The Conqueror

by Bryan Litfin

  The servant Septimus had laid out a light breakfast for the master’s guests in one of the villa’s smaller, more intimate dining rooms. Alexamenos had arrived not long after dawn, and now the three friends were gathered around the divan of Senator Ignatius, breaking their nighttime fast with honeyed pears and warm, wheaty bread. The senator was a tall man with long, spindly limbs. His angular frame made him look a little ridiculous as he leaned on his elbow and picked at his food. Alexamenos and Rex sat on wicker chairs to one side of the room, while Flavia was stationed across from them on her own couch. The privilege of letting her, a woman, dine with the men displayed the high regard in which the senator held his niece.

  For a while, no one spoke, as each enjoyed the quiet morning and the tasty food. Birds chirped from the patio outside the little room. At last the master signaled for the plates to be taken away, leaving behind only cups of spiced cider. The meal had made Ignatius chatty. Like the excellent conversationalist that men of his class always are, he indulged in congenial small talk, mostly with Flavia. Their exchange was marked by the formal tone so often used by aristocrats.

  Finally, the master turned his attention to Flavia’s plight. “I hear you have come back to me under difficult circumstances, dear one,” he said. “Although I would have preferred to see you under happier conditions, I must say, it is delightful to hear your footsteps again in my home, no matter what brought you here. Tell me a little about your dilemma, my dear, and let us consider what needs to be done.”

  “Thank you, Uncle! I have such fond memories of this place. It was a wonderful retreat for me as a girl, and now I hope it will serve as a sanctuary once again.” After collecting her thoughts, Flavia proceeded to explain that her father had run afoul of Ruricius Pompeianus, the powerful Praetorian prefect. Seeking to destroy Neratius’s reputation, the prefect had trumped up charges against Flavia and condemned her to the beasts. Fortunately, Rex had come to the capital from the frontier farmlands to seek his fortune. Motivated by nothing but compassion for an innocent woman, he had intervened on her behalf, and because he had briefly served as a mercenary before coming to Rome, he was able to defeat Flavia’s captors and help her escape.

  “That’s quite a feat for an untrained soldier of fortune,” Ignatius said to Rex. “I wouldn’t have imagined you could get the best of so many crack troops from the army’s most prestigious division.”

  “The gods favored me, I guess,” Rex said with a shrug.

  “Either that, or you are not what you seem.”

  The men exchanged a long look before Rex said, “You honor me, sir. But I’m just a humble farmer’s son from Germania with a strong arm and a big dream.”

  “And what do you dream of?”

  “To serve Rome, of course.”

  “Serve it or conquer it?”

  “To conquer Rome seems impossible for anyone, sir.”

  “So it would seem. Yet some are saying Constantine could do it.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Rex said smoothly. “I hope to win a place in Maxentius’s army. I would gladly shed my blood for Rome’s defense.”

  Ignatius sipped his cider, seeming to savor the mouthful before swallowing it. “I fear, young man, that you’d only be shedding your blood to perpetuate tyranny. Maxentius has become hostile to his own people. In light of that, one could consider Constantine a liberator, not a conqueror.”

  The bold remark, bordering on seditious, startled Rex. What does this man know? And why is he probing me?

  “I don’t claim to understand the politics of great men,” Rex lied. “I only want to serve in the famous horse guard of Rome. Although I had to oppose some local soldiers to help your niece, I’m sure I’ve gone unrecognized by them. Once things have stabilized for her, I hope to leave Lady Junia in your care so I can resume my dream of enlistment.”

  “Hmm. Is that so?” Ignatius raised his finger and pointed at Rex. “I don’t think you’re telling the truth, young man.”

  The comment burst from the master’s mouth like a slingstone, its challenge unmistakable. Yet Rex wasn’t fazed; speculators, who often worked as covert operatives behind enemy lines, were trained in the art of misdirection and disguise. Rex wasn’t about to let a little clever banter from a rich aristocrat blow his cover. Setting down his cup on a side table, he looked directly at his host. “Master Ignatius, this is your home, and I will dishonor neither it nor you by arguing at a meal. But you should know that in the frontier lands where I am from, my people value truth above all else. I can assure you I would never lie to someone who has extended such gracious hospitality to me. What I have told you is the truth, nothing more.”

  The room was silent for a long, tense moment. Flavia shifted uncomfortably, while Alexamenos watched with wide eyes. Suddenly Master Ignatius broke into a kindly grin. “Ah, young Rex, forgive my forceful words,” he said. “I intended no offense. I only meant to imply that our hearts are sometimes hard to read. How often do we say one thing, unaware that the truth lies somewhere else? This is what I sensed when you said you intend to leave my niece behind. From what I have observed, I think that will be difficult for you.”

  “Perhaps. But a courageous soldier must learn to do difficult things.”

  “And that is exactly why you will remain to help me save the young lady whom we both admire so much.”

  Before Rex could reply to the strange assertion, Flavia rejoined the conversation. “Uncle, would you show me the grace of explaining your words? I think all of us are a little confused right now.”

  “Yes, I am completely confused,” Alexamenos admitted.

  Ignatius rose from the couch and assumed a more authoritative air, like a politician about to deliver an important speech. He made eye contact with Flavia as he paced about. “Prefect Pompeianus seeks your life, is that correct?”

  “With all the hatred a man can muster.”

  “Do you think he will stop at anything until he claims it?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “Surely there must be something that would make him give up?”

  “I don’t think so, Uncle.”

  Ignatius’s face turned grave. “Then that is a serious problem, isn’t it? He wants your life above all else. He will stop at nothing. It leaves us only one solution.”

  “What?” Flavia asked.

  Before anyone could answer, Rex grimaced and nodded, for he now understood what Senator Ignatius intended.

  “We must give it to him,” Rex said.

  Senator Ignatius peeked around the corner in one of Tibur’s many ancient alleys. The blond German who called himself Rex was standing not far away, about to make his move and set the plan in motion. Ignatius watched the youth from behind as he crept down the narrow alley to approach Tibur’s main street.

  Who are you, young man?

  Was this newcomer to Italy really a farm boy from the frontier villages along the Rhenus? Just a strapping lad with a strong arm and a sword for hire, dreaming about the glories of war? So he had declared, but it hardly seemed likely. Not many farmers’ sons—even among the chiseled barbarians—had a physique like his. Rex’s body had been honed for one purpose: battle. And not just the battles of an ordinary legionary but combat of a more elite type. Ignatius had seen many men like Rex during his military days. For two years, he had supervised a cohort of secret operatives who infiltrated enemy territory for months at a time. They were all the same, these men, with their swaggering self-assurance; their sharp, attentive eyes; their fluid way of moving that wasted no motion. In truth, young Rex could be only one thing: a speculator sent to Rome on a secret mission. And Senator Titus Junius Ignatius intended to find out what it was.

  But until then, this man’s skills will be useful in helping my niece . . .

  Rex stepped into the bright light of the main street and turned left—just the way the two of them had planned it after the strategic breakfast yesterday. By the time Ignatius reached the street and ventured a glance around the corner,
a commotion had already begun to develop. Rex had been recognized as the fugitive the soldiers were after. Things were going exactly according to plan.

  “Stop right there!” a man shouted. Then Rex dashed past the alley. Ignatius drew back into the shadows as three Praetorian guardsmen followed Rex at a full run, yelling for him to halt. But, of course, he didn’t.

  Ignatius retreated down the alley and turned into a side street. He hurried to Tibur’s southern gate, a rarely used one, and went out along the road until he came to a necropolis. The cemetery was heavily forested, and many of its tombs were overgrown with vines. Ignatius took up a position in a copse of trees and waited. It wasn’t long before Rex arrived, running well ahead of his three pursuers.

  The young German ducked into a dense oak thicket. When the soldier in the lead reached the trees and paused to search for his quarry, Rex burst from the foliage and threw his arm around the man’s neck, clasping his forearm with his other hand. The blood choke—a classic speculator’s technique—quickly did its work. After a little thrashing, the soldier went limp and sank to the ground. Rex threw a hank of rope around his wrists and bound them to his ankles.

  Once he had dragged the groggy man into the thicket, Rex emerged into plain view again and caught the attention of the second pursuer, who had become separated from the third. Rex lured him close to the dense woods and disappeared. No sooner had the bewildered soldier lost sight of his quarry than he was subdued from behind, bound hand and foot, and dragged into the underbrush.

  With the first and second men gone, the third Praetorian searching the cemetery began to grow wary. This time Rex charged straight at him.

  Though the Praetorian tried to escape, Rex caught him and forced him to black out by once again cutting off the blood to his brain. After the tight squeeze of such a choke was released, the victims always recovered quickly, but by then it was too late. The third man was down on his belly like the other two, his wrists tied to his ankles.

  Rex dragged the third soldier, wriggling and spitting curses, into a nearby crematorium. He returned and dragged the other two Praetorians into the squat little building as well. When all the men were inside, Ignatius rose from his hiding place and moved toward the brick structure with its large central chimney. The place was windowless, and Ignatius knew its interior would be dark. He approached quietly and peered into the open doorway.

  A pile of crisscrossed logs the height of a man’s chest stood beneath the chimney’s flue in the ceiling. The three bound captives lay on the floor, quieter and more subdued by their ominous surroundings, with no hint of their former belligerence. Rex stood above them. He held a woman’s limp body wrapped in a white funeral shroud. Only Flavia’s head was exposed. Her neck was arched backward, and her mouth was slightly agape. The unbound locks of her long, brown hair dangled over Rex’s forearm as he lifted her body into the ray of light from the door.

  “Behold what you have done!” he accused the Praetorians. “You have slain an innocent woman! The Furies will snatch your souls to hell today for this deed!”

  “No, stop! We’re good soldiers! Let us go!” cried one of the captives. “We were only doing our duty!” whined another.

  “No excuses! Your lives shall be required this day,” Rex said in a firm voice, unmoved by the men’s desperate pleas. “By the fires of divine vengeance you shall be consumed!”

  Ignatius pulled his dark cloak tight around his shoulders and drew the hood over his head. The oversized cowl obscured his face in shadow. He stepped inside the crematorium and closed the door, plunging the space into blackness. The men on the floor whimpered and moaned. A quiet rustling could be heard around the logs, then all fell silent. Groping in the dark, Ignatius found an upside-down jug on the pyre. He lifted it to uncover a small oil lamp. The dim glow revealed that Rex had now departed, and Flavia’s body had been laid on the pile of wood. Her facecloth had been cinched tight, enclosing the entire corpse in a white mantle of death.

  “Set us free,” a Praetorian threatened, “or the Furies will take you too!”

  “The Furies only take revenge for the shedding of innocent blood,” Ignatius replied, “but yours is the blood of the guilty.”

  The third soldier squirmed on the floor and tried to lift his head to look his executioner in the face. “Please! Have mercy!” he begged, but Ignatius’s only answer was to pick up a torch. The stick was tipped with rags soaked in sulfur and lime, and it quickly took the flame from the lamp. By its flickering glow, Ignatius could see the pyre was drenched with glossy oil. Shadows danced on the ceiling vault, made all the more eerie by the echoes from the men writhing on the floor and pleading for their lives. Ignatius emptied the oil from the lamp onto Flavia’s shroud so the body would be sure to burn. Then he stepped back.

  “Murderers!” he accused. “The time has come for your judgment.” Ignatius touched the torch to the pyre. A bright flame erupted from the slick wood.

  Now the men on the floor began to roll furiously toward the door. Ignatius sidestepped them and reached the exit first. “My vengeance is complete,” he said as he left the crematorium and stepped into the evening light. He dropped a bar across the door and retreated into the thickening shadows under the tangled oaks.

  Smoke began to rise from the crematorium’s chimney. By now the logs must be burning hot, and the body was surely aflame. Any moment now . . .

  Yes! There he is!

  A gardener rushed toward the crematorium with a knife in his hand. He threw aside the bar and yanked open the door. Smoke billowed from the upper half of the opening. Ducking low, the gardener entered the little building and remained inside for several moments. Suddenly one of the Praetorians burst from the crematorium, stumbling across the grass like a madman. He was followed by the second and third soldiers, then the gardener came out as well. The three rescued guardsmen fell to their knees, gasping and coughing as they sought to fill their lungs with fresh air. Once they could catch sufficient breath, they shouted prayers of gratitude to Mars and Mithras.

  “Thank you, sir!” one of the soldiers sputtered, clasping the gardener’s hand.

  “I saw the smoke and heard you yelling. I couldn’t let you burn!”

  “Vile treachery!” another soldier declared.

  “Powerful people are arrayed against you,” the gardener said. “I think you had better leave right away.”

  The three soldiers needed no further encouragement to escape the site of their close brush with death. They hastened from the necropolis, leaving the gardener alone in the dusk.

  Ignatius picked his way through the trees and went out to meet him. The gardener remained silent as the senator approached. Ignatius did not remove his hood.

  “You did well,” he told the waiting man.

  “I did just as you told me, sir.”

  “Indeed, you did. Here is your reward.” Ignatius put a sack of small silver coins in the gardener’s outstretched hand, then added a gold aureus. “That is for the family of the boy who died yesterday. I will check to make sure you have delivered it to the father. Be sure also to take them the boy’s ashes in an urn.”

  “I’m an honest man, sir. I will pass along the coin when I bring the remains. And the family needs the money. They are poor and were very frightened when their son took ill. The boy was just coming into his manhood. He was to be their means of support. Now he’s gone. His death was a grievous blow to their futures.”

  “May the power in heaven be propitious to them,” Ignatius said, not wanting to offer any specific religious details. “Be gone now, and speak not a word of this.”

  The gardener bowed and withdrew. When all was quiet, Ignatius returned to the copse of trees. Two figures emerged from the underbrush.

  “Do you think they fell for it?” Rex asked.

  Ignatius nodded. “No question.”

  “Uncle, that was risky!” Flavia said. “A little longer and those soldiers would have died!”

  “I think not. The flue was open
and the smoke was rising. The air near the floor would have been breathable for some time.”

  “Perhaps. But I still wouldn’t have wanted to be them!”

  Rex turned to Flavia. “Nice work,” he said. “You held perfectly still in my arms. Lifeless as a doll. Those Praetorians were convinced it was your dead body I put on that pyre. They never saw us slip out in the dark.”

  “And now they think your body has been consumed by fire,” Ignatius added. “As far as those men are concerned, you are in the underworld now. Gone from this earth forever.”

  Flavia stretched out her right hand, palm up. “Clasp it.”

  Ignatius took his niece’s hand in his own.

  “You too, Rex,” Flavia said, extending her left. After Rex complied with her wish, she lifted both men’s hands. Ignatius felt Flavia give his fingers a squeeze.

  “As you can feel, gentlemen, I am still quite alive on this earth. I am a woman made of flesh and blood despite our little ruse. And so I shall remain, until the Father God calls me to his heavenly city. When that day comes, I will be ready. Until then, I believe he has important work for me to do in the city of man.”

  “Yes! I believe he does too, my precious niece,” Ignatius said. “May the God of heaven bless your journey.”

  Flavia gave one last squeeze, then released the men’s hands. Silence hung between the threesome for a long moment.

  “It’s dark now,” Rex observed at last. “We should probably go. Those soldiers might come back.”

  “I doubt it! You were much more than they could handle!” Flavia said admiringly.

  Rex waved off the remark. “Caught them by surprise,” he said with a little laugh. “I was lucky.”