny her exile to a safe house. ‘I shall have quite a fleet in Arelate for you by the kalends.’
‘Thank you. Now I must prepare to move on once more into the south. I shall return when I am able, and look for messages from me whenever anything of import occurs. Once again, thank you for all you have done and continue to do. Our scheme approaches its end, and everyone thus far has played their part excellently.’
Severus bowed to them both and then turned, opening the door and walking out into the atrium.
‘What’s that?’ Rufinus said in surprise, pointing to a pile of kit bags on the marble floor, close to the impluvium.
Severus turned. ‘That is the equipment and effects of Gaius Valerius Maximus. Keep them secured for the next few days, and on the morning after your commission ends, you can step into them and make your way to the castrum. At the same time, your good lady should have all her effects ferried to the emporium and taken aboard the bireme Celestia, which will ferry her to either Syracuse or Cemenelum, as she chooses. Either way, a friend will meet you at your destination, good lady.’
And with that he took his leave and departed.
Rufinus stared at the kit as the slave hurried off to close the door behind the governor, whose retinue had remained in the street. Rufinus hadn’t asked how he was supposed to leave the house of the Prefect Rufinus dressed as a centurion without arousing suspicion, though he was fairly sure it had been dealt with. Likely Cestius had a hand in things again. Rufinus could quite imagine whoever was currently watching his house being led away temporarily by some frumentarii scheme.
Gaius Valerius Maximus.
A centurion. He’d been an ordinary soldier in a legion, and a Praetorian guardsman. He’d even played at being a centurion briefly in Dacia, though not with the best of results. He’d been the prefect of Rome’s senior fleet, even if it was under an assumed name. Now he was going to be a centurion for real, and one of the force that protected the city, no less. He stared at the kit bags, and Senova appeared unexpectedly at his shoulder.
‘The governor missed something.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Just stubble and cropped hair is not going to be enough. You won’t look like the prefect Triarius any more, but you might look quite a lot like a certain young Praetorian who disappeared i
n Dacia.’
He huffed. ‘What do you suggest? Hack off an arm or wear a bag over my head?’
She shook her head. ‘You are a man, and a soldier. I, on the other hand, know a few tricks. You’d be surprised at what the ladies of Rome will do to match the current fashion. The governor said this Maximus was a little blonder. I can attend to that with little difficulty. Let me get my makeup.’
Rufinus felt his heart sink. Makeup, now. Still, she was almost certainly right as to how he would look when he cut his hair, and if a little dye could make him look more like Maximus and less like Rufinus, that had to be a good thing.
Especially where he was going: the Praetorian fortress, where he had spent the first year of his service with the Guard, and where at least half a dozen men would remember the real him well.
There followed three of the strangest days of Rufinus’ life. After spending so long in the role of the prefect he had grown used to it, even, he might add with regret, to its little luxuries. To clamber into the mail shirt and harness of what was more or less a legionary centurion felt very strange now. In fact, during the three days between Severus’ visit and the morning in which Aulus Triarius Rufinus laid down his prefecture and retired into obscurity, he spent every free moment he had in the seclusion of the more private areas of their town house wearing his new kit and breaking it in, getting used to it such that his every movement seemed to be those of a man almost born into the uniform.
It was not enough to dress as Maximus. If his time in the navy had taught him anything it was that he now had to become Maximus the centurion. There must be no hint of suspicion that he was anything else. And that meant taking on the persona of a man considerably older than him, though Rufinus did look somewhat aged these days, he had to admit. But it also meant taking on that personality. He could not afford to be unsure. Nervous. Clumsy. Indecisive. Passive. Centurions were none of those things. If they were they did not stay centurions – or even upright – for long. And Maximus was a real person, or had been. He had been a long-standing veteran. Rufinus had to be a veteran centurion.
On the bright side, either Severus had been truly spot on when he noted how alike Maximus and Rufinus had been, or since the man’s death the governor had had the uniform and armour re-worked and tailored to fit Rufinus perfectly. A simple glance in Senova’s impressively flat floor-length bronze mirror had told him that at the least he did look like a veteran centurion. He even thought he was managing that world-owning swagger they all achieved.
Oddly, having spent so long scratching at his itchy beard and unruly mop, wishing he could get back to his short hair and clean chin, now that he had he was already missing it. The weather had turned cold recently and he’d been unprepared for just what a difference a full head of hair made in this weather.
Mind you, Senova had had the slave cut it far shorter than he’d ever had it. He was sure that if someone saw him from above his head would look pink, like an egg. Might as well have shaved it at this point. Then at least she needn’t have lightened it with her saffron and yellow-petal mix. It would take Rufinus quite a long time to get used to the startling difference a brighter, lighter colour made to his hair. She had shown him how to apply it, to face fuzz and eyebrows as well, and had given him a whole jar of it to keep for re-application, telling him he would need to do so at least twice a month if not more.
How he was going to achieve the privacy to do such a thing in the world’s biggest and busiest military fortress he had no idea, but at least centurions were afforded the luxury of their own accommodation, so perhaps he might manage it after all.
Then this morning had finally come around and Rufinus had prepared once more to say a temporary farewell to Senova. She did not appear blissfully happy to be leaving, but she had the good sense not to argue about it. The coming days and months could contain who knows what dangers, and she would be far safer elsewhere. Besides, she could no longer live with Rufinus. Centurions did not marry any more than ordinary soldiers, and their women certainly weren’t permitted in the camps.
He had looked out of the townhouse that morning, most of the slaves already gone ahead to prepare Senova’s new place in Syracuse, and had been struck by the emptiness. Oddly he could feel the lack of eyes on the place. He had known the watchers were there now for so long that it was actually noticeable – palpable, even – when they were absent. Clearly Cestius and his friends had done their job and, for a short time, their house was unobserved.
He had said goodbye to Senova, kissed her with the awkward mix of tenderness and embarrassment that was his norm, and watched her and the last of the house’s staff trot away down the street, litter barely shaking unlike the crappy ones he always got. He’d felt a lot more of a wrench at the sight than he’d expected to, in all honesty.
Still, he had watched her go and somehow the house became dead without her. It no longer felt like home. Rufinus the prefect was gone. Senova would be observed at the emporium getting onto the ship for Sicilia and in the blur of Roman life, especially with no one watching the house, it would generally be assumed that her husband followed on. Rufinus the prefect had effectively left the moment Senova turned the first corner. All he was now was a grizzled veteran centurion of the Urban Cohorts rattling around in some rich man’s empty house.
Hardening himself, preparing for his new role, he opened the door and left the townhouse, once more oddly aware of the different feeling when the place wasn’t being watched.
He took his time in the city, for it was worth getting used to his kit and new persona before trying it anywhere more dangerous than the Subura – a comparison he’d never have thought to utter in the old days. At least he hadn’t had to learn anything odd to fill in the background of his assumed name. Maximus had served in the First Adiutrix in Pannonia, in areas Rufinus knew well from the wars. Then he had transferred to the Eighth Augusta in Gaul, where he had been stationed as a commander in Severus’ bodyguard at Lugdunum, with which Rufinus now had at least a passing familiarity. The man was originally from Narbo, which was close enough to Tarraco to allow for faint traces of a regional accent he’d never quite lost. All in all he and Maximus were close enough in many ways to have been brothers.
He bought in the markets a few things that he decided he might need in the coming days in the camp and finally, as prepared as he could be, he marched off up the hill to the Castra Praetoria, once again oddly missing the luxury of a litter, even as uncomfortable a one as he’d had.
His feet ached as he approached the fortress. He would have to get in slightly better shape, for certain. He adjusted his grip on his kit bag, his fingers a little numb in the leather gloves he’d bought from a dubious merchant on a poor market stall. It seemed that the wearing of gloves in cold weather had boomed in Rome these days, perhaps due to everyone wanting to keep skin contact minimal with the plague so rife, perhaps due to the influence of the troops returning from Pannonia and Germania, where gloves were common. Either way, he would wear them as an affectation through the winter, and worry about the summer when it happened. Though he was starting to regret not shopping around for better gloves. These ones itched like a flea party.
‘Name and business,’ called out the man on the wall above the gate as he arrived. Rufinus had to think for just a moment, so disguised the slowness of his response as a coughing fit.
‘You’d better not be bringing the fucking plague,’ grunted another man up there.
Rufinus bridled, recognising a chance to plant his standard in the ground from the start.
‘One more word like that from you, soldier, and I shall see to it that you get latrine duty for a month and the only tool you’ll have is your foul tongue. Now get down here and open the bloody gate. Centurion Gaius Valerius Maximus, Second Urban Cohort, assigned fresh today and reporting for duty.’
There was a pause and a brief confab on the wall before the thunder of descending feet and the gate creaking open. Rufinus knew exactly why: the two men would have been
deliberating how much crap to take from the visitor. As a centurion, and a senior one, he outranked them as Vesuvius outranked a mole hill, but as a member of the Urban Cohorts, while they were Praetorians, they would doubt he had the power to exert any influence over them. Caution had won out in the end, though, and the two men stood contrite and respectful as Rufinus passed through the gate, proffering his orders in the form of a scroll case sealed with Severus’ seal – possibly the man’s last ever official duty as governor of Lugdunensis and therefore de facto commander of the Eighth.
The soldiers snapped the seal and checked the document and, content that he was exactly what he’d said, they saluted and gestured off to the right. ‘Urban Cohort barracks are that way, Centurion. The prefect’s office is…’
‘I know where it is, soldier,’ snapped Rufinus and marched off in that direction before he realised that that would seem odd. Why should a newly-arrived centurion from the north on his first posting here know that? Still, the common man had a tendency to write off things like that as unimportant and before he was out of earshot they were already gossiping about a friend and striding away.
Rufinus stumped off towards his new barracks, his mind going over and over everything he needed to remember. His hand was itching badly now, and he wondered whether these ‘new’ gloves he’d bought from the market stall had actually been recently filched from a plague corpse in the street. Shuddering at the thought, he ripped the glove from his hand and peered inside, making sure nothing in there was moving.
Lions of Rome Page 21