by Peter Tonkin
Caesar’s Spies: The Ides
Peter Tonkin
© Peter Tonkin 2016
Peter Tonkin has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
For Cham, Guy and Mark, as always. And with special thanks to Nick Slater.
Table of Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
EPILOGUE
I
The woman wriggled out of the window and her lively weight pulled at his arms like fish on a line. Artemidorus slipped forward until his head and shoulders also went through the gaping frame. The edge of the sill slid beneath his chest but it was wet and slimy. Like the tabletop he was lying on. The all too active burden tugging at his wrists threatened to pull him further out. The brutal wind seemed intent on sucking him through the hole in the wall and whirling him away. Rain pounded onto the back of his skull as though he had thrust himself into a waterfall. He teetered on the edge of disaster, fighting for control.
The secret agent steadied himself. Physically and mentally. He spread his knees on the solid piece of furniture wedged against the inner edge of the window to facilitate the escape. Glad of the thick leather of his military-style bracchae trousers, which ended at his knees but seemed to grip the wood better than skin and bone. ‘Puella?’ he called as loudly as he dared. ‘Puella, what’s wrong?’
The young woman who had just slithered through the frame, her fingers closed trustingly around his wrists, was known simply by her slave name as Puella Africana. Her full burden swung below him as he waited for her answer. Threatening to drag them both to destruction as she writhed. And the time he had allowed for the escape sped by. But she was slight, he assured himself spreading his knees wider, willing the leather covering them to grip the treacherous tabletop. She would find her footing soon and solve both problems at once. The arms holding her in the meantime had seen him through years in the legions to the rank of centurion in the VIIth. In the arena as a provocator, armed and equipped the same as he was as a legionary. Lethally expert with the gladius sword that gave gladiators their name. With the pugio dagger that matched it. These arms and shoulders were more than equal to the task of holding a slim young woman steady.
‘I can’t find it,’ she answered his whispered question. ‘It’s not here!’ At once he understood the movement threatening to pull the pair of them to disaster. Her body writhed as her feet sought in the darkness for the first rung of the ladder he had left leaning against the wall when he climbed silently into the villa in order to break her free.
The brutal wind which had extinguished the tiny flame of his tallow candle and entombed them in darkness, backed suddenly. Smacked him in the face like a fist. Weather like this was not unusual in the month of Mars, this close to the New Year which was only fourteen days past. But, thought the Spartan spy with a bitter smile, this particular cataclysm seemed especially powerful. Almost personal in its spite. Perhaps he should have made a sacrifice to Janus, Roman god of doorways, on entering. Even though he had come through the window. For this was the two-faced god’s season. Janus oversaw beginnings and endings as well as entrances and exits. The spy was certainly entering and exiting without due reverence. Independently of the fact that he was stealing a valuable slave from one of the most powerful men in the city.
And perhaps he should have left something for the household deities and ghostly lares at the shrine in the atrium when he also stole the knife that had lain there. Tucking it into his belt as he glanced up at the wax death masks of past generations, all watching him accusingly. And at the family tree adorning the wall. Tracing the house-owner’s ancestry back through more than four hundred years to the founding of the Republic. The theft of the knife had been an impulse. Something about the weapon made him want to discuss it with Quintus, the veteran optio in charge of maintaining and issuing the weapons he used. Quintus, last of a rich and noble clan who had nothing but the legion as a family. Who stayed on, therefore, long after he had earned his release. Quintus, who they teased affectionately, calling him the last of the triarii. The theft certainly appeared to have upset one god or another. Unless, of course, he reckoned wryly, the tempest had a significance which was larger than one Spartan secret agent, his actions and omissions.
Whatever the reason, the stormy darkness beneath Artemidorus seemed disturbingly threatening and utterly blinding. Though in truth there was little enough to see. An ebony-haired, dark-skinned woman in a drab sleeping tunic, dangling down a brown-brick wall above a black-cobbled passageway between two tall patrician villas. Her face two arms’ lengths below him. Her feet still the height of a man above the ground, scrabbling over the brick in search of that elusive ladder.
But then, a lightning fork lit up the entire sky. Its brightness lingered for two full heartbeats. He saw the woman’s face as she looked up at him, eyes wide. Legs spread as they searched for the ladder. The ladder itself, sliding away across the edge of his vision. Kicked by an unwary foot or blown by the ferocious wind. Gone, in any case. Distractingly, he also saw the way her tunic had ridden up to leave her naked from her shoulders down. The way the brightness gleamed disconcertingly off her rain-polished nudity. It seemed that her entire body had been gilded with thick gold paint.
As though the huge bolt of lightning held some power over the storm itself, the wind dropped to silence as darkness slammed back. Everything was still for the briefest instant. As the ladder clattered onto the ground with sufficient noise to wake the ostiarius doorkeeper’s dog. The dog’s barks were lost at once beneath the most deafening rumble of thunder so far. As it echoed into silence, the dog redoubled its warnings. There was a stirring in the villa. Artemidorus glanced over his shoulder. The open doorway into the upper room from which they were escaping was suddenly defined by distant brightness as the household came awake. It would be a matter of mere heartbeats before someone noticed that one of the slaves was missing. Particularly as she was the master’s current favourite.
Artemidorus released his grip on Puella’s left hand and she opened her own fingers, allowing her shoulders to sag and lower her toes a few more precious unicae inches. He eased his grip on her right wrist. ‘Run!’ he spat.
‘I can’t,’ she replied, her words just loud enough for him to hear. Her tone calm and controlled in spite of the danger. ‘I can’t see.’
‘Downhill,’ he ordered. ‘Follow the slope. Towards the Forum. I’ll catch up.’ He doubted she heard the final promise for she had loosed her grip in turn and was gone.
He slid back, raising his torso and unexpectedly stabbing himself in the left buttock with the stolen knife tucked against his spine. The soldier’s part of his mind marvelled at a blade sharp enough to cut through his heavy woollen tunic and thick leather trousers and into his flesh like that. He had never before seen a dagger with such an unusual, cross-topped handle – or ever come across a blade of such temper or quality. It had cut through Puella’s leather slave collar effortlessly. He was fortunate not to have slit her throat with it. He doubted even wise old Quintus had seen anything like it.
He smacked the crown of his skull on the top of the window frame. The pain in his backside and thoughts of his triarius weapons expert distracting him as effectively as the vision of Puella’s gilded nakedness had done. The hard edge would have brought blood had he not been wearing the leather cap of a freedman. Like the unfashionable barbar
ian beard hiding his lower face, it was part of the secret agent’s current disguise as a handyman.
He hardly noticed the pain in his head, for he was focused on swinging round and easing himself back along the tabletop and out of the window as quickly as he could. If he didn’t catch up with Puella before the doorkeeper and his dog did, then the fugitive slave was in deadly danger. By Roman law she was guilty of theft – having stolen herself from her owner. She could expect to be whipped, branded as a runaway and perhaps even crucified. All the careful undercover work he had done during the last few days while fixing damage to the villa would be utterly undone. Repairing damage carefully designed to grant him undercover access not only to the villa but to the servants and slaves within it.
The best of good fortune had led the secret agent to Puella and the secrets she knew within a matter of days. It had taken no time at all to convince her to run away with him. Had it been any other member of the household who agreed so readily, the spy would have been suspicious. In his world, there was a counterspy for every spy. But there was an innocence about the girl that rang true; a deeper motivation he had yet to understand. In the meantime it was his responsibility to keep her alive long enough to pass on what she had heard and seen.
For the knowledge in Puella’s memory was simply too important to be put at risk, though she herself had no idea how significant it was. The secrets locked within her could change the course of history. Or, perhaps, stop the course of history from being altered by the villa’s owner and his murderous associates. But only if Artemidorus got her safely to his handler, the spymaster and military tribune Enobarbus. And, together, they got her to the general in time to present him with unarguable proof that must spur him to immediate, decisive action.
The secret agent dangling from the sill of the open window had a list of suspicions gathered as he worked in the household, and gossiped apparently inconsequentially with whoever would talk to him there. The girl lost down in the darkness had the undeniable proof. He was a speculator. She was a witness. A witness full of the kind of proof both Enobarbus and the general demanded before they would consider taking action. The only witness he had.
*
Sudden brightness shone out above him. The ostiarius no doubt – racing up here from his post at the front door, carrying a lantern. Following the chilly drafts and the sound of the rain pouring in. Just about to find a cut slave collar lying on the floor. The slippery table. The gaping window.
Artemidorus loosed his grip on the sill and kicked clear of the wall as he dropped. He landed hard but fell into a roll and came up running at full tilt. There were shouts of surprise and anger above and behind him. They faded quickly enough as he took his own advice and began to pound downhill towards the Forum, guided by the slope beneath his feet rather than by anything he could actually see. And by the smell. Even in the midst of a deluge like this, his nostrils, more used to the relative cleanliness of legion encampments, twitched at the gathering stench of the city’s bustling heart.
But the darkness overcame the guidance of both the streaming slope and the gathering stink. Long before he caught up with the girl as promised, Artemidorus smashed into an invisible outcrop of wall that sent him staggering. The slick soles of his sandals slithered across the cobbles and he went sprawling. He pulled himself to his feet at once and stood gasping, regretting the absence of the solid caligae he wore with his centurion’s uniform. Their studded soles would have given much more purchase. But then, he reflected with a tight smile, the studded soles of a soldier’s boots would hardly have been the ideal for creeping around a patrician villa in the middle of the night seeking to smuggle a slave girl out of the clutches of her traitorous master.
Although Artemidorus stood still only for a moment, the hesitation was sufficient to bring the doorkeeper, his half-wild guard dog and a pair of brawny household slaves down upon him. They were running fast and sure-footed because the doorkeeper had a lantern whose horn panels allowed almost as much light to beam out as came from the flaming torches carried by his companions. The hound clearly had the girl’s scent, for it was running straight and sure, its nose close to the cobbles. Its chain taut from shaggy neck to master’s fist. The spy reached for the knife he had stolen from the shrine in the atrium. Glancing around for a good place to stand and fight.
But the darkness befriended him. The light from the lantern and the torches revealed an angled house-front with a recessed doorway. He stepped silently back into the shadows of the doorway and watched the three slave-hunters run heedlessly past.
‘If she gets to the Forum, our task will be harder,’ snarled the doorkeeper to his companions. ‘The dog will lose the canicula bitch’s scent.’
They growled in agreement. Not much more civilised or house-trained than the dog, thought the Spartan. He stepped out of the shadows once more and joined their party. He ran at the same speed as they did but half a dozen paces back at the edge of the darkness, which also followed them silently down the roadway.
It took them hardly any time at all to catch up with the fleeing woman. She materialised like a ghost from the household shrine at the forward edge of the brightness. She glanced over her shoulder and the brightness caught the whites of her eyes. The three slave-hunters gave a universal growl of avarice and lust. There would be a fat reward for the return of Puella Africana, no doubt. But the way her sodden tunic clung to her offered a more carnal, more immediate, promise. As though she understood the depth of her danger, she ran on faster, still looking over her shoulder in terror. So that she also ran headlong into an unexpected thrust of wall. She bounced off the brick outcrop, apparently sure-footed enough to survive. But then her sandals slipped and she fell headlong onto the streaming roadway. The doorkeeper slowed, his lantern high and his dog straining at its chain. His cohorts slowed beside him. And their unsuspected follower slowed also, keeping far enough back to be hidden by shadows and downpour. Close enough to hear what they were saying.
‘Right. You two go back,’ ordered the doorkeeper as he came to a halt beside the fallen woman. ‘Tell the master I have her and will bring her back soon.’ The broad, squat-bodied ostiarius was a freedman. He wore the same leather cap as the disguised spy. His companions were slaves. They wore neck rings and name tags like the one Artemidorus had cut from Puella’s throat. They would obey immediately and fully. Their lives might depend on it. ‘And take this brute with you,’ he added handing one of them the dog’s chain, swapping it for a nasty-looking club. Artemidorus stepped back into the shadows as they pounded obediently past. Only the dog shot him a suspicious, golden-eyed glance before being dragged away.
This section of the street became quiet almost at once. Except for the wind and the rain. Artemidorus stepped out of one shadow into another and began to close up behind the unsuspecting doorkeeper. He pulled the stolen dagger out of his belt, slipping the cross-topped handle into his right fist and letting the blade rest vertically against the skin of his inner forearm, the icy touch of the flat steel reaching almost from wrist to elbow. He could see the weapon in his mind’s eye. A pugio like the dagger he carried with his gladius on the belt of his centurion’s uniform. Except for that unusual handle. And, perhaps, for the almost magical keenness of the blade – two honed edges coming to a sharp steel point. But what steel it must be! He wished he had time to examine it properly. Perhaps when he was back with Quintus at the VII’s camp on Tiber Island after this was all over. One way or another. If he lived to tell the tale. As he took another silent step forward he wondered once more why it had been in the little shrine in the first place. Then he dismissed the thoughts and focused on the matter in hand.
The doorkeeper was too intent upon his apparently helpless victim to register anything less intrusive than a full cohort of soldiers marching up behind him. Hobnailed caligae and all. The spy had no trouble in creeping closer as the doorkeeper continued to poke at the stunned woman with the end of his club. The man had the bandy legs, squat spine and massive sh
oulders of a bull. The short, fat neck of an ox. The head on top of all this looked ridiculously small. But it was neither the head nor the shoulders that interested Artemidorus.
‘You’re in trouble, girl,’ continued the doorkeeper. ‘You know the mistress, Lady Porcia, has been in a foul mood since she got that knife wound in her thigh. And the master, Lord Brutus, has hardly been any better. And as for his mother the Lady Servilia… You’ll be lucky if they only crucify you. I’d bet that they’ll flog you half to death and let all us menfolk have you first. The master won’t want to keep you for himself any longer. Not when you would rather run than pleasure him. No. We’ll all have you, I’ll bet. Freedmen and slaves. As often as we want.’ The end of the club was pushing at the hem of her tunic now, easing it up her thighs. ‘If you let me in first, though,’ continued the doorkeeper, ‘we might be able to work something out.’
Which was as far as he had got in his one-sided bargaining before Artemidorus stepped past him. ‘What…’ he demanded, confused by the sudden intrusion of a large, square shoulder between himself and his victim. With his lantern in one fist and the club in the other, he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He straightened, the tiny brain in the tiny head seeking to make sense of the unexpected situation. The stranger said nothing. Still facing away from him, he took one more step forward and half-turned. The last thing that the doorkeeper saw was a blur of the stranger’s arm lashing back towards him at neck level. The last thing he felt was a sharp pain in the pit of his throat.
It was a move Artemidorus had perfected for his brief career in the arena. He called it The Scorpion and the manoeuvre had become so famous he had taken it for his fighting name: Scorpionis. As he stepped past the doorkeeper, he allowed the blade of the stolen dagger to slide away from his inner arm until it stood out at right angles behind his fist. Then he drove it backward as hard and fast as he could. The point went unerringly into the pit of the doorkeeper’s throat. It passed through the tubes there and slid between the vertebrae buried at the back of his thick neck, severing the great nerve of his spinal cord without cutting the blood vessels on either side. Then it wedged between the articulated bones which joined his skull to his spine. A finger-length of blade protruding just above the collar of his tunic. He might as well have been beheaded. In an instant, his lungs forgot how to breathe, his heart forgot how to beat and his legs forgot how to stand. There was no sound. No blood. Nothing but an instant and permanent cessation of life.