Swords Around the Throne

by Ian Ross

  The thought returned to him, a stab in his mind. Constantine was dead. Maximian was emperor. He had failed in his vows, and now he was a prisoner condemned for treason.

  He could almost laugh at that: if he had conspired against Maximian, it had only been at the prompting of the notary Nigrinus, whose men had been responsible for trapping and capturing him... An elaborate deception, he thought. Perhaps too elaborate; something was missing from the picture. His mind turned, but only in one direction was there hope. If Brinno had evaded capture, if he had escaped and if he managed to get back to Treveris... But again he remembered: Constantine was dead. If Brinno reported what had happened, he would only be condemning himself.

  No hope at all then. Castus grinned mirthlessly to himself. The pain in his arms and the constant thirst kept him from sleeping. Instead his mind turned again: he thought of Sabina, and wondered what she would be doing. Would she easily accept Maximian as her new master? And what of Fausta, a widow now: what was her part in this...? Castus suddenly remembered the sorcerer in the tomb outside Treveris. The letters of the next emperor’s name revealed. M... A... X... Had it been a genuine divination, Maximian’s accession foretold by the spirits? Or had the man been paid to sow the seeds of future loyalty?

  The ceaseless whirl of questions lulled Castus eventually into a dull sleep.

  He was woken by a crash as the jailer flung the cell door open. Weak daylight seeped in from the chamber outside, and Castus closed his eyes at once as the pain of his shackled arms exploded through his torso. The jailer came and stood over him. He was a small man with a perverted leer, but his arms were long and corded with muscle, and he wore a heavy military belt covered in ornaments: brooches and rings, keys and clasps. Taken from previous prisoners, Castus guessed. Prisoners who had no use for such things now.

  The jailer’s slave assistant, a youth with dirty blond hair and a bruised face, dragged Castus up into a kneeling position, and then the jailer amused himself by bringing a tin cup of water close to his mouth and then moving it away as he leaned forward to drink. Finally Castus managed to grip the rim of the cup between his teeth and suck the sour water down before the man could drag it from him. There was a crust of dry bread to follow; the jailer rammed it into Castus’s mouth and left him to chew.

  The door slammed shut and Castus was alone in the dark again. He rolled onto his side, then spat out the bread. It was drying his mouth, and tasted of ash. Hours seemed to pass, and as his eyes adjusted to the faint trace of light from beneath the door he stared at the walls of the cell, the low vaulted ceiling, the worn stone-slab floor, and saw no possibility of escape. He had lapsed into another stunned and dreamless sleep when the first scream woke him.

  At first he thought it was the jailer beating his slave again. But the scream was followed by a second, a long drawn-out shriek that echoed and then died into racked sobs of agony. Castus struggled to his feet and stood staring at the door. His scalp prickled and crawled, and sweat ran down his back beneath his dirty unbelted tunic. The noise came again. The wrenching howl of a man in pain and terror. Castus was breathing hard through his nose. He felt panic rising in his chest, the overwhelming desire to get out, to flee whatever was causing that terrible agony.

  Moments passed in long-held breaths. The screaming had stopped, and after a while Castus felt the ache in his legs and sank down with one shoulder against the wall. He had barely closed his eyes when the door slammed open.

  ‘Big man,’ the jailer said. ‘On your feet.’

  The blond slave entered the cell holding a trident; Castus wondered if it was the same weapon that the gladiator on the aqueduct had carried. The slave jabbed the points of the trident towards Castus’s chest, then the jailer seized his arms and dragged him upright and out through the door.

  Outside the cell was a long chamber with heavy brick vaulting overhead. Water seeped through the bricks to drip and puddle on the stone floor, and a pair of torches in wall brackets threw ugly angled shadows. With the trident jabbing his back and the jailer tugging at his arm, Castus stumbled on through a series of low arches and interconnecting rooms. He saw iron-barred doors in the torchlight, dark openings in the bricks. Now that he was moving, he was more conscious than ever of his swollen bladder; the possibility that he might have to piss, and it would be taken as a sign of fear, was all the more humiliating.

  A sharp turn to the right, then another to the left, and Castus was shoved forward into a much larger chamber, the far end lost in smoky gloom. Squat pillars ran down the centre, with arches above, and the low vaulted ceiling seemed to compress the shadows. The chamber stank of hot iron, burnt flesh and blood.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ a voice said.

  Castus recoiled, and felt the trident prick his back. Nigrinus paced towards him from between the pillars, smiling.

  ‘I hope they’ve been treating you appropriately down here,’ the notary said. ‘I did send food, but of course jailers have a habit of taking the best stuff for themselves...’

  Castus glanced to his side, but the jailer had vanished. The trident was gone too. For a moment he thought he was alone with the notary, but then a movement at the far side of the room drew his eye and he saw the four men sitting together in the corner. They looked like labourers, gathered around a low table with their midday meal, but Castus could make out the burn scars on their arms, the dark stains on their sleeveless tunics. They were quaestionarii. Professional torturers.

  There were others, too, in the chamber. Men moved from the darkness: a couple of guards in military cloaks, their faces without expression. Castus sensed a movement to his right and turned to see three more figures enter the room, bending their heads beneath the low brick arch. The newcomers also wore cloaks, but they secured them with brooches of gold and gemstones, and their tunics were richly patterned and embroidered. The first was Scorpianus, the Praetorian tribune. After him came an older man who wore an expression of mild surprise: Castus had seen him dining with Maximian, and knew he was one of the local provincial governors. The third figure was the eunuch, Gorgonius.

  ‘Domini,’ Nigrinus said. ‘Welcome to the Stygian depths! I was just about to show this prisoner some of the more intriguing items kept down here.’

  Gorgonius smiled and made a gesture for the notary to continue. The older man beside him was lifting the hem of his cloak to cover his nose and mouth, but the tribune Scorpianus was gazing about himself with frank interest.

  ‘If you’ll step this way please,’ Nigrinus said. Castus remained standing, until the two cloaked guards moved up behind him and shoved at his shoulder. Then he paced heavily after the notary, the guards and the three distinguished visitors following behind.

  ‘You see here, on this rack,’ Nigrinus said, gesturing, ‘the simple implements called claws. As you’ll notice, they are razor sharp. These are used to rake down the flanks of the subject’s body, ripping the flesh and muscle away from the bones beneath... It’s said that they can rip a man’s soul from his body too... Beside them here are the hooks. This one – if you look closely – is shaped to cut in beneath the ribs. The subject can be lifted from his feet using these chains here, and made to hang suspended on the hooks for a considerable period... These need cleaning, as you can see...’

  He paced on down one side of the room, through the puddles of firelight, gesturing to right and left as he spoke. Rather like, Castus thought, a wealthy man guiding visitors through his house, pointing out the fine marbles and the wall paintings.

  ‘These things upon the table are really very crude. As you see, a simple lash of nine cords, but the cords are tied with knucklebones and potsherds. When the subject is bound to that post over there, one of these lashes can strip the flesh from his back with surprising speed... Careful of that bucket. It’s full of salt water...’

  Castus paced steadily, conscious only of the twisting knot of pain between his shoulder blades and deep in his bowels, and the hatred he felt for Nigrinus. A hate so extreme it was almo
st sweet, almost pleasurable. He listened only vaguely to the man’s thin droning voice, and paid no attention to the guards behind him or the guests trailing after them.

  ‘Ah, now this is more interesting,’ Nigrinus said, and turned to address his audience. He had led them in a half-circle, down the length of the chamber and back up the other side, and now they were standing beneath a hanging lamp in the open area at the far end. Castus blinked his eyes back into focus. The thing standing in the middle of the floor looked strangely familiar, but so out of place that for a moment he could not understand what he was looking at.

  ‘This device we call the catapult,’ Nigrinus said with a slight smirk. ‘You military men will recognise it, no doubt, a standard army artillery piece, although the torsion arms are set rather differently, and this flat board here covers the channel where the bolt would normally lie...’

  Castus stared at the device. He felt a deep revulsion crawling in his stomach. Scorpianus the tribune was bending across it, studying it with interest.

  ‘You can surely imagine how it works,’ Nigrinus went on. ‘The subject is made to lie on his back on the board here, with his legs secured to the frame at the bottom and his wrists fastened to the two arms of the catapult, which are winched back against the pressure of the torsion drums. When we pull this lever here, the catapult is released, and the subject is dragged violently up by the recoil. In most cases, his arms and legs are dislocated at once. He then hangs here, suspended on his stretched tendons...’

  The eunuch sucked a sharp hiss between his teeth, but he was still smiling. Scorpianus nodded in appreciation. Castus felt cold sweat coursing down his body, and weakening nausea filling his stomach.

  ‘Our quaestionarii are quite adept at probing the tendons with these blades and spikes here,’ Nigrinus continued. ‘Although I’m told that the greatest pain is experienced when the tension is relaxed and the body of the subject allowed to fall. Some men are able to withstand three or even four sessions on the catapult. Though none can take more.’

  ‘Perhaps we could have a demonstration?’ Scorpianus said, straightening up and jutting his heavy jaw at Castus. ‘Maybe the prisoner here?’

  Castus glared back at him. How many times had he stood guard as Scorpianus reclined at dinner? How many times had he saluted as the tribune passed him in the corridors of the palace? He flexed his shoulders, and felt the shackles bite into his wrists.

  ‘Sadly, the prisoner is a soldier,’ Nigrinus explained. ‘A member of the Corps of Protectores, in fact. An honestior. So he is legally immune from torture... except in cases of treason, of course. Although we do have reason to believe that treason may have been committed...’

  ‘You would know about that,’ Castus said. But the words came out as a choked snarl. Gorgonius stared at him in bemusement, as if he had just heard a dog speak.

  ‘Yes, perhaps we could try you on the catapult,’ Nigrinus said, perching himself casually on the bed of the machine. ‘We could see how long you last. Such a brawny pair of shoulders – how long would it take those muscles to rip, do you think?’

  ‘What do you want, you bastard?’

  They understood him that time. But the three guests were not looking at Castus, but at Nigrinus.

  ‘Well,’ the notary said, ‘I could demand the names of your fellow conspirators. But as it happens I already have those. Your friends Sallustius and the other one, the young Frank, gave me all I needed.’

  Castus felt cold despair plummet through him. The man was bluffing, he must be... Sallustius was surely captured, but Brinno too? The notary tightened his mouth to hide a grin.

  ‘So as it is, all I require from you is your oath of allegiance to the true emperor, Maximian Augustus. And, of course, your renunciation of the false oath you swore to the usurper Constantine, now deceased.’

  ‘You won’t get either.’

  ‘No? Then our friend Scorpianus will get his wish after all. But think, first. To what do you owe your greatest loyalty?’

  ‘To the emperor.’

  ‘And what is the emperor?’ Nigrinus said, still sitting on the torture machine. He made a casual rhetorical gesture. ‘Is the emperor not a personification of Rome? Of the harmony between gods and men, the divine order of the universe? So you could better say that your loyalty is to that divine order: to the empire, and to the sacred majesty of Rome.’

  Castus exhaled slowly. He dragged his arms against the bind of the shackles, as if he might break the chains that linked them; the effort made his neck swell.

  ‘I see you are not considering this calmly and clearly!’ Nigrinus said. The three dignitaries were observing him still, the eunuch with unfeigned amusement, the older civilian with bafflement and Scorpianus with an air of vague boredom.

  ‘Constantine,’ Nigrinus went on, ‘was committed to a war with Maxentius. Everyone knew it. A huge and costly war, which would have left the armies of the west depleted and exhausted, easy prey to our rivals in the east. Such a war would have weakened the empire, weakened Rome, thrown us back into the bloody chaos of our fathers’ and grandfathers’ age.’

  He paused for a moment, as if recalling some sorrowful memory. It was a performance, Castus realised. But for whose benefit? Certainly not his own. All Castus wanted to do was kill everyone in the room.

  ‘But now,’ Nigrinus said, brightening, ‘we have a new emperor, a man united to Maxentius by paternal love which no sordid quarrel can extinguish! And with the united armies of the western empire under their command, they can sweep away their corrupt rivals in the east, banish our enemies from the frontiers and unite the Roman world under their divine rule. So, you see, the demise of the usurper Constantine was a very good thing. Even the gods applaud it, I’m sure. And I myself have worked tirelessly for nearly two years to bring about this fortunate revolution!’

  Castus felt his mind grow still and cold. The massive brick vaults overhead pressed downwards, and the faces of the three watching men seemed to blur and warp. Clenching his jaw, Castus forced himself to focus. He understood what was happening now. He would not be tortured, not yet.

  ‘Go and fuck yourself,’ he said. Scorpianus laughed.

  They took him back to his cell, and the jailer pushed him as he crossed the threshold, so he stumbled and fell hard onto the stone floor. He knew at once he was not alone.

  ‘Brother, is that you?’

  With the door closed the blackness was a solid mass, filling the small chamber. Castus crawled to the wall and slumped against it. He flinched as he heard the movements of a body close to him.

  ‘Brinno?’

  Then the young Frank was crouched beside him; their arms were still shackled, but they pressed their shoulders together. ‘I thought they’d killed you, brother,’ Brinno said.

  ‘Likewise. How far did you get from the aqueduct?’

  ‘Hardly any distance. They were already waiting in the trees. When I looked back, I saw you fighting. How many of them did you kill?’

  ‘Only three or four, I think.’

  ‘Heh! That’s good enough. Keep killing three or four, and soon they’ll all be dead.’

  ‘Victor died. And they’ve got Sallustius too.’

  He heard Brinno make a spitting sound. ‘Sallustius betrayed us,’ the Frank said.

  ‘I think I guessed that,’ Castus said quietly. ‘I didn’t want to think about it.’

  For a while they sat in silence, crouched against the wall. Then, haltingly, they began to fill in the details of what had happened to them. Their experiences were much the same. Castus told Brinno about the torture chamber, and Nigrinus’s strange speech of loyalty to Maximian.

  ‘I knew he was a snake,’ Brinno said. ‘You can kill him, if I can kill that bastard Flaccianus.’

  Castus laughed, and it was a good feeling, even if it made the muscles in his arms ache again.

  ‘There’s something else I have to tell you,’ Brinno said, a short while later. ‘That slave boy, the jailer’s assistant. He
’s Frankish. I heard him talking. He’s of the Tubantes, I think.’

  ‘So?’ Castus had often wondered about his friend’s attitude to the large numbers of his countrymen in slavery. Brinno had never appeared to give it much thought.

  ‘The Tubantes are vassals of the Salii, my people.’

  Castus nodded slowly, beginning to comprehend. Brinno said no more, but his silence told Castus everything he needed to know.

  It must have been three hours later when they heard the rattle of the jailer’s key in the lock. The door clashed open, spilling hot torchlight over the dirty stone floor, and the jailer swaggered into the cell carrying a water pot and a wooden tray of bread. The slave came in behind him, angling his trident down at the prisoners.

  ‘Dinnertime! You first, barbarian,’ the jailer said, nudging Brinno with the toe of his boot. ‘Up on your knees, or I’ll pour this lot over your head.’

  The Frankish slave had his trident pointed at Castus, who squatted with his back against the wall. Brinno was lying sprawled on the straw on the far side of the cell.

  ‘Up, I said. I’m not feeding you myself... I don’t bend over for any man!’

  Without moving, Brinno began to speak. The words were fast and guttural, Germanic; Castus paid no attention to them, but watched the slave. At once the youth gave a start and glanced at Brinno.

  ‘Quiet!’ the jailer snarled. He dropped the tray of bread and pulled a cane from his belt. Castus saw the slave take a step back into the corner of the cell, his mouth open, and the points of the trident swung upwards. It was all he needed.

  With one heave of his leg muscles he launched himself up, dipping his head and squaring his shoulders. The jailer only had time to notice the movement before Castus slammed into the man’s chest, knocking him off his feet and driving him back against the far wall. He let out a shout of pain. Castus drew his head back and then jabbed forward, his brow thudding against the bridge of the man’s nose. Another crunching headbutt, fast and hard, and the jailer’s skull smacked back against the wall. His legs folded beneath him and he collapsed to the floor.