Rufinus growled. ‘I took an oath to Rome and her emperor. I am loyal to that oath to the very end. I will serve Rome, and I will serve Commodus with my dying breath. I do not serve Cleander, no matter how much he aspires to rule. Cleander is anathema to everything I took an oath to protect. He winds like a serpent, sowing seeds of discord in the city and poisoning all about him, and he is dangerous for the emperor himself. Cleander will fall because if he does not, he will ruin Rome. And I will be a part of that as I vowed from the start. I cannot disappear, but those I love are safe and secure. Only one real danger remains for me right now, and that is you. I put myself at risk in a foolish attempt to dissuade you from this awful path and as a reward for the act of a dutiful son you threaten to hand me to my enemies. No. I will not divert from my path. And you will not sell me to your evil master.’
‘I will…’
‘No you will not. Because if you do, I shall make sure he knows that you were complicit in everything I have done. I shall endure torture, for I’ve done it before. And in doing so, I shall protect my friends, but I shall mollify my interrogators by blaming you for it all. Remember that when you are tempted to sell me out. In doing so, you will nail yourself and the family name to that cross.’
His father recoiled as though struck.
‘And so my advice to you, old man – for how can I ever think of you as a father now? – is the same as your advice to me. Forget your power games. Ignore your web of money and flattery in Rome and run away. Take what you can carry and hide until this is over. Then, perhaps, you can rebuild your name. Mine will be renowned and untainted for my loyalty to the emperor and my choice of patron. Now before you bluster and threaten any more, know that we are done here, and forever more. I have no wish to ever set eyes upon you again. And because you are a vain, greedy, stupid old man who blindly clings to a viper, you will not realise that he will have had you followed.’
He saw a flicker of shock in his father’s eyes then. The old man really hadn’t considered the possibility.
‘When you depart, take an empty vial and some burned incense containers with you, so that at least it looks like you came here for a legitimate reason. And go north somewhere. I don’t care where, but lead your watcher away from me. I shall wait a short while before I leave to give you plenty of room.’
The old man stood for a moment, silent and full of impotent, empty anger, mouth flapping like a fish.
‘Go.’
Ignoring the old man further, he turned and strode across to the altar.
‘Dear Lucius, I am so sorry to have brought such discord to you on this important day.’
He spent half an hour there, lighting the incense, pouring the wine, giving the gold over and praying to Diana that his brother ‘live’ on in happiness and peace in Elysium. Finally, feeling that somehow this year’s visit had been irretrievably marred, he cast his brother the latest in a long line of farewells and left the temple. As he emerged into the cold February sunlight he paused, blinking and shading his eyes – a perfectly natural reaction to adjusting to the change in light level and conveniently a good way to surreptitiously examine the surroundings and pick out anything that looked out of place. If one of Cleander’s watchers was still there, then he was very, very good. There were only two figures in the street outside. One was sitting by the roadside, moaning and praying, a bowl held out for money to help him survive with only one leg. An ex-soldier. And a one legged man would not be much use in tailing someone around the city. The other was an old woman in ragged clothes carrying a basket that contained what appeared to be rather limp looking vegetables. The open sores on her flesh and the blood she coughed up make it unlikely she worked for the chamberlain.
As satisfied as he could be that he was not being followed and could therefore not be connected with his father today, he marched away, heading for the Aventine plain and the Horrea Galbana.
The day was not shaping up to be one of his better ones, and as he rounded the corner into the street outside the city’s largest storage complex, he decided that it may well be one of the worst.
A crowd had gathered in the street outside the horrea and though he couldn’t hear the individual grumbles of the mass, the general murmur of discontent was clear. In the privacy of his head, Rufinus wondered what Dionysus was doing. Wasn’t he supposed to have been persuading Cleander to move the grain into private storage? If so why were crowds still gathering outside the imperial granaries? Once more he cursed the fact that everything that was happening behind the scenes seemed to be happening so slowly.
Taking a deep breath he concentrated on the scene before him. This was his duty, after all.
His century had taken up positions in two double lines, one at each end of the street, containing the crowd, but far enough back not to appear to be moving against them. Sura, the optio, was at the far side, his gaze locked on the mob until he noticed Rufinus and waved an indication that he was uncertain how best to proceed.
Rufinus chewed his lip. On this occasion at least his duty was clear. Had this crowd been demonstrating outside one of Cleander’s structures and not the public granary, he might have been forced to play things carefully, trying, in fact, to exacerbate the crowd’s dissatisfaction with the chamberlain. Dionysus, though, did not need this demonstration. Rufinus had to somehow disperse this lot. He’d watched the other centurions doing it with professionalism and aplomb, but it seemed a monumental task now that it was his, and once again he appreciated just how different the role of the Urban Cohorts and their officers was to that of the standard army.
He cleared his throat.
‘People of Rome…’
Perhaps half the crowd turned their attention to him, as did the two men from someone else’s century who were guarding the one open doorway into the horrea
‘People of Rome, we understand your unhappiness.’
‘No you fucking don’t,’ shouted someone from the crowd. ‘The army still gets fed.’
Rufinus forced himself to breathe calmly. Stirring this up would do no good for anyone.
‘My men will be the first to tell you that they are now on quarter rations, and yet they stand their ground, loyal to the core. We know that you are hungry.’
‘Then give us bread,’ bellowed someone unseen.
‘Yeah, what use are circuses without the bread.’
So there were some well-read wags in the crowd. This was your higher class sort of mob.
‘Let reason and logic be your guide,’ Rufinus called out. ‘You know that no new grain has been put into this granary in months. And you know that there was already too little in there to feed even one region of the city. If we threw open the doors and doled out what there was, you would be back here in a matter of days shouting again, but over an empty granary, now.’
‘But at least some would eat,’ pleaded someone else.
Rufinus sighed.
‘We are saving what little there is.’
‘Why? Why save it when it’s needed so badly?’ called someone desperate – weren’t they all?
He’d reasoned through this argument himself in preparation. ‘Because what we have is earmarked for the vital services. If we cannot feed the vigiles, for example, who will put out the fires that burn down your houses? If we cannot feed the men who crew the barges and drive the carts, then when grain does arrive, how will you get it? And what little can be spared for the public is being directed to those of you who labour to provide other foods in an attempt to ward off the worst of the famine. Fishermen and farmers, butchers and bakers are getting grain, for without those men, who would provide you with the rest of the produce that is at least keeping you alive? Reason. Think about this.’
‘It’s hard to think with such an empty belly,’ moaned an old woman, and Rufinus nodded his sympathy.
‘I really do understand your plight and your anger. And I share it. I do. But everything that can be done is being done. Ships are being built and bought to replace those lost. I unde
rstand that subsidies are being given in the grain provinces to any man who will take on a ruined farm lost to the plague and make it thrive once more. Soldiers are being seconded out as farm labourers. What can be done is being done, and this will end. Soon, this will end. But casting first blame and then rocks solves nothing.’
‘My dad died yesterday,’ someone shouted. ‘Not of the plague. He died of hunger.’
There was a murmur of agreement, but Rufinus could feel a thrum of something different in the crowd. Their misery and their need to vocalise was still there, but the anger had gone out of the mob. What had felt like a throng on the edge of violence mere moments ago now felt plaintive and sad.
‘Please,’ Rufinus called out. ‘Disperse and return to your homes and businesses. When grain is available it will be handed out, but here and like this you are just putting yourself at increased risk of contracting disease from those around you.’
That was a gamble. It could easily have made the crowd twitchy, but it seemed to do the trick. A sudden nervous desire to be anywhere that wasn’t within arm’s reach of one another rose among the people. Rufinus gestured to his optio, who nodded. The men of his century stood at ease, and then split off, moving to the edges of the street to make room. Thankfully, there was no sudden change in attitude, and the crowd broke up like ice in a warming pool. In a matter of heartbeats there were few men left, and those were standing close to the granary entrance. Rufinus hurried over and his spirits fell once more.
The body of a boy, not more than seven or eight years old, lay crumpled on the horrea’s threshold.
‘What happened.’
‘He tried to come in, sir,’ one of the two guards on the door said, his voice dripping with regret. ‘Tried to push past us. I didn’t mean to hurt him bad. I just sort of whacked him to stop him.’
Rufinus nodded. It wasn’t the guard’s fault. He’d had to stop the boy, and it was probably a fairly gentle knock. But the boy was stick thin and frail, weak with hunger and possibly sick. A slight knock had been enough to finish him.
He was suddenly aware of Sura standing beside him.
‘What was well handled, sir.’
‘Thank you. Still one casualty, though.’
‘One beats a thousand any day, sir.’
Rufinus nodded, grateful for the man’s words, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the boy. How long must this go on? This hunger was his fault. He and his colleagues had done this to the city. The horrible guilt began to gnaw at him once more.
This had to end soon.
Chapter Sixteen – New Challenges
Rome, April 190 A.D.
Rufinus pulled the hood of his cloak lower over his brow in an attempt to ward off the worst of the rain, though all that really did was create a funnel down which all the collected water ran, tipping out in a waterfall directly in front of his nose, and no amount of re-jigging it seemed to make it any better. He nodded to the optio and instantly regretted the motion, since it somehow caused a rivulet of cold water to trickle through some unseen fold onto his neck. The optio saluted, apparently unconcerned by the torrential spring rain that has started at the end of their shift and seemed set in for the day, and gave the order for the men to fall out.
They had just returned from their latest civic duty, patrolling the Velabrum from the Capitol to the great Circus Maximus and imposing the rule of law upon the increasingly unstable city. During their time out there, Rufinus had rather hoped to catch sight of Severus, though he had been sadly disappointed. Septimius Severus, successful pacifier of troublesome Gaul during the Maternus war and then lauded governor of Sicilia for his achievements in doubling grain import from that island, was back in Rome. In actual fact, doubling the grain from Sicilia made very little difference and still accounted for only a fragment of that actually needed in the city, but it had still made the man popular with both the emperor and the senate and people of Rome. Now he had been granted a suffect consulship and lorded it over the city, along with his colleague the emperor, who remained locked away in some seaside estate with his mistress.
Though it shouldn’t really, it somewhat smarted that Rufinus had recently taken a career plummet from the grandeur of Prefect of the Fleet to an ordinary centurion in the Cohort, while Severus seemed to be rising to ever loftier positions, now arm in arm with Commodus himself. In truth, Rufinus suspected that this was all part of Severus’ plan, that now he was in a position to supplant Cleander in the emperor’s circle when the time came.
Still, it was irritating. Severus was busy cycling through all the gatherings of the rich and influential, making laws and being praised, while Rufinus got to break up fights, threaten hungry civilians, and stand about in the cold rain.
This morning’s patrol had been particularly vexing.
Rufinus had adopted a circuit of the Velabrum region that covered the entire area from the river to the edge of the forum and threaded snake-like back and forth across the land in between. Their duty was, as Pertinax had made clear, much a case of reminding the Roman people that there was a force of strong men in the city whose very job was to make sure that peace reigned through Rome.
Not long ago, even since Rufinus had taken on the role of centurion here, the populace had usually been as cowed in the presence of the Urban Cohorts as they were before the Praetorians. Now, with the rising tide of anger and discontent, things had changed. Now, the people glowered threateningly at the soldiers of the Cohort, as though they no longer saw them as figures of imperial law and authority, but as an oppressive gang of thugs, starving the poor.
Then this morning, Rufinus had been forced to impose control in new and unpleasant ways, narrowly avoiding an escalation into full-scale riot. Even then, the result had almost been disastrous. His century had been split into three units of twenty four men, led by he, Optio Sura, and the tesserarius, and the three groups had patrolled for some time without trouble. Then, with only an hour to go before the end of shift, Rufinus had rounded the ruined stones of the old Porta Trigemina to see a demonstration in progress. Heart rising into his throat even as his spirits sank, Rufinus had immediately deployed his men into three lines of eight, wishing the rest of his century were here too. The men brandished their stout ash nightsticks and braced into their shields every bit as professionally as the legions in the field.
A chant began to arise among the people, and Rufinus sighed as he heard the familiar refrain.
Grain for Rome. Grain for Rome. Grain for Rome.
As if anyone was likely to respond positively. There was no grain. In fact, Rufinus now knew that there was grain, hidden in provincial granaries by Severus and waiting for the right moment to be deployed. But officially there was no grain. The orders from Pertinax, supported by direct imperial command, were to mete out the absolute minimum of violence, yet to do what needed to be done in order to keep control in the city. Civilians had left such gatherings over the last month with cuts and bruises and even broken bones. As yet no further fatalities had been reported as a result of the Urban Cohorts’ actions, though it was somewhat hard to judge, given the number of people now dying each day through hunger or the ever-present disease.
Rufinus had moved his men forward, stopping them fifteen paces from the edge of the crowd, where he had delivered once more his speech on pacification and the necessity of preserving what grain Rome had. He’d had plenty of opportunities to hone the oration over the months, and it was often successful without the need of a show of force – a tribute to Rufinus’ rhetoric teachers as a boy, he felt. Somehow this morning, though, he’d known straight away that words would not be enough. Still, he trotted it out. Not only was it going to calm at least some of the crowd, but just as importantly it carried a subtle message of culpability.
‘…the storage of what little grain comes in, against the possibility of shortage for the most important groups in the city.’
As usual, he noted the small group of men from the local vigiles unit who stood looking tense and trou
bled near a fountain. To give the vigiles their due, they were deploying without fail anywhere a gathering of people occurred. It was important that they did so for civic safety, but it also helped make Rufinus’ point. He gestured to the men by the fountain, whose job was to arrest small-time criminals and prevent the outbreak of fires.
‘Imagine if the pitiful grain that’s been hoarded was distributed among those listed, many of whom may well be dead within the month anyway from the plague, and then these vital men here went hungry. One careless tip of an oil lamp and the city becomes a fireball. These men need to be fed before all others, even my own. This is imperial edict as sanctioned by the chamberlain, Marcus Aurelius Cleander.’
And it was. Of course, Cleander’s entire role in matters had been to nod sagely and seal the document, confirming that the emperor had agreed to Papirius Dionysus’ plan for the grain. Still it was undeniably the truth, and in the minds of those who walked away from these streets it would be Cleander’s name they remembered in connection with their hunger, and the blame would land with him. Sooner or later the chamberlain would discover what was being done and would take umbrage, though, so Rufinus sincerely hoped that Severus’ plan came to fruition before that happened.
The crowd had not reacted well to Rufinus speech that morning. Rotten fruit and veg began to pelt the line of shields and spatter the men holding them. Then, somewhere at the back there had been the sound of groaning, tearing and snapping wood. Rufinus had just caught sight, above the heads of the crowd, of a damaged shutter detaching from the wall of the building beyond and falling away unseen. He saw figures slipping through the window into the dark interior.
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