The drive was perhaps half a mile long and terminated at a low wall that marked the perimeter of the imperial villa. Trees marched in ordered, well-tended lines along both sides of the dusty gravelled drive, and further along more statues added to the border. But it was not the glory of the imperial driveway that grabbed his attention. It was what was happening in it.
Perhaps a third of the way along the drive, horsemen in white were busy hacking and slaying civilians. Another group of citizens were ahead, strung out and racing for the emperor’s gateway. Cleander was at the very brink of disaster, desperately trying to kill off the evidence before they could complain to their emperor. It sounded so stupid thinking that he might try such a thing, but Rufinus knew Cleander. The man could yet talk himself out of anything if there was no strong enough voice in opposition with an ounce of knowledge of what had happened.
If he did still manage to butcher the citizens…
Rufinus raced on after them. As he rode, his sword rasped from its scabbard. There were still the better part of thirty Praetorian cavalrymen there. There was a very good chance he would die if he launched an attack, but he had to try and help.
It came to him in that moment. There were the sounds of alarms from the imperial villa. The emperor’s guards were coming, and they would not be Praetorians in the pay of Cleander. The emperor and his men were coming, and there was simply no longer time for Cleander to do away with the two hundred or so civilians gathering outside the gate.
Rufinus slowed. This would not be solved with his sword.
Indeed, the action was all now taking place right outside the emperor’s gateway. Men were being slaughtered within sight of the villa gates, which were even now opening. Rufinus fought against the urge to move forward. Currently he was the only Praetorian in the entire drive not butchering Roman citizens, sitting astride his horse a hundred paces back from them. Cleander was urging his men to the slaughter like some ancient barbarian lunatic.
The gates opened. Probably Cleander and his riders didn’t see it at first as they were too busy with their wholesale murder, but Rufinus’ breath caught in his throat. This was it: the culmination of everything they had been doing for the three years. Every citizen who had died by plague or starvation or a gleaming blade for those three years had done so because of what had been planned by five people and their contacts. It had been appalling and unforgivable, but it had all been for what was happening right now.
The people hated Cleander now. Even if he lived, he would be a figure of spite forever to the citizens of Rome, and they had come to tell their emperor that, and of his wrongdoings. He had fought to the very last to try and stop it; was still fighting in fact, killing innocents even as they turned to call to their emperor.
He could no longer argue his way out of it. Cleander was bust condemning himself in the sight of Commodus.
The divine Commodus emerged surrounded by perhaps a dozen gladiators.
Rufinus heard the emperor shout something, though he couldn’t quite make out what he said. On a whim, and knowing that the time for making a difference was at hand, Rufinus kicked his horse and began to ride forward to where those white-clad riders were busy hewing at loyal people of Rome. Something was happening. The dynamic was changing and Rufinus could see it, detached from the action as he was.
The mob had stopped running. They had reached their emperor and there was nowhere else to run. Besides, the emperor carried a sword and had brutal gladiators clustered around him, not to mention more of their ilk and Praetorians who had to be trustworthy to their emperor beyond.
Cleander was in a mad fit of trying to kill every last man before he could open his mouth in condemnation, the lunatic.
Rufinus had not heard the emperor’s clear baritone voice since the day Perennis died half a decade ago, and yet it was impossible to mistake as it cut through the din.
‘FORM RANKS!’
Cleander was ignoring his emperor’s order entirely and consequently so were his guardsmen. They hurried to butcher as many as they could, despite the clear indications that it was over. Cleander had lost but he hadn’t yet accepted it. He was a man moving pieces around on the board after the killing move had been made, but refusing to quit.
He killed mercilessly alongside his men.
This had to end.
In a far smaller voice than the emperor’s glorious tone, Rufinus shouted ‘put up your swords. Stop.’
He rode in among the Praetorian cavalry, heedless of the danger. He’d had enough blood on his hands from all this, and would have no more, even among the cavalry. To his right, a horseman lifted his sword ready to plunge it down at a cowering shopkeeper.
Rufinus grabbed the man’s wrist. The Praetorian turned to him in angry shock, and Rufinus simply shook his head in answer. As if the gesture broke a spell, the rider looked from Rufinus first to his raised blade, and then down to the unarmed man he’d been about to kill.
The man nodded. His sword came slowly back down.
Somewhere ahead, Cleander was still busy howling and killing, but Rufinus had to ignore him. The bastard was the emperor’s to deal with now. Rufinus would instead save lives.
He moved among the throng of horsemen, silencing most with a look and grabbing wrists where he had to. In a dozen heartbeats, he had managed to halt the killing. He realised that the only figure in command here was Cleander, and the chamberlain was busy killing with crazed fury. There were no career officers with a powerful presence to take charge. Some of the soldiers had already responded to the emperor’s command, but in the absence of one of their own officers Rufinus’ tone of power stopped them. He had been a centurion twice now, among the legions in Dacia and in command of the Urban Cohort, and the sheer power of a centurion shone from his very being. Men stopped when he told them to.
With a fierce glare, he opened his mouth.
‘You heard your emperor. Form up.’
It took only moments for the Praetorians to become a solid block of unmoving cavalry, ordered and disciplined. Rufinus sat among them. Perhaps there was a future for the Guard, after all? Especially if he were in command of it…
He became aware that the emperor had said something else, addressing the soldiers, and he cursed himself for being too busy to notice. Whatever it was raised a murmur of consent from the cavalry. Concentrating, Rufinus now heard the emperor once more.
‘What is the meaning of this?’
A rumble of answers, mostly conflicting, arose from the crowd. Rufinus glanced ahead. Cleander had put up his sword and ridden his horse forward, closer to the emperor.
‘What is this, Cleander?’ Commodus demanded, his tone carrying the threat of violence.
‘Rome seethes with riots. I had word that such a mob was bound for the villa, so we came to protect the imperial person.’
‘Horse shit,’ shouted someone in the crowd.
The emperor’s voice came loud and clear again. ‘They are curiously unarmed for a dangerous mob, Cleander.’
‘An enraged man can kill with his hands. Think what hundreds can do.’
‘He lies, Majesty,’ called a voice from the crowd.
‘I will have your fucking tongue, maggot, before you are nailed up,’ Cleander rasped in reply.
Rufinus could not see past the riders and the crowd clearly enough to see what was happening, and the conversation that followed between the emperor, the chamberlain and the unseen speaker in the crowd evaded him entirely. The growing desperation in Cleander’s tone did not. Whatever Commodus said, the speaker in the crowd seemed to be the vox populi, and he spoke now in great clear tones, the conversation becoming all the more clear in the silence as the slaughter stopped.
‘This man has turned Rome to revolt, Majesty. To the very brink of a civil war, in fact. Even now, the streets of the city run with blood, for good men will no longer take his oppression and raise blades to defy him, even as he has his Praetorians gut the populace in the forum. As the Praetorian commander he has becom
e overlord of Rome, master of spies and butcher of citizens. He casually murders those who oppose him and takes their lands. As chamberlain he is worse. Rome starves, Majesty, and in such dreadful famine the best of emperors in times past have increased the grain dole, doubled shipments, even diverted the navy to aid in easing the crisis. What does this man do? Hoard what little is left in private horrea and put to the sword any man who tries to feed his family from what should be public grain.’
Rufinus felt the gate of Tarterus open beneath him. This was it: the very moment of accusation.
‘Is this true, Cleander?’ the emperor asked.
‘After a fashion. On the advice of the grain commissioner I began to stockpile the grain against the time of greatest crisis.’
Gods, Rufinus thought, please don’t let this be pinned on Dionysus. Not now, at the very end.
‘You do not feel that starvation in the streets is the time of greatest crisis?’ Commodus snarled angrily.
‘Things can get worse. I was preparing for disaster.’
‘You were causing disaster,’ Commodus snapped. ‘What do the consuls have to say on all of this?’
Cleander’s eyes narrowed. I could see him thinking his way around the problem, but he was too late. That unseen voice in the crowd answered instead. ‘Majesty, Vitellius has fled the city, fearing Praetorian blades in the night, for he has already lost a son and most of his property to Cleander. Severus is one of those lion-hearts in the city who wields a blade in defiance.’
‘This man is twisting the truth,’ Cleander barked. ‘I followed the advice of the grain commissioner. He assured me more supplies were on the way. The Misenum fleet has been dispatched to speed the flow. The consuls should be helping to keep the peace in Rome so that I can do my job…’
‘Yet you have driven one consul from the city and turned the other against you as a champion of the starving?’
‘No.’
‘And these people are such a danger that you thought to bring a turma of cavalry and slay hundreds of Roman citizens in my driveway?’
‘No, but…’
‘But you could not allow news of your mismanagement and cruelty to reach my ears.’
‘No.’
‘That would be no, Majesty.’
There was a murmur now among the crowd, soldier and civilian alike, and it drowned out the muted conversation that followed. The next words Rufinus heard clearly were those of the emperor.
‘You are hereby removed from the Praetorian prefecture and the office of cubicularius. I imagine there are legal hoops through which to jump with the senate, but they will not deny me when I brand you an enemy of Rome.’
Rufinus could imagine Cleander’s face. He moved as best he could, but could only just see the chamberlain on his horse as an unreachable figure out front.
‘No, Majesty!’
Again, Rufinus did not hear what was said next, but he managed through the throng to see the emperor pass a sword into the crowd of citizens and then turn and walk back to his gate. Around Rufinus, the cavalry were becoming restive, uncertain of what to do, perhaps questioning where their loyalties lay. There was the tell-tale rasp of swords being drawn once more.
‘Steady,’ he said to the cavalry around him in his best centurion’s tones. ‘You serve the emperor, not the former chamberlain.’
There was a tense silence, but he felt his words sink into them. He had command of the turma now, in the absence of a proper officer. He smiled. ‘Senatus, et Imperator, populusque Romanum…’
Somewhere in the crowd, someone shouted ‘enemy of Rome,’ which gained a roar of approval.
Cleander turned now, and Rufinus saw the desperation in his face. ‘Defend me!’
‘Stand… your… fucking… ground,’ Rufinus growled at his men. ‘First man who moves will have to get the medicus to remove my boot from his colon.’
The mob were chanting now.
Enemy of Rome.
Enemy of Rome.
Enemy of Rome.
As the mob bayed for Cleander’s death, the emperor returned to his gate and abandoned him. The cavalry at this last moment clearly felt more comfortable with Rufinus’ orders than their former commander’s. Rufinus held them in position.
Cleander made his last play. Escape.
Trapped between his own cavalry, the crowd and the emperor’s walls and guards, the chamberlain tried to jump his horse across one of the statues by the side of the track. Rufinus was horseman enough to know if for a disaster even as the attempt was made. The horse simply refused and stopped. Still baying their ‘enemy of Rome’ chant, the crowd went for him.
Rufinus saw only enough to know that the deed was done. Hands grasped and clawed at the chamberlain and in moments he was pulled from his horse. Screams and howls spoke all too eloquently of what was happening to the man. By tradition, a traitor was hurled down the Gemonian Stair, where the crowd would tear the body to pieces. There were no steps here, but the crowd were content to make do. Rufinus swore that beneath the roar and the screaming he heard the sickening sounds of a limb torn free.
Twenty heartbeats it lasted, and then suddenly Cleander reappeared… or at least, his head did. Jammed on the top of that sword the emperor had wielded, and trailing blood and sinew, the chamberlain’s silent scream was passed around above the crowd.
Rufinus swallowed his disgust.
At last, it was over.
Chapter Twenty Eight – Epilogue
The Palatine, Rome, June 24th 190 A.D.
Rufinus stood in the vestibule feeling oddly out of place. For years he had worn the uniform of a legionary, and then for a similar period the whites of the Praetorian Guard. He had garbed himself as a Prefect of the Fleet and then a centurion in the Urban Cohort. Now here he was standing in a toga like a civilian and feeling strange. What was he now? He could hear the murmur of palace life around him as the Palatine settled down to normality again, with the chamberlain gone and the emperor once more in residence.
The return of Commodus had been a glorious thing and had given Rufinus hope for the future. People had been telling him for years now that Commodus was withdrawing from public life as Tiberius had once done, leaving dubious freedmen, both political and military, to run his empire. Indeed, his recent disappearance to his coastal villa for far too long seemed to support that notion, and yet the Commodus that returned to Rome was every bit that glorious golden Hercules Rufinus remembered from the bath house in Vindobona a decade ago. There was perhaps something unsettling about him these days, maybe a gleam in the eye, or the tight creases of his face as though he had worn a mask so long it had become part of his flesh.
Whatever the case, the emperor was back and was ruling Rome once more. He had thrown open the granaries, making the Horrea Ummidiana a public storehouse under the aegis of the grain commissioner. The people of Rome had glutted on bread at last, and barely had the stores been emptied before the first barges of grain from Alexandria began to arrive up the Tiber, just two days after the death of Cleander, proving to Rufinus that the gods had been with them after all. The people were fed, and the unrest subsided instantly. Moreover, the emperor had announced the commissioning of a new fleet controlled directly by the imperial administration to ship grain and prevent any such disaster occurring again. All was good in Rome.
As for Cleander? His head had returned to Rome on a spear point and had been planted by the Gemonian Stair at the top of the forum, on display for all to see. The rest of his body had disappeared in the wake of what had happened at Laurentum, though Rufinus had been among those present when the crowd dispersed and had seen the fragments of rent flesh and quivering offal. His body had quite literally been torn apart, people taking away pieces as a grisly trophy of their victory.
Rufinus had visited the chamberlain’s remains on the stair only an hour after they had been placed there, and had discovered with mixed dismay and relief that his father’s head was not on display close by as Fulvius had threatened. Perhaps it wa
s for the best. Rufinus would not be able to bury his father, and without a coin beneath the tongue to pay the ferryman the old fool was doomed to wander the world as a restless spirit, but perhaps that was what he’d deserved in the end. At least his memory would not carry the stain of treason, not having been officially displayed there.
Publius had been sent for, way back in Cemenelum, told he could return to Rome under his own name and without fear, and similarly Senova had been sent a missive telling her to come home. Both letters had told their recipients to bring Acheron to Rome, for in the chaos of the last few years, he had no idea whether his great hound remained in Cemenelum or had been taken to Sicilia. Either way it was time for him to be reunited with his master.
Gnaeus Marcius Rustius Rufinus.
It felt exceedingly weird to be himself again after so long, and with no reason to hide or fear. He owed no one, and had no real enemies left, except perhaps a bitter optio out in Dacia, and Clodius Albinus, his master. He doubted he even registered on their list of important names. He was Rufinus again, and could be proud of being so. He tried not to ponder any longer on what Rufinus actually was now, since that subject threatened to bring on a headache whenever he reasoned through it.
Septimius Severus had weathered the plot in grand style as a consul of Rome and a hero of the people, thanked in person by the emperor. His future was as yet unconfirmed beyond this year’s consulate, though it could only be bright. Similarly, Pertinax, who had been labelled a Hero of Rome by the emperor for his actions in defying Cleander’s Praetorians and their butchery had come out of the plot well.
The cleansing of the web of wickedness the chamberlain had spun over the years had begun instantly, and it had started with the Guard. A man called Laetus, who was one of the emperor’s own most trusted men, had been given command as prefect, and any officer who had been put in place by Cleander or who had commanded during the butchery of citizens was removed from office. A few were dishonourably discharged, and only a couple executed for their actions. The bulk of the Guard remained. The civil administration in Rome, and on the Palatine in particular, experienced a huge list of proscriptions, important posts becoming empty at a rate of knots.
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